"The Spartans," Hood whispered. "Doctor Halsey.
Whit-comb. 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 the Inner Colonies and Earth. The new orbital platforms won't be online for another ten days. Until then, our defense pos- ture 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 every square millimeter of the surface is covered with plasma bombardments."
"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 con- cern. "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 2
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 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.
Fred's Banshee skimmed over the treetops, down the mountain- side. He pushed the craft to its maximum speed. Kelly followed, and they swooped into a valley and up onto the zigzagging ridge-line 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, identi- fied 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 needier—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.
Needle-like 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 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.
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, 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 ac- celerated 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 al- ways proceeded in an orderly crisscrossing pattern across a planet until every square centimeter of the 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 apop. 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 aero- dynamics 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.