Cortana's decryption of the Covenant communiques referencing the "holy one" finally cycled to a halt. The language in them was unusually ornate—even more so than the florid prose of the higher-ranking Elites. It was impossible to develop a literal translation, but she gleaned that some dignitary was due at the Halo construct. Soon.
This visitor was so important that these warships were only the advance scouting party. More ships were on their way. Hundreds of them.
"Chief," Cortana said. "We may have a prob—"
"Hold transmission, Cortana," the Chief interrupted. "We're outside the command center. Can you tell how many are inside?" "Negative. They have disabled the bridge sensors," she replied. "You heard Cortana," the Chief said, addressing his com
panions. "Expect anything. Sergeant, you and Locklear: Get in position." "Roger that," Sergeant Johnson whispered. "In position and ready to kick Covenant ass."
"We're about to blow the door on this end, Cortana. Stand by."
Cortana picked up energy surges on the flagship's lateral sensors. The Covenant cruisers turned; their plasma weapons warmed and readied to fire.
"Chief," Cortana said. "Hurry!"
"Plasma grenades on my mark," the Chief said on the COM. "Mark! Toss them and take cover."
The Chief tossed two plasma grenades. They burned magnesium-brilliant and adhered to the heavy alloy of the bulkhead doors that encased the bridge—one of the alien weapons' more useful properties. He moved around the corner of the passage and shielded Haverson and Polaski.
Five seconds elapsed, and a flash filled the hallway. The Chief moved back to the doors. They shone mirror-bright where the grenade had detonated but were otherwise unharmed.
A hundred grenades wouldn't have blasted through these doors—but when Covenant plasma grenades detonated, they disrupted electronics and shielding. The Chief dug his gauntleted fingers into the door crack—hoping that the disruption had knocked out the motors and shielding keeping these doors closed.
He braced himself and tried to pull the doors apart at the seams. They slid a few centimeters, then ground to a halt. The Chief adjusted his footing and strained at them again, but the doors remained frozen in place.
The Chief's motion sensors pulsed a warning—there was movement directly on the other side of the door.
He shoved the muzzle of his assault rifle into the narrow opening and squeezed the trigger. Spent shell casings clattered to the floor.
A howl echoed from the other side, and a curl of gray smoke drifted through the crack. The Chief slung his rifle, grabbed the doors, flexed, pulled— and this time the heavy metal moved.
A flash of plasma fire washed over his shields, blinding him. He ignored it, closed his eyes, and continued to force his way through the door. Another plasma shot struck him in the chest.
The doors were half a meter apart—good enough. He rolled to the side and gave his shields a moment to regenerate.
Nothing. The suit's alarms pulsed insistently. He squinted through the glowing spots that swam in his vision and scanned the damage report—the MJOLNIR's internal temperature was over sixty degrees Celsius, and the Chief heard the whine of microcompressors in his armor, trying to compensate.
"Marines!" he yelled. "Suppressing fire!"
"Hell yes, Master Chief," Locklear replied. Locklear dropped to one knee and fired through the opening; Johnson stood and fired over the younger Marine's head.
The Chief rebooted his shielding control software.
Nothing. His shield system was dead.
The shooting stopped. "I'm out," Locklear said.
"And I'm in," the Chief said.
• He rushed into the room and stepped over the dead Elite on the floor before him. Its torso had been ripped open—shot as it tried to hold the doors closed.
The Chief scanned the room. It was circular, twenty meters across, with a raised platform in the center that was ten meters across and ringed with holographic control surfaces. The central platform floated over a pit in the floor. Within the pit were exploded optical conduits and a trio of Covenant Engineers, cowering in fear.
"Don't shoot the Engineers," Cortana warned. "We need them." "Understood," the Chief replied. "Acknowledge that order, Locklear." There was a pause over COM and then Locklear said, "Roger." Along the circular walls, floor-to-ceiling displays showed the flagship's status as a variety of charts and graphs, peppered with
the odd calligraphy of the Covenant. They also showed the space surrounding them, and the five remaining Covenant cruisers closing in.
