by Eric Nylund
Ensign Lovell nodded. “Sir, ETA to rally point Zulu in five minutes.”
“Remove all missile safety locks,” Captain Keyes ordered. “Get our remote-piloted Longsword into the launch tube. And make sure our MAC gun capacitors and boosters are hot.”
Captain Keyes pulled out his pipe. He lit it and puffed.
The Covenant were, of course, after the orbital guns. Their suicidal frontal charge—while almost effective enough—had been just another diversion. The real danger was on the ground; if their troops took out the fusion generators, the Super MAC guns would be so much floating junk in orbit.
“This is bad,” he muttered to himself.
Cortana appeared on the AI pedestal near the NAV station. “Captain Keyes, I’m picking up another distress signal. It’s from the Reach space dock AI. And if you think this—” she gestured at the incoming Covenant fleet on screen “—is bad, wait until you hear this. It gets worse.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
0558 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System
The mission had just encountered another snag.
It never entered the Master Chief’s mind that he would fail to achieve his objectives. He had to succeed. Failure meant death for not only himself, but for all the Spartans . . . every human.
He stood at the view screen in the cargo bay and reread the priority Alpha transmission Captain Keyes had sent down:
Alpha priority channel: To Fleet Admiralty from REACH Space Dock Quartermaster AI8575 (a.
k.a. Doppler) /
/triple-encryption time-stamped public key: red rover red rover/ /start file/
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED
Item:Covenant data invasion packets detected penetrating firewall of REACH DOC NET. Counterintrusion software enacted. Resolution: 99.9 percent certainty of neutralization. Item:Initialization of triple-screening protocol discovered the corvetteCircumference /Bay Gamma-9/
isolated from REACH DOC NET. Item:Covenant ships detected on inbound Slipstream vector intersecting Bay Gamma-9. Conclusion:Unsecured navigation data on theCircumference detected by Covenant forces. Conclusion: VIOLATION OF THE COLE PROTOCOL. IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED.
/end file/
He replayed the distress call from Reach’s groundside FLEETCOM HQ.
“ . . . They’ve breached the perimeter. Fall back! Fall back! If anyone can hear this: the Covenant is groundside. Massing near the armory . . . they’re—”
The Master Chief copied these files and sent them over his squad’s COM channel. They had a right to know everything, too.
There was only one reason the Covenant would launch a ground invasion: to take out the planetary defense generators. If they succeeded, Reach would fall.
And there was only one reason why the Covenant wanted the shipCircumference —to plunder its NAV database—and find every human world, including Earth.
Captain Keyes appeared on the view screen. He held his pipe in one hand, squeezing it so tight his knuckles were white. “Master Chief, I believe the Covenant will use a pinpoint Slipspace jump to a position just off the space dock. They may try to get their troops on the station before the Super MAC guns can take out their ships. This will be a difficult mission, Chief. I’m . . . open to suggestions.”
“We can take care of it,” the Master Chief replied.
Captain Keyes’ eyes widened and he leaned forward in his command chair. “How exactly, Master Chief?”
“With all due respect, sir, Spartans are trained to handle difficult missions. I’ll split my squad. Three will board the space dock and make sure that NAV data does not fall into the Covenant’s hands. The remainder of the Spartans will go groundside and repel the invasion forces.”
Captain Keyes considered this. “No, Master Chief, it’s too risky. We’ve got to make sure the Covenant doesn’t get that NAV data. We’ll use a nuclear mine, set it close to the docking ring, and detonate it.”
“Sir, the EMP will burn out the superconductive coils of the orbital guns. And if you use thePillar of Autumn ’s conventional weapons, the NAV database may still survive. If the Covenant search the wreckage—they may obtain the data.”
“True,” Keyes said, and tapped his pipe thoughtfully on his chin. “Very well, Master Chief. We’ll go with your suggestion. I’ll plot a course over the docking station. Ready your Spartans and prep two dropships. We’ll launch you—” he consulted with Cortana “—in five minutes.”
