Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [51]
The ceiling was three meters high. It made John feel small. “You think they need all this space because they’re so large?” Kelly asked. “We’ll know soon,” he told her. They crouched, weapons at the ready, and moved slowly down the corridor, John and Kelly in front.
They rounded a corner and stopped at another set of pressure doors. John grabbed the seam. “Hang on,” Kelly said. She knelt next to a pad with nine buttons. Each button was inscribed with runic
alien script. “These characters are strange, but one of them has to open this.” She touched one and it lit, then she keyed another. Gas hissed into the corridor. “At least the pressure is equalized,” she said. John double-checked sensors. Nothing . . . though the alien metal inside the ship could be blocking the
scans. “Try another,” Sam said. She did—and the doors slid apart. The room was inhabited. An alien creature stood a meter and half tall, a biped. Its knobby, scaled skin was a sickly, mottled
yellow; purple and yellow fins ran along the crest of its skull and its forearms. Glittering, bulbous eyes
protruded from skull-like hollows in the alien’s elongated head. The Master Chief had read the UNSC’s first contact scenarios—they called for cautious attempts at communication. He couldn’t imagine communicating with something like this . . . thing. It reminded him of the carrion birds on Reach—vicious and unclean.
The creature stood there, frozen for a moment—staring at the human interlopers. Then it screeched and reached for something on its belt, its movements darting and birdlike.
The Spartans shouldered their weapons and fired a trio of bursts with pinpoint accuracy. Armor-piercing rounds tore into the creature, shredding its chest and head. It crumpled into a heap without a sound, dead before it hit the deck. Thick blood oozed from the corpse. “That was easy,” Sam remarked. He nudged the creature with his boot. “They sure aren’t as tough as their ships.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” John replied.
“I’m getting a radiation reading this way,” Kelly said. She gestured deeper into the vessel.
They continued down the corridor and took a side branch. Kelly dropped a NAV marker, and its double blue triangle pulsed once on their heads-up displays. They stopped at another set of pressure doors. Sam and John took up flanking positions to cover her.
Kelly punched the same buttons she had punched before and the doors slid apart.
Another of the creatures was there. It stood in a circular room with crystalline control panels and a large window. This time, however, the vulture-headed creature didn’t scream or look particularly surprised. This one looked angry. The creature held a clawlike device in its hand—leveled at John. John and Kelly fired. Bullets filled the air and pinged off a silver shimmering barrier in front of the
creature.
A bolt of blue heat blasted from the claw. The blast was similar to the plasma that had hit theCommonwealth . . . and boiled a third of it away. Sam dove forward and knocked John out of the blast’s path; the energy burst caught Sam in the side.
The reflective coating of his MJOLNIR armor flared. He fell clutching his side, but still managed to fire his weapon. John and Kelly rolled on their backs and sprayed gunfire at the creature. Bullets peppered the alien—each one bounced and ricocheted off the energy shield. John glanced at his ammo counter—half gone.
“Keep firing,” he ordered. The alien kept up a stream of answering fire—energy blasts hammered into Sam, who fell to the deck, his weapon empty.
John charged forward and slammed his foot into the alien’s shield and knocked it out of line. He jammed the barrel of his rifle into the alien’s screeching mouth and squeezed the trigger. The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien and spattered the back wall with blood and bits of bone.
John rose and helped Sam up.
“I’m okay,” Sam said, holding his side and grimacing. “Just a little singed.