Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [50]
missiles. Around him in the dark were puffballs of red-orange detonations—utterly silent.
John’s velocity now almost matched that of the ship. He eased toward the hull—twenty meters, ten, five . . . and then the Covenant ship started to pull away from him. It was traveling too fast. He tapped his attitude thrusters and pointed himself perpendicular to the hull. The Covenant hull accelerated under him . . . but he was dropping closer. He stretched out his arms. The hull raced past his fingertips a meter away.
John’s fingers brushed against something—it felt semiliquid. He could see his hand skimming a near-
invisible, glassy, shimmering surface: the energy shield. Damn. Their shields were still up. He glanced to either side. The huge hole in their hull was nowhere in sight.
He slid over the hull, unable to grab hold of it. No.He refused to accept that he had made it this far, only to fail now. A pulse laser flashed a hundred meters away; his faceplate barely adjusted in time. The flash nearly
blinded him. John blinked and then saw a silvery film rush back around the bulbous base of the laser turret. The shield dropped to let the laser fire?
The laser started to build up charge again. He would have to act quickly. His timing had to be perfect. If he hit that turret before it fired, he’d bounce off. If he hit the turretas it fired . . . there wouldn’t be much left of him.
The turret glowed, intensely bright. John set his thrust harness on a maximum burn toward the laser, noting the rapidly dwindling fuel charge. He closed his eyes, saw the blinding flash through his lids, felt the heat on his face, then opened his eyes—just in time to crash and bounce into the hull.
The hull plates were smooth, but had grooves and odd, organic crenellations—perfect fingerholds. The difference between his momentum and the ship’s nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip.
He had made it.
John pulled himself along the hull toward the hole theCommonwealth ’s MAC round had punched in the ship. Only two other Spartans waited for him there. “What took you so long?” Sam’s voice crackled over the COM channel. The other Spartan lifted her
helmet’s reflective blast shield. He saw Kelly’s face. “I think we’re it,” Kelly said. “I’m not getting any other responses over the COM channels.”
That meant either the Covenant ship shielded their transmissions . . . or there were no Spartans left to
communicate with. John pushed that last thought aside. The hole was ten meters across. Jagged metal teeth pointed inward. John looked over the edge and saw that the MAC heavy round had indeed passed all the way through. He saw tiers of exposed decks, severed conduits, and sheared metal beams—and through the other side, black space and stars.
They climbed down. John immediately fell down on the first deck. “Gravity,” he said. “And with nothing spinning on this ship.” “Artificial gravity?” Kelly asked. “Dr. Halsey would love to see this.” They continued inward, scaling the metal walls, past alternating layers of gravity and free fall, until they
were approximately in the middle of the ship.
John paused and saw the stars wheel outside either end of the hole. The Covenant ship must be turning. They were engaging theCommonwealth . “We better hurry.” He stepped onto an exposed deck, and the gravity settled his stomach—giving him an up-and-down
orientation. “Weapons check,” John told them. They examined their assault rifles. The guns had made the journey intact. John slipped in a clip of armor-
piercing rounds, noting with pleasure that the suit immediately aligned the sight profile of the gun with
his targeting system. He slung the weapon and checked the HE warhead attached to his hip. The timer and detonator looked undamaged.
John faced a sealed set of sliding pressure doors. It was smooth and soft to his touch. It could have been
made of metal or plastic . . . or could have been alive, for all he knew. He and Sam grabbed either side and pulled, strained, and then the mechanism