Ghosts of Onyx

PROLOGUE

BETA COMPANY'S VICTORY AT PEGASI DELTA

1135 HOURS, JULY 3, 2545 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \

51 PEGASI-B SYSTEM, TARGET AREA APACHE, PLANET

PEGASI DELTA

The orbital pod impacted, and metal wrenched and sparked. Inside his cocoon

of titanium, lead foil, and stealth ablative coating, SPARTAN-B292 watched

black stars explode across his vision, he tasted blood in his mouth, and the last

air compressed from his lungs.

Tom's training kicked in: he pulled the pod's twisted frame apart and blinked in

the bright blue sunlight.

Something was wrong. 85 Pegasi-914A was supposed to be a faint yellow sun.

This was electric blueboiling plasma blue.

He jumped, rolling to one side as the blast washed over him. The outer layers

of his Semi-Powered Infiltration armor boiled and peeled like a bad sunburn.

"Training," his instructor, Lieutenant Commander Ambrose, had said. "Your

training must become part of your instinct. Drill until it becomes part of your

bones." Tom reacted without thought; a lifetime of training took over.

He raised his MA5K assault rifle and fired along the trajectory of the plasma

bolt, making sure to sweep low.

His eyes cleared, and as he automatically reloaded his weapon, he finally saw

the surface of Pegasi Delta. It could have been hell: red rocks; orange dust-

filled sky; the scars of a dozen impact skids and craters around him; and thirty

meters ahead, dark purple splashes of Jackal blood soaking into the sand.

Tom pulled out his Sidearm and warily moved to the fallen aliens. There were

five with extensive wounds to their lower legs. He shot them each once in their

odd angular vulturelike heads, then he knelt, relieved them of their plasma

grenades, and stripped off their forearm force shields.

Although Tom wore a full suit of Semi-Powered Infiltration armor (colloquially

called "SPI" armor by Section Three techno-philes), its hardened plates and

photo-reactive panels could only take a few glancing shots before failing. The

armor's camouflag-ing textures sputtered and stabilized, however; and once

again blended into the rocky terrain.

Every SPARTAN-III had received extensive training in using the enemy's

equipment, so Tom would improvise. He strapped one of the Jackal shields to

his forearm. It was excellent protection, as long as you remembered to crouch behind it and cover your legs, a tactic larger UNSC soldiers would have trouble

accomplishing.

The display on his faceplate flickered to life, a transparent layer of ghostly

green topology. One hundred kilometers overhead, the baseball-sized Stealth

Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance Satellite, or STARS, had come online.

A single blinking dot appeared that represented his position. Tom was five

kilometers south of the primary target.

He scanned the horizon and saw the Covenant factory city in the distance,

looming from the rocky surface like a castle of rust with giant smokestacks and

blue plasma coils pulsing deep inside. Beyond the factory lay the lavender

shoreline of a toxic sea.

Additional dots appeared on his heads-up screen a dozen, two dozen, and then

hundreds. The rest of Beta Company was online. Two hundred ninety-one of

them. Nine hadn't made it, either dead on reentry or killed from the impact or

by Covenant forces before they could get out of the pods.

After the mission, he'd cheek the roster to see who they'd lost. For now, he

stuffed his feelings into a dark corner of his mind.

Tom sighed with relief as he saw the eight Xs representing the subprowler

Black Cat exfiltration craft appear and then fade on his display. That was their

only way off this rock after Operation TORPEDO was accomplished.

Text scrolled on his display: "TEAM FOXTROT PROCEED ON VECTOR ZERO EIGHT

SIX. PROVIDE FLANKING SUPPORT TO TEAM INDIA."

No reply was necessary. Orders were broadcast from STARS overhead, and any

break of radio silence would reveal their position.

Three of the dots on the display winked, and tiny numbers faded into view.

B091 was Lucy. B174 was Min. And B004, that was Adam. His friends. Fireteam

Foxtrot.

Tom loped forward, found an outcropping of rock, and took cover under it,

waiting for them to catch up.

To stay on task, and not get distracted by his racing heartbeat, he reviewed

Operation TORPEDO one more time. Pegasi Delta was home to a Covenant

refinery. The sea on this tiny world was unusually rich in deuterium and tritium,

which they used in their plasma reactors. The factory processed the stuff, and

refueled their ships, making this Covenant operation on the edge of UNSC

territory a prime target. It allowed the enemy easy access to human space.

There had been previous operations to neutralize the target. UNSC CENTCOM

had sent nukes, launched from Slipspace, but plutonium emitted an aura of

Cherenkov radiation upon reentering normal space, making all the stealth

coatings and lead linings useless. The Covenant had easily detected and

destroyed them.

There were similarly too many Covenant ships near the moon to send a slow,

distantly launched nuke in normal space. Nor was a regular invasion or even the

elite Helljumper ODSTs worth the attempt. The UNSC had one chance to take

the factory out before the enemy would muster their defenses.

So they were sent.

The three hundred Spartans of Beta Company had been launched seven hours

ago into Slipspace from the UNSC carrier All Under Heaven. They had endured

the ride in long-range stealth orbital drop pods, suffered debilitating nausea

transitioning unshielded into normal space, and then got parboiled on the fiery

ride to the surface of Pegasi Delta.

From the warm welcome given by those five Jackals, Tom knew they'd been

detected, but the Covenant might not yet know the size of the breach in their

security. He'd have to move quick, take advantage of whatever element of

surprise remained, blow the factory, and if possible, the secondary targets of

ammunition depots and methane reserves.

They could still do this. They had to do it. Destroying that factory would triple

the length of the Covenant supply lines to UNSC space. This is exactly what

Tom had trained for since he was six years old years of drills and war games

and schooling. But that might not be enough.

