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  “When the Covenant slipped onto the surface of Reach with their tactical forces and took out the orbital-gun generators—that was the end. Well, I saw only the start of the end. They glassed the planet, starting with the poles.”

  Wagner, who’d two years ago had a third of his body burned by Covenant plasma and not once screamed or shed a tear, paused and blinked away the moisture blurring his vision. “I trained at the Naval Academy on Reach, sir. It was the closest thing I had to a home in the colonies.”

  Hood nodded sympathetically.

  Ackerson snorted. He pushed away from the table, got up, and moved to Wagner’s side. “Save the sentimentality, Lieutenant. You say they glassed Reach. Everything?”

  Wagner detected anticipation in the Colonel’s tone—as if he wanted the Covenant to have destroyed Reach.

  “Sir,” Wagner replied. “Before I jumped to Slipspace, I witnessed the poles destroyed, and a significant portion of the planet’s surface was on fire.”

  Ackerson nodded, seemingly satisfied with this answer. “So everyone on Reach is gone, then. Vice Admiral Whitcomb. Doctor Halsey, too.” He nodded and added, “Such a tremendous waste.” There was no sympathy in his voice.

  “I could only speculate, sir.”

  “No need,” Ackerson muttered. He returned to his seat.

  Strauss sighed. “At least we have your special weapons programs, Ackerson. Halsey’s SPARTAN-IIs were such a great suc—”

  Ackerson shot the General a look that could have blasted through battle plate.

  The General halted midsentence and snapped his mouth closed.

  Wagner stood absolutely still and stared straight ahead, pretending he hadn’t seen such a gross breach of military protocol. A General knuckling under to a junior officer? Something extraordinary had just been revealed—there was some kind of backup plan on a par with the SPARTAN program, and Ackerson was behind it. The Colonel suddenly had a lot of juice.

  Wagner continued to feign ignorance—and no matter what, he didn’t meet Colonel Ackerson’s gaze. If Ackerson suspected that he’d caught on, the bastard would have him erased to prevent his secret from getting back to Section Three.

  After what seemed a century of uncomfortable silence, Admiral Hood cleared his throat. “The Pillar of Autumn, Lieutenant Wagner. Was that ship destroyed? Or did she jump? There is no mention in your report.”

  “She jumped, sir. Telemetry indicates the Autumn was pursued by a number of enemy ships, however, so her fate can only be speculated upon. I did not mention the Pillar of Autumn in my report, as that ship is on Section Three’s Secure List.”

  “Good.” Hood closed his eyes. “Then there is, at least, some hope.”

  Ackerson shook his head. “With all due respect to my predecessor, Doctor Halsey, the special weapons package on the Pillar hasn’t got a chance in hell of accomplishing its mission. You might as well have shot every one of them in the head and gotten it over with.”

  “That will be enough, Ackerson,” Hood said and glowered at him. “Quite enough.”

  “Sir,” Wagner ventured. “The Colonel may be correct…at least in his mission assessment. Our agent on the Pillar of Autumn signaled us before the end. He regrettably reported that a significant number of Spartans went groundside to defend Reach’s orbital guns.”

  “Then they’re dead,” Ackerson said. “Halsey’s freaks have finally lost their luster of invincibility.”

  Admiral Hood set his jaw. “Doctor Halsey,” he said slowly and with deliberate control, “and her Spartans deserve the utmost respect, Colonel.” He turned to face him, but Hood stared through Ackerson. “And if you wish to keep your newly acquired position on the Security Council, you will show them that respect, or I will personally kick you from here to Melbourne.”

  “I merely—” Ackerson said.

  “Those ‘freaks,’” Hood said over his protest, “have more confirmed kills than any three divisions of ODSTs and have garnered every major citation the UNSC awards. Those ‘freaks’ have personally saved my life twice, as well as the lives of most of the senior staff here at HighCom. Keep your bigotry in check, Colonel. Do you understand?”

  “My apologies,” Ackerson muttered.

  “I asked you a direct question,” Admiral Hood barked.

  “Sir,” Ackerson said. “I understand completely, Admiral. It will not happen again.” His face burned bright red.

  Wagner, however, didn’t think this was the color of shame. It was anger.

  “The Spartans,” Hood whispered. “Doctor Halsey. Whitcomb. We lost too many good people on Reach. Not to mention dozens of ships.” He pursed his lips into a razor-thin line.

  “We should send a small recon force to see what’s left,” General Strauss suggested.

  “Not wise, sir,” Ackerson replied. “We must pull back and reinforce what’s left of the Inner Colonies and Earth. The new orbital platforms won’t be online for another ten days. Until then, our defense posture will be far too weak. We’ll need every ship we’ve got.”

  “Hmm,” Admiral Hood said. He placed both thumbs under his chin as he considered both positions.

  “Sir,” Wagner said. “There is one additional item not covered in my report. It didn’t seem exceptionally important at the time, but if you’re debating a recon mission, I thought it might be pertinent.”

