The Flood

CHAPTER FIVE

D+128:15:25 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock)

On the plain surrounding The Pillar of Autumn

The rain stopped just before dawn – not gradually but all at once, as if someone had flipped a switch. The clouds melted away, the first rays of the sun appeared, and darkness surrendered to light.

Slowly, as if to reveal something precious, the golden glow slid across the plain to illuminate the Pillar of Autumn, which lay like an abandoned scepter, her bow hanging out over the edge of a steep precipice.

She was huge, so huge that the Covenant had assigned two Banshees to fly cover over her, and a squad of six Ghosts patrolled the area immediately around the fallen cruiser’s hull. However, from the listless manner with which the enemy soldiers went about their duties, McKay could tell they were unaware of the threat that had crept up on them during the hours of rain-filled darkness.

Back on Earth, before the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, and the subsequent efforts to colonize other star systems, human soldiers had frequently staged attacks at dawn, when there was more light to see by, and the enemy sentries were likely to be tired and sleepy. In order to counter, the more sophisticated armies soon developed the tradition of an early morning “stand-to,” when every soldier went to barricades in case the enemy chose that particular morning to attack.

Did the Covenant have a similar tradition, McKay wondered? Or were they dozing a bit, relieved that the long period of darkness was finally over, their fears eased by the first rays of the sun? The officer would soon find out.

Like all sixty-two members of her Company, the Helljumper was concealed just beyond the border of the roughly U-shaped area that the Covenant actively patrolled. And now, with daylight only minutes away, the time had arrived either to commit herself or to withdraw.

McKay took one last look around. Her arm ached, and her bladder was full, but everything else was A-okay. She keyed the radio and gave the order that both platoons had been waiting for. “Red One to Blue One and Green One... Proceed to objective. Over.”

The response came so quickly that McKay missed whatever acknowledgments the two Platoon leaders might have sent. The key was to neutralize the Banshees and the Ghosts so quickly, so decisively, that the ODST troopers would be able to cross the long stretch of open ground and reach the Autumn virtually unopposed. That’s why no fewer than three of the powerful M19 rocket launchers were aimed at each Banshee – and three Marines had been assigned to each of the half dozen target Ghosts.

Two of the four rockets fired at the Covenant aircraft missed their marks, but both Banshees took hits, and immediately exploded. Wreckage rained on the Covenant position.

The Ghost drivers on both sides of the ship were still looking upward, trying to figure out what had occurred, when more than two dozen assault weapons opened up on them.

Four of the rapid attack vehicles were destroyed within the first few seconds of the battle. The fifth, piloted by a mortally wounded Elite, described a number of large overlapping circles before crashing into the cruiser’s hull and finally putting the driver out of his misery. The Elite behind the controls of the sixth and last Ghost panicked, backed away from the wholesale destruction, and toppled over the edge of the precipice.

If the alien screamed on the way down McKay wasn’t able to hear it, especially with the steady crack, crack, crack of multiple S2 Sniper Rifles going off all around her. She keyed her radio to the command freq and ordered her platoon leaders to move up.

The assault force crossed the open area in a run, and headed toward the ship’s sternmost air locks.

Covenant troops stationed within the ship heard the ruckus and hurried outside, and were met by the sight of the still-smoking wrecks of their mechanized support, and an enthusiastic – if somewhat thin – infantry assault.

Most were simply standing there, waiting for someone to tell them what to do, when the snipers’ 14.5mm armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot rounds began to cut them down. The impact was devastating. McKay saw Elites, Jackals, and Grunts alike throw up their arms and collapse as the rolling fusillade took its toll.

Then, as the aliens started to pull back into the relative safety of the ship’s interior, McKay jumped to her feet, knowing that one of her noncoms would do likewise on the far side of the hull, and waved the snipers forward. “Switch to your assault weapons! The last one to the lock has to stay and guard it!”

All the ODST troopers knew there were plenty of things to scrounge inside the hull, and they were eager to do so. The possibility that they might end up guarding a lock rather than pillaging the Autumn’s interior was more than sufficient motivation to make each Marine run as fast as possible.

The purpose of the exercise was to get the last members of the Company across what could have been a Covenant killing ground and to do so as quickly as possible. McKay thought she’d been successful, thought she’d made a clean break, when a momentary shadow passed over her and someone yelled, “Contact! Enemy contact!”

The officer glanced back over her shoulder and spied a Covenant dropship. The ungainly looking craft swept in from the east, and was about to deploy additional forces. Its plasma cannon opened fire and stitched a line of black dots in the dirt, out toward the edge of the drop-off.

A sniper disappeared from the waist down, and still had enough air to scream as his forward motion slowed, and his torso landed on a pile of his own intestines.

McKay skidded to a halt, yelled, “Snipers! About face, fire!” and hoped that the brief parade ground–style orders would be sufficient to communicate what she wanted.

Each Covenant dropship had side slots, small cubicle-like spaces where their troops rode during transit, and from which they were released when the aircraft arrived over the landing zone. Had the pilot been more experienced he would have positioned the aircraft so that it was nose-on to the enemy and fired his cannon while the troops bailed out – but he wasn’t, or he’d simply made a mistake, as he presented the ship’s starboard side to the humans and opened the doors.

More than half the ODST snipers had switched back to their S2s and had shouldered their weapons up as the drop doors opened. They opened fire before the Covenant troops could leap to the ground. One of their rounds hit a plasma grenade and caused it to explode. A control line must have been severed, because the dropship lurched to port, pitched forward, and nosed into the ground. Twin waves of soil were gouged out of the plateau as the aircraft slid forward, hit a boulder, and exploded into flame.

Secondary explosions cooked off and the twin hulls disintegrated. The sound of the blast bounced off the Autumn’s hull and rolled across the surrounding plain.

The Marines waited a moment to see if any of the aliens would try to crawl, walk, or run away, but none of them did.

McKay heard the muffled thump, thump, thump of automatic weapons fire coming from within the ship behind her, knew the job was only half done, and waved to the half dozen Marines. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

The Helljumpers looked at one another, grinned, and followed McKay into the ship. The El-tee might look like a wild-eyed maniac, but she knew her stuff, and that was good enough for them.

The soil was still damp from the rain, so when the sun hit the top of the mesa a heavy mist started to form, as if a battalion of spirits had been released from bondage.

Keyes, exhausted by his captivity, not to mention the harrowing escape from the Truth and Reconciliation, had literally collapsed in the bed the Helljumpers had prepared for him and slept hard for the next three hours.

Now, awakened by both a nightmare and the internal clock that was still attuned to the arbitrarily set ship time, the Naval officer was up and prowling about.

The view from the rampart was nothing less than spectacular, looking out over a flat plain to the gently rolling hills beyond. A bank of ivory-white clouds scudded above the hills. The vista was so beautiful, so pristine, that it was difficult to believe that Halo was a weapon.

He heard the scrape of footsteps, and turned to watch Silva emerge from the staircase that led up to the observation platform. “Good morning, sir,” the Marine said. “I heard you were up and around. May I join you?”

“Of course,” Keyes said, gesturing to a place at the waist-high wall. “Please do. I took a self-guided tour of the landing pads, the Shade emplacements, and the beginnings of the maintenance shop. Good work, Major. You and your Helljumpers are to be congratulated. Thanks to you, we have a place to rest, regroup, and plan.”

“The Covenant did some of the work for us,” Silva replied modestly, “but I agree, sir, my people did a hell of a job. Speaking of which, I thought I should let you know that Lieutenant McKay and two platoons of ODST troops are fighting their way into the Autumn even as we speak. If they retrieve the supplies we need, Alpha Base will be able to hold for quite a while.”

“And if the Covenant attacks before then?”

“Then we are well and truly screwed. We’re running short on ammo, food, and fuel for the Pelicans.”

Keyes nodded. “Well, let’s hope McKay pulls it off. In the meantime there are some other things we need to consider.”

Silva found the easy, almost offhanded manner in which Keyes had reassumed command to be a bit irritating, even though he knew it was the other officer’s obligation to do so. There was a clear-cut chain of command, and now that Keyes was free, the Naval officer was in charge. There was nothing the Marine could do except look interested – and hope his superior came up with at least some of the right ideas.

“Yes, sir. What’s up?”

So Keyes talked, and Silva listened, as the Captain reviewed what he had learned while in captivity. “The essence of the matter is that while the races which comprise the Covenant seem to possess a high level of technology, most if not all of it may have been looted from the beings they refer to as the ‘Forerunners,’ an ancient race which left ruins on dozens of planets, and presumably was responsible for constructing Halo.

“In the long run, the fact that they are adaptive, rather than innovative, may prove to be their undoing. For the moment, however, before we can take advantage of that weakness, we must first find the means to survive. If Halo is a weapon, and if it has the capacity to destroy all of humanity as they seem to believe, then we must find the means to neutralize it – and perhaps turn it against the Covenant.

“That’s why I ordered Cortana and the Master Chief to find the so-called Control Room to which the aliens have alluded, and see if there’s a way to block the Covenant’s plan.”

Silva placed his forearms on the top of the wall that fronted the rampart and looked out over the plain. If one knew where to look, and had a good eye, he could see the blast-scarred ground where the Ghosts had attacked, the Helljumpers had held, and some of his Marines lay buried.

“I see what you mean, sir. Permission to speak freely?”

Keyes looked at Silva, then back to the view. “Of course. You’re second in command here, and obviously you know your way around ground engagements far better than I do. If you have ideas, suggestions, or concerns, I want to hear them.”

Silva nodded respectfully. “Thank you, sir. My question has to do with the Spartan. Like everyone else, I have nothing but respect for the Chief’s record. However, is he the right person for the mission you have in mind? Come to think of it, is anyone person right for that kind of operation?

“I know that the Master Chief has an augmented body,” Silva continued, “not to mention the advantage that the armor gives him, but take a look around. This base, these defenses, were the work of normal human beings.

“The Spartan program is a failure, Captain – the fact that the Chief is the only one left proves that, so let’s put your mission into the hands of some real honest-to-god Marines and let them earn their pay.

“Thanks for hearing me out.”

Keyes had been in the Navy for a long time. He knew Silva was ambitious, not only for himself, but for the ODST branch of the Marine Corps. He also knew that Silva was brave, well-intentioned, and in this case, flat-outwrong. But how to tell him that? He needed Silva’s enthusiastic support if any of them were going to make it out of this mess alive.

The Captain considered Silva’s words, then nodded. “You make some valid points. What you and your ‘honest-to-god’ Marines have accomplished on this butte is nothing short of miraculous.

“However, I can’t agree with your conclusions regarding the Chief or the Spartan program. First, it’s important to understand that what makes the Chief so effective isn’t what he is, but who he is. His record is not the result of technology – not because of what they’ve done to him but in spite of what they’ve done to him, and the pain he has suffered.

“The truth is that the Chief would have grown up to be a remarkable individual regardless of what the government did or didn’t do to him. Do I think children should be snatched away from their families? Raised by the military? Surgically altered? No, I don’t, not during normal times.”

He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “Major, one of my first assignments was to escort the Spartan’s project leader during the selection process for the II-series candidates. At the time, I didn’t know the full scope of the operation – and I probably would have resigned had I known.

“These aren’t normal times. We’re talking about the very real possibility of total extinction, Major. How many people did we lose in the Outer Colonies? How many did the Covenant kill on Jerico VII? On Reach? How many will be glassed if they locate Earth?”

It was a rhetorical question. The Marine shook his head. “I don’t know, sir, but I do know this. More than twenty-five years ago, when I was a second lieutenant, the people who invented the Chief thought it would be fun to test their new pet weapon on some real meat. They engineered a situation in which four of my Marines would run into your friend, take offense at something he did, and try to teach him a lesson.

“Well, guess what? The plan worked perfectly. The plan sucked my people in, and the freak not only kicked the hell out of them, he left two of them dead – beaten to death in a goddamned ship’s gymnasium. I don’t know what you call that, sir, but I call it murder. Were there repercussions? Hell, no. The windup toy got a pat on the head and a ticket to the showers. It was all in a day’s bloody work.”

Keyes looked bleak. “For whatever it’s worth I’m truly sorry about what happened to your men, Major, but here’s the truth: Maybe it isn’t nice – hell, maybe it isn’t even right – but if I could get my hands on a million Chiefs I’d take every single one of them. As for this particular mission, yes, I believe it’s possible that your people could get the job done, and if that’s all we had, I wouldn’t hesitate to send them in. But the Chief has a number of distinct advantages, not the least of which is Cortana, and by taking this task on he will free your Helljumpers to handle other things. Lord knows there’s plenty to do. My decision stands.”

