TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALYEstimated 0640 hours, September 23,2552 (MilitaryCalendar)Epsilon Eridani system, tunnel complex below surface of Reach.

John tensed as he watched the thousands of Covenant crowd.ing on the galleriessurround him and his team. He didn't dare move; his team was on the wrong end of toomuch firepower. They couldn't win this fight.

On the third gallery off the floor of the great room, at the four o'clock position, a Hunterpair roared with anger. They raised their fuel rod cannons and then leveled theirweapons—and fired.

Kelly moved before anyone; she was a blur of motion and stepped in front of Dr. Halsey.John and Fred moved to either side of Kelly, while Anton grabbed the Admiral and threwthe older man behind them.

The blinding white-hot plasma charges struck the Spartans' shields and splashed over their chests.

John's shield drained completely. The overpressure forced him to take a step backward,and the skin on his forearms blistered.

Then the heat was gone, and he blinked away the black dots that swarmed in his vision. Kelly lay at his feet. Her armor smol.dered and hydrostatic gel boiled from theemergency release vent along her left side.

A thousand more shots rang out from the gallery, and John in.stinctively crouched tocover his fallen comrade. He braced for the inevitable burning energy impact.

Plasma bolts and crystalline needles crisscrossed the galleriesERIC NYLUND201overhead, a spiderweb of energy and projectiles. Every shot was directed at the pair ofHunters who had fired upon John and his team.

The Hunter pair raised their shields in unison and ducked be.hind them—the quarter-meter-thick slabs of metal could repel almost any single weapon's fire ... but not thismerciless bar.rage. These mightiest Covenant  soldiers burned, their armor and shieldsignited as well, and John caught their outlines for only a split second before they were vaporized.

The section of gallery where they had stood blasted into dust and smoke, and the debrisrained onto the floor ... along with dozens of Grunts and Jackals who had been unfortunate enough to be standing too near the  pair.

Three heartbeats pounded in John's chest. Neither the humans nor the Covenant hosts inthe great room moved.

"What the hell is this?" Sergeant Johnson muttered. "Shouldn't we be dead by now?"John linked to Kelly's biomonitors; she was in shock, and her suit's heat pumps were strained to the failure point. He had to get her to safety.

From the uppermost gallery a Covenant Elite in golden armor raised its energy swordhigh into the air and shouted. Translation software in John's helmet whispered half asecond later: "Take them—but the next one to fire  at the holy light will be skinned alive!

Go!"Dr. Halsey pressed the arm of her glasses tighter against the back of her ear, listening asthe built-in translator whispered. "The crystal," she murmured. "They're after thecrystal."Teams of Elites dropped slithering, plasticine ropes, which glowed a ghostly blue. Theyrappelled to the floor. A hundred Grunts squealed with excitement and danced from onefoot to the other. Jackals followed their Elite  leaders on the ropes.

"Polaski!" Admiral Whitcomb shouted into his COM. "Get down here ASAP! We needimmediate extraction!""Roger that," Polaski replied in her cool never-flinch Navy flier voice.

Fred, Grace, and Anton turned and fired three-round bursts straight up as a team of Elitestried to descend on their position. The Elites fell, spattering purple blood across the tiledfloor.

202HALO: FIRST STRIKEDr. Halsey stuffed the alien crystal into her lab coat pocket and knelt next to Kelly. Shechecked her vitals on the data pad and shook her head. She looked at John, her expressiongrim. "She's alive ... barely. She needs  help.""Let's not be rude," Admiral Whitcomb barked. "Welcome our guests, Master Chief!""Perimeter fire," the Master Chief ordered. "Keep it tight. Dispersion pattern Delta. Go!"The Spartans simultaneously step ed into a semicircle, as.sault rifles pointed outward.In unison they thumbed their weappp.ons' safeties and opened fire. Right behind themLocklear, Johnson, Haverson, and the Admiral took up position inside the circle. Theyprimed and threw grenades.

John paused and turned his attention to Kelly. He hauled her limp body off the floor anddraped her over his shoulder.

The Covenant forces hit the ground and edged closer, but they didn't return fire. Dozensof Elites dropped as armor-piercing rounds peppered their armor and frag grenadesdetonated with thunderous force. The Jackals  who followed their masters on the ropeslanded in the middle of the carnage, maneuvered in front of the Elites, and overlappedenergy shields. It was typical Elite bravado—they had to be the first into the battle ... evenif  that meant they'd die for that honor.

The Chief had no problem satisfying their honor. He slapped a fresh clip into his rifle andcontinued firing.

Jackals and Elites cautiously advanced on the firing Spartans. A second line of Jackalsangled their personal energy shields over their heads to prevent any grenades from being tossed into their midst.

Polaski's dropship descended from the hole in the ceiling, spun about, and eased to a stopa meter above the cracked blue-tiled floor. Both side hatches of the craft hissed open.

John handed Kelly to Fred as he leapt on board; he helped Dr. Halsey and the Admiralinside next. Locklear and the other Spartans jumped into the second hatch. SergeantJohnson and the Master Chief were last to board—just as their feet touched the ramp andthey grabbed on to the rungs, Polaski accelerated off the deck.

The Master Chief watched the Covenant as the dropshipERIC NYLUND 203climbed. There were thousands of them—on the floor, clinging to the walls, overflowingthe galleries. They looked like a swarm of angry ants.

The hatch sealed and the Master Chief moved forward, toward the cockpit. As he passedthrough the compartment, he saw Kelly. She was slumped over; thin trails of smokecurled from the holes in her armor.

He helped Dr. Halsey strap Kelly down. Halsey's eyes locked onto the wounded Spartan'serratic vitals as they squiggled across her data pad. She set the elongated crystal next toKelly... but it didn't lie flat. It defied gravity, floating—one sharp, slender end pointed atthe surface.

