0744 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)Epsilon Eridani system, Longhorn Valley, planet Reach. Five days ago.

Steamy clouds parted like a drawn curtain; a fireball one hun.dred meters across roaredover Fred and Kelly's position. Fred traced the line of flames back through the sky andspotted the faint outlines of dozens of  Covenant warships in low orbit.

Fred's Banshee skimmed over the treetops, down the mountain.side. He pushed the craftto its maximum speed. Kelly followed, and they swooped into a valley and up onto thezigzagging ridge-line where Joshua had first  spotted the Covenant invasion force.

He put aside thoughts of his fallen comrade. He had to focus on keeping his remaining team members alive.

Fred called up the mapping system on his heads-up display. A blue NAV marker, nestledin the crux of topological lines, identi.fied their fallback position: ONI Section Three'ssecure-and-secret research facility buried under  Menachite Mountain. Two decades ago ithad been a titanium mine, and then the abandoned tunnels were used as storage untilSection Three had taken over the mountain for their own purposes.

"We'll need to find a safe route through—"A hail of purple-white crystalline shards hissed through the air, arcing up from the forestbeneath them. Each shard looked like the projectile fired by a Covenant needier—but far larger. The shard that slashed past Fred's  cockpit was the size of his forearm.

Kelly dodged one projectile, which exploded in midair. Needle-like fragments bouncedfrom the Banshee's fuselage.

ERIC NYLUND 109One tiny secondary fragment impaled Fred's Banshee and detonated. The port canard ofhis flier deformed from the explo.sion, and the craft wobbled.

"Down!" he shouted, but Kelly was already a dozen meters below him and plummeting toa distant dry riverbed. He fol.lowed, trailing smoke.

Fred confirmed his position and guided his wounded Banshee onto a course that followedthe flash-dried riverbed below. The path wound through the forest, and sinewed close toMenachite Mountain. With luck, they  could ditch the Banshees and make a short run to  the ONI facility.

Overhead, tangerine borealis pulsed from the north. Sheets of silver crackled across thesky, and the black clouds boiled, lit by the raging fires beneath them. They piled into thunderheads and spat lightning.

The massive warships that had been overhead moments ago ac.celerated back into theupper atmosphere. Their engines screamed and left blistering wakes across the swollen sky.

For a split second panic seized Fred's throat. Then his training kicked in and his mindturned cold and metallic, and filtered through every fact he had on Covenant plasma bombardments. He had to think or die.

So he thought.

Something didn't fit. Covenant plasma bombardment had al.ways proceeded in an orderly crisscrossing pattern across a planet until every square centimeter of the surface was glass and cinder. The ships above hadn't  finished their work here.

He risked a glance to the left and right. One hundred thousand hectares of forest—thesame forest that Fred and his fellow Spartans had trained in since childhood—was beingdevoured by walls of flame. Coils of heat and  thick black smoke spiraled into the sky.

A wave passed over Fred and Kelly—he couldn't see it, but he felt it: A thousand ants hadgotten into his armor and bitten him. Static fuzzed his display, and then vanished withapop. His shields dropped to zero and then  slowly started to recharge. The grav pods on their fliers flickered and sputtered.

"EMP," Kelly shouted over the COM. "Or some plasma effect."110HALO: FIRST STRIKE"Hard landing," Fred ordered.

Kelly made an unhappy sound over the COM and snapped it off.

They plummeted out of the sky, gliding with what little aero.dynamics and power remained in their Banshees. Fred nosed his craft over the steaming rocks of the dry riverbed. He picked a path between boulders and  jagged granite fangs, pointed toward aribbon of gravel.

There was just one problem: A pair of these rocks were slightly darker than the others . ..and they moved.

The creatures were huge and heavily armored and moved with slow, deliberate precision. Each held a massive metal plate like a shield. Fred hit the COM and yelled, "Heads up!Covenant Hunters dead ahead!" There was  no time to evade the new threat. The nearestHunter wheeled to face them, and the array of sen.sory pins along its back flared,anemone-like. The hulking crea.ture raised its main weapon—a powerful fuel rod gun,mounted on its arm—at Fred. The barrel pulsed green.

The Hunter fired.

Fred killed the power, and his Banshee dropped ten meters. There was a flash as the orbof destructive energy split the air where his flier had been a second before.

The Banshee hit the ground, skidding through fist-sized rocks. The battered craft flippedand tossed him to the ground. The Banshee rolled end over end and crashed into theHunter.

The massive alien brought up its thick, metal shield and shrugged off the wreckage as if itwere cardboard. The fuel rod gun began to charge again.

Fred winced and rolled to his feet, ignoring the new pain the crash landing had caused. Heneeded a weapon. Pain would have to wait.

The Hunter lumbered toward him, then dropped into a crouch and charged ahead atterrifying speed.

There was a crackle of static on his COM frequency, and Fred heard one word: "Duck!"He threw himself onto the ground and rolled to the side.

Kelly's riderless flier soared over him and collided with the Hunter at full speed. TheBanshee exploded and showered the area with glittering metal fragments.

ERIC NYLUND111The Hunter reeled as fire washed across its armor. It moved in slow, confused circles.