Silva nodded stiffly. “Sir, yes sir. My people will do everything they can to support both the Chief and Cortana.”

“Yes,” Keyes said, as he gazed up into the gently curving ring, “I’m sure they will.”

The normally dark room was bright with artificial light. Zuka ’Zamamee had studied the raid on the Truth and Reconciliation, taken note of the manner in which the human AI had accessed the Covenant battle net, and analyzed the nature of the electronic intrusions to see what the entity seemed most interested in.

Then, based on that analysis, he had constructed projections of what the humans would do next. Not all of the humans, since that lay outside the parameters of his mission, but the one person in whom he was truly interested. An individual who appeared to be part of a specialized, elite group similar to his own, and would almost certainly be sent to follow up on what the humans had learned.

Now, in the room that led directly into the Security Control Center, ’Zamamee laid a trap. The armored human would come, he felt sure of that, and once inside the snare, the human would meet his end. The thought cheered ’Zamamee immensely and he hummed a battle hymn as he worked.

There was a flash, followed by a loud bang! as the fragmentation grenade went off. A Jackal screamed, an assault weapon stuttered, and a Marine yelled, “Let me know if you want some more!”

“Good work!” McKay exclaimed. “That’s the last of them. Close the hatch, lock it, and post a fire team here to make sure they don’t cut their way out. The Covenant is welcome to the upper decks. What we need is down here.”

The battle had been raging for hours by then as McKay and her Marines fought to push the remaining enemy forces out of key portions of the Autumn and into the sections of the ship that weren’t mission-critical.

As the Helljumpers sealed the last interdeck ladder not already secured, they had what they’d been striving for: free and unfettered access to the ship’s main magazine, cargo holds, and vehicle bays.

In fact, even as the second platoon pushed the last of the aliens out of the lower decks, the first platoon, under the leadership of Lieutenant Oros, had begun the important task of hitching trailers to the fleet of Warthogs stowed in the Autumn’s belly and loading them with food, ammo, and the long list McKay had brought with her of other supplies. Then, once each ’Hog-trailer combo was ready, the Marines drove them down makeshift ramps onto the hardpan below.

Once outside, and positioned laager style, the combined power of the LRV-mounted M41 light antiaircraft guns formed a potent defense against possible attack by Covenant dropships, Banshees, and Ghosts. It wouldn’t hold out forever, but it would do the most important job: It would buy them time.

Adding to the supply column’s already formidable firepower were four M808B Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, or MBTs, which rumbled down off the ramps, and threw dirt rooster tails up off their powerful treads as they growled into position within the screen established by the Warthogs.

The MBTs’ ceramic-titanium armor provided them with excellent protection against small arms fire – although the vehicles were vulnerable should the aliens manage to get in close. That’s why provision had been made for up to four Marines to ride on top of each Scorpion’s track pods.

Now, free to withdraw from the grounded cruiser and supervise final loading, McKay left Lister in charge of keeping the aliens penned up.

As she exited the ship, McKay caught sight of two heavily-loaded Pelicans flying off in the general direction of the butte, each with a ’Hog clutched beneath its belly. And there, arrayed on the hardpan in front of her, twenty-six Warthog-trailer combinations sat ready to roll, with still more coming off the ship.

Their only problem was personnel. As a result of the work only fifty-two effectives remained, which meant that the stripped-down infantry company would be hard-pressed to crew thirty-four vehicles and fight, should that become necessary. Both McKay and her noncoms would all play a role as drivers or gunners during the return trip.

Oros saw the Company Commander emerge from the Autumn’s hull. The Platoon Leader was caged inside one of the loader-type exoskeletons taken from the ship. Servos whined in sympathy with her movements as she crossed the intervening stretch of wheel-churned dirt to the point where McKay waited with hands on hips. Grime covered her face and her body armor was charred where a plasma pulse had hit. “You look good in orange.”

Oros grinned. “Thanks, boss. Did you see the Pelicans?”

“As a matter of fact I did. They looked a bit overloaded.”

“Yeah, the pilots were starting to whine about weight, but I bribed them with a couple of candy bars. They’ll be back in about forty-five minutes. When they do we’ll wrestle fuel bladders into the cargo compartments, fill them from the ship, and top their tanks all at the same time. Then, just to make sure we get our money’s worth, we’ll hook a 50mm MLA autocannon under each fuselage and take those out as well.”

McKay raised both eyebrows. “Autocannons? Where did you get those?”

“They were part of the Autumn’s armament,” the other officer answered cheerfully. “I thought it would be fun to spot the occasional Covenant dropship from the top of the mesa.”

He paused then added, “That’s the good news.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“A lot of gear didn’t survive the crash. No missile or rocket pods for the Pelicans, and we’re almost bone dry on 70mm for their chin guns. We can’t count on air support for much more than bus rides.”

“Damn.” She scowled. Without well-armed air support, Alpha Base was going to be a lot tougher to defend.

“Affirmative,” Oros agreed. “Oh, and I ordered the pilots to bring fifteen additional bodies on the return trip. Clerks, medics, anybody who can drive or fire an M41. That would allow me to squeeze some additional ’Hogs into the column and put at least two people on each tank.”

McKay raised an eyebrow. “You ‘ordered’ them to bring more bodies?”

“Well, I kind of let them believe that you whistled them up.”

McKay shook her head. “You are amazing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Oros replied shamelessly. “Semper Fi.”

The Pelicans swept over the glittering sea, passed over a line of gently breaking surf, and flew parallel with the beach. Foehammer saw a construct up ahead, a headland beyond, and a whole lot of Covenant troops running around in response to the sudden and unexpected arrival of two UNSC dropships. Rawley fought the urge to trigger the Pelican’s 70mm chin gun. She’d expended the last of her ammo on the last pass – had watched geysers of sand chase an Elite up the beach, and was rewarded by the sight of the alien disappearing in a cloud of his own blood – and it didn’t look like more were coming anytime soon.

She keyed open a master channel. “The LZ is hot, repeat, hot,” Foehammer emphasized. “Five to dirt.”

The Master Chief stood next to the open hatch, and waited for Foehammer’s signal: “Touchdown! Hit it, Marines!”

He was among the first to step off the ramp, his boots leaving deep impressions in the soft sand.

He paused for a quick look around, then started down-spin to the point where the aliens waited. No sooner had the last member of the landing party disembarked than the Pelicans were airborne once more – and flying up-spin.

Plasma fire stuttered down from the top of a rise as the Marines advanced up the sandy slope, careful to fire staggered bursts, so the entire group didn’t wind up reloading at the same time. The Spartan ran forward, added his fire to the rest, and sent an Elite sprawling to the ground. The Covenant forces were outnumbered for once and the human attackers wasted little time cutting them down. The whole fight lasted only ten minutes.

Time to get moving. He reviewed the mission objectives as he surveyed the LZ: find and secure a Covenant-held facility, some kind of map room – which the enemy had already captured.

The Covenant called the site “the Silent Cartographer” – which could presumably pinpoint the location of Halo’s control room. Keyes had been very adamant about the urgency of the mission. “If the Covenant figure out how to turn Halo into a weapon, we’re cooked.”

Maybe, with Cortana’s help, they had a good chance of figuring out where the hell the ring’s control systems were housed. All they had to do is take it away from an entrenched enemy.

The Spartan heard a burst of static followed by Foehammer’s cheerful voice as her Pelican swooped back into the LZ area. “Echo 419 inbound. Did someone order a Warthog?”

A Marine said, “I didn’t know that you made house calls, Foehammer.”

The pilot chuckled. “You know our motto: ‘we deliver.’”

The Master Chief waited for the dropship to deposit the LRV on the beach, saw two Marines jump on board, and climbed up behind the wheel. The soldier riding shotgun nodded. “Ready when you are, Chief.”

The Spartan put his foot on the accelerator, sand shot out from under the vehicle’s tires, and the ’Hog left parallel tracks as it raced along the edge of the beach.

They rounded the headland in minutes, and entered the open area beyond. There was a scattering of trees, some weathered boulders, and a swath of green ground cover. “Firing!” the gunner called, and pulled his trigger. The petty officer saw Covenant troops scurry for cover, steered right to give the three-barreled weapon a better angle, and was soon rewarded with a batch of dead Grunts and a badly mangled Jackal.

The Spartan drove the Warthog uphill, turning to avoid obstacles, careful to maintain the vehicle’s traction. It wasn’t long before the humans neared the top of the slope and spotted the massive structure beyond. The top curved downward, cut dramatically in, and gave way to a flat area where a Covenant dropship had been docked.

It appeared that the aircraft had just finished loading: It backed out of a U-shaped slot, swung out toward the ocean, and quickly disappeared. The noise generated by its engines covered the sound made by the Warthog and provided the defenders with something to look at.

The gunner tracked the aircraft but knew better than to open fire and attract unwanted attention. The area beyond was crawling with Covenant troops. “Anyone else see what I see?” the second leatherneck inquired. “How are we supposed to get around that?”

The Master Chief killed the ’Hog’s engine, motioned for the Marines to remain where they were, and eased his way up to a point where a fallen log offered him some cover. He drew his pistol, took aim, and opened fire. Four Grunts and an Elite fell beneath the quick barrage of gunfire.

The response was nearly instantaneous as the surviving troops ran for cover and a series of plasma bolts blew chunks of wood out of the protective log and set it ablaze.

Confident that he had whittled the opposition down to a more manageable size, the Chief eased his way back to the LRV and pulled himself up into the driver’s seat. The Marines waited to see what he would do next. “Check your weapons,” he advised, as he hit the ignition switch and the big engine roared to life. “We have some clean-up to do.”

“Roger that,” the gunner said grimly. “It looks like we have KP duty again.”

There was no telling what the Covenant troops expected the humans to do, but judging from the way they ran around screaming, the possibility of an old-fashioned frontal assault just hadn’t occurred to them.

The Spartan aimed the vehicle for the front of the complex, spotted the hallway that extended back toward the face of the cliff, and drove straight inside. It was a tight fit, and the Warthog wallowed a bit as the big off-road tires rolled over a couple of dead Grunts, but the strategy worked. Both Marines opened up on the Covenant troops and the Chief ran one of them down.

Then, once the outer part of the structure had been cleared, the Master Chief parked the LRV where the Marines could provide him with fire support, and ventured inside. A series of ramps led down through darkened hallways to the antechamber below. It was full of aliens. The Master Chief tossed a grenade in among them, backed up out of the way, and sprayed the ramp with bullets. The grenade went off with a satisfying wham! and body parts flew high into the air before thumping to the floor.

Cortana said, “Don’t let them lock the doors!”

Too late. The doors noiselessly flashed shut.

The Spartan polished off the last of the resistance, checked to confirm that the doors were locked, and was already on his way back to the surface when the AI accessed the suit’s radio. “Cortana to Keyes...”

“Go ahead, Cortana. Have you found the Control Center?”

“Negative, Captain. The Covenant have impeded our progress. We can’t proceed unless we can disable the installation’s security system.”

“Understood,” Keyes replied. “Use any means necessary to force your way into the facility and find Halo’s Control Center. Failure is not an option.”

The Master Chief was back in the ’Hog and halfway to the LZ by the time the Captain signed off. “Good luck, people. Keyes out.”

If the front door is locked – then go around back. That’s what the Spartan figured as the LRV rolled back the way it had come, through the LZ. The Marine seated next to him exchanged insults with a buddy stationed on the beach.

They had just rounded a bluff when Cortana said, “Look up to the right. There’s a path that leads toward the interior of the island.”

The AI had no more than finished her sentence when the gunner said, “Freaks at two o’clock!” and opened fire.

The Spartan ran the Warthog up a slope, allowed the M41 LAAG to handle the heavy lifting, and positioned the vehicle so the gunner could put fire on the ravine ahead. “Tell me something, Cortana,” the Master Chief said, as he lowered himself to the ground. “How come you’re always advising me to go up gravity lifts, run down corridors, and sneak through forests while making no mention of all the enemy troops that seem to inhabit such places?”

“Because I don’t want you to feel unnecessary,” the AI replied easily. “For example, given the fact that your sensors are telling both of us that there are at least five Covenant soldiers lying in wait farther up the ravine, it’s logical to suppose that there are even more beyond them. Does that make you feel better?”

“No,” the Spartan admitted as he checked to ensure that both of his weapons were fully loaded.

He charged up the ravine and took cover behind a large outcropping of rock. Plasma bolts melted the stone near his head, and he snapped a quick shot in return. The Grunt snarled and dove for cover, as a pair of his partners opened up on the Spartan’s position. Behind them, a cobalt-armored Elite urged them forward.

