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"I hope that sounds heili" Mal elbowed Vaz and looked back from the door Elar and her kil -crazed sisters were at every availableslit, hosing whatever was out there while the unlucky Elites who’dwere a messy heap on the floor Some of the smal er kids clustered around to look, as if there wasn’t a pitched battle going on "They’ve got to be running out of men soon"

Devereaux cut in on the circuit "Mal, I’ht at the door, so watch for shrapnel"

Meters from the door, stone and soil fountained into the air in a streae-heads outside dive for cover So continued but the firing had stopped dead Naomi thudded down beside him

"Now," she said "Move now There’s about twenty left outside We can take the detonated above their heads BB said so, but Vaz didn’t catch it Then he saw a Banshee streak east again, ski blue murder

"Bastard hitcoolant Hey, asshole, you want to oddah-pitched shriek of an engine as it pul ed away "Dev, can you drop an Anvil out front?"

"If you want to risk bringing down the keep"

"Just clear a space"

BB cut in "Everybody cover, " he said

An AnvilVaz wanted to see detonate on his front doorstep Phillips No ar himself on the professor just as the blast hit his visor like a blizzard The debris seeet up and found hiy

But it was Nao," she said, and scooped Phil ips up under one arhty toddler as now in serious trouble He wasn’t dead or bleeding, anyway He was stilout"

Mal was up and running Vaz stumbled after hione, but he could see Tart-Cart waiting on the other side of a crater twice the size of a swi toward it with Phil ips Then a huge hand clamped down on Vaz’s shoulder and spun hiirls, loomed in his face

"You destroy our land and then you run away" She pointed behind her but he couldn’t see anything He could hear h, ainst an entire keep"

It wasn’t Vaz’s probleot one of my own Sorry"

She could have ripped his head from his shoulders He knew that for sure now But she didn’t, and he ran for the dropship Mal pul ed him into the crew bay and Devereaux took off so fast that he fel across the seats The last thing he saw beloas an al -too-familiar sea of armored heads thrust forward froe-heads ot to fix this leak," Devereaux said "BB, let me knohen you see a quiet spot where I can set down Othere’re not going to otten for thehis plas her to put him over her knee and slap his ass She took the pistol off him

"Thanks," he said sheepishly "My radio went down and BB’s fragment is total y screwed, but you should see some of the stuff I’ve found Halo data" He looked past Nao to be slaughtered down there Can’t we do anything?"

"We’re not here to do peacekeeping We came to save your arse" Mal lifted off his helmet and tried to peer out of the hatch "Where’s that bloody Phanto us," said Devereaux

UNSC INFINITY, SOMEWHERE IN SLIPSPACE Andrew Del Rio sat at the comms console with an expression of confidence welded seaosky one bit He clenched his jaw for a moment, then opened the ship’s broadcast systenal to al hands that the exercise was suspended and that they were deploying for real This was no longer a dril"Safeguard, safeguard, safeguard"

He had to be terrified He had a te down his neck, and a new, largely untested ship running on alien technology that didn’t have a manual

And when Infinity dropped out of slip--if things went to plan--she’d be right in the middle of a civil war, tasked to defend a former enemy

Now that’s what I call the pucker factor

"Bracing, isn’t it?" Parangosky walked up behind his seat h to his ear for hi war in decades"

Del Rio was staring into the unbroken blackness ahead She watched his Adam’s apple slide just a fraction as he sed discreetly When she was thirty and good-looking, it was a tactic that could be litteringly black history of vengeance was known throughout the fleet, it could only be interpreted as e loud and clear

"I’h to take this risk," he said

She inhaled silently: sandalwood soap, coffee, and mint "I wouldn’t htened up and took a seat to his right just as Hood arrived on the bridge Lasky was standing at the navigation console with Glassether and forefingers resting on his top lip He looked like a s for a bike for Christmas This was the test This would prove whether the Forerunner drive enhance would drop theosky almost al owed herself a little shiver of excitee and drifted along the rows of instruhost

"Fifty seconds, sir," Lasky said "Engineering stand by … forty … thirty…"

Aine took over the count Lasky didn’t see the point that she stil had a job to do, civil war or not

"Twenty-nine…"

"Sorry, Aine"

"Twenty … ten … five, four, three, two … and we’re back"

Parangosky didn’t feel the slightest hint of giddiness as the ship dropped back into realspace One moment Infinity was in one dimension and the next she was in another, as smooth and instant as a blink The black void fil ed up with stars and skeins of glowing gas