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Ackerson nodded

The three Naval officers thumbed their tablet readers and the files erased They rose, and without another word, left the cage

They had never been here

None of this had ever been discussed

Alone now, Ackerson reviewed his files and made plans The first matter of business was already in the works: on-screen appeared the career record of SPARTAN-051

CHAPTER THREE

0940 HOURS, NOVEMBER 7, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ GROOMBRIDGE 34 SYSTEM, NEAR CONSTRUCTION PLATFORM 966A (DECOMMISSIONED)

SPARTAN-051, Kurt, jumped into utter emptiness It was a hundred-kilometer drop to the moon under his feet Heworld of space, and noted that technically there was no "under" or "above" in space--just vectors, le camera and saw Kelly and Fred jump from the lock of the prowler after him He knew not to turn his head to look The yrate out of control Besides, in the vacuum-enhanced variant of MJOLNIR armor, his mobility was a fraction of normal

A green status light winked on, confir they were all on the same vector

They'd coast for several kiloe thruster packs

Although slow, there were two good reasons to be cautious

First, when their prowler Circumference, had reentered normal space, the NAV Officer had picked up an echo, a partial ship silhouette, prowler class He had dismissed this as an echo from their reentry to normal space that had bounced off theto worry about Still, the anoed Kurt In case there was another ship, Kurt wanted to be well away before igniting packs No need to needlessly give away the stealth ship's position

Second, they had detected an inert COM satellite on the dark side of thenal had e The Circumference had jammed, and then fried it with a burst from a pulse laser

Kurt just made the assumption this simple recon mission would be hot That way, he'd be happy to be disappointed

He activated the single-beaht demarcation in five nostic They couldn't take any chances with the packs Designed for long-range deep-space operations, it was one of the riskiest pieces of equipment they'd been trained on Even with triple redundancy in NAV systeh compressed tri-amino hydrazine in the double fuel tanks to propel you so far and so fast off course, rescue would be an astronomically remote possibility

Or as Chief Mendez had put it: "Start tuhts winked back at Kurt

"ETA three er," Kelly replied and then she added, "So?"

"No," Kurt said

Fred's voice came over the COM: "When you say 'no' like that, you ," he adle-beale display as Kelly and Fred activated their MA5B assault rifles A data cable linked each rifle to their T-PACK ive the proper counterthrust when the weapon fired

Kurt sighed,his faceplate Now they were jus weren't adding up

There was the echo and the inactive spy satellite And why had CENTCOM picked theo on a low-risk recon mission? This was just a simple look to check out reported suspicious activity at a decoh-riskyou'd send three Spartans on

"Coht zone," Kurt said "Go to radio silent"

They drifted toward the razor line that ht to day on the smooth icy moon

There was no atht would be quick, no sparkling sunrise, just a blinding flash of glare

They crossed into the light Kurt's faceplate autoli city of welded scaffolding, cranes, docking pods, tubes, and grappling claws There were no lights No therh-def recorder to capture every square meter of the derelict Whoever had been responsible for the station's decoo had done a sloppy job There was a halo of debris: spinning steel girders, bolts, and battle plate flashing as it caught and reflected the dull red sunlight from the distant binary stars

It looked deserted, so Kurt winked his green status light three tile-beae over TEAMCOM, the skeletal frame of a partially constructed ship, about three times the size of their prowler He said, "That TR steel alloy exposed to solar radiation is supposed to turn white"

"It's silver," Kurt replied "New construction?"

"Check this out," Kelly said

She uploaded a series of inification a hull-support cradle whose shape suggested the oddly angular structure of a stealth ship Only this vessel had to be as large as a UNSC destroyer--which was ier the ship, the more radiation leaked, the more thermals, the more stealth-coated surfaces had to be kept in perfect repair so they didn't reflect radar

"Send that ile beam back to the Circureen

Kurt swept his left hand forward, gathering data on his sensors-encrusted glove Still no thermals No, wait, as Station Delphi rotated slowly, a tiny white flare appeared

"Hot spot," he said, and tagged the region on his display, sending coordinates to Fred and Kelly

Kurt's hand twitched; years of co you just didn't unlearn Talk, even using a single beaht on this , and while his T-PACK could compensate, Kurt wanted to continue to stealth without thrusters

Kelly e on the spot, zoomed in, and they all saw a splash of rainbow colors

Kurt's radiation counter clicked wildly and then went dead "Broad-spectrum pulse," he reported

"I've seen one of those before," Fred told theine on the Magellan It was a risky op Those things aren't o active"

Shaw-Fujikawa engines allowed UNSC ships to leave norh a dimensional subdomain colloquially known as "Slipstrea in hoorked The drive used particle accelerators to rip apart norradiation in a nanosecond The real quantuic" of the drive was how ita hundred-thousand-ton cruiser into Slipspace The mathematics of how this worked and how a ship reentered normal space ell beyond hieniuses

Kurt, however, did know this about Shaw-Fujikawa drives: they were dangerous There was radiation and anecdotal evidence that the normal laws of nature "bent" in close proxis and bea to take a closer look at that thing and confirm it's what Fred thinks it is before we call in HAZMAT"

There was a slight delay before Kelly's and Fred's acknowledgreen

Kurt activated his T-PACK, puffed the thrusters, and angled toward Station Delphi He tapped the attitude controls, adjusting pitch, roll, and yaw to avoid colliding with the bolts, bea in the debris field

As they closed to within one hundred , partially disassele ca interference here," Kurt said "You two hold position I'll scout it out"

"Roger," Kelly said There was an edge of concern in her voice, "Grapple lines ready"

Kurt crept closer and got a glilow that didn't match the thermal output It wasn't possible for a hole into Slipspace to exist for more than a fraction of an instant, but he couldn't help feeling that's exactly what this was… and the closer he drifted the et pulled in and forever lost

But that was just a feeling

He hesitated

Kurt altered his direct trajectory and drifted toward a beaine The space near the drive rippled like heat waves rising… impossible in a hard vacuum