2037 Hours, November 27, 2525 (Military Calendar) /In orbit over Chi Ceti 4John piloted the Pelican through the exit burn of their orbital path, then sent the ship toward the lastknown position of theCommonwealth . The frigate had moved ten million kilometers in-system fromtheir rendezvous point.
Dr. Halsey sat in the copilot’s seat, fidgeting with her space suit. In the aft compartment were theSpartans, the three technicians from the Damascus facility, and a dozen spare MJOLNIR suits.
Missing, however, were the AIs John had seen when they had first arrived. All Dr. Halsey had time to dowas remove their memory processor cubes. It was a tremendous waste to leave such expensiveequipment behind.
Dr. Halsey examined the ship’s short-range detection gear, then said, “Captain Wallace may be trying touse Chi Ceti’s magnetic field to deflect the Covenant’s plasma weapon. Try and catch up, Petty Officer.”
“Yes, ma’am.” John pushed the engines to 100 percent.
“Covenant ship to port,” she said, “three million kilometers and closing on theCommonwealth .”
John bumped up the magnification onscreen and spotted the ship. The alien vessel’s hull was bent at athirty-degree angle from the impact of the MAC heavy round, but it still moved at almost twice thespeed of theCommonwealth .
“Doctor,” John asked, “does the MJOLNIR armor operate in vacuum?”
“Of course,” she replied. “It was one of our first design considerations. The suit can recycle air forninety minutes. It’s shielded against radiation and EMP as well.”
He then spoke to Sam over his COM link. “What kind of missiles is this bird carrying?”
“Wait one, sir,”Sam replied. His voice returned a moment later.“We have two rocket pods with sixteenHE Anvil-IIs each.”
“I want you to assemble a team and go EVA. Remove those warheads from the wing pods.”
“I’m on it,”Sam said.
Halsey tried to push her glasses up higher on her nose—instead she bumped up against the faceplate ofher suit’s helmet. “May I ask what you have in mind, Squad Leader?”
John left his COM channel open so the Spartans would hear his reply.
“Requesting permission to attack the Covenant ship, ma’am.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Most certainly not,” she said. “If a warship like theCommonwealth couldn’tdestroy it, a Pelican is certainly no match for them.”
“Not the Pelican, no,” John agreed. “But I believe we Spartans are. If we getinside the enemy ship, wecan destroy her.”
Doctor Halsey considered, tapping her lower lip. “How will you get onboard?”
“We go EVA and use thruster packs to intercept the Covenant ship as it passes en route totheCommonwealth .”
She shook her head. “One slight error in your trajectory, and you could miss by kilometers,” Dr. Halseyremarked.
A pause.
“I don’t miss, ma’am,” John said.
“They have reflective shields.”
“True,” John replied. “But the ship is damaged. They may have had to lower or reduce shielding in orderto conserve power—and if we have to, we can use one of our own warheads to punch a small hole in thebarrier.” He paused, then added, “There’s also a large hole in their hull. Their shield may not cover thatspace entirely.”
Dr. Halsey whispered, “It’s a tremendous risk.”
“With respect, ma’am, it’s a bigger risk to sit here and do nothing. After they finish withtheCommonwealth . . . they’ll come for us and we’ll have to fight them anyway. Better to strike first.”
She stared off into space, lost in thought.
Finally she sighed in resignation. “Very well. Go.” She transferred the pilot controls to her station. “Andblow the hell out of them.”
John climbed into the aft compartment.
His Spartans stood at attention. He felt a rush of pride; they were ready to follow him as he leapedliterally into the jaws of death.
“I’ve got the warheads,” Sam said. It was hard to mistake Sam even with his reflective blast shieldcovering his face. He was the largest Spartan—even more imposing encased in the armor.
“Everyone’s got one.” Sam continued as he handed John a metal shell. “Timers and detonators arealready rigged. Stuck on a patch of adhesive polymer; they’ll cling to your suit.”
“Spartans,” John said, “grab thruster packs and make ready to go EVA. Everyone else—” He motionedto the three technicians. “—get into the forward cabin. If we fail, they’ll be coming after the Pelican.
Protect Dr. Halsey.”
He moved aft. Kelly handed him a thruster pack and he slipped it on.
“Covenant ship approaching,” Halsey called out. “I’m pumping out your atmosphere to avoid explosivedecompression when I drop the back hatch.”
“We’ll only get one shot at this,” John said to the other Spartans. “Plot an intercept trajectory and fireyour thrusters at max burn. If the target changes course, you’ll have to make a best guess correction onthe fly. If you make it, we’ll regroup outside the hole in their hull. If you miss—we’ll pick you up afterwe’re done.”
