0711 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)Epsilon Eridani system, Longhorn Valley, planet Reach.

The alarm hooted, and Zawaz sprang to his feet with a startled yelp. The squat alien, a Grunt clad in burnished orange armor, fumbled and dropped his motion scanner. He keened in fear and retrieved the device with a  trembling claw. If the scanner had been damaged, the Elites would use his body as reactor shielding. If his masters learned he'dbeen asleep at his post, they might do far worse than kill him. They might give him to  theJackals.

Zawaz shuddered.

Fortunately, the scanner still worked, and the diminutive alien sighed with relief. Three contacts rapidly approached the moun.tain that separated Zawaz's cadre from thedistant human forces. He reached for the warning  klaxon but relaxed as his detector identified the contacts—Banshee fliers.

He peered over the dirt edge of his protective hole to confirm this. He spotted three of thebulbous aircraft on approach. Zawaz snorted. It was odd that the fli ht wasn't listed onhis patrol schedule. He considered alerting  his superiors, then thouggght bet.ter of it. Whatif they were Elites on some secret mission?

No, it was best not to question such things. Be ignored. Live another day. That was hiscreed.

He nestled back into his hole, reset the motion detector to long range, and prayed itwouldn't go off again. He curled into a tight ball and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

Fred led their flying-wed e formation. The purple and red air.ships arced up and overthe treetops of the ridge, gggaining asERIC NYLUND27much altitude as the Banshee could manage—about three hun.dred meters. As hecleared the top, what he saw made him ease off the throttle.

The valley was ten kilometers across and sloped before him, thick with Douglas firs thatthinned and gave way to trampled fields and the Big Horn River beyond. Camped in thefields were thousands upon thousands of  Covenant troops. Their mass covered the entirevalley, and thin, smoke-choked sunlight glinted off a sea of red, yellow, and blue armor.They moved in tight columns and swarmed along the river's edge—so many that  itlooked like someone had kicked over the largest anthill in existence.

And they were building. Hundreds of flimsy white dome-shaped tents were being erected,atmosphere pits for the methane-breathing Grunts. Farther back were the odd polyhedralhuts of the Elite units, guarded by a  long line of dozens of beetlelike Wraith tanks. Guardtowers unctuated the valley; they spiraled up from mobile treaded bases, ten meters talland topppped with plasma turrets.

The rules had indeed changed. In more than a hundred battles Fred had never seen theCovenant set up encampments of such magnitude. All they did was kill.

Floating behind all this activity, almost brushing against the far hills, the Covenant cruisersat thirty meters off the ground. It looked like a great bloated fish with stubby stabilizingfins. Its gravity lift was in operation, a tube of scintillating energy that moved matter toand from the ground. Stacks of purple crates gently floated down from the craft. In theafternoon light he could see its weapons bristling along its length, casting spider-likeshadows across its hull.

Their Banshees leveled out, and Fred dropped back to tighten his formation with Kellyand Joshua.

He glanced again at the enemy ship and the guard towers. One good hit from thoseweapons could take them out.

Fred saw other Banshee patrols circling the valley. He frowned. If they passed them, theenemy pilots would almost certainly de.mand to know their business... and there was noway of knowing what the established patrol routes were. That meant he'd have to28 HALO: FIRST STRIKEtake an alternate flight path: straight down the middle, and straight over the Covenanthorde.

They'd only need one run to do this. They'd probably only get one run.

He activated a COM frequency. "Go."Kelly hit the acceleration and glided toward the cruiser. Fred fell in behind her. He armedthe fuel rod gun built into the Banshee.

They were six kilometers from the cruiser when Kelly achieved the maximum speed ofher flier. Grunts and Jackals in the fields below craned their necks as the Spartans flashedover them.

They had to go faster. Fred felt every Covenant eye watching them. He dived, trading hisaltitude for acceleration, and Joshua and Kelly did the same.

