This time the Covenant was glassing a planet . . . with his people still on it.
He tried to think of a way to stop them . . . to save his teammates. He couldn’t.
The Captain turned and strode to the Master Chief, stood by his side. “Dr. Halsey’s mission,” he said, “ismore important than ever now. It may be the only chance left for Earth. We have to focus on that goal.”
Three dozen Covenant craft moved toward Gamma station and the now inert orbital defense platforms.
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They bombarded the installations—the mightiest weapons in the UNSC arsenal—with plasma. The gunsmelted, and boiled away.
The Master Chief clenched his hands into fists. The Captain was correct: there was nothing to do nowexcept complete the mission they had set out to do.
Captain Keyes barked, “Ensign Lovell, give me our best acceleration. I want to enter Slipstream space assoon as possible.”
Cortana said, “Excuse me, Captain. Six covenant frigates are inbound on an intercept course.”
“Continue evasive maneuvers, Cortana. Prepare the Slipspace generators and get me an appropriaterandomized exit vector.”
“Aye, sir.” Navigation symbols flashed along the length of her holographic body.
The Master Chief continued to watch as the Covenant ships closed in on them.
Was he the only Spartan left? Better to die than live without his teammates. But he still had a mission:victory against the Covenant—and vengeance for his fallen comrades.
“Generating randomized exit vector per the Cole Protocol,” Cortana said.
The Master Chief glanced at her translucent body. She looked vaguely like a younger Dr. Halsey. Tinydots, ones, and zeros slid over her torso, arms, and legs. Her thoughts were literally worn on her sleeve;the symbols also appeared on Ensign Lovell’s NAV station.
He cocked his head as the symbols and numbers scrolled across the NAV console.
The representations of Slipspace vectors and velocity curves twisted across the screen—tantalizinglyfamiliar. He’d seen them somewhere before—but he could not make the connection.
“Something on your mind, Master Chief?” Cortana asked.
“Those symbols . . . I thought I had seen them somewhere before. It’s nothing.”
Cortana got a far off look in her eyes. The marks cycling on her hologram shifted and rearranged.
The Master Chief saw the Covenant fleet gathered around planet Reach. They swarmed and circled likesharks. The first of their plasma bombardments launched toward the surface. Clouds in the fire’s pathboiled away.
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“Jump to Slipspace, Ensign Lovell,” the Captain said. “Get us the hell out of here.”
John remembered Chief Mendez’s words—that they had to live and fight another day. He was alive . . .and there was still plenty of fight left in him. And he would win this war—no matter what it took.
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SECTION VI
HALO
EPILOGUE
0647 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /UNSCPillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System’s edge
Cortana fired thePillar of Autumn ’s autocannons—targeting a dozen Seraph fighters harassing them asthey were accelerated out of the system. Seven Covenant frigates were now locked into the pursuit. Shedodged a volley of pulse laser fire, using the ventral emergency thrusters.
She pushed the damaged secondary reactor to critical levels. They had to build up more speed beforeactivating the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators or the jump to Slipstream space would fail.
She rechecked her calculations. Under the Cole Protocol, they would be jumping away from Earth . . .but it would not be a totally random heading.
The Master Chief had been right when he said that he recognized the shorthand navigation symbols onthe NAV display.
Cortana accessed the Spartans’ mission logs. She sifted through the data, and filed it into a secondarylong-term storage buffer. When she reviewed the database of his mission reports, Cortana learned thatSpartan 117had seen something similar on the Covenant vessel he had boarded in 2525. And again—thesymbols almost looked like those on the rock he had extracted from Covenant forces on Sigma OctanusIV. ONI reports on the symbols found in the anomalous rock had defied cryptoanalysis.
Keyes’ order to plot a navigation route sparked a connection between this data; she accessed the aliensymbols, and rather than compare them with alphabets or hieroglyphics, compared them to starformations.
There were some startling similarities—along with a number of differences. Cortana reanalyzed thesymbols and accounted for thousands of years of stellar drift.
A tenth of a second later she had a close match on her charts—86.2 percent.
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Interesting. Perhaps the markings in the rock recovered on Sigma Octanus IV were navigation symbols,albeit highly unusual and stylized ones—mathematical symbols as artistic and elegant as Chinesecalligraphy.
What was there that the Covenant wanted so badly that they had launched a full offensive against SigmaOctanus IV? Whatever it was . . . Cortana was interested, too.
She compared the new NAV coordinates with her directives and was pleased with what she saw; thenew course complied with the Cole Protocol. Good.
The Covenant frigates fired their plasma again. Seven bolts of fire streaked toward thePillar of Autumn .
She dumped the coordinates to the NAV controls and stored the logic path that led to her deduction inher high-security buffer.
“Approaching saturation velocity,” she told Captain Keyes. “Powering Shaw-Fujikawa Translightgenerators. New course available.”
The Covenant frigates aligned with their outbound vector. They were going to try to follow thePillar ofAutumn through Slipspace. Damn.
The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators tore a hole in normal space. Light boiled around thePillar ofAutumn and she vanished.
Cortana had plenty of time to think on the journey. Most of the crew were frozen in cryo for the trip.Some of the engineers had elected to try to repair the main reactor. A futile gesture . . . but she lent thema few cycles to try to rebuild the convection inductor.
Had Dr. Halsey been on Reach when it fell to the Covenant? Cortana felt a pang of regret for her creator.Maybe she had gotten away. The probability was low . . . but the doctor was a survivor.
Cortana ran a self-diagnostic. Her Alpha-level commands were intact. She had not jeopardized herprimary mission by following this vector. There were, unfortunately, sure to be Covenant ships whenthey arrived . . . wherever they arrived.