He hesitated, then added, “And if we don’t succeed, then power down your systems and wait for UNSCreinforcements to retrieve you. Live to fight another day. Don’t waste your lives.”
There was a moment of silence.
“If anyone has a better plan, speak up now.”
Sam patted John on the back. “This is a great plan. It’ll be easier than Chief Mendez’s playground. Abunch of little kids could pull it off.”
“Sure,” John said. “Everyone ready?”
“Sir,” they said. “We’re ready, sir!”
John flipped the safety off and then punched in the code to open the Pelican’s tail. The mechanismopened soundlessly in the vacuum. Outside was infinite blackness. He had a feeling of falling throughspace—but the vertigo quickly passed.
He positioned himself on the edge of the ramp, both hands gripping a safety handle overhead.
The Covenant ship was a tiny dot in the center of his helmet’s view screen. He plotted a course and firedthe thruster pack on maximum burn.
Acceleration slammed him into the thruster harness. He knew the others would launch right after him,but he couldn’t turn to see them.
It occurred to him then that the Covenant ship might identify the Spartans as incoming missiles—andtheir point-defense lasers were too damn accurate.
John clicked on the COM channel. “Doctor, we could use a few decoys if Captain Wallace can sparethem.”
“Understood,”she said.
The Covenant vessel grew rapidly in his display. A burst from its engines and it turned slightly.
Traveling at one hundred million kilometers an hour, even a minor course correction meant that he couldmiss by tens of thousands of kilometers. John carefully corrected his vector.
The pulse laser on the side of the Covenant ship glowed, built up energy, until they were dazzling neonblue, then discharged—but not at him.
John saw explosions in his peripheral vision. TheCommonwealth had fired a salvo of her Archermissiles. Around him in the dark were puffballs of red-orange detonations—utterly silent.
John’s velocity now almost matched that of the ship. He eased toward the hull—twenty meters, ten,five . . . and then the Covenant ship started to pull away from him.
It was traveling too fast. He tapped his attitude thrusters and pointed himself perpendicular to the hull.
The Covenant hull accelerated under him . . . but he was dropping closer.
He stretched out his arms. The hull raced past his fingertips a meter away.
John’s fingers brushed against something—it felt semiliquid. He could see his hand skimming a nearinvisible,glassy, shimmering surface: the energy shield.
Damn. Their shields were still up. He glanced to either side. The huge hole in their hull was nowhere insight.
He slid over the hull, unable to grab hold of it.
No.He refused to accept that he had made it this far, only to fail now.
A pulse laser flashed a hundred meters away; his faceplate barely adjusted in time. The flash nearlyblinded him. John blinked and then saw a silvery film rush back around the bulbous base of the laserturret.
The shield dropped to let the laser fire?
The laser started to build up charge again.
He would have to act quickly. His timing had to be perfect. If he hit that turret before it fired, he’dbounce off. If he hit the turretas it fired . . . there wouldn’t be much left of him.
The turret glowed, intensely bright. John set his thrust harness on a maximum burn toward the laser,noting the rapidly dwindling fuel charge. He closed his eyes, saw the blinding flash through his lids, feltthe heat on his face, then opened his eyes—just in time to crash and bounce into the hull.
The hull plates were smooth, but had grooves and odd, organic crenellations—perfect fingerholds. Thedifference between his momentum and the ship’s nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets. He grittedhis teeth and tightened his grip.
He had made it.
John pulled himself along the hull toward the hole theCommonwealth ’s MAC round had punched in theship.
Only two other Spartans waited for him there.
“What took you so long?” Sam’s voice crackled over the COM channel. The other Spartan lifted herhelmet’s reflective blast shield. He saw Kelly’s face.
“I think we’re it,” Kelly said. “I’m not getting any other responses over the COM channels.”
That meant either the Covenant ship shielded their transmissions . . . or there were no Spartans left tocommunicate with. John pushed that last thought aside.
The hole was ten meters across. Jagged metal teeth pointed inward. John looked over the edge and sawthat the MAC heavy round had indeed passed all the way through. He saw tiers of exposed decks,severed conduits, and sheared metal beams—and through the other side, black space and stars.
They climbed down.
John immediately fell down on the first deck.
“Gravity,” he said. “And with nothing spinning on this ship.”
“Artificial gravity?” Kelly asked. “Dr. Halsey would love to see this.”
They continued inward, scaling the metal walls, past alternating layers of gravity and free fall, until theywere approximately in the middle of the ship.
John paused and saw the stars wheel outside either end of the hole. The Covenant ship must be turning.
