First Strike

by Eric Nylund

  The Admiral narrowed his eyes, assessing the young woman. “Very well, Warrant Officer.” He added so softly that the Chief almost missed it: “Too many damned heroes in this war.”

  Polaski turned to Locklear, handed him back his bandanna, and whispered, “Hang on to that for me, Corporal. I’ll pick it up when I get back.”

  Locklear’s hand clenched, then relaxed. He took the token, nodded, and looked away. “I’ll be here,” he said and tied it around his arm.

  “Chief,” Admiral Whitcomb said. “Make sure you come back alive. That’s an order, son.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Time: Date Record [[Error]] Anomaly Date Unknown

  Captured Covenant Dropship Near Hybrid Vessel

  Gettysburg—Ascendant Justice, In Anomalous

  Slipspace Bubble.

  The faintly blue luminous walls of the Covenant dropship pressed in, which made John feel slightly claustrophobic. It was ironic when he stopped to think about it, because he was always inside his skintight armor. His fellow Spartans sat in the bay beside him, motionless.

  Fred, designated Blue-Two on this mission, was John’s second in command. He had fought in more than 120 campaigns, was a great leader and a quick thinker. Sometimes he took the responsibility of his command too seriously, though, empathizing too deeply with any wounded member of his team.

  Li, Blue-Three, was the team’s zero-gee combat specialist. He had trained extensively with microgravity equipment and martial arts at the UNSC’s extreme-conditions facility on Chiron in orbit about Mars. He was as much at home in free fall as the rest of them were on solid land, and John was glad to have him on this mission.

  Anton, Blue-Four, had John worried. He spent most of his life with his feet firmly planted on the ground. He’d cross-trained in tracking, camouflage, and stealth, and had been used almost exclusively on ground-based operations. More than once he had expressed discomfort in zero-gee situations.

  Will, Blue-Five, was quiet, but had never failed to complete his mission. He wasn’t always that way, though. When he was younger he was the one with the jokes and riddles that kept the team’s spirits high. Something had hardened in him over the years…as it had in them all. But with Will something special had been lost.

  Grace, Blue-Six, had a knack for explosives. She could shape a charge to cut through a single steel bolt with only a whisper sound, or rig a hundred thousand liters of kerosene to blow into a firestorm from hell. Ironically her temper was nonexistent.

  John opened a COM channel. “Give me a systems check, Blue Team.”

  Five acknowledgment lights winked on.

  “This reminds me of the underwater mission Chief Mendez sent us on at Emerald Cove,” Fred whispered. “When he sabotaged half our air tanks? And we ended up stealing his.”

  “And after,” Anton said, laughing, “we ditched him and camped on that island. It was a week with nothing to do but light bonfires, bake clams, and surf.”

  “Mmmmm,” Grace added, “calamari.”

  John wondered if Emerald Cove even existed anymore. The UNSC had abandoned that colony a decade ago. The Covenant had most likely glassed that world.

  “Blue Team.” Polaski’s voice broke over the COM. “Local conditions are as calm as they’re going to get. Exiting in three…two…one.”

  John felt the acceleration in the pit of his stomach. He rose, moved to the hatch, and popped it open. Outside, Ascendant Justice’s hull moved past them—almost every square centimeter of the flagship’s polished alloy skin had been scarred by heat and micrometeors; tendrils of metal vapor snaked and shimmered in the vacuum.

  On Ascendant Justice’s upper deck he saw the looming shadow of the inverted UNSC frigate Gettysburg still miraculously attached. It was on fire, pockmarked with craters, and venting atmosphere, but it was remarkably intact. If not for the thousands of dead Naval personnel undoubtedly on board, he might have christened the ship “lucky.”

  The dropship slowed and Polaski drifted, turned, and descended onto the surface of the ship.

  “Latch engaged,” she said over the COM. “All yours, Chief.”

  “Fred, Grace, and I will reconnoiter,” he told Blue Team. “Anton, Will, and Li, get ready to move the arc welder and hull plates we scavenged from the Gettysburg when we give the all-clear signal.”

  John eased his boots onto the hull. Their magnetic soles clamped onto the metal with a satisfying click.