The Master Chief took a deep breath. Time to go to work, he thought. He sprinted from his cover and his pistol’s reports echoed through the narrow ravine.

The skirmish took mere minutes. His shield indicator pulsed a warning yet again, and he paused at the top of the ravine to allow it time to recharge. His gun swept the area, and noted the circular structure that dominated a small depression at the top of the ravine.

His shield had just begun a recharge cycle, feeding off the armor’s capacious power plant, when the pair of Hunter aliens burst from cover and lobbed fire at his position.

The first blast struck him square in the chest and sent him tumbling backward. The second shot was stopped by a thick-trunked tree. A trickle of blood pooled in the corner of his left eye. He shook his head to clear his blurred vision and rolled to his left. A third shot kicked up a plume of soil where he had lain just seconds before.

The Chief tossed a frag grenade, counted to three, then sprang to his feet and sidestepped to his right, firing all the way.

He’d timed it perfectly. The grenade detonated, and the flash and smoke briefly confused the aliens. His rounds bounced from their thick armor plates. In unison, they spun to face him, their weapons glowing green as they charged for another salvo.

Another grenade detonated in their path and slowed the Hunters’ advance. They fired through the smoke and the crash of their weapons thundered through the low ravine.

The Hunters moved forward, eager for the kill – and realized too late that he’d doubled back and closed in on them. His assault rifle barked and tore into the gaps in their armor at close range. They screamed and died.

The Master Chief followed the terrain as it gradually sloped back down to the west. He dealt with a brace of sentries, then located his objective: a way into the massive structure that loomed above. The human saw a dark, shadowy door, slipped through the opening. He felt the gloom settle around him.

His biochemically altered eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, and he moved deeper into the structure, pausing only to feed a fresh magazine into his assault rifle.

One level below, Zuka ’Zamamee listened. Someone was on the way, the desperate radio traffic testified to that, and it seemed safe to assume that it was the very human he had set out to kill. The fact that the transmissions ceased amid the clatter of human weaponry attested to the fact that the armored human was here.

But would he enter the trap? He had carefully seeded references to the map room into the stream of battle updates. If the humans had tapped into the network using the downed ship’s AI, then they would have no choice but to send this fearsome soldier to find it.

Yes, the Elite thought, as his highly sensitive ears heard the scrape of a booted foot, a muted click as a new magazine slid home, and the subtle rasp of armor. It won’t be long now.

’Zamamee looked left and right, assured himself that the Hunters were in position, and withdrew to his hiding place. Others were present inside the cargo module as well, including Yayap and a team of Grunts.

The Master Chief hit the bottom of the ramp, saw the alien cargo modules that populated the center of the dimly lit room, and knew that damned near anything could be lurking among them. Something – instinct, or perhaps only luck – caused his heart to beat a little faster as he put his back to a wall and slid sideways. Something wasn’t right.

Light filtered in through an ornate window which enabled the Spartan to see that there was an alcove to his left. He eased in that direction, felt a cold weight hit the bottom of his stomach as he heard movement, and turned toward the sound.

The Hunter rushed out of the darkness, intent on smashing the Chief with his shield, and finishing him with razor-sharp spines. A steady stream of 7.62mm bullets hammered the Hunter’s chest plate and slowed his rate of advance.

’Zamamee, backed by Yayap and his team of Grunts, chose that moment to emerge from the relative safety of the cargo module. The Elite was frightened, but determined to conceal it, and he raised his weapon. But the Hunter was in his line of fire.

Then, as if the melee weren’t confusing enough, the second Hunter charged in, bumped into the Elite, and sent him spinning to the cold metal floor.

Yayap, who found himself standing out in the middle of the floor, was about to order a retreat when one of his subordinates, a Grunt named Linglin, fired a weapon.

It was a stupid thing to do since there was no clear target to shoot at, but that’s what Grunts were encouraged to do when in doubt: shoot. Linglin fired, and the plasma bolt flew straight and true. It hit the second Hunter in the back, and threw the spined warrior forward, and caused him to collide with his bond brother.

“Uh-oh,” Yayap muttered.

The Master Chief saw his opponent start to go down, shot him in the back, and brought the assault weapon back up. The fact that the second Hunter was already down came as something of a surprise, albeit a pleasant one, and he looked for something else to shoot.

No doubt stunned by the enormity of his error, and terrified regarding the potential consequences, Linglin was still backing away when the bulky, armored human raised his weapon and fired. Yayap felt Linglin’s blood spray the side of his face as he tripped over his own feet, fell over backward, and used his hands to push himself back into the shadows. A hand grabbed hold of his combat harness, jerked the Grunt into the still yawning cargo module, and held him in place. “Silence!” ’Zamamee instructed. “This battle is over. We must live to fight another.”

That sounded very good, maybe the most sensible thing he’d heard in a hundred units, so Yayap held his breath as the human walked past the open cargo module. He briefly wondered if there was some way he could get a transfer back to a normal front-line unit. To the diminutive alien trooper, such an assignment seemed considerably less dangerous.

His nerves on edge, fully expecting yet another attack, the Spartan circled the room. But there was nothing for him to deal with except his own twitchiness and the heavy silence which settled over the room.

“Nice job, Chief,” Cortana said. “Head through the cargo modules. The security center lies beyond.”

The Master Chief followed Cortana’s directions, entered a hall, and followed it into a room that featured a small constellation of lights floating at its very center. “Use the holo panel to shut down the security system,” Cortana suggested, and, eager to complete the job before anyone else could attack him, the Spartan hurried to comply. He was again struck by an odd near-familiarity with the glowing controls.

Cortana used the suit sensors to examine the results. “Good!” she exclaimed. “That should open the door that leads into the main shaft. Now all we have to do is find the Silent Cartographer and the map to the Control Room.”

“Right,” the Master Chief replied. “That, and avoid capture in unknown territory, possibly held by the enemy, with no air support or backup.”

“Do you have a plan?” she asked.

“Yes. When we get there, I’m going to kill every single Covenant soldier I find.”

CHAPTER SIX

D+144:38:19 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock)

The hills between Alpha Base and the Pillar of Autumn

Three parallel columns of vehicles are pretty hard to hide, and McKay didn’t even try. The combination of some thirty Warthogs and four Scorpions raised a cloud of dust that was visible from more than two kilometers away. No doubt the heat produced by the machines registered on sensors clear out in space. Banshee recon flights could have tracked them from the minute they hit the trail, and there was only one logical place the vehicles could be headed: the butte called Alpha Base.

It wasn’t too surprising that the Covenant not only organized a response, but a massive one. Here, after days of humiliation, was the opportunity to revenge themselves on the beings who had taken the butte away from them, paid a surprise visit to the Truth and Reconciliation, and raided more than a dozen other locations besides.

Knowing she was in for a fight, McKay organized the vehicles into three temporary platoons. The first platoon was comprised of Warthogs under the command of Lieutenant Oros. She had orders to ignore ground targets and concentrate on defending the column from airborne attacks.

Sergeant Lister was in charge of the second platoon’s Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, which, because of their vulnerability to infantry, were kept at the center of the formation.

The third platoon, under McKay herself, was charged with ground defense, which meant keeping Ghosts and infantry off the other two platoons. A third of her vehicles, five Warthogs in all, were unencumbered by trailers and left free to serve as a quick reaction force.

By giving each platoon its own individual assignment, the officer hoped to leverage the Company’s overall effectiveness, ensure fire discipline, and reduce the possibility of casualties caused by friendly fire, a real danger in the kind of melee that she expected.

As the Marines headed east toward Alpha Base, the first challenge lay at the point where the flat terrain ended. Hills rolled up off the plain to form a maze of canyons, ravines, and gullies which, if the humans were foolish enough to enter them, would force the vehicles to proceed single file, which rendered the convoy vulnerable to air and ground attacks. There was a different route, however, a pass approximately half a klick wide. All three columns could pass through it without breaking formation.

The problem, and a rather obvious one, was the fact that a pair of rather sizable hills stood guard to either side of the pass, providing the Covenant with the perfect platform from which to fire down on them.

As if that weren’t bad enough, a third hill lay just beyond, creating a second gate through which the humans would have to pass before gaining the freedom of the plain beyond. It was a daunting prospect – and McKay felt a rising sense of despair as the company drew within rifle shot of the opposing hills. She wasn’t especially religious – but the ancient psalm seemed to form itself in her mind. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...”

Screw it, she thought. She ordered the convoy to lock and load and prepare for a fight. Psalms weren’t going to win the coming fight. Firepower would.

From his vantage point high on what Covenant forces had designated as “Second Hill,” the Elite Ado ’Mortumee used a powerful monocular to eye the human convoy. With the exception of five vehicles, the rest of the alien LRVs were hooked to heavily laden trailers, which prevented them from making much speed. Also serving to slow the convoy down was the presence of four of the humans’ cumbersome tanks.

Rather than risk passage through the hills, their commanding officer had opted to use the pass. Understandable, but a mistake for which the human would pay.

’Mortumee lowered the monocular and turned to look at the Wraith. Though not normally a fan of the slow-firing, lumpy-looking tanks, he had to admit that the design was perfect for the work at hand, and in combination with an identical unit stationed on First Hill, the monster at his elbow was certain to make short work of the oncoming convoy.

The counterthreat, if that’s what it was, would come from the armored behemoths which rolled along at the very center of the human formation. They looked powerful, but never having seen one in action, and having found precious little data on them within the Intel files, ’Mortumee wasn’t sure what to expect.

“So,” a voice said from behind him, “the Council of Masters has sent me a spy. Tell me, spy, who are you here to watch: the humans or me?”

’Mortumee turned to find that Field Master Noga ’Putumee had approached him from behind, something he did rather quietly for such a large being. Though known for his bravery, and his leadership in the field, ’Putumee was also famous for his blunt, confrontational, and paranoid ways. There was a good deal of truth in the officer’s half-serious suggestion, however, since ’Mortumee had been sent to watch both the Field Master and the enemy.

’Mortumee ignored the field commander’s blunt tone, and clicked his mandibles. “Someone has to count all the human bodies, write the report celebrating your latest victory, and lay the groundwork for your next promotion.”

If there was a chink in ’Putumee’s psychological armor it was in the vicinity of his ego, and ’Mortumee would have sworn that he saw the other officer’s already massive chest expand slightly in response to the praise.

“If words were troops you would lead a mighty army indeed. So, spy, are the Banshees ready?”

“Ready and waiting.”

“Excellent,” ’Putumee replied. The gold-armored Elite turned his own monocular on the approaching convoy. “Order the attack.”

“As you order, Excellency.”

’Putumee nodded.

McKay heard the incoming Banshees and the prospect of action banished her butterflies to a less noticeable sector of her stomach. The sound started as a low drone, quickly transformed itself into a buzz, then morphed into a bloodcurdling wail as the officer keyed her mike.

“This is Red One: We have hostile aircraft inbound. First Platoon is clear to engage. Everyone else will remain on standby. This is the warm-up, people, so stay sharp. There’s more on the way. Over and out.”

There were five flights of ten Banshees each, and the first group came through the pass so low that ’Mortumee found himself looking down on the wave of aircraft. Sun glinted off the burnished, reflective metal of the Banshees’ wings.

It was tempting to jump into his own aircraft and join them, thrilling to the feel of the low altitude flight, as well as the steady booming of outgoing plasma fire. Such pleasures were denied the spy if he was to maintain the objectivity required to carry out his important work.

Eager to have the first crack at the humans, and determined to leave nothing for subsequent flights to shoot at, the pilots of the first wave fired the moment they came within range.

First Platoon’s Marines saw the aircraft appear low on the horizon, watched the blobs of lethal energy blip their way, and knew better than to engage individual targets. Not yet, anyway. Instead, consistent with the orders that Lieutenant Oros had given, the Helljumpers aimed their M41 LAAGs at a point just west of the pass, and opened fire all at once. The Banshees didn’t have brakes, and the pilots had just started to turn, when they ran right into the meat grinder.

’Mortumee understood the problem right away, as did ’Putumee, who ordered the following waves to break up and attack the convoy independently.

The orders came too late for eight of the first ten aircraft, which were ripped into thousands of pieces, and fell like smoking snow.

A pair of the flyers got through the storm of gunfire. One of the Banshees managed to hit a Warthog with a burst of superheated plasma, killing the gunner, and slagging his weapon. The LRV continued to roll, however – which meant that the trailer and its load of supplies did as well.