Communication symbols flashed across his Banshee's wind.shield display. The UNSCsoftware built into their armor worked only with some of the spoken Covenant languages—not their written words. Odd, curling characters scrolled across the Ban.shee'sdisplays.

Fred hit one of the response symbols.

There was a pause, the display cleared, and dozens more sym.bols flashed, twice as fast.

Fred clicked the display off.

Three kilometers to go, and his heart beat so hard he heard it thunder in his ears.

Kelly pulled slightly ahead of them. She was now thirty me.ters off the ground, gaining asmuch speed as she could, driving straight for the cruiser's gravity lift.iving straight for the cruiser's gravity lift.

The nearest guard tower tracked her; its plasma cannon flared and fired.

Kelly's flier climbed and banked to evade the energy fire. The bolt of superheated ionizedgas brushed against her starboard fuselage. Energy spray melted the Banshee's frontfaring, and her ship slowed.

A dozen plasma turrets turned to track them.

Fred banked and opened fire. Energy bursts from the Ban.shee's primary weapon strafedthe guard tower. Joshua did the same, and a river of fire streaked toward the towers.

Fred hit the firing stud for the Banshee's heavy weapon, and aERIC NYLUND 29sphere of energy arced into the base of the tower. It began a grad.ual tilt, then collapsed.

Kelly hadn't fired. Fred glanced her way and saw that she now stood in a low crouch atop her racing Banshee. She had one foot under the duct tape that had secured the nuke andnow held the bomb in her hand,  cocking it back to throw.

A shard of jagged crystal, a round from a Covenant needier, pinged off Fred's port shield.He snapped a look below.

Covenant Grunts and Jackals boiled in agitation—a hundred badly aimed shots arced up after him; glistening clouds of crys.talline needles and firefly plasma bolts swarmedthrough the air and chipped away at his  Banshee's fuselage.

Fred jinked his Banshee left and right, and dodged plasma bolts from the three guardtowers tracking him. He lined up for a second strafing run, and the Banshee's lighter energy weapons sent Grunts scattering.

A hundred meters to go.

Kelly leaned back, coiled her body, and readied to throw the nuclear device as if it were a shotput.

The Covenant cruiser came to life, and its weapons tracked the Banshees. A dozen fingers of plasma ripped the air; white-blue arcs of fire reached for them.

One bolt connected with Joshua's ship. The Banshee's impro.vised shields overloadedand vanished. The canards of the flier melted and bent. The alien airship lurched into a spin as its con.trol surfaces warped, and Joshua  fell behind Fred and Kelly just as they entered the gravity lift of the craft.

Fred keyed his COM to raise Joshua but got only static. Time seemed to slow inside thebeam of purple light that ferried goods and troops to and from the belly of the ship. The strange glow surrounded them and made his skin tingle as if it were asleep.

Their Banshees rose toward an opening in the underside of the carrier. They weren'triding into the ship, though; they were trav.eling too fast and would cross the beam before they were three quarters of the way to the  top.

Fred snapped around. He didn't see Joshua anywhere. Plasma beams hit the well andwere deflected as if it were a giant glass lens.

Kelly hurled the nuke straight up into the gullet of the cruiser.

30 HALO: FIRST STRIKEFred wrenched the Banshee's controls and arced the craft under the edge of the ship;Kelly was right behind him. The light vanished, and they emerged on the far side of theCovenant vessel.

Behind them, distorted through the gravity lift, Fred saw Covenant troops firing theirweapons into the sky. He heard ten thousand voices screaming for blood.

Fred pinged Joshua on the COM, but his acknowledgment light remained dark.

He wanted to slow and turn back for him, but Kelly dived, ac.celerating toward theground, and she entered the forest that car.peted the mountainside. Fred followed her.They were scant meters above the ground; they  dodged trees and blasted through tangles of foliage. A handful of stray shots flashed overhead. They flew at top speed and didn'tlook back.

They emerged from the tree line and over the powdered snow of the mountaintop. They arced over a granite ridge, came about, and throttled back. The Banshees drifted slowly tothe ground.