  Polaski had landed the Covenant dropship so that its mandibles cradled the hole and gave them some shelter.

  Overhead, Slipspace was on fire. It looked as if someone had doused the night with jet fuel and ignited it. Bloody, boiling streaks of flame tore across a midnight-blue sky. Meteors flashed past and sprayed molten metal in trails of glittering stardust.

  A fist-sized projectile blurred past the Master Chief and rammed into the ship’s starboard side. Sparks and liquefied alloy spattered into space. His shields flickered as debris ricocheted from the armor’s protective field.

  They had to move fast. The Admiral was right: This was a shooting gallery. The quicker they sealed that hole and got out of here—the better.

  John turned and swept his rifle over the terrain. There were bumpy sensor nodes, kilometers of conduits, and a dozen gaping canyons in the hull. A legion of Covenant warriors could hide in this mess.

  No enemy contact. Nothing on his motion sensors, either.

  He stepped close to the main-drive conduit and examined the hole. The pipe was five meters across and still red hot, even though Cortana had shut it down three minutes ago. The hole was round, a three-meter-wide gap, with ragged edges that all pointed inward.

  “If that was from a plasma strike,” Grace said, “the metal would have been boiled away. If it was from an impact, the edges would be scraped on one side, compacted on the other. This hole was deliberately made.”

  “Eyes sharp,” John said. “We have company. My guess is camouflaged Elites. Maybe some of the original crew still alive. Blue-Three, - Four, and - Five—move out.”

  “Roger,” Will replied.

  Anton emerged from the dropship hefting an arc welder, while Will and Li maneuvered the three-by-three-meter hull plates.

  “Fred and Grace, you’re on the welders,” John ordered. “Anton, post on top of the dropship. Li, you’re at three o’clock. Will at nine. I’ll take the six.”

  Blue acknowledgment lights winked on.

  John helped Fred and Grace set the plates in position. Grace and Fred fired up the arc welder, and pinpoints of metal liquefied beneath their tips. A shower of sparks swirled around them in the evacuated environment like a swarm of fireflies.

  “We’re in position, Admiral,” John reported. “ETA for repairs is two minutes.”

  “Roger, Chief,” Admiral Whitcomb replied. Ionization made the channel flood with static. “When you’re done, give the word and get secure. We’ll be accelerating immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  So far, so good, John thought. Just another minute or two.

  A streamer of plasma appeared from nowhere. The tangled, crisscrossed Slipspace around them dropped the bolt of boiling fire fifty meters overhead; it moved port to starboard—and vanished back into the void.

  The COM shattered into white noise, and the motion sensors blurred…as did the active camouflage shielding of the six Elites who had been slowly—and until a moment ago imperceptibly—crawling toward their position.

  “Enemy contacts!” John shouted.

  He crouched behind the dome of a sensor node and opened fire. A hail of bullets caught the closest Elite dead-center in its chest. The gunfire punched through its shielding and then tore into its armor. It tumbled backward and spun off the hull.

  In his peripheral vision John saw the silent muzzle flashes from his team. He glanced back; Fred and Grace hadn’t moved. They stared at the beads of molten alloy under their arc welder’s tip.

  As if Fred could read his mind, he said, “I ne
ed another twenty seconds, Chief.”

  A volley of crystalline needles fired from one of the Elites peppered the sensor node. The Master Chief returned fire, but the Elite’s camouflage kicked in and it faded from view.

  Another plasma bolt sizzled close to the hull, this one thirty meters to port. It was a river of fire that lit the surface of Ascendant Justice like a dozen suns. John’s shields drained to a quarter.

  “Okay, Chief,” Fred told him, “I’m—”

  “Incoming!” Polaski cried over the COM.

  John turned to the dropship and saw a third plasma projectile materialize from the folds of tangled Slipspace. This one skimmed a mere three meters over the hull—straight toward them.

  Will dived into the crux where the dropship met the hull. Fred and Grace hit the deck. Li stood his ground and fired at the Elites, muzzle flash reflected in his helmet’s faceplate. Anton rose from his limited cover on top of the dropship, but instinctively ducked again as an Elite took a shot at him. John crouched, jumped, and propelled himself into the sheltered area between the dropship’s mandibles.