Once through the hail of bullets, the surviving Banshees turned and lined up for a second pass.

As the second flight of Covenant aircraft arrived from the east, split up, and launched individual attacks, Field Master ’Putumee barked an order into his radio. The mortar tanks on First and Second Hills fired in unison. Blue-white orbs of fire, trailing tendrils of energy, shot high into the sky, hung suspended for a moment, then began to fall.

The plasma mortars fell with a deliberate, almost casual slowness. They arced gracefully into the ground and a deafening thunderclap shook the ground. Neither round found a target, but these were ranging shots, and that was to be expected.

McKay heard a Marine say, “What the hell was that?” over the command freq, then heard Lister tear a strip off him.

She couldn’t help but wonder the same thing herself. The truth was that while the officer knew the vehicles existed, she’d never seen a Wraith tank in action, and wasn’t sure if that was what she faced. It didn’t matter much, though, because the weapon in question was quite clearly lethal, and would cause havoc in the close quarters of the pass. She keyed her radio.

“Red One to Green One: Those ‘energy bombs’ originated from those hilltops. Let’s give the bastards a haircut. Over.”

“This is Green One,” Lister acknowledged. “Roger that, over.”

There was a burst of static as Lister switched to his platoon’s freq, though McKay could hear every word on the command channel.

“Green One to Foxtrot One and Two: lay some high explosive on the hill to the left. Over.”

“Green One to Foxtrot Three and Four: ditto the hill to the right. Over.”

Banshees wheeled, turned, and poured fire down on the hapless humans as one of the pilots fired his fuel rod cannon and scored a direct hit. A trailer full of precious ammo exploded, wrapped the Warthog in a fiery embrace, and took the LRV with it. Covenant forces watching from the hilltops felt a sense of exultation, and more than that, the pleasure of revenge.

’Mortumee was there to document the battle, not celebrate it, though he watched in fascination as two of the tank turrets swiveled to his left in order to fire on First Hill, while two turned in the opposite direction and seemed to point directly at him.

The Elite wondered if he should seek cover, but before the message to move could reach his feet, he heard a reverberating roar as the 105mm shell passed through the intervening air space, followed by a loud craack! as the shell landed about fifty units away. A column of bloody dirt flew high into the air. Body parts, weapons, and pieces of equipment continued to rain down as the half-deafened ’Mortumee recovered his composure and ran for cover.

Field Master ’Putumee laughed out loud and pointed to show a member of his staff where ’Mortumee had taken shelter behind some rocks. That was when the second round detonated just below the summit of the hill and started a small landslide. “This,” the Elite said happily, “is a real battle. Keep an eye on the spy.”

Stung by the loss of a Warthog, a trailer-load of ammo, and three Marines, McKay was starting to question the division of labor she had imposed, and was just about to free her platoon’s gunners to fire on the Banshees, when her driver said, “Uh-oh, look at that!”

A series of plasma bolts stitched a line along the ’Hog’s side, scorched the vehicle’s paint, and kicked up geysers of dirt as the officer followed the pointing finger. A force of Ghosts skittered into the pass.

“Red One to all Romeo units... follow me!” McKay yelled into her mike, and tapped the driver’s arm. “Go get ’em, Murphy – let’s clear that gap.”

No sooner had the officer spoken than the Marine put his foot into it, the gunner whooped, and the LRV leapt forward.

The rest of the five-vehicle reaction force followed just as the Wraith on Hill One hurled a third then a fourth plasma ball high into the sky.

McKay looked up, saw the fireball slow to a near stop at the point of apogee, and knew it would be a race. Would the bomb land on top of the reaction force? Or, would the fast-moving ’Hogs slip out from under it, leaving the plasma charge to explode harmlessly on the ground?

The gunner saw the threat as well, and yelled, “Go! Go! Go!” as the driver swerved to avoid a clutch of rocks, did his best to push the accelerator through the floor. He mumbled, “Damn, damn, damn,” as he felt something wet and warm puddle on his seat.

The energy bomb fell with increasing velocity. The first LRV slipped underneath it, quickly followed by the second and third.

Heart in her throat, McKay looked back over her shoulder as the plasma weapon landed, detonated, and blew a large crater out of the ground.

Then, like a miracle on wheels, Romeo Five flew through the smoke, bounced as it hit the edge of the newly created crater, and lurched up over the rim.

There was no time to celebrate as the Ghosts pulled into range and the lead vehicle opened fire. McKay raised her assault rifle, took aim at the nearest blur, and squeezed the trigger.

Master Sergeant Lister faced a harsh reality. Never mind Banshees that swooped overhead, or the Ghosts up ahead, it was his job to do something about the mortar fire, and as the hills loomed ahead, Second Platoon’s Scorpions were coming up on the point when their main guns would no longer be able to elevate high enough to engage the primary target. One more salvo, that’s what the tanks could deliver, before their weapons could no longer be brought to bear.

“Wake up, people,” Lister said over the platoon frequency, “the last group on the left was at least fifteen meters too low, and the last group on the right overshot the hill. Make adjustments, take the tops off those hills, and do it now. We don’t have time to screw around.”

Each tank commander adjusted aim, sent their shells on the way, and prayed for a hit. They all knew that facing the Covenant would be easier than suffering Lister’s wrath should the shells miss their marks.

Field Master ’Putumee watched impassively as the Wraith on First Hill exploded, taking a file of Jackals with it. He was sorry to lose the mortar tank, but the truth was that with two dozen Ghosts milling around in the pass below, he was going to have to cease fire anyway. Either that or risk killing his own troops. The Elite snapped an order, saw one last fireball sail into the air, and watched the humans enter the gap.

Lance Corporal “Snaky” Jones was screwed, he knew that, had known it ever since the front end of his ’Hog took a hit and flipped end-for-end. He was standing behind the LAAG, firing forward over the driver’s head, when he was suddenly catapulted into the air. Jones saw a blur, hit hard, and tumbled head over heels. Once his body came to a stop the Marine discovered that it was almost impossible to breathe, which was why he just lay there at first, staring up into the amazing blue sky as he gasped for air.

It was pretty, very pretty, until a Banshee screamed through the picture and a Warthog roared past on the left.

That was when Jones managed to scramble to his feet, and yelled into his boom mike, only to discover that it was missing. Not just the mike, but his entire helmet, which had come loose during the fall. No helmet meant no mike, no radio, and no possibility of a pickup.

The Lance Corporal swore, ran toward the wrecked Warthog, and gave thanks for the fact that it hadn’t caught fire. The vehicle was resting on its side and the S2 was right where he had left it – clamped butt down behind the driver’s seat.

It was hard to see Sergeant Corly strewn over the rear fender with half her face blown away, so Jones averted his eyes. His rucksack, the one that contained extra ammo, a med pack, and the stuff he had looted from the Pillar of Autumn, was right where he had left it, secured to the bottom of the gun pedestal.

Jones grabbed the pack, slung it across his back, and grabbed the sniper rifle. He made sure the rifle was ready to fire, then clicked on the safety and ran for the nearest hill. Maybe he could find a cave, wait for the battle to end, and haul ass back to Alpha Base. Dust puffed away from the Marine’s boots and death hung all around.

Lieutenant Oros estimated that First Platoon had reduced the number of attacking aircraft by two thirds – and she had a plan to deal with the rest. McKay wouldn’t approve – but what was the CO going to do? Send her to Halo? The Lieutenant grinned, gave the necessary order, and jumped down to the ground.

She waved to the volunteers from four of the thirteen Warthogs she had remaining, then scampered toward a group of likely-looking rocks. All five of the Marines carried M19 SSM Rocket Launchers slung across their backs, plus assault weapons, and as many spare rockets as they could carry in the twin satchels that hung from their hands. They pounded across the hardpan, scurried into the protection offered by the surrounding boulders, and set up shop.

When everyone was ready, Oros pulled the pins on one flare after another, tossed them out beyond the circle of rocks, and watched the orange smoke billow up into the sky.

It wasn’t long before the Banshee pilots spotted the smoke and, like vultures attracted to fresh carrion, hurried to the scene.

The Marines held their fire, waited until no less than thirteen of the Covenant aircraft were circling above them, and fired five rockets, all at once. A second volley followed the first – and a third followed that. There was a steady drumbeat of explosions as ten Banshees took direct hits, some from multiple rockets, and ceased to exist.

Of the aircraft that survived the barrage of rockets, two bugged out immediately. The last staggered in response to a near miss, belched smoke from its port engine, and looked like it would go down. Oros thought it was over at that point, that she and her volunteers would be free to fade into the hills, and beat feet for home.

But it wasn’t to be. Unlike most of his peers, the pilot in the damaged Banshee must have had a strong desire to transcend the physical, because he turned toward the enemy, put the aircraft into a steep dive, and plunged into the pile of boulders. Oros tried to make the shot but missed – and barely had time to swear before the mortally wounded Banshee augered into the rocks and swallowed the ambush team in a ball of fire.

The fact that Lance Corporal Jones made it all the way to the base of the hill without getting killed was just plain luck. The subsequent scramble up through the loose tumble of rocks was instinctual. The desire to gain elevation is natural to any soldier, but especially to a sniper, which was what Jones had been trained to be when he wasn’t busy humping supplies, operating LAAGs, or taking crap from sergeants.

The fact that Jones was about to go on the offensive, about to take it to the Covenant, that was a decision. Maybe not the smartest decision he’d ever made, but one he knew to be right, and to hell with the consequences.

Jones was only halfway up the side of the hill, but that was high enough to see the top of the opposite hill, and the tiny figures who stood there. Not the Grunts who were running this way and that, not the Jackals who lined the edge of the summit, but the shiny armor of the Elites. Those were the targets he wanted, and they seemed to leap forward as the Marine increased the magnification on his scope, and let the barrel drift slightly. Which life should he take? The one on the left with the blue armor? Or the one on the right, the shiny gold bastard? At that moment in time, in that particular place, Lance Corporal Jones was God.

He clicked the sniper rifle’s safety catch, and lightly rested his finger on the trigger.

’Mortumee had emerged from hiding by that time and was standing next to Field Master ’Putumee as the human convoy cleared the pass and turned up-ring. There was a third hill off to his left – and it, too, was topped with a Wraith.

The mortar tank opened fire. For one brief moment ’Mortumee harbored the hope that the remaining tank would accomplish what the first two had not and decimate the convoy. But the humans were still out of range, and, knowing that the Wraith couldn’t do them any harm, they took the time to put their own tanks into a line abreast.

A single salvo was all it took. All four of the shells landed on target, the mortar tank was destroyed, and the way was clear.

’Putumee lowered his monocular. His face was expressionless. “So, spy, how will your report read?”

’Mortumee looked at the other Elite with a pitying expression. “I’m sorry, Excellency, but the facts are clear, and the report will practically write itself. Had you deployed your forces differently, down on the plain perhaps, victory would have been ours.”

“An excellent point,” the Field Master replied, his tone mild. “Hindsight is always perfect.”

’Mortumee was about to reply, about to say something about the value of foresight, when his head exploded.

Lance Corporal Jones steadied his aim for a second shot. The first shot had been perfect. The 14.5mm slug had flown true, entered the base of Blue Boy’s neck, and exited through the top of his head. That blew his helmet off, allowing a mixture of blood and brains to fountain into the air.

’Putumee snarled and threw himself backward – and thereby escaped the second bullet.

Moments later, the twin reports echoed back and forth between the two hillsides. The Field Master crabbed back to cover and fed position information to the Banshee commander, and snarled into his communications gear: “Sniper! Kill him!”

Satisfied that the sniper would be dealt with, ’Putumee stood and looked down at ’Mortumee’s headless body. He bared his fangs. “It looks like I’ll have to write that report myself.”

Jones spat into the dirt, angry that the gold Elite had evaded the second shot. Next time, he promised himself. You’re mine next time, pal. Banshees banked overhead, searching for his position. Jones backed into a deep crevice among the rocks. Fortunately, thanks to the loot gathered aboard the Autumn, he had twenty candy bars to sustain him.

The security system neutralized, the Master Chief made his way back through the alien construct, and headed toward the surface. Time to find this “Silent Cartographer” and complete this phase of the mission.

“Mayday! Mayday! Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Repeat, we are taking fire and losing altitude.” The dropship pilot’s strained voice was harsh and grating – the sound of a man about to lose it.

“Understood,” Cortana replied. “We’re on our way.”

Then, in an aside to the Spartan, the AI said, “I don’t like the sound of that – I’m not certain they’re going to make it.”

