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Kurt motioned to the Spartans and then to the four ropes strung to the archways overhead. Ash, Olivia, and Lucy clambered up the braided monolines.

He then met Chief Mendez by the dropship.

"Everything's ready to go. sir," Mendez said, "except the FENRIS warheads. We'll need more time to cut the rest of them down for transport." He nodded over the edge. "Rigged six zip lines over there, just in case we needed a quick way down."

"Good thinking. Chief."

Kurt removed the thumb-sized datapad for his gauntlet, and banded it to Mendez. "Prime the warhead detonators and synchronize firing codes through this pad. With Sentinels and

Covenant inbound, I want all my options open."

Mendez's face became a mask of steel. "Yes, sir. After that where do you want me?"

Mendez was a crack shot, but he was unarmored and slower than the others. Keeping

him close would risk everyone's lives.

"I need you with Dr. Halsey, Chief. Follow the lights. Let Kelly know you're coming. She's dug in."

To his credit the Chief didn't show any disappointment—just a moment's hesitation before he replied, "Yes, sir."

Kurt grabbed an ascension line and pulled himself up, rapidly climbing to an archway twenty meters above the landing pad.

Linda lent him a hand and helped him onto the ledge. She eased back into her position on the far side of the arch, lay flat, and sighted through her sniper scope.

Kurt crouched on the opposite side and scanned the city. Under any other circumstance the nighttime vista of alien architecture and the shifting Sentinel Hghts would have filled him with awe. Now, though, he was only concerned with surviving.

The airspace was clear.

Not wanting to risk using even the single beam, Kurt waved at Fred on the adjacent arch

and made a horizontal circle gesture in the air, asking. Where are they?

Fred held up a hand.

A mated Sentinel pair silently glided past the open arch—ten meters in front of Kurt. The

spheres within the booms moved back and forth. It continued its orbit around the dome, moving out of view, and another Sentinel pair appeared along the same trajectory.

They weren't attacking, yet they had to sense the Spartans inside. It almost looked as if they were guarding this dome.

Kurt steeled himself, resisting the urge to shoot such a close target. What good would it have done? He couldn't penetrate those shields.

He felt vibrations, and in the distance lights flickered along the rim of the crater.

The bulbous hull of a Covenant Seraph single ship appeared, then another Seraph appeared, then seven more… and then two dozen flying in formation.

Kurt held his breath, hoping this was just a search party.

A line of Covenant destroyers followed, so massive they blotted out the stars in the night sky. A second wave of cetacean-shaped vessels resolved, and then a Covenant carrier flew on overwatch, surrounded by a hundred Seraph fighters.

Kurt had never seen so many enemy ships so close—all of

them headed toward his position. Twenty warships. The subsonic thrum of their antigrav

units made his insides go soft.

The Sentinels circling the dome moved to intercept the new threat.

Pinpoint laser artillery shot them out of the air.

The two leading destroyers peeled off the battle group and drifted over the dome. Shafts of sparkling purple light flashed from their undersides—antigrav transporter beams. A hundred armored Elite shock troopers streamed to the ground.

Kurt looked for Dante and spotted him high on the dome's inner surface attached with a rigging of rope and suction climbers. He pressed blobs of C-12 onto the patterned stone.

Kurt directed his single beam at the COM relay on the landing pad. "Will, what's Dr. Halsey's status?"

"She's found something," Will replied. "Says she needs ten minutes to get it ready"

"Get what ready? Never mind. We don't have ten minutes," Kurt told him. "Prepare for a hot reception."

Kurt watched Covenant assets pour down the transport beams and assemble in the city: more Elites with plasma rifles, titanlike