Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (25 page)

Beneath the deck, the ship shuddered.

"Power loss across all systems," Will told Fred. "Slipspace capacitors draining from ninety-eight… trying to reroute."

"Jump now," Fred ordered. "Before we lose more power."

Underpowered Slipspace transitions were
technically
possible. Over the last thirty years UNSC ships had attempted such a maneuver, twice. Both times they succeeded transitioning… into atomized bits.

Fred hoped Covenant technology had a work-around for that problem.

"Aye aye," Will said. He tapped a control.

The enemy ships and stars vanished from the viewer.

The Spartans stood silent; Fred held his breath, unsure if they'd explode.

The viewers went completely dark. It was silent.

Slipspace parameters then streamed across Will's console.

"We made it," Will breathed.

Fred exhaled. "Good job," he told them. He stood there dumb and mute as he worked

through the undeniable logic of what had just happened.

"What is it?" Linda asked.

"We were in Slipstream space," he said, "and answered a distress signal from a ship in

combat in normal space."

Linda nodded and one of her hands nervously flexed.

"So?" Will asked. "The Covenant can send signals in Slipspace. So can we."

"But not hsten to those signals in
normal
space," Linda said.

"They could have heard Cortana's message and Dr. Halsey's," Fred told them. "They may know everything."

Ship Master Voro clutched the rail of his command platform and shouted, "Now! All thrusters answer new course one eight zero by zero zero zero. Divert engine and shield

power to the forward energy projector."

"Answering new course," Zasses said.

The
Incorruptible
spun about—its momentum continued to carry it forward—but now they

faced the pursuing frigate pair.

Uruo at his Operation station called out, "Projector hot, sir. Target solution ready."

"On my word."

Voro hesitated and listened to three beats of his hearts—one

for faith, one for family, and the last for honor—the ritual mediation of the Mendicant.

The leading frigate fired lasers.

"Armor sections Prime One and Ventral Three severely damaged," Y'gar announced with

utter calm.

"Stand by," Voro said.

He felt his junior officers' eyes upon him. They were wondering perhaps, as he was, if he

had gone mad.

"Let them come closer for the kill," Voro said. "We have but one shot. Wait… Wait…"

Both frigates, the
Twilight Compunction
and the
Revenant,
filled and blurred the edges of

the holographic viewers, their lateral lines powering.

A single, normal energy-projector shot could not by itself destroy a Covenant ship of war. It would obliterate shields, but it had to be followed by a plasma bolt to damage or disable.

This was a tactic neutralized by the skillful maneuvers employed by a Jiralhanae frigate pair. They would shift to take alternate plasma hits efficiently, giving the pair an alternating energy shield. They could then combine firepower. If they made no mistakes, they were more than a match for the
Incorruptible.

This was the standard Covenant tactical thinking. Recent events, however, had shaken what Voro had considered "standard" behavior. This would be a gamble, but in Voro's

estimation, their only winning option.

"Now," Voro spat. "Fire!"

The overcharged energy projector sent a shudder through the
Incorruptible.

All their power—shields, engines, Slipspace capacitor reserves—channeled into a single

burst from the projector. The darkness of interstellar space parted.

The shields of the
Revenant
boiled and popped. The hull peeled away, bubbling, as the beam penetrated through and

through. The frigate was cut in half diagonally, ventral fore to dorsal aft—until it severed the starboard plasma line. Fire blazed along her surface and reached the main coils. The ship's aft section detonated and her mid and fore sections tumbled away aflame and spewing smoke.

"All weapons systems inactive," Uruo reported, as he stared at the destruction.

"No power to maneuver," Zasses said nervously. "Thrusters on standby."

The other Jiralhanae frigate veered away and continued to turn, presenting the flare of engine cones as it ran. After seeing the obliteration of its sister ship, the
Twilight Compunction
had no desire to face them alone.

As Voro had hoped: The Jiralhanae were quick to act without thinking. They were savage, yes, but not suicidal.

