CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
0616 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Pelican dropship, Epsilon Eridani System near Reach Station Gamma
“Brace for maneuvering!” the Master Chief barked.
The Spartans dove for safety harnesses and strapped in. “All secure!” Kelly shouted.
The Master Chief killed the Pelican’s forward thrusters and triggered a short, sudden reverse burn. The Spartans were brutally slammed forward into their harnesses as the Pelican’s acceleration bled away.
The Master Chief quickly shut down the engines.
The tiny Pelican faced the Covenant frigate. At a kilometer’s distance, the alien ship’s launch bay and pulse laser turrets looked close enough to touch on the view screen; enough firepower to vaporize the Spartans in the blink of an eye.
The Master Chief’s first instinct was to fire their HE Anvil-II missiles and autocannons—but he checked his hand as he reached for the triggers.
That would only attract their attention . . . which was the last thing he wanted. For the moment, the alien vessel ignored them—probably because the Master Chief had shut down the Pelican’s engines. But the ship also seemed dead in space: no lights, no single ships launched, and no plasma weapons charging.
The dropship continued toward the docking station, their momentum putting distance between them and the frigate.
Space around the Covenant ship boiled and pulled apart—and two more alien ships appeared.
They, too, ignored the dropship. Was it too small to bother with? The Master Chief didn’t care. His luck, it seemed, was holding.
He checked the radar—thirty kilometers to the docking ring. He ignited the engines to slow them down.
He had to or they would crash into the station.
Twenty kilometers.
Rumbling shook the dropship. They slowed—but it wasn’t going to be enough.
Ten kilometers.
“Hang on,” he told Linda and James.
The sudden impact whiplashed the Master Chief back and forth in his seat. The straps holding him snapped.
He blinked . . . saw only blackness. His vision cleared and he noted that his shield bar was dead. It slowly began to fill again. Every display and monitor in the cockpit had shattered.
The Master Chief shook off the disorientation and pulled himself aft.
The interior of the dropship was a mess. Everything tied down had come loose. Ammunition boxes had broken open in the crash landing and loose carriages filled the air. Coolant leaked, spraying blobs of black fluid. In zero gravity, everything looked like the inside of a shaken snowglobe.
James and Linda floated off the deck of the Pelican. They slowly moved.
“Any injuries?” the Master Chief asked.
“No,” Linda replied.
“I think so,” James said. “I mean, no. I’m good, sir. Was that a landing or did those Covenant ships take a shot at us?”
“If they had, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. Get whatever gear you can and get out, double time,”
the Master Chief said.
The Master Chief grabbed an assault rifle and a Jackhammer launcher. He found a satchel. Inside was a kilogram of C-12, detonators, and a Lotus antitank mine. Those would come in handy. He salvaged five intact clips of ammunition but couldn’t locate his thruster pack. He’d have to do without one.
“No more time,” he said. “We’re sitting ducks here. Out the side hatch now.”
Linda went first. She paused, and—once she was satisfied the Covenant weren’t lying in ambush—
motioned them forward.
The Master Chief and James exited, clung to the side of the Pelican in zero gravity, and took flanking positions at the fore and aft ends of the dropship.
Space dock Gamma was a three-kilometer-diameter ring. Dull gray metal arced in either direction. On the surface were communications dishes and a few conduits—no real cover. The docking bay doors were sealed tight. The station wasn’t spinning. The dockmaster AI must have shut the place up tight when it detected the unsecured NAV database.
The Master Chief frowned when he spotted the tail end of their Pelican—crumpled and embedded into the station’s hull. Its engines were ruined. The dropship jutted out at an angle; its prow and the charges of C-12 that were supposed to have blasted them into a Covenant ship—now pointed into the air.
The Master Chief started to drift off the station. He clipped himself to the hull of the dropship.
“Blue-Two,” he said, “police those explosives.” He gestured to the prow. The motion sent him gyrating.
“Yes, sir.” James puffed his thruster pack once and drifted up to the nose of the Pelican.
The Spartans had trained to fight in zero gravity. It wasn’t easy. The slightest motion sent you spinning out of control.
A flash overhead reflected off the hull. The Master Chief looked up. The Covenant ships were alive now
—lances of blue laser fire flashed and motes of red light collected on their lateral lines. Their engines glowed and they moved close to the station.