"How very odd," Halsey whispered.

John had to agree; it was unusual. Almost as odd as being un.der the guns of a thousandangry Covenant soldiers—yet none of them had fired a shot.

"Take care of her," he told Dr. Halsey, then he stood and made his way to the cockpit.

Polaski hunched over the controls. She pushed the Covenant dropship into a hyperbolicascent and entered the hole in the ceiling of the great room. The Master Chief grabbedhold of the walls and braced himself.

The dropship, however, slowed and pitched forward so it was once again horizontal.

"Problem," Polaski announced and rapidly tapped the controls. "Big problem."The purple light of the grav beam in the hole darkened; it seemed to fade from view... butit also began to hurt to look at.

"They're pushing us back," Admiral Whitcomb said. "Li, crawl topside and launch a couple"Yes, sir," Li replied—eager to return to the fight. He nodded at John, grabbed aof Jackhammers up this pipeht.

t"Jackhammer rocket launcher, and moved to the hatch.

The Admiral frowned and shook his head. "No way a rocket will make it up a kilometer ofthis tunnel. Gotta try anyway."The dropship stopped rising, bobbed in place a moment, and slowly sank back down through the tunnel.

Li opened the side hatch. The intense purple light from the grav beam flooded the interior of the ship.

204HALO: FIRST STRIKEDr. Halsey inhaled sharply, and the Master Chief turned to see what had startled her.

For a moment he thought the crystal she had brought with her had shattered. But ithadn't broken, not exactly. The top half of the slender shard had split along its facets and opened like a flower blossom. The sapphire  petals undulated, and as the ultraviolet lightof the grav beam fell upon them, the crystal opened wider. The facets twirled and spun ina complex geo.metric dance. The crystal seemed to reshape itself, and it pulsed a  coolgreen.

The light inside the ship cleared—all traces of the purple tint seemed to recede like a tide.

The dropship lurched upward.

"What the hell—" Polaski, caught unawares, grasped the yoke and pulled back. Theirdropship hummed with power and shot up through the tunnel.

"Gravity," Dr. Halsey whispered and stared into the opened facets of the crystal. "Thisthing warped space when we first ap.proached. It apparently has an effect on artificialgravity fields as well. I can't wait to get this into  a lab."The dropship emerged from the hole, and sunlight flooded the interior.

Once out of the grav beam, the slender stone folded back upon itself, closing petal-likefragments, melding back into a single smooth shard. Dr. Halsey plucked up the stone and slipped it back into her lab coat pocket;  she returned her attention to Kelly's biosigns.

The air over Menachite Mountain was thick with circling flocks of Banshee fliers andSeraph fighters. The three-hundred-meter-long light cruiser had company, too. Six more Covenant cruisers faced their tiny dropship,  plasma turrets tracking them.

A series of icons flashed on Polaski's console. "They've got weapons lock," she said, thecalm in her voice cracking slightly around the edges.

"They won't fire," Admiral Whitcomb declared. There was steel resolution in his words—as if this weren't a guess on his part, but rather an order that the Covenant had better follow. He set his hands on his hips and watched the ships, seeming to stare the cruisers down. "They want whatever the doctor  and her teamERIC NYLUND205discovered ... and they want it bad enough to let us shoot at them and not so much as spitin our direction.""Sir," the Master Chief said. "We're to rendezvous with Cor-tana and the captured flagshipat oh-seven-fifteen hours. That gives us only twenty minutes, sir."Admiral Whitcomb consulted his watch and then glanced at the Covenant ships gatheringaround them and edging closer. "Polaski, get us out of here. Plot a course to your rendezvous point—and make this crate fly as  fast as you can!""Aye aye, sir." Polaski angled the ship into the upper atmo.sphere of Reach; the skydarkened from turquoise to slate gray to midnight blue and then inky black, filled withstars.

As their dropship left the cruisers behind, it moved painfully slow compared to the agileSeraph fighters. They formed up around her, four to the port and four on the starboard oftheir craft. A pair of the teardrop-shaped  singleships pulled ahead of her, slowed... and blocked their path.

"They're boxing us in," Polaski said and decelerated their ship.

"Warrant Officer," the Admiral said and set a hand gently on her shoulder. "Ram them.Full speed."Polaski swallowed. "Aye, sir." One of her hands cinched her crash harness tight. The other hand passed over the velocity stripe on the control panel, and shoved it to full power.

The dropship jumped—straight toward the Seraph fighters in their path. The two fighters tumbled aside with a scant three me.ters to spare, and the dropship raced past them.

Locklear peered out of the port display and whistled. "Does anyone else," he whispered,"think it's a little crowded up here?"The Master Chief looked over Locklear's shoulder. There had been a dozen smallwarships when they had descended only a few hours ago... now there were three timesthat number in or.bit around Reach.d Reach.

There were light cruisers that looked like luminous manta rays; there were four carriers with their bulbous sections, and the space near them was aglow with swarms of Seraphsinglecraft; there were a handful of  destroyers, sleek and fast, bristling with plasma turrets.

There was also wreckage: Pieces of Covenant ships tumbled in orbit, raw ragged chunks of the alloy plating, tangles of plasma206HALO: FIRST STRIKEconduits still aglow from the heat they carried, and clouds of metal that had been vaporized and had cooled into mists of glit.tering dust.

"Cortana's been busy in our absence," Lieutenant Haverson remarked. He noddedapprovingly at the carnage.

The Master Chief detected flickers of light and dark from the launch bays of a Covenantcarrier. He activated his visor's mag.nification and saw a legion of Elites in thruster packs, and a score of the tentacled engineering  drones leaving the bay.

"Singleships, drones, and Elit............