“Aye, Captain. We’ll be ready.”
“Good luck,” Captain Keyes said, and snapped off the view screen. Luck. The Master Chief always had been lucky. He’d need luck more than ever this time. He turned to face the Spartans . . . his Spartans. They stood at attention. Kelly stepped forward. “Master Chief sir, permission to lead the space op, sir.” “Denied,” he said. “I’ll be leading that one.” He appreciated her gesture. The space operation would be ten times more dangerous than the ground op. The Covenant would outnumber them ten to one—or more—but the Spartans were used to taking the
fight against numerically superior enemies. They had always won on the ground. The extraction of theCircumference database, however, would be in vacuum and zero gravity—and they
might have to fight their way past a Covenant warship to reach the objective. Not exactly ideal conditions. “Linda and James,” he said. “You’re with me. Fred, you’re Red Team Leader. You’ll have tactical
command of the ground operation.” “Sir!” Fred shouted. “Yes, sir.” “Now make ready,” he said. “We don’t have much time left.” The Master Chief regretted his unfortunate choice of words. The Spartans stood a moment. Kelly called out, “Attention!” They snapped to and gave the Master Chief
a crisp salute. He stood straighter and returned their salute. He was intensely proud of them all. The Spartans scattered and gathered their gear, racing for the dropship bay. The Master Chief watched them go. This was the mission the Spartans had been tempered for in mission after mission. It would be their
finest moment . . . but he knew that it might also be their last moment. Chief Mendez had said that a leader would be required to spend the lives of those under his command.
The Master Chief knew he would lose comrades today—but would their deaths serve a necessary purpose . . . or would they be wasted?
Either way, they were ready.
John tapped the thrusters and rotated the Pelican dropship 180 degrees. He pushed the engines to full power to brake their forward momentum. ThePillar of Autumn had dropped them while she had been cruising at one-third full speed.
They’d need every millimeter of the ten thousand kilometers between them and the docking station to slow down.
The Master Chief had taken the Spartan’s modified Pelican, rigged with explosives. The station would be locked down—every airlock sealed. They’d have to blast their way in.
He glanced aft. Linda checked one of the three sniper rifle variants she had brought. James inspected his thruster pack.
He had picked Linda because no other single Spartan was as efficient at long-range combat. And that’s what the Master Chief wanted:long -range combat. If it came to hand-to-hand combat in zero gee with hordes of Covenant troopers . . . even his luck wouldn’t hold out too long.
He had picked James because James had never quit. Even when his hand had been burned off, he had shrugged off the shock—at least for a while—and helped them dispatch the Covenant behemoths on Sigma Octanus IV. The Master Chief would need that kind of determination on this mission.
He took a long look out the front of the Pelican. Their sister dropship initiated a burn and hurtled toward Reach.
Kelly, Fred, Joshua . . . all of them. Part of him longed to join them in the ground action.
The radar panel blinked a proximity warning; the Pelican was one thousand kilometers from the docking ring.
The Master Chief tapped the thrusters to align the dropship. He squelched the proximity alert.
/>
The alert immediately re-sounded. Strange. He reached for the squelch again—then stopped as he saw the space around the Pelican change. Motes of green light appeared, pinpoints at first, which swelled like bruises on velvet black space. The green smears lengthened, compressed, and distorted the stars.
—a Slipstream entry point. The Master Chief cut the Pelican’s engines, slowing them for impact. A Covenant frigate materialized a kilometer from the dropship’s nose. Its prow filled their view screen.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
0616 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Pelican dropship, Epsilon Eridani System near Reach Station Gamma
“Brace for maneuvering!” the Master Chief barked. The Spartans dove for safety harnesses and strapped in. “All secure!” Kelly shouted. The Master Chief killed the Pelican’s forward thrusters and triggered a short, sudden reverse burn. The
Spartans were brutally slammed forward into their harnesses as the Pelican’s acceleration bled away.
