"Get primary computers online," Lash ordered. "Cho, what's our Slipspace status?"
Over the COM Cho's voice crackled with static. "Capacitors at eighty percent and draining. I'll need full engine power for two more minutes."
"Understood," Lash replied. Two minutes could be forever. "Continue dark protocols," he ordered Yang. "Lock down all external systems." To Lieutenant Durruno he said, "Use docking jets to present minimal aspect to the incoming vessels while they're on the blind side."
"Aye, sir." She activated the thrusters and tapped a joystick to manually reposition the ship.
On-screen the moon tilted as they realigned.
The Covenant destroyer pair emerged from the far side of the moon… and grew larger on-screen. Sleek and dangerous as hell, their gray-blue hulls bore down on the Dusk.
"Replot their course," Lash told Lieutenant Commander Waters.
Waters stood over his station, checked and rechecked his numbers. "Not an intercept course," he whispered, "… but dammed close."
A coincidence? Or had the enemy seen them and were coming for revenge?
"Stay dark," Lash ordered.
There was little else they could do.
The destroyers' smooth blue curves filled their viewscreens.
Lash felt the butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation of quantum fluctuations from the Covenant repulsor engines.
The Dusk tumbled and spun.
The viewscreen cleared, revealing a rotating field of untwin-kling stars.
"Thirty-one meters off the port bow," Waters breathed.
"Repulsor wake has set us adrift off the Lagrange point, sir," Lieutenant Durruno said.
"Let us drift, Lieutenant," Lash said. "Fix cameras on the Stalingrad."
The spinning stars on the viewscreens slowed and then centered on the four UNSC warships as they rounded the moon at flank speed, chasing the two Covenant destroyers.
"They're lining up for a shot," Waters said. "They've got six MAC slugs left. That should be enough."
"Energy spike!" Yang shouted, "Not from our ships. Not from the Covenant vessels, either, sir."
"Location?" Lash asked, and he pushed himself out of the captain's chair.
Yang shook his head, opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Waters went to the SENSOR-OPS station and looked. "Power profile indicative of a Slipspace field," he said. "A big one. Deconvoluting signature. Location is"—his features went slack— "everywhere."
The space around the UNSC fleet rippled and blue lines appeared, connected, and intertwined like waves of sapphire water. Slipspace fields ruptured normal dimensions and Cherenkov radiation dazzled the night—as dozens of Covenant destroyers, carriers, and cruisers appeared, swarms of them formed a phalanx between the UNSC battle group and the two surviving enemy vessels.
"Counting thirty-two Covenant ships," Yang croaked.
Lieutenant Durruno froze at her station, eyes wide with terror.
The Covenant armada fired.
Spotlight energy projectors flashed, and pure white light cleaved the dark. The UNSC ships' titanium armor boiled and vaporized, mixed with venting oxygen, and photonic pressure blasted the flames into wavering plumes.
Archer missiles and magnetic accelerator cannons fired in a desperate counterstrike.
The missiles detonated a fraction of a second along their flight paths, high explosives heated to the flashpoint. Four MAC slugs rocketed though the energy projector cones, fireballs of liquefied metal. Three missed.
One hit, spattering uselessly on Covenant shields.
Thirty-two lines of plasma heated, detached, and arced toward the human fleet, striking critically damaged vessels, blasting craters, ripping through inner decks, until the superstructures buckled and inner atmospheres decompressed in large bursting bubbles upon the now-molten hulls.
The Covenant armada ceased fire and slowly advanced.
Admiral Patterson's ships had been reduced to a field of debris in a matter of seconds.
Pinpoint lasers fired from the enemy ships as they destroyed escape pods.
"Incoming debris," Waters warned.
"We need to do something," Lieutenant Durruno whispered.
What had been a victorious battle group chasing down a doomed enemy was now tumbling, half-melted prows and glowing reactor cores. A floating graveyard. Ghosts.
The hope that Commandeer Richard Lash had felt was forever gone.
"Do nothing," Lash told them.
"If anything hits us, sir," Waters said, "assuming we survive the impact, the deflection angles will give away our position."
