CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

0637 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)

Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Station Gamma

“Multiple signals on motion tracker,” the Master Chief said. “They’re all around us.”

The passageway behind the Master Chief and Blue-One swarmed with blips. So did docking Bay Nine, ahead of them. The Master Chief saw, however, not all the blips were hostiles. Four Marine friend-or-foe tags strobed on his heads-up display: SGT. JOHNSON, PVT. O’BRIEN, PVT. BISENTI, and PVT.

JENKINS.

The Master Chief opened up a COM channel to them. “Listen up, Marines. Your lines of fire are sloppy; tighten them up. Concentrate on one Jackal at a time—or you’ll just waste your ammo on their shields.”

“Master Chief?” Sergeant Johnson said, startled. “Sir, yes sir!”

“Blue-One,” the Master Chief said. “I’m going in. We’re going to open up the Circumference like a tin can.” He nodded toward the Pelican in the adjacent bay. “Give me a few grenades over the top.”

“Understood,” she replied. “You’re covered, sir.” She primed two frag grenades, swung around the pressure doors, and threw them behind the Jackals.

The Master Chief pushed off the wall—propelled himself in the zero gee across the bay.

The grenades detonated and caught the Jackals on their backsides. Blue blood spattered on the insides of their shields and across the deck.

The Master Chief crashed into the Pelican’s hull. He pulled himself to the side hatch, opened it, and crawled in. He got into the cockpit, released the docking clamps, and tapped the maneuvering thrusters once to break free.

The Pelican lifted off the deck.

The Master Chief said over the COM channel, “Marines and Blue-One: take cover behind me.” He maneuvered the Pelican into the center of the docking bay.

A dozen Jackals poured in through the passage that Blue-One had just left.

The Master Chief fired with the Pelican’s autocannon—cut down their shields and peppered the aliens with hundreds of rounds. They exploded into chunks; alien blood twisted crazily in zero gravity.

“Master Chief,” Linda said, “I’m picking up thousands of signals on the motion tracker, inbound from all directions. The entire station is crawling.”

The Master Chief opened the Pelican’s back hatch. “Get in,” he said. Blue-One and the Marines piled inside.

The Marines did a double take at Blue-One and the Master Chief in their MJOLNIR armor.

The Master Chief turned the Pelican to face the Circumference . He sighted the autocannon on the ship’s forward viewports—and opened fire. Thousands of rounds streamed from the chain-gun and cracked through the thick, transparent windows. He followed up with an Anvil-II missile. It blasted through the prow and peeled the craft open.

“Take the controls,” he told Blue-One.

He slipped out the side hatch and jumped to the Circumference . The inside of the ship’s cockpit was scrap metal. He accessed the computer panel in the floor deck and located the NAV database core. It was a cube of memory crystal the size of his thumb. Such a tiny thing to cause so much trouble.

He shot it three times with his assault rifle. It shattered.

“Mission completed,” he said. One small victory in all this mess. The Covenant wouldn’t find Earth . . .today.

He exited the Circumference . Jackals appeared on the level above them in the docking bay. His motion tracker blinked with solid contacts.

He jumped back into the Pelican, strapped himself in the pilot’s chair, and turned the ship to face the outer doors.

“Blue-One, signal the dockmaster AI to open the outer bay doors.”

“Signal sent,” she said. “No response, sir.” She looked around. “There’s a manual release by the outer door.” She moved toward the aft hatch. “I’ll get this one, sir. It’s my turn. Cover me.”

“Roger, Blue-One. Keep your head down. I’ll draw their fire.”

She launched herself out the back hatch.

The Master Chief tapped the Pelican’s thrusters and the ship rose higher in the bay—up to the second level. The upper decks were the mechanic bays; the area was littered with ships that were partially disassembled in various stages of repair. It was also where a hundred Jackals and a handful of Elite warriors were waiting for him.

They opened fire. Plasma bolts scored the hull of the Pelican.

The Master Chief fired the chain-gun and let loose a salvo of missiles. Alien shields blazed and failed.

Blue and green blood splashed and flash-froze in the icy vacuum.

He hit the top thrusters and dropped down to the lower level—slammed the ship back into a berth for cover.

Blue-One crouched by the manual release. The outer doors eased open, revealing the night and stars beyond. “You’re clear for exit, Master Chief. We’re home free—”

A new contact on the Pelican’s targeting display appeared—right behind Linda. He had to warn her—

A bolt of plasma struck her in the back. Another blot of fire blazed her from the upper decks and splashed across her front. She crumpled—her shields flickered and went out. Two more bolts hit her chest. A third blast smashed into her helmet.

“No!” the Master Chief said. He felt each of those plasma bolts as if they had hit him, too.

He moved the Pelican to cover her. Plasma struck the hull, melting its outer skin.

“Get her inside!” he ordered the Marines.

They jumped out, grabbed Linda and her smoldering armor, and pulled her inside the Pelican.

The Master Chief sealed the hatch, ignited the engines and pushed them to full thrust—rocketing into space.

“Can you fly this ship?” he asked the Marine Sergeant.

“Yes, sir,” Johnson replied.

“Take over.”

The Master Chief went to Linda and knelt by her side. Sections of her armor had melted and adhered to her. Underneath, in patches, bits of carbonized bone showed. He accessed her vital signs on his heads-up display. They were dangerously low.

“Did you do it?” she whispered. “Get the database?”

“Yes. We got it.”

“Good,” she said. “We won.” She clasped his hand and closed her eyes.

Her vital signs flat-lined.

John squeezed her hand and let go. “Yes,” he said bitterly. “We won.”

“Master Chief, come in.” Captain Keyes voice sounded over the COM channel. “The Pillar of Autumn will be in rendezvous position in one minute.”

“We’re ready, Captain,” he answered. He set Linda’s hand over her chest. “I’m ready.”

The instant the Master Chief docked the Pelican to the Pillar of Autumn , he felt the cruiser accelerate.

He took Linda’s body double time to a cryo chamber and immediately froze her. She was clinically dead

—there was no doubt of that. Still, if they could get her to a Fleet hospital, they might be able to resuscitate her. It was a long shot—but she was a Spartan.

The med techs wanted to check him out as well, but he declined and took the elevator to the bridge to report to Captain Keyes.

As he rode inside the lift he felt the ship accelerate port—then starboard. Evasive maneuvers.

The elevator doors parted and the Master Chief stepped onto the bridge.

He snapped a crisp salute to Captain Keyes. “Reporting for debriefing, sir.”

Captain Keyes turned and looked surprised to see him . . . or maybe he was shocked to see the condition of his armor. It was charred, battered, and covered with alien blood.

The Captain returned the Master Chief’s salute. “The NAV database was destroyed?” he asked.

“Sir, I would not have left if my mission was incomplete.”

“Of course, Master Chief. Very good,” Captain Keyes replied.

“Sir, may I ask that you scan for active FOF tags in the region?” The Master Chief glanced at the main view screen—saw scattered fights between Covenant and UNSC warships in the distance. “I lost a man on the station. He may be floating out there . . . somewhere.”

“Lieutenant Hall?” the Captain asked.

“Scanning,” she said. After a moment she looked back and shook her head.

“I see,” the Master Chief replied. There could be worse deaths . . . but not for one of his Spartans.

Floating helpless. Slowly suffocating and freezing—losing to an enemy that could not be fought.

“Sir,” the Master Chief said, “when will the Pillar of Autumn rendezvous with my planetside team?”

Captain Keyes turned from the Master Chief and stared out into space. “We won’t be picking them up,”

he said quietly. “They were overrun by Covenant forces. They never made orbit. We’ve lost contact with them.”

The Master Chief took a step closer. “Then I would like permission to take a dropship and retrieve them, sir.”

“Request denied, Master Chief. We still have a mission to perform. And we cannot remain in this system much longer. Lieutenant Dominique, aft camera on the main screen.”

Covenant vessels swarmed though the Reach System in five-ship crescent formations. The remaining UNSC ships fled before them . . . those that could still move. Those ships too damaged to outrun the Covenant were blasted with plasma and laser fire.

The Covenant had won this battle. They were mopping up before they glassed the planet; the Master Chief had seen this happen in a dozen campaigns. This time was different, however.

This time the Covenant was glassing a planet . . . with his people still on it.

He tried to think of a way to stop them . . . to save his teammates. He couldn’t.

The Captain turned and strode to the Master Chief, stood by his side. “Dr. Halsey’s mission,” he said, “is more important than ever now. It may be the only chance left for Earth. We have to focus on that goal.”

Three dozen Covenant craft moved toward Gamma station and the now inert orbital defense platforms.

They bombarded the installations—the mightiest weapons in the UNSC arsenal—with plasma. The guns melted, and boiled away.

The Master Chief clenched his hands into fists. The Captain was correct: there was nothing to do now except complete the mission they had set out to do.

Captain Keyes barked, “Ensign Lovell, give me our best acceleration. I want to enter Slipstream space as soon as possible.”

Cortana said, “Excuse me, Captain. Six covenant frigates are inbound on an intercept course.”

“Continue evasive maneuvers, Cortana. Prepare the Slipspace generators and get me an appropriate randomized exit vector.”

“Aye, sir.” Navigation symbols flashed along the length of her holographic body.

The Master Chief continued to watch as the Covenant ships closed in on them.

Was he the only Spartan left? Better to die than live without his teammates. But he still had a mission: victory against the Covenant—and vengeance for his fallen comrades.

