by Eric Nylund
A way to stop the Flood. Without firing the remaining Halo rings.
A way to stop the Flood.
A way.
Was she talking about the replacement ring? Absolutely possible; she was obviously knowledgeable about the Portal and where it led, so perfectly reasonable that she could have known there was another Halo installation. Technically, it wouldn’t involve firing the “rings” plural, right?
Could the Ark have been a weapon? Details are fairly sketchy—OK, very sketchy—but as the mother of all Forerunner artifacts, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Although it was meant as a fallback position to fire the Halo rings from, so why would you need to fire them at all if the Ark itself possessed a weapon that could stop the Flood?
Or…
With a surly stab, Petra quickly toggled the holopad off. The “or” was what she knew with certainty would keep her sleeping hours to a minimum for the foreseeable future. “Or” couldn’t be bargained with, it wouldn’t get bored and run off to play with its little friends, it wasn’t going to show up at her door at 11 P.M. a week from now claiming it was all a big misunderstanding. The only cure for “or” was to find out what the hell the little glowstick was on about. If there was some other instrument of destruction Cortana had set her sights on to use against the nigh-undefeatable Flood…well, that certainly wasn’t going to be a footnote, now, was it?
Petra’s hand flopped onto the couch, smoothing the cushions as if she were petting her folks’ dog, Handsome, back home on Lenapi. The pillows were soft and cool from the breeze blowing in through the balcony doors. Petra mussed her hair, taking a last quiet moment to watch the curtains reverse course and get dragged out toward the city beyond. Then she was up, and on the phone with the cruise line to see if her ticket could be exchanged for the next flight to Earth.
Novels In The New York Times Bestselling Halo® Series
Halo®: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund
Halo®: The Flood by William C. Dietz
Halo®: First Strike by Eric Nylund
Halo®: Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund
Halo®: Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten
Halo®: The Cole Protocol by Tobias S. Buckell
Halo®: Evolutions by Various Authors
Acknowledgments to The 2010 Edition
None of this would have been possible without Microsoft staffers Jacob Benton, Nicolas “Sparth” Bouvier, Alicia Brattin, Gabriel “Robogabo” Garza, Jon Goff, Kevin Grace, Tyler Jeffers, Frank O’Connor, Jeremy Patenaude, Chris Schlerf, Kenneth Scott, and Kiki Wolfkill.
Nor without the efforts of the staff at Tor Books: Tom Doherty, Eric Raab, Whitney Ross, Seth Lerner, Megan Barnard, Teresa DeLucci, Jim Kapp, Lauren Hougen, Heather Saunders, Nathan Weaver, Justin Golenbock, and Patty Garcia.
343 Industries would like to thank Bungie Studios, Scott Dell’Osso, Nick Dimitrov, David Figatner, Nancy Figatner, Josh Kerwin, Bryan Koski, Eric Nylund, Bonnie Ross-Ziegler, Phil Spencer, and Carla Woo.
This edition features early drafts of the new cover art, which have been included periodically throughout the book. These images give a small insight into the process of creating the new cover from artists within 343 Industries.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HALO®: FIRST STRIKE
Copyright © 2003, 2010 by Microsoft Corporation
Foreword copyright © 2010 by Microsoft Corporation
Originally published by Del Rey, The Random House Publishing Group
All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, and the Xbox logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nylund, Eric S.
Halo. First strike / Eric Nylund.—1st Tor trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2834-2
1. Space warfare—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: First strike.
PS3564.Y55H34 2010
813'.54—dc22
2010035744