Fred could see the bright orange smears of the Hunter's blood staining the rocks.

Kelly landed on her feet next to Fred. She readied a captured plasma grenade and hurledit straight toward the second Hunter's huge gun.

It lodged in the barrel of the weapon and detonated. Tendrils of energy covered theHunter. The gun crackled and belched smoke.

Fred got to his feet. "Run!"They weren't going to engage a Hunter in hand-to-hand com.bat. They might lose—theymight win, but in the meantime the rest of the Covenant ground forces would catch up tothem.

They sprinted toward a tiny patch of forest ahead, perhaps the last trees standing onReach. The Hunter, confused with its de.stroyed weapon—and its flame-wreathedpartner—hesitated, not sure what to do.

"Didn't you see while we were airborne?" Kelly said, concern tightening her voice.

"There's about half the entire Covenant as.sault force just ahead.""Ground troops?" Fred said, boosting his speed to a full sprint. "How far?""Haifa klick."That didn't make sense, either. Why have forces groundside when you were destroyingthe planet from orbit? "Something's not right," he told her. "Let's see what they're up to."Kelly's acknowledgment light winked red.

"They're between us and the fallback point," Fred told her. "We have to."They entered the stand of trees, paused, and looked back. The Hunter shambled afterthem, but it was a futile pursuit. Despite their occasional bursts of speed, the Hunterswere too slow.

They were caught between Covenant forces on the ground and those in the air, andneither Fred nor Kelly voiced the one question foremost on their minds: Was there even afallback po.sition left? Or had the Covenant between them and the rest of their teamfound and destroyed them?

The COM crackled."—is Gamma Team, Alpha. Come in."Fred replied, "Gamma, this is Alpha. Go ahead."112HALO: FIRST STRIKEThere was a roar of static. "Whitcomb ... too many. Got— you read?""Gamma," Fred shouted. "The fallback is hot. Repeat hot! Acknowledge."There was only static.

"I hope they heard," he told Kelly.

"Red-21 can take care of his team. Don't worry." She crept forward and waved him tofollow. "Take a look at this."Fred glanced over his shoulder. No Hunter, and nothing on his motion detector. Hefollowed Kelly, and parted a wall of black.berry brambles. Parked in a clearing wereCovenant vehicles, lined in three rows of four: mortar tanks. The tanks had two widelateral fins, beneath which were armored antigrav  pods. They were extremely stable andfired the Covenant's most powerful ground weapon: the energy mortar. Fred had seenthem in ac.tion; they fired an encapsulated blob of plasma that obliterated everythingwithin  twenty meters of impact. Titanium battle plate, concrete, or flesh—it all vaporized.

Marines called these tanks "Wraiths" because you usually got one look at them beforethey made you one.

There were a handful of Grunts milling about the tanks, as well as dozens of the floatingCovenant Engineers. The Engi.neers swarmed over and under the machinery. Mostinteresting to Fred, the vehicles' hatches were  open.

"I can't think of a better disguise," Kelly whispered, "than five tons of Covenant armor." She started forward.

Fred set his hand on her arm, holding her back. "Wait. Think it through. There are twopossibilities. First, if the Covenant have found the fallback position, we go in guns blazingand carve a path for Delta Team to get out."She nodded. "The other possibility?""They don't know that Delta Team is holed up under the mountain. Then—" Fredhesitated. "Then we have to draw them away."Kelly considered this, then said, "I was afraid you were going to say that." She gave thedirt a tiny kick. "But you're right."A blip appeared on their motion trackers, directly on their six. The contact was large andmoving steadily toward them. TheERIC NYLUNO 113Hunter must have made up its mind—come to find them and stomp them into the ground.

"Move," Fred whispered.

The crossed the field, quickly and silently, and the Grunts never saw them. Fred andKellyyy reached the smooth-surfaced Wraith tanks. He gave Kelly a go signal, and shesprang into the nearest open hatch. A moment later Fred inched ahead to the next tankand eased inside.

He sealed the hatch behind him.

This was one of the most desperate and stupid decisions he had ever made. How werethey going to take on an entire Cove.nant invasion force with a pair of tanks—especially tanks they hadn't a clue how to operate?

"Red-One," Kelly said over the COM. "Ready when you are."Fred examined the dim interior. Directly ahead was a seat, constructed with the same mottled purple metal as the Banshees. Fred settled his bulk onto it. It was too high; hehad to stand in a half crouch. Holographic  control surfaces and displays sprang into theair before him and showed a 360-degree view.

Through the armored shell he felt the rumble and roar of Kelly's tank starting.

Fred didn't understand any of the symbols, yet something seemed familiar about them.Some of the controls were similar to the Banshee, but nothing was an exact match. He relaxed as best he could given the situation,  and his hands drifted over the controls. He tapped a symbol that could have been Aztec iconog.raphy, a tangle of spaghetti, or a crisscross of bird tracks.

His tank coughed and rumbled and rose a meter off the ground.

Fred frowned. He'd been damned lucky to get it right the first time. That was more than luck—-just as it was more than luck that he knew that the controls under his left handmoved the tank, the ones under his right  aligned the mortar on target, and the one in thecenter armed and fired the main battery. But Fred ............