“Generating randomized exit vector per the Cole Protocol,” Cortana said.

The Master Chief glanced at her translucent body. She looked vaguely like a younger Dr. Halsey. Tiny dots, ones, and zeros slid over her torso, arms, and legs. Her thoughts were literally worn on her sleeve; the symbols also appeared on Ensign Lovell’s NAV station.

He cocked his head as the symbols and numbers scrolled across the NAV console.

The representations of Slipspace vectors and velocity curves twisted across the screen—tantalizingly familiar. He’d seen them somewhere before—but he could not make the connection.

“Something on your mind, Master Chief?” Cortana asked.

“Those symbols . . . I thought I had seen them somewhere before. It’s nothing.”

Cortana got a far off look in her eyes. The marks cycling on her hologram shifted and rearranged.

The Master Chief saw the Covenant fleet gathered around planet Reach. They swarmed and circled like sharks. The first of their plasma bombardments launched toward the surface. Clouds in the fire’s path boiled away.

“Jump to Slipspace, Ensign Lovell,” the Captain said. “Get us the hell out of here.”

John remembered Chief Mendez’s words—that they had to live and fight another day. He was alive . . .

and there was still plenty of fight left in him. And he would win this war—no matter what it took.

SECTION VI

HALO

EPILOGUE

0647 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)

UNSC Pillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System’s edge Cortana fired the Pillar of Autumn ’s autocannons—targeting a dozen Seraph fighters harassing them as they were accelerated out of the system. Seven Covenant frigates were now locked into the pursuit. She dodged a volley of pulse laser fire, using the ventral emergency thrusters.

She pushed the damaged secondary reactor to critical levels. They had to build up more speed before activating the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators or the jump to Slipstream space would fail.

She rechecked her calculations. Under the Cole Protocol, they would be jumping away from Earth . . .

but it would not be a totally random heading.

The Master Chief had been right when he said that he recognized the shorthand navigation symbols on the NAV display.

Cortana accessed the Spartans’ mission logs. She sifted through the data, and filed it into a secondary long-term storage buffer. When she reviewed the database of his mission reports, Cortana learned that Spartan 117 had seen something similar on the Covenant vessel he had boarded in 2525. And again—the symbols almost looked like those on the rock he had extracted from Covenant forces on Sigma Octanus IV. ONI reports on the symbols found in the anomalous rock had defied cryptoanalysis.

Keyes’ order to plot a navigation route sparked a connection between this data; she accessed the alien symbols, and rather than compare them with alphabets or hieroglyphics, compared them to star formations.

There were some startling similarities—along with a number of differences. Cortana reanalyzed the symbols and accounted for thousands of years of stellar drift.

A tenth of a second later she had a close match on her charts—86.2 percent.

Interesting. Perhaps the markings in the rock recovered on Sigma Octanus IV were navigation symbols, albeit highly unusual and stylized ones—mathematical symbols as artistic and elegant as Chinese calligraphy.

What was there that the Covenant wanted so badly that they had launched a full offensive against Sigma Octanus IV? Whatever it was . . . Cortana was interested, too.

She compared the new NAV coordinates with her directives and was pleased with what she saw; the new course complied with the Cole Protocol. Good.

The Covenant frigates fired their plasma again. Seven bolts of fire streaked toward the Pillar of Autumn .

She dumped the coordinates to the NAV controls and stored the logic path that led to her deduction in her high-security buffer.

“Approaching saturation velocity,” she told Captain Keyes. “Powering Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators. New course available.”

The Covenant frigates aligned with their outbound vector. They were going to try to follow the Pillar of Autumn through Slipspace. Damn.

The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators tore a hole in normal space. Light boiled around the Pillar of Autumn and she vanished.

Cortana had plenty of time to think on the journey. Most of the crew were frozen in cryo for the trip.

Some of the engineers had elected to try to repair the main reactor. A futile gesture . . . but she lent them a few cycles to try to rebuild the convection inductor.

Had Dr. Halsey been on Reach when it fell to the Covenant? Cortana felt a pang of regret for her creator.

Maybe she had gotten away. The probability was low . . . but the doctor was a survivor.

Cortana ran a self-diagnostic. Her Alpha-level commands were intact. She had not jeopardized her primary mission by following this vector. There were, unfortunately, sure to be Covenant ships when they arrived . . . wherever they arrived.

The Covenant had followed them into Slipstream space. And they had always been faster and more accurate than UNSC navigators in the elusive dimension.

Captain Keyes and the Master Chief would get their chance to disable and capture one of those vessels.

Their “luck” had so far defied all probability and statistical variations. She hoped their defiance of the odds continued.

“Captain Keyes? Wake up, sir,” Cortana said. “We will enter normal space in three hours.”