The Master Chief agreed, and in his eagerness to get topside, made a potentially fatal error. Having just cleared the room adjacent to what appeared to be the ring world’s Security Center, he assumed that it was still clear.

Fortunately, the Elite – equipped with another of the Covenant’s camouflage devices – announced his presence with a throaty roar just prior to firing his weapon. Plasma fire still splashed the Chief’s chest, followed by a brief moment of disorientation as he tried to figure out where the attack was coming from. His motion sensor detected movement, and he aimed his weapon as best he could. He fired a sustained burst and was rewarded with an alien scream of pain.

As the Covenant warrior fell, the Master Chief made a mad dash for the ramp that led up toward the surface, reloading as he went. Walking into the once-cleared room too quickly had been stupid – and he was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that Cortana was there, seeing the world via his sensors, made such errors that much more embarrassing. Somehow, for reasons he hadn’t had time to sort out, the human wanted the AI’s approval. Silly? Maybe so, if one thought of Cortana as little more than a fancy computer program, but she was more than that. In the Chief’s mind at least.

He smiled at the irony of the thought. The human-AI interface meant that, in many ways, Cortana wasliterally in the Chief’s mind, using some of his wetware for processing power and storage.

The Spartan made his way up the ramp, through a hall, and out into bright sunlight. He paused on a platform, and dropped to the slope below, as Cortana cautioned him to keep an eye peeled for Bravo 22.

Covenant troops were patrolling the beach below – a mix of Jackals and Grunts. The Master Chief drew his sidearm, switched to the 2X magnification, and decided to work from right to left. He nailed the first Jackal, missed the next, and killed a pair of Grunts who were waddling around on top of the mesa opposite his position.

As he moved farther down the slope, he could see Bravo 22’s wreckage, half buried in the side of the mesa. There were no signs of life. Either the crew and passengers had been killed on impact, or some had survived and been executed by the enemy.

The possibility made him particularly angry. He turned to the right, caught the surviving Jackal on the move, and put him down. He switched to his MA5B and made his way down the grassy slope to the sand beyond. It was a short walk to the smoking wreckage and the scattering of bodies. Plasma burns on some of the bodies served to confirm the Spartan’s suspicions.

Though not the most pleasant of tasks, the Chief knew he had to obtain ammo and other supplies wherever he could, and took advantage of the situation in order to stock up.

“Don’t forget to grab a launcher,” Cortana put in. “There’s no telling what might be waiting for us when we go back to looking for the Control Room.”

The Master Chief took the AI’s advice and decided to ride rather than walk. The Warthog that had been tucked under the dropship’s belly had come loose during the final moments of flight, hit the ground, and flipped over on its side. He approached the vehicle, reached upward, got a good purchase, and pulled. Metal creaked as the ’Hog swayed, tilted in the Spartan’s direction, and started to fall. He stepped back, waited for the inevitable bounce, and climbed up behind the wheel. After a quick check to ensure that the LRV was still operable, he was off.

He skidded the Warthog into a slewing turn, then headed back to the mission LZ – the beachhead the Marines had been left to hold.

The Helljumpers had fought off two assaults during his absence, but they still owned the real estate they had originally taken, and remained undeterred.

“Welcome back,” a Corporal said as she took her place behind the three-barreled gun. “It was getting boring without you.” She had a grimy face, the words CUT HERE tattooed around the circumference of her neck, and a short, stocky body.

The Chief eyed the hastily dug weapons pits and foxholes, the large pile of Covenant corpses, and the plasma-scorched sand. “Yeah, I can see that.”

A freckle-faced PFC jumped into the passenger seat, a captured plasma rifle cradled in his arms. The Spartan turned back in the direction he had come from, and raced along the edge of the water. Spray flew up along the left side of the LRV and he wished he could feel the moisture on his face.

A kilometer ahead, a Hunter named Igido Nosa Hurru fumed as he paced back and forth across a docking platform still stained with Covenant blood. Word had come down from an Elite named Zuka ’Zamamee that a lone human had killed two of his brothers a few hours earlier, and was about to attack his newly reinforced position, as well. This was something the spined warrior hoped would happen so that he, and his bond brother Ogada Nosa Fasu, could have the honor of killing the alien.

So, when Hurru heard the whine of the surface vehicle’s engine, and saw it round the headland, both he and his bond brother were ready. Having received the other Hunter’s characteristic nod, Hurru took up a position directly outside the entrance to the complex. If the vehicle was some sort of trick, a ruse to lure both guards away from the door long enough for the human to slip inside, it wasn’t going to work.

Fasu, always one to seize the initiative, and something of an artist with the fuel rod cannon attached to his right arm, waited for the LRV to come within range, led the vehicle to ensure that the relatively slow-moving energy pulse would have an adequate amount of time to reach its destination, and fired a single shot.

The Master Chief saw the yellow-green blob appear in his peripheral vision, and made the decision to turn toward the enemy both to make the ’Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal an opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over.

All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master Chief scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter drop down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive knees, and move forward.

Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, “Come on, Hosky! Let’s take this bastard out!”

The Spartan yelled, “No! Fall back!” and bent over to retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew there simply wasn’t time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge out of the way in time, but the Helljumpers didn’t have a prayer.

The distance between the alien and the two Marines had closed by then and they couldn’t disengage. The Corporal threw a fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster, and stared in disbelief as the alien kept on coming. The alien charged right through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and lowered a gigantic shoulder.

Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic shield hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what was left onto the ground. The private remained conscious, however, which meant he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot high into the air, and brought it down on his face.

The Master Chief had the launcher up on his shoulder by then and was just about to fire when the Corporal screamed something incoherent, dashed into the line of fire, and blocked his shot. The Chief yelled at her to hit the deck and was moving sideways in an attempt to get a clear line of fire when Fasu blew a hole the size of a dinner plate through the leatherneck’s chest.

The Spartan hit the firing stud, and a rocket whooshed for the Hunter. With surprising agility, the massive alien hunched and sidestepped, and the rocket skimmed past him. It detonated behind the Hunter, and showered them both with debris.

The Hunter charged.

The Master Chief stepped back, knew there wouldn’t be time to reload, and that the next rocket would have to fly straight and true. The surf swirled around his knees as he backed out into the ocean, fought to maintain his footing in the soft sand, and saw the alien fill his sight. Was the target too close? There wasn’t time to check. He pulled the trigger, and a second rocket streaked ahead on a column of smoke and fire.

The Hunter had reached full speed and couldn’t dodge in time. The creature’s massive feet dug into the soft ground as it tried to alter course to avoid the rocket – to no avail. The 102mm shaped charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter’s chest armor, blew through his torso, and severed his spine. There was a mighty splash as the alien creature fell face first into the water. A pool of vibrant orange blood stained the surf around the fallen Hunter.

The Master Chief took a moment to reload the launcher then slogged back up onto the beach. A distant howl of anguish issued from the other alien’s throat. Serves you right, he thought. You only lost one brother. I lost all of mine.

He felt a pang of sorrow for the two dead Marines. He should have anticipated the long-range attack, should have briefed the leathernecks about the possibility of Hunters, should have reacted more quickly. All of which meant that it was his fault that the Marines were dead.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Cortana said gently. “Now be careful – there’s another Hunter up on the platform.”

The words were like a bucket of cold water in the face. “Mental combat,” that’s how his teacher, Chief Mendez, had referred to it, always stressing the importance of a cool head.

Slowly, methodically, the Master Chief worked his way up the slope, killing Covenant soldiers with machine precision. The small groups of Grunts were irrelevant. The real challenge waited above.

Hurru heard the firing, knew he was being flanked, and welcomed it. Rage, sorrow, and self-pity all churned around inside him causing him to fire his fuel rod cannon again and again, as if to obliterate the human by the weight of his barrage.

The human made good use of what cover there was, put his left arm against the cliff face, and inched his way forward. The Hunter saw him and attempted to fire, but the fuel rod cannon hadn’t had time to recharge after the last shot. That left the human free to fire, which he did. Hurru felt warm relief.

He was about to join his bond brother.

The rocket was a hair high, hit Hurru in the head, and blew it off. Orange blood fountained straight up, splashed the alien metal around the Hunter, and splattered his body as it collapsed.

The Spartan paused, switched to his assault weapon, and waited for the feeling of satisfaction. It never arrived. The Marines were still dead, would always be dead, and nothing would change that. Was it fair that he remained alive? No, it wasn’t. All he could do was accomplish what they would want him to do. Forge ahead, find the map, and make their deaths count for something.

With that thought in mind, the Master Chief reentered the complex on foot, made his way through halls still slick with alien blood from his last visit, turned down the ramp, proceeded to the lower level, and passed through the door he had worked so hard to open.

The Master Chief moved into the bowels of the structure. From outside, the spires stood several stories high, which was misleading. The interior of the structure plunged deep below the surface.

He wound down a curving ramp. The air was still and slightly stale, and thick pillars of the first large chamber he moved through made the room feel like a crypt.

He slipped through heavily shadowed rooms, padded down spiral ramps, passing through galleries filled with strange forms. The walls and floors were made of the same burnished, heavily engraved metal that he’d encountered elsewhere on the ring. He clicked on his light and noticed new patterns in the metal, like the swirls in marble – as if the material were some kind of metal-stone hybrid.

The tomblike silence was shattered by the squalling of several Grunts and Jackals. There was opposition, plenty of it, as the human was forced to deal with dozens of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. “It’s as if they knew we were on the way,” Cortana observed. “I think someone is tracking our progress, and has a pretty good idea of where we’re headed.”

“No kidding,” the Master Chief replied dryly as he shot a Grunt and stepped over the body. “I hope we reach the Cartographer before I run out of ammo.”

“We’re close,” the AI assured him, “but be careful. There’s bound to be more Covenant ahead.”

The Master Chief took Cortana’s counsel to heart. He hoped that he would find a way to bypass whatever the Covenant had in store, but that wasn’t to be. As the Spartan entered a large room, he saw that two Hunters had been assigned to patrol the far side of it. He slung his rifle and readied the rocket launcher. It was the right weapon for Hunters, no question about that – so long as he didn’t allow either one of the monsters to get too close. A rocket fired under those conditions would kill him if it detonated nearby.

One of the spined aliens spotted the intruder and bellowed a challenge. The Hunter was already in motion when the rocket flashed across the room, struck him in the right shoulder, and blasted him to hell.

A second Hunter howled and fired his fuel rod cannon. The Chief swore as the wash from a slightly off-target plasma bolt set off the audible alarm, and the indicator in the upper right hand corner of his HUD morphed to red.

The Spartan turned, hoping to put the second Hunter in his sight, but the massive alien slid behind a wall.

Unable to fire, he backed off. The Hunter lunged forward, and the deadly razor-spines raked across his already-weakened shields.

The Chief grunted in pain as the tip of the uppermost spine spiked through his armor’s shoulder joint. He felt a sickly tearing as the meat of his arm parted beneath the scalpel-sharp limb.

He spun, and the spine wrenched free.

The Master Chief felt a rising sense of frustration as he switched to the assault weapon, backed up a ramp, and used his greater mobility to circle behind the alien. Then he had it, a brief glimpse of unprotected flesh, and the opportunity he needed. He put a quick burst into the warrior’s back, spun away, and barely escaped a blast from the plasma pistols of the Jackals that had dropped into view and opened fire.

The Master Chief hurled three grenades over a divider. One of them scored a direct hit, sprayed the walls with chunks of alien flesh, and finally brought the frantic firefight to an end.

Cortana, whose life had been on the line as well, and who had been forced to watch as the Spartan fought for both of them, processed a sense of relief. Somehow, against all odds, her human host had come through again, but it had been close, very close, and he was still in something akin to shock, his back pressed into a corner, his vital signs badly elevated, his eyes jerking from one shadow to the next.

The AI hesitated as she processed the dilemma. It was difficult to balance the need to move ahead and complete the mission with her concern that she might push the Master Chief too hard, and possibly endanger them both. Cortana’s affection for the human, plus her own desire to survive, made it difficult for her to arrive at the kind of clear, rational decision that she expected of herself.

Then, just as Cortana was about to say something, anything, even if it was wrong, the Chief recovered and took the initiative. “All right,” he said – whether to himself or to Cortana wasn’t exactly clear. “It’s time to finish this mission.”

Working carefully, so as not to walk into an ambush, the Master Chief left the large room, found his way onto a downward slanting ramp. He backed into a corner and, satisfied that the area was reasonably secure, disengaged the shoulder plates of the MJOLNIR armor.