He heard the crunch of gravel under a boot. He spun, rifle raised, and saw Lucy.

Every SPARTAN-III looked the same in their Semi-Powered Infiltration armor.

The angular shifting camo pattern of the SPI armor was one part legionnaire

mail, one part tactical body armor, and one part chameleon. Tom, however,

recognized Lucy's short, careful gait.

He made the two-fingers-over-faceplate gesture, the age-old silenced Spartan

welcome. She gave him the slightest of nods.

Tom handed her a Jackal shield unit and two plasma grenades.

Adam arrived next, and Min ten seconds after that.

When all their appropriated shields were in place, Tom gave Team Foxtrot a

series of quick, sharp hand gestures, ordering them to move ahead in a loose

arc formation. Stealthy, but fast.

As he stood, thunder rumbled, fire flashed in the sky, and a

shadow covered them and vanished. Two teardrop-shaped Covenant Seraph

fighters roared over their hiding spot.

A line of plasma erupted a hundred meters behind theman inferno that

billowed and blossomed straight toward his team.

Tom leapt to one side, activating his Jackal shield, holding it between him and

the three-thousand-degree flames that would melt though his SPI armor like

butter. The force field flared white from the radiation; his skin on his palms

prickled with blisters.

The plasma passed thinned evaporated. The air cooled.

Covenant air support was already in play. That made the situation a hundred

times worse.

With a blink, Tom switched his heads-up display from TACMAP to TEAMBIO. All

members of Team Foxtrot showed skyrocketing pulses and blood pressures. But

they were all still green. All alive. Good.

He sprinted. Stealth was no longer an operational priority. Getting to the

factory where they couldn't be strafed was all that mattered.

Behind him, Lucy, Adam, and Min fell in line, covering the rough ground in long

powerful strides at nearly thirty kilometers an hour.

Red ovals appeared on Tom's TACMAP: Covenant Seraphs on another attack run.

More than before three six ten.

Tom glanced to either side and saw his comrades, hundreds of Spartans running

across the broken ground. The dust from their charge filled the air and mingled

with the smoke from the last plasma blasts.

Three Spartans lagged behind, turned, and braced, holding M19-B SAM missile

launchers. They fired. Missiles streaked into the atmosphere, leaving snaking

trails of vapor.

The first bounced off an incoming Seraph's shield; the missile exploded, not

damaging the craft, but buffeting it nonetheless

into its wingman. Both craft tumbled, lost fifty meters of altitude, and then

recoveredbut their leading edges scraped the ground, dissipating their

weakened shields, and they spun end over end erupting into fiery pinwheels.

The two other missiles struck their targets, overloaded shields, leaving their

target Seraphs covered in soot, but otherwise intact. Tom could see the

Seraphs wave off their attack runs.

A small victory.

Tom slowed to a trot and watched as the remaining six Seraphs dipped and

released their plasma charges, then pulled up, rolled, and vanished in the haze.

Each charge of dropped plasma was a brilliant pinpoint that elongated into a

lance of boiling sun-fueled sapphire. When they hit the ground, they exploded

and fanned forward, propelled at three hundred kilometers an hour by

momentum and thermal expansion.

A wall of flame appeared on Tom's left, and it made the camo panels of his SPI

armor shiver blue and white. But he didn't move. He remained transfixed on

the other five fires enveloping scores of Spartans.

The plasma slowed, still boiling, and then the clouds cooled and thinned to a

dull gray haze, leaving crackling glassed earth and bits of charred bone in its

wake.

On his TACMAP, dozen of dots winked off.

Lucy sprinted past Tom. The sight of her snapped him back to action, and he

ran.

There'd be time for fear later. And for revenge. When they blew this factory

there'd be plenty of time for bloody revenge.

Tom shifted his focus off his TACMAP on his helmet's faceplate and farther

ahead to the primary target, now only five hundred meters distant.

From the center of the city-sized factory the blue glow was too intense to stare

directly at, casting hard shadows in the web

of pipes and the forest of smokestacks. The structure was a kilometer square

with towers rising three hundred meters, perfect for snipers.

Tom forced himself to run faster, ahead of Lucy, Adam, and Min, darting from

side to side. They understood and mimicked his evasive tactic.

Plasma bolts exploded near his foot. He weaved back and forth through a

hailstorm of high-angle trajectories. His suspicions about snipers had been

correct.

He dodged, kept running, and squinted ahead at the edge of the factory. His

faceplate automatically responded and zoomed to five-times magnification.

There was another threat: shifting luminescent edges of force fields, Jackal

shields. And in the shadows, the arrogant eyes of a Covenant Elite in purple

armor, staring straight back at him.

Tom skidded to a halt, grabbed the sniper rifle slung on his back, and sighted

through the scope. He stilled his labored breathing. A plasma bolt sizzled near

his shoulder, crackling the skin of his SPI armor, singeing his flesh, but he

ignored the pain, irritated only that the shot had thrown him momentarily off

target. He waited for the split second between the beats of his heart, and then

squeezed the trigger.

The bullet's momentum spun the Elite around. The articulation of its neck

armor exploded off the creature. Tom shot once more, and caught it in the

back. A splash of bright blue blood spattered the pipes.

Jackals emerged from the shadows at the periphery of the factory, crawling

out behind pipes and plasma tubes.

There were hundreds of them. Thousands.

And they all opened fire

Tom rolled to the ground, flattening himself into a slight depression. Adam, Min,

and Lucy dropped, as well, their assault rifles out in front of them, ready to

fire.

Plasma bolts and crystal shards crisscrossed over Tom's headtoo many to dodge.

