0402 hours, March 5, 2526 (military calendar)

Spartan Extra-Vehicular Assault Squad

High Equatorial Orbit, Planet Netherop, Ephyra System

The alien spacecraft were growing more visible by the second, five dark slivers silhouetted against the curve of Netherop’s dingy horizon, swelling into thin black blades as the assault squad descended on them from above and behind. The Spartans were diving into Netherop’s gravity well at a shallow angle, traveling thirty-three thousand kilometers per hour relative to the planet—and at that kind of speed, reaction time didn’t exist.

Were someone to cross paths with a meteorite or a hunk of Covenant jetsam, there would be no opportunity to evade. By the time the object appeared on the motion tracker, it would have punched through the Spartan’s armor, passed through the body, and already be a dozen kilometers away.

Yet there was no sense of motion. The Spartans had stopped accelerating, so it felt like they were motionless in space. The vestibular fluid in their ears was still, and their organs were floating free in their torsos. Only the rapidly expanding cloud swirls on Netherop hinted at their true speed—the clouds, and the vessels stretching from thin little blades into thumb-length crosses.

As the silhouettes continued to swell, their forward-swept wings and twin nose-cannons grew apparent. John recognized them as an ex-atmo variant of a single-pilot fighter that UNSC pilots had nicknamed “Banshees.” Banshees were not especially deadly in combat, but the enemy used them for everything from atmospheric patrol to orbital interception, depending on the variant deployed, and they were a high priority on the Covenant equipment capture list.

But then again, what wasn’t?

The Covenant had made “contact” with humanity more than a year ago, when it happened upon a shipping lane near the planet Harvest. A local attempt to negotiate peace erupted into open warfare, with the aliens initiating a planetary bombardment and blocking all communications with other worlds. So superior was the enemy’s technology that the Colonial Military Authority did not even learn of the conflict until nine months later, when the CMA Heracles—the sole survivor of a mission to investigate the world’s sudden silence—limped home with a message from the aliens: “Your destruction is the will of the gods, and we are their instrument.”

FLEETCOM received the declaration on October 31. The following day, the Unified Earth Government mobilized the UNSC, the CMA, and all other military services against the alien menace. The Spartans were deployed on the second of November, and by the twenty-seventh, Samuel-034 was dead.

The UNSC had been on a full war footing for four months now, and so far it continued to reel. The alien foes had superior weaponry, superior mobility, and superior intelligence, and they were using all three to good effect, emerging from slipspace to destroy support bases and ambush convoys, to knock shipyards from orbit and bombard civilians with hundred-meter plasma beams. The UNSC had to find a way to eliminate the Covenant’s advantages—and so far, John’s assault team was its best hope. Perhaps its only hope.

The waypoint marker in John’s HUD flashed yellow. He activated his thrusters and began to decelerate, flattening his angle of descent until he entered orbit. The Banshees were clearly visible in his faceplate magnification against the pearl haze of Netherop’s mesosphere. They were still a couple of kilometers ahead, too distant to offer protection from any mass-discerning sensor systems the mothership might employ.

Not that John actually knew the Covenant employed mass-discerning sensor systems. It was simply a theoretical possibility the UNSC’s own scientists were exploring. But given the enemy’s technological superiority, it seemed wise to be cautious.

He took a few moments to do another visual head count. When he was sure that everyone was in position, he used his thrusters to nudge himself into a slightly lower orbit.

The other Spartans followed his lead, and they began to creep toward the targets. This was the most dangerous phase of their approach. They were close enough to be spotted visually if a pilot happened to look back and had the right angle. Under different conditions, it would be smart to move in as fast as possible. But closing the distance more quickly meant dropping lower, which would make the Spartans even more visible. Better to stay behind the Banshees and hope for the best.

After forty minutes of inching closer, the Spartans remained undiscovered. The silhouettes of the craft had swollen to the size of a head, and the lines of their drooping wings were thickening into three-dimensional forms. John brought up a mission projection on his TACMAP and saw that the Covenant mothership would appear above the planetary horizon in eight minutes. After that, Netherop’s bulk would no longer shield the assault squad from the vessel’s sensor umbrella. In theory, the Spartans would remain as undetectable to the aliens as the Starry Night and her sister prowlers. In theory.

