Encryption Code:Red
Public Key:file /bravo-tango-beta-five/
From:Admiral Roland Freemont, Commanding Fleet Officer, FLEETCOM Sector One Commander/(UNSC Service Number: 00745-16778-HS)
To:ALL UNSC warships in REACH, JERICO, and TANTALUS systems
Subject:IMMEDIATE RECALL
Classification:Classified (BGX Directive)
/start file/
Covenant presence detected on REACH system’s edge coordinates 030 relative.
All UNSC warships are hereby ordered to cease all activities and regroup at rally pointZULU at bestspeed.
ALL SHIPSare to enact the Cole Protocol immediately.
/end file/
“Cortana has picked up ship signatures on thePillar of Autumn ’s sensors,” Captain Keyes said. “Shecannot be sure how many because of electrical interference, but there are more than a hundred alienships inbound toward Reach. We have to go. We have our orders. The Section Three mission has to bescrubbed.”
“Sir? Scrubbed?” John had never had a mission canceled.
“Reach is our strategic headquarters and our biggest ship-building facility, Master Chief. If the shipyardsfall, then Dr. Halsey’s prediction of humanity having only months to survive will shrink to weeks.”
The Master Chief normally would never have contradicted a superior officer, but this time dutycompelled him. “Sir, our two missions are not mutually exclusive.”
Captain Keyes lit his pipe—in defiance of three separate regulations of igniting a combustible on aUSNC ship. He puffed once and thoughtfully examined the smoke. “What do you have in mind, MasterChief?”
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“A hundred alien vessels, sir. Between the combined force of the fleet and Reach’s orbital gunplatforms, it is almost guaranteed there will be a disabled ship my squad can board and capture.”
Captain Keyes mulled this over. “There will also be hundreds of ships exchanging fire with one another.Missiles, nukes . . . Covenant plasma torpedoes.”
“Just get us close enough,” the Master Chief said. “Punch a hole in their shields long enough for us toget on their hull. We’ll do the rest.”
Captain Keyes chewed on his pipe. He tucked it into the cup of his hand. “There are operationalcomplications with your plan. Cortana has been running thePillar of Autumn ’s shakedown. We have ourown AI, but by the time we get it initialized and running this ship—the battle may be over.”
“I see, sir.”
Captain Keyes gazed a moment at the Master Chief, then sighed. “If there is a disabled Covenant shipand if we are close enough to itand if we’re not blown to a million bits by the time we get there, then I’lltransfer Cortana to you. I’ve flown ships without an AI before.” Captain Keyes managed a weak smile,but it quickly disappeared.
“Yes, sir!”
“We’ll be at rally point Zulu in twenty minutes, Master Chief. Have your team ready by then . . . foranything.”
“Sir.” He saluted.
Captain Keyes returned the salute and entered the elevator, puffing on his pipe and shaking his head.
The Master Chief turned to his teammates. They halted what they were doing.
“You all heard. This is it. Fred and James, I want to you to refit one of our Pelicans. Get every scrap ofC-12 and shape a charge on her nose. If Captain Keyes downs a Covenant shield, we may have to blastour way into the ship’s hull.”
Fred and James replied, “Aye, sir.”
“Linda, assemble a team and get into every crate ONI packed for us—distribute that gear ASAP. Makesure everyone gets a thruster pack, plenty of ammo, grenades, and Jackhammer launchers if we havethem. If we do get on board, we may encounter those armored Covenant types again—this time I wantthe firepower to take them out.”
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“Yes, sir!”
The Spartans scrambled to make ready for the mission.
The Master Chief approached Kelly. On a private COM channel, he told her, “Crate thirteen on themanifest has three HAVOK nuclear mines. Get them. I have the arming cards. Ready them for transport.”
“Affirmative.” She paused.
The Master Chief couldn’t see her face past the reflective shield of her helmet, but he knew her wellenough to know that the tiny slump of her shoulders meant that she was worried.
“Sir?” she said. “I know this mission will be tough, but . . . do you ever get the feeling that this is likeone of Chief Mendez’s missions? Like there’s a trick . . . some twist that we’ve overlooked?”
“Yes,” he replied. “And I’m waiting for it.”
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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
0534 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /UNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System
ThePillar of Autumn detonated its port emergency thrusters. The ship slid out of the path of the asteroid,missing it by ten meters—
—The Covenant plasma trailing them did not. It impacted the city-sized rock and sent fountains ofmolten iron and nickel spewing into space.
Nine of the ten teardrop-shaped Covenant fighters—nicknamed “Seraphs” by ONI—dodged the asteroidas well. The tenth ship slammed into the asteroid and vanished from the bridge’s view screen.
The other single ships accelerated and swarmed around thePillar of Autumn , harassing her with pulselaser fire.
“Cortana,” Captain Keyes said, “activate our point defense system.”
ThePillar of Autumn ’s 50mm cannons flashed—chipping away at the Covenant ships’ shields.
“Already engaged, Captain,” Cortana said calmly.
“Ensign Lovell,” Captain Keyes said. “Engines all stop and bring us about one hundred eighty degrees.Lieutenant Hikowa, ready our MAC gun and arm Archer missile pods A1 through A7. I want a firingsolution that has our Archer missiles hitting with the third MAC round.”
“On it, sir,” Lieutenant Hikowa replied.
“Aye, sir,” Ensign Lovell said. “Answering engines all stop. Coming about. Brace yourselves.”
ThePillar of Autumn ’s engines sputtered and died. Navigational thrusters fired and rotated the ship toface the real threat—a Covenant carrier.
The enormous alien craft had materialized aft of thePillar of Autumn and launched their single ships.The carrier had then launched two salvos of plasma—which Captain Keyes had only shaken by enteringthe asteroid field.
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Cortana maneuvered the massivePillar of Autumn like it was a sporting yacht; she nimbly dodgedtumbling rocks, used them to screen Covenant plasma and pulse laser bolts.
But thePillar of Autumn would emerge from the asteroid field in twenty seconds.
“Firing solution online, sir,” Lieutenant Hikowa said. “MAC gun hot and missile safety interlocksremoved. Ready to launch.”
“Fire missiles at will, Lieutenant.”
Rapid-fire thumps echoed though thePillar of Autumn ’s hull and a swarm of Archer missiles spedtoward the incoming carrier.
“MAC gun is hot,” Hikowa said. “Booster capacitors ready. Firing in eight seconds, sir.”
“I must make one small adjustment to your trajectory, Lieutenant,” Cortana said. “Covenant single shipsare concentrating their attacks on our underside. Captain? With your permission?”
“Granted,” Keyes said.
“Firing solution recalculated,” Cortana said. “Hang on.”
Cortana fired thrusters and thePillar of Autumn rotated belly up—brought the majority of her 50mmcannons to bear on the Covenant Seraph fighters underneath her.
Overlapping fields of fire wore down their shields—punctured their armored hulls with a thousandrounds, tore through the pilots with a hail of projectiles, and peppered their reactors. Nine puffs of firedropped behind thePillar of Autumn and vanished into the darkness.
“Enemy single ships destroyed,” Cortana said. “Approaching firing position.”
“Cortana, give me a countdown. Lieutenant Hikowa, fire on my mark.” Captain Keyes said.
“Ready to fire, aye,” Lieutenant Hikowa said.
Cortana nodded; her trim figure projected in miniature inside the bridge holotank. As she nodded, a timedisplay appeared, the numbers counting down rapidly.
Keyes gripped the edge of the command chair, his eyes glued to the countdown. Three seconds, two,one . . . “Mark.”
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“Firing!” Hikowa answered.
A triple flash of lightning saturated the forward view screen and bled in from the viewport; three white-hot projectiles crossed the black distance between thePillar of Autumn and the Covenant carrier.
Along the side of the carrier, motes of light collected as they rebuilt the charges of their plasma weapons.
Archer missiles were pinpoints of exhaust in the distance; the carrier’s pulse lasers fired and melted athird of the incoming missiles.
ThePillar of Autumn rolled to starboard and dove.
Captain Keyes floated in free fall for a heartbeat, then landed awkwardly on the deck. The crenellatedsurface of an asteroid appeared on their port camera—meters away—then vanished.
Captain Keyes was grateful that he never had time to initialize thePillar of Autumn ’s AI. Cortanaperformed superbly.
The trio of blazing MAC rounds struck the carrier. The shield flashed once, twice. The third round gotthrough—gutting the ship from stem to stern.
The carrier spun sideways. Her shields stuttered once, trying to reestablish a protective screen. Ahundred Archer missiles struck, cratered the hull, blossomed into fire and sparks and smoldering metal.
The alien carrier listed and crashed into the asteroid thePillar of Autumn had just narrowly avoided. Itstuck there, hull broken and cracked. Columns of fire blossomed from the shattered vessel.
Captain Keyes sighed. A victory.
