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FIRST

STRIKE

ERIC NYLUND

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

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Summary of Contents for Halo First Strike Games

Page 1 FIRST STRIKE ERIC NYLUND BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK...
Page 2 Other books based on Xbox games: HALO: THE FLOOD by William C. Dietz HALO: THE FALL OF REACH by Eric Nylund BRUTE FORCE: BETRAYALS by Dean Wesley Smith CRIMSON SKIES by Eric Nylund, Michael B. Lee, Nancy Berman, and Eric S. Trautmann...
Page 3 Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have re- ceived payment for it. Halo: First Strike is a work of fiction.
Page 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank the personnel at Central Command: Syne Mitchell and the newest officer on our team, Kai Nylund. The Intel Officers at Microsoft's Franchise Development Group: Doug Zartman, Nancy Figatner, and Edward Ventura, and most notably Eric S.
Page 5 SECTION REACH...
Page 6 CHAPTER ONE 0622 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\ UNSC Vessel Pillar of Autumn, Epsilon Eridani system near Reach Station Gamma. SPARTAN-104, Frederic, twirled a combat knife, his fingers nimble despite the bulky MJOLNIR combat armor that encased his body. The blade traced a complicated series of graceful arcs in the air.
Page 7 ERIC NYLUND Master Chief SPARTAN-117—John—marched to the nearest COM panel as Captain Keyes's face filled the screen. Fred sensed a slight movement to his right—a subtle hand sig- nal from Kelly. He opened a private COM freq to his teammate. "Looks like we're in for more surprises,"...
Page 8 HALO: FIRST STRIKE with danger at every turn—unknown enemy deployment, no gravity, useless intel, no dirt beneath his feet. There was no question, though: The space op was the toughest duty, so Fred intended to volunteer for it. Captain Keyes considered John's suggestion. "No, Master Chief.
Page 9 ERIC NYLUND prep in five minutes. Joshua: Liaise with Cortana and get me current intel on the drop area—I don't care if it's just weather satellite imagery, but I want pictures, and I want them ninety seconds ago." Red Team jumped into action. The pre-mission jitters were gone, replaced with a cold calm.
Page 10 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Knife Two-Six to Bravo-One," a terse, female voice crackled across the COM channel. "Keep your pants on. Business is good today." Too good. No sooner had the fighters taken escort position over his dropship than the approaching Covenant fighters opened up with a barrage of plasma fire.
Page 11 ERIC NYLUND The Pelican's aft section had been stripped of the padded crash seats that usually lined the section's port and starboard sides. The life-support generators on the firewall between pas- senger and pilot's compartment had also been discarded to make room.
Page 12 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Their job this time was to get groundside and protect the gen- erators that powered the orbiting Magnetic Accelerator Cannon platforms. The fleet was getting ripped to shreds in space. The massive MAC guns were the only thing keeping the Covenant from overrunning their lines and taking Reach.
Page 13 ERIC NYLUND The Pelican pitched forward, and her engines blasted in full overload. The dropship's stabilizers tore away, and the craft rolled out of control. The Spartans grabbed on to cross beams as their gear was flung about inside the ship. "It's going to be a helluva hot drop, Spartans,"...
Page 14 HALO: FIRST STRIKE a command; the port engine shuddered, and the ship's rolling slowed and ceased. "Can we land?" Fred asked. Joshua didn't hesitate to give the bad news. "Negative. The computer has no solution for our inbound vector." He tapped rapidly on the keyboard.
Page 15 ERIC NYLUND armored glove on the wall and tried to will the craft to hold to- gether a little longer. It didn't work. The port engine exploded, and the Pelican tum- bled out of control. Kelly and the Spartans near the aft drop hatch dropped out. No more time.
Page 16 CHAPTER TWO 0631 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, unknown aerial position, planet Reach. Fred saw the sky and earth flashing in rapid succession before his faceplate. Decades of training took over. This was just like a parasail drop ... except this time there was no chute. He forced his arms and legs open;...
Page 17 ERIC NYLUND lives. This was the same forest where CPO Mendez had left them when they were children. With only pieces of a map and no food, water, or weapons, they had captured a guarded Pelican and re- turned to HQ. That was the mission where John, now the Master Chief, had earned command of the group, the mission that had forged them into a team.
Page 18 HALO: FIRST STRIKE his knees, and tucked into a ball. He overrode the hydrostatic sys- tem and overpressurized the gel surrounding his body. A thou- sand tiny knives stabbed him—pain unlike any he'd experienced since the SPARTAN-II program had surgically altered him. The MJOLNIR armor's shields flared as he broke through branches—then drained in one sudden burst as he impacted dead-center on a thick tree trunk.
Page 19 ERIC NYLUND Fred snorted in disgust. Kelly thought he'd been thinking on his feet—but all he'd done was land on his ass. He didn't want to talk about it—not now. "Any other good news?" he said. "Plenty," she replied. "Our gear—munitions boxes, bags of extra weapons—they're scattered across what's passing for our LZ.
Page 20 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "One here, too," Red-Fifteen reported. "Neutralized." There had to be more. Fred knew the Covenant never traveled in small numbers. Worse, if the Covenant were deploying troops in any signifi- cant numbers, that meant the holding action in orbit had turned ugly .
Page 21 ERIC NYLUND Fred nodded, and clipped the other captured weapon to his harness. "Beats the hell out of throwing rocks," he replied. "Affirmative, Chief," she said with a nod. "But just barely." "Red-One," Joshua's voice called over the SQUADCOM. "I'm a half-klick ahead of you. You need to see this." "Roger,"...
Page 22 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred sent a narrow-beam transmission on UNSC global fre- quency. "Marine patrol, this is Spartan Red Team. We are ap- proaching your position from your six o'clock. Acknowledge." The Marines turned about and squinted in Fred's direction, and brought their assault rifles to bear.
Page 23 CHAPTER THREE 0649 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Epsilon Eridani system, Orbital Defense Generator Facility A-331, planet Reach. Fred looked over the battlefield from the top of the southern bunker, his temporary command post. The structure had been hastily erected, and some of the fast-drying instacrete hadn't fully hardened.
Page 24 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Scorpion tanks for almost an hour. Grunts had charged across the minefield and cleared a path for the Jackals and Elites. Lieutenant Buckman, the Marines' CO, had been ordered to send the bulk of his men into the forest in an attempt to flank the enemy.
Page 25 ERIC NYLUND "Roger that," Will said with a disappointed sigh. "Red-Three?" Fred asked. "Report." There was a moment's hesitation. Joshua whispered: "Not good here, Red-One. I'm posted on the ridge between our valley and the next. The Covenant has a massive LZ set up. There's an enemy ship on station and I estimate battalion-strength enemy troops on the ground.
Page 26 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Understood," Fred said. "Keep me—" "Wait. Incoming transmission to Charlie Company from Reach HighCom." HighCom? Fred thought headquarters on Reach had been overrun. "Verification codes?" "They check out," Kelly replied. "Patch it through." "Charlie Company? Jake? What the hell is the holdup there? Why haven 'tyou gotten my men out yet?"...
Page 27 ERIC NYLUND He controlled the shaking and keyed the COM. "Acknowl- edged, sir. Is air support available?" "Negative. Covenant craft took out our fighter and bomber cover in the first wave." "Very well, sir. We'll get you out." "Step on it, Chief." The COM snapped off. Fred wondered if Admiral Whitcomb was responsible for the hundreds of dead Marines who'd been trying to guard the gener- ators.
Page 28 HALO: FIRST STRIKE ravine like the backs of their hands. It wasn't marked on any map, but it was where they'd trained for months with Dr. Halsey. Beneath the mountain were caverns that the Office of Naval In- telligence had converted into a top-secret facility. It was fortified and hardened against radiation, and could probably withstand anything up to and including a direct nuclear strike.
Page 29 ERIC NYLUND Fred grabbed a launcher, a pair of rockets, and a roll of tape from the 'Hog. "We'll be needing these when we hit the Cove- nant on the other side of the ridge," he explained. "Each of you secure a launcher and some ammo in a Banshee."...
Page 30 CHAPTER FOUR 0711 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, Longhorn Valley, planet Reach. The alarm hooted, and Zawaz sprang to his feet with a startled yelp. The squat alien, a Grunt clad in burnished orange armor, fumbled and dropped his motion scanner. He keened in fear and retrieved the device with a trembling claw.
Page 31 ERIC NYLUND much altitude as the Banshee could manage—about three hun- dred meters. As he cleared the top, what he saw made him ease off the throttle. The valley was ten kilometers across and sloped before him, thick with Douglas firs that thinned and gave way to trampled fields and the Big Horn River beyond.
Page 32 HALO: FIRST STRIKE take an alternate flight path: straight down the middle, and straight over the Covenant horde. They'd only need one run to do this. They'd probably only get one run. He activated a COM frequency. "Go." Kelly hit the acceleration and glided toward the cruiser. Fred fell in behind her.
Page 33 ERIC NYLUND sphere of energy arced into the base of the tower. It began a grad- ual tilt, then collapsed. Kelly hadn't fired. Fred glanced her way and saw that she now stood in a low crouch atop her racing Banshee. She had one foot under the duct tape that had secured the nuke and now held the bomb in her hand, cocking it back to throw.
Page 34 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred wrenched the Banshee's controls and arced the craft under the edge of the ship; Kelly was right behind him. The light vanished, and they emerged on the far side of the Covenant vessel. Behind them, distorted through the gravity lift, Fred saw Covenant troops firing their weapons into the sky.
Page 35 ERIC NYLUND It was a sea of flame. Hundreds of fires dotted the cracked, glassy ground. Where the Big Horn River had snaked along, there was now only a long steaming furrow. There was no trace of the cruiser or the Covenant troops that had filled the valley moments ago.
Page 36 HALO: FIRST STRIKE incomprehensible. Then there was only static, and then the COM went dead. The cruisers fired salvos of plasma that burned the sky. Dis- tant explosions thumped, and Fred strained to see if there was any return fire—any sign that his Spartans were fighting or re- treating.
Page 37 SECTION I THRESHOLD...
Page 38 CHAPTER FIVE 1637 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard Longsword fighter, uncharted system, Halo debris field. Three weeks later. The Master Chief settled into the pilot's seat of the Longsword attack craft. He didn't fit. The contoured seat had been engi- neered to mate with a standard-issue Navy flight suit, not the bulky MJOLNIR armor.
Page 39 ERIC NYLUND "Scan it again," the Master Chief told Cortana. "Already completed," her disembodied voice replied. "There's nothing out there. I told you: just dust and echoes." The Master Chief's hand curled into a fist, and for a moment he felt the urge to slam it into something.
Page 40 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "That's highly un—" Cortana froze for a split second. The static around her vanished, and she stared off into space. "Interesting." "What?" Cortana looked distracted, then seemed to snap out of it. "New data. That signal echo's getting stronger." "Meaning?"...
Page 41 ERIC NYLUND on universal joints—enough firepower to gut any ship in the UNSC fleet. "Picking up encrypted transmissions from new contact," Cor-tana whispered. "Descrambling... lots of chatter... orders being given to the cruisers. It appears to be directing the Covenant fleet operations in the system." "A flagship,"...
Page 42 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Course plotted," Cortana said. "Thrusters engaged." There was a slight acceleration. "ETA twenty minutes, Chief. But given the Covenant cruis- ers' current search pattern, I estimate they will encounter the pod infive minutes." "We need to move faster," the Chief told her, "but without firing the engines.
Page 43 ERIC NYLUND saw that what he thought was a single pod was in fact three of them, affixed side by side. Three possible survivors out of the Pillar of Autumn's total complement of hundreds. He wished there were more. He wished Captain Keyes were here.
Page 44 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Cortana dropped the aft hatch, and the inside of the ship ex- ploded out; the Chief slammed into the door of the locker, denting the centimeter-thick Titanium-A. He climbed out and Cortana overlaid a blue arrow-shaped NAV point on his heads-up display, indicating the location of the drifting cryopods.
Page 45 ERIC NYLUND the muscles in his braced legs so his motions didn't send them into a tumble in the zero gravity. The Longsword was a sitting duck for those Covenant cruisers. Cortana couldn't fire the engines until he got on board. Even if he and the pods survived the thruster wash, any evasive maneuver Cortana made would snap him and his cargo like the end of a whip.