  The plasma blasted over the dropship like a tidal wave of fire.

  Polaski screamed, and her channel went silent.

  Blue-white light filled John’s vision, and electrical discharges jolted his flesh and buzzed through his muscles and ligaments. Temperature warnings blared. Boiling hydrostatic gel vented through his MJOLNIR armor’s emergency ducts.

  Through blurry eyes, John saw the Covenant Elites flash vaporize. Downship, Ascendant Justice’s hull heated to a glowing yellow and softened.

  Then the light and heat vanished, and the torrent of fire trailed aft like the tail of a comet.

  John craned his neck up, every muscle in his body screaming in pain. There was no trace of Li or Anton. The dropship’s hull was melted and distorted like a wax candle caught in a blowtorch’s blast.

  The cockpit and Polaski were gone.

  His biosign warning blared. Will, Grace, and Fred lay next to him—dead or unconscious, he couldn’t tell. He quickly attached their tethers to the deck, then clipped his own in place.

  John keyed the COM. “Admiral, conduit breach is sealed, sir.”

  “Hang on, son,” Admiral Whitcomb replied. “This might be a rough ride.”

  John slumped to the deck unconscious.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Time: Date Record [[Error]] Anomaly Date Unknown

  Hybrid Vessel Gettysburg—Ascendant Justice,

  In Anomalous Slipspace Bubble.

  Admiral Whitcomb stood on the bridge of Ascendant Justice. He gripped the edges of the railing that encircled the central raised platform and watched the sea of fire on the wall displays.

  They were stuck in this pocket of Slipspace, trapped like an insect in amber as lines of plasma crisscrossed the region. Enemy fire vanished and reappeared, smearing the blue fog of Slipspace with crimson streaks of glowing energy. Molten chunks of metal, the broken pieces of Covenant ships, streaked past the cameras—comets that thudded into their hull.

  There was another danger in the blue fog: ghost ships that appeared and faded from sight…more than half of them disabled, engulfed in fire, or their hulls broken. How many of those Covenant craft were still capable of engaging Ascendant Justice? How many could they take out before they risked the jump back to normal space?

  Lieutenant Haverson stood next to him. The young man was invaluable for his tactical assessments and knowledge of the Covenant. He was a bit too cautious for Whitcomb’s taste—though the trait was to be expected in an ONI officer, he supposed. Still, the young Lieutenant had shown enough backbone to stand up to him. The kid definitely had some potential.

  A square on the holographic controls morphed into the tiny figure of Cortana.

  “Sporadic plasma and mass impacts along our hull, Admiral,” she reported and crossed her arms. “Atmospheric integrity down to thirteen percent. Structural integrity rated poor. I estimate the hull will fail in no more than five minutes.”

  “Understood,” the Admiral replied.

  They didn’t have much choice but to play the hand that they’d been dealt. The longer they stayed in this environment, the more damage the Covenant ships surrounding them incurred. If Ascendant Justice had engines, the Admiral could accelerate that process. But if they waited too long, their own ship would disintegrate around them.

  Admiral Whitcomb glanced up to see how the rest of his crew was holding up under the pressure.

  Locklear paced, his hands flexing. The ODST was a weapon with its safety permanently clicked off…and on overload charge.

  Sergeant Johnson stood near the sealed bulkhead, rifle slung over his shoulder. He was looking at the crew and probably formulating his own opinions about them. He was rock-solid. One glance into his dark eyes and the Admiral understood what drove the man: pure cold hatred of the enemy. The Admiral could appreciate that.

  Dr. Halsey tended the Spartan called “Kelly” on the deck. The doctor was brilliant…but a total mystery to him. They had met half a dozen times before at upper-echelon social gatherings, and he’d found her to be charming and outwardly likable. But he’d read enough reports of her “projects” that he’d found it impossible to relate to her. If half the rumors he’d heard about her were true, she’d been mixed up in every black op from here to Andromeda. He didn’t trust her.

  “Doctor Halsey,” the Admiral said. He released his grip on the railing and clasped his hands behind his back to conceal his sweaty palms. “Clear my bridge of the wounded, ASAP.”

