Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [15]
Fred watched as the plasma impacted upon the horizon and the sky turned white, then faded to black as millions of tons of ash and debris blotted out the sun.
"Maybe," Fred said. He gunned his Banshee. "Maybe not. Come on, we're not done yet."
SECTION I
THRESHOLD
CHAPTER FIVE
1637 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ AboardLongsword fighter, uncharted system, Halo debris field. Threeweeks later.
The Master Chief settled into the pilot's seat of the Longsword attack craft. He didn't fit. The contoured seat had been engineered to mate with a standard-issue Navy flight suit, not the bulky MJOLNIR armor.
He scratched his scalp and breathed deeply. The air tasted odd— it lacked the metallic quality of his suit's air scrubbers. This was the first quiet moment he'd had to sit, think, and remember. First there was the satisfaction after the successful space op at Reach, which went sour after Linda was killed and the Covenant glassed the planet... and Red Team. Then the time spent in a Pillar of Autumn cryotube, the flight from Reach, and the discovery of Halo.
And the Flood.
He stared out from the front viewport and fought down his revulsion at the memory of the Flood outbreak. Whoever had constructed Halo had used it to contain the sentient, virulent xenoform that had nearly claimed them all. The rapidly healing wound in his neck, inflicted by a Flood Infection Form during the final battle on Halo's surface, still throbbed.
He wanted to forget it all. . . especially the Flood. Everything inside him ached.
The system's moon, Basis, was a silver-gray disk against the darkness of space, and beyond it was the muted purple of the gas giant Threshold. Between them lay a glistening expanse of debris—metal, stone, ice, and everything else that had once been Halo.
"Scan it again," the Master Chief told Cortana. "Already completed," her disembodied voice replied. "There's nothing out there. I told you: just dust and echoes."
The Master Chief's hand curled into a fist, and for a moment he felt the urge to slam it into something. He relaxed, surprised at his frayed temper. He'd been exhausted in the past—and without a doubt the fight on Halo had been the most harrowing of his career—but he'd never been prone to such outbursts.
The struggle against the Flood must have gotten to him, more than he'd realized.
With effort he banished the Flood from his mind. Either there'd be time to deal with it later. . . or there wouldn't. Worrying about it now served no useful purpose.
"Scan the field again," he repeated.
Cortana's tiny holographic figure appeared on the projection pad mounted between the pilot's and system-ops seats. She crossed her arms over her chest, visibly irritated with the Master Chief's request.
"If you don't find something out there we can use," he told her, "we're dead. This ship has no Slipspace drive, and no cryo. There's no way to get back and report. Power, fuel, air, food, water—we only have enough for a few hours.
"So," he concluded as patiently as he could manage. "Scan. Again."
Cortana sighed explosively, and her hologram dissolved. The scanner panel activated, however, and mathematical symbols crowded the screen.
A moment later the scanner panel dimmed and Cortana said, "There's still nothing, Chief. All I'm picking up is a strong echo from the moon ... but there are no transponder signals, and no distress calls."
"You're not doing an active scan?"
Her tiny hologram appeared again, and this time static flashed across her figure. "There are trillions of objects out there. If you want I can start to scan and identify each individual piece. If we sit here and do nothing else, that would take eighteen days."
"What if someone's out there but they turned off their transponder? What if they don't want to be found?"
"That's highly un—" Cortana froze for a split second. The static around her vanished, and she stared off into space. "Interesting."
"What?"
Cortana looked distracted, then seemed to snap out of it. "New data. That signal echo's getting stronger."