John extended an arm above his head, signaling the squad to form on him, then dropped into a lower orbit and began to quickly overtake the Banshees. His Spartans closed up, grouping themselves by team, but taking care to maintain a spacing of a hundred meters. That was tight enough to support each other if necessary, but far enough apart to avoid presenting an eye-catching cluster of dark forms—or a massed target that could be taken out by a single plasma strike.

After nine additional slow minutes, the Spartans were finally close enough to make out the knobby equipment pods at the tips of the Banshees’ drooping wings. John raised his hand and, closing his fist, made a twisting motion. The squad tightened formation, arranging itself so that there were at least two Spartans fifty meters below each spacecraft.

John raised a thumb and used his thrusters to ascend into orbit behind the leftmost Banshee. Fred climbed into position beside him, with Linda and Kelly behind the next spacecraft over, while Green and Gold Teams slipped into place behind the other three craft. The aliens maintained their formation.

So far, the mission was going flawlessly. But John wanted to be ready, in case that changed.

He unlimbered the M99 Stanchion Gauss rifle magclamped across his back and made sure there was a round in the chamber. While M99s were normally used as extreme-range sniper rifles or antimatériel weapons, their accuracy and recoilless firing mechanisms made them ideal weapons for zero-g infiltration operations, and he had equipped half the squad with them. The other half was carrying M41 rocket launchers. The M41s were less accurate than M99s, but they had more combat applications, and like the M99s, they could be fired without sending a weightless gunner into an uncontrolled spin.

The Covenant mothership now materialized above Netherop’s horizon. Just visible through the planet’s thick corona of atmosphere, the vessel appeared as a hazy gray drop not much larger than a pinhead. But John knew from previous observations that it had a long, tapering tail that curled down into an open hook.

If the Banshees followed prior procedure, they would return to a maintenance hangar located in the interior of the hook. After being serviced, they would be moved out of the hangar and suspended beneath the elongated tail, ready for immediate launch.

John suspected the trickiest part of the assault would be advancing through the tail. It was an obvious choke point that would be sealed at the first sign of trouble—which meant the Spartans either had to board forward, or capture the hangar without allowing an alarm to be raised.

At least they had options.

They remained behind the Banshees and continued to close, the mothership’s tiny shape growing longer and darker as it slowly drifted higher above Netherop’s horizon. The ONI analysts aboard the Starry Night had measured the vessel’s length at 550 meters and its horizontal and vertical beams at 110 meters—about the size of a UNSC light frigate. A standard complement for a human warship that size would be about 250 crew plus the same number of combat personnel, but there was no guessing how many aliens might be crammed aboard such a vessel.

The mothership passed out of sight in front of the Banshees, and John signaled the assault squad to slip in tight, within a few meters of the spacecraft. When the mothership emerged from behind the Banshees again, it would be above the Spartans relative to the planet, and he didn’t want a lucky alien to glance down through a porthole and see a dozen humans silhouetted against Netherop’s brown clouds.

John and Fred stopped about two meters behind their target Banshee, positioning themselves just outside the tail stabilizers. This close to the mothership, the craft could probably sync orbits without firing its main engine—but John wasn’t taking chances. As tough as the Spartans’ new Mjolnir armor was, he was not eager to see how the outer shell would hold up against a plume of white-hot propellant.

It was a precaution John was glad he had taken when the Banshees raised their noses and ignited their engines for a half-second burn. The Spartans climbed after them, but thruster packs were no match for main engines, and the Banshees quickly pulled away. A moment later, the mothership appeared over them, a huge, tear-shaped darkness looming against the starlit beyond.

The Banshees used their maneuvering jets to bleed off excess velocity and sync orbits, then brought their noses down and positioned themselves about fifty meters beneath the belly of the mothership—no doubt awaiting authorization to dock.

All five were facing aft, toward the interior of the hooked tail, and the pilots could not see the Spartans climbing back into position behind them. Beyond the spacecraft, the mothership’s belly was as dark as a closet, suggesting it lacked any viewports or observation bubbles through which the assault squad might be spotted. But the mouth of the maintenance hangar was a bright, flat-bottomed oval facing forward, and although John was still too far below to see inside, he knew there would be plenty of crewmembers looking toward a flight of arriving Banshees.

John raised a fist to bring his assault squad to a halt, then lifted his index finger and made a circling motion. The Spartans began to tighten their formation and prepare for boarding action.