The Covenant had followed them into Slipstream space. And they had always been faster and moreaccurate than UNSC navigators in the elusive dimension.
Captain Keyes and the Master Chief would get their chance to disable and capture one of those vessels.
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Their “luck” had so far defied all probability and statistical variations. She hoped their defiance of theodds continued.
“Captain Keyes? Wake up, sir,” Cortana said. “We will enter normal space in three hours.”
Captain Keyes sat up in the cryo tube. He licked his lips and gagged. “I hate that stuff.”
“The inhalant surfactant is highly nutritious, sir. Please regurgitate and swallow the protein complex.”
Captain Keyes swung his legs out of the tube. He coughed and spat the mucus onto the deck. “Youwouldn’t say that, Cortana, if you ever tasted this stuff. Ship status?”
“Reactor two has been fully repaired,” she replied. “Reactors one and three are inoperable. That gives ustwenty percent power. Archer missile pods I and J rows serviceable. Autocannon ammunition at tenpercent. Our two remaining Shiva warheads are intact.” She paused and double-checked the MAC gun.“Magnetic Accelerator Gun’s capacitors depolarized. We cannot fire the system, sir.”
“More good news,” he grumbled. “Continue.”
“Hull breaches patched—but the majority of decks eleven, twelve, and thirteen are destroyed—thatincludes the Spartans’ weapons locker.”
“Are there any infantry weapons left?” Keyes asked. “We may need to repel boarders.”
“Yes, Captain. A substantial number of standard Marine infantry weapons survived the engagement.Would you like an inventory?”
“Later. What about the crew?”
“All crew accounted for. Spartan 117 is in cryo sleep with the Marine and security personnel. Wakingbridge officers and all essential personnel.”
“And the Covenant?”
“We’ll know in a moment if they were able to track us, sir.”
“Very well. I’ll be on the bridge in ten minutes.” He eased out of the tube. “I’m getting too damn old tobe frozen and shot through space at light speed,” he muttered.
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Cortana checked the status of the waking crew. There was a minor flutter in Lieutenant Dominique’sheart, which she corrected. Otherwise, status normal.
The Captain and crew assembled on the bridge. They waited.
“Five minutes until normal space, sir,” Cortana announced.
She knew they could see the countdown timer, but Cortana noticed that the crew responded well to hercalm voice in stressful situations. Their reaction times generally improved by as much as 15 percent—give or take. Sometimes, human imperfection made calculations maddeningly imprecise.
She ran another check on all intact systems. ThePillar of Autumn had taken a tremendous beating atReach. It was a wonder it was still in one piece.
“Entering normal space in thirty seconds,” she informed Captain Keyes.
“Shut down all systems, Cortana. I want us to be dark when we hit normal space. If the Covenant didfollow us—maybe we can hide.”
“Aye, sir. Running dark.”
The view screen filed with green light; smears of stars came into focus. A purple-hued gas giant filled athird of the screen.
Captain Keyes said, “Fire thrusters to position us in orbit around the planet, Ensign Lovell.”
“Aye, sir,” he replied.
ThePillar of Autumn glided around the gravity well of the moon.
Cortana detected a radar echo ahead, an object hidden in the shadow.
As the ship rounded the dark side of the gas giant, the object came into full view. It was a ring-shapedstructure . . . gigantic.
“Cortana,” Captain Keyes whispered. “What is that?”
Cortana noted a sudden spike in pulse and respiration among the bridge crew . . . particularly the Captain.
The object spun serenely in the heavens. The outer surface was gray metal, reflecting the brilliantstarlight. From this distance, the surface of the object seemed to be engraved with deep, ornate
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geometric patterns.
“Could this be some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon?” Dominique asked.
“Unknown,” Cortana replied.
She activated the ship’s long-range detection gear. Cortana’s holo image frowned. ThePillar of Autumn’s scanning systems were fine for combat . . . but for this kind of analysis it was like using stone tools.She diverted processing power away from ancillary systems and channeled it into the task.
Figures scrolled across the sensor displays.
“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana announced, “and twenty-two point threekilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenantmaterials, sir.”
She paused and aimed the long-range camera array at the ring. A moment later a close-up of the objectsnapped into focus.
Keyes let out a low whistle.
The inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and browns—trackless desert; jungles; glaciers and vastoceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows upon the terrain. The ring rotated and brought a newfeature into view—a tremendous hurricane forming over an unimaginably wide body of water.
Equations scrolled furiously across Cortana as she studied the ring. She checked and rechecked hernumbers—the rotational speed of the object and its estimated mass. They didn’t quite add up. She ranthrough a series of passive and active scans . . . and found something.
“Captain,” Cortana said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that controls the ring’sspin and keeps the atmosphere inside. At this range—and with this gear—I can’t say with one hundredpercent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and Earth-normalgravity.”
“If it’s artificial, who the hell built it . . . and what in God’s name is it?”
Cortana processed that question for a full three seconds, then finally answered: “I don’t know, sir.”
Captain Keyes took out his pipe, lit it, and puffed once. He examined the curls of smoke thoughtfully.“Then we’d better find out.”
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They stand alone—undaunted—before the mightiest enemy in the universe.
But these are no ordinary men.
They are SPARTANS . . .
PLUMB THE THRILLING DEPTHS OF HALO—AS SECRETS UNFOLD AND THE ACTIONBEGINS . . .
HALOThe Fall of Reach
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A Del Rey (R) Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright (C) 2001 by Microsoft Corporation
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in theUnited States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, andsimultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Bungie, Halo, Xbox, and the Xbox Logos are either registered trademarks or trademarks of MicrosoftCorporation in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license. (C) 2001 MicrosoftCorporation. All Rights Reserved.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
ISBN 0-345-45134-1
First Edition: November 2001
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