The Master Chief quickly shut down the engines. The tiny Pelican faced the Covenant frigate. At a kilometer’s distance, the alien ship’s launch bay and pulse laser turrets looked close enough to touch on the view screen; enough firepower to vaporize the Spartans in the blink of an eye.
The Master Chief’s first instinct was to fire their HE Anvil-II missiles and autocannons—but he checked
his hand as he reached for the triggers. That would only attract their attention . . . which was the last thing he wanted. For the moment, the alien vessel ignored them—probably because the Master Chief had shut down the Pelican’s engines. But the ship also seemed dead in space: no lights, no single ships launched, and no plasma weapons charging.
The dropship continued toward the docking station, their momentum putting distance between them and the frigate.
Space around the Covenant ship boiled and pulled apart—and two more alien ships appeared. They, too, ignored the dropship. Was it too small to bother with? The Master Chief didn’t care. His luck, it seemed, was holding.
He checked the radar—thirty kilometers to the docking ring. He ignited the engines to slow them down. He had to or they would crash into the station. Twenty kilometers. Rumbling shook the dropship. They slowed—but it wasn’t going to be enough.
Ten kilometers. “Hang on,” he told Linda and James. The sudden impact whiplashed the Master Chief back and forth in his seat. The straps holding him
snapped.
He blinked . . . saw only blackness. His vision cleared and he noted that his shield bar was dead. It slowly began to fill again. Every display and monitor in the cockpit had shattered. The Master Chief shook off the disorientation and pulled himself aft. The interior of the dropship was a mess. Everything tied down had come loose. Ammunition boxes had
broken open in the crash landing and loose carriages filled the air. Coolant leaked, spraying blobs of black fluid. In zero gravity, everything looked like the inside of a shaken snowglobe. James and Linda floated off the deck of the Pelican. They slowly moved. “Any injuries?” the Master Chief asked.
“No,” Linda replied. “I think so,” James said. “I mean, no. I’m good, sir. Was that a landing or did those Covenant ships take a shot at us?”
“If they had, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. Get whatever gear you can and get out, double time,”
the Master Chief said. The Master Chief grabbed an assault rifle and a Jackhammer launcher. He found a satchel. Inside was a kilogram of C-12, detonators, and a Lotus antitank mine. Those would come in handy. He salvaged five intact clips of ammunition but couldn’t locate his thruster pack. He’d have to do without one.
“No more time,” he said. “We’re sitting ducks here. Out the side hatch now.”
Linda went first. She paused, and—once she was satisfied the Covenant weren’t lying in ambush— motioned them forward. The Master Chief and James exited, clung to the side of the Pelican in zero gravity, and took flanking
positions at the fore and aft ends of the dropship. Space dock Gamma was a three-kilometer-diameter ring. Dull gray metal arced in either direction. On
the surface were communications dishes and a few conduits—no real cover. The docking bay doors were sealed tight. The station wasn’t spinning. The dockmaster AI must have shut the place up tight when it detected the unsecured NAV database.
The Master Chief frowned when he spotted the tail end of their Pelican—crumpled and embedded into the station’s hull. Its engines were ruined. The dropship jutted out at an angle; its prow and the charges of C-12 that were supposed to have blasted them into a Covenant ship—now pointed into the air.