The enemy didn't have to be able to see them. All they had to do was fill every

square centimeter of air with lethal projectiles. His team was pinned, easy

picking for those Seraphs on their next pass.

How had the Covenant mustered such a counterresponse so quickly?

If they had been detected earlier, their drop pods would have been vaporized

en route. Unless they had had the extreme bad luck to get here when a capital

ship had been docked at the factory. On the blind side? Could the STARS

overhead have missed something that large?

One of Lieutenant Commander Ambrose's first lessons echoed in Tom's head:

"Don't rely on technology. Machines are easy to break."

Tom's COM crackled: "Ml9 SAMs execute Bravo maneuver, targets painted. All

other teams ready to move."

Tom understood: they needed cover. And the only cover was dead ahead in the

factory.

From the field six smears of vapor lanced forward to the factory. The M19 SAMs

detonated on contact with pipes and plasmas conduitsexploding into clouds of

black smoke and blue sparks.

The enemy fire slowed.

That was their opening.

Tom rolled to his feet, and sprinted for the thickest smoke. Team Foxtrot

followed.

Every other Spartan on the field charged as well, hundreds of half-camouflaged

armored figures, running and firing at the dazed Jackals, appearing as a wave

of ghost warriors, half liquid, half shadow, part mirage, part nightmare.

They screamed a battle cry, momentarily drowning the sound of gunfire and

explosion.

Tom yelled with themfor the fallen, for his friends, and for the blood of his

enemies. The sound was deafening.

Jackals broke ranks, turned to flee, and got shot in the back as their shields

turned with them.

But hundreds more held their ground, overlapping shields to form an

invulnerable phalanx.

Tom led Team Foxtrot into the smoke-filled shadows of the factory. He found a

pipe the size of a redwood dripping condensed water and green coolant and

took cover behind it. In the mist he saw Lucy, Adam, and Min take positions

behind cover, too. He gave them rapid-fire orders with hand signals: Move in

and kill.

He spun around, his MA5K rifle leveledand found himself face-to-face with a

Covenant Elite, its jaw mandibles split in mimicry of an impossibly large human

grin. The monster held an energy sword in one hand, and a plasma pistol in the

other.

It shot and swung.

Tom sidestepped the deadly arcs of energy, set his foot between the Elite's

too-wide stancepushed and fired at the same time.

The Elite sprawled onto the ground, and Tom tracked his body, spraying rounds

into the slit of its helmet. He didn't miss.

Team Foxtrot closed on him, leaving six dead Jackals behind, their bodies

snapped like rag dolls.

Behind on the field came rapid thumps and flashes of heat. Plasma grenades.

Jackals and Elites rushed from their cover in the factory to meet the rest of

Beta Company on the field, realizing perhaps it would be suicide to face

Spartans in close quarters.

Thousands of Covenant clashed with two hundred Spartans in open combat.

Tracer rounds, crystal shards, plasma bolts, and flaring shields made the scene

a blur of chaos.

The SPARTAN-IIIs moved with speed and reflexes no Covenant could follow.

They dodged, snapped necks and limbs, and with captured energy swords they

cut through the enemy until the field ran with rivers of gore and blue blood.

Tom hesitated, torn between moving deeper into the factory complex and

executing the mission and running back to help his comrades. You didn't leave

your friends behind.

The sky darkened, clouds overhead turning steel gray.

Tom's COM crackled to life: "Omega three. Execute now! NOW!"

That stopped him cold. Omega three was the panic code, an order to break and

run no matter what the cost.

Why? They were winning.

Tom then saw the clouds move. Only they weren't clouds.

Everything was clear to him now. Why there were so many Covenant here. And

why Seraph single ships, craft designed for space combat, were bombing them.

Seven Covenant cruisers sank from the clouds. Over a kilometer long, their

bulbous oblong hulls cast shadows over the entire field. If these ships had been parked in formation, refueling over the complex, the STARS might have

mistaken such large structures as part of the factory.

"We have to help them," Lucy whispered over the TEAMCOM.

"No," Min said, making a short cut motion with his hand. "The Omega order."

"We're not running," Adam broke in.

"No," Tom agreed. "We're not. The order is in error." Despite the environmental

controls in his SPI armor, he felt chilled.

Seraph fighters dropped from the cruisers, dozens of them, and gathered into

swarms. Darkly luminescent shafts of light appeared from the belly of each

cruiser, transport beams, and from them marched hundreds of Elites onto the

field.

"But we can't help them either," Tom whispered to his team.

Half of Beta Company turned to face the new threat. Impossible odds, even for

Spartans, but they would buy time for the rest of them to find cover.

Finding cover was a futile tactic, though. Seven Covenant cruisers had enough

firepower to neutralize even two hundred

Spartans. They could pin them down, send in ground reinforcements by the

thousands, or if they wanted to, glass the entire moon from orbit.

That left only one option.

"The core," Tom told them. "It's still our mission, and our only effective

weapon."

There was a heartbeat pause, and then three green acknowledgment lights

winked on his display. His friends knew what he was asking.

Team Foxtrot moved as one, running into the factory at top speed, dodging

pipes and supply pods.

A squad of six Elites was ahead, hunkered behind a tangle of ducts.

Tom tossed a handful of concussive grenades to disorient them, but his team

kept running. Any delayeven to engage an enemy who could take shots at their

backsmight rob them of their one chance.

The surviving Elites recovered and fired.

Adam fell, one hand clutched at the crystal shards that penetrated his armor

and punctured his lower spine.

"Go!" Adam cried, waving them off. "I'll hold them."

Tom didn't break stride. Adam knew what had to be done: keep fighting until

there was no fight left in him.