Captain Keyes sat up in the cryo tube. He licked his lips and gagged. “I hate that stuff.”

“The inhalant surfactant is highly nutritious, sir. Please regurgitate and swallow the protein complex.”

Captain Keyes swung his legs out of the tube. He coughed and spat the mucus onto the deck. “You wouldn’t say that, Cortana, if you ever tasted this stuff. Ship status?”

“Reactor two has been fully repaired,” she replied. “Reactors one and three are inoperable. That gives us twenty percent power. Archer missile pods I and J rows serviceable. Autocannon ammunition at ten percent. Our two remaining Shiva warheads are intact.” She paused and double-checked the MAC gun.

“Magnetic Accelerator Gun’s capacitors depolarized. We cannot fire the system, sir.”

“More good news,” he grumbled. “Continue.”

“Hull breaches patched—but the majority of decks eleven, twelve, and thirteen are destroyed—that includes the Spartans’ weapons locker.”

“Are there any infantry weapons left?” Keyes asked. “We may need to repel boarders.”

“Yes, Captain. A substantial number of standard Marine infantry weapons survived the engagement.

Would you like an inventory?”

“Later. What about the crew?”

“All crew accounted for. Spartan 117 is in cryo sleep with the Marine and security personnel. Waking bridge officers and all essential personnel.”

“And the Covenant?”

“We’ll know in a moment if they were able to track us, sir.”

“Very well. I’ll be on the bridge in ten minutes.” He eased out of the tube. “I’m getting too damn old to be frozen and shot through space at light speed,” he muttered.

Cortana checked the status of the waking crew. There was a minor flutter in Lieutenant Dominique’s heart, which she corrected. Otherwise, status normal.

The Captain and crew assembled on the bridge. They waited.

“Five minutes until normal space, sir,” Cortana announced.

She knew they could see the countdown timer, but Cortana noticed that the crew responded well to her calm voice in stressful situations. Their reaction times generally improved by as much as 15 percent—

give or take. Sometimes, human imperfection made calculations maddeningly imprecise.

She ran another check on all intact systems. The Pillar of Autumn had taken a tremendous beating at Reach. It was a wonder it was still in one piece.

“Entering normal space in thirty seconds,” she informed Captain Keyes.

“Shut down all systems, Cortana. I want us to be dark when we hit normal space. If the Covenant did follow us—maybe we can hide.”

“Aye, sir. Running dark.”

The view screen filed with green light; smears of stars came into focus. A purple-hued gas giant filled a third of the screen.

Captain Keyes said, “Fire thrusters to position us in orbit around the planet, Ensign Lovell.”

“Aye, sir,” he replied.

The Pillar of Autumn glided around the gravity well of the moon.

Cortana detected a radar echo ahead, an object hidden in the shadow.

As the ship rounded the dark side of the gas giant, the object came into full view. It was a ring-shaped structure . . . gigantic.

“Cortana,” Captain Keyes whispered. “What is that?”

Cortana noted a sudden spike in pulse and respiration among the bridge crew . . . particularly the Captain.

The object spun serenely in the heavens. The outer surface was gray metal, reflecting the brilliant starlight. From this distance, the surface of the object seemed to be engraved with deep, ornate geometric patterns.

“Could this be some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon?” Dominique asked.

“Unknown,” Cortana replied.

She activated the ship’s long-range detection gear. Cortana’s holo image frowned. The Pillar of Autumn

’s scanning systems were fine for combat . . . but for this kind of analysis it was like using stone tools.

She diverted processing power away from ancillary systems and channeled it into the task.

Figures scrolled across the sensor displays.

“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana announced, “and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant materials, sir.”

She paused and aimed the long-range camera array at the ring. A moment later a close-up of the object snapped into focus.

Keyes let out a low whistle.

The inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and browns—trackless desert; jungles; glaciers and vast oceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows upon the terrain. The ring rotated and brought a new feature into view—a tremendous hurricane forming over an unimaginably wide body of water.

Equations scrolled furiously across Cortana as she studied the ring. She checked and rechecked her numbers—the rotational speed of the object and its estimated mass. They didn’t quite add up. She ran through a series of passive and active scans . . . and found something.

“Captain,” Cortana said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that controls the ring’s spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. At this range—and with this gear—I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and Earth-normal gravity.”

“If it’s artificial, who the hell built it . . . and what in God’s name is it?”

Cortana processed that question for a full three seconds, then finally answered: “I don’t know, sir.”

Captain Keyes took out his pipe, lit it, and puffed once. He examined the curls of smoke thoughtfully.

“Then we’d better find out.”

They stand alone—undaunted—before the mightiest enemy in the universe.

But these are no ordinary men.

They are SPARTANS . . .