They were engaging theCommonwealth .
“We better hurry.”
He stepped onto an exposed deck, and the gravity settled his stomach—giving him an up-and-downorientation.
“Weapons check,” John told them.
They examined their assault rifles. The guns had made the journey intact. John slipped in a clip of armorpiercingrounds, noting with pleasure that the suit immediately aligned the sight profile of the gun withhis targeting system.
He slung the weapon and checked the HE warhead attached to his hip. The timer and detonator lookedundamaged.
John faced a sealed set of sliding pressure doors. It was smooth and soft to his touch. It could have beenmade of metal or plastic . . . or could have been alive, for all he knew.
He and Sam grabbed either side and pulled, strained, and then the mechanism gave and the doorsreleased. There was a hiss of atmosphere, a dark hallway beyond. They entered in formation—coveringeach other’s blind spots.
The ceiling was three meters high. It made John feel small.
“You think they need all this space because they’re so large?” Kelly asked.
“We’ll know soon,” he told her.
They crouched, weapons at the ready, and moved slowly down the corridor, John and Kelly in front.
They rounded a corner and stopped at another set of pressure doors. John grabbed the seam.
“Hang on,” Kelly said. She knelt next to a pad with nine buttons. Each button was inscribed with runicalien script. “These characters are strange, but one of them has to open this.” She touched one and it lit,then she keyed another. Gas hissed into the corridor. “At least the pressure is equalized,” she said.
John double-checked sensors. Nothing . . . though the alien metal inside the ship could be blocking thescans.
“Try another,” Sam said.
She did—and the doors slid apart.
The room was inhabited.
An alien creature stood a meter and half tall, a biped. Its knobby, scaled skin was a sickly, mottledyellow; purple and yellow fins ran along the crest of its skull and its forearms. Glittering, bulbous eyesprotruded from skull-like hollows in the alien’s elongated head.
The Master Chief had read the UNSC’s first contact scenarios—they called for cautious attempts atcommunication. He couldn’t imagine communicating with something like this . . . thing. It remindedhim of the carrion birds on Reach—vicious and unclean.
The creature stood there, frozen for a moment—staring at the human interlopers. Then it screeched andreached for something on its belt, its movements darting and birdlike.
The Spartans shouldered their weapons and fired a trio of bursts with pinpoint accuracy.
Armor-piercing rounds tore into the creature, shredding its chest and head. It crumpled into a heapwithout a sound, dead before it hit the deck. Thick blood oozed from the corpse. “That was easy,” Samremarked. He nudged the creature with his boot. “They sure aren’t as tough as their ships.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” John replied.
“I’m getting a radiation reading this way,” Kelly said. She gestured deeper into the vessel.
They continued down the corridor and took a side branch. Kelly dropped a NAV marker, and its doubleblue triangle pulsed once on their heads-up displays.
They stopped at another set of pressure doors. Sam and John took up flanking positions to cover her.
Kelly punched the same buttons she had punched before and the doors slid apart.
Another of the creatures was there. It stood in a circular room with crystalline control panels and a largewindow. This time, however, the vulture-headed creature didn’t scream or look particularly surprised.
This one looked angry.
The creature held a clawlike device in its hand—leveled at John.
John and Kelly fired. Bullets filled the air and pinged off a silver shimmering barrier in front of thecreature.
A bolt of blue heat blasted from the claw. The blast was similar to the plasma that had hittheCommonwealth . . . and boiled a third of it away.
Sam dove forward and knocked John out of the blast’s path; the energy burst caught Sam in the side.
The reflective coating of his MJOLNIR armor flared. He fell clutching his side, but still managed to firehis weapon.
John and Kelly rolled on their backs and sprayed gunfire at the creature.
Bullets peppered the alien—each one bounced and ricocheted off the energy shield.
John glanced at his ammo counter—half gone.
“Keep firing,” he ordered.
The alien kept up a stream of answering fire—energy blasts hammered into Sam, who fell to the deck,his weapon empty.
John charged forward and slammed his foot into the alien’s shield and knocked it out of line. He jammedthe barrel of his rifle into the alien’s screeching mouth and squeezed the trigger.
The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien and spattered the back wall with blood and bits of bone.
John rose and helped Sam up.
“I’m okay,” Sam said, holding his side and grimacing. “Just a little singed.” The reflective coating on hisarmor was blackened.
“You sure?”
Sam waved him away.
John paused over the remaining bits of the alien. He spotted a glint of metal, an armguard, and he pickedit up. He tapped one of three buttons on the device, but nothing happened. He strapped in onto hisforearm. Dr. Halsey might find it useful.
