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He moved to the still-open port hatch, slid the fiber-optic probe outside, and plugged it into his heles ap- peared on his heads-up display
Hundreds of Covenant ships swarer until the Master Chief saas a ship of sin to their oo U-shaped hulls, each the size of their dropship, sat on top of one another This ship accelerated toward them and separated--one part moved to their dropship's stern and the other drifted to the nose
The clanging of h the hull, and the Master Chief felt a gentle motion in the pit of his stomach
He looked back and passed on a thu that their tow had arrived, and Fred passed this signal on to the rest of the team
On the fiber-optic feed the Master Chief saw that the Covenant tug h the fleet, up, over, and around ships a hundred times their size There was aon screen save the stars and black of space The Master Chief got a gliold-colored star on his heads-up display, and then the video feed moved over to a planet of ocher sturned to face a new ship in the distance This vessel looked like two teardrop-shaped Covenant ships that had collided, giving the result an overall elongated figure-eight geometry
They moved toward this ship, and the Master Chief made out more details Spokes radiated from the narrowthat he hadn't seen before because they had approached facing it edge-on Featherlike tubes extended from either bulbous section and moved slowly over that central wheel John squinted to make out more details on this unusual ship, but he was already at ? But the Covenant had gravita- tional technology They didn't need rotating sections to sinizable on the structure: tiny ships docked to that ring Covenant cruisers and carriers There must have been sixty connected to the central hub
The titanic perspective of this structure clicked into place
The carriers looked like toys The twin teardrop shapes had to be thirty kilometers end to end This could only be the Covenant co moved directly toward the station It was precisely where they had to go, so it was a lucky break but ironically, it was also the last place the Master Chief wanted to be
There was no telling what kind of sensors the Unyielding Hiero-phanthad, but they couldn't take chances John retreated into the dropship and eased the hatch shut
He moved deeper into the ship and waited with the rest of Blue Team
Three minutes ticked by on hisand focus his mind
Gravity settled his sto the hull Ath the cracks of their breached ship
John pointed at Fred and Grace and then to the starboard hatch They leveled their rifles and moved He pointed to Linda and himself, then the port hatch, and they also moved into position
John wasn't sure what kind of reception waited for the was certain--they'd have to face it head-on There was nowhere to hide inside the re- inforced and too-cramped interior of their dropship
The port hatch cracked and squeaked open
Linda and John aimed their rifles
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
0610 hours, September 13,2552 (revised date, Military Calendar) \ Aboard Covenant battle station Unyielding Hierophant
A rubbery tentacle reached in along the seanaled Linda to stand down He recognized the alien lians could belong only to a Covenant Engineer
The Engineer pushed open the hatch and entered the ship, floating past John and Linda as if they weren't there It chittered and squawked as it ran its tentacles over the foreign arineers bolted through the open hatch and joined the first
As long as they left the single-minded aliens to their work, they wouldn't raise an alarainst the frame of the hatch and slid the fiber- optic probe outside There was a line of dropships, Seraph fight- ers, and other singleships that stretched away into the shadows
Swarineers, thousands of the creatures, hovered and drifted throughout the area They moved parts, disassembled and reassembled sections of ship hulls, and plumbed plasma coils There was no trace of a welco for Blue Team
John turned the optic probe up and saw a latticework deck overhead with tools, welders, and spotlights hanging like jungle vines It was as good a place as any to get their bearings
John turned and pointed at Linda and Will, then out the hatch and up They nodded and hts from Blue Four and Three winked on It was safe for the rest of therabbed the upper lip of the hatchway and flipped up onto the top of the dropship He grabbed a dangling cord and pulled himself onto the latticework deck where Fred and Linda perched, watching andsure the bay was clear
Grace and Fred dise theers at his eyes and then made a flat fan motion across the space of the bay The Spartans moved to care- fully scan the area
From his shadowy overview John saw that this place was a repair-and-refit facility, with slots for hundreds of singleships
The room curved out of view three hundred meters in either di- rection It must run the circumference of the station's hub
Apart froineers, John spotted only two Grunts wearing white nation he had seen before They pushed carts containing barrels of sloshing fluids They would be easy to avoid
One side of the bay had a series of sealed doors that he pre- sumed led to air locks The opposite wall of the bay had a ht
Every thirtythat transparent as a recessed alcove Overflowing froo barrels, old charred plasma coils, and plates of the silver-blue Covenant alloy But what piqued John's interest as next to this pile of junk: a holographic teret Blue Teaers, and then pointed again at the alcove
Everyone nodded, understanding his order
Fred and Linda silently dropped to the deck, ran across the bay, and melted into the shadows behind a cut section of hull
Grace followed
John looked up and down and side to side across the bay,sure no Grunts were visible He and Will crossed and took cover behind a plasht reconnais- sance vehicle
He used both hands to point at Fred and Linda, turned his hands so they pointed to himself, and then nodded to the data tere of the alcove shadows on his right; Fred took the left They would cover him while he moved to the terminal
John reached to the back of his neck and pulled Cortana's chip fro the wall until he got to the terminal He slid Cortana's chip into the input slot and then eased back into the shadows
"I'm in," Cortana reported over the COM "I have secured our own channel and encrypted the signal so we're free to use the interteam COM"
"Good work," John told her "Is there a central reactor in this station? Hoell defended is it?"
"Stand by I have to move carefully There are Covenant secu- rity AIs in this system"