Page 46 HALO: FIRST STRIKE I want them to target their plasma turrets just before they fire. They have to drop a section of their shields for a fraction of a second." "Working," Cortana replied. "Without precise data, however, I'll have to base my calculations on several assumptions." A string of mathematics appeared on the weapons ops panel.
Page 47 ERIC NYLUND ships might evade and dodge through the debris field for a few minutes, but soon their fuel would be exhausted, and the Cove- nant would move in for the kill. And where could they really run to, anyway? Neither ship had Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engines, so they were stuck in this system and the Covenant knew it.
Page 48 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the ship. "Looks like your 'plan' has gotten their attention. I'm reading all six Covenant cruisers moving to overtake us at flank speed." "And the Pelican?" "Still there," Cortana reported. "Taking heavy fire. But on tra- jectory to the NAV point. .. moving slower than us, of course." "Adjust our speed so we arrive at the same time.
Page 49 ERIC NYLUND The flagship's turrets turned to bear on the Longsword and Pelican. They glowed like angry eyes in the dark. "Three hundred kilometers." Light sparkled along the length of the Covenant craft as it pre- pared to fire; dull red plasma gathered; three torpedoes extruded and raced toward them.
Page 50 HALO: FIRST STRIKE A hand reached up from the other side. John pulled the person through. The shock only lasted a moment. John's reflexes kicked in— he grabbed a handful of the man's uniform, kicked the hatch shut, and propelled both of them against the hull. With a lightning-quick motion, he drew the newcomer's pistol and aimed it squarely at the man's forehead.
Page 51 CHAPTER SIX 1710 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard Longsword fighter, uncharted system, Halo debris field. The Master Chief held on to the ship's frame with one hand so he wouldn't float away in zero gee. With the other hand he pressed the pistol deeper into Johnson's forehead.
Page 52 HALO: FIRST STRIKE likely." She paused for two heartbeats, and then added, "Accord- ing to the readings from the Sergeant's biomonitors, his story checks out. I can't be one hundred percent positive until he's been cleared in a medical suite, but preliminary findings indi- cate that he is clean of any Flood parasitic infection.
Page 53 ERIC NYLUND the bone, and during the action on Halo had been decidedly negative about the SPARTAN-IIs in general... and the Chief in particular. Another man gripped the edge of the hatch and pulled himself up. He had a plasma pistol strapped to his side and wore a crisp black uniform.
Page 54 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "So what's the story?" Locklear demanded. "We got some- thing to shoot here?" "At ease, Marine," the Sergeant growled. "Use that stuffing between your ears for something besides keeping your helmet on. Notice we're not floating? Feel those gee forces? This ship is in a slingshot orbit.
Page 55 ERIC NYLUND "So what's the plan?" Locklear asked. "Slingshot orbit—then what? We just going to talk all day, Chief?" "No," the Chief replied. He glanced at Polaski and the Sergeant. He could count on her, and though he was suspicious of exactly how Sergeant John- son had avoided falling to the Flood, he was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt.
Page 56 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Haverson frowned. "Chief, if we approach that ship we'll be blown out of the sky before we can even think about engaging them." "Normally, yes," the Chief replied. "But we're going to rig the Pelican as a fireship—we load it with Moray mines and send it out ahead of us.
Page 57 ERIC NYLUND Johnson, and finally Haverson. "Unless anyone has a better plan?" They were silent. "Anything to add, Cortana?" he asked. "Our exit orbit burn leaves us low on fuel and traveling at high velocity on an intercept course with the flagship. There are over- lapping fields of enemy fire on our approach vector.
Page 58 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Orbital exit burn in ten seconds," Polaski said. "Dog the rest of that," the Chief told Locklear. "And brace yourself." Locklear secured the collection of weapons and ordnance in a duffel bag, looped it around his neck, and then found a hand- hold.
Page 59 ERIC NYLUND The Chief said nothing, but he agreed. Despite the ODST's foul disposition, he shared his uneasiness with space combat. "Amen," Sergeant Johnson added. "Now shut up and let the lady drive." He removed a mission record unit from his pocket and inserted a chip.
Page 60 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Their momentum is carrying them within range. Tracking . .. locked on . . . maneuvering." Tiny puffs of fire overlapped the teardrop-shaped Seraph fighters as they exploded. Haverson laughed. "Bull's-eye!" "Forward weapons systems and shields are disabled," Cor-tana said.
Page 61 ERIC NYLUND announced. "External atmosphere stabilizing. Please feel free to get up and move around the cabin." Locklear scrambled to his feet. "Yeah!" he whooped. The young Helljumper yanked his MA5B's charging lever and racked a round into the chamber. "Let's rock!" "Good work, people,"...
Page 62 CHAPTER SEVEN 1750 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard unidentified Covenant flagship, uncharted system, Halo debris field. Plasma bolts impacted on the Longsword's hull and splashed across the windshield. The packets of glowing energy sizzled across the cockpit and etched cloudy, molten trails into the glass. A legion of Grunts hunkered behind docked Seraph fighters and fuel pods.
Page 63 ERIC NYLUND "Good." He turned to the others. "We're going in. I'll lead. Locklear, you're up with me. Sergeant, you've got the rear." "You'll need to take me, too," Cortana said. "I've pulled a schematic of this ship to navigate, but the engineering controls have been manually locked down.
Page 64 HALO: FIRST STRIKE thousand Covenant, mostly Engineers. There's a light company of Grunts, and only a hundred Elites." "Only a hundred?" the Chief muttered. He waved his team forward toward a heavy door at the back of the launch bay. The air was full of smoke and fire-suppressing mist, which reduced visibility to a dozen meters.
Page 65 ERIC NYLUND Polaski moved forward and crouched by the panel in the mid- dle of the door. She turned her cap around and leaned closer, then looked back to the Chief and gave him a thumbs-up. He raised his rifle and nodded, giving her the go-ahead to breach the door.
Page 66 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Now that's what I'm talkin' about," Johnson crowed. "An honest-to-God turkey shoot." Ten meters down the passage a dozen more Elites rounded a corner. "Uh-oh," Locklear muttered. "Sergeant," the Chief barked. "Door control!" John moved to Polaski's position in two quick strides, grabbed her by her collar, and dragged her out of the line of fire.
Page 67 ERIC NYLUND The Chief grunted an acknowledgment as he eased his way through. There was a scraping sound and a flash of sparks as his energy shield brushed the wall. It was too tight a fit. He powered down the shields, which left him just enough room to squeeze through.
Page 68 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The Chief felt her leave his mind, felt the heat rush back into his head, pulsing with the rhythm of his heart... and once again, he was alone in the armor. He slotted Cortana's chip into the Covenant data port. Locklear's face rippled with disgust, and he whispered, "You couldn't pay me to stick any part of myself in that thing."...
Page 69 ERIC NYLUND position and stored it in a stolen tertiary system buffer. She multitasked a portion of herself and continued to analyze the ship's structure and subsystems. "Proceed thirty meters down this passage and turn left." Cortana hijacked the external ship cameras and detected the six Covenant cruisers.
Page 70 HALO: FIRST STRIKE But to operate as if nothing were different would be even more foolish. She sent a blocking countersignal along the connection where this "other" was trying to contact her. The portion of her consciousness examining the ship's struc- ture discovered that the bridge had another access point.
Page 71 ERIC NYLUND fight. They didn't ask for help... not for themselves. Then again, this ship, although armed for war, didn't appear to be staffed for combat. It carried only a few hundred Elites and an army of Engineers. As Cortana pondered this, she continued to generate a counter-signal to match to the probe sent by the other presence in the system.
Page 72 HALO: FIRST STRIKE mary air systems. She then tasked the processor pumps to ser- vice the rest of the ship and activated them—in reverse. Warnings flashed throughout the Covenant system as the pressure suddenly dropped in 87 percent of the ship's passages. She squelched them.
Page 73 ERIC NYLUND "Chief," Cortana said. "We may have a prob—" "Hold transmission, Cortana," the Chief interrupted. "We're outside the command center. Can you tell how many are inside?" "Negative. They have disabled the bridge sensors," she replied. "You heard Cortana," the Chief said, addressing his com- panions.
Page 74 HALO: FIRST STRIKE A howl echoed from the other side, and a curl of gray smoke drifted through the crack. The Chief slung his rifle, grabbed the doors, flexed, pulled— and this time the heavy metal moved. A flash of plasma fire washed over his shields, blinding him. He ignored it, closed his eyes, and continued to force his way through the door.
Page 75 ERIC NYLUND the odd calligraphy of the Covenant. They also showed the space surrounding them, and the five remaining Covenant cruisers closing in. The Chief caught a motion in his peripheral vision: An Elite in jet-black armor materialized from the wall display, its light-bending camouflage dissolving.
Page 76 CHAPTER EIGHT 1802 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard unidentified Covenant flagship, uncharted system, Halo debris field. The Master Chief ducked as the hissing energy blade slashed at him. He dived toward the Elite and slammed the butt of his rifle into the alien's midsection.
Page 77 ERIC NYLUND ODSTs in half and gouge gaping wounds in Titanium-A armor plating. Worse, this Elite was tough, cunning, well trained—and it hadn't spent days fighting nonstop on Halo. The Chief felt every wound, pulled muscle, and strained tendon in his body. Haverson and Polaski moved onto the bridge, their pistols drawn, but neither of them had a clear line of fire.
Page 78 HALO: FIRST STRIKE ergy bolt melted their systems. Before the displays went dark, however, the Master Chief saw one of the Covenant cruisers open fire. A lance of plasma rushed through space toward the flagship. The Chief and the Elite struggled, rising to their feet. The Chief batted the plasma pistol aside, and it clattered across the control center.
Page 79 ERIC NYLUND slippery with blood. Finally he twisted the Elite to the right and launched a powerful open-handed strike into the alien's wounded chest. The Elite howled in pain and flew back, through the open hatch of an escape pod. "Get off this ship,"...
Page 80 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The ship spun to port. On the displays that still functioned, four more Covenant cruisers tracked them—and fired. The flagship accelerated, but the plasma torpedoes arced and followed them. "No good," Cortana said. "I can't overcome our inertia in this tub.
Page 81 ERIC NYLUND The Master Chief looked around the bridge. There had to be a way. There was always a way— He leaned over the edge of the central platform and grabbed one of the Covenant Engineers that cowered below. He dragged it up by its float-sack.
Page 82 HALO: FIRST STRIKE of the ship, assuming that there had only been one point of sabo- tage. It was a mistake she would never have made if she'd been operating at full capacity. She checked every system of the flagship. She then locked them out with her own security measures.
Page 83 ERIC NYLUND She checked on the Chief. His signal was still on board, and his biomonitor indicated that he was still alive. "Chief, are you there yet? I'm down to one last option." There was a static-filled pause over the COM, and then the Master Chief whispered, "Almost."...
Page 84 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Cortana experienced a moment of triumph—then squelched it. There was a new problem: The concussion from that blast had altered their flight path. The heat and overpressure wave had thinned the atmosphere ... just enough to cause the flagship to drop seven hundred meters.
Page 85 ERIC NYLUND here, it would have maintained better discipline and silenced the Grunts. Still, the Master Chief hesitated. His shields were gone, his armor breached. He had been fighting almost nonstop for what felt like years. He was forced to admit that he was at the limits of his endurance.
Page 86 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The trap was set; all he needed now was bait. He set a plasma grenade on the far wall of the shaft and trig- gered it. He pushed into the corridor, fast. Four seconds to go. The gravity, still active in this portion of the ship, pulled him to the deck.
Page 87 ERIC NYLUND energy coil dim. The Master Chief grabbed it—ducked as an- other plasma bolt singed over his head. He withdrew to the cover of the bracing support. He tried to activate the weapon. No luck. It was dead. The Engineer snaked a tentacle around the weapon and tugged it away from John's grasp.
Page 88 CHAPTER NINE 1827 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard unidentified Covenant flagship, uncharted system, Halo debris field. The flagship plunged through Threshold's churning atmo- sphere. Cortana could not hold the ship's attitude. It wobbled and blasted a fiery scar through the clouds, slowly rolling to port on its central axis.
