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. Linda.

She’d been mortally wounded during the raid on Gamma Station, just before Reach fell. He’d dragged her burned, limp body back to the Pillar of Autumn, and the medics had placed her in deep cryostasis just before the jump.

When the Autumn crashed on Halo, Keyes must have jettisoned the active cryotubes—standard operating procedure.

They had frozen her while she’d still been in her suit. That was for the best, considering the extent of her injuries… but he would have given anything to see her face one last time.

Linda had been unique among the Spartans with her bloodred hair and dark emerald eyes, but her appearance was not what set her apart. She was the unit’s best sniper-scout and could hit targets the rest of them couldn’t. While the other Spartans preferred to operate as a team, Linda was content to separate, hide and post in some remote location, and wait for days for the single, critical shot that could turn the tide of battle. Although snipers in the UNSC were always trained to function in pairs, a shooter and a spotter, Linda was the exception to that rule—she had proven time and again that she was most effective on her own. If any one of the Spartans could be called a “lone wolf,” it was Linda. In many ways that made her the strongest of them.

To see her like this…

John wiped away the condensation that formed over her helmeted 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.

Linda’s prognosis was good. The occupants of the other two cryopods hadn’t made it. Some kind of energy discharge had deactivated the units, and those inside had died cold bleak deaths.

There was a gentle knock on the hull of the Longsword, and Sergeant Johnson pulled himself inside. “Master Chief,” he said. “You got the air scrubbers? The remote COM? Polaski says she’s ready to call it a day with that Covenant dropship. We need to get on board and work.”

The Master Chief stood and nodded to the aft hatch, where he had stripped the air scrubbers and COM from the Longsword.

The Sergeant picked up the gear, and then he and the Chief crawled out of the Longsword. The Chief hesitated and looked back at the cryotube.

“Don’t you worry about her,” Johnson said. “Hell, I been hit worse and she’s three times the soldier I am. She’ll pull through.”

The Chief sealed the hatch without comment. He had heard the same hollow promises a hundred times before with critically wounded men. Why was it that soldiers would face their own deaths without blinking an eye… but when faced with the death of a squadmate, they turned away and lied to themselves?

They silently marched across the hangar. It had been cleared of debris and bodies, and Warrant Officer Polaski had, for the last six hours, been practicing inside the space with the intact Covenant dropship. She spun the odd U-shaped craft around on its center axis, shimmied to port, rose, and then floated down for a landing.

Johnson squinted his dark eyes at her performance and nodded approvingly. “She says that she’s figured out the weapon controls, too. No way to test them in here, of course.”

“Understood,” the Master Chief replied. “And the rest of the team’s progress?”

“I’ve got the doors from here to the bridge and to the engine room welded shut,” Sergeant Johnson told him. “If those transient 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. Lieutenant Haverson slept some then got up, had a long conversation with Cortana, and started reading through some of the Covenant database. Everyone seems to be fine, considering what we’ve been through.”

“Understood,” the Chief said. “Cortana? Ship status?”

“ETA to Reach in twenty minutes,” she said.

The Chief checked his mission clock. “You said thirteen hours’ total travel time. By my count, we have approximately two hours to go.”

“I had determined it would be thirteen hours based on the specifications of the Covenant Slipspace drive, but there’s…” Her voice trailed off and faded.

“Cortana?”

“Sorry. There’s a curious time-dilation effect at these Slipspace velocities. Although, technically, velocity, acceleration, and for that matter even time have no meaning in the folds of Slipspace. I thought I told you all this,” she said. Irritation crept into her voice.

The Chief looked to the Sergeant, who shook his head and shrugged.

Cortana sounded more than distracted—and she didn’t just “forget” things. It was a bad sign. They depended on her to fly this ship, and if she started falling apart they were in real trouble.

The Master Chief opened a COM channel. “Change of plans, team. Reach ETA is nineteen minutes. I’ll explain later—just grab your gear and meet on the bridge ASAP.”

There was a pause, then Lieutenant Haverson replied, “Roger, Master Chief. Locklear and I are already up here.”

The hatch of the Covenant dropship opened, and Polaski jogged out. The three of them proceeded at a brisk pace to the bridge.

The Master Chief opened a private COM channel to Cortana. “Anything else I should know?”

The channel was silent for a full ten seconds. “I have the Covenant magnetic plasma-shaping system figured out,” she 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.

Cortana’s behavior worried the Chief, but he resigned himself to trust her. What other option was there?

He, the Sergeant, and Polaski halted outside the bridge; the thick blast doors were sealed.

“Lieutenant?” he said. “We’re outside.”

The doors pulled apart. Locklear and the Lieutenant stood with their assault rifles aimed down the hall. They relaxed their stance when they identified them as friendlies.

Lieutenant Haverson slung his rifle and said, “Sorry for the warm welcome. Cortana’s been picking up transient contacts all over the ship. We’re going to have to deal with them sooner or later—preferably before they deal with us.”

“Agreed,” the Chief said.

Polaski approached the Lieutenant, saluted, and gave her report on her efforts to master the Covenant dropship’s controls.