The sky turned white. Fred's faceplate polarized to its darkest setting. Thunder rolledthough his body. Fire and molten metal blossomed over the ridge, boiled skyward, and rained back into the valley. The granite top of  the intervening mountain shattered into dust and the snow on their side melted in muddy rivulets.

Fred's visor slowly depolarized.

Kelly leaned across her Banshee. Blood oozed from her ar.mor's left shoulder joint. Shefumbled for her helmet seal, caught it, and peeled it off her head. "Did we get 'em?" shepanted. Blood foamed from the corner of her  mouth.

"I think so," Fred told her.

She looked around. "Joshua?"Fred shook his head. "He got t "hit on the way in.

It had been easy for him to fly into the face of certain death moments ago. Saying those words was a hundred times harder.

Kelly slumped and dropped her head back against her Banshee.

"Stay here, I'm going up to take a look." Fred powered up his Banshee and rose parallelwith the ridgeline. He nudged the craft up a little farther and got his first look into thevalley.

ERIC NYLUND31It was a sea of flame. Hundreds of fires dotted the cracked, glassy ground. Where the BigHorn River had snaked along, there was now only a long steaming furrow. There was no trace of the cruiser or the Covenant  troops that had filled the valley moments ago. All thatremained was a field of smoldering, twisted bone and metal. At the edge of this carnage stood black.ened sticks—the remnants of the forest—all leaning away from  the center ofthe explosion.

Ten thousand Covenant deaths. It wasn't worth losing Joshua or any of the other Spartans, but it was something. Perhaps they had bought enough time for the orbital MACguns to tip the bat.tle overhead in the Fleet's  favor. Maybe their sacrifices would save Reach. That would be worth it.

He looked up into the sky. The steam made it difficult to see anything, but there was motion overhead: Faint shadows glided over the clouds.

Kelly's Banshee appeared alongside his, and their canards bumped.

The shadows overhead sharpened; three Covenant cruisers broke through the clouds anddrifted toward the generator com.plex. Their plasma artillery flickered and glowed withenergy.

Fred snapped open his COM channel and boosted the signal strength to its maximum."Delta Team: Fall back. Fall back now!"Static hissed over the channel, and several voices overlapped. He heard one of hisSpartans—he couldn't tell who—break through the static.

"Reactor complex seven has been compromised. We're falling back. Might be able to savenumber three." There was a pause as the speaker shouted orders to someone else: "Setoff those charges now!"Fred switched to FLEETCOM and broadcast: "Be advised, Pillar of Autumn, groundsidereactors are being taken. Orbital guns at risk. Nothing we can do. Too many. We'll have touse the nukes. Be advised, orbital MAC  guns will most likely be neu.tralized. Pillar ofAutumn, do you read? Acknowledge."More voices crowded the channel, and Fred thought he heard Admiral Whitcomb's voice,but whatever orders he issued were32 HALO: FIRST STRIKEincomprehensible. Then there was only static, and then the COM went dead.

The cruisers fired salvos of plasma that burned the sky. Dis.tant explosions thumped,and Fred strained to see if there was any return fire—any sign that his Spartans were fighting or re.treating. Their only hope was  movement; the enemy firepower wouldshred a fixed position.

"Fall back," he hissed. "Now, damn it."Kelly tapped him on the shoulder and pointed up.

The clouds parted like a curtain drawn as a fireball a hundred meters across roared over their position. He saw the faint out.lines of dozens of Covenant battleships in low orbit.

"Plasma bombardment," Fred whispered.

He'd seen this before. They all had. When the Covenant con.quered a human world they fired their main plasma batteries at the planet—fired until its oceans boiled and nothingwas left but a globe of broken glass.

"That's it," Kelly murmured. "We've lost. Reach is going to fall."Fred watched as the plasma impacted upon the horizon and the sky turned white, then faded to black as millions of tons of ash and debris blotted out the sun.

"Maybe," Fred said. He gunned his Banshee. "Maybe not. Come on, we're not done yet."