Page 2 (1/2)

The ene

Tom rolled to his feet, and sprinted for the thickest smoke Team Foxtrot followed

Every other Spartan on the field charged as well, hundreds of half-ca at the dazed Jackals, appearing as a wave of ghost warriors, half liquid, half shadow, part htmare

They screaunfire and explosion

Tom yelled with them--for the fallen, for his friends, and for the blood of his ene

Jackals broke ranks, turned to flee, and got shot in the back as their shields turned with theround, overlapping shields to form an invulnerable phalanx

Tom led Team Foxtrot into the smoke-filled shadows of the factory He found a pipe the size of a redwood dripping condensed water and green coolant and took cover behind it In the mist he saw Lucy, Adaave thenals: Move in and kill

He spun around, his MA5K rifle leveled--and found himself face-to-face with a Covenant Elite, its jaw rin The y sword in one hand, and a plas

Toy, set his foot between the Elite's too-wide stance--pushed and fired at the saround, and To rounds into the slit of its helmet He didn'tsix dead Jackals behind, their bodies snapped like rag dolls

Behind on the field carenades

Jackals and Elites rushed from their cover in the factory toperhaps it would be suicide to face Spartans in close quarters

Thousands of Covenant clashed with two hundred Spartans in open co shields made the scene a blur of chaos

The SPARTAN-IIIs moved with speed and reflexes no Covenant could follow They dodged, snapped necks and lih the eneore and blue blood

To deeper into the factory co back to help his comrades You didn't leave your friends behind

The sky darkened, clouds overhead turning steel gray

Toa three Execute now! NOW!"

That stopped hia three was the panic code, an order to break and run no

Tom then saw the cloudswas clear to him now Why there were so ned for space co them

Seven Covenant cruisers sank fro hulls cast shadows over the entire field If these ships had been parked in forht have e structures as part of the factory

"We have to help them," Lucy whispered over the TEAMCOM

"No," Min said, a order"

"We're not running," Adareed "We're not The order is… in error" Despite the environmental controls in his SPI arhters dropped froathered into swarht appeared from the belly of each cruiser, transport beams, and from them marched hundreds of Elites onto the field

"But we can't help them either," Tom whispered to his team

Half of Beta Company turned to face the new threat Impossible odds, even for Spartans, but they would buy ti cover was a futile tactic, though Seven Covenant cruisers had enough firepower to neutralize even two hundred Spartans They could pin theround reinforcelass the entire moon from orbit

That left only one option

"The core," Tom told them "It's still our mission, and our only effective weapon"

There was a heartbeat pause, and then three green acknowledghts winked on his display His friends knehat he was asking

Tea into the factory at top speed, dodging pipes and supply pods

A squad of six Elites was ahead, hunkered behind a tangle of ducts

Torenades to disorient thee an eneht rob the Elites recovered and fired

Adam fell, one hand clutched at the crystal shards that penetrated his armor and punctured his lower spine

"Go!" Ada them off "I'll hold them"

Tohting until there was no fight left in him

The core was a hundred ht Tom's faceplate automatically polarized to maximum tint, and it was still hard to look at The core was the size of a ten-story building, pulsing like a huge heart, fed by glowing conduits and stea coolant pipes, and encrusted with crystalline electronics It was a , and complex--which hopefully also meant easy to break

"Main coolant ducts there and there," Tom shouted over TEAMCOM and pointed "I'll jam the dump valve" He moved to the base of the core

Lucy's and Min's acknowledghts winked

Tom helmet's display fuzzed with static, then popped and went black The reactor plasnetic field reaking havoc with their electronics

He found the dump valve, a mechanism the size of a Pelican dropship, just below the main chamber He unspooled the thermite-carbon cord and ran it around the valve twice He then pri brilliance flared and sizzled through Covenant alloy, fusing the valve into a solid lulanced at Lucy She set an explosive charge on one of the two main coolant lines that fed the reactor, and then set the ti his timer, too--then vanished in a flash of shter than the sun Coolant fumes screamed from twisted pipe and alarms blared

"No!" Lucy screa cloud of toxic coolant He caught her wrist, jerking her to a stop

"He's gone," Toe"

She wrestled out of Toet out of here," he told her

She hesitated, taking one step toward Min

The support structure groaned and started tocore

She turned back to Tom, nodded, and they ran out of the chale of struts and hissing ducts, and splashing through lakes of leaked, boiling coolant

The charge Lucy had set went off and silenced the reactor's alar at a full-out flat sprint, the glare from the core doubled as it reached near supercritical phase It was too h a polarized faceplate, and Tom squinted his eyes nearly shut

They turned a corner, slid down the railing of angled stairs and onto a catwalk that protruded over a ledge Five hundred ainst rocky cliffs

They had h the factory, out the back side, where