Page 89 ERIC NYLUND She recomputed the numbers, thrust and velocity and gravita- tional attractions. Even if she overloaded the reactors to critical-meltdown levels, they were still stuck in an ever-descending spiral. The numbers didn't lie. The Master Chief's Engineer must have repaired the power coupling, because the Slipspace generator was functional again—...
Page 90 HALO: FIRST STRIKE such accuracy. They could literally plot a course with an error no larger than an atom's diameter. "Status, Cortana?" the Master Chief asked. "Stand by," she said, annoyed at the distraction. At this resolution Cortana could discern every ripple in space caused by Threshold's gravity, the other planets in this solar sys- tem, the sun, and even the warping of space caused by the mass of this ship.
Page 91 ERIC NYLUND Had it seen what she had done? Had it understood what she'd just accomplished? And if so, why declare it a "heresy"? True, manipulating eighty-eight stochastic variables in eleven-dimensional space-time was not child's play... but it was possible that the other AI would be able to follow her calculations. Perhaps not.
Page 92 HALO: FIRST STRIKE from Halo, Threshold, and that Covenant fleet. If this tin can holds together a bit longer, I want to put some distance between us and them." The Chief replied, "Good work, Cortana. Very good." He moved toward the elevator. "Now we have a hard decision to make." He paused and turned back toward the Covenant Engineer.
Page 93 ERIC NYLUND The Engineer passed a tentacle over the controls. They flashed blue, then dimmed. "It locks now," Polaski told them. "Ugly here knows his stuff." Three ultrasonic whistles filled the air. The Covenant Engi- neer who had just repaired the bridge door snapped to attention, and its eyes peered intently forward.
Page 94 HALO: FIRST STRIKE impacted on the flagship's shields. "Man," he whispered. "I wish our boats had weapons like those." "We might soon have exactly that, Marine," Lieutenant Haver-son said. He winced and stood, then moved to a screen that showed the storms in the upper atmosphere of Threshold. "Play this one, Corporal."...
Page 95 ERIC NYLUND Haverson shrugged. "I see no reason to keep this information classified at this point. Tell him, Chief." The Master Chief didn't like how Haverson "acceded" to his tactical command yet readily ordered him to reveal highly clas- sified material. "Cortana,"...
Page 96 HALO: FIRST STRIKE core Marine like Johnson, could endure. And as much as he didn't want to admit it, his original orders, given only a week ago, felt as if they'd been issued a lifetime in the past. Even John felt the temptation to stop and regroup before continuing.
Page 97 ERIC NYLUND given when the UNSC had a fleet, and when Reach was still an intact military presence. All that has changed." The Master Chief couldn't disagree with what she was say- ing ... but there was something else in her voice. And for the first time, John thought that Cortana might be hiding something from him.
Page 98 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Protocol. Furthermore, we are not allowed an indirect route, ei- ther. Subsection Seven of the Cole Protocol states that no Cove- nant craft may be taken to human-controlled space without an exhaustive search for tracking systems that could lead the enemy to our bases."...
Page 99 ERIC NYLUND "Acknowledged, Lieutenant," Cortana replied. "Be advised that this ship traverses Slipspace much faster than our UNSC counterparts. ETA to Reach in thirteen hours." The Master Chief sighed and relaxed a little. There was an- other reason for choosing Reach, one he didn't reveal to the Lieutenant.
Page 100 CHAPTER TEN 1852 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Captured Covenant flagship, in Slipspace, location unknown. After the Chief had left to investigate the cryopod, Haverson made certain that the bridge doors locked. He turned and walked over to the Covenant Engineer who'd repaired the Master Chief's armor.
Page 101 ERIC NYLUND He wasn't mad at Cortana; he was mad at himself—furious be- cause of the ugly necessity of his act. "The Covenant are imitative—not innovative," he said. "The Engineer you ordered to repair the Chief's armor just got a first- hand look at our shield technology, a technology we stole from the Covenant and improved upon.
Page 102 CHAPTER ELEVEN 0930 hours, September 4,2552 (Military Calendar) \ UNSC High Command (HighCom) Facility Bravo-6, Sydney, Australia, Earth. Two and a half weeks ago. Lieutenant Wagner walked explosive-detector gates and into the atrium entrance of the large, vaguely conical structure. Officially designated UNSC HighCom Facility B-6, the sprawling edifice had been nicknamed "the Hive."...
Page 103 ERIC NYLUND weren't in any position to make trouble. The Covenant didn't take prisoners. "You're expected today, Lieutenant," the receptionist said. She was a young Chief Petty Officer and looked like she didn't have a care, or a clue. But her eyes gave her away. She knew something.
Page 104 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She laughed, and it sounded like fine bone china clinking to- gether. "You may proceed, Lieutenant," she told him. The doors parted and revealed a corridor lined with walnut panels and paintings of Washington Crossing the Delaware, Ad- miral Cole's Last Stand, various alien landscapes, and space battles.
Page 105 ERIC NYLUND banged a fist onto the table. "Why the hell didn't we know about this? Who in ONI let this one slip by?" Ackerson leaned back. "No one is to blame, General—except the Covenant, obviously. I'm more concerned with our response to this incursion.
Page 106 HALO: FIRST STRIKE justified because of the value of the intel. Still, if they wanted to crucify him, all they had to do was check the time logged on his Prowler's engines and do the math. Hood waved his hand. "That's hardly the issue." "I think it is,"...
Page 107 ERIC NYLUND "No need," Ackerson muttered. He returned to his seat. Strauss sighed. "At least we have your special weapons pro- grams, Ackerson. Halsey's SPARTAN-IIs were such a great sue—" Ackerson shot the General a look that could have blasted through battle plate.
Page 108 HALO: FIRST STRIKE significant number of Spartans went groundside to defend Reach's orbital guns." "Then they're dead," Ackerson said. "Halsey's freaks have fi- nally lost their luster of invincibility." Admiral Hood set his jaw. "Doctor Halsey," he said slowly and with deliberate control, "and her Spartans deserve the ut- most respect, Colonel."...
Page 109 ERIC NYLUND "Just spit it out," General Strauss said. Wagner swallowed and resisted the urge to meet Ackerson's eyes. "When the Covenant destroys a planet, they typically move their large warships closer and blanket the world with a series of crisscrossing orbits to ensure that every square millimeter of the surface is covered with plasma bombardments."...
Page 110 HALO: FIRST STRIKE confirm what we have already seen a dozen times before: Reach is gone." He inched closer to Wagner. "Everything on it is blasted to bits, burned, glassed over, and vaporized. Everyone on Reach is dead." He jabbed a finger into Wagner's chest for emphasis. "Dead.
Page 111 SECTION 2 DEFENSE OF CASTLE BASE...
Page 112 CHAPTER TWELVE 0744 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, Longhorn Valley, planet Reach. Five days ago. Steamy clouds parted like a drawn curtain; a fireball one hun- dred meters across roared over Fred and Kelly's position. Fred traced the line of flames back through the sky and spotted the faint outlines of dozens of Covenant warships in low orbit.
Page 113 ERIC NYLUND One tiny secondary fragment impaled Fred's Banshee and detonated. The port canard of his flier deformed from the explo- sion, and the craft wobbled. "Down!" he shouted, but Kelly was already a dozen meters below him and plummeting to a distant dry riverbed. He fol- lowed, trailing smoke.
Page 114 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Hard landing," Fred ordered. Kelly made an unhappy sound over the COM and snapped it off. They plummeted out of the sky, gliding with what little aero- dynamics and power remained in their Banshees. Fred nosed his craft over the steaming rocks of the dry riverbed.
Page 115 ERIC NYLUND The Hunter reeled as fire washed across its armor. It moved in slow, confused circles. Fred could see the bright orange smears of the Hunter's blood staining the rocks. Kelly landed on her feet next to Fred. She readied a captured plasma grenade and hurled it straight toward the second Hunter's huge gun.
Page 116 HALO: FIRST STRIKE There was a roar of static. "Whitcomb . . . too many. Got— you read?" "Gamma," Fred shouted. "The fallback is hot. Repeat hot! Acknowledge." There was only static. "I hope they heard," he told Kelly. "Red-21 can take care of his team. Don't worry." She crept forward and waved him to follow.
Page 117 ERIC NYLUNO Hunter must have made up its mind—come to find them and stomp them into the ground. "Move," Fred whispered. They crossed the field, quickly and silently, and the Grunts never saw them. Fred and Kelly reached the smooth-surfaced Wraith tanks.
Page 118 HALO: FIRST STRIKE In unison the Spartans turned and fired at the far corner of the formation of tanks. Two blue-white blobs of liquid sun spat from the Wraiths and detonated. There was a dazzling light, an expan- sion of superheated white fire—and then there was glass-smooth ground and the smoldering skeletons of seven Wraith tanks.
Page 119 ERIC NYLUND Fred keyed his COM. "Delta, if you're listening, we're com- ing in from south-southeast in a pair of captured Wraith tanks. You'll know which ones from the fireworks. Keep your heads down and don't shoot us." He keyed over to Kelly's personal COM. "Blaze a trail, Red-Two! Kill everything and get to that entrance ASAP!"...
Page 120 HALO: FIRST STRIKE support, sooner or later the Covenant ground and air forces would regroup and destroy them. "Move!" he shouted over the COM. "Break off contact and get to the caves!" Kelly gunned her tank and pushed through the wreckage. Fred let her get ahead and paused to target the excavation equipment.
Page 121 ERIC NYLUND stood next to her. Fred was thrilled to see them alive—and even more thrilled to see Will holding a Jackhammer rocket launcher. "Get below," Kelly said, and motioned with her head to the center of the crater. "We'll cover you." She continued to fire until she had depleted the chaingun's belt of ammunition.
Page 122 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Where's the rest of the team? And the Marines from Charlie Company?" Fred asked. "They didn't make it," Will replied, his voice flat. "We were separated on the way here." He shook his head. "No contact since then." Fred was quiet a moment.
Page 123 ERIC NYLUND "It was a good idea," he told Kelly. "We'll recon the shaft. Maybe it's not completely collapsed. Will you—" A mechanism thunked and then hummed within the titanic door. There was a hiss as the seams parted, and the meter-thick door swung inward on perfectly balanced, silent hinges.
Page 124 CHAPTER THIRTEEN 0810 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, ONI underground facility, planet Reach. Dr. Halsey studied the five Spartans in the hallway and pushed her antique glasses farther up the ridge of her nose. Despite everything their presence here meant—Reach invaded, their mis- sion to find the Covenant leadership compromised, everything she had worked for now in jeopardy—she was still pleased to see them.
Page 125 ERIC NYLUND She nodded. "William." Will grunted. He had never liked his formal name. She knew this annoyed them all—how she was always able to tell who they were despite the MJOLNIR armor. She had grown up with them, knew their every gesture and their indi- vidual walks.
Page 126 HALO: FIRST STRIKE They walked in silence for a moment past a display of cap- tured insurgent flags that had been mounted under glass along the curved concrete wall. Most were emblazoned with an array of gaudy insignia—family crests, bloodied dragons, and scorched crossed swords.
Page 127 ERIC NYLUNO tivity overhead. Interface with the Spartans' biomonitors and patch the output to the display on bay three." She strolled over to a table, and a bank of holographic dis- plays hummed to life, floating serenely. Graphs and figures scrolled across them.
Page 128 HALO: FIRST STRIKE always kept her admiration for her Spartans to herself. The last thing she wanted was to do make them feel different. They got enough "special" treatment from everyone else. Dr. Halsey picked up a clipboard, tapped a few items onto its display, and handed it to Fred.
Page 129 ERIC NYLUNO MJOLNIR armor. Blood and hydrostatic gel bubbled from Kelly's wounds. "I volunteered to be the fail-safe option," she told Kelly. "In the lower levels of these caverns are enough high explosives to level the facility—in case we were ever overrun by the enemy. I'm here to make sure no one gets access to our technology."...
Page 130 HALO: FIRST STRIKE desk. She turned down the blinds that separated her office from the medical bay, but only halfway, so she could keep an eye on Kelly. "Let's have it, Kalmiya." Kelly's medical history scrolled across a display. "Here," Kalmiya said, and highlighted a surreptitious data re- quest at the end of the file.
Page 131 ERIC NYLUND seam with her forefinger along a shard of ruby to the ninety-degree angle made by a stair-step-cut emerald. "This data cluster here. Spike that and backfill with a neutralizing pulse." "Yes, Doctor." The holographic crystal shattered into a thousand glittering fragments and swirled upward into a helix.
Page 132 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "These commands were invented, refined, and then discarded and forgotten long before even the first functional dumb AI went online," Dr. Halsey told him. "I learned them when I was fifteen, working on my second doctoral thesis." "An antiquated input methodology for an obsolete human."...
Page 133 ERIC NYLUND Kalmiya would undoubtedly stress-analyze her vocal pat- terns, so she told her the truth. It was always a game of chess with smart AIs—move and countermove. It was a constant chal- lenge to earn and keep their respect. That's why she preferred their company to humans—they were so deliciously complex.
Page 134 HALO: FIRST STRIKE There was one last file in the As Dr. Halsey tapped it open, Kalmiya said, "That is only a fragment. It had been erased, but I managed to reconstruct it from trace ionization in the memory crystal." Dr.
Page 135 ERIC NYLUND This was more than a curiosity, now. Ackerson had been sit- ting on a tremendous secret—a very dangerous secret. "Just his style to play with fire and get us all burned." Additional files detailed the procurement of digging equip- ment, and a new set of blueprints and geological surveys.
Page 136 CHAPTER FOURTEEN 0901 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, ONI underground facility, planet Reach. The secure storage doors whispered open, and overhead fluo- rescent lights strobed on. Fred saw motion—but it was only his own reflection in the burnished-mirror finish of the chamber's stainless-steel walls.
Page 137 ERIC NYLUND objective. He'd leave the long-range strategies to Generals and Admirals. It was time to concentrate on what he did best. The walls hummed as thick metal bolts inside the lockers re- tracted, the sound of heavy oiled steel sliding over steel. With a final thump, the sound ceased.
Page 138 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Inside the first locker were satchel charges. Fred grabbed three and looped them over his neck. "I think we can find a use for these." Will knelt next to the second footlocker. Within were plastic boxes marked followed by a long list of serial MJOLNIR MARK V numbers.
Page 139 ERIC NYLUND magnum pistols, loaded them, and then tossed them to Kelly, along with three extra clips. "I guess you get to test these." Kelly gazed at the new weapons and gave a low whistle. Fred opened the bags with die new rifles and handed them out to his team.
Page 140 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "I've lost targets on motion sensors," Vinh whispered over the COM. "They were close, too." "Kelly, watch for camouflaged Elites." "Affirmative," she said. She scanned the room, moved to a cabinet, and grabbed a tin can marked "Let's move,"...
Page 141 ERIC NYLUND the center of its elongated forehead. Purple blood blossomed across the wall. The remaining Elites returned fire, and Kelly bounded for- ward, plasma flaring at the edge of her shield. She ducked into the side passage. The instant Kelly was out of the line of fire, Fred shouldered his rifle and squeezed the trigger.
Page 142 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the darkness. The three of them ripped open the doors at the bot- tom of the shaft. Will slid down next with Dr. Halsey holding on to his neck. Isaac followed. "There should be an air vent," Dr. Halsey whispered. "There." Kelly ripped off the vent cover and peered down.
Page 143 CHAPTER FIFTEEN 0002 hours, September 7,2552 (Military Calendar) \ ONI underground facility, planet Reach. Fred followed the trail of odd symbols along the left-hand stone wall until they twisted into a spiral mosaic and vanished into ever-smaller curls. The symbols were part of the rock, com- posed of glittering mica inclusions in the granite matrix.
Page 144 Five days. It hadn't seemed that long. They worked, they rested, they slept, and they waited. Dr. Halsey had taught them word games like twenty questions and simple cipher, at which they all became extremely proficient—so much so that she quickly stopped playing.
Page 145 ERIC NYLUND He didn't want to think about them—but he couldn't help it. Maybe it was the darkness and the constant weight of the earth around him. What if they died here? Not died fighting, but just died here. In a way, that wouldn't be so bad. Fred had faced death a dozen times, brushed so close to it he had stared it in the face until it blinked and turned away.
Page 146 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred realized that he was holding his breath. He exhaled. This new corridor was twenty meters high—large enough for a titan to stride down its length. It vanished into the distance, a straight line that gently sloped deeper into the earth. The floor was paved with asymmetric blue tiles patterned to look like waves lapping upon a shore.
Page 147 ERIC NYLUND "Careful," Fred warned them. "Filter the light. Go to black-and-white image enhancement." He got four blue acknowledgment signals, and then Fred switched to BWIM display. Funny that he hadn't thought of that for himself. Only when the safety of his team was at stake did he think clearly.
Page 148 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The corridor emptied onto a landing that overlooked the largest room Fred had ever seen. Kelly stepped onto the landing, looked, and waved them forward. They stood on one of a dozen tiered levels that encircled the room;...
Page 149 ERIC NYLUND circles and bars and triangles. If the symbols were a language, Fred stood upon a million words; he wished he'd been issued a dictionary. Dr. Halsey paused to examine the tiles as well. "If only we had the time," she muttered, and then walked toward the light gleam- ing in the center of the chamber.
Page 150 HALO: FIRST STRIKE middle of the room. There was a pedestal made of the same gold material as the symbols in the corridor, and floating above it was a fist-sized crystal, tapered to a point at either end. It spun, and the facets along its centerline folded and shifted like the pieces of a puzzle.
Page 151 ERIC NYLUNO The stone ceiling melted and peeled back as if it were thin plastic hit with a blowtorch—an angled shaft of dazzling white radiance appeared and blasted into the tiled floor, five hundred meters from their position. Then it was gone and the room fell into darkness punctured only by a ray of faint sunlight that streamed in through the hole above.
Page 152 HALO: FIRST STRIKE onto Fred with one arm, and in her free hand she clutched the crystal. Fred's motion tracker showed dozen of targets behind them, then hundreds. A pair of detonations thumped, an overpressure wave blurred his motion tracker, subsided, and then half of those contacts were gone.
Page 153 SECTION 3 RESCUE...
Page 154 CHAPTER SIXTEEN 0455 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Captured Covenant flagship, in Slipspace, location unknown. John brushed off the frost buildup that clouded the top half of the cryotube, and revealed the green-armored figure sprawled behind the plastasteel shell. SPARTAN-058.
Page 155 ERIC NYLUND John wiped away the condensation that formed over her hel-meted head. She was neither dead nor alive. She was in some twilight place in between. That uncertainty was worse than seeing her broken and burned body on Gamma Station. It felt like an open wound in John's chest.
Page 156 HALO: FIRST STRIKE sient sensor contacts that Cortana keeps picking up are anything, they'll have to cut through to get to us. "Locklear's grabbing some sack time. He needed it." The Sergeant shrugged. "He'll be fine, though; ODSTs are tough as nails.
Page 157 ERIC NYLUND replied. "We'll have a limited offensive capacity when we get to Reach, if we need it. I think." "And the rest of this ship is still functional?" "Yes," she replied. "I'm sorry, Chief ... these calculations are. . . tricky." The COM went dead.
Page 158 HALO: FIRST STRIKE had the skill and luck to survive Halo—qualities the Master Chief knew they'd need if they were ever going to get back. "Exiting Slipspace," Cortana announced, "in three ... two ... one." According to the Master Chief's mission clock, it had only been eight minutes since Cortana had told him their ETA was nineteen minutes.
Page 159 ERIC NYLUND The image resolved into patches of green, brown, and white— different from the angry black and livid orange that dominated the view of the rest of the planet. "Looks like they missed a spot," the Sergeant said. "The Covenant don't 'miss' anything when they glass a planet,"...
Page 160 HALO: FIRST STRIKE string of honorifics attached to their responses there's supposed to be someone of extreme high rank commanding this ship, someone they referred to, among other things, as the 'Guardian of the Luminous Key.' " "Damn silly name," muttered Sergeant Johnson. "Can you tell what they're doing down there, Cortana?"...
Page 161 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 1002 hours, July 14,2523 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, planet Reach, Spartan training exercise. Twenty-nine years ago. John crawled forward and peered over the edge of the rise. A lush, green valley stretched out below him. In the distance, the silvery reflections of the Big Horn River twisted through the thick forest.
Page 162 HALO: FIRST STRIKE was twenty meters, and on impact it could drop a rhino in its tracks. Twenty meters wouldn't cut it for this mission, though, so Fhajad had modified the 114mm APFSDS rounds from the sniper rifles, removed their deadly armor-piercing tips, and re- placed them with narq-dart capsules.
Page 163 He wondered if that's what her eyes looked like when she sighted through the sniper scope. She never seemed to blink; she always won in games of stare-down. "After we get the flag," he continued, "Red Team will get out of there.
Page 164 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Okay. Check your mirrors." They all pulled out the shards of mirror they had taken from Tango Company's latrine last night. They had taped the edges so they could be handled more easily, and taped their backs to re- duce the chance they'd shatter.
Page 165 ERIC NYLUND at an angle pointed at the undercarriage of the truck. His hand trembled but he forced himself to be steady. He had to. The gate guard approached the truck with a long pole and a small mirror attached at one end. He stuck the mirror under the truck and swept it along one side.
Page 166 HALO: FIRST STRIKE John and Kelly patrolled the warehouse, looking for cameras, dogs, guards, anything they'd have to remove. It was clear. Sam returned with four canteens, which he had, according to their plan, filled with battery acid from the truck. There was a click from the side door and Fhajad gave them a thumbs-up.
Page 167 ERIC NYLUND plywood. Once the acid had eaten through the porous fibers, however, the three grenades would have more than enough bang to turn that meter-square section into a million airborne splinters—shot straight up into the sleeping quarters of Tango Company.
Page 168 HALO: FIRST STRIKE holster, trying to free his weapon. John planted two narq-darts in his chest. The Corporal dropped. Two more guards rounded the corner of the warehouse, shouted, and took aim at John. He was out in the open, and there was no way his dart pistol could hit those guards from this distance.
Page 169 ERIC NYLUND At 0545 they made it to the clearing designated as their ex- traction LZ. At 0700 hours they were supposed to meet CPO Mendez. Of course, the Chief rarely let them get off this easy— so John had planned for Blue Team to be here as well... only they would remain hidden.
Page 170 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Should we just shoot him?" another man said. "No," the one leading them hissed. "Payback first." He stepped up to John and punched him in the stomach. John doubled over from the blow. The man hauled him up and patted him down. "We gotta find that damned flag or the Captain will have our asses in a sling.
Page 171 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALYX Estimated 0510 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\Aboard captured Covenant flagship, Epsilon Eridani system. Cortana only partially listened to the debate between the Master Chief and the others. The discussion was moot. She had projected the outcome as 100 percent certain that John would convince them all to go, or—failing that—that he would con- vince the Lieutenant to let him go alone to the surface to investi- gate the signal .
Page 172 HALO: FIRST STRIKE nant craft pushed debris into a concentrated region of space in a high stationary orbit over Reach's northern pole. Within that re- gion drifted the wrecked hulls of both Covenant and UNSC ships destroyed in the battle for Reach. Floating there were some of the UNSC's finest ships: the Basra, the Hannibal, and the pride of the fleet, the supercarrier Trafalgar.
Page 173 ERIC NYLUND them down, but there were transient contacts, vent shaft panels had been opened and closed, and several Engineers had gone missing. She tracked their Covenant dropship as it cleared the launch bay, entered the upper atmosphere, and drifted toward the sur- face.
Page 174 HALO: FIRST STRIKE thin. Multitasking too many jobs. This was dangerous. She couldn't react fast enough if— "Infidel!" The Covenant word blasted through her communications rou- tines and left her stunned for three cycles—just enough time for her to lose control over the ship-to-ship COM software suite. The Covenant AI transmitted a narrow-beam communica- tions burst to the nearest cruiser.
Page 175 ERIC NYLUND and then wiped the original. The Covenant AI was gone, its bits safely hacked apart and stored for future research. Provided, of course, Cortana had a future. She tracked thirteen Covenant warships. They came about and bore down on her position. Her COM channels overloaded with fanatical threats and promises of her and the captured flag- ship burning.
