Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [42]
“We haven’t let this be widely known,” she said, “but when the aliens were first detected at Harvest, they appeared at extreme range . . . and then they were suddenly much closer.” “An intrasystem jump?” John asked. Dr. Halsey smiled at him. “Correctly surmised, Spartan.” “That’s not possible,” Captain Wallace remarked. “Slipstream space can’t be navigated that accurately.”
“You meanwe cannot navigate with that kind of accuracy,” she said.
The Captain clenched and unclenched his jaw. He clicked the intercom. “General quarters: all hands to battle stations. Seal bulkheads. I repeat: all hands, battle stations. This is not a drill. Reactors to ninety percent. Come about to course one two five.”
The bridge lights darkened to a red hue. The deck rumbled beneath John’s boots and the entire ship tilted as it changed heading. Pressure doors slammed shut and sealed John on the bridge.
TheCommonwealth stabilized on her new heading, and Dr. Halsey crossed her arms. She leaned over and whispered to John, “We’ll be using theCommonwealth ’s dropship to go to the testing facility on Chi Ceti Four. We have to get to Project MJOLNIR.” She turned back and watched the radar screen. “Beforethey do. So get the others ready.”
“Yes, ma’am.” John keyed the intercom. “Sam, muster the squad in Bay Alpha. I want that Pelican loaded and ready for drop in fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll have it done in ten,”Sam replied.“Faster if those Longsword interceptor pilots get out of our way.”
John would have given anything to be belowdecks with the others. He felt as if he were being left behind.
The radar screen flashed with blobs of eerie green light . . . almost as if the space around theCommonwealth were boiling. The collision alarm sounded. “Brace for impact!” Captain Wallace said. He laced his arm around the brass railing. John grabbed an emergency handhold on the wall. Something appeared three thousand kilometers off theCommonwealth ’s prow. It was a sleek oval with a
single seam running along its lateral edge from stem to stern. Tiny lights winked on and off along its hull. A faint purple-tinged glow emitted from the tail. The ship was only a third the size of theCommonwealth .
“A Covenant ship,” Dr. Halsey said, and she involuntarily backed away from the view screens. Captain Wallace scowled. “COM officer: send a signal to Chi Ceti—see if they can send us some reinforcements.”
“Aye, sir.”
Blue flashes flickered along the hull of the alien ship—so bright that even filtered through the external camera, they still made John’s eyes water. The outer hull of theCommonwealth sizzled and popped. Three screens filled with static. “Pulse lasers!” the lieutenant at the ops station screamed. “Communication dish destroyed. Armor in
sections three and four at twenty-five percent. Hull breach in section three. Sealing now.” The Lieutenant swiveled in his seat, sweat beaded on his forehead. “Ship AI core memory overloaded,” he said.
With the AI offline, the ship could still fire weapons and navigate through Slipstream space, but John
knew it would take more time to make jump calculations. “Come to heading zero three zero, declination one eight zero,” Caption Wallace ordered. “Arm Archer missile pods A through F. And give me a firing solution.”
“Aye aye,” the navigation and weapons officers said. “A through F pods armed.” They furiously tapped away on their keypads. Seconds ticked by. “Firing solution ready, sir.” “Fire.”
“Pods A through F firing!” TheCommonwealth had twenty-six pods, each loaded with thirty Archer high-explosive missiles. On screen, pods A through F opened, and launched—180 plumes of rocket exhaust that traced a path from theCommonwealth to the alien ship.
The enemy changed course, rotated so that the top of the ship faced the incoming missiles. It then moved
straight up at an alarming speed. The Archer missiles altered their trajectory to track