First Strike

by Eric Nylund

  Lieutenant Haverson took an involuntary step closer to the display, and his face contorted as he worked out the math in his head. “That’s…a collision course, sir.”

  “Glad you concur with my calculations,” the Admiral remarked dryly.

  Lieutenant Haverson glanced at the Gettysburg and nodded, finally understanding. “Aye, sir. A good plan.”

  “Admiral,” the Master Chief’s voice broke through in a wash of static. “Conduit breach is sealed, sir.”

  “Hang on, son,” Admiral Whitcomb said. “This might be a rough ride. Cortana, give me flank speed now!”

  “Complying,” Cortana said. “Flank speed. Conduit is holding. Coming about to two-four-zero by zero-three-five. Collision with Covenant cruiser at this speed and heading in eighteen seconds.”

  Ascendant Justice–Gettysburg accelerated toward a line of wavering orange plasma—and steamed through it like a ship smashing through a storm wave on the open seas.

  Fire splashed over their hulls and burned away layers of armor. The entire hull superstructure groaned. Explosions reverberated through the deck.

  “Fire on decks eight through twelve,” Cortana reported. “We have lost plasma turret five. Distance to enemy ship six thousand kilometers and closing.”

  “Initiate a roll, Cortana. Make it thirty degrees per second. That’ll spread out the damage over more surface area.”

  “Roll maneuver, aye. Attitude thrusters set to maximum burn.” She exhaled, and her holographic image flickered with irritation. “This will make a targeting solution difficult, sir.”

  “Set firing range of plasma turrets for point blank,” the Admiral told her.

  Cortana hesitated for a full second. “Yes, Admiral.”

  The space on the external cameras slowly began to spin as their ship spiraled toward their intended target.

  The Covenant cruiser came about to face them. Its plasma turrets glowed like angry red eyes.

  “Lieutenant, take the weapons station. Cortana, give us a firing solution and manual fire control.”

  Haverson’s hands moved quickly over the Covenant holographic control surfaces. “Cortana has a firing solution, sir. Activate weapons?”

  “Stand by, Lieutenant.”

  “They’ll get off the first salvo, sir,” Lieutenant Haverson said. Although his voice was calm, a drop of sweat trickled down his freckled cheek.

  “I hope they do,” the Admiral replied. “It may be the only thing that saves us.”

  Lieutenant Haverson took a deep breath, nodding. “Weapons standing by, sir.”

  “Cortana, make ready to vent the Gettysburg’s launch bay.”

  “Aye, sir. Overriding bay door safeties. Distance to target three thousand kilometers.”

  The Covenant cruiser fired. Lances of energy launched and veered toward Ascendant Justice…and arced away in cork-screw spirals and right angles. The space between the two large masses was still tangled and fractured.

  “Two thousand kilometers,” Cortana reported.

  “Stay on course,” the Admiral said. “And continue to hold fire.”

  Lieutenant Haverson’s jaw clenched, and his hands trembled over the controls.

  The enemy cruiser filled the displays. Its plasma turrets recycled and glowed a dull red.

  “One thousand kilometers,” Cortana announced.

  “Admiral?” Lieutenant Haverson asked.

  “Hold your fire.”

  “Five hundred kilometers,” Cortana said. “Three hundred…two…collision imminent.”

  The Admiral’s fist clenched. He barked, “Fire! All turrets, fire! Cortana, depressurize the launch bay and give us full power to port.”

  Ascendant Justice was a kilometer from the Covenant ship on an intercept course when it fired. The Gettysburg’s launch bay doors opened and the air inside explosively decompressed—propelling the conjoined ships to port—just enough to miss the cruiser.

  Plasma rocketed toward their target. There was no way to miss. White-hot fire impacted on the cruiser’s hull, splashed across its surface, boiled off the armored skin, and corroded the skeletal framework underneath.

  “Aft cameras,” the Admiral ordered.

  On screen he saw fire explode out the opposite side of the cruiser. The warship tilted and rolled belly-up, plasma disintegrating the interior from stern to stem until it reached the fusion core. The ship detonated in a ball of flame. An instant later the explosion twisted and curved as the warped Slipspace field swept away all traces of the enemy ship.