The Spartans, however, would not be taking that ship into Covenant space. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“Cortana, mark the location of the destroyed ship and the asteroid. We may have a chance to salvage herlater.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Ensign Lovell,” Captain Keyes said, “turn us around and give me best speed to rally point Zulu.”
Lovell tapped the thrusters and rotated thePillar of Autumn to relative space normal with Reach. Therumble of the engines shook the decks as the ship accelerated in-system.
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“ETA twenty minutes at best speed, sir.”
The battle for Reach could be over by the time he got there. Captain Keyes wished he could movethrough Slipspace for short, precision jumps like the Covenant. That carrier had materialized a kilometerbehind thePillar of Autumn . If he had that kind of accuracy, he could be at the rally point now—and beof some use. Any attempt to jump in-system, however, would be foolish at best. At worst, it would be afatal move. Jump targets varied by hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Theoretically, they couldreenter normal spaceinside Reach’s sun.
“Cortana, give me maximum magnification on the fore cameras.”
“Aye sir,” she said.
The view on the forward screen zoomed in—jumped and refocused on planet Reach.
Twenty thousand kilometers from the planet, a cluster of a hundred UNSC ships collected at rally pointZulu: destroyers, frigates, three cruisers, two carriers—and three refit and repair stations hovering overthem . . . waiting to be used as sacrificial shields.
“Fifty-two additional UNSC warships inbound to rally point Zulu,” Cortana reported.
“Shift focus to section four by four on-screen, Cortana. Show me those Covenant forces.”
The scene blinked and transferred to the approaching Covenant fleet. There were so many ships CaptainKeyes couldn’t estimate their numbers.
“How many?” he asked.
“I count three hundred fourteen Covenant ships, Captain,” Cortana replied.
Captain Keyes couldn’t tear his gaze away from the ships. The UNSC only won battles with theCovenant when they outnumbered the enemy forces three to one . . . not the other way around.
They had one advantage: the MAC orbital guns around Reach—the UNSC’s most powerful nonnuclearweapon. Some called them “Super” MAC guns or the “big stick.”
Their linear accelerator coils were larger than a UNSC cruiser. They propelled a three-thousand-tonprojectile at tremendous speed, and could reload within five seconds. They drew power directly from thefusion reactor complex planetside.
“Pull back the camera angle, Cortana. Let me see the entire battle area.”
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The Covenant ships accelerated toward Reach. The fleet at rally point Zulu fired their MAC guns andmissiles. The orbital Super MAC guns opened fire as well—twenty streaks of white hot metal burnedacross the night.
The Covenant answered by launching a salvo of plasma torpedoes at the orbital guns—so much fire inspace that it looked like a solar flare.
Deadly arcs of flame and metal raced through space and crossed paths.
The engines of the three refit stations flared to life and the platelike ships moved toward the path of theflaming vapor.
A plasma bolt caught the edge of the leading station—fire splashed over its flat surface. More bolts hit,and the station melted, sagged, and boiled. The metal glowed red, then white-hot, tinged with blue.
The other two stations maneuvered into position and shielded the orbital guns from the fiery assault.Plasma torpedoes collided with them and sprayed plumes of molten metal into space. After a dozen hits,clouds of ionizing metal enveloped the place where the three stations had been.
They had been vaporized.
The last of the Covenant plasma hit the haze—scattered, absorbed, and made the cloud glow a hellishorange.
Meanwhile, the fleet’s opening salvo and the Super MAC rounds hit the Covenant fleet.
The smaller ship-based MAC rounds bounced off the Covenant shields—it took three or more to wearthem down.
The Super MAC rounds, however, were another story. The first Super MAC shell hit a Covenantdestroyer. The ship’s shield flashed and vanished—the remaining impact momentum transferred to theship—the hull rippled and shattered into a million fragments.
Four nuclear mines detonated in the center of the Covenant fleet. Dozens of ships with downed shieldsflared white and dissolved.
The other ships however, shrugged off the damage; their shields burned brilliant silver, then cooled.
The surviving Covenant vessels advanced in-system—a third of their number were left behind . . .burning radioactive hulks or utterly destroyed by the Super MAC rounds.
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Plasma charges collected on the lateral lines of the Covenant ships. They fired. Fingers of deadly energyreached across space . . . toward the UNSC fleet.
One Covenant ship sat in the center of the pack, a gigantic vessel, larger than three UNSC cruisers.White-blue beams flashed from its prow—a split second later five UNSC vessels detonated.