The core was a hundred meters ahead. It was impossible to miss, so bright

Tom's faceplate automatically polarized to maximum tint, and it was still hard

to look at. The core was the size of a ten-story building, pulsing like a huge

heart, fed by glowing conduits and steaming coolant pipes, and encrusted with

crystalline electronics. It was a marvel of alien engineering, and complexwhich

hopefully also meant easy to break.

"Main coolant ducts there and there," Tom shouted over TEAMCOM and pointed.

"I'll jam the dump valve." He moved to the base of the core.

Lucy's and Min's acknowledgment lights winked.

Tom helmet's display fuzzed with static, then popped and went black. The

reactor plasma and its intensely fluctuating electromagnetic field was wreaking

havoc with their electronics.

He found the dump valve, a mechanism the size of a Pelican dropship, just

below the main chamber. He unspooled the thermite-carbon cord and ran it

around the valve twice. He then primed and activated the charge. A line of

lightning brilliance flared and sizzled through Covenant alloy, fusing the valve

into a solid lump.

Tom glanced at Lucy. She set an explosive charge on one of the two main

coolant lines that fed the reactor, and then set the timer on the detonator.

Min was setting his timer, toothen vanished in a flash of smoke and thunder.

The core flared brighter than the sun. Coolant fumes screamed from twisted

pipe and alarms blared.

"No!" Lucy screamed.

She ran past Tom toward the billowing cloud of toxic coolant. He caught her

wrist, jerking her to a stop.

"He's gone," Tom said. "EM field must have triggered his charge."

She wrestled out of Tom's grasp.

"We have to get out of here," he told her.

She hesitated, taking one step toward Min.

The support structure groaned and started to melt and sag from the

superheating core.

She turned back to Tom, nodded, and they ran out of the chamberdeeper into

the factory complex, through a jungle of struts and hissing ducts, and splashing

through lakes of leaked, boiling coolant.

The charge Lucy had set went off and silenced the reactor's alarms.

Even with their backs to the reactor, running at a full-out flat

sprint, the glare from the core doubled as it reached near supercritical phase.

It was too much to endure, even through a polarized faceplate, and Tom

squinted his eyes nearly shut.

They turned a corner, slid down the railing of angled stairs and onto a catwalk

that protruded over a ledge. Five hundred meters below, an ocean churned

against rocky cliffs.

They had made it through the factory, out the back side, where massive tubes

sucked in the ocean water for processing.

Lucy looked back at the factory and then to Tom. She offered her hand.

He took it.

They jumped.

In free fall, Tom struggled, pumping his legs. Lucy released his hand, and

straightened her body. He did the same and then pointed his feet down a split

second before he hit the water.

The impact stunned him, then he tasted salt, and choked on water that filled

his helmet. He clawed for the surface. The lining of his SPI armor swelled,

taking on water, weighing him down.

He broke the surface, paddling as hard as he could with his legs to stay afloat.

He clawed at his helmet release and pulled it off.

Next to him, Lucy had her helmet off as well, gasping.

"Look." He nodded to the cliff tops.

From this angle Tom saw the Covenant cruisers over the field. Lances of laser

fire rained down from the ships' lateral weapon arrays and blasted his fellow

Spartans. Firepower meant for capital ship combat how could anyone survive

that?

A new sun appeared. The supercritical core flared and light filled the world.

The cruisers rippled, distorted, their alloy skins boiling away in the heat. They

disintegrated, bits blasted outward.

The rocky prominence shattered into molten debris.

"Down!" Tom cried.

He and Lucy pushed themselves underwater, diving to escape the overpressure

and incinerating blast. His waterlogged armor might now save his life.

Overhead, water flash vaporized. Droplets of liquid rock and metal hissed past

him. Heat smothered him and a giant hand grasped and squeezed until all Tom

saw was blackness.

Tom lay on the ground panting. They had nearly drowned after the blast, but

managed to shed their armor, and finally, exhausted, swam back to the shore,

and dragged themselves around the edge of the battlefield and into the hills.

He and Lucy had made it to extraction point six where he had seen one of the

stealth exfiltration ships.

No Covenant reinforcements came. They had all been killed when the reactor

blew. Operation TORPEDO was a success but it had cost the lives of everyone

else in the Beta Company contingent.

All that remained of the factory, the Covenant cruisers, and ground forces of

Beta Company was a glass crater four kilometers in diameter. No bones, not

even a camo panel from a suit of SPI armor. Gone. Whispers in the wind.

Lucy pulled herself up against the hull of the Black Cat sub-prowler craft, her

body trembling. She started to stagger back down the hill.

"Where are you going?"

"Survivors," she whispered and took one uncertain step forward. "Foxtrot. We

have to look."

No one had survived. They had checked all the COM frequencies, searched the

shoreline, fields, and hills on their long silent hike back. No one else was alive.

Lucy was tiny. Like Tom, she was only twelve years old, but at one point six

meters and seventy kilos, Lucy was one of the

smallest SPARTAN-IIIs. Without her SPI armor and weapons, and her pale form

covered only in modest body sheathing, she looked even smaller.

Tom stood and gently put his arm around her. She trembled violently.

"You're going into shock."

He found a first-aid kit and injected her with the standard postmission

antishock medical cocktail.

"Survivors" she whispered.

"There are none," he said. "We have to get out of here. The Black Cat's

capacitors will drain in four hours and we won't be able to jump to Slipspace."

She turned to him, eyes wide and brimming with tears. "How are you sure we're

alive?"

Tom was alive. He was certain. But as he cast one final glance at the crackling

fields of Pegasi Delta, he knew part of him had died today with Beta Company.

He helped Lucy into the Black Cat prowler and closed the hatch.

The subprowler's engines thrummed to life, then dulled to a whisper. The craft

lifted and angled up into the darkening skies.