The Chief caught a motion in his peripheral vision: An Elite in jet-black armor materialized from the wall display, its light-bending camouflage dissolving. It strode toward the Chief, roaring a challenge.
The Chief's rifle snapped up, and he squeezed the trigger. Three rounds spat from the muzzle, then the bolt locked open. The ammo counter read oo—empty.
The shots flared on the Elite's shielding; a lucky round penetrated and deformed its shoulder. Purple-black blood spattered on the deck, but it shrugged off the wound and kept coming.
Haverson charged into the room and leveled his pistol. "Hold it!" he yelled, and thumbed off the weapon's safety. The Elite drew a plasma pistol and fired at the Lieutenant— but never took its eyes off the Chief. Haverson cursed and scrambled out of the room as the plasma charge slashed at him.
The Chief altered his grip on the rifle and crouched in a low fighting stance. Even with the shield malfunction, he was confident he could take a single Elite.
The Elite removed its helmet and dropped it. The plasma pistol clattered to the deck a moment later. It leaned forward, and its mandibles parted in what the Chief guessed had to be a smile. It moved closer, and a blue-white blade of energy flashed to life in its hands.
The Elite raised the energy blade and charged.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1802 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) Aboard unidentified Covenant flagship, uncharted system, Halo debris field.
The Master Chief ducked as the hissing energy blade slashed at him. He dived toward the Elite and slammed the butt of his rifle into the alien's midsection.
The Elite doubled over, and the Chief brought the rifle butt down to smash the alien's skull—
But the Elite rolled back. There was a blur of motion as the energy blade lashed out and neatly bisected the assault rifle. The two halves of the wrecked MA5B clattered to the deck.
The blade of crackling white-hot energy narrowly missed the Chief. The MJOLNIR's internal temperature skyrocketed.
He couldn't risk dancing at this range, so the Master Chief did the last thing the creature expected: He stepped closer and grabbed its wrists.
The bands of muscle on the Elite's arms were iron hard, and it struggled to free itself from the Chief's grasp. The Chief wrenched the alien's sword arm and forced the blade away—but this took most of his strength, and he had to weaken his grasp on the Elite's other hand.
The energy blade blurred perilously close to the Chief's head. It missed by a fraction of a centimeter and sent a wash of static across his heads-up display.
The blade was a flattened triangle of white-hot plasma, contained in an electromagnetic envelope that emanated from its hilt. The Chief had seen such weapons slice battle-armored ODSTs in half and gouge gaping wounds in Titanium-A armor plating.
Worse, this Elite was tough, cunning, well trained—and it hadn't spent days fighting nonstop on Halo. The Chief felt every wound, pulled muscle, and strained tendon in his body.
Haverson and Polaski moved onto the bridge, their pistols drawn, but neither of them had a clear line of fire.
"Move, Chief!" Haverson shouted. "Damn it, we've got no shot!"
Easier said than done. If he let go, the Elite would cut him in two. The Master Chief grunted, struggling to turn the Elite. The alien fought back for a moment, then—instead of
resisting—lurched back, right into the path of the Chief's advancing teammates. The Elite fl
icked the angle of its blade flat so the arc of energy whipped toward Haverson and Polaski.
Haverson screamed and fell to the ground as the energy blade sliced through his pistol and across his chest. Polaski cursed and fired a single shot, but it glanced off the Elite's shield.
The alien glanced at the source of the fire and growled in its guttural, warbling tongue.
"Get the Lieutenant out of here," the Master Chief barked. He raised his knee to his chest and lashed out with a straight kick. His boot connected with the Elite's breastplate. The alien's energy shield flared, then faded, and its breastplate cracked like porcelain beneath the force of the blow.
The alien staggered back, dragging the Master Chief with it. It coughed up purple-black blood that smeared John's visor, obscuring his vision. Its foot struck something on the ground—the alien's fallen helmet—and it lost its footing.
Together they crashed to the ground.
The Master Chief kept his grip on the Elite's sword arm. The alien's other hand, however, wrenched free and grabbed the fallen plasma pistol. The weapon's muzzle charged with sickly green energy.