The Master Chief started to drift off the station. He clipped himself to the hull of the dropship. “Blue-Two,” he said, “police those explosives.” He gestured to the prow. The motion sent him gyrating. “Yes, sir.” James puffed his thruster pack once and drifted up to the nose of the Pelican. The Spartans had trained to fight in zero gravity. It wasn’t easy. The slightest motion sent you spinning
out of control. A flash overhead reflected off the hull. The Master Chief looked up. The Covenant ships were alive now
—lances of blue laser fire flashed and motes of red light collected on their lateral lines. Their engines glowed and they moved close to the station. A streak crossed the Master Chief’s field of vision in the blink of an eye. The center Covenant frigate
shields strobed silver; the ship shattered into a cloud of glistening fragments. The orbital guns had turned and fired on the new threat. This was a suicide maneuver. How did the Covenant think they could withstand that kind of firepower? “Blue-One,” the Master Chief said. “Scan those ships with your scope.” Linda floated closer to the Master Chief. She pointed her sniper rifle up and sighted the ships. “We’ve
got inbound targets,” she said, and fired. The Master Chief hit his magnification. A dozen pods burst from the two remaining Covenant ships. Trails of exhaust pointed right at the Spartans’ position. There were tiny specks accompanying the pods;
the Master Chief increased his display’s magnification to maximum. They looked like men in thruster packs— No, they were definitely not men. These things had elongated heads—and even at this distance, the Master Chief could see past their
faceplates and noted their pronounced sharklike teeth and jaws. They wore armor; it shimmered as they collided with debris—which meant energy shields.
These must be the elite warrior class Dr. Halsey had conjectured. The Covenant’s best? They were about to find out.
Linda shot one of the EVA aliens. Shields shimmered around its body and the round bounced off. She didn’t stop. She pumped four more rounds into the creature—hitting a pinpoint target in its neck. Its shields flickered and a round got through. Black blood gushed from the wound and the creature writhed in space.
The other aliens spotted them. They jetted toward their location, firing plasma rifle and needlers.
“Take cover,” the Master Chief said. He unclipped himself and clung to the side of the dropship.
Linda followed—bolts of fire spattering on the hull next to them, spattering molten metal. Crystalline needles bounced off their shields
“Blue-Two,” the Master Chief said. “I said fall back.”
James almost had the explosives rigged to the nose free. A shower of needles hit him. One stuck the tank of his thruster harness—penetrated. It remained embedded for a split second . . . then exploded.
Exhaust billowed from the pack. The uncontrolled jets spun James in the microgravity. He slammed into the station, bounced—then rocketed away into space, tumbling end over end, unable to control his trajectory.
“Blue-Two! Come in,” the Master Chief barked over the COM channel.
“Can—control—” James’ voice was punctuated with static. “They’ve—everywhere—” There was more static and the COM channel went dead.
The Master Chief watched his teammate tumble away into the darkness. All his training, hi
s superhuman strength, reflexes, and determination . . . completely useless against the laws of physics.
He didn’t even know if James was dead. For the moment, he had to assume that he was—put him out of his mind. He had a mission to complete.If he survived, then he’d get every UNSC ship in the area to mount a search and rescue op.
Linda shrugged out of her thruster harness.
The suppressing fire from the aliens halted. Covenant landing pods descended toward the station,
touching down at roughly three-hundred-meter intervals. A pod landed twenty meters away. Its sides uncurled like the petals of a flower. Jackals in black-andblue vacuum suits drifted out. Their boots adhered to the station’s hull.
“Let’s pave a path out of here, Blue-One.” “Roger that,” she said. Linda targeted spots their energy shields didn’t cover—boots, the top of one’s head, a fingertip. Three
Jackals went down in quick succession, their spacesuits ruptured by her marksmanship. The rest
scrambled for cover inside the pod. The Master Chief braced his back against the dropship and fired his assault rifle in controlled bursts. The microgravity played havoc with his aim.
One Jackal leaped from his cover—straight towards them. The Master Chief switched to full auto and blasted his shield with enough rounds to send the alien flying
backward off the station. He spent the clip, reloaded, and got out a grenade. He pulled the pin and lobbed it. He threw it in a flat trajectory. The grenade ricocheted off the far side of the pod and bounced inside. It detonated—a flash and spray of freeze-dried blue vented upward. The explosion had caught the enemy
on their unshielded sides. “Blue-One, secure that landing pod. I’ll cover you.” He leveled his rifle. “Yes, sir.” Linda grabbed a pipe that ran along the station and pulled herself hand over hand. When she
was inside the pod, she flashed him a green light on his heads-up display. The Master Chief crawled toward the prow of the Pelican. As he crested the ship he saw that the station