  Lieutenant Haverson exhaled and wiped his brow. “Excellent maneuvering, Admiral.”

  “Don’t waste your breath on victory speeches yet, son.” The Admiral scrutinized the tactical display and spotted the other ship. “There. We’ve got a new target.”

  He pointed to a ship half obscured in the plasma fog: the carrier, intact, with a cloud of gnats swarming about it. Seraph fighters dived and intercepted plasma and meteor bolts that got too close. The resulting fireballs deflected the impacts from the hull.

  “She’s got a smart Captain,” the Admiral muttered. “So we can’t use the same trick twice.”

  Five explosions rattled Ascendant Justice, and the ambient blue light on the bridge flickered.

  “Meteor impact,” Cortana replied. “We just lost plasma turrets two and three. All functionality on decks eight and below has been lost. The structural integrity of this ship, sir, is in danger of imminent collapse.”

  “Another minute, Cortana,” the Admiral told her and continued to search the tactical display. “We either take out that carrier here—where their shields can’t regenerate—or we face them in normal space.”

  He tapped the TAC map. “Gotcha! Cortana, come about to zero-three-zero by one-four-five, calculate the fastest acceleration and deceleration burns this ship can handle to get us to this object, and move this ship ASAP.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Lieutenant Haverson looked at the map and located what the Admiral pointed at. “That object is just part of a Covenant ship, the aft section of a cruiser.”

  The Admiral nodded. “Exactly, Lieutenant. Cortana, how’s the structural integrity of our ship’s nose?”

  “Sir? The nose?” Cortana paused, then reported, “Intact, sir. Most of the damage has been to the lateral—”

  “Bring us into direct contact with that hunk of metal, Cortana.”

  “Aye, sir,” Cortana replied.

  Ascendant Justice accelerated toward the broken Covenant ship, and then slowed. The two warships touched; there was a slow grinding noise that echoed along the ship’s frame.

  “Contact,” Cortana reported.

  “Perfect,” Admiral Whitcomb replied. “New course three-two-zero by two-two-zero. Flank speed. Lieutenant, charge any plasma turret we have left. Cortana, get this ship ready for full reverse power.”

  Ascendant Justice–Gettysburg turned and moved toward the Covenant carrier—pushing the broken hull of the other ship before them.

  They accelerated on a collision course.

  The turrets on the Covenant carrier heated to white hot—but they held their fire.

  “Eight thousand kilometers to enemy ship,” Cortana announced.

  “Hold this course, Cortana.”

  “Six thousand kilometers, sir.”

  “Stand by,” the Admiral ordered and gripped the railing again with his sweating hands.

  “Two thousand kilometers.”

  “Full reverse power now!”

  The engines rumbled, and the hull of Ascendant Justice shuddered.

  The wrecked Covenant ship on their nose screeched as its momentum carried it along at the faster velocity. It pulled free of Ascendant Justice…tumbled directly toward the enemy carrier.

  “Mass impact on carrier in four seconds,” Cortana said. “Three seconds.”

  The carrier fired its plasma at the incoming mass. Flames heated the wreckage, punched though its armor and hull, and melted the alloy.

 
The mass, however, continued forward, shattered and molten—but its velocity was undiminished.

  It crashed into the carrier and sent it spinning to starboard. The carrier’s hull breached along a dozen rents, and atmosphere vented and fanned the red-hot metal into gold flames. The launch bays chained with explosions.

  “Fire all weapons, Lieutenant!”

  Ascendant Justice fired its remaining turrets. Plasma cut into the carrier and sliced it to the core. Every deck flashed with fire and became an inferno.

  “That’s the best we can do,” Admiral Whitcomb whispered. “Cortana, get us out of here. Transition to normal space.”

  Cortana’s holographic silhouette blackened with swarming calculations. “Engaging Slipspace matrix.”

  Blotches of inky black welled within the sea of fire. Tiny stars winked on within those pools of darkness. The plasma-charged atmosphere faded, and the enemy ships ablaze vanished.

  “Cut all power to the engines,” the Admiral ordered.

  Admiral Whitcomb gazed at the blackness and stars. “Now, where the hell are we?”

  Section V

  Massacre At Eridanus Secundus

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Time: Date Record [[Error]] Anomaly Date Unknown

  Hybrid Vessel Gettysburg—Ascendant Justice, In

  Anomalous Slipspace Bubble.

  The Master Chief woke.

  Consciousness, however, was a slight overestimation of his condition. His blurry vision came into focus slowly…but there was nothing to see except the interior of his visor. Amber status lights winked on.

  Pain washed over his feet, his right thigh, and his hand. Good. He was alive. He knew from previous experience that this was the tail end of shock…and the stunning, numbing effects of that state were wearing off.

  He felt the familiar weight and reactive circuits of his MJOLNIR armor surrounding him. The coppery-tinged flavor of biofoam coated his mouth, so he also surmised that his injuries had been recently treated.

  And there was gravity. The press against his back was a great comfort to the Master Chief. The next time someone wanted him to go on a zero-gee op, he’d—

  “Welcome back,” Cortana said, interrupting his thoughts. A faint light flickered on to his left.

  He turned onto his side. The burns on his extremities protested and shot lances of pain up his hand and feet.

  He was in a med bay. The lights were turned down low, and he saw that he was the only person occupying a recovery bed. Biomonitors pulsed along one wall, displaying his vital signs and MRI snapshots.

  A holographic projection pad stood next to his bed. Cortana’s tiny figure, strobing with symbolic logic code, waved to him, and when he didn’t immediately respond she crossed her arms impatiently. “MRIs show no concussion, no subdural or epidural hematomas. You must have a thicker skull than I thought.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Deck thirty-two on the UNSC frigate Gettysburg,” Cortana told him. “Or what’s left of it, anyway.”

  “What happened?”

  Cortana sighed. “Are you referring to what happened since I left you on Reach? Or the outcome of the Slipspace battle? Or do you mean what happened since that battle?”

  “The battle, first,” he said and struggled to get up. “I presume we won.”

  Standing was too painful, though, and the strength seemed to have been drained from his muscles. He eased himself back to his original horizontal position.

  Cortana’s pale blue light dimmed and her gaze dropped to the deck. “Blue Team successfully repaired the main-engine conduit.”

  “I remember,” the Master Chief murmured. “The repair part of it, at least. There was an explosion…”

  “A plasma bolt,” Cortana corrected. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Chief, but only you and SPARTANS 093, 043, and 104 survived that blast.”

  Grace, Will, and Fred were alive, but Li, Anton, and Warrant Officer Polaski had been killed in action. He remembered Polaski’s scream, then Anton’s outline as the flash of white-hot fire swept over the hull.

  “Acknowledged,” he said as graciously as he could muster, but he heard bitterness give an edge to his voice.

  It struck him as odd that Polaski’s death affected him as well. He’d seen thousands of UNSC soldiers die. She hadn’t hesitated to transport Blue Team on a mission that was insanely dangerous. She had survived the battle of Reach, the crash landing on Halo, the Flood, and everything else—then she had bravely volunteered for this mission, too, and perhaps saved all their lives.

  She might have made a good Spartan. There were worse eulogies.

  The Master Chief sighed, called up his team roster on his heads-up display, and marked Anton and Li as Missing in Action. He paused to view all the others on that list; his first and best friend, Sam, was there…and he hadn’t even realized a dozen more had been listed as MIA.

  He saved the changes to the roster and closed the file.

  “What about Kelly and Linda?” he asked Cortana.

  Cortana looked up and flipped the hair from her luminous eyes. She paced a small circle on the holographic pad and then said, “SPARTAN 087, Kelly, is recovering from second-degree burns on seventy-two percent of her body. Doctor Halsey has accelerated tissue regrowth with dermacortic steroids. She should be fully healed in a matter of days…although her mobility will be severely hampered until then.”

  “And Linda?”

  “Accessing status.” Cortana paused for a full second. “Doctor Halsey has SPARTAN 058 currently in medical facility alpha, three decks above us. She still has her in a cryogenic state and is presently performing exploratory surgery. She has given me several orders to prepare the flash clone banks for replacement organs pending transplant.”

  “So she’s alive?” the Master Chief asked.

  “Technically,” Cortana replied, “no.” For a moment there was a look of genuine concern on her face—but it quickly vanished. “The doctor and Admiral Whitcomb have debated the risk of attempting to revive SPARTAN 058 before we reach a major medical facility. Doctor Halsey, I’m sure, will brief you when she has all the facts, Chief.”

  John frowned at this lack of detail. He didn’t appreciate Cortana’s increasingly difficult attitude, one that had slowly shifted ever since she interfaced with the Forerunner computer system on Halo. He made a mental note to ask Dr. Halsey about Linda later…and he’d ask her about Cortana, too.

  “All other hands on board are accounted for?” the Master Chief asked.

  “Yes, Chief. They are all engaged in repairs to the conjoined ships. We took tremendous damage in the expanded Slipspace from plasma bombardments and mass impacts. Both ships’ superstructures, however, remain intact. The Gettysburg’s reactor is online and operating at sixty-seven percent capacity. Ascendant Justice’s reactor is offline undergoing repairs. Five of our seven plasma turrets require refit. And worst, Ascendant Justice’s engines are crippled. We have less than three percent operational thrust.”

  “Can the ship still jump to Slipspace? Are we stranded out here?”

  “A jump is possible,” Cortana said. She shook her head the way an older sister might when her baby brother asked a naive question. “It wouldn’t do us any good, though. The alien artifact in Doctor Halsey’s possession emits high levels of radiation in Slipspace. This unknown radiation even penetrates your suit’s shields. I estimate lethal exposure in just under seventy-two hours. Also, that radiation would serve as a beacon for any Covenant ships prowling Slipspace, searching for us.”

  “So we’re stuck between systems.”

  “Negative,” Cortana replied, and her voice took on a new chill. “Admiral Whitcomb is quite adamant that we risk another Slipspace transition—regardless of the cost in human life. Otherwise, it would be weeks before we would be able to contact UNSC High Command.”

  HighCom? Two facts suddenly clicked into place: the Admiral’s need to contact the rest of the Admiralty—no matter the price—and Dr. Halsey’s attemp
ts to revive Linda.

  “What’s compelling the Admiral’s tactics, Cortana?”

  Cortana’s holographic outline softened. “I told you this before, Chief, but apparently it did not stick in your semiconscious state.” She then came into sharp focus and crossed her arms over her chest. “The Covenant have discovered the location of Earth.”

  The Master Chief stood, suddenly wide awake and alert. He set aside his pain and fatigue.

  “Explain,” he demanded.

  Cortana outlined her discovery of the encoded subchannel within normal Covenant communiqués. She explained how the Covenant’s military orders were disseminated with startling efficiently, and she then showed him symbols that represented the coordinates for Sol…and Earth.

  He stood mute and listened. The UNSC had worked so hard, for so long, to preserve this secret. It was only a matter of time; he had always known that the Covenant had to find Earth sooner or later. He had, however, always thought it would be later…and never now.

  The Master Chief stared at the tiny triangles, squares, dots, and bars that made up the spatial coordinates. “We’ve seen these before, on Côte d’Azur.”

  “Yes. And according to Doctor Halsey, her team on Reach found similar markings in the underground vaults.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Unknown.”

  The Master Chief put these facts aside for the moment; the greater meaning of the symbols and translation he’d leave up to Cortana and ONI. The only insight that mattered to him was that the Covenant were going to attack Earth.

  “Was there a timetable or any other data encoded on the subchannel?” he asked.

  “Affirmative. There’s a coordinated series of orders to Covenant warships scattered across the galaxy to rendezvous with a mobile command-and-control base they call the ‘Unyielding Hierophant.’ When they have sufficient force, they will collectively make the jump to Earth.”

  The Master Chief moved toward the medical bay’s doors. They automatically parted. “Where is Admiral Whitcomb?”

  “The Admiral is currently on the bridge,” Cortana replied. “But Doctor Halsey gave me strict orders that you are not to—”