The wound was ragged, and blood flowed freely. The Chief could ignore the pain, but the blood loss would take its toll and jeopardize the mission. He made sure the motion sensor was still active, then slung his weapon.

He dug into his equipment pack and drew out his med kit. The Spartan had been wounded before, and had on several occasions performed first aid on injured comrades and himself. He quickly cleaned the wound, sprayed a stinging puff of bio-foam into the wound, then applied a quick-adhesive dressing.

In minutes, he had suited up, popped a wake-up stim, and moved on.

“Foehammer to ground team: You’ve got two Covenant dropships coming fast!”

The Master Chief stood at the edge of a massive chasm and monitored his allies’ radio chatter. In the distance, he could barely see the twinkling of the luminescent panels that Halo’s creators had left behind to illuminate these subterranean warrens. Below him, the abyss yawned and appeared to be bottomless.

He recognized the next voice as belonging to Gunnery Sergeant Waller, the Helljumper in charge of their LZ. “Okay, people,” Waller drawled, “we got company coming. Engage enemy forces on sight.”

“It’ll be easier to hold them off from inside the structure,” Cortana put in. “Can you get inside?”

“Negative!” Waller replied. “They’re closing in too fast. We’ll keep ’em busy as long as we can.”

“Give ’em hell, Marine,” the AI said grimly, and broke the connection. “We’ll all be in a tight spot if we don’t get out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive.”

“Roger that,” the Master Chief replied, as he pushed his way down a ramp, through a pair of hatches, and into the gloomy spaces beyond. He marched over some transparent decking, crossed a footbridge and killed a pair of Grunts he found there, followed another ramp to the floor below, tossed a grenade into a group of enemies that patrolled the area, and hurried through a likely looking opening. There was a roar of outrage as an Elite fired up at him from the platform below while some Grunts barked and gibbered.

The Spartan used a grenade to grease the entire group and hurried down to see what they had been guarding. He recognized the Map Room the moment he saw the opening, and had just stepped inside when another Elite opened up on him from across the way. A sustained burst from his assault weapon was sufficient to drop the alien’s personal shields, and he put the alien down with a stroke of his rifle butt.

“There!” Cortana said. “That holo panel should activate the map.”

“Any idea how to activate it?”

“No,” she replied, her tone arch. “You’re the one with the magic touch.”

The Master Chief took a couple of steps forward and reached a hand toward the display. He seemed to know instinctively how to activate the panel – it almost seemed hard-wired, like his fight-or-flight response.

He banished the random thought and returned to the mission. He slid his armored hand across the panel and a glowing wire-frame map appeared and seemed to float in front of him. “Analyzing,” the AI said. “Halo’s Control Center is” – she highlighted a section of the map in his HUD – “there. Interesting. It looks like some sort of shrine.”

She opened a channel. “Cortana to Captain Keyes.”

There was silence for a moment, followed by Foehammer’s voice. “The Captain has dropped out of contact, Cortana. His ship may be out of range or may be having equipment problems.”

“Keep trying,” the AI replied. “Let me know when you reestablish contact. And then tell him that the Master Chief and I have determined the location of the Control Center.”

Captain Jacob Keyes tried to ignore the incessant slam-bam beat of the Sergeant’s colonial flip music that pounded over the intercom as the pilot lowered the dropship into a swamp. “Everything looks clear – I’m bringing her down.”

The Pelican’s jets whipped the water into a frenzy as the ramp was lowered and the cargo compartment was flooded with thick, humid air. It carried the nauseating stench of rotting vegetation, the foul odor of swamp gas, and the slight metallic tang typical of Halo itself. Somebody said, “Pe-euu,” but was drowned out by Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, who shouted, “Go! Go! Go!” and the Marines jumped down into the calf-deep water.

Somebody said, “Damn!” as water splashed up their legs. Johnson said, “Stow it, Marine,” as Keyes cleared the ramp. Freed from its burden, the dropship fired its jets, powered its way up out of the glutinous air, and started to climb.

Keyes consulted a small hand comp. “The structure we’re looking for is supposed to be over there.”

Johnson eyed the pointing finger and nodded. “Okay, you slackers, you heard the Captain. Bisenti, take point.”

Private Wallace A. Jenkins was toward the rear, which was almost as bad as point, but not quite. The ebony water topped his boots, seeped down through his socks, and found his feet. It wasn’t all that cold – for which the Marine was thankful. Like the rest of the team, he knew that the ostensible purpose of the mission was to locate and recover a cache of Covenant weapons. Still an important thing to do, even in the wake of Lieutenant McKay’s efforts to raid the Pillar of Autumn, and the fact that Alpha Base had been strengthened as a result.

It was a crap detail, however – especially slogging through this dark, mist-clogged swamp.

Something loomed ahead. Bisenti hoped it was what the Old Man had dragged their sorry butts into this swamp for. He hissed the word back to the topkick. “I see a building, Sarge.”

There was the sound of water splashing as Johnson came forward. “Stay close, Jenkins. Mendoza, move it up! Wait here for the Captain and his squad. And get your asses inside.”

Jenkins saw Keyes materialize out of the mist. “Sir!”

Johnson saw Keyes, nodded, and said, “Okay, let’s move!”

Keyes followed the Marines inside. The entire situation was different from what he had expected. Unlike the Covenant, who killed nearly all of the humans they got their hands on, the Marines continued to take prisoners. One such individual, a rather disillusioned Elite named ’Qualomee, had been interrogated for hours. He swore that he’d been part of a group of Covenant soldiers who had delivered a shipment of arms to the forces guarding this very structure.

But there was no sign of a Covenant security team, or the weapons ’Qualomee claimed to have delivered, which meant that he had probably been lying. Something the Captain planned to discuss with the alien upon his return to Alpha Base. In the meantime, Keyes planned to push deeper into the complex and see what he could find. The second squad, under Corporal Lovik, was left to cover their line of retreat, while the rest of the team continued to press ahead.

Ten minutes had passed when a Marine said, “Whoa! Look at that. Something scrambled his insides.”

Johnson looked down at a dead Elite. Other Covenant bodies lay sprawled around the area as well. Alien blood slicked the walls and floor. Keyes approached from behind. “What do we have, Sergeant?”

“Looks like a Covenant patrol,” the noncom answered. “Badass Special Ops types – the ones in the black armor. All KIA.”

Keyes eyed the body and looked up at Bisenti. “Real pretty. Friend of yours?”

The Marine shook his head. “No, we just met.”

It took another five minutes to reach a large metal door. It was locked and no amount of fooling around with the keypad seemed likely to open it. “Right,” Keyes said, as he examined the obstacle. “Let’s get this door open.”

“I’ll try, sir,” the Tech Specialist, Kappus, replied, “but it looks like those Covenant worked pretty hard to lock it down.”

“Just do it, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kappus pulled the spoofer out of his pack, attached the box to the door, and pressed a series of keys. Outside of the gentle beeping noises that the black box made as it tapped into the door’s electronics and ran through thousands of combinations per second, there was nothing but silence.

The Marines shifted nervously, unwilling to relax. Sweat dripped down Kappus’ forehead.

They held position for another few minutes, until Kappus nodded with satisfaction and opened the door. The Marines drifted inside. The electronics expert raised a hand. “Sarge! Listen!”

All of the Marines listened. They heard a soft, liquid, sort of slithery sound. It seemed to come from every direction at once.

Jenkins felt jumpy but it was Mendoza who actually put it into words. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this...”

“You’ve always got a bad feeling,” the Sergeant put in, and was about to chew Mendoza out when a message came in over the team freq. It sounded like the second squad was in some sort of trouble, but Corporal Lovik wasn’t very coherent, so it was difficult to be sure.

In fact, it almost sounded like screaming.

Keyes responded. “Corporal? Do you copy? Over.”

There was no reply.

Johnson turned to Mendoza. “Get your ass back up to second squad’s position and find out what the hell is going on.”

“But Sarge–”

“I don’t have time for your lip, soldier! I gave you an order.”

“What is that?” Jenkins asked nervously, his eyes darting from one shadow to the next.

“Where’s that coming from, Mendoza?” Sergeant Johnson demanded, the second squad momentarily forgotten.

“There!” Mendoza proclaimed, pointing to a clutch of shadows as the Marines heard the muffled sound of metal striking metal.

There was a cry of pain as something landed on Private Riley’s back, drove a needle-like penetrator through his skin, and aimed it down toward his spine. He dropped his weapon, tried to grab the thing that rode his shoulders, and thrashed back and forth.

“Hold still! Hold still!” Kappus yelled, grabbing onto one of the bulbous creatures and trying to pull it off his friend.

Avery Johnson had been in the Corps for most of his adult life, and had logged more time humping across the surface of alien planets than any of the other men in the room combined. Along the way, he’d seen a lot of strange stuff – but nothing like what skittered across the metal floor and attached itself to one of his men.

He saw a dozen white blobs, each maybe half a meter in diameter, and equipped with a cluster of writhing tentacles. They skittered and bobbed in a loose formation, then sprang in his direction. The tentacles propelled them several meters in a single leap. He fired a short, almost panicked burst. “Let ’em have it!”

Keyes, pistol in hand, fired at one of the creatures. It popped like a balloon, with surprising force. The tiny explosion caused three more to burst into feathery shards, but it seemed as if dozens more took their place.

Keyes realized that Private Kappus had been correct. The Covenant had locked the door for a reason, and this was it. But maybe, just maybe, they could pull back and close the blobs inside again. “Sergeant, we’re surrounded.”

But Johnson’s attention was elsewhere. “God damn it, Jenkins, fire your weapon!”

Jenkins, his face tight with fear, clutched his assault rifle with white-knuckled hands. It seemed like the little things were boiling from thin air. “There’s too many!”

The Sarge started to bellow a reply, but it was as if a floodgate had opened somewhere, as a new wave of the obscene, pod-like creatures rolled out of the darkness to overwhelm the humans. Marines fired in every direction. Many lost their balance as two, three, or even four of the aliens managed to get a grip on them and pull them down.

Jenkins began to back away as fear overwhelmed him.

Keyes threw up his hands with the intention of protecting his face and accidentally caught one of the monsters. He squeezed and felt the creature explode. The little bastards were fragile – but there were so damned many of them. Another attacker latched onto his shoulder. The Captain screamed as a razor-sharp tentacle plunged through both his uniform and his skin, wriggled under the surface of his skin, and tapped his spinal cord. There was an explosion of pain so intense that he blacked out, only to be brought back to consciousness by chemicals the thing had injected into his bloodstream.

He tried to yell for help, but couldn’t make a sound. His heart raced as his extremities grew numb, one by one. His lungs felt heavy.

As Keyes began to lose touch with the rest of his body, something foul entered it, pushing his consciousness down and back even as it claimed most of his cerebral cortex, polluting his brain with a hunger so base that it would have made him vomit, had he any possession of his own body.

This hunger was more than a desire for food, for sex, or for power. This hunger was a vacuum, an endless vortex that consumed every impulse, every thought, every measure of who and what he was.

He tried to scream, but it wouldn’t let him.

The sight of Captain Keyes struggling with this new adversary had frozen Private Jenkins in place. When the Captain’s struggles ceased, however, he snapped into motion. He turned to flee, and felt one of the little beasts slam into his back. Pain knifed into him as the creature inserted its tendrils into his body, then subsided.

His vision clouded, then cleared. He had some sensation that time had passed, but he had no way to tell how long he’d been out. Private Jenkins, Wallace A., found himself in a strange half-world.

Due to some fluke, some random toss of the galactic dice, the mind that invaded his body had been severely weakened during the long period of hibernation, and while strong enough to take over and begin the work necessary to create a combat form, it lacked the force and clarity required to completely dominate its host the way it was supposed to.

Jenkins, helpless to do anything about it, was fully aware of the invading intelligence as it seized control of his musculature, jerked at his limbs like a child experimenting with a new toy, and marched him around in circles even as his friends, who no longer had any consciousness at all, were completely destroyed. He screamed, and the air left his lungs, but no one turned to look.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Seventh Cycle, 49 units (Covenant Battle Calendar)

Aboard Cruiser, Truth and Reconciliation, above Halo’s surface

Zuka ’Zamamee had entered the Truth and Reconciliation via the ship’s main gravity lift, taken a secondary lift up to the command deck, suffered through the usual security check, and been shown into the Council Chambers in record time. All of which seemed quite appropriate until he entered the room to find that only a single light was on, and it was focused on the spot where visitors were expected to stand. There was no sign of Soha ’Rolamee, of the Prophet, or of the Elite to whom he had never been introduced.