Lucy's words asking if they were alive would be her last. "Posttraumatic vocal

disarticulation," the experts would eventually declare. And although recertified

for duty, she would remain silenteither unable, or unwilling, to speak the rest

of her life.

In the years to come, Tom would reflect on Lucy's last question every day.

"How are you sure we're alive?" Something had died for every Spartan that day.

SECTION I

LIEUTENANT AMBROSE

CHAPTER

ONE 1647 HOURS, MAY 1, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ 111 TAURI SYSTEM, CAMP

NEW HOPE, PLANET VICTORIA

John, SPARTAN-117, despite being encased in a half ton of angular MJOLNIR

armor, moved like a shadow through the twilight forest underbrush.

The guard on the perimeter of Base New Hope drew on a cigarette, took a final

puff, and tossed the butt.

John lunged, a whisper rustle, and he wrapped his arm around the man's neck,

wrenching it up with a pop.

The guard's cigarette hit the ground.

Nearby crickets resumed their night song.

John pinged his status to the rest of Blue Team. Four green LED lights winked

on his display, indicating the rest of the extended perimeter guards had been

neutralized.

The next objective was a delivery gate, the weakest part of the rebel base's

defense system. The guardhouse had two men outside, two on the rooftop, and

several inside. Past this, however, the base had impressive security even by

Spartan standards: motion and seismic sensors, a triple layering of guards,

trained dogs, and overhead MAKO-class drones.

John blinked his status light green: the signal to proceed with the next phase.

The setting sun just touched the edge of the horizon when the guards on the

roof of the bunker twitched and crumpled. It happened so fast, John wasn't

sure which Linda had targeted first. A heartbeat later the two on the ground

were dead as well.

John and Kurt ran for the gatehouse.

Kelly sprinted ahead, covering the three hundred meters from the forest in half

the time, and leapt to the roof in a single bound. She opened the roof's vent

and dropped flash-bang grenades.

Kurt posted outside the door, and swept the aft side for any targets. John

waited on the other side of the steel and bulletproof-glass security door, one

hand on its handle, one foot braced against the wall.

Inside three muffled thumps sounded.

John pulled, wrenching the door and frame from the steel reinforcing in the

wall.

Kurt entered, his M7 submachine gun burping three-round bursts.

John was in a moment later, and assessed the threats in the blink of an eye.

There were three guards already down. Behind them, banks of security

monitors showed a hundred views of the base.

Seven other men sat at a card table, shaking off the effects of the flash-bangs.

They stood with their sidearms halfway out of their holsters.

John calmly shot each man, once in the head.

Nothing moved.

Kelly dropped outside the door, rolled inside, her weapon leveled.

"Security system," John whispered to her and Kurt.

Fred and Linda appeared a moment later, and together they pulled and wedged

the heavy door back into its twisted frame.

"All good outside," Fred told them.

Kelly sat before the bank of monitors and pulled out a touch pad, booting the

ONI computer infiltration software package.

Kurt tapped on the keyboard, nodding to the sticky note under one monitor.

"Password's posted," he said, shaking his head.

"Okay," Kelly muttered. "We can do it the easy way, too.

Running monitor-looping protocol, now. I'll get a clean path to the target."

Kurt meanwhile flipped through various camera angles and subsystems on the

displays. "No alarms raised," he reported. He paused and watched a group of

guards unloading ammunition canisters off a Warthog. One man fumbled and

dropped a can; along its side was stenciled: MUTA-AP-09334.

John hadn't ordered a subsystems sweep, though he hadn't specifically

forbidden it, either. Kurt's actions could trigger a red flag at the base's

command and control.

John had mixed feelings about using SPARTAN-051, Kurt, as Sam's replacement

on Blue Team. On the one hand, he was an extremely capable Spartan. Chief Mendez had routinely given him command of Green Team during training

exercises, and Kurt had often won when facing John's Blue Team. But on the

other hand, he was, for a Spartan, undisciplined. He took time to talk with

every Spartan, and even the non-Spartan personnel that trained and supplied

them. As a professional soldier in the middle of two warsone fighting an

entrenched rebellion, the other taking on a technologically superior

xenophobic alien raceKurt spent a considerable amount of time and energy

making friends.

"Camera system and detectors looped," Kelly announced and made a tiny circle

with her index finger. "We have fifteen minutes while dogs and drones are

rotated and refueled. So just guards to deal with."

"Move," John told his team.

Kurt hesitated, eyes still fixed on the monitors.

"What?" John asked.

"A funny feeling," Kurt whispered.

This worried John. Everyone had performed flawlessly, and there were no signs

the enemy had reacted to their presence. But Kurt had a reputation for sniffing

out ambushes. John had been on the receiving end of Kurt's intuition several

times during training.

John nodded at the monitor, still devoid of anything but normal activity.

"Explain."

"The guards unloading that Warthog," Kurt said. "They look like they're getting

ready for something. Security systems and machines can be fooledor easily

rigged to fool," he stated. "People? They're not so easy."

"I understand," John said. "We'll stay sharp, but we have to stick to the

schedule. Let's move."

Kurt got up, casting a glance back at the monitor as they exited the gatehouse.

The Spartans melted from shadow to shadow, skirting around a warehouse,

under officers' barracks, and finally, at the center of the base, they

approached the edge of a warehouse. The building was surrounded by three

fences posted with warnings that the gravel yard beyond was mined.

Eight guards patrolled the perimeter. Parked on the side was a modified

Warthog; it had been cut in half and a new midsection had been welded in

place that looked like it could carry ten men into battle. It would suffice.

John withdrew a tiny rod and pointed it at the building. The radiation counter

flickered to a hundred times normal background level for this planet.

That confirmed that their primary target was inside: three FENRIS nuclear

warheads.