  “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 nothing could ever survive on its surface.”

  “I’m painfully aware of Covenant bombardment doctrine, Lieutenant,” Hood growled. “What of it?”

  “As I indicated, they started at the poles, but took in only a few ships. They were spread thin along the equatorial latitudes, and no additional ships were inbound. In fact, a large number of Covenant ships abandoned the system, in pursuit of the Pillar of Autumn.”

  Ackerson waved his hand dismissively. “Reach is glassed, Lieutenant. If you had stayed to watch the whole show, they would have burned you down, too.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wagner replied. “If, however, there is a recon mission, I would like to volunteer for the duty.”

  Ackerson got up and strode to Wagner. He stood a centimeter from his face, and their eyes locked. Ackerson’s gaze was full of poison. Wagner did his best not to recoil, but he couldn’t help it. One look and he knew this man wanted him dead—for whatever reason: that he had heard of Ackerson’s alternative program to the SPARTAN-IIs, that he didn’t want trouble over Reach…or maybe, as Lysithea had warned him, that he was just looking for someone’s head to impale on a pike.

  “Are you deaf, Lieutenant?” Ackerson asked with mock concern. “Some kind of hearing loss due to combat action?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, when you push the limits of Slipspace in those little Prowlers, you risk all kinds of radiation damage. Or maybe the trauma of seeing Reach destroyed shook you. Whatever your problem, when you leave here you are to visit the infirmary. They are to give you a clean bill of health before you return to active duty.” He shrugged. “There must be something wrong with you, Lieutenant, because you do not seem to understand me even though my words are crystal clear.”

  “Sir.”

  “Let’s try this, then. We are not wasting a single UNSC ship to 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. Dead. Dead.”

  Section II

  Defense of Castle Base

  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 hundred 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.

  Fred’s Banshee skimmed over the treetops, down the mountainside. He pushed the craft to its maximum speed. Kelly followed, and they swooped into a valley and up onto the zigzagging ridgeline where Joshua had first spotted the Covenant invasion force.

  He put aside thoughts of his fallen comrade. He had to focus on keeping his remaining team members alive.

  Fred called up the mapping system on his heads-up display. A blue NAV marker, nestled in the crux of topological lines, identified their fallback position: ONI Section Three’s secure-and-secret research facility buried under Menachite Mountain. Two decades ago it had been a titanium mine, and then the abandoned tunnels were used as storage until Section Three had taken over the mountain for their own purposes.

  “We’ll need to find a safe route through—”

  A hail of purple-white crystalline shards hissed through the air, arcing up from the forest beneath them. Each shard looked like the projectile fired by a Covenant needler—but far larger. The shard that slashed past Fred’s cockpit was the size of his forearm.

  Kelly dodged one projectile, which exploded in midair. Needlelike fragments bounced from the Banshee’s fuselage.

  One tiny secondary fragment impaled Fred’s Banshee and detonated. The port canard of his flier deformed from the explosion, and the craft wobbled.

  “Down!” he shouted, but Kelly was already a dozen meters below him and plummeting to a distant dry riverbed. He followed, trailing smoke.

  Fred confirmed his position and guided his wounded Banshee onto a course that followed the flash-dried riverbed below. The path wound through the forest and sinewed close to Menachite Mountain. With luck, they could ditch the Banshees and make a short run to the ONI facility.

  Overhead, a tangerine borealis pulsed from the north. Sheets of silver crackled across the sky, and the black clouds boiled, lit by the raging fires beneath them. They piled into thunderheads and spat lightning.

  The massive warships that had been overhead moments ago accelerated back into the upper atmosphere. Their engines screamed and left blistering wakes across the swollen sky.

  For a split second panic seized Fred’s throat. Then his training kicked in and his mind turned cold and metallic, and filtered through every fact he had on Covenant plasma bombardments. He had to think or die.

  So he thought.

  Something didn’t fit. Covenant plasma bombardment had always proceeded in an orderly crisscrossing pattern across the planet until everything on its surface was glass and cinder. The ships above hadn’t finished their work here.

  He risked a glance to the left and right. One hundred thousand hectares of forest—the same forest that Fred and his fellow Spartans had trained in since childhood—was being devoured by walls of flame. Coils of heat and thick black smoke spiraled into the sky.

  A wave passed over Fred and Kelly—he couldn’t see it, but he felt it: A thousand ants had gotten into his armor and bitten him. Static fuzzed his display, and then vanished with a pop. His shields dropped to zero and then slowly started to recharge. The grav pods on their fliers flickered and sputtered.

  “EMP,” Kelly shouted over the COM. “Or some plasma effect.”

  “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 aerodynamics and power remained in their Banshees. Fred nosed his craft over the steaming rocks of the dry riverbed. He picked a path between boulders and jagged granite fangs, pointed toward a ribbon of gravel.