A streak crossed the Master Chief’s field of vision in the blink of an eye. The center Covenant frigate shields strobed silver; the ship shattered into a cloud of glistening fragments.
The orbital guns had turned and fired on the new threat.
This was a suicide maneuver. How did the Covenant think they could withstand that kind of firepower?
“Blue-One,” the Master Chief said. “Scan those ships with your scope.”
Linda floated closer to the Master Chief. She pointed her sniper rifle up and sighted the ships. “We’ve got inbound targets,” she said, and fired.
The Master Chief hit his magnification. A dozen pods burst from the two remaining Covenant ships.
Trails of exhaust pointed right at the Spartans’ position. There were tiny specks accompanying the pods; the Master Chief increased his display’s magnification to maximum. They looked like men in thruster packs—
No, they were definitely not men.
These things had elongated heads—and even at this distance, the Master Chief could see past their faceplates and noted their pronounced sharklike teeth and jaws. They wore armor; it shimmered as they collided with debris—which meant energy shields.
These must be the elite warrior class Dr. Halsey had conjectured. The Covenant’s best? They were about to find out.
Linda shot one of the EVA aliens. Shields shimmered around its body and the round bounced off. She didn’t stop. She pumped four more rounds into the creature—hitting a pinpoint target in its neck. Its shields flickered and a round got through. Black blood gushed from the wound and the creature writhed in space.
The other aliens spotted them. They jetted toward their location, firing plasma rifle and needlers.
“Take cover,” the Master Chief said. He unclipped himself and clung to the side of the dropship.
Linda followed—bolts of fire spattering on the hull next to them, spattering molten metal. Crystalline needles bounced off their shields
“Blue-Two,” the Master Chief said. “I said fall back.”
James almost had the explosives rigged to the nose free. A shower of needles hit him. One stuck the tank of his thruster harness—penetrated. It remained embedded for a split second . . . then exploded.
Exhaust billowed from the pack. The uncontrolled jets spun James in the microgravity. He slammed into the station, bounced—then rocketed away into space, tumbling end over end, unable to control his trajectory.
“Blue-Two! Come in,” the Master Chief barked over the COM channel.
“Can—control—” James’ voice was punctuated with static. “They’ve—everywhere—” There was more static and the COM channel went dead.
The Master Chief watched his teammate tumble away into the darkness. All his training, his superhuman strength, reflexes, and determination . . . completely useless against the laws of physics.
He didn’t even know if James was dead. For the moment, he had to assume that he was—put him out of his mind. He had a mission to complete. If he survived, then he’d get every UNSC ship in the area to mount a search and rescue op.
Linda shrugged out of her thruster harness.
The suppressing fire from the aliens halted. Covenant landing pods descended toward the station, touching down at roughly three-hundred-meter intervals.
A pod landed twenty meters away. Its sides uncurled like the petals of a flower. Jackals in black-and-blue vacuum suits drifted out. Their boots adhered to the station’s hull.
“Let’s pave a path out of here, Blue-One.”
“Roger that,” she said.
Linda targeted spots their energy shields didn’t cover—boots, the top of one’s head, a fingertip. Three Jackals went down in quick succession, their spacesuits ruptured by her marksmanship. The rest scrambled for cover inside the pod.
The Master Chief braced his back against the dropship and fired his assault rifle in controlled bursts. The microgravity played havoc with his aim.
One Jackal leaped from his cover—straight towards them.
The Master Chief switched to full auto and blasted his shield with enough rounds to send the alien flying backward off the station. He spent the clip, reloaded, and got out a grenade. He pulled the pin and lobbed it.
He threw it in a flat trajectory. The grenade ricocheted off the far side of the pod and bounced inside.
It detonated—a flash and spray of freeze-dried blue vented upward. The explosion had caught the enemy on their unshielded sides.
“Blue-One, secure that landing pod. I’ll cover you.” He leveled his rifle.
“Yes, sir.” Linda grabbed a pipe that ran along the station and pulled herself hand over hand. When she was inside the pod, she flashed him a green light on his heads-up display.
The Master Chief crawled toward the prow of the Pelican. As he crested the ship he saw that the station was swarming with Covenant troops: a hundred Jackals and at least six Elites. They pointed toward the Pelican and slowly started to advance on their position.
“Come and get it,” the Master Chief muttered.
He pulled two grenades from his satchel and wedged them into the C-12 on the nose of the ship. He pushed off and propelled himself back to his teammate.