Locklear edged closer to the Chief and the Sergeant. “What do you think, Sarge?” he whispered and cast a furtive glance at Polaski. “I mean, about her? Sure, there’s that Marine–Navy thing to get over, but I can get past that. You think there’s a chance that she and I? I mean—”

“I’d give you the same odds as spacing yourself and walking the rest of the way to Reach,” the Sergeant declared. “In your skivvies.”

“Give me a drop pod and I’d take those odds, Sarge.” A smile split Locklear’s tanned face, and he turned to the Master Chief. “Sure, I get it. Wouldn’t be so defensive if I hadn’t been close to the mark. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?”

The Master Chief stared at Locklear and slowly shook his head.

Locklear’s smile faded, but not entirely. “You guys are just jealous,” he muttered and absentmindedly ran his finger over the scar that lined his jaw. “That’s cool. I get that all the time.”

Locklear’s spirits had improved. Despite the ODST’s rough edges, the Chief had seen him in combat. He didn’t panic, and he 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. Was there more to the time-dilation effect than she realized?

The bridge lights dimmed, and blackness filled the arc of displays along the wall. Stars winked into existence, and at three o’clock blazed the warm orange orb of Epsilon Eridani.

“We are seven hundred thousand kilometers from the system center,” Cortana told them. “I wanted to jump in close enough to see what’s going on—but far enough away so we would have time to recharge and reenter Slipspace if there’s any trouble. Picking up signals now. Covenant signals. Lots of them. Translating… stand by.”

Haverson tapped one of the screens and magnified the image.

“My God,” he whispered.

A planet appeared on the screen. He sucked in his breath as he saw a world smoldering from pole to equator. Fires raged over its surface, and a hurricane of black spiraled through the atmosphere.

The Master Chief felt as if the ship had suddenly decelerated. His hands clenched.

He’d sent the majority of his team down there—and had considered it the “easier” mission. He’d gotten his Spartans killed, he was sure of it.

Had they at least died fighting? Or were they burned from an orbiting Covenant ship, helpless?

“Are we in the right place?” Locklear murmured. “That’s Reach?” He removed his cap, crushed it in his hand, and whispered, “Poor bastards.”

The other displays showed Covenant warships orbiting the planet, as well as dozens of smaller craft and one large structure that seemed to be a central docking station.

“What is this?” the Master Chief asked, stepping closer. He tapped the center display, pushing the limits of its resolution and magnifying a portion of the surface near the midlatitudes.

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,” the Master Chief replied. “We’ve seen them do it enough to know what happens. This is no accident.” He turned to Lieutenant Haverson. “We should get closer and see what this is, sir.”

“Master Chief,” Haverson said softly and held up his hands. “I sympathize with your need to know with absolute certainty what happened to your fellow Spartans, but this is…” He gestured to the planet and then frowned as he scrutinized the undamaged part of Reach. “Indeed,” he murmured. “This does warrant a closer look… provided we can get away with it.”

The Lieutenant pulled the magnification back and refocused the display on the upper atmosphere. A hundred Covenant ships popped into view. “There are several smaller vessels circling over that spot. Forget what I just said,” Haverson whispered. “If the Covenant are so interested in this region, then we should be as well—as long as our cover holds. Cortana, take us in closer.”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Cortana replied.

The Covenant flagship smoothly accelerated in-system.

“They’re hailing us,” Cortana said. “Preparing the proper counter-response.”

John counted the ships on the display. There were hundreds—most no larger than a Covenant dropship, but there were at least a dozen cruisers and two of the titanic carriers that each carried three squadrons of Seraph fighter craft. There was more than enough firepower to turn their captured flagship into molten slag.

Many of the smaller ships herded debris from the battle into one spot over Reach—a floating junkyard of UNSC and Covenant ships.

“You see this?” The Master Chief pointed to the field of floating debris.

The Lieutenant stared at it. “It’s almost as if they planned to stay here for a while—they’re cleaning house.”

“We’re in,” Cortana announced. “The fleet is curious why a Covenant flagship is here, but not suspicious enough to question our authority. The translation is tricky. But apparently from the 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?” the Lieutenant asked.

“Not yet,” she replied. “Their language doesn’t translate in a literal manner, and each word has multiple meanings. There’s something they consider holy—there are ten times as many religious allusions than in their typical communiqués. Hang on… picking up a new signal. Weaker than the others. Not on a Covenant frequency. It’s the UNSC E-band.”

Lieutenant Haverson licked his lips. “Play it,” he said.

A message beeped through the speakers, six tones, then a two-second pause; it repeated.

The Master Chief stiffened.

“That’s it,” Cortana said. “Just those six notes over and over. It originates here.” A tiny NAV triangle appeared on the edge of the intact region on the planet’s surface.

“It’s not Morse code,” Polaski said. “Not any code I’ve heard of. Maybe it’s a test signal? Something automated, like an airtraffic repeater relay, maybe?”

“It’s not automated,” the Master Chief said. “Everyone gear up and get ready. We’re going down there. There are Spartans down there. And they’re still alive.”

He whispered so softly that only he and Cortana heard: “Oly Oly Oxen Free.”