Recent battles with the Covenant had depleted UNSC stockpiles of fissile

materials in this sector to almost nothing. Insurgents had heard of this (which

indicated they also had a considerable intelligence capability), and they had

contacted the regional CENTCOM to boldly offer a trade. They said they had

stolen warheads. They claimed to have people with Borren's Syndrome, and

wanted the expertise and medicines only UNSC doctors could provide.

CENTCOM said they'd consider the matter.

They had considered it, and sent in Blue Team to get those

warheads, and if presented with the opportunity, they were to target any rebel

leaders.

John signaled his team to move out, disperse around the bunker, and take up

positions to snipe the guards.

Green acknowledgment lights winked on. Kurt's was last, with a palpable

hesitation.

John gave Kurt a short hand wave, and then pointed at the Warthog, indicating

that he get the vehicle ready to move.

Kurt nodded.

Kurt's "feeling" that something was wrong was contagious. John didn't like it. He

pushed his uncertainties aside. Blue Team was in position.

John unslung his sniper rifle and sighted. He gave the "go" signal and watched

as one guard and then another silently fell over. Linda had been quick and

efficient as usual.

John gave the go-ahead to move in.

Blue Team eased inside, sweeping the dark corners of the building.

The place was empty, save steel racks cradling three conical warhead casings.

John's radiation counter jumped, indicating that they did not hold conventional

explosives.

He pointed at Kelly and Fred, to the rack, then to the Warthog outside. They

nodded.

Kurt's acknowledgment light winked red.

No Spartan flashed a red light on a mission unless they had a good reason.

"Abort," John said. "Back out. Now."

Dizziness washed over him.

John saw Linda, Fred, and Kelly sink to their knees.

Then blackness swallowed him.

John awoke with a start. Every muscle burned and it felt like someone had

hammered his head. This was a good sign: it meant he wasn't dead.

He tensed his muscles against an unyielding pressure.

He blinked to clear his hazy vision and saw he sat propped against a wall, still

in the high-security bunker.

The warheads were also still there.

Then John saw a dozen commandos in the warehouse, watching him. They

hefted the .30-caliber machine gun, favored by rebel forces. Nicknamed

"confetti makers," they were grossly inaccurate, but at point-blank range, it

would hardly be a concern.

The rest of Blue Team lay face-first on the concrete floor. Technicians in lab

coats crouched over them capturing high-resolution digital video.

John jerked against his inert armor. He had to get to his team. Were they dead?

"No need to struggle," a voice said.

A man with long gray hair stepped in front of John's faceplate. "Or struggle if

you want. We've installed neural-inhibitor collars on you and your comrades.

UNSC standard issue for dangerous felons." He smiled. "I'd wager without one

you could, and would, rip me in half in that miraculous power armor."

John kept his mouth shut.

"Relax," the man said. "I am General Graves."

John recognized the name. Howard Graves was one of the three men believed

to be in charge of the united rebel front. It was no coincidence he was here.

"You're suffering from rapid decompressionthe bends," he told John. "We used

an antigrav plate, old technology that never panned out, but for our purposes,

it worked just fine. A focused beam fooled your armor's sensors into thinking

you were in a ten-gee environment. It increased internal pressure to save your

lives, momentarily rendering you unconscious."

"You engineered this all for us," John said, his voice hoarse.

"You 'Spartans' have put quite a dent in our efforts to liberate the frontier

worlds," General Graves said. "Station Jefferson in the Eridanus asteroid belt

last year; our destroyer

Origami; six months ago, our high-explosive manufacturing facility; followed by

the incident in Micronesia, and our saboteur cell on Reach. I didn't believe it

until I saw the video. All by the same four-man team. Some said 'Blue Team'

was a myth." He rapped his knuckle on John's faceplate. "You seem real enough

to me."

John struggled, but he might as well have been encased in a mountain of steel.

The neural collar neutralized every signal traveling down his spine save the

autonomics to his heart and diaphragm.

He had to focus. Did everyone on his team have a collar? Yes. Each Spartan had

a thick clamp on the back of their neck, directly over the AI interface port.

Graves had excellent intelligence on their equipment.

Wait. John scrutinized his paralyzed team: Kelly, Linda, and Fred. No Kurt.

Graves had said "four-man team." He didn't know about Kurt.

"As you surmised," Graves continued, "this was all for your benefit. We scraped

our fissile material together and made sure it was done so sloppily that even

your Office of Naval Intelligence saw it happen. We anticipated the miraculous

Blue Team would be sent. I am not disappointed that your leaders' minds are

still so easily read."

A young commando approached, saluted, and nervously whispered, "Sir,

external sensors are off-line."

Graves frowned. "Drag the prisoners out of here. Sound the general alarm.

Police those warheads, and tell the liftships to"

A buzzing sound filled the air. John spied a blur of spinning metal through the

doorway. He had a fraction of a second to see it was an eight-armed Asteroidea

antipersonnel mine, its pressure trigger jammed with a chunk of graveljust

before it detonated into a ball of thunder.

Metal pinged off John's armor.

Everyone standing in the room doubled over from the con-cussive force and hail

of shrapnel.

Six commandos with multiple cuts and bleeding ears rose, weapons ready,

shaking their heads to clear the disorientation.

The modified Warthog that had been parked next to the bunker crashed into

the open double doorway.

The entire warehouse shook.

The commandos opened fire, and rushed the doorway.

The Warthog pulled away, then with a squeal, it reversed, and then rammed

the doorway again. The corrugated steel walls screeched, buckled, and with a

shower of sparks the vehicle wedged its midsection in the building like a

pregnant queen termite.

The commandos unloaded their confetti makers, puckering the 'Hog's armor.

