CHAPTER FOURTEEN

2037 Hours, November 27, 2525 (Military Calendar)

In orbit over Chi Ceti 4

John piloted the Pelican through the exit burn of their orbital path, then sent the ship toward the last known position of the Commonwealth . The frigate had moved ten million kilometers in-system from their rendezvous point.

Dr. Halsey sat in the copilot’s seat, fidgeting with her space suit. In the aft compartment were the Spartans, 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 do was remove their memory processor cubes. It was a tremendous waste to leave such expensive equipment behind.

Dr. Halsey examined the ship’s short-range detection gear, then said, “Captain Wallace may be trying to use 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 the Commonwealth .”

John bumped up the magnification onscreen and spotted the ship. The alien vessel’s hull was bent at a thirty-degree angle from the impact of the MAC heavy round, but it still moved at almost twice the speed of the Commonwealth .

“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 for ninety 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 sixteen HE 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 of her 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 the Commonwealth couldn’t destroy it, a Pelican is certainly no match for them.”

“Not the Pelican, no,” John agreed. “But I believe we Spartans are. If we get inside the enemy ship, we can 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 to the Commonwealth .”

She shook her head. “One slight error in your trajectory, and you could miss by kilometers,” Dr. Halsey remarked.

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 order to conserve power—and if we have to, we can use one of our own warheads to punch a small hole in the barrier.” He paused, then added, “There’s also a large hole in their hull. Their shield may not cover that space 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 with the Commonwealth . . . 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. “And blow 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 leaped literally into the jaws of death.

“I’ve got the warheads,” Sam said. It was hard to mistake Sam even with his reflective blast shield covering 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 are already 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 motioned to 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 explosive decompression 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 fire your thrusters at max burn. If the target changes course, you’ll have to make a best guess correction on the fly. If you make it, we’ll regroup outside the hole in their hull. If you miss—we’ll pick you up after we’re done.”

He hesitated, then added, “And if we don’t succeed, then power down your systems and wait for UNSC

reinforcements 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. A bunch 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 mechanism opened soundlessly in the vacuum. Outside was infinite blackness. He had a feeling of falling through space—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 fired the 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—and their point-defense lasers were too damn accurate.

John clicked on the COM channel. “Doctor, we could use a few decoys if Captain Wallace can spare them.”

“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 could miss 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 neon blue, then discharged—but not at him.

John saw explosions in his peripheral vision. The Commonwealth had fired a salvo of her Archer missiles. 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 near-invisible, 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 in sight.

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 nearly blinded him. John blinked and then saw a silvery film rush back around the bulbous base of the laser turret.

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’d bounce off. If he hit the turret as 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, felt the 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. The difference between his momentum and the ship’s nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip.

He had made it.

John pulled himself along the hull toward the hole the Commonwealth ’s MAC round had punched in the ship.

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 her helmet’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 to communicate with. John pushed that last thought aside.

The hole was ten meters across. Jagged metal teeth pointed inward. John looked over the edge and saw that 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 they were 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 the Commonwealth .

“We better hurry.”

He stepped onto an exposed deck, and the gravity settled his stomach—giving him an up-and-down orientation.

“Weapons check,” John told them.

They examined their assault rifles. The guns had made the journey intact. John slipped in a clip of armor-piercing rounds, noting with pleasure that the suit immediately aligned the sight profile of the gun with his targeting system.

He slung the weapon and checked the HE warhead attached to his hip. The timer and detonator looked undamaged.

John faced a sealed set of sliding pressure doors. It was smooth and soft to his touch. It could have been made 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 doors released. There was a hiss of atmosphere, a dark hallway beyond. They entered in formation—covering each 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 runic alien 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 the scans.

“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, mottled yellow; purple and yellow fins ran along the crest of its skull and its forearms. Glittering, bulbous eyes protruded 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 at communication. He couldn’t imagine communicating with something like this . . . thing. It reminded him 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 and reached 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 heap without a sound, dead before it hit the deck. Thick blood oozed from the corpse. “That was easy,” Sam remarked. 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 double blue 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 large window. 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 the creature.

A bolt of blue heat blasted from the claw. The blast was similar to the plasma that had hit the Commonwealth . . . 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 fire his 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 jammed the 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 his armor 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 picked it up. He tapped one of three buttons on the device, but nothing happened. He strapped in onto his forearm. Dr. Halsey might find it useful.

They entered the room. The large window was a half-meter thick. It overlooked a large chamber that descended 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 its surface 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. “Their reactor . . . or maybe a weapons system.”

Another alien marched near the cylinder. It spotted John. A silver shimmer appeared around it. It screeched 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 start the 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 get away.”

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 and showed them the burn in the side of his suit. There was a hole the size of his fist, and beneath that, the skin 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 mouth slowly 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 took those techs on Damascus fifteen minutes to fit us. I wouldn’t even know where to start to unzip this thing.”

John looked to the deck. The Chief had told him he’d have to send men to their deaths. He didn’t tell him 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 this out.” He started the timers. “There. It’s decided.” A three-minute countdown appeared in the corner of their 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. Better to die with a friend than leave him behind. But as much as he wanted to fight and die alongside his friend, 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 as the 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 the MJOLNIR 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 and ballooned, but curled downward as it hit and rebounded off their own shield. The plasma spread along the 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, and boiled.

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 then disappearing into the dark of the night.

Sam’s death had shown them that the Covenant were not invincible. They could be beaten. At a high cost, 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.