0631 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)Epsilon Eridani system, unknown aerialposition, planet Reach.

Fred saw the sky and earth flashing in rapid succession before his faceplate. Decades oftraining took over. This was just like a parasail drop ... except this time there was no chute. He forced his arms and legs open; the  spread-eagle position controlled his tumbleand slowed his velocity.

Time seemed to simultaneously crawl and race—something Kelly had once dubbed"SPARTAN Time." Enhanced senses and augmented physiology meant that in periods ofstress Spartans thought and reacted faster than  a normal human. Fred's mind raced as heabsorbed the tactical situation.

He activated his motion sensors, boosting the range to maxi.mum. His team appeared as blips on his heads-up display. With a sigh of relief he saw that all twenty-six of them were present and pulling into a wedge  formation.

"Covenant ground forces could be tracking the Pelican," Fred told them over the COM."Expect AA fire."The Spartans immediately broke formation and scattered across the sky.

Fred risked a sidelong glance and spotted the Pelican. It tum.bled, sending shards ofarmor plating in glittering, ugly arcs, be.fore it impacted into the side of a jaggedsnowcapped mountain.

The surface of Reach stretched out before them, two thousand meters below. Fred saw a carpet of green forest, ghostly mountains in the distance, and pillars of smoke rising from the west. He spied a sinuous ribbon of  water that he recognized: Big Horn River.

The Spartans had trained on Reach for most of their earlyERIC NYLUND 13lives. This was the same forest where CPO Mendez had left them when they were children. With only pieces of a map and no food, water, or weapons, they had captured aguarded Pelican and re.turned to HQ. That was  the mission where John, now the Master Chief, had earned command of the group, the mission that had forged them into a team.

Fred pushed the memory aside. This was no homecoming.

UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B training facility would be due west. And thegenerators? He called up the terrain map and overlaid it on his display. Joshua had done his work well: Cortana had delivered decent satellite  imagery as well as a topo.graphicsurvey map. It wasn't as good as a spy-sat flyby, but it was better than Fred had expectedon such short notice.

He dropped a NAV marker on the position of the generator complex and uploaded thedata on the TACCOM to his team.

He took a deep breath and said: "That's our target. Move toward it but keep your incoming angle flat. Aim for the treetops. Let them slow you down. If you can't, aim for water... and tuck in your arms and legs before  impact."Twenty-six blue acknowledgment lights winked, confirming his order.

"Overpressurize your hydrostatics just before you hit."That would risk nitrogen embolisms for his Spartans, but they were coming in at terminalvelocity, which for a fully loaded Spartan was—he quickly calculated—130 meters per second. They had to overpressurize the  cushioning gel or their organs would be crushedagainst the impervious MJOLNIR armor when they hit.

The acknowledgment lights winked again ... although Fred sensed a slight hesitation.

Five hundred meters to go.

He took one last look at his Spartans. They were scattered across the horizon like bits ofconfetti.

He brought up his knees and changed his center of mass, try.ing to flatten his angle as heapproached the treetops. It worked, but not as well or as quickly as he had hoped.

One hundred meters to go. His shield flickered as he brushed the tops of the tallest of thetrees.

He took a deep breath, exhaled as deeply as he could, grabbed14 HALO: FIRST STRIKEhis knees, and tucked into a ball. He overrode the hydrostatic sys.tem and overpressurized the gel surrounding his body. A thou.sand tiny knives stabbed him— pain unlike any he'd experienced since the SPARTAN-II  program had surgically alteredhim.

The MJOLNIR armor's shields flared as he broke through branches—then drained in one sudden burst as he impacted dead-center on a thick tree trunk. He smashed through itlike an armored missile.

He tumbled, and his body absorbed a series of rapid-fire im.pacts. It felt like taking a fullclip of assault rifle fire at point-blank range. Seconds later Fred slammed to a bone-crunching halt.

His suit malfunctioned. He could no longer see or hear any.thing. He stayed in that limbostate and struggled to stay con.scious and alert. Moments later, his display was filledwith stars. He realized then that the suit wasn't  malfunctioning... he was.

"Chief!" Kelly's voice echoed in his head as if from the end of a long tunnel. "Fred, get up," she whispered. "We've got to move."His vision cleared, and he slowly rolled onto his hands and knees. Something hurt inside,like his stomach had been torn out, diced into little pieces, and then stitched backtogether all wrong. He took a ragged breath. That  hurt, too.