He counted his blessings that the Jiralhanae Ship Master had not taken the time to thoroughly scan the
Incorruptible
to assess her battle worthiness.

"Repairs underway," Y'gar announced. "All crews on task. Estimate seventy cycles until plasma lines ready."

"Direct repairs to the coils and Slipspace capacitors," Voro ordered.

"A brilliant tactical maneuver, sir," Zasses said, and bowed his head.

Voro grunted.

Brilliant? Desperate was closer to the truth. But Voro would never voice his feelings on this matter before his crew. Unvoiced, however, a mixture of shame and disgust rose in the back of his throat. He had risked everything to win. Perhaps this was how Tano felt? The lives of his brothers in his hands on every mission? Voro felt unworthy to lead.

He scrutinized the central viewer. The Jiralhanae frigate had headed toward the third ship in its battle group, the one that had turned to engage
Bloodied Spirit.

They had intercepted the enemy's transmissions and seen the humans manning
Bloodied Spirit. A
disturbing revelation.

"Zasses," Voro growled. "You tracked the
Spirit
as it jumped?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, and rechecked his console. "Only one stellar system on that vector."

Voro gritted his teeth and flexed his hands. Then at least
Bloodied Spirit
could be hunted and destroyed. "Make ready to jump. We must warn our brethren… of everything."

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SI
X

1520 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ CAPTURED COVENANT DESTROYER
BLOODIED SPIRIT,
IN SLIPSTREAM SPACE

Bloodied Spirit
was on fire. The shot she'd taken from the Covenant frigate had hit an auxiliary plasma line, and fire streamed along the side in a crimson plume.

The raging flames made repairs impossible. Fred couldn't find the controls to quench the broken line without shutting down the main plasma coil and dropping them out of Slipspace—so he let it bum.

Purple alloy melted and oozed through the aft quarters, consuming life support and several sensor nodes.

Bloodied Spirit
would last only a few more minutes, but it was, he hoped, all they'd need.

Will smoothed his hands over the NAV console. "Shifting to normal space in three seconds," he said, "two, one—now."

Stars winked on in the central viewer. Fred moved perspective alongside
Bloodied Spirit,
revealing smoldering holes in her

side, bare conduits spewing plasma, and in places gapping cavities two decks deep.

A planet rotated into view.

Will's jump had been uncannily accurate. They were only a hundred thousand kilometers from the world known as Onyx, a jewel of blue and white against the black.

"Looks habitable," Fred remarked.

"Reading water vapor, oxygen, and nitrogen," Linda said.

"Other ships?" Fred asked. "Scan the region."

Linda bent over the Covenant sensors. "No plasma signatures. No silhouettes on radar," she said. "They didn't follow us."

"Yet," Will added.

"I'll take the lucky break," Fred told him, "and figure out why we got it later."

Fred couldn't relax, though. Leading Blue Team and the responsibility to "captain" this ship was his alone. He had been trained in rudimentary astrogation and ship-to-ship tactics, but it wasn't enough; it was like trying to perform brain surgery with only a basic aid kit. The sooner he got groundside where he could fight on his own terms, the better off they'd all be.

He wasn't sure what the Covenant were doing fighting amongst themselves and stealing human nukes… but whatever it was, he hoped it kept them busy The Covenant captain who had seen them wasn't going to let a human-crewed Covenant ship slip off his radar for too long.

"Groundside signals," Linda said. Lines wavered in a window floating off her console. "UNSC E-Band."

"Put it on audio," Fred said.

There was a hiss, a pop, and it went dead. The hiss repeated and then again fell silent.

"That's a looped signal," Linda said. "Hang on, slowing it down by a factor of three hundred."

A series of beeps resolved from the noise.

"Slow it down more," Will told her.

Three longer beeps pinged, then three shorter ones, and three longer. After a moment, this repeated.

"Not 'SOS,'" Linda declared. "It's 'OSO.'"

"Signal source?" Fred asked.

Linda retuned to the console. "Multiple point sources," she said. "Cycling at random. Someone doesn't want to get triangulated."