They entered the room. The large window was a half-meter thick. It overlooked a large chamber thatdescended three decks. A cylinder ran the length of the chamber and red light pulsed along its length,like a liquid sloshing back and forth.
Under the window, on their side, rested a smooth angled surface—perhaps a control panel? On itssurface were tiny symbols: glowing green dots, bars, and squares.
“That’s got to be the source of the radiation,” Kelly said, and pointed to the chamber beyond. “Theirreactor . . . or maybe a weapons system.”
Another alien marched near the cylinder. It spotted John. A silver shimmer appeared around it. Itscreeched and wobbled in alarm, then scrambled for cover.
“Trouble,” John said.
“I’ve got an idea.” Sam limped forward. “Hand me those warheads.” John did as he asked, so did Kelly.
“We shoot out that window, set the timers on the warheads, and toss them down there. That should startthe party.”
“Let’s do it before they call in reinforcements,” John said.
They turned and fired at the crystal. It crackled, splintered, then shattered.
“Toss those warheads,” Sam said, “and let’s get out of here.”
John set the timers. “Three minutes,” he said. “That’ll give us just enough time to get topside and getaway.”
He turned to Sam. “You’ll have to stay and hold them off. That’s an order.”
“What are you talking about?” Kelly said.
“Sam knows.”
Sam nodded. “I think I can hold them off that long.” He looked at John and then Kelly. He turned andshowed them the burn in the side of his suit. There was a hole the size of his fist, and beneath that, theskin was blackened and cracked. He smiled, but his teeth were gritted in pain.
“That’s nothing,” Kelly said. “We’ll get you patched up in no time. Once we get back—” Her mouthslowly dropped open.
“Exactly,” Sam whispered. “Getting back is going to be a problem for me.”
“The hole.” John reached out to touch it. “We don’t have any way to seal it.”
Kelly shook her head.
“If I step off this boat, I’m dead from the decompression,” Sam said, and shrugged.
“No,” Kelly growled. “No—everyone gets out alive. We don’t leave teammates behind.”
“He has his orders,” John told Kelly.
“You’ve got to leave me,” Sam said softly to Kelly. “And don’t tell me you’ll give me your suit. It tookthose techs on Damascus fifteen minutes to fit us. I wouldn’t even know where to start to unzip thisthing.”
John looked to the deck. The Chief had told him he’d have to send men to their deaths. He didn’t tellhim it would feel like this.
“Don’t waste time talking,” Sam said. “Our new friends aren’t going to wait for us while we figure thisout.” He started the timers. “There. It’s decided.” A three-minute countdown appeared in the corner oftheir heads-up displays. “Now—get going, you two.”
John clasped Sam’s hand and squeezed it.
Kelly hesitated, then saluted.
John turned and grabbed her arm. “Come on, Spartan. Don’t look back.”
The truth was, it was John who didn’t dare look back. If he had, he would have stayed with Sam. Betterto die with a friend than leave him behind. But as much as he wanted to fight and die alongside hisfriend, he had to set an example for the rest of the Spartans—and live to fight another day.
John and Kelly pushed the pressure doors shut behind them.
“Good-bye,” he whispered.
The countdown timer ticked the seconds off inexorably.
2:35 . . .
They ran down the corridor, popped the seal on the outer door—the atmosphere vented.
1:05 . . .
They climbed up through the twisted metal canyon that the MAC round had torn through the hull.
0:33 . . .
“There,” John said, and pointed to the base of a charged pulse laser. They crawled toward it, waited asthe glow built to a lethal charge.
0:12 . . .
They crouched and held onto one another.
The laser fired.
The heat blistered John’s back. They pushed off with all their strength, multiplied through theMJOLNIR armor.
0:00.
The shield parted and they cleared the ship, hurtling into the blackness.
The Covenant ship shuddered. Flashes of red appeared inside the hole—then a gout of fire rose andballooned, but curled downward as it hit and rebounded off their own shield. The plasma spread alongthe length of their vessel. The shield shimmered and rippled silver—holding the destructive force inside.
Metal glowed and melted. The pulse laser turrets absorbed into the hull. The hull blistered, bubbled, andboiled.
The shield finally gave—the ship exploded.
Kelly clung to John.
A thousand molten fragments hurled past them, cooling from white to orange to red and thendisappearing into the dark of the night.
Sam’s death had shown them that the Covenant were not invincible. They could be beaten. At a highcost, however.
John finally understood what the Chief had meant—the difference between a life wasted and a life spent.
John also knew that humanity had a fighting chance . . . and he was ready to go to war.