Page 26 (1/2)

Grace fired the fuel rod gun, hit the broken phalanx formation, and blew them literally to bits She dropped the weapon "Rad counter at 's too hot to use anys have a fail-safe!"

Grace sprang back, just in tiun sparked, sputtered, and then bleith the force of a frag grenade Black- ened, twisted tile rained down on the the excava- tion They weren't armed Locklear mowed them doithout remorse

Froled to rise Blood and bone exploded outward from their chests, and they spun around toward the source of this force--boulders pushed away froed fro froe

John knew instantly the three were Kelly, Fred, and Will

He ran forward to meet them

Fred lowered his weapon "AntonGraceJohn?" he said disbelievingly

The Master Chief opened a COM channel to his Spartans

"It'sI will--later

Let's get the hell out of here first"

Kelly quickly reached out and swiped her two fingers across John's faceplate

He wanted to return the s full force, skidded to a stop next to the Spar- tans He was followed in short order by Haverson, Locklear, and Johnson, who kept looking over his shoulder to scan the huge empty room around them

"Is this everyone?" Admiral Whitcomb asked

"No, sir," Fred replied "There's one more" He turned and extended his hand back into the partially collapsed tunnel "Ma'am?

It's safe to coot that he was in the heart of an eneot about the war, that Reach had fallen, and everything else he had gone through in the last few days He had never thought he would see her again

Dr Halsey eed from the partially caved-in tunnel She brushed dust from the hem of her skirt and lab coat with one slender hand

"Adain

My thanks for the rescue It was far tiine" She turned to the Master Chief "Or is it you I have to thank for this daring operation, John?"

The Master Chief found he had no words to answer He also bristled at her casual use of his given naive her that She had always used his name--never his rank or serial number

He noticed the fist-sized crystal clutched in her hand It had a thousand facets and eht the color of sapphires and sunlight on water

"Thank anyone you want, Catherine," Admiral Whitcomb said

"Throw us all a party if that'll make you happy once we're out of here" He clicked open his COM "Polaski, get down--"

Sergeant Johnson set his hand on the Admiral's areant?" The Admiral's voice died in his throat

The Master Chief's motion tracker flickered on his heads-up display, but there was no solid contact nor did he see any- thing across the entire three-kiloed Elite? No, the dust in the air would have certainly given it away

"No one move," the Admiral whispered

John saw them, then He saw theht it was the haze in the air rippling, the dust, ht it possible for so many Covenant to be so still

On each level of the twelve tiered galleries that circuantic room stood Covenant soldiers They crowded the balconies with Grunts, Jackals whose energy shields popped on, snarling Elites, and several pairs of Hunters with fuel rod can- nons glowing green

The whine of thousands of plas filled the air like a swarm of locusts

No oneand heartfelt expletive

John tried to count them all There had to be thousands--on every level A battalion at least, maybe more They wouldn't even have to aim All they had to do was shoot and fill the space with needle shards and boiling energy

They'd be vaporized before they could get halfway to the tun- nel at their backs

A Hunter pair roared with rage; they leveled their fuel rod cannons at John and his teaed their weapons

A split second later the rest of the alien horde opened fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALYX Estimated 0640 Hours, Septeship Ascendant Justice, periphery of Epsilon Eridani systeed from the non-Euclidian, non-Einsteinian realms that humans had erroneously called "Slip-space" There was neither "space" nor anything to "slip"

across in the alternate dimensions

The ship displaced a cloud of ice crystals that had for eoh these particles and ed reflections It relobe that Dr Halsey had kept on her desk: the Matterhorn and a little Swiss cli in the center of a micro- scopic blizzard

The frozen Oort cloud around her was significantly larger, but it was still a charht from the abyss ofSlipspace