One by one, the Banshees rose into the docking hollow beneath the mothership’s tail, then drifted through the hangar mouth. A faint shimmer suggested the presence of some sort of energy barrier.

John waited until only the last craft remained, then gave the thumbs-up. Being careful to remain near the tail of the craft, the squad rose alongside the Banshee, their weapons shouldered and off-safety.

As more of the hangar interior came into view, John found himself looking into an oblong vault thirty meters deep and twenty wide. Lit in ambient blue-white light, it had an arched overhead and bulkheads lined by curved alcoves filled with equipment and supplies. It was bustling with the tall, vaguely avian aliens that the UNSC had nicknamed “Jackals.” There were also a half dozen winged, insectile creatures, and two of the short, mask-wearing bipeds known as “Grunts.”

The last Banshee began a leisurely drift toward the hangar mouth, an indication that the Spartan assault squad remained completely undetected. With any luck, John and his teams would soon be the proud new crew of a Covenant frigate . . . or whatever the analysts decided to call it.

John motioned Fred and Kelly forward to deal with the pilot, then shouldered his M99 and placed the scope in front of his helmet. An aiming reticle appeared on his HUD, and he scanned across the hangar, selecting his target. He was the third sniper from the left, so attack-by-surprise protocol dictated that he take the third high-value target from the left. And standard priority was clear: commanders, comm techs, countersnipers, high-mobility personnel, heavy weapon operators, everyone else. The challenge with the Covenant was that humanity hadn’t engaged them long enough yet to learn the nuances of those roles or how they related to the species and armor. They would just have to leverage what little available intel and speculative theories they had at their disposal.

John didn’t see any obvious commanders or comm techs, so he set his sights on number three, one of the insect-aliens—he thought of it as a Drone—then nodded. He waited a one-count, let out his breath, and fired.

A faint glow flashed along the M99 as the electromagnetic coils charged and drew the projectile down the barrel; then the Drone’s body erupted into a spray of blood and chitin. John shifted to the next target inward—one of the Grunts—and fired again. This time, there was an orange ball as the creature blew apart in flames.

John looked away to check on the final Banshee. Fred was holding the edge of the cockpit with one hand and using the other to drag the tall pilot out through the shattered canopy. Kelly was on the opposite side, holding herself in place while firing M6 pistol rounds into the alien’s techsuited chest.

When John turned back to his targeting reticle, he spotted a pair of similar aliens moving toward an alcove at the back of the hangar. Like the pilot Fred and Kelly were attacking, these were taller and more powerfully built than Jackals, with strong shoulders and compact, oblong heads. They wore the same sinewy techsuit as the other pilot and seemed to have a proud gait to their movements, which told John they likely held some level of leadership. He took them out with two quick shots, then looked for more targets. Finding none, he tossed the M99 aside—flinging it toward Netherop proper so it would drop out of orbit and burn up during atmospheric entry—then reached back and pulled his MA5K carbine off its magnetic mount. He checked to make sure the sound suppressor was still attached, then activated his thrusters and led the way into the hangar.

His HUD system flickered and dimmed as he passed through the energy barrier and entered the ship’s artificial gravity field, but it returned to normal the instant his boots hit the deck. John noted the phenomenon without letting it worry him. Mjolnir armor was supposed to be shielded against electromagnetic interference, but ONI clearly had a lot to learn about the alien technology, and the glitch might reveal something useful to the science jockeys in the Section Three Materials Group.

The rest of the assault squad appeared on John’s HUD, and the Spartans quickly swept the hangar, putting two rounds into the head of any alien that remained in less than three pieces. Several Jackals had turned toward luminous ovals set into the hangar bulkheads, but they had all died well short of their goal. If they had been trying to sound an alarm, it seemed unlikely they had succeeded.

The same was true for the pilots of the Banshees. Three of them had perished with their helmets under their arms, which would have prevented them from accessing any comm systems that might be integrated into their techsuits. The fourth pilot—the last to enter the hangar before the Spartans launched their attack—had taken an M99 round as he raised his canopy, and now his head and helmet were splattered all over the cockpit interior.

John could hardly believe it. The entire Spartan assault squad was inside the hangar, and the enemy did not yet know it had been boarded. Missions just didn’t go this well.