  Dr. Halsey looked up from her data pad and the fluctuating patterns of Kelly’s biosigns. “Admiral, I don’t want to move her. She not entirely stable.”

  “Do it, Doctor. She’s a distraction. We have a battle to fight here.”

  Dr. Halsey shot him a look that could have stopped a plasma bolt dead in its tracks.

  Lieutenant Haverson stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Ma’am, there’s an escape craft just off the bridge.” He moved to the starboard hatch and eased it open. He drew his pistol and checked the passage beyond. “It’s clear. Locklear, Sergeant, please give the doctor a hand with her patient.”

  “Yes, sir,” Locklear said. “Happy to sit this battle out in the escape pod.”

  Sergeant Johnson set his rifle on Kelly’s chest and said, “Come on, Corporal, shake a leg and gimme a hand. The lady in her armor weighs more than your last date.”

  Locklear and the Sergeant hefted Kelly and, grunting under the load, moved her off the bridge. Dr. Halsey followed, cast one last withering look at the Admiral, and sealed the hatch behind her.

  Admiral Whitcomb sighed. He felt for the Spartan…felt too much—which was the problem. He couldn’t concentrate with her so close. He’d want constant status reports on her condition. Hell, he would have gone over, knelt next to her, and held her hand if that would’ve helped. He loved the men and women under his command as if they were his own sons and daughters. It was the old axiom of command: To be a good leader, you had to love the service. To be a great commander, you had to be willing to destroy that which you loved.

  Static crackled, and the Master Chief reported in: “We’re in position, Admiral. ETA for repairs is two minutes.”

  “Roger, Chief,” Admiral Whitcomb replied. “When you’re done give the word and get secure. We’ll be accelerating immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Thunder rumbled through the deck.

  “Plasma impacts, sir,” Cortana explained. “Their energy profile has diffused, but they were still powerful enough to knock the lateral sensors and cameras offline.”

  Admiral Whitcomb smoothed his thick fingers over his mustache. “We’ve got only a few minutes before this space tears us apart.” He squinted at the wall displays, trying to count the number of enemy craft. “That’s if those Covenant ships don’t do the job first.”

  He turned to Cortana. “How many enemy ships are there? Which are real and which are
illusion?”

  “Impossible to accurately determine, sir. I counted fourteen targets before they started firing and filling the space between us with ionizing plasma. Now?…” Mathematical symbols raced along her length, flashing blue and indigo. “Cross-indexing similar mirrored images and extrapolating, I estimate there are currently between three and five operational ships, sir.”

  Admiral Whitcomb gritted his teeth and concentrated. He had to get this ship moving—take out one or two enemy craft. Maybe the tangled plasma-filled space would cook the rest of them.

  That was their best chance. Their only chance. He’d have to trust the Master Chief to get that drive conduit fixed.

  “Very well, Cortana,” he said. “Heat the Gettysburg’s reactor to maximum power and prepare to flood the main-engine plasma conduit. Charge all available weapons turret capacitors.”

  “Yes, sir. Stand by.”

  He glanced at a screen that showed the Gettysburg sitting atop them inverted. “Is the launch bay on the Gettysburg intact? Can it hold an atmosphere?”

  Cortana blinked. “Yes, sir. It has a slow leak of thirty-two kilo pascals per—”

  “Pressurize the bay.”

  “Acknowledged, Admiral. However,” Cortana replied, “that will leave our air reserves dangerously low.”

  The Admiral stared at the ships surrounding them—a plasma bolt struck a distant cruiser head-on, and its nose buckled. Gouts of flame flared along its lateral plasma lines. The ship looked like a fish spit with a red-hot poker.

  That could have been them.

  “Hurry up, Chief,” he whispered.

  On the displays the Admiral spotted two ships. There was a carrier far away; it looked undamaged. Closer, off the port bow, was a cruiser that, aside from a hole punched through its aft section, was also undamaged…and only ten thousand kilometers away. That was the priority target.

  “Lay in a new course,” the Admiral ordered. “Two-four-zero by zero-three-five.”