Page 176 HALO: FIRST STRIKE rithm. Alas, the Covenant's grasp of Maxwell's equations was ironically inferior to human technology. Cortana realized it was fortuitous she had shut down the enemy AI before it leaked her new plasma guidance system. The thought of every ship in the Covenant fleet refitted with im- proved weaponry was too terrible to calculate.
Page 177 CHAPTER NINETEEN TIME:OATE ERROR \ Estimated 0530 hours, September 23, 2552 (Military Calendar)\Aboard captured Covenant dropship, Epsilon Eridani system, en route to surface of Reach. The Master Chief stood on the deck of the Covenant dropship. He stood because the crash seats had been designed for Elites and Jackals and none of the contours fit his human backbone.
Page 178 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Locklear's trigger finger twitched, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead. "Cortana has this stuff wired tight," Sergeant Johnson whis- pered. "No worries." "I got plenty of worries here," Locklear muttered. "Man, I'd rather be in a HEV pod on fire and out of control than up here. We're sitting ducks."...
Page 179 ERIC NYLUND and flooded the display panels with the purple-blue frequency the Covenant favored. The Master Chief realized that he, too, had been holding his breath. Maybe he and Locklear were more alike than he had realized. He took a closer look at the ODST: The wild, desperate look in his eyes and the flaming-comet tattoo covering his left deltoid seemed almost alien to the Master Chief.
Page 180 HALO: FIRST STRIKE John tried not to think of this as Reach anymore—it was only one more world the Covenant had taken. "That canyon," Lieutenant Haverson said and pointed at a fis- sure where the earth had been eroded in a sinuous twisting scar. "Scanners are just picking up surface information.
Page 181 ERIC NYLUND Haverson drummed his long fingers across his chin, thinking. "Very well, Chief." "I got your six, Master Chief," Locklear said and unslung his assault rifle. The Spartan nodded to Locklear and marched down the ramp. The Chief wanted them on board the dropship for two reasons. First, if this was a trap and they were all caught out in the open, he wouldn't have time to save them and himself.
Page 182 HALO: FIRST STRIKE jogged out of the center of the ravine, both keeping their eyes on the rim of the canyon overhead. The Master Chief had plenty of questions for Anton, however. Like, why had his team split from Red Team? Where was Red Team? And why hadn't the Covenant glassed every square cen- timeter of Reach yet? "You okay, Chief?"...
Page 183 ERIC NYLUND John had never worked with the Admiral before, but his ac- complishments during the battles for New Constantinople and the Siege of the Atlas Moons were well known. Every Spartan had studied Whitcomb's record. John opened a COM channel to Lieutenant Haverson. "Move up, sir.
Page 184 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Everyone planetside was busy evacuating—which was the right thing to do—but I had to stay behind." Several emotions played across the Admiral's face: concern, amusement... and then his features settled into a firm stare as he looked into the past, recalling what happened.
Page 185 ERIC NYLUND "I see, sir," Lieutenant Haverson replied in a whisper, then glanced at his watch. "This was how many days ago?" "Got plenty of time left," the Admiral told him. "Around twenty hours." Lieutenant Haverson swallowed. "There's just one snag in that plan, though." The Admiral re- moved his hand from Haverson and his gaze settled onto the dirt floor of the cavern.
Page 186 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Sir!" Lieutenant Haverson said. "With all due respect, sir, our first priority should be to get back to Earth. The intelligence we've gathered on the Halo construct, the technology aboard the flagship we've captured ... Cortana's Slipspace calculations alone could turn the tide of this war for us."...
Page 187 CHAPTER TWENTY TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALY\Estimated 0610 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\ Aboard captured Covenant dropship, Epsilon Eridani system, en route to surface of Reach. Polaski accelerated the captured dropship to its maximum velocity—just under Mach 1. The craft arced up and joined the long convoy of Covenant ships—troop transports, scavenger drones, and Seraph fighters—as they descended from a higher orbit down to the surface.
Page 188 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Locklear hefted the fuel rod gun, grunting from the exertion. The weapon glowed an eerie green along its fuel casing. Grace relieved him of the too-heavy weapon and shouldered it with ease. "Make sure you get a handgun," the Chief told Locklear. "We'll be in close quarters underground."...
Page 189 ERIC NYLUND Cut off from the thin shreds of sunlight above, the ship went dark. The internal running lights glowed a faint blue. "We've got no room to maneuver in here," Polaski whispered. Lieutenant Haverson climbed forward. "Admiral Whitcomb, sir, I see how we can get in—assuming this hole leads somewhere—...
Page 190 HALO: FIRST STRIKE I want you back in that hole ASAP. Plug it up. We don't want to leave our back door wide open." "Aye, sir," Polaski replied. Admiral Whitcomb addressed Li. "You're our rear guard, son. Stay here and guard the ship with Polaski. Sorry." "Sir! Yes, sir,"...
Page 191 ERIC NYLUND Ahead there were silhouetted Grunts and Jackals in the dust clouds, screaming and shooting at the air, each other, anything that moved. "Keep moving," the Master Chief said. "Move while they don't know what's hit them." Anton paused and knelt next to a set of tracks dug into the tiled floor.
Page 192 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Grace sprang back, just in time. The fallen fuel rod gun sparked, sputtered, and then blew with the force of a frag grenade. Black- ened, twisted tile rained down on them. Locklear jogged up and fired at the Grants fleeing the excava- tion.
Page 193 ERIC NYLUND imagine." She turned to the Master Chief. "Or is it you I have to thank for this daring operation, John?" The Master Chief found he had no words to answer. He also bristled at her casual use of his given name... but he could for- give her that.
Page 194 HALO: FIRST STRIKE They'd be vaporized before they could get halfway to the tun- nel at their backs. A Hunter pair roared with rage; they leveled their fuel rod cannons at John and his team and, with steady aim, discharged their weapons.
Page 195 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALYX Estimated 0640 Hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\Aboard captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, periphery of Epsilon Eridani system. Ascendant Justice emerged from the non-Euclidian, non-Einsteinian realms that humans had erroneously called "Slip-space." There was neither "space" nor anything to "slip" across in the alternate dimensions.
Page 196 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She redlined the reactors, however, to recharge the Slipspace capacitors and regenerate the plasma she had expended in her brief fight with the Covenant cruisers. If she was part of a larger fleet, her desperate tactics might be valuable—flashing all her plasma away and the near-gravity Slipspace jump—but as one ship against a dozen, her effective combat lifetime using those tactics could be measured in...
Page 197 ERIC NYLUND babble were: uncovering the fragment of divinity, and illuminat- ing shard of the gods to exist the perfect moment that vanishes in the blink of an eye but lasts forever, and collecting the stars left by the giants. A literal translation was not a problem.
Page 198 HALO: FIRST STRIKE tapped into the software; it had infinite loops and dead-end code lines—things that had to be errors. Yet there were also slender crystalline translation vectors that she would never have thought of on her own. She copied those and slaved them to her dynamic lexicon.
Page 199 ERIC NYLUND the doors were being slowly opened... but not enough to reach the second set of sealed doors ahead. The opening of those doors halted. "Gotcha," she whispered. She'd keep that section of Ascendant Justice sealed until Sergeant Johnson could confirm the kills. She wouldn't let her guard down, either.
Page 200 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the origin of the copied pathways of the alien AI, and found its replication routine. This copying code was extremely convo- luted; in fact, it took up more than two thirds of the Covenant AI's processor-memory space. It was dark with functions that ran deep to the core.
Page 201 ERIC NYLUND The replication ceased, and the copying code was once again in- ert and safely stored with the dissected Covenant AI's directory. Cortana ran her entire system; nothing else had been altered. She checked the new copied system. It was intact, and, apart from a few slight errors in the software—which she immediately mended—it appeared functional.
Page 202 HALO: FIRST STRIKE These subcommuniques were orders. They originated from new ships entering the Epsilon Eridani system and were, in turn, accepted and acknowledged by those outbound. It was an automated mail system that could carry messages from the center of the Covenant Empire to the outer reaches of the galaxy.
Page 203 SECTION 4 GAMBIT...
Page 204 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALY\Estimated 0640 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, tunnel complex below surface of Reach. John tensed as he watched the thousands of Covenant crowd- ing on the galleries surround him and his team. He didn't dare move;...
Page 205 ERIC NYLUND overhead, a spiderweb of energy and projectiles. Every shot was directed at the pair of Hunters who had fired upon John and his team. The Hunter pair raised their shields in unison and ducked be- hind them—the quarter-meter-thick slabs of metal could repel almost any single weapon's fire ...
Page 206 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Dr. Halsey stuffed the alien crystal into her lab coat pocket and knelt next to Kelly. She checked her vitals on the data pad and shook her head. She looked at John, her expression grim. "She's alive ... barely. She needs help." "Let's not be rude,"...
Page 207 ERIC NYLUND climbed. There were thousands of them—on the floor, clinging to the walls, overflowing the galleries. They looked like a swarm of angry ants. The hatch sealed and the Master Chief moved forward, toward the cockpit. As he passed through the compartment, he saw Kelly.
Page 208 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Dr. Halsey inhaled sharply, and the Master Chief turned to see what had startled her. For a moment he thought the crystal she had brought with her had shattered. But it hadn't broken, not exactly. The top half of the slender shard had split along its facets and opened like a flower blossom.
Page 209 ERIC NYLUND discovered ... and they want it bad enough to let us shoot at them and not so much as spit in our direction." "Sir," the Master Chief said. "We're to rendezvous with Cor-tana and the captured flagship at oh-seven-fifteen hours. That gives us only twenty minutes, sir."...
Page 210 HALO: FIRST STRIKE conduits still aglow from the heat they carried, and clouds of metal that had been vaporized and had cooled into mists of glit- tering dust. "Cortana's been busy in our absence," Lieutenant Haverson remarked. He nodded approvingly at the carnage. The Master Chief detected flickers of light and dark from the launch bays of a Covenant carrier.
Page 211 ERIC NYLUND time, she would've designed a set of experiments with drone ships to test out her displacement-luck hypothesis. But time was something neither she nor the Master Chief had in abundance. Minutes remained until their rendezvous—and Cortana would need every millisecond to accomplish what she had to do if any of them were going to leave the Epsilon Eridani system alive.
Page 212 HALO: FIRST STRIKE undercarriage were apparently functional. Even better: The ship's topside hardpoints were intact. Cortana let a flicker of power pulse through Ascendant Jus- tice's engines, and she slowly drifted toward the Gettysburg. She paused to listen to the Covenant traffic insystem. There was eight times the chatter there had been before, with many ref- erences to the "Infidels"...
Page 213 ERIC NYLUND within the outer hull of Ascendant Justice to secure the docking points mating the two ships and adapt their power uplinks. The reason for this salvage operation, her pinpoint jump into the debris field, and the hybrid docking. . . it was all for power. Ascendant Justice's cover had been blown;...
Page 214 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She made certain her plasma turrets were fully charged; she rechecked her shaping magnetic coils; she ran a systems check on Ascendant Justice's thrusters in case something happened with her exit jump and she had to maneuver. The time was 0714.10 Military Standard.
Page 215 ERIC NYLUND dropped shields for a split second—just long enough for the tiny craft to enter—then reestablished the protective field. Cortana routed power from the Gettysburg into Ascendant Justice's Slipspace capacitors, and they began soaking up the charge. Three dozen Covenant cruisers surrounded her, their plasma turrets glowing a hellish red as they prepared to fire.
Page 216 HALO: FIRST STRIKE She probed the region with her sensors, but her range was lim- ited to a thousand kilometers as if she were in an obscuring fog. There—a contact. And another. And then a dozen more. Fourteen Covenant cruisers resolved from the blue mist. "Cortana,"...
Page 217 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE TIME:DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\Date unknown\ Aboard captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace. Now. "Cortana?" the Master Chief asked. "What's our status?" The Chief and the rest of his team scrambled out of the Cove- nant dropship. Fred carried a semiconscious Kelly out and laid her on the deck of the launch bay.
Page 218 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "We jumped," she said, examining her reflection in the arti-fact's mirrored planes. "But not to the Slipspace we know." The Master Chief's radiation counter clicked and a shrill alarm screamed through his helmet. "Secure that, Anton," he said and nodded toward the glowing stone.
Page 219 ERIC NYLUND Dr. Halsey removed her glasses, and her eyes widened. "Nor- mally, they can't. If they can fire, then logically, we're not in Slipspace. And wherever we are," she murmured, "the rules have changed." The Admiral frowned. "Cortana," he shouted. "Whatever you do, do not return—"...
Page 220 HALO: FIRST STRIKE As the blast door lowered, the Chief saw another fireball spill across their port side. Energy sprayed across the bow in a blood red borealis. Ascendant Justice's shields flickered and faded... but they held. Barely. The launch bay door touched the deck and sealed with a sub- sonic thud.
Page 221 ERIC NYLUND stepped onto the bridge, sweeping the space with his rifle. "Clear," he told them. Admiral Whitcomb and the others entered the bridge. Lieu- tenant Haverson stepped onto the raised platform and said, "Cortana, project tactical on the displays." Enemy ship positions and plasma tracks appeared on the inte- rior walls.
Page 222 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Worry creased Admiral Whitcomb's features. "That leaves just one option. Cortana, give me flank speed and heat up every weapon we have. We're going to run right over these Covenant ships. Tangled space or not, we're going to blast them right back to normal space from point-blank range."...
Page 223: Chapter Twenty-Four
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR TIME:DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\Date unknown \ Captured Covenant dropship near flagship Ascendant Justice, in anomalous Slipspace bubble. The faintly blue luminous walls of the Covenant dropship pressed in, which made John feel slightly claustrophobic. It was ironic when he stopped to think about it, because he was always inside his skintight armor.
Page 224 HALO: FIRST STRIKE years . . . as it had in them all. But with Will something special had been lost. Grace, Blue-Six, had a knack for explosives. She could shape a charge to cut through a single steel bolt with only a whisper sound, or rig a hundred thousand liters of kerosene to blow into a firestorm from hell.
Page 225 ERIC NYLUND we scavenged from the Gettysburg when we give the all-clear signal." John eased his boots onto the hull. Their magnetic soles clamped onto the metal with a satisfying click. Polaski had landed the Covenant dropship so that its mandibles cradled the hole and gave them some shelter.
Page 226 HALO: FIRST STRIKE ton, post on top of the dropship. Li, you're at three o'clock. Will at nine. I'll take the six." Blue acknowledgment lights winked on. John helped Fred and Grace set the plates in position. Grace and Fred fired up the arc welder, and pinpoints of metal liquefied beneath their tips.
Page 227 ERIC NYLUND "Incoming!" Polaski cried over the COM. John turned to the dropship and saw a third plasma projectile materialize from the folds of tangled Slipspace. This one skimmed a mere three meters over the hull—straight toward them. Will dived into the crux where the dropship met the hull. Fred and Grace hit the deck.
Page 228: Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE TIME:DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\Date Unknown\ Captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in anomalous Slipspace bubble. Admiral Whitcomb stood on the bridge of Ascendant Justice. He gripped the edges of the railing that encircled the central raised platform and watched the sea of fire on the wall displays. They were stuck in this pocket of Slipspace, trapped like an insect in amber as lines of plasma crisscrossed the region.
Page 229 ERIC NYLUNO to thirteen percent. Structural integrity rated poor. I estimate the hull will fail in no more than five minutes." "Understood," the Admiral replied. They didn't have much choice but to play the hand that they'd been dealt. The longer they stayed in this environment, the more damage the Covenant ships surrounding them incurred.
Page 230 HALO: FIRST STRIKE to the starboard hatch and eased it open. He drew his pistol and checked the passage beyond. "It's clear. Locklear, Sergeant, please give the doctor a hand with her patient." "Yes, sir," Locklear said. "Happy to sit this battle out in the es- cape pod."...
Page 231 ERIC NYLUND targets before they started firing and filling the space between us with ionizing plasma. Now? ..." Mathematical symbols raced along her length, flashing blue and indigo. "Cross-indexing similar mirrored images and extrapolating, I estimate there are currently between three and five operational ships, sir." Admiral Whitcomb gritted his teeth and concentrated.
Page 232 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Glad you concur with my calculations," the Admiral re- marked dryly. Lieutenant Haverson glanced at the Gettysburg and nodded, finally understanding. "Aye, sir. A good plan." "Admiral," the Master Chief's voice broke through in a wash of static. "Hull breach is sealed, sir." "Hang on, son,"...
Page 233 ERIC NYLUND "They'll get off the first salvo, sir," Lieutenant Haverson said. Although his voice was calm, a drop of sweat trickled down his freckled cheek. "I hope they do," the Admiral replied. "It may be the only thing that saves us." Lieutenant Haverson took a deep breath, nodding.
Page 234 HALO: FIRST STRIKE On screen he saw fire explode out the opposite side of the cruiser. The warship tilted and rolled belly-up, plasma disinte- grating the interior from stern to stem until it reached the fusion core. The ship detonated in a ball of flame. An instant later the explosion twisted and curved as the warped Slipspace field swept away all traces of the enemy ship.
Page 235 ERIC NYLUND "Sir? The nose?" Cortana paused, then reported, "Intact, sir. Most of the damage has been to the lateral—" "Bring us into direct contact with that hunk of metal, Cortana." "Aye, sir," Cortana replied. Ascendant Justice accelerated toward the broken Covenant ship, and then slowed.
Page 236 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The carrier's hull breached along a dozen rents, and atmosphere vented and fanned the red-hot metal into gold flames. The launch bays chained with explosions. "Fire all weapons, Lieutenant!" Ascendant Justice fired its remaining turrets. Plasma cut into the carrier and sliced it to the core.
Page 237 SECTION 5 MASSACRE AT ERIDANUS SECUNDUS...
Page 238 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX TIME-.DATE RECORD [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\Date unknown\ Captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in anomalous Slipspace bubble. The Master Chief woke. Consciousness, however, was a slight overestimation of his condition. His blurry vision came into focus slowly... but there was nothing to see except the interior of his visor. Amber status lights winked on.
Page 239 ERIC NYLUND tiny figure, strobing with symbolic logic code, waved to him, and when he didn't immediately respond she crossed her arms impatiently. "MRIs show no concussion, no subdural or epidural hematomas. You must have a thicker skull than I thought." "Where am I?"...
Page 240 HALO: FIRST STRIKE He paused to view all the others on that list; his first and best friend, Sam, was there ... and he hadn't even realized a dozen more had been listed as MIA. He saved the changes to the roster and closed the file. "What about Kelly and Linda?"...
Page 241 ERIC NYLUND plasma turrets require refit. And worst, Ascendant Justice's en- gines are crippled. We have less than three percent operational thrust." "Can the ship still jump to Slipspace? Are we stranded out here?" "A jump is possible," Cortana said. She shook her head the way an older sister might when her baby brother asked a naive question.
Page 242 HALO: FIRST STRIKE or later. He had, however, always thought it would be later ... and never now. The Master Chief stared at the tiny triangles, squares, dots, and bars that made up the spatial coordinates. "We've seen these before, on Cote d'Azur." "Yes.
Page 243 ERIC NYLUND his arms, and ligaments popped in his chest—but he gritted his teeth and banished the pain from his awareness. When the doors parted, the Master Chief paused, taking in the sad state of the Gettysburg's bridge. The front viewports had been blown out and recently replaced with welded plates of hull armor.
Page 244 HALO: FIRST STRIKE noticed deep circles of fatigue ringing the younger man's eyes. "To complicate matters, we can barely navigate. We've been working around the clock to restore our ships, but we'd need an engineering crew of a hundred and a space dock to get these wrecks into fighting shape."...
Page 245 ERIC NYLUND that the Covenant never found it, either. We might be able to ex- pedite repairs there." The Admiral stared thoughtfully at him. "You sure? Sure enough to bet our lives and Earth on that hunch, Chief?" The Master Chief looked again at the tiny dot on the map. It wasn't Eridanus he was thinking of.
Page 246: Chapter Twenty-Seven
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN TIME:DATE STAMP [[ERROR]] ANOMALY\Revised date estimated 0450, September 12,2552, captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace en route to Eridanus system. Dr. Halsey buzzed the door open, and the Master Chief en- tered the clean room. "You wanted to see me, Doctor?" He quickly looked the room over—taking in the adjoining surgical suites, and the strange or- ange sterile-field lamps set every meter into reflective recessions in the tiled walls.
Page 247 ERIC NYLUND speak about your report on the alien construct—Halo. I've pieced together a bit of the story based on Admiral Whitcomb's recounting of your adventures, Cortana's debriefing, and the mis- sion logs of Locklear, Johnson... and the curious partial mission log of one PFC Wallace Jenkins."...
Page 248 HALO: FIRST STRIKE plasma. Like the burst released by a Covenant plasma grenade. We don't see many cases—people usually die from the direct ef- fects of those weapons long before these secondary symptoms manifest. "Apparently, the Sergeant captured a crate of plasma grenades from the Covenant during the Siege of Paris IV He used them all—received a commendation for bravery ...
Page 249 ERIC NYLUND "And the Sergeant's nervous system is so jumbled that the Flood couldn't force a match?" "Correct," she said. "Further blood tests show his system bearing traces of Flood DNA—very much dead and noninfec-tious, but some gene fragments are intact. I believe this is proof of a failed attempt to possess him.
Page 250 HALO: FIRST STRIKE able to find a countermeasure for the Flood. Maybe. They would have a slightly better chance, however, if you give them the sec- ond report." "Then I'll give them the second report." He picked up the crystal. "Which will murder Sergeant Johnson,"...
Page 251 ERIC NYLUND "Done," Cortana said. The irritation at having been silenced for the last five minutes was like barbed wire in her voice. "What precisely was all that about? Teach the Master Chief a lesson? Giving him a choice? Save one man instead of billions?" Dr.
Page 252 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Do you have any data from your subsequent gravity-influenced translation to correlate?" There was a two-second pause, and then Cortana finally an- swered, "Yes, Doctor. There are no temporal displacements on those later jumps." "As I suspected." Dr. Halsey tapped her finger on her lower lip as she thought.
Page 253 ERIC NYLUND "Aye, Doctor." Linda's medical data winked on a display along with the entire Spartan roster: a long list of every Spartan's current operational status. Only a handful was left, almost every one of them listed as W or M OUNDED IN CTION ISSING IN...
Page 254: Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 1930 hours, September 12,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\Captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace en route to Eridanus system. Black space churned with pinpricks of light; it split, and the Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice appeared in the Eridanus system. The Master Chief stood on the Gettysburg's bridge. He'd wanted to be on the medical deck when Dr.
Page 255 ERIC NYLUND The Master Chief stared at the three large monitors that had replaced the bridge's observation windows. Eridanus blazed in the center of one display; stars shone with a steady brilliance. "Move us one-point-five astronomical units relative to the sun," he said.
Page 256 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "No, sir," the Master Chief finally replied. "There were enemy casualties. And we had to blow their cargo bay to escape." "So," the Admiral said, tapping his fingers on the arm of the Captain's chair, "they're not going to be happy to see a UNSC ship knocking on their front door?"...
Page 257 ERIC NYLUND One of his closest teammates, his friend, someone he had thought dead... was alive again. "Thank you, Doctor Halsey," he said. She waved her hand dismissively, and there was a strange look in her eyes—almost as if she had regretted the success of her operation.
Page 258 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Lieutenant Haverson," the Admiral barked, "open a channel on the D-band. It's time we introduced ourselves." "Aye, sir. Frequency matched and channel open." The Admiral stood. "This is the UNSC frigate Gettysburg" he barked, his voice full of authority and colored with his Texas ac- cent.
Page 259 ERIC NYLUND "No weapons," the Admiral said and stared at the blocky ge- ometry of the black ship. "That's all I need to know." "Their 'fleet,' " Fred interjected, "is deploying and taking up positions around us in a wide arc. Classic formation. They'll flank us."...
