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"Report," he said to Lieutenant Commander Waters.

Waters looked up with bloodshot eyes from his display. "The Admiral has been informed mission accomplished, sir. He's moving the fleet to new coordinates, a high orbit on the bright side of the moon."

Lash examined the system NAV map. Patterson was going to use the entire planetoid as cover. He'd need it. The enemy forces still outnumbered them sixteen ships to their four. By any sane measure it would be suicide to attack that Covenant battle group.

The line, however, between sane and not was becoming increasingly blurred in this system.

Lash settled in the captain's chair. "Lieutenant Yang? Status?"

"As dark as midnight under a rock, sir."

Lash nodded, pleased at Yang's hyperbole. A little humor was a good sign. "Lieutenant Durruno, move us to lunar Lagrange-Four, one-quarter full. Tell Lieutenant Commander Cho to trickle-charge our Slipspace capacitors."

"Aye, sir." She tapped in the commands, cursed, and then backspaced and retyped them correctly.

Durruno needed sleep. They all did. But he'd keep her in play a little longer. There was no one to replace her, and this would be over, one way or the other, very soon.

"Covenant fleet on-screen," Lash ordered Waters. "Rescan and give me a full spectral analysis."

"All sensors on target," Waters replied.

Rainbows played over the central viewscreen, building composite images from radiation far-infrared to soft gamma, and fourteen Covenant ships resolved, clustered together in a spherical formation three hundred thousand kilometers distant.

To Lash they looked like hungry sharks, ready to pounce on a few sardines.

Their spectral analysis, however, painted a different picture. Thermal blooms and radiation leaks spewed in helical showers from the vessels. They'd been damaged by Admiral Patterson's alpha strike and the captured plasma redirected by the alien drones.

The enemy was sitting there, making repairs, in all likelihood frothing from their split

mouths to get back in the fight and go another round with the UNSC battle group.

Patterson, however, had another plan: hit them first. Hard.

"Activity from Onyx on the E-Band?" Lash asked Yang.

"No, sir. Not a flicker since that ONI AI took care of the alien drones."

Lash wondered how the AI and Spartans on the planet had

neutralized the alien fleet. Had they recovered some new super-weapon? However they

did it, he promised he'd personally shake every one of their hands. "Continue to monitor all UNSC bands," he told Yang. "Those Spartans might need a lift."

"Action on-screen," Waters announced. The camera snapped aft and centered on the silver moon.

In the twilight regions on either side of the moon, magnetic accelerator cannons flared, briefly illuminating the now-split UNSC battle group in high orbit. Slugs of steel and tungsten rocketed into space, curving slightly from the gravitational distortion—streaking toward the Covenant ships.

The Covenant ships broke formation.

One MAC slug cleanly missed.

Three hit.

The targeted ships lit as their shields absorbed the massive kinetic energy. They

careened backward… slowed, and stopped, undamaged from the single MAC strikes.

Covenant ships turned and accelerated toward the moon.

The MAC salvo had done precisely what Admiral Patterson had hoped: tweaked their

collective noses, and gotten them good and mad.

The UNSC battle group maneuvered behind the moon, denying the enemy a clean line of fire.

"Set EMP dampers," Lash said, trying to control his rising adrenaline. "Shut down primary and secondary computers."

"Aye, sir," Durruno and Yang said together. They scrambled to isolate the Dusk's delicate electronics from the impending nuclear blasts.

The Covenant battle group divided—each half moving to opposite sides of the moon, taking flanking positions where they could blast the hiding human ships into oblivion with

their plasma.

What they couldn't see on their approach vector, however,

was Admiral Patterson's fleet backing directly away from