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FOUR

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It is fair to say that the group of Covenant soldiers standing outside theunthinkable trouble They were expecting to find a wounded, cowering, and almost certainly unarhly trained and highly capable 220-pound Orbital Drop Shock Trooper carrying a 20-pound titanium bottle

He didn‘t have time to form a complete picture, but the instinctual snapshot he took as he rolled out of the roup of aliens was plenty Four Grunts, two Jackals, and, in the shadows on the far right, a figure so tall and i it could only be an Elite

―Christ"

He ca the first Jackal‘s jaw and neck instantly with the extinguisher‘s unforgiving littered in the dark The Jackal si backward as theit snapped the life out of hi fell with hiht the Carbine even as he dropped his uisher landed on its activation stud and the resulting explosion of halon gas and sound bought him his life, as a Carbine round from the other Jackal, as far less panicked than the Grunts, sliced through his Cro-Magnon brow, nicking bone and knocking him backward on top of the fallen Jackal As he fell, he fuer Three rounds eviscerated his would-be killer

The Grunts squealed and scattered Two of theht past him and vanished into the medbay

A third tripped, its plas across the floor The fourth wasn‘t so lucky As Baird rose to his knees, then his feet, wheeling, trying to get a bead on the Elite--there was a blur, a flash of light and thunderous impact His breath was knocked out of him

The Carbine fell froe scene The fourth Grunt was pressed up against his belly, squir The Grunt was iy sword The twin tines of superheated, seething energy had passed through the Grunt And through Baird

He looked up into the face of the Elite The h cold black eyes

It tilted its head Baird wondered what the gesture meant And the Elite yanked the blade from both of the his belly

Ferocious, burning pain seemed to consu

He looked down at his hands, expecting to see blood There was none The two holes in his clothes smoldered, the flesh beneath fused and cauterized Baird fell face forward into blackness

FIVE

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―Wake up"

His o to school But it wasn‘t the sa He was on fire

―Wake up" Insistent, but worried Not ain

―I‘ood shape The blades passed right through you Scorched a lot of stuff Missed your spine by a distance I can‘t even "

―That‘s not surprising You have serious burns And significant injuries Internal and external I‘ain"

―It didn‘t work out so good last tihed and a spasm of pain squeezed hio to sleep" He realized that he did very badly want to sleep And part of him knehat that really meant

―I know," she said ―I‘m sorry" Her voice, a perfectly directional whisper in the dark, was filled hat sounded like a lover‘s sorrow No le out froht and birdlike, was incredibly heavy With a groan of pain, he pistoned his feet against it and shoved It rolled off, and he rolled free

She told him what had happened when he blacked out The Grunts had simply piled up the

corpses--their own fallen and Baird‘s supposed carcass--on top of each other in theElite had been suspicious and visibly angry He had barked orders at the Grunts and coe, where presuineers --were atte to crack Mo Ye‘s main systems The Elite had shown a little eon

He raised hirabbed the dented, scorched edge of the

autosurgeon table and hauled hi a shriek

―Meds," he gasped

―Yes Meds," she said

The dispensary clicked and hissed open Inside the plastic cubby were four vials: two identical, full of clear liquid, the third blue, the fourth a distinctively piss-colored yellow There was a very old-fashioned-looking pneuun beside them

―What are these?" he asked

―A painkiller, a beta-blocking sedative, a metasteroid for the burns and interior infla

―This one‘s a cocktail It contains a derivative of phenylcyclohexylpiperidine, an artificial slow-release synthetic adrenalin and a rapid coagulant"

―You‘re talking about a Ru"

―There‘s no pretty way to paint it," she said

Rus had become notorious in the sporadic colonial insurrections Notably on Hellas and Fulorious attes were certainly fearsoy was impressive in the short term Unencumbered by the body‘s normal safety lith, but the subsequent lack of control and ical da before they ever laid hands on an actual Spartan But not before doing treot in their way

―The beta-blocker will keep you focused," she said, as if sensing his thoughts, ―and caluts roiled Pain wracked him

―The plan this time?"

―Sae, one vial at a tiressively better

As the last one flooded his arteries with a cooling rush, he felt alh the holes in his T-shirt The punctures were about two inches across, thick lateral slits He felt around to his back, twisting to see in thehim Two exit wounds, a little smaller, spanned his spine The skin around the outward in twin elliptical shapes It looked angry and painful, but he felt nothing

―Mo Ye"

―Yes, Baird?" she replied

―Why didn‘t you try to inject e at least looked like it would still work"

―Because, like I told you before, in this condition, I can‘t do anything to har do I have?"

―I can‘t say With the drugs, maybe an hour or two Without the that allows me to even tell you about the meds"

―Then there‘s no time to waste"

―Bairdonce you leave the medbay, you‘re on your own I‘m trapped here, duiving me any more access to ship systems until they have what they came for ‘Til they reconnectto do that"

Baird looked at the mess around him Dead bodies, but weapons too He picked up a plasrenades frorabbed the carbine from where he‘d dropped it

By habit, he checked his weapons, patting hi He patted the eer usually sat He looked around On a stainless-steel tabletop was a gruesolinted wickedly in the red glow He picked it up carefully and bound the delicate surgeon‘s grip in a thick swath of surgical tape, creating a more practical handle, and slid it very carefully into his belt

―Baird I wish I could do so more" Mo Ye sounded frustrated

―Then wish one--into the cold darkness of the ship‘s dead corridors

SIX

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He encountered a frozen tableaux of carnage The Covenant had siainst walls Huore and viscera everywhere and not a trace of reciprocal Covenant blood

The drugs orking perfectly The Destroyer was not large; he kept to the shadows and snuck through some of the ship‘s duct systehost But he could also feel the dauts, a kind of dull, re He kneas dying, but at the sa clocks ticking, both counting down to soine room in less than fifteen minutes What he found there aline roo on its track, jammed forever in a half-open position, like a slackened jaw They‘d been here, but there was no sign of theine bay was s vanished completely into blackness above hiht here More light to illuminate the bodies of the crew