Page 260 HALO: FIRST STRIKE the long arm of Imperial Earth and Covenant intrusions." Some- one off camera handed Jiles a data pad with a radar silhouette of Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice; numbers and symbols crawled alongside the picture. He hesitated and crinkled his nose, ap- pearing confused at the odd configuration of mated craft.
Page 261 ERIC NYLUND Mister Jiles." He turned to Cortana. "If we're not back in thirty minutes, blast them all to hell." The Master Chief linked mission telemetry with Cortana as Jiles's men met them in the landing bay—six men dressed in black coveralls with old MA3 rifles slung over their shoulders.
Page 262 HALO: FIRST STRIKE traitor Colonel Watts. Yet Jiles's guards glared at John as if they knew everything. As the Master Chief stepped into the corridor, Cortana in- formed him: "This passage is from a UNSC cargo vessel, ripped out and reinforced with a bulkhead every ten meters. Airtight and tough.
Page 263 ERIC NYLUND skirt, and Jiles gently slid the chair under her. He offered her a plate of plump strawberries, which she graciously declined. Haverson took one of the strawberries, however, and bit into it. "Delicious," he remarked. Jiles inclined his head. "Our hydroponics facility—" "With respect, Governor, there's no time for chitchat,"...
Page 264 HALO: FIRST STRIKE a sip, and nodded appreciatively. "Now, assuming you manage to outwit our ship's AI—which I very much doubt—and assum- ing further you somehow disable our ship's weapons before our AI blows your base to atoms—which I also doubt—then you'll have a Covenant fleet to contend with.
Page 265 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 2000 hours, September 12,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\Aboard hybrid vessel Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice, station-keeping in Eridanus system. Admiral Whitcomb, the Master Chief, Fred, and Lieutenant Haverson bounded off the elevator and onto the bridge of the Gettysburg. Cortana's image nickered on the holographic pad near the star map.
Page 266 HALO: FIRST STRIKE came to life. The Chief scrutinized the Gettysburg's weapons inventory. Governor Jiles appeared on the number three forward display, his face placid except his lips, which pressed together so tightly that they were only a thin white line of concentration. "Governor,"...
Page 267 ERIC NYLUND "Analyzing now," Cortana replied. "Plasma turret offline. Stand by, sir." "I can move my fleet to engage the enemy," Jiles said uncertainly. Admiral Whitcomb surveyed the forward screens: Jiles, the approaching Covenant cruiser, and the asteroid field full of rocks floating on invisible currents.
Page 268 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The ship slowly angled toward the center of the large asteroid and backed away. "Cortana?" the Admiral asked. "Do we have a weapons turret or not?" "Yes, sir," Cortana said, "but the turret's magnetic coils that shape and aim the plasma charge have overloaded." The Admiral inhaled and sighed explosively.
Page 269 ERIC NYLUNO of his mustache. "We wouldn't be able to outrun that Covenant cruiser even if we had full power. Our only chance is to take them out before they take us out. Launch those Clarion spy drones, Chief. Target the region abeam that planetoid—so we can see around the corner."...
Page 270 HALO: FIRST STRIKE tip; streamers looped upon themselves like tiny solar flares, vi- brated, intensified to orange and then blue-white. "Almost there," Cortana cried. "Hang on." The ball of squeezed plasma imploded. It instantly boiled away a thirty-meter section of armor and hull from Ascendant Justice;...
Page 271 ERIC NYLUND sword singleships, and the odd stealth Chirvptera-class vessel appeared on screen. "Jiles's fleet," Haverson stated. "And he has us exactly where he wants us—dead in the water." "Incoming transmission," Cortana said. "Piping it through." "Admiral Whitcomb?" Jiles's rich and resonant voice flooded the bridge.
Page 272 HALO: FIRST STRIKE with her team. She sat cross-legged before a disassembled SRS99C sniper rifle and selected gyro compensators, optics, and adaptive texture barrel sheaths. Linda proceeded to re- assemble the precision-made weapon with the care of a loving mother caressing her newborn child. Without looking up from her rifle she said, "Now I know what you have to do to get a couple of days' R-and-R in this outfit."...
Page 273 ERIC NYLUND "Master Chief," the Sergeant said. "Reporting as you requested." John nodded and lowered his gun, as did the other Spartans. "Come in, Marines." As he holstered his weapon, John's hand brushed against the belt compartment that held Dr. Halsey's data crystals. He hadn't decided which to give to Lieutenant Haverson.
Page 274 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "No," the Chief quietly said. "They can't win. They'll try. But the Covenant will eventually take down one of the orbital MACs, slip through, and pick off the ground-based generators. Just like on Reach." Fred visibly flinched. Locklear twisted the red bandanna he had tied on his biceps.
Page 275 ERIC NYLUND trate, kill, and blow shit up. If there's room in this operation for an ODST, pencil me in." The Master Chief looked to the data pad, then to his team, Locklear, and the Sergeant. They were right: For the first time, they'd know when and where the Covenant would be.
Page 276 CHAPTER THIRTY 0440 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\Aboard hybrid vessel Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg, station-keeping in Eridanus system. Time was running out. Dr. Halsey could feel the Covenant nearly upon them and her window of opportunity shrinking to a pinpoint. Only a few more things to take care of before she could go—before she started something she couldn't stop.
Page 277 ERIC NYLUND Dr. Halsey removed a cloth covering a pair of injectors. She clicked them into the ports on Kelly's MJOLNIR armor ports that threaded directly into her subclavian and femoral veins. "Keep doing your physical therapy, and the dermacortic steroids will remove most of the scarring and restore your full mobility within another week,"...
Page 278 HALO: FIRST STRIKE He smoothed his hand over his shaved head. "I'm kind of busy right now, so if this can wait—" "Whatever you're doing," Dr. Halsey told him, "this is more important." She nodded to Kelly's prone form. "I need your help getting SPARTAN-087 to the launch bay."...
Page 279 ERIC NYLUND getting it back to ONI Section Three—even if he had to gamble that the Covenant might get it." Locklear snorted. "Well, as much as I don't like El-Tee White-bread, I'd hand it over if ordered, too. What's the big deal, anyway? We're almost home."...
Page 280 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The hatch parted with a hiss. She smiled. "Not even Cortana could crack their crypto, in- deed." She waved Locklear inside. Locklear obliged her and pushed the gurney into the ship. Dr. Halsey followed, secured the examination table, and escorted Locklear outside.
Page 281 ERIC NYLUND NAV station. She crossed her arms over her chest much as he had, and minute red symbols raced over her glowing lavender skin. "Status is nearly identical to my last report five minutes ago, Admiral. Tests on Ascendant Justice's reactor and the Get- tysburg's engines are in synch, and will be completed in forty minutes."...
Page 282 HALO: FIRST STRIKE my personal property when I have showed nothing but good faith in this—" "Hold on to your shirttail, Governor," Admiral Whitcomb snapped. "I'm in the middle of finding out who took your ship and what precisely is going on. Cortana, any response to our hail?"...
Page 283 ERIC NYLUND empty star field, and the frozen video of Dr. Halsey and Locklear in the launch bay. "I want Corporal Locklear on the bridge ten minutes ago. Lieutenant Haverson, have Cortana locate him. Then I want you personally to escort that ODST up here." Haverson swallowed.
Page 284 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The Admiral watched as Jiles's fleet of single ships and tech- nicians in jet packs abandoned the Gettysburg, swarming across the dark of space back to the safety of their asteroid. "Rats leaving a sinking ship?" he wondered aloud. The Master Chief wasn't sure if that was a question directed at him, but he decided to reply anyway.
Page 285 ERIC NYLUND fighting was over, Travis and his men were dead, but it cost the enemy six hundred lives." "Like the Battle of Thermopylae," the Chief remarked. "But there were survivors at the Alamo; they let the civilians live." He turned to the Chief. "You think anyone's going to sur- vive this fight? You think there's any way to win?"...
Page 286 HALO: FIRST STRIKE is also too damned clear. Even if we stay and fight... they'll all bejustasdead." "Capacitors at foil charge," Cortana announced. "Preparing to enter Slipspace. Waiting for your order, sir." The Master Chief saw the energy from Ascendant Justice's re- actor drain to 5 percent.
Page 287 ERIC NYLUND hasn't been trying to kill me off, though." Locklear turned to the robotic dolly. "Right, amigo?" Its treads spun, and the flatbed dolly turned to the right. "No, no, stop." He sighed. "Man, I gotta buy myself a ticket out of this outfit.
Page 288 HALO: FIRST STRIKE pinpricks of stretched space, the first indication of a Slip-space jump. "I'm not going through another Slipspace fight," Locklear said through gritted teeth. "I'm not going to let them follow us. Or let this thing shoot off a signal flare to every Covenant ship in the galaxy."...
Page 289 SECTION 6 OPERATION: FIRST STRIKE...
Page 290 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 0510 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar) \ Aboard hybrid vessel Gettysburg-Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace. The Master Chief and his team, which now consisted of Grace, Linda, Will, and Fred, had been ordered to report to the Officers' Club—normally forbidden territory to NCOs. Of course, nothing about their circumstances had been normal for a long, long time.
Page 291 ERIC NYLUND "I just wanted to see who was left on board and alive." He looked past the open doors to the Officers' Club. "Lieutenant Haverson will join us shortly. He's investigating the site of Corporal Lock-lear's... accident." A holographic projector pad upon the bar flickered to life, and Cortana's slender body appeared.
Page 292 HALO: FIRST STRIKE an alternative explanation. The timing between that explosion and the radiation flare was only forty-seven milliseconds. Since the crystal had unusual space- and time-bending properties, the missing fragments may have been 'squeezed' out of the ship and into Slipspace."...
Page 293 ERIC NYLUND The Master Chief outlined his mission plan, how he and his team would take a Covenant dropship and insert into the ren- dezvous location for the invading Covenant fleet. They would then infiltrate their command-and-control center, the Unyielding Hierophant, and destroy it;...
Page 294 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Admiral Whitcomb narrowed his eyes and reexamined the Lieutenant as if seeing him for the first time. "You'd never survive the Slipspace transition," Cortana told him. "But..." She tapped her lip with her forefinger, deep in thought. "There might be another way." Covenant icons entered the stream of symbols flowing along the surface of her holographic body.
Page 295 ERIC NYLUND The Master Chief parked the groaning overloaded robotic dolly next to the side hatch of the Covenant dropship. The dolly held four tons of carbon-molybdenum steel I-beams. Will unloaded the cargo and hauled it inside, where Fred and the Sergeant cross-braced and welded the beams in place.
Page 296 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Fred emerged from inside, and Linda handed him an armful of submachine guns. The Master Chief detected a slight limp to her stride and an almost imperceptible awkwardness to her usual fluid motions. He opened a private COM channel to Linda. "What's your sta- tus? Are you fit?"...
Page 297 ERIC NYLUND Haverson looked up and slicked the sweat-drenched hair from his face. "What can I do for you, Chief?" The Master Chief eased into the copilot's seat. "Dr. Halsey gave me something to pass on to ONI Section Three: her analysis on the Flood."...
Page 298 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Allow me, Sergeant." John grasped the two-hundred-kilogram machine and lifted it with one hand. The Master Chief exited the dropship, and he and the other Spartans assembled outside. He stowed the arc welder and took his position at the head of the Spartan formation. Admiral Whitcomb looked them over once and then said, "I'd wish you luck, Master Chief, but you Spartans seem to make your own luck.
Page 299 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 0530 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\Aboard captured Covenant dropship, in Slipspace. The dropship rolled, inverted, and spun out of control. It tum- bled and pitched, and one of the I-beams solidly welded to the hull bucked and snapped. The Spartans of Blue Team were strapped to the hull in quick-release harnesses.
Page 300 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "You know those SS probes?" Fred asked. "They're almost solid Titanium-A." The Master Chief checked his team's biosigns: erratic but still within normal operational parameters. Grace's heart skipped a beat or two, but then returned to a normal strong rhythm. No broken bones or signs of internal bleeding yet, either.
Page 301 ERIC NYLUND "Affirmative," the cloned Cortana answered. "I'm picking up a tremendous volume of Covenant COM traffic on the F- through K-bands. They've pinged us three times already for a response, Chief. Awaiting orders." "How can you pick up any signal inside this lead-lined hull?" "The hull is breached in many sections, Chief.