"This close to so many vessels," Lash replied, "so would maneuvering." He went to Lieutenant Durruno at the NAV station. "Hang tight," he told her. Her eyes shone with tears, but she nodded, and gripped the edges of her seat.
Lash checked his wristwatch and made sure it was wound tight.
The Covenant armada moved closer, blotted out the starlight, and covered the Dusk with shadow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
2115 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDARS \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM \ UNDETERMINED LOCATION IN THE FORERUNNER CONSTRUCT KNOWN AS ONYX
Kurt motioned back to Fred and Ash, Linda and Mark to close the gap.
Two by two they moved up the corridor, gliding from pillar to pillar, the SPARTAN-IIIs on point barely visible in their armor, part shadow, part striped onyx patterns. The SPARTAN-IIs closed behind like liquid mercury rolling over velvet, smooth and silent.
The differences between their two generations had been left behind. Teams Blue and Saber worked as a single unit, family who had pulled together in a crisis.
Kurt watched his motion tracker, IFF tags overlaid on the grid. The Spartans had the best positions possible—set along each of the pillars that stretched up to the ten-meter-tall corridor. Kurt, Tom, and Lucy had point.
Olivia was on recon, her IFF disabled, so Kurt wasn't certain of her precise location in the room ahead.
This corridor was tiled with interlocking Forerunner symbols of jade, turquoise, and lapis.
Dr. Halsey surmised it was an epic poem depicting a struggle in the Forerunners' long-lost past.
All Kurt knew was it was a kill zone, with scant cover and long sight lines. A good place to get ambushed.
Olivia flashed her green status light three times: the all-clear signal.
Kurt motioned for Tom and Lucy to follow him, and they slinked into the room ahead.
Shadows shrouded rows of squat machines, and the only light came from eight podlike sarcophagi clustered in the center.
These pods were semitranslucent, and within each lay a person, their features obscured.
Olivia moved next to Kurt. "Five of these have to be Team Katana," she whispered. "This one is still tagged with the lime-green 'kill' flag from top-honors exercise."
Kurt smoothed his gauntlet over the pod's surface. Were they alive inside? Dead?
Somewhere in between? He had come here first—not gone after the technology that the UNSC needed, risking everything for Team Katana.
You never leave a fallen comrade behind.
But there was more to it than that: given a choice between alien technologies that might save all of humanity and these five Spartans… he had picked them first. He would have done anything to protect them.
"Let's see what we're dealing with here," he said.
Kurt flickered on his helmet's tactical lights, and panned them over the chamber. Organo- metallic appendages cradled each pod and radiated branches that connected to banks of two-meter cubes.
On closer inspection, Kurt saw a faint light leaking from these cubes… and staring closer, he noticed they were not at all cubes—their edges distorted and radiated extra dimensions.
He staggered back, hands reflectively grasping for his temples. Disorientation washed over him as he tasted the faint green light, inhaled the dusty odors of meaning from the symbols on the floor, and heard the bell-like tinkling of the organic electronics of the pods.
He sank to one knee and the tangled sensory input faded.
"Stand back," Kurt warned the others. Over the COM he said, "Will, escort Dr. Halsey up here."
Another wave of disorientation hit Kurt and his vision swam. When he again could see.
Dr. Halsey knelt next to him.
"Move him away from the machines," she told Will.
Will dragged him back to the room's entrance, and Kurt's vision immediately cleared and the dizziness vanished.
"What was that?" he asked Dr. Halsey.
"Unshielded Slipspace field," she said. Her face was a mask of concentration, staring at the cubic machine housing. Frowning, she crossed to the pods. "Linda," she said, "your assistance please."
Linda moved up to Dr. Halsey, her sniper rifle aimed at the floor.
"Use your weapon's range finder; point at the interior of the pod."
Linda nodded, raised her rifle, and aimed at the Spartan inside the pod. After a moment, she lowered the weapon, checked her Oracle scope's settings, and then repeated the procedure. She shook her head.
"You are reading an infinite range?" Dr. Halsey said.
"Yes," Linda replied, uncharacteristic annoyance in her tone. "There must be something wrong with it."
"No," Dr. Halsey replied. "I'm afraid it is in perfect working order."