  There was just one problem: A pair of these rocks were slightly darker than the others…and they moved.

  The creatures were huge and heavily armored and moved with slow, deliberate precision. Each held a massive metal plate like a shield. Fred hit the COM and yelled, “Heads up! Covenant Hunters dead ahead!” There was no time to evade the new threat. The nearest Hunter wheeled to face them, and the array of sensory pins along its back flared, anemone-like. The hulking creature raised its main weapon—a powerful fuel rod gun, mounted on its arm—at Fred. The barrel pulsed green.

  The Hunter fired.

  Fred killed the power, and his Banshee dropped ten meters. There was a flash as the orb of destructive energy split the air where his flier had been a second before.

  The Banshee hit the ground, skidding through fist-sized rocks. The battered craft flipped and tossed him to the ground. The Banshee rolled end over end and crashed into the Hunter.

  The massive alien brought up its thick, metal shield and shrugged off the wreckage as if it were cardboard. The fuel rod gun began to charge again.

  Fred winced and rolled to his feet, ignoring the new pain the crash landing had caused. He needed a weapon. Pain would have to wait.

  The Hunter lumbered toward him, then dropped into a crouch and charged ahead at terrifying speed.

  There was a crackle of static on his COM frequency, and Fred heard one word: “Duck!”

  He threw himself onto the ground and rolled to the side.

  Kelly’s riderless flier soared over him and collided with the Hunter at full speed. The Banshee exploded and showered the area with glittering metal fragments.

  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.

  It lodged in the barrel of the weapon and detonated. Tendrils of energy covered the Hunter. The gun crackled and belched smoke.

  Fred got to his feet. “Run!”

  They weren’t going to engage a Hunter in hand-to-hand combat. They might lose—they might win, but in the meantime the rest of the Covenant ground forces would catch up to them.

  They sprinted toward a tiny patch of forest ahead, perhaps the last trees standing on Reach. The Hunter, confused with its destroyed weapon—and its flame-wreathed partner—hesitated, not sure what to do.

  “Didn’t you see while we were airborne?” Kelly said, concern tightening her voice. “There’s a sizable Covenant assault force just ahead.”

  “Ground troops?” Fred said, boosting his speed to a full sprint. “How far?”

  “Half a klick.”

  That didn’t make sense, either. Why have forces groundside when you were destroying the planet from orbit? “Something’s not right,” he told her. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”

  Kelly’s acknowledgment light winked red.

  “They’re between us and the fallback point,” Fred told her. “We have to.”

  They entered the stand of trees, paused, and looked back. The Hunter shambled after them, but it was a futile pursuit. Despite their occasional bursts of speed, the Hunters were too slow.

  They were caught between Covenant forces on the ground and those in the air, and neither Fred nor Kelly voiced the one question foremost on their minds: Was there even a fallback position left? Or had the Covenant between them and the rest of their team found and destroyed them?

  The COM crackled. “—is Gamma Team, Alpha. Come in.”

  Fred replied, “Gamma, this is Alpha. Go ahead.”

  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-Twenty can take care of his team. Don’t worry.” She crept forward and waved him to follow. “Take a look at this.”

  Fred glanced over his shoulder. No Hunter, and nothing on his motion detector. He followed Kelly, and parted a wall of blackbe
rry brambles. Parked in a clearing were Covenant vehicles, lined in three rows of four: mortar tanks. The tanks had two wide lateral fins, beneath which were armored anti-grav pods. They were extremely stable and fired one of the Covenant’s most powerful ground weapons: the energy mortar. Fred had seen them in action; they fired a shaped blast of plasma that obliterated everything within twenty meters of impact. Titanium battle plate, concrete, or flesh—it all vaporized.

  Marines called these tanks “Wraiths” because you usually got one look at them before they made you one.

  There were a handful of Grunts milling about the tanks, as well as dozens of the floating Covenant Engineers. The Engineers swarmed over and under the machinery. Most interesting to Fred, the vehicles’ hatches were open.

  “I can’t think of a better disguise,” Kelly whispered, “than five tons of Covenant armor.” She started forward.

  Fred set his hand on her arm, holding her back. “Wait. Think it through. There are two possibilities. First, if the Covenant have found the fallback position, we go in guns blazing and carve a path for Delta Team to get out.”

  She nodded. “The other possibility?”

  “They don’t know that Delta Team is holed up under the mountain. Then—” Fred hesitated. “Then we have to draw them away.”

  Kelly considered this, then said, “I was afraid you were going to say that.” She gave the dirt a tiny kick. “But you’re right.”

  A blip appeared on their motion trackers, directly on their six. The contact was large and moving steadily toward them. The 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. He gave Kelly a go signal, and she sprang into the nearest open hatch. A moment later Fred inched ahead to the next tank and eased inside.

  He sealed the hatch behind him.

  This was one of the most desperate and stupid decisions he had ever made. How were they going to take on an entire Covenant invasion force with a pair of tanks?