Perhaps the Council had been delayed, there had been a scheduling error, or some other kind of bureaucratic error. But then, why had he been admitted? Surely the staff knew whether the Council was in session or not.

The Elite was about to turn and leave when a second spot came on and ’Rolamee’s head appeared. Not attached to his body the way it should have been, but sitting on a gore-drenched pedestal, staring vacantly into space.

An image of the Prophet appeared and seemed to float in midair. He gestured toward the head. “Sad, isn’t it? But discipline must be maintained.”

The Prophet made what ’Zamamee took to be a mystical gesture. “Halo is old, extremely old, as are its secrets. Blessings, really, which the Forerunners left for us to find, knowing that we would put them to good use.

“But nothing comes without risk, and there are dangers here as well, things which ’Rolamee promised to keep contained, but failed to do so.

“Now, with the humans blundering about, his failures have been amplified. Doors have been opened, powers have been released, and it is now necessary to shift a considerable amount of our strength to the process of regaining control. Do you understand?”

’Zamamee didn’t understand, not in the least, but had no intention of admitting that. Instead he said, “Yes, Excellency.”

“Good,” the Prophet said, “and that brings us to you. Not only were your most recent efforts to trap the marauding human a total failure, he went on to neutralize part of Halo’s security system, found his way in to the Silent Cartographer, and will no doubt use it to cause us even more trouble.

“So,” the Prophet added conversationally, “I thought it might be instructive for you to come here, take a good look at the price of failure, and decide whether you can afford the cost. Do you understand me?”

’Zamamee gulped, then nodded. “Yes, Excellency, I do.”

“Good,” the Prophet said smoothly. “I’m gratified to hear it. Now, having failed once, and having determined never to do so again, tell me how you plan to proceed. If I like the answer, if you can convince me that it will work, then you will leave this room alive.”

Fortunately ’Zamamee not only had a plan, but an exciting plan, and he was able to convince the Prophet that it would work.

But later, after the Elite had rejoined Yayap, and the two of them were leaving the ship, it wasn’t a vision of glory that he saw, but ’Rolamee’s vacant stare.

The Master Chief paused just inside the hatch to ensure that he wasn’t being followed, checked to make certain that his weapons were loaded, and wondered where the hell he was. Based on instructions from Cortana, Foehammer had dropped her Pelican through a hole in Halo’s surface, flown the dropship through one of the enormous capillary-like maintenance tunnels that crisscrossed just below the ring world’s skin, and dropped the unlikely twosome off on a cavernous landing platform. From there the Spartan felt his way through a maze of passageways and rooms, many of which had been defended.

Now, as he walked the length of another corridor, he wondered what lay beyond the hatch ahead.

The answer was quite unexpected. The door opened to admit cold air and a sudden flurry of snowflakes. It appeared as if he was about to step out onto the deck of a footbridge. A barrier blocked some of the view, but the noncom could see traction beams that served in place of suspension cables, and the gray cliff face beyond.

“The weather patterns here seem natural, not artificial,” Cortana observed thoughtfully. “I wonder if the ring’s environmental systems are malfunctioning – or if the designers wanted this particular installation to have inclement weather.”

“Maybe this isn’t even inclement weather to them,” he said.

The Chief, who wasn’t sure it made a hell of a lot of difference, not to him anyway, stuck his nose around the edge of the hatch to see what might be waiting for them.

The answer was a Shade, with a Grunt seated at the controls. A quick glance to the right confirmed the presence of a second energy weapon, this one unmanned.

Then, just as he was about to make his move, a Pelican appeared off to the left, roared over the bridge, and settled into the valley below. There was a squawk of static, followed by a grim-sounding male voice.

“This is Fire Team Zulu requesting immediate assistance from any USNC forces. Does anyone copy? Over.”

The AI recognized the call sign as belonging to one of the units operating out of Alpha Base and made her reply. “Cortana to Fire Team Zulu. I read you. Hold position. We’re on the way.”

“Roger that,” the voice replied. “Make it quick.”

So much for the element of surprise, he thought. The Spartan stepped out of the hatch, shot the Grunt in the head, and hurried to take the alien’s place on the Shade. He could hear the commotion the sudden attack had caused and knew he had only seconds to bring the barrel around.

He swiveled the weapon into position, saw the sight glow red, and pulled the trigger. A Grunt and a Jackal were snatched off their feet as the ravening energy bolts consumed not only them, but a chunk of the bridge as well. All the rest of the enemy forces seemed to melt back into the woodwork.

Then, with no clear targets left in sight, he took a moment to inspect the bridge. It appeared to have been built for use by pedestrians rather than vehicles, had two levels, and was held aloft by the traction beams he had observed earlier. Snow swirled down from above, hissed when it hit the glowing cables, then ceased to exist.

There was movement farther down the bridge deck, which he rewarded with a steady stream of glowing energy. He used the plasma like water from a hose, squirting the deadly fire into every nook and cranny he could find, thereby clearing the way.

Then, satisfied that he had nailed all the obvious targets, the Spartan jumped to the deck. The bridge was large enough that it featured a variety of islands, turn-outs, and pass-throughs, all of which could be used for cover. That cut two ways, of course – meaning that the Covenant had plenty of places to hide.

Moving from one bit of protection to the next, he fought his way across the span, dropping down to the lower level to deal with Covenant forces there, then resurfacing at the far end, where he spotted an Elite armed with an energy blade. The Elite ducked behind a wall.

The Chief saw no reason to close with such a dangerous opponent if it could be avoided, and tossed a plasma grenade over the wall. He heard the startled reaction as the explosive device latched onto the Elite’s armor and refused to let go. The alien emerged from hiding, and vanished in a flash of light.

Thankful to put the bridge behind him, the Chief activated the hatch, made his way through the maze-like room beyond, and entered a lift. It dropped for a long time before coming to a relatively smooth stop and allowing him to exit. A short passageway took him to a hatch and the battle that raged beyond.

As the door opened the Master Chief looked up, saw the bridge directly above, and had a good idea where he was. Then, looking down, he saw a snow-covered valley, punctuated by groups of boulders, and the occasional stand of trees.

Judging from the fact that most of the Covenant fire was directed toward the corner of the valley off to his left, the Spartan assumed that at least part of Fire Team Zulu was trapped there. They were under fire from at least two Shades and a Ghost, but putting up a good fight nonetheless.

He knew that the heavy weapons offered the greatest danger to the Marines. He sprinted from the protection of the tunnel, paused to shoot the nearest gunner with his pistol, then headed toward the dead Grunt’s Shade. He could feel the heat radiating off the weapon’s barrel as he jerked the corpse out of the seat and took his place behind the controls. There were plenty of targets, a rather busy Ghost primary among them, so the Chief decided to tackle that first. A couple of bursts were sufficient to get the pilot’s attention and bring him into range.

Both the human and the Elite opened fire at the same moment, their reciprocal fire drawing straight lines back and forth, but the Shade won out. The attack vehicle shuddered, skittered sideways, and blew up.

But there was no opportunity to celebrate as a Wraith mortar tank turned its attention to that corner of the valley, lobbed comet-like energy bombs high into the air, and started to walk them toward the Marines.

The Spartan sent a stream of energy bolts toward the tank, but the range was too great, and the fire couldn’t penetrate the monster’s armor.

Convinced that he would have to find some other way to deal with the tank, the Chief decided to bail out, and was twenty meters away when one of the bombs scored a direct hit on the Shade he had just occupied.

The Marines saw him coming and took heart from his sudden appearance on the scene. A Corporal tossed him a weak grin, and whooped, “The cavalry has arrived!”

“We can sure use your help – that Shade has us pinned,” another Marine chimed in.

The soldier pointed and the Spartan saw that the Covenant had dropped a Shade onto the top of a huge rock overlooking the valley. The elevation allowed the weapon to command half the depression and even as the Chief looked, the gunner continued to pound the area where Fire Team Zulu had taken refuge.

The Marines’ Warthog had flipped, spilling supplies out onto the ground. The Master Chief paused to grab a rocket launcher, but knew the range was extreme, and that it would pay to get closer.

So he slung the launcher across his back, checked the load on his assault weapon, and moved into the trees. A party of Grunts made a run at the Marines, and were pushed back even as the Spartan spotted a likely looking tree trunk. He moved up, killed the Jackal that lurked behind the tree cover, then brought the launcher up to his shoulder. The Shade winked blue light as he peered through the sight, increased the magnification, and saw the gun leap toward him. Then, careful to hold the tube steady, he fired.

There was an explosion on top of the rock, and the Shade toppled off the side of a cliff.

The Marines cheered, but the Master Chief had already shifted priorities. He ran for the ’Hog.

A mortar bomb exploded behind him and blew the tree cover he’d just vacated into splinters. A Marine screamed as a meter-long shard of wood penetrated his abdomen and nailed him to the ground.

The Spartan grabbed hold of the Warthog’s bumper, then used his armor’s strength enhancements to flip it back onto its tires. One Marine jumped aboard and manned the LAAG, and another jumped into the passenger seat.

Snow sprayed out from behind both of the rear tires as the Spartan put his foot down, felt the ’Hog break loose, and steered into the skid.

The sudden movement gave their position away to the Wraith. It belched, and a comet arced their way and slid sideways across the center of the valley as if to block the humans from reaching the other end.

The Spartan saw the fireball, raced to pass under it, and heard the LAAG open up as the range to the Wraith began to close.

But there was an infantry screen to penetrate before they could dance with the tank, and both the LAAG gunner and the Marine in the passenger seat were forced to deal with a screen comprised of Elites, Jackals, and Grunts as the Chief slammed on the brakes, backed out of a crossfire, and turned to provide them with a better angle.

The M41 roared as it sent hundreds of rounds downrange, plucked Grunts like flowers, and hurled them back into the bloodied snow.

The Marine in the passenger seat yelled, “You want me? You want some of this? Come and get it!” as he emptied a clip into an Elite. The eight-foot-tall warrior staggered under the impact and fell over backward. He wasn’t dead, however, not yet, not until the front of the Warthog sucked him under and spit chunks out the back.

Then they were through the screen, and more important, inside the dead area where the Wraith couldn’t fire mortar bombs without risking dropping them on itself. That was the key, the factor that made the attack possible. The Chief braked on a patch of ice, and felt the ’Hog start to slide. “Hit him!” he ordered.

The gunner, who couldn’t possibly miss at that range, opened fire. There was an earsplitting roar as large-caliber rounds pounded the side of the tank. Some glanced off, others shattered, but none of them managed to penetrate the Wraith’s thick armor.

“Watch out!” the Marine in the passenger seat exclaimed. “The bastard is trying to ram!”

The Spartan, who had just managed to bring the Warthog to a stop, saw that the private was correct. The tank surged forward, and was just about to crush the LRV, when the Master Chief slammed the lighter vehicle into reverse. All four wheels spun as the ’Hog backed away, guns blazing, suddenly on the defensive.

Then, having opened what he hoped was a sufficient gap, the Spartan braked. He slammed the shifter forward and swung the wheel to the right. The vehicles were so close as they passed each other that the Wraith scraped the ’Hog’s flank, hard enough to tip the left-side wheels off the snowy ground. They hit with a thump, the LAAG came off-target, and the gunner brought it to bear again. “Hammer it from behind!” the Chief yelled. “It might be weaker there!”

The gunner obeyed and was rewarded with a sharp explosion. A thousand pieces of metal flew up into the air, turned lazy circles, and drifted downward. Black smoke boiled up out of the wreckage. What remained of the tank slammed into a boulder, and the battle was over.

The valley belonged to Fire Team Zulu.

Cortana’s intelligence revealed there were other valleys, all connected by one means or another, and he would have to negotiate every one of them in order to reach his objective. A drop-off prevented the Spartan from taking the Warthog any farther.

He bailed out and made his way through the snow. A cold wind whistled past his visor and snowflakes dusted the surface of his armor. “Damn,” one of the Marines remarked, “I forgot my mittens.”

“Stow the BS,” a sergeant growled. “Watch those trees... this ain’t no picnic.”

Strangely, the Chief felt very calm. Right then, right there, he was home.

It was sunny, only a few clouds dotted the sky, and the strangely uniform hills piled one on top of the other as if eager to reach the low-lying mountain ridge beyond. It had been dry in this region, which meant that the vehicles sent wisps of dust into the air as they climbed up off the plain, and made for the heights above.

The patrol consisted of two captured Ghosts, or “Gees” as some of the Marines called them, plus two of the Warthogs that had survived the long, arduous journey back from the Pillar of Autumn.