Page 302 HALO: FIRST STRIKE edge of the hatch, and his arms failed to respond. Five hundred ships? There was more firepower here than he had ever seen be- fore. This fleet would easily overwhelm any UNSC defensive force—whether or not the Admiral got through with his warning. Their opening salvo would be a tidal wave of plasma, and it would obliterate Earth's orbital fortresses before they could fire a shot.
Page 303 ERIC NYLUND and titanium plates underneath showed through. Without their reinforcements, the craft would have disintegrated on the rough ride through Slipspace. "Covenant C & C responding to our request," the copied Cor-tana informed him. "Ferry en route to take us in for repairs. They were a little confused about which warship we belong to, but I simulated static to cover our ship's registration ID.
Page 304 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The Chief grabbed a battle rifle and, for close use, a pair of submachine guns. He took a pair of silencers for the SMGs and hip holsters for the smaller weapons. He picked up a dozen frag grenades in their plastic ring carrier and slotted that into the left thigh section of his armor.
Page 305 ERIC NYLUND The tug turned to face a new ship in the distance. This vessel looked like two teardrop-shaped Covenant ships that had collided, giving the result an overall elongated figure-eight geometry. They moved toward this ship, and the Master Chief made out more details.
Page 306 HALO: FIRST STRIKE have to face it head-on. There was nowhere to hide inside the re- inforced and too-cramped interior of their dropship. The port hatch cracked and squeaked open. Linda and John aimed their rifles.
Page 307 CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 0610 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar) \ Aboard Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. A rubbery tentacle reached in along the seam of the drop-ship's hatch. John raised his hand and signaled Linda to stand down. He recognized the alien limb—the splitting cilia feelers and globu- lar sensory organs could belong only to a Covenant Engineer.
Page 308 HALO: FIRST STRIKE Five seconds later acknowledgment lights from Blue Four and Three winked on. It was safe for the rest of them. John grabbed the upper lip of the hatchway and flipped up onto the top of the dropship. He grabbed a dangling cord and pulled himself onto the latticework deck where Fred and Linda perched, watching and making sure the bay was clear.
Page 309 ERIC NYLUND He used both hands to point at Fred and Linda, turned his hands so they pointed to himself, and then nodded to the data terminal. Linda lay flat and slithered to the edge of the alcove shadows on his right; Fred took the left. They would cover him while he moved to the terminal.
Page 310 HALO: FIRST STRIKE you?" he asked. "It would be handy to have you monitor the Covenant security systems." The duplicate Cortana was silent a full three seconds. "There is a way," she finally replied. "When I was copied from the origi- nal Cortana, the duplicating software was copied as well—it becomes an inseparable part of all subsequent copies.
Page 311 ERIC NYLUND According to John's mission timer they had followed this route for eleven hours—when it dead-ended. "New welds," Fred said, running his gauntlet over the seams in the alloy plate blocking their path. Cortana broke in over the COM, "It must be a repair not logged into the station manifest."...
Page 312 HALO: FIRST STRIKE group of Jackals passed the mouth of the alley only five meters from his position. He ducked ... and none of the vulturelike creatures saw him in the dark. When they passed he looked up and saw that the fiber-optic probe had not been broken after all.
Page 313 ERIC NYLUND "Do it," John said. "Let me know when you're in position and ready." Linda retrieved a padded grappling hook and rope from her pack, twirled it, and tossed it up and over the adjacent roof. She tugged it once, it caught, and then she quickly ascended. The remaining Spartans joined John in the shadows.
Page 314 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "There are dozens of reports on the security channels. I've got them covered." Another Cortana voice broke in over the first: "Also be ad- vised, Chief, that there are ceremonial guards in this temple—a race we have not encountered before. Roughly translated from Covenant dialects, they are called 'Brutes.' They shouldn't be a significant threat or they would have been used in previous mili- tary situations."...
Page 315 ERIC NYLUND Even with his MJOLNIR armor, John was not as strong as the alien. It pounded on him with bare fists—broke through his shield- ing, grabbed his neck, and squeezed. Red flashes played across John's vision. He began to black out.
Page 316 CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 1751 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\Aboard Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. John struggled and tried to pry the hands from his throat. The tendons in the Brute's forearms were solid bands of steel—and the creature was so determined to rip John's head off that a full clip from a rifle into its chest hadn't even slowed it down.
Page 317 ERIC NYLUNO and legs, torque and your center of mass ... and most impor- tantly your mind. He pulled his knees to his chest, and tucked his torso toward his pelvis at the same time. He twisted ninety degrees and shot out both legs and arms, and uncoiled his body.
Page 318 HALO: FIRST STRIKE The instant he did this, two Brutes wheeled from their cover on either side of the entrance archway. They held rifles with large-caliber muzzles and padded stocks, fixed with razor-edged blades. One of the Brutes saw John, aimed, and fired. John darted back behind the basalt pillar;...
Page 319 ERIC NYLUND fire. The temple opening and Brutes vanished, replaced by a cloud of dust and a cascade of stones that fell from the ceiling. One gray arm remained exposed under the rubble, still flexing. John moved up. The entrance was sealed. They were safe for a few seconds.
Page 320 HALO: FIRST STRIKE by side, but John had to crouch and turn sideways to pass. Will and Fred followed; Cortana sealed the door behind them. They continued until the narrow passage turned ninety de- grees and dropped straight down. Will attached a rope and they rappelled down a hundred meters, landing on a platform.
Page 321 ERIC NYLUND The light from the reactors shifted; blue plasma tinged white and spread like a poison through the interconnecting conduits. "Overload commencing," the copy of Cortana announced. "I suggest Blue Team move at top speed to the exit." A NAV triangle indicated a ladder that ran to the catwalk overhead.
Page 322 HALO: FIRST STRIKE John turned toward the far end of the great room and spotted a band of translucent material on the far wall. It led to the repair bays and air locks beyond. That was their exit. He glanced at his mission timer: 8:42. They'd have to get there fast.
Page 323 ERIC NYLUND John, Fred, and Will raised their rifles. There was a muted crack of a sniper rifle, and another Ban- shee drifted to the ground, its pilot felled by Linda's uncanny skill. The last remaining pilot veered starboard, not knowing what had just taken out its two wingmates ...
Page 324 HALO: FIRST STRIKE repair bays. John settled his Banshee next to theirs, turned his backpack around, reached in, and tossed Fred his last Lotus anti- tank mine. "Get that on the window and set for a remote trigger." He then risked an open COM channel to the copy of Cortana in the station's system.
Page 325 CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 1820 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\Aboard Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. The Master Chief accelerated his Banshee to its top speed. There was another explosion at the temple, and plumes of steam geysered into the air from the heat-exchange plant. The circling formations of Banshees scattered.
Page 326 HALO: FIRST STRIKE impacted a water tower, and the structure detonated into a cloud of blinding steam. John punched the Banshee through the cloud, glanced down, and saw a Wraith tank tracking his trajectory. He ducked and weaved but kept moving toward Linda's probable location. His mission countdown timer read 7:06.
Page 327 ERIC NYLUND slowed them down—but there was no other way to fit two people on the craft. "Coming in hot," John said over the COM to Fred and Will. "Open the door and get ready for a quick exit, Blue Team." Fred's acknowledgment light winked on.
Page 328 HALO: FIRST STRIKE every twenty meters along the bay walls, the air lock doors were opening. Beyond, stars shone upon velvet black. Fred and Will's Banshees appeared off John's starboard ca- nard. John pointed and together they dived, accelerating toward a bull's-eye pattern of cracks on the translucent portion of the wall.
Page 329 ERIC NYLUND John spotted a dropship drifting a kilometer ahead, dead in space. He clicked his COM once and dropped a NAV marker onto a Covenant craft. Fred and Will's acknowledgment lights winked on. John pulsed the Banshee's engines once and let its inertia carry them to the dropship.
Page 330 HALO: FIRST STRIKE "Communiques and queries to and from every ship in the fleet wondering what the hell is going on. And the station's COM channels are all full of those copied Cortanas ... and she's just repeating different system error codes." "What's this?"...
Page 331 ERIC NYLUND "Perfect, Master Chief. Bring 'em on back to the barn. Stay on your heading. Your instincts are dead on. We're on the far side of the moon and are waiting for you." John motioned to Linda to increase their velocity. She pushed the acceleration stripe to three quarters power.
Page 332 CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 1825 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar)\Aboard UNSC vessel Gettysburg, near Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant. The Master Chief and Blue Team stepped off the lift and onto the bridge of the Gettysburg. "Sir—" John started to salute Admiral Whitcomb, but neither the Admiral nor Lieutenant Haverson was there.
Page 333 ERIC NYLUND hull was breached in a dozen places, its skeletal frame exposed, and only a handful of plasma conduits flickered with life. "I don't understand," the Chief said. He stepped closer to Cortana's hologram. Being near the real Cortana—not one of her fragmented copies—reassured him that everything was un- der control.
Page 334 HALO: FIRST STRIKE sending this image to every ship in the system and letting them know it's theirs for the taking ... if they dare to board this ship and face Earth's best warriors." He laughed. "I think that'll ap- peal to those Elites and their overinflated sense of honor."...
Page 335 ERIC NYLUND son groggily got to his feet as well, his arm held at an odd angle, broken. "Systemwide transmission," Admiral Whitcomb barked to Haverson. "Aye, sir," Haverson said and clumsily adjusted the COM. "Come on, mighty Covenant warriors," the Admiral shouted. "We're here in the middle of your fleet with your 'holy of holies.' "...
Page 336 HALO: FIRST STRIKE afraid. Just a few good soldiers fighting for what's right made the difference." "Yes, sir." John remembered all those who had made a difference for him. Sam. James. CPO Mendez. Captain Keyes. The men and women who had fought and died on Halo. And now two more names to add to that list: Whitcomb and Haverson.
Page 337 ERIC NYLUND "Aye, Chief," Will said. "Thrusters responding." The side viewscreens showed a hailstorm of molten metal streaking toward the drone's cameras—then their view was obscured by the black- and silver-pockmarked surface of the tiny moon. "Cortana, is the Gettysburg ready to jump?" the Chief asked. "Slipspace capacitors charged, Master Chief.
Page 338 HALO: FIRST STRIKE additional copying that caused its breakdown, but that copy did have some of my core personality programming as well. I just hope it's not a sign of.. . some other instability." Cortana had been on edge. She had been so distracted at times she hadn't known the correct time.
Page 339 ERIC NYLUND from all threats, and they had fulfilled their duty as few ever could. And like his Spartans who were "missing in action," the Admiral and the Lieutenant would never die, either. Not because of a technicality in a mission status listing, but because in their deaths they would live on as inspirations.
Page 340 HALO: FIRST STRIKE That was the point, wasn't it? He couldn't know the future. He had to do what he could to save every person. Today. Now. So he decided. He tightened his fist around the crystal with the complete mis- sion data and crushed it to dust.
Page 341 SECTION VII HARBINGER...
Page 342 EPILOGUE Ninth Age of Reclamation, Step of Silence \ Covenant Holy City "High Charity," Sanctum of the Hierarchs. A hundred thousand probes darted and scanned with winking electronic eyes across the void of tangled nonspaces enveloping the Covenant inner empire. They gathered data and emerged into the cold vacuum, where they were recovered by the hundreds of supercarriers and cruisers in station-keeping positions around the massive, bulbous planetoid that dominated the heavens.
Page 343 ERIC NYLUND and respiratory apparatus that extended like insect antennae. Only its snout and dark eyes protruded. . . as did tiny claws from the sleeve of its gold underrobes. The left claw twitched—the signal for the chamber's doors to open. The doors groaned and split apart, and a crack of light appeared.
Page 344 HALO: FIRST STRIKE its head even lower. "Many were lost in the void. This is all there was to find." "A pity." The orb's lid screwed itself back on, and then the container gently drifted into the Prophet's grasp. "It may yet be enough for our purposes... and one more relic from the Great Ones, as precious as they are, will soon make no difference to us."...

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Summary of Contents for Halo First Strike Games

Page 223: Chapter Twenty-Four

Page 228: Chapter Twenty-Five

Page 246: Chapter Twenty-Seven

Page 254: Chapter Twenty-Eight