She turned to Kurt. "I cannot revive your Spartans or the other three, Lieutenant Commander. They are not in cryogenic suspension."
Kurt shook off the last traces of confusion. "Explain," he said.
"They are encased in a Slipspace field. The process to stabilize such a field in normal space is well beyond any technology we or the Covenant possess. Essentially these Spartans are here, but not, extruded into an alternate set of spatial coordinates and excluded from time."
"They're right here," Linda said, and pointed at the pods.
"No," Dr. Halsey said. "You are merely seeing their afterimage. It's like looking at a mass accelerated past the event horizon of a black hole. Its image may linger there forever, but it is gone."
"So they're gone?" Linda whispered.
"Oh no," Dr. Halsey replied. "They're right here."
Kurt said, "You just said they're gone. Which is it?"
Dr. Halsey considered a moment and then replied, "Both. The quantum-mechanical implications do not translate to simple, nonparadoxical, classical terms."
"Then let's stick to practical terms," Kurt said, growing annoyed. "Are they safe?"
She tilted her head, considering, and then replied, "You could detonate a nuclear warhead on these pods and because the extruded Slipspace within is not in this dimension, there would be no effect to their contents."
At this reference to "nuclear warhead," Ash shifted his pack, which held the two cut-down FENRIS bombs.
"Can we move them?" Kurt asked.
Dr. Halsey walked to the end of one pod. She examined the trunk line attached there and uncoupled it. There was a hiss and the pod rose a half meter off the floor.
"It appears they were designed to be moved," she said, her last words trailing off into deep thought.
Kurt motioned to the pods. "Teams Saber, Blue, get them uncoupled. We'll take them with us to the core-room entrance."
The Spartans detached the pods.
As Ash maneuvered one pod. Dr. Halsey held up a hand, indicating that he halt. She bent closer to the last pod and ran her fingers over the Forerunner icons along its side, translating as she did so: " 'That which must be protected… behind the sharpened edge of the shield… beyond the reach of the swords… for the reclaimed.' No, that's not quite the correct meaning."
"Reclaimed…" Ash echoed. "Maybe 'Reclaimers'?"
Dr. Halsey looked up, startled, at him. "Yes. A title. Specifically, an honorific."
"Yeah," he said, "that's what the Sentinel called us."
"One spoke?" Dr. Halsey asked. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and moved to Ash.
"I'd forgotten it with everything else going on." Ash shook his head, embarrassed.
"What exactly did it say?" she demanded. "The precise wording. It may be important."
Ash shifted foot to foot. "… I don't remember, ma'am."
Chief Mendez came up and set a hand on Ash's shoulder. "Take a deep breath. Spartan.
Go back and think: what were you doing just before the thing talked?"
"We'd moved to the edge of Zone 67," Ash said slowly, "to disengage from Team Katana and Gladius. That's when they started to blow up the ONI bunkers… and then one came after us. It chased Holly right to the edge of a cliff.
"I got its attention. Threw a rock at the thing. It chased me, got me pinned in a ravine. I started to broadcast in the open, to let Saber know you could get past its shields with a slow ballis-tic object—didn't have much to lose at that point. But the Sentinel attenuated my COM signal, and transmitted it back to me."
"Slow it down," Chief Mendez whispered. "Take your time. What happened next?"
"At first it didn't make any sense," Ash continued. "Like untranslated Covenant—only it was different. 'Pungent Juber' something. I tried to talk back to it. Told it that I didn't understand. It spoke again, still gibberish, but then it said 'non se-quitur' I was certain it spoke Latin."
"Linguistic analysis based on a microscopic sample set," Dr. Halsey said. "It tried to communicate with a root language."
"Then it said 'Security protocols enabled' and 'Shield in countdown mode. Exchange proper counterresponse. Reclaimer.' I told it that I meant it no harm. I guess that was the wrong thing to say, because that's when it told me I was not a Reclaimer, and reclassified me as an 'aboriginal subspecies.'"
Dr. Halsey stared off into space, thinking. "Yes…" she murmured. "This all makes sense."
"It was about to flash me with its energy beam when the rest of Saber came along and dropped a few rocks on it." Ash shrugged. "That's it, sir,"