Various combinations had been tried, but McKay liked the two-plus-two configuration best, combining as it did the best features of both designs. The alien attack craft were faster than the LRVs, which meant they could cover a lot of ground in a short period of time, thereby reducing the wear and tear on both the four-wheelers and the troops who rode them. But the Ghosts couldn’t handle broken ground the way the Warthogs could and, not having anything like the M41 LAAG, they were vulnerable to Banshees.

Therefore, if an enemy aircraft appeared, it was standard procedure for the Gees to scuttle in under the protection offered by the three-barreled weapons mounted on the ’Hogs. Each Warthog carried a passenger armed with a rocket launcher as well, which provided the Marines with even more antiaircraft capability.

Of course the real stick, the one the Covenant had learned to respect, was a Pelican full of Helljumpers sitting on a pad back at Alpha Base ready to launch on two minutes’ notice. It could put as many as fifteen ODST Marines on any point inside the designated patrol area within ten minutes. No small threat.

The purpose of the patrols was to monitor a circle ten kilometers in diameter with Alpha Base at its center. Now that the Marines had taken the butte and fortified it, they had to hold onto the high keep. And while there had been some air raids, and a couple of ground-based probes, the Covenant had yet to launch an all-out attack, something that bothered both Silva and McKay. It was almost as if the aliens were content to let the humans sit there while they tended to something else – although neither one of the officers could imagine what the something else could be.

That didn’t mean a complete cessation of activity; far from it, since the enemy had taken to watching the humans, making note of which routes they took, and setting ambushes along the way.

McKay tried to ensure that she never followed the same path twice in a row, but often the terrain dictated where the vehicles could go, and that meant that there were certain river crossings, rocky defiles, and mountain passes where the enemy could safely lie in wait – assuming they had the patience for it.

As the patrol approached one such spot, a pass between two of the larger hills, the Marine on the lead Ghost called in. “Red Three to Red One, over.”

McKay, who had decided to ride shotgun in the first ’Hog, keyed her mike. “This is One. Go... Over.”

“I see a Ghost, Lieutenant. It’s on its side – like it crashed or something. Over.”

“Stay clear of it,” the officer advised. “It could be some sort of trap. Hold on, we’ll be there shortly. Over.”

“Affirmative. Red Three, out.”

The Warthog bounced over some rocks, growled as the driver downshifted, and entered an open area that led up to the pass. “Red One to team: We’ll leave the vehicles here and proceed on foot. Gunners, stay on those weapons, and split the sky. The last thing we need is to get bounced by a Banshee. Ghost Two, keep an eye on the back door. Over.”

There was a series of double-clicks by way of acknowledgment as McKay took the Warthog’s rocket launcher, jumped to the ground, and followed her driver up the path. A scorched rock, and what might have been a patch of dried blood, served as reminder of the patrol that had been ambushed there not long ago.

The sun beat down on the officer’s back, the air was hot and still, and gravel crunched under her boots. The hill could have been on Earth, up in the Cascade Mountains. McKay wished that it were.

Yayap lay next to a pile of wreckage and waited to die. Like most of ’Zamamee’s ideas, this one was totally insane.

After failing to find and kill the armored human, ’Zamamee had concluded that the elusive alien must be on top of the recently captured butte. Or, if not on the butte, then coming and going from the butte, which was the only base the humans had established. The butte was a strong point that the Council of Masters would very much like to take back.

The only problem was that ’Zamamee had no way to know when the human was there, and when he wasn’t, because while taking the butte would be something of a coup, doing so without killing the human might or might not be sufficient to keep his head on his shoulders.

So, having given the problem extensive thought, and aware of the fact that humans did take prisoners, the Elite came up with the idea of putting a spy on top of the butte, someone who could send a signal when the target was in residence, thereby triggering a raid.

But who to send? Not him, since it would be his role to lead the attack, and not some other Elite, because they were deemed too valuable for such a dangerous scheme – nor could they be trusted not to steal the glory of the kill – especially given the increased demands associated with countering the mysterious “powers” to which the Prophet had referred.

That suggested a lower ranking member of the Covenant forces, but someone ’Zamamee could trust. Which was why Yayap had been equipped with an appropriate cover story, enthusiastically beaten up, and laid out next to a wrecked Ghost which one of the transports had dropped in during the hours of darkness.

The final scene had been established just prior to dawn, which meant that the Grunt had been there for nearly five full units. Unable to do more than flex his muscles lest he unknowingly give himself away, with nothing to drink, and subject to his own considerable fears, Yayap silently cursed the day he “rescued” ’Zamamee. Better to have died in the crash of the human vessel.

Yes, ’Zamamee swore that the humans took prisoners, but what did he know? Thus far, Yayap had been unimpressed with ’Zamamee’s plans. Yayap had seen Marines shoot more than one downed warrior during the battle on the Pillar of Autumn, and saw no reason why they would spare him. And what if they discovered the signaling device that had been incorporated into his breathing apparatus?

No, the odds were against him, and the more he thought about it, the more the Grunt realized that he should have run. Taken what he could, headed out onto the surface of Halo, sought shelter with the other deserters who lurked there. The dignity of his eventual suffocation when his methane bladder finally emptied had considerable appeal.

It was too late for that now. Yayap heard the crunch of gravel, smelled the musky, unpleasant meat odor he had come to associate with humans, and felt a shadow fall over his face. It seemed best to appear unconscious, so that’s exactly what he did. He fainted.

“It sounds like he’s alive,” McKay observed, as the Grunt took a breath, and the methane rig wheezed in response. “Check for booby traps, free that leg, and search him. I don’t see much blood, but if he’s leaking, plug the holes.”

Yayap didn’t understand a word the human said, but the tone was even, and no one put a gun to his head. Maybe, just maybe, he was going to survive.

Five minutes later the Grunt had been hog-tied, thrown into the back of an LRV, and left to bounce around back there.

McKay recovered two saddlebag-style containers from the wrecked Ghost, one of which contained some clothes wrapped around what she took to be rations. She sniffed the tube of bubbling paste and winced. It smelled like old socks wrapped in rotting cheese.

She stuffed the alien food back into its pack, and investigated the second. It held a pair of Covenant memory blocks, brick-shaped chunks of some superdense material that could store who knew how many gazillion bytes of information. Probably a kilo’s worth of BS? Yes, probably, but it wasn’t for her to judge. Wellsley loved that kind of crap, and would have fun trying to sort it out.

If they were lucky, it would distract him from quoting the Duke of Wellington for a few precious minutes. That alone was almost worth recovering the devices.

As the humans got back on their vehicles and went up over the pass, ’Zamamee watched them from a carefully camouflaged hiding spot on a neighboring hill. He felt a thrill of vindication. The first part of his plan was a success. The second phase – and his inevitable victory – would follow.

Finally, after battling his way through wintry valleys twisting passageways, and maze-like rooms, the Master Chief opened still another hatch and peered outside. He saw snow, the base of a large construct, and a Ghost which patrolled the area beyond.

“The entrance to the Control Center is located at the top of the pyramid,” Cortana said. “Let’s get up there. We should commandeer one of those Ghosts, we’re going to need the firepower.”

The Spartan believed her, but as he stepped through the hatch, and more Ghosts appeared and began shooting at him, none of the pilots seemed ready to surrender their machines. He destroyed one of them with a long, controlled burst from his assault rifle, then scurried up through a jumble of boulders, and perched on one of the pyramid’s long, sloping skirts.

From his new position he saw a Hunter patrolling the area above, and wished he had a rocket launcher. He might as well have wished for a Scorpion tank.

The pyramid’s support structures offered some cover, which allowed the Master Chief to climb unobserved, and toss a fragmentation grenade at the monster above. It went off with a loud craack!, peppered the alien’s armor with shrapnel, and generally pissed him off.

Alerted now, the Hunter fired his fuel rod cannon, just as the Chief hurled a plasma grenade and hoped his aim was better this time. The energy pulse missed, the grenade didn’t, and there was a flash of light as the Covenant warrior went down.

It was tempting to run for the top, but if there was one lesson the Spartan had learned over the last few days it was that Hunters traveled in pairs.

Rather than leave such a potent enemy guarding his six, the Master Chief climbed up to the first level, ducked around the wall that separated one side of the pyramid from the next, and took a peek. Sure enough, there was Hunter number two, gazing down-slope, unaware of the fact that his bond brother was dead. The human put a burst into the alien’s unprotected back. The spined warrior fell and slid, face first, to the bottom of the structure.

The Chief worked his way farther up, zigzagging back and forth across the front of the massive pyramid while an extremely determined Banshee pilot tried to bag him from above, and all manner of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites emerged to try and block his progress.

He took a deep breath, and continued his climb.

At the top of the pyramid, the Spartan paused and allowed his long-suffering shield system to recharge. He stepped over the fallen body of a Grunt, and loaded his last clip into the assault rifle.

A huge door fronted the top level. There was no way to tell what waited on the other side, but it wasn’t likely to be friendly – a series of motion sensor traces ghosted at the edge of the device’s range.

“What’s the plan?” Cortana inquired.

“Simple.” The Spartan took a deep breath, hit the switch, spun on his heel, and ran.

It was about twenty meters back to the Shade, and the Chief covered the distance in seconds. Once at the controls he swiveled the barrel around just in time to see the doors part and a horde of Covenant soldiers pour out.

The Shade was up to the job. Just as quickly as they appeared, the aliens died.

Dismounting once again, the Spartan entered a large, hangarlike space, took the time required to deal with stragglers, and activated the next set of doors.

“Scanning,” Cortana said. “Covenant forces in the area have been eliminated. Nicely done. Let’s move on to Halo’s Control Center.”

He made his way through the doors and out onto an immense platform. A gleaming reflective bridge, apparently without supports, extended over a vast emptiness and ended in a circular walkway. In the center of this walkway was a moving holographic model of the Threshold system: a giant transparent image of the gas giant overhead, the small gray moon Basis in orbit around it, and suspended between the two, the tiny shining ring of Halo itself.

Outside of the walkway, stretching almost to the edges of the enormous space, was another model of Halo, this one thousands of feet across, displaying as it rotated a detailed map of the terrain on its inner surface.

The span lacked any kind of railing, as if to remind those who passed over it of the dangers attendant to the power they were about to encounter. Or so it seemed to the Master Chief.

“This is it... Halo’s Control Center,” Cortana said as the Master Chief approached a large panel. It was covered with glyphs, all of which glowed as if lit from within, and went together to form what looked like a piece of abstract art.

“That terminal,” the AI said. “Try there.”

The Spartan reached out to touch one of the symbols, then stopped.

He felt Cortana’s presence dwindle in his mind as she transmitted herself into the alien computer station. A moment later, she appeared – giant-sized – over the control panel. Data scrolled across her body, energy seemed to radiate out of her holographic skin, and her features were alight with pleasure.

Her “skin” shifted from blue to purple, to red, then cycled back as she gazed around the room and sighed.

“Are you all right?” the Master Chief inquired. He hadn’t expected this.

“Never been better!” Cortana affirmed. “You can’t imagine the wealth of information – so much, so fast. It’s glorious!”

“So,” the Master Chief asked, “what sort of weapon is it?”

The AI looked surprised. “What are you talking about?”

“Let’s stay focused,” the Spartan responded. “Halo. How do we use it against the Covenant?”

The image of Cortana frowned. Suddenly her voice was filled with disdain. “This ring isn’t a cudgel, you barbarian, it’s something else. Something much more important. The Covenant were right, this ring–”

She paused, and her eyes moved back and forth as she scanned the tidal wave of data she now accessed. A puzzled look flashed across her face. “Forerunner,” she muttered. “Give me a moment to access...”

A moment later, she began to speak, and her words rushed out in a flood, as if the constant stream of new information was sweeping her along.

“Yes, the Forerunners built this place, what they called a fortress world, in order to–”

The Chief had never heard the AI talk like that before, didn’t like being referred to as a “barbarian,” and was about to cut her down to size when she spoke again. Plainly alarmed, her voice had a hesitant quality. “No, that can’t be... Oh, those Covenant fools, they must have known, there must have been signs.”

The Chief frowned. “Slow down. You’re losing me.”

Her eyes widened in horror. “The Covenant found something, buried in this ring, something horrible. Now they’re afraid.”

“Something buried?”

Cortana looked off into the distance as if she could actually see Keyes. “Captain – we’ve got to stop the Captain. The weapons cache he’s looking for, it’s not really – we can’t let him get inside.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s no time!” Cortana said urgently. Her eyes were neon pink and they focused on the Spartan like twin lasers. “I have to remain here. Get out, find Keyes, stop him. Before it’s too late!”