The Chief rolled to his right as the pistol discharged. A globe of plasma arced across the compartment and splashed over the displays behind him.
The instruments flickered, then flashed and sparked as the energy bolt melted their systems. Before the displays went dark, however, the Master Chief saw one of the Covenant cruisers open fire. A lance of plasma rushed through space toward the flagship.
The Chief and the Elite struggled, rising to their feet. The Chief batted the plasma pistol aside, and it clattered across the control center.
The Elite's mouth opened, and it snapped at the Chief. It was angry or panicking now... and he felt it getting stronger.
His grasp on the alien loosened.
There was motion behind the Elite; Sergeant Johnson and Locklear still struggled to get their hatch open more than a crack. "Sergeant—prepare to fire." "Ready, Master Chief." the Sergeant cried from the other side
of the hatch.
The Chief tightened his grip on the Elite's sword arm, shoved his forearm into the alien's throat and drove it backward, across the bridge. He slammed the creature into the partially opened hatch.
The energy blade cut into the Master Chief's armor, boiling through the alloy that protected his upper arm.
"Sergeant, now! Firer
Gunfire exploded from the hatch, oddly muffled because the rounds impacted directly into the Elite's back. The alien snarled and contorted, but it held on to the Master Chief. The alien warrior sawed the blade deeper, cutting through the tough crystalline layers of the MJOLNIR armor. Hydrostatic gel oozed from the wound... mixed with the Chief's blood.
"Keep. Shooting." A bullet hole appeared through the Elite's broken chestplate— bits of shattered armor and torn flesh spattered over the Chief.
The Master Chief slammed the Elite into the bulkhead, and a control panel behind the alien sparked. The door to the escape corridor hissed open, and the creature reeled back.
The alien was off balance, and the Chief finally had leverage. He bulled the Elite backward and hammered its arm into the wall. The alien metal rang like a gong, and the Elite dropped its energy sword. The blade guttered and went dark as its fail-safes permanently disabled the weapon.
The Chief forced the alien back, step by step. The deck was slippery with blood. Finally he twisted the Elite to the right and launched a powerful open-handed strike into the alien's wounded chest.
The Elite howled in pain and flew back, through the open hatch of an escape pod.
"Get off this ship," the Chief said. He hit a control stud and the hatch slammed shut. There was a sharp, metallic bang as the locking clamps released. The pod screamed away from the hull.
The Chief exhaled. Sweat dripped in his eyes, momentarily blurring his vision. "Good work, Sergeant, Locklear," he panted. His shoulder burned. He tried to move it, but it was stiff and wouldn't respond.
The ship lurched.
"Plasma impact on the starboard foredeck!" Cortana called out. "Shields down to sixty-seven percent." She paused and then added, "Amazing radiative properties. Chief, you need to disable the navigation override so I can maneuver."
Haverson and Polaski strode toward the Chief. Haverson clutched his chest and grimaced in pain from the sword wound. Polaski set her hand on the Master Chief's shoulder. "That's bad," she whispered. "Let me get a first-aid kit from the Pelican, and—"
The Chief shrugged off her touch. "Later." He saw her concerned expression melt into one of... what? Fear? Confusion?
"Cortana, show me what to do," the Chief said and made his way to the raised platform in the center of the bridge. "Polaski, you and Haverson get that other hatch open."
"Aye aye," Polaski muttered, her voice tight. She and Haverson went to the hatch and got to work.
The Master Chief glanced at the control surfaces. As his hand hovered over them, the flat controls rose and became a three-dimensional web of the distinctive Covenant calligraphy. "Where?" he asked.
"Move your hand to the right half a meter," Cortana said. "Up twenty centimeters. That control. No, to the left." She sighed. "That one. Tap it three times."
Faint lights traced the surface as the Chief touched it; they flared red and orange and finally cooled to brilliant blue.
"It worked," Cortana said. "NAV controls coming online. I can finally move this crate. Hang on."
The ship spun to port. On the displays that still functioned, four more Covenant cruisers tracked them—and fired.