"If SOS is a distress call," Will said, "then what's OSO supposed to be? A warning? Why would Dr. Halsey send a distress call and then warn us away?"

"The message repeats every twelve seconds," Linda said. "Twenty-seven OSO units, a pause of two seconds, and then another one hundred eighteen units."

"Twenty-seven by one one eight?" Fred considered. "Latitude and longitude?"

"Which direction?" Will asked. "North or south? East or west? Any matches of those permutations to the random signal sources?" He moved closer to Linda's station.

"There," she said. "Twenty-seven degrees north, one hundred eighteen east."

Fred told them, "Set course to those coordinates. Give us a nice and easy deorbital burn. We've got to—"

"Hang on," Linda said. "Picking up contacts. Wait… recalibrating." Her hand flicked over the control surfaces. "Multiple silhouettes in high orbit. The system missed them; it's not set up to detect something so small. Objects are three meters long. On the central viewer."

Fred moved to the holographic display.

Floating before him was a simple structure: Three cylindrical booms sat parallel to one another. From the end-on view they formed an equilateral triangle. In the center of this sat a sphere, a quarter meter in diameter. The booms were a brushed matte sliver metal. The resolution was just good enough to see a swirled pattern etched onto the alloy. The sphere glowed dull

red, as if it were heated from within. Nothing connected the sphere to the associated rods. There were no shimmering energy fields, either.

"A bomb?" Fred asked. "Dr. Halsey's new technology?"

"No radiologicals detected," Linda reported.

"Satellites?" Will offered.

"I'm reading two thousand four hundred twenty-three of these objects in orbit," Linda said. "That's overkill for a COM network. Wait, they're breaking orbit."

With a flick of her hand she shifted perspective in the central tank and Onyx drifted in the center.
Bloodied Spirit
was a glowing purple dash among the stars.

"Image enhancement online," she said.

A haze of red dots swarmed in the black of space and slowly drifted toward them.

"Shields!" Fred barked at Will.

"Responding. Full strength confirmed." Will rechecked the alien controls. "No error," he said. "They're up this time."

"If those aren't nukes," Fred told them, "there's no way something that small can penetrate Covenant shields."

Fred watched the holographic viewer as the hostiles approached. It was like watching a tide come in, and Fred remembered one of Deja's childhood lessons: jellyfish swarming the tide lines on an Australian beach. One sting from the tiny invertebrates caused tissue necrosis and paralysis. A hundred was overkill-lethal.

"Back us off. Will," he ordered.

"Something's happening," Linda said.

The image in the viewer zoomed in on a cluster of the spacecraft. Seven of them moved

into a line.

The view pulled back and revealed other identical formations. Seven of these lines stacked into an elongated triangle, and the spheres within the forty-nine-craft pattern glowed

red-hot.

"Hard to port!" Fred cried. "Emergency power to shields."

The deck tilted.

"Answering hard to port," Will cried.

A blast of golden light overwhelmed the image in the viewer.

The frame of
Bloodied Spirit
resounded like it had been struck with a hammer. The artificial gravity failed and Fred gripped the railing.

"Starboard side hit," Will said. "Shields destroyed."

Fred moved his hand over his console and
Bloodied Spirit
appeared on the viewer. A gaping crater of blue hull armor smoldered white-hot. Crystalline electronics crackled, and severed plasma lines spewed fire. As the ship turned, Fred saw the hole was five decks across and had punched clean through to the port side.

"Main plasma pressure nil," Will reported. "Cycling to fuel cells. Slipspace capacitors holding charge. We have enough power to jump."

Linda looked to Will and then to Fred and nodded.

Fred watched as more alien drones crystallized into triangular lattices. Individually they were no match for even a Covenant single ship. Combined they packed enough punch to atomize
Bloodied Spirit.

"We're not leaving," Fred muttered. "We're moving closer. Will, get me a jump solution on coordinates to twenty-seven degrees north latitude, one hundred eighteen east longitude, elevation fifteen thousand meters."