The top of the midsection slid open and three more Aster-oidea antipersonnel

mines arced, whirling like a child's toy each landing in a corner of the

bunkerand exploded.

White-hot metal fragments cut through the commandos like a scythe.

Kurt leapt out and shot the three men still moving. He quickly went to each

Spartan and pulled off the collars.

Kelly rolled to her feet. Fred and Linda got up.

Kurt yanked the collar off John's neck. His entire body tingled, but his muscles

once again responded to his commands. He flexed his limbs. There was no

permanent nerve damage.

"We can forget about stealth now," John said. "Kurt, drive the Warthog. Kelly,

Linda, Fred, get those warheads loaded ASAP."

They nodded.

John went to General Graves. A sliver of corrugated steel had lodged in the

man's skull.

Unfortunate. Graves had held secrets of the rebels' command and intelligence

structure-secrets John had had the barest glimpse of. Their capacities had

been greatly underestimated. With the larger Covenant threat looming, John

wondered what

the rebels would ultimately do. Attack a weakened UNSC as it battled aliens, or

fight against humanity's common enemy?

He ignored the larger strategic picture and focused on the tactical, helping

Kelly maneuver the last warhead into the Warthog's armored midsection.

Loaded with the bombs and five armored Spartans, the vehicle bottomed its

shocks. John climbed into the rear and Kurt drove, and they sluggishly

accelerated away from the secure warehouse.

"Best speed to the PZ," John ordered.

Kurt turned on the Warthog's radio. It buzzed with confused chatter.

"Unit One nonresponsive. Gunfire reported. Man down! Tracking APC. Open fire?

Confirmconfirm! All units converge. Do it now!"

"Everyone," John shouted, "into the center."

Holes peppered the Warthog, armor-piecing rounds penetrating the side like

paper and denting the casings of the warheads.

"Behind the warheads!" Fred told them.

John, Kelly, Fred, and Linda huddled behind the missiles. Nuclear warheads

ironically would provide their best defense. Their casings were superhardened,

both to contain radiation and hold the fury of a small sun for a split second

longer and to boost the thermonuclear yield.

John looked up at the driver's seat. Kurt squeezed himself lower into the seat,

presenting the smallest possible target, risking his life to get them all to safety.

The Warthog billowed smoke, but its speed slowly increased to forty kilometers

an hour. A sharp rattle came from the engine. A tire shredded and the vehicle

swerved right and then left.

Kurt regained control and kept going.

The AP fire slowed and then stopped.

"Brace!" Kurt said and downshifted.

The Warthog barreled through the chain-link and concertina-wire barrier, over

gravel fields, and into the forest.

"Road 32-B to the PZ," Kurt said.

"Road" was a creative overstatement. They bounced along, mowing down trees,

fishtailing, and spraying mud.

"Drones!" Kurt told them.

"Get the hatch open," John ordered. Kelly and Fred pulled the midsection roof

panels apart.

John stuck his head out, and spotted three MAKO-class attack drones jetting

toward them, each heavy with a fat missile. One direct hit would take out the

Warthog. Even a near miss could destroy an axle.

Linda popped up, her sniper rifle already in hand and eyes on the scope.

John and Linda opened fire.

The lead drone smoked and dropped into the trees. The next drone angled up,

bobbing. It released its missile, and banked away. A line of smoke appeared, a

tail of fire, and a missile accelerated toward them at a frightening rate.

Linda fired, squeezing off the rounds as fast as the chamber could cycle. The

missile started to spin but it was still dead on course.

"PZ three hundred meters," Kelly said, consulting her tablet. "Welcome

committee has us in their sights."

"Tell them we have the package," John said, "and we need a hand."

"Roger that," she said.

The missile was two kilometers from themclosing fast.

Ahead, the forest turned into swamp. With a hurricane roar, a UNSC Pelican

dropship rose over the treetops and its twin chain guns spat a cloud of depleted

uranium slugs at the incoming missilemaking it bloom into a flower of fire and

smoke.

"Stand by for pickup, Blue Team," the dropship's pilot said over their COM. "We

got incoming single-craft hostiles. So hang tight, and go vacuum protocols."

"Check suit integrity," John ordered. He remembered Sam

and how his friend had sacrificed himself, remaining on a Covenant ship under

siege because of a breach in his suit. If a single AP round had breached their

MJOLNIR, they'd be in a similar jam.

The Warthog, billowing thick black clouds, rattled to a stop.

The Pelican settled over it and clamped tight.

Blue Team came back all green status lights, and John relaxed; he had been

holding his breath.

The Pelican lifted the Warthog, laden with Spartans and warheads, into the air.

"Make secure," the pilot said. "Bogies inbound on vector zero seven two."

Acceleration tugged at John, but he stood fast, one hand bracing the nukes,

the other against the punctured side of the Warthog.

The clear blue light outside darkened to black and filled with the twinkle of

stars.

"Rendezvous with the Bunker Hill in fifteen seconds," the Pelican pilot

announced. "Prepare for immediate out-system Slipspace jump."

Kurt carefully eased out of the driver's seat and into the midsection to join

them.

"Nice work," Fred told him. "How did you know it was a trap?"

"It was the guards loading ammunition off the Warthog," Kurt explained. "I saw

it at the time, but it didn't register until it was almost too late. Those ammo

canisters were marked as armor-piercing rounds. All of them. You wouldn't

need that much AP unless you were taking on a few light tanks"

"Or a squad of Spartans," Linda said, catching on.

"Us," Fred remarked.

Kurt doggedly shook his head. "I should have figured it out sooner. I almost got

everyone killed."

"You mean you saved everyone," Kelly said and she butted her shoulder into his.

"If you ever have another funny 'feeling,'" John told him, "tell me, and make me

understand."

Kurt nodded.

John wondered about this man's "feelings," his instinctive subconscious

awareness of the danger. CPO Mendez had made then all train so hard, lessons

in fire-team integration, target prioritization, hand-to-hand combat, and

battlefield tactics were part of their hardwired instincts now. But that didn't

mean the underlying biological impulses were worthless. Quite the opposite.

John set a hand on Kurt's shoulder, searching for the right words.

Kelly, as usual, articulated the sentiments that John never could. She said,

"Welcome to Blue, Spartan. We're going to make a great team."

CHAPTER

TWO

0500 HOURS, OCTOBER 24, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ABOARD UNSC POINT

OF NO RETURN, INTERSTELLAR SPACE, SECTOR B-042

Colonel Ackerson ran both hands through his thinning hair, and poured himself

a glass of water from the carafe on the table. His hand shook. Ironic that his

career in the military had come to this: a secret meeting on a ship that

technically didn't exist, about to discuss a project that, if successful, would

never surface from the shadows.

Eyes-only classification. Code words. Double deals and back-stabbing.

He longed for earlier days when he held a rifle in his hands, the enemy was

easily recognized and dispatched, and Earth was the most powerful, secure

center of the universe.

Those times only existed in memory now, and Ackerson had to live in the dark

to save what little light remained.

He pushed back from the ebony conference table, and his gaze swept over the

room, a five-meter-diameter bubble, bisected by a metal grate floor, with

stainless-steel walls brushed to a white reflective sheen. Once sealed, it

became a Faraday cage, and no electronic signals could escape.

He hated this place. The white walls and the black table made him feel, like he

sat inside a giant eye, always under observation.

The "cage," as it was referred to, was contained within a cocoon of ablative

insulating layers, and counterelectronics to provide further security, and this

ensconced on the most secret ship in the UNSC fleet, Point of No Return.

Constructed in parts and then assembled in deep space, Point of No Return was

the largest prowler-class vessel ever built. The size of a destroyer, she was

completely radar-invisible, and when her baffled engines ran below 30 percent

she was as dark as interstellar space. Point of No Return was the wartime field

command and control platform for the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence,

NavSpecWep Section Three.

Very few had actually seen this ship, only a handful had ever been aboard, and

fewer than twenty officers in the galaxy had access to the cage.

The white wall sheathed apart and three people walked in, boots clipping

across the metal grate.

Rear Admiral Rich entered first. He was only forty, but already gray. He

commanded covert operations in Section Three, in charge of every field

operation save Dr. Halsey's SPARTAN-II program. He sat on Ackerson's right,

glanced

at the water, and scowled. He withdrew a gold flask and un-stoppered it. The

odor of cheap whiskey immediately assailed Acker son.

Next was Captain Gibson. The man moved like a panther with the low lopping

strides indicative of time recently spent in mi-crogravity. He was the field

officer in charge of Section Three Black Ops, the hands-on wet-work

counterpart to Rear Admiral Rich.

And last, Vice Admiral Parangosky entered.

The doors immediately sheathed close behind her. There were three distinct

clicks as locks meshed into place, and then the room fell into an unnatural

silence.

Parangosky remained standing and assessed the others; her iron gaze finally

pinned Ackerson. "You better have one hell of a reason for dragging us all here

through back channels, Colonel."

Parangosky looked fragile and closer to 170 years old than her actual seventy

years, but she was in Ackerson's opinion the most dangerous person in the UNSC. She was the real power in ONI. To his knowledge, only one person had ever

successfully crossed her and lived.

Colonel Ackerson set four reader tablets on the table. Bio-metric scanners

flashed on the sidebars.

"Please, Admiral," he said, "if you would."

"Very well," she growled and sat. "I'll bite."

"Nothing new with that, Margaret," Admiral Rich muttered.

She shot him a piercing glare, but said nothing.

The three officers scanned the document.

Captain Gibson sighed explosively and pushed the tablet away. "Spartans," he

said. "Yes, we're all familiar with their operational record. Very impressive."

From the scowl on his face, it was clear "impressed" was not what he was

feeling.

"And," Rich commented, "we already know your feelings

about this program, Colonel. I hope you did not bring us here to try and once

again shut the Spartans down."

"No," Ackerson replied. "Please scroll to page twenty-three, and my purpose

will become clear."

They reluctantly examined his report.

Captain Rich's brows shot up. "I've never seen these figures before MJOLNIR suit

construction, maintenance staff, and recent upgrades to their microfusion

plants. Christ! You could build a new battle group for what Halsey is spending."

Vice Admiral Parangosky did not glace at the figures. "I've seen this before,

Colonel. The Spartans are the single most expensive project in our section.

They are, however, also the most effective. Come to the point."

"The point is this," Ackerson said. Sweat trickled down his back, but he kept his

voice even. If he didn't sell this, Parangosky might roll over him, and he'd find

himself busted to sergeant and patrolling some dusty frontier world. Or worse.

"I'm not suggesting that we shut the Spartans down," he continued and gestured

broadly with both hands. "On the contrary, we're fighting a war on two fronts:

rebels eroding our economic base in the outer colonies; and the Covenant, who, as far as we know, are committed to the total annihilation of humanity."

Ackerson straightened and met Gibson's, Rich's, and then Parangosky's gazes.

"I'm suggesting we need more Spartans."

The smallest flicker of a smile played over Vice Admiral Parangosky's thin lips.

"Crap," Rich muttered. He took a draw from his whiskey flask. "Now I've heard

everything."

"What's your angle, Colonel?" Gibson demanded. "You've been on record against

Dr. Halsey's SPARTAN-IIs since she started t

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 597