The flagship accelerated, but the plasma torpedoes arced and followed them. "No good," Cortana said. "I can't overcome our inertia in this tub. They're going to hit us . . . unless I can get us into Slipspace."
A rhythmic warble pulsed from one of the displays. It flashed red.
"Oh no," Cortana said.
The leading plasma torpedo impacted. Dull red fire smeared across the viewscreens.
"Oh no, what?" Haverson demanded.
"This ship's Slipspace generator is inert," Cortana replied. "The disabled NAV controls were a trick. It must have been the Covenant AI; it lured me here while the drive was physically de-coupled from the reactor. I can maneuver all I want, give orders to the Slipspace generator—but without the system powered up were not going anywhere."
"There's a Covenant AI?" Haverson muttered, and raised an eyebrow. "Upload the coordinates to power coupling," the Master Chief said. "I'll take care of it." Two more plasma torpedoes impacted and splashed across the shield. "Energy shields collapsing," Cortana said. "Brace!"
The last shot collided with the flagship. The hull heated, and plasma boiled layers of armor plating away. The ship rolled as plumes of superheated metal vapor outgassed.
"Another hit like that will breach the hull," Cortana said. "Moving this tub at flank speed." "The power coupling coordinates, Cortana," the Master Chief insisted. A route appeared on his heads-up display. The engineering rooms were twenty decks below the bridge.
"Those won't do you any good," Cortana told him. "There are bound to be Elite hunt-and-kill teams waiting for you. And even if you managed to remove them, there is no way to repair the power coupling in time. We don't have the tools or the expertise."
The Master Chief looked around the bridge. There had to be a way. There was always a way—
He leaned over the edge of the central platform and grabbed one of the Covenant Engineers that cowered below. He dragged it up by its float-sack. The creature squirmed and squealed.
"Maybe we don't have the expertise," he said and shook the Engineer. "But this thing does. Can you communicate with it? Tell it what we need?"
There was a pause. Then Cortana replied, "There is an extensive communications suite in the Covenant lexic—"
"Just tell it I'm taking it to fix something."
"All right, Chief," Cortana said.
A stream of high-pitched chirps emanated from the bridge speakers, and t
he Engineer's six eyes dilated. It stopped squirming and grabbed hold of the Master Chief with its tentacles.
"It says 'good' and 'hurry,' " Cortana told him.
"Everyone else stay here," the Chief said.
"If you insist," Haverson muttered, his face pale. Blood trickled from the wound in his chest. The Master Chief looked at Johnson and Locklear. "Don't let the Covenant retake the bridge."
"Not a problem, Chief," Sergeant Johnson said. He stopped to kick the dead Elite once in the teeth, then slapped a fresh clip into his MA5B. He yanked the weapon's charge handle, fed a round into the chamber, and stood at arms. "Those Covenant sissies are going to have to tango with me before they set one foot in this room."
On the display two of the Covenant cruisers fired again.
The Chief watched as the plasma raced toward them, fire that spread across the black of space. "Cortana, buy me some time," he said.
"I'll do what I can, Chief," Cortana told him. "But you'd better move fast. I'm running out of options."
Cortana was annoyed. She had let the Covenant AI—for that's what this other presence in the system undoubtedly had to be— trick her. She had gone straight for the simple lockdown of the NAV systems. She never performed a thorough systems check of the ship, assuming that there had only been one point of sabotage. It was a mistake she would never have made if she'd been operating at full capacity.
She checked every system of the flagship. She then locked them out with her own security measures.
Cortana turned off her feelings of anger and guilt and concentrated on keeping the ship in one piece, and the Master Chief alive. No. . . she reconsidered and kept her emotions active. The "intuition" provided by this aspect of her intelligence template was too valuable to deactivate in a battle.
She maneuvered the flagship toward the gas giant, Threshold. The incoming plasma might be disrupted by the planet's magnetic field—if she dared get close enough.
Cortana diverted power from the foreshield to the aft portions, distorting the protective bubble around the flagship. She turned all seven plasma turrets aft and fired a pair of plasma torpedoes at the incoming salvo.