The pain was good—it helped keep him alert.

"Status," he coughed. His mouth tasted like copper.

Kelly knelt next to him and on a private COM channel said, "Al.most everyone has minor damage: a few blown shield generators, sensor systems, a dozen broken bones and contusions. Nothing we can't compensate for.  Six Spartans have more serious injuries.They can fight from a fixed position, but they have limited mobil.ity." She took a deepbreath and then added, "Four Kour K"IA.

Fred struggled to his feet. He was dizzy but remained upright. He had to stay on his feetno matter what. He had to for the team, to show them they still had a functioning leader.

It could have been much worse—but four dead was bad enough. No Spartan operation had ever seen so many killed in one mis.sion, and this op had barely begun. Fred wasn'tsuperstitious, but he couldn't help but feel  that the Spartans' luck was running out.

"You did what you had to," Kelly said as if she were reading his mind. "Most of us wouldn't have made it if you hadn't been thinking on your feet."ERIC NYLUND 15Fred snorted in disgust. Kelly thought he'd been thinking on his feet—but all he'd done was land on his ass. He didn't want to talk about it—not now. "Any other good news?" hesaid.

"Plenty," she replied. "Our gear—munitions boxes, bags of extra weapons—they're scattered across what's passing for our LZ. Only a few of us have assault rifles, maybe five in total."Fred instinctively reached for his MA5B and discovered that the anchoring clips on hisarmor had been sheared away in the impact. No grenades on his belt, either. His drop bag was gone, too.

He shrugged. "We'll improvise," he said.

Kelly picked up a rock and hefted it.

Fred resisted the urge to lower his head and catch his breath. There was nothing hewanted to do more right now than sit down and just rest and think. There had to be a way to get his Spartans out of here in one piece.  It was like a training exercise—all he neededto do was figure out how best to accomplish their mis.sion with no more foul-ups.

There was no time, though. They'd been sent to protect those generators, and theCovenant sure as hell weren't sitting around waiting for them to make the first move. The columns of smoke that marked where Reach  HighCom once stood testified to that.

"Assemble the team," Fred told her. "Formation Beta. We're heading toward thegenerators on foot. Pack out our wounded and dead. Send those with weapons ahead as scouts. Maybe our luck will change."Kelly barked over the SQUADCOM: "Move, Spartans. For.mation Beta to the NAV point."Fred initiated a diagnostic on his armor. The hydrostatic sub.system had blown a seal,and pressure was at minimal functional levels. He could move, but he'd have to replacethat seal before he'd be able to sprint or dodge plasma fire.

He fell in behind Kelly and saw his Spartans on the periphery of his tactical friend-or-foemonitor. He couldn't actually see any of them because they were spread out and dartedfrom tree to tree to avoid any Covenant  surprises. They all moved silently through theforest: light and shadow and an occasional muted flash of luminous green armor, thengone again.

"Red-One this is Red-Twelve. Single enemy contact ... neutralized."16 HALO: FIRST STRIKE"One here, too," Red-Fifteen reported. "Neutralized."There had to be more. Fred knew the Covenant never traveled in small numbers.

Worse, if the Covenant were deploying troops in any signifi.cant numbers, that meant theholding action in orbit had turned ugly ... so it was only a matter of time before thismission went from bad to worse.

He was so intent on listening to his team's field checks, he al.most ran into a pair ofJackals. He instinctively melted into the shadow of a tree and froze.

The Jackals hadn't seen him. The birdlike aliens sniffed at the air, however, and thenmoved forward more cautiously, closing on Fred's concealed position. They wavedlasma pistols before them and clicked on their energy  shields. The small, oblongpppro.tective fields rippled and solidified with a muted hum.

Fred keyed his COM channel to Red-Two, twice. Her blue ac.knowledgment lightimmediately winked in response to his call for backup.

The Jackals suddenly turned to their right and sniffed rapidly.

A fist-sized rock whizzed in from the aliens' left. It slammed into the lead Jackal's occipitalcrest with a wet crack. The creature squawked and dropped to the ground in a pool ofpurple-black blood.

Fred darted ahead and in three quick steps closed with the re.maining Jackal. Hesidestepped around the plane of the energy shield and grabbed the creature's wrist. TheJackal squawked in fear and surprise.

He yanked the Jackal's gun arm, hard, and then twisted. The Jackal struggled as its ownweapon was forced into the mottled, rough skin of its neck.

