Halo_ Ghosts of Onyx - Eric S. Nylund [78]
"What insurgent base?" Will asked, rolling over and waking up.
"It was twenty years ago," Fred explained. "Rebels in the Tauri System claimed they had nukes to trade. Blue Team was sent in to recover the warheads, but it turned out to be a trap." He shook his head. "Would have worked too, if it hadn't been for Kurt."
Linda took the canteen and hoisted it. "To absent friends," she whispered and sipped.
She passed the canteen to Will, who drank deeply.
A red octahedral flashed over the Covenant command console. It projected amber beams onto the surface and the holographic geometries shifted.
The Spartans dropped their faceplates.
Fred moved to the console, overrode the controls, but they reverted, seeming to have a mind of their own.
Were there Covenant still alive on this ship, attempting to regain control?
Translations scrolled across his datapad: "BLOODIED SPIRIT AUTOMATED…SYSTEM ACTIVATED…TO BATTLE SOUNDED…HEED THE CALL TO WAR…WARNING…SLIPSPACE ANOMALY…DIMENSION YED-4 DETECTED…CAUSE: SINGULARITY AFTERMATH."
"Trouble," he told Linda and Will.
Linda bounded to the weapons station and her hands moved over the surface. "Making plasma lines hot," she said. "I think. Laser capacitors charging."
Will stood at the NAV station. "We're approximately sixteen light-years from Onyx," he said. "No stellar systems or other significant bodies in the region. The Slipspace matrix is decon-voluting."
Fred tapped a hexagon—the Slipstream space matrix reinitialization command. It blinked
once and faded.
"We're entering normal space," he said. "Stand ready."
Stars winked on in the bridge's holographic viewer along with four Covenant ships.
Three smaller ships gave chase to one larger. The small ones were two-thirds the
tonnage of Bloodied Spirit. The larger ship was twice their size. The vessels' sleek outlines made Fred think of sharks hunting a whale.
Lances of plasma flashed from the three and shimmered as they impacted on the larger ship's shields.
"I think we dropped out of Slipspace because of some anomaly," Fred said. "Or… in response to a distress signal. I'm not sure which."
"From what ship?" Linda asked. "Which one do we target first?"
The central holographic viewer faded and a Brute materialized standing before them with blue-gray skin, a gorilla head, and red feral eyes. He spoke in a series of grunts and hisses.
A translation popped on Fred's datapad: "Brothers, the schism is here. We are free at last to crush the lesser races. We will no longer be led by—"
The Brute looked about the bridge, blinked, and then glared at Fred. It hissed and vanished.
On the translation pad a single word had appeared: "Demons."
One of the smaller ships turned toward them. Ultramarine spheres flashed over Linda's weapon console.
"It's targeting us," she said.
"That answers that," Fred muttered. "Target the smaller ships. Will, get me a best-guess Slipspace transition vector to Onyx."
Fred had no intention of engaging in ship-to-ship combat. He was no captain. He'd be out of his depth if this were a UNSC ship with controls he could understand, and astrogation, tactics, and weapon systems he was familiar with. On Bloodied Spirit, he couldn't begin to fathom how to fight. Running was the only realistic option.
"Working on a solution," Will said. He glanced back and forth between the printed crib sheet of translated symbols and the Covenant mathematics that flashed before him.
"Time on target calculated," Linda announced. "Ready to fire plasma."
"Just buy us time," Fred told her. "We're not moving to engage."
"Covenant frigate now in weapons range," Linda said. "Plasma lines heating. They've fired!"
On the central viewer twin crimson lances streaked from the ship and arced toward them. Circles snapped on the tips of these lines, which then twisted into three-dimensional spheres.
The holographic perspective pulled back and showed the frigate, the plasma, and their ship in their relative positions. The translucent spheres centered on the plasma shots and overlapped Bloodied Spirit.
"I think those spheres