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"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