Fred squeezed, and he could feel the alien's bones shatter. The plasma pistol dischargedin a bright, emerald flash. The Jackal flopped over on its back, minus its head.

Fred picked up the fallen weapons as Kelly emerged from the trees. He tossed her one ofthe plasma pistols, and she plucked it out of the air.

"Thanks. I'd still prefer my rifle to this alien piece of junk," she groused.

ERIC NYLUND 17Fred nodded, and clipped the other captured weapon to his harness. "Beats the hell out ofthrowing rocks," he replied.

"Affirmative, Chief," she said with a nod. "But just barely.""Red-One," Joshua's voice called over the SQUADCOM. "I'm a half-klick ahead of you. You need to see this.""Roger," Fred told him. "Red Team, hold here and wait for my signal."Acknowledgment lights winked on.

In a half crouch, Fred made his way toward Joshua. There was light ahead: The shadethinned and vanished because the forest was gone. The trees had been leveled, every one blasted to splin.ters or burned to charred  nubs.

There were bodies, too; thousands of Covenant Grunts, hun.dreds of Jackals and Elites littered the open field. There were also humans—all dead. Fred could see several fallen Marines still smoldering from plasma fire. There  were overturned Scor.pion tanks,Warthogs with burning tires, and a Banshee flier. The flier had snagged one canard on a loop of barbed wire, and it pro.pelled itself, riderless, in an endless orbit.

The generator complex on the far side of this battlefield was intact, however. Reinforcedconcrete bunkers bristling with ma.chine guns surrounded a low building. The generators were deep beneath there. So far it looked  as if the Covenant had notman.aged to take them, though not for lack of trying.

"Contacts ahead," Joshua whispered.

Four blips appeared on his motion sensor. Friend-or-foe tags identified them as UNSCMarines, Company Charlie. Serial numbers flashed next to the men as his HUD pickedthem out on a topo map of the area.

Joshua handed Fred his sniper rifle, and he sighted the con.tacts through the scope. They were Marines, sure enough. They picked through the bodies that littered the area, lookingfor sur.vivors and policing weapons  and ammo.

Fred frowned; something about the way the Marine squad moved didn't feel right. Theylacked unit cohesion, with their line ragged and exposed. They weren't using any of theavailable cover. To Fred's experienced eye, the Marines didn't even seem to be heading ina specific direction. One of them just ambled in circles. hem just ambled in circles.

18 HALO: FIRST STRIKEFred sent a narrow-beam transmission on UNSC global fre.quency. "Marine patrol, this isSpartan Red Team. We are ap.proaching your position from your six o'clock.Acknowledge."The Marines turned about and squinted in Fred's direction, and brought their assaultrifles to bear. There was static on the channel, and then a hoarse, listless voice replied:"Spartans? If you are what you say you are ...  we could sure use a hand.""Sorry we missed the battle, Marine."" 'Missed'?" The Marine gave a short, bitter laugh. "Hell, Chief, this was just round one."Fred returned the sniper rifle to Joshua, pointed toward his eyes and then to the Marines in the field. Joshua nodded, shoul.dered the rifle, and sighted them. His finger hoverednear the weapon's trigger—not quite on it.  It never hurt to be careful.

Fred got up and walked to the cluster of Marines. He picked his way past a tangle of Grunt bodies and the twisted metal and charred tires that had once been a Warthog.

The men looked as if they had been to hell and back. They all sported burns, abrasions,and the kilometer-long stare indicative of near shock. They gaped at Fred, mouths open; itwas a reac.tion that he had often seen  when soldiers first glimpsed a Spar.tan: two meters tall, half a ton of armor, splashed with alien blood. It was a mix of awe andsuspicion and fear.

He hated it. He just wanted to fight and win this war, like the rest of the soldiers in theUNSC. The Corporal seemed to snap out of his near fugue. He removed his helmet,scratched at his cropped red hair, and looked  behind him. "Chief, you'd better head backto base with us before they hit us again."Fred nodded. "How many in your company, Corporal?"The man glanced at his three companions and shook his head. "Say again, Chief?"These men were likely on the verge of battle shock, so Fred controlled his impatience and replied in as gentle a voice as he could muster: "Your FOF tags say you're with CharlieCompany, Corporal. How many are you?  How many wounded?""There's no wounded, Chief," the Corporal replied. "There's no 'company' either. We're allthat's left."