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"Back us off Will," he ordered
"Soe in the viewer zoomed in on a cluster of the spacecraft Seven of them moved into a line
The view pulled back and revealed other identical forle, and the spheres within the forty-nine-craft pattern glowed red-hot
"Hard to port!" Fred cried "Eency power to shields"
The deck tilted
"Answering hard to port," Will cried
A blast of golden light overwhele in the viewer
The frame of Bloodied Spirit resounded like it had been struck with a haripped the railing
"Starboard side hit," Will said "Shields destroyed"
Fred moved his hand over his console and Bloodied Spirit appeared on the viewer A gaping crater of blue hull armor smoldered white-hot Crystalline electronics crackled, and severed plasma lines spewed fire As the ship turned, Fred saw the hole was five decks across and had punched clean through to the port side
"Main plas to fuel cells Slipspace capacitors holding charge We have enough power to jump"
Linda looked to Will and then to Fred and nodded
Fred watched as ular lattices Individually they were no le ship Coh punch to ato," Fred et rees north latitude, one hundred eighteen east longitude, elevation fifteen thousand meters"
"On it," Will said, and he stared at the Covenant o evasive!" Fred ordered
Her hand raphic controls and Bloodied Spirit pitched forward, accelerating, whichwith stress
The tiny alien ships easily tracked theirthem
Covenant ships could perform pinpoint-acurate Slipspace jumps But could the weakened hull of Bloodied Spirit survive an instantaneous change of pressure frora for the atmosphere Their velocity in air would exert trees
"Course plotted," Will announced "Only a second-order approxi the nuher-order terms in a ive ines Slave Will's juive us a thirty-second countdown"
"Done," she said
"Let'sship"
It was a perfect day on the jungle-swathed peninsula The sky was crystal cobalt dappled with cotton-ball altocumulus clouds Insect buzz and bird caw abruptly ceased and a hundred redwing ht as the world exploded over their heads
A fifteen-kilo smear of condensed water vapor marred the air, and from it a fireball colored every cloud red-- Bloodied Spirit shot forth like a bullet
Sonic booonal ar a skeletal fraes arced from ship to clouds and back
Inside Bloodied Spirit fires raged ste flames and an oily black san to shudder until the entire length of the vessel wobbled
The once-deadly Covenant ship was no more than a ballistic mass, a meteor, with only one possible trajectory: a parabola that intersected the planet's surface
A dozen drones punched through the clouds and left swirling vortices, and then a hundredchase
As the destroyer dropped to a hundreda blistering path in its wake Debris fro them to splinters
The drones closed and fired
As Bloodied Spirit turned and its shuttle bay presented groundwork, what appeared to be another chunk of the ship fell, spinning until it pluines flared, and it righted
The tiny ship's h three banyan trees before it touched ground and scraped to a full stop
Three figures eased fro fork-shaped vessel, and quickly le
Fred watched pieces of Bloodied Spirit fall to the earth The ground under him shook from the impacts
Drones accelerated after the lost destroyer, so many that they blackened the sky
A flash cut through the jungle, casting long hard shadows A wave of pressure shot rock, splinters, and s leaf and wood and flattening brush and trees
Bloodied Spirit had landed
A kilometer to the north a wall of plasma-fueled fire shot skyward and the clouds overhead parted
Fred flicked his green status to his teareen, but Will's remained dark a moment, and then winked amber
There was a flutter on Fred'sAnother ht shifted to amber as well
No Real trouble
Fred sited down his assault rifle and covered the area Linda would soon be in position to snipe Will would drahatever was there out into the open
Had those drones discovered theed to track them here after all?
On his heads-up display, the secure single-beam COM system activated His helmet speaker hissed with static, and then a voice as familiar as his own spoke
Kelly whispered: "Olly olly oxen free"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN