William C. Dietz - Halo 1 - The Flood

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THE
FLOOD
WILLIAM C. DIETZ
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
For Marjorie, with love and gratitude.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks go to Steve Saffel for charting the course, to Doug Zartman for coordinating the pieces, to Eric
S. Trautmann for polishing ’til it sparkled, to Eric Nylund who led the way inThe Fall of Reach , to
Nancy Figatner and the Franchise Development Group for their support, and to Jason Jones, who, along
with the rest of the outstanding Bungie team, created one helluva pulse-pounding game.
PROLOGUE
0103 Hours, September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
UNSC CruiserPillar of Autumn, location unknown.
Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom roused him from fitful sleep. He rubbed his
blurry eyes and glanced at the Mission Clock bolted to the wall above his bunk. He’d been asleep for
three hours—his first sleep cycle in thirty-six hours, damn it. Worse, this was the first time since the ship
had jumped that he’d been able to fall asleepat all .
“Jesus,” he muttered, “this better be good.”
The Old Man had put the tech crews on triple shifts after thePillar of Autumn jumped away from
Reach. The ship was a mess after the battle, and what was left of the engineering crews worked around
the clock to keep the aging cruiser in one piece. Nearly one third of the tech staff had died during the
flight from Reach, and every department was running a skeleton crew.
Everyone else went into the freezer, of course—nonessential personnel always got an ice-nap during a
Slipspace jump. In over two hundred combat cruises, Marcus had clocked fewer than seventy-two hours
in cryostorage. Right now, though, he was so tired that even the discomfort of cryorevival sounded
appealing if it meant that he could manage some uninterrupted sleep.
Of course, it was difficult to complain; Captain Keyes was a brilliant tactician—and everyone aboard the
Autumn knew just how close they’d come to destruction when Reach fell to the enemy. A major naval
base destroyed, millions dead or dying as the Covenant burned the planet to a cinder—and one of
Earth’s few remaining defenses transformed into corpses and molten slag.
All in all, they’d been damned lucky to get away—but Sam couldn’t help but feel that everyone on the
Autumn was living on borrowed time.
The intercom buzzed again, and Sam swung himself out of the bunk. He jabbed at the comm control.
“Marcus here,” he growled.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Sam, but I need you down in Cryo Two.” Tech Chief Shephard sounded
exhausted. “It’s important.”
“Cryo Two?” Sam repeated, puzzled. “What’s the emergency, Thom? I’m not a cryo specialist.”
“I can’t give you specifics, Sam. The Captain wants it kept off the comm,” Shephard replied, his voice
almost a whisper. “Just in case we have eavesdroppers.”
Sam winced at the tone in his superior’s voice. He’d known Thom Shephard since the Academy and had
never heard the man sound so grim.
“Look,” Shephard said, “I need someone I can depend on. Like it or not, that’s you, pal. You’ve
cross-checked on cryo systems.”
Sam sighed. “Months ago . . . but yes.”
“I’m sending a feed to your terminal, Sam,” Shephard continued. “It’ll answer some of your questions
anyway. Dump it to a portable ’pad, grab your gear and get down here.”
“Roger,” Sam said. He stood, shrugged into his uniform tunic, and stepped over to his terminal. He
activated the computer and waited for the upload from Shephard.
As he waited, his eyes locked on a small two-dee photograph taped to the edge of the screen. Sam
brushed his fingers against the photo. The pretty young woman frozen in the picture smiled back at him.
The terminal chimed as the feed from Shephard appeared in Sam’s message queue. “Receiving the feed,
Chief,” he called out to the intercom pickup.
He opened the file. A frown creased his tired features as a new message scrolled across his screen.
>FILE ENCRYPTED/EYES ONLY/MARCUS, SAMUEL N./SN:18827318209-M.
>DECRYPTION KEY: [PERSONALIZED: “ELLEN’S ANNIVERSARY”]
He glanced back at the picture of his wife. He hadn’t seen Ellen in almost three years—since his last
shore leave on Earth, in fact. He didn’t know anyone on active duty who’d been able to see their loved
ones for years. The war simply didn’t allow for it.
Sam’s frown deepened. UNSC personnel generally avoided talking about the people back home. The
war had been going badly for so long that morale was rock-bottom. Thinking about the home front only
made things worse. The fact that Thom had personalized the security encoding was unusual enough;
reminding Sam of his wife in the process was completely out of character for Chief Shephard. Someone
was being security-conscious to the point of paranoia.
He punched in a series of numbers—the date of his wedding—and enabled the decryption suite. In
seconds, the screen filled with schematics and tech readouts. His practiced eye scanned the file—and
adrenaline suddenly spiked through his fatigue like a bolt of lightning.
“Christ,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Thom, is this what . . . who Ithink it is?”
“Damn right. Get down to Cryo Two on the double, Sam. We’ve got an important package to thaw
out—and we drop back into real space soon.”
“On my way,” he said. He killed the intercom connection, his exhaustion forgotten.
Sam quickly dumped the tech file to his portable compad and deleted the original from his computer. He
strode toward the door to his cabin, then stopped. He snatched Ellen’s picture from the
workstation—almost as an afterthought—and shoved it into his pocket.
He sprinted for the lift. If the Captain wanted the inhabitant of Cryo Two revived, it meant that Keyes
believed that the situation was about to go from bad to worse . . . or it already had.
Unlike vessels designed by humans—in which the command area was almost always located toward the
ship’s bow—Covenant ships were constructed in a more logical fashion, which meant that their control
rooms were buried deep within heavily armored hulls, making them impervious to anything less than a
mortal blow.
The differences did not end there. Rather than surround themselves with all manner of control interfaces,
plus the lesser beings required to staff them, the Elites preferred to command from the center of an
ascetically barren platform held in place by a latticework of opposing gravity beams.
However, none of these things were at the forefront of Ship Master Orna ’Fulsamee’s mind as he stood
at the center of his destroyer’s control room and stared at the data projections which appeared to float in
front of him. One showed the ring world, Halo. Near that, a tiny arrow tracked the interloper’s course.
The second projection displayed a schematic titledHUMAN ATTACK SHIP, TYPE C -11. A third scrolled a
constant flow of targeting data and sensor readouts.
He fought a moment of revulsion. That these filthy primates somehow merited an actual name—let alone
names for their inferior constructs—galled him to his core. It was perverse. Names implied legitimacy,
and the vermin deserved only extermination.
The humans had “names” for his own kind—“Elites”—as well as the lesser races of the Covenant:
“Jackals,” “Grunts,” “Hunters.” The appalling temerity of the filthy creatures, that they would darename
his people with their harsh, barbaric tongue, was beyond the pale.
He paused, and regained his composure. ’Fulsamee clicked his lower mandibles—the equivalent of a
shrug—and mentally recited one of the True Sayings.Such is the Prophets’ decree, he thought. One
didn’t question such things, even when one was a Ship Master. The Prophets had assigned names to the
enemy craft, and he would honor their decrees. Any less was a disgraceful dereliction of duty.
Like all of his kind, the Covenant officer appeared to be larger than he actually was, due to the armor
that he wore. It gave him an angular, somewhat hunched appearance which, when combined with a
heavy, pugnacious jaw, caused him to look like what he was: a very dangerous warrior. His voice was
calm and well modulated as he assessed the situation. “They must have followed one of our ships. The
culprit will be found and put to death at once, Exalted.”
The being who floated next to ’Fulsamee bobbed slightly as a gust of air nudged his heavily swathed
body. He wore a tall, ornate headpiece made of metal and set with amber panels. The Prophet had a
serpentine neck, a triangular skull, and two bright green eyes which glittered with malevolent intelligence.
He wore a red overrobe, a gold underrobe, and somewhere, hidden beneath all the fabric, an antigrav
belt which served to keep his body suspended one full unit off the deck. Though only a Minor Prophet,
he still outranked ’Fulsamee, as his bearing made clear.
True Sayings aside, the Ship Master couldn’t help but be reminded of the tiny, squealing rodents he had
hunted in his childhood. He immediately banished the memory of blood on his claws and returned his
attention to the Prophet, and his tiresome assistant.
The assistant, a lower-rank Elite named Bako ’Ikaporamee, stepped forward to speak on the Prophet’s
behalf. He had an annoying tendency to use the royal “we,” a habit that angered ’Fulsamee.
“That is very unlikely, Ship Master. We doubt the humans have the means to follow one of our vessels
through a jump. Even if they do, why would they send only a single cruiser? Is it not their way to drown
us in their own blood? No, we think it’s safe to surmise that this ship arrived in the system by accident.”
The words dripped with condescension, a fact which made the Ship Master angry, but couldn’t be
addressed. Not directly, and certainly not with the Prophet present, although ’Fulsamee wasn’t willing to
cave in completely. “So,” ’Fulsamee said, careful to direct his comment to ’Ikaporamee alone, “you
would have me believe that the interlopers arrived here entirely bychance ?”
“No, of course not,” ’Ikaporamee replied loftily. “Though primitive by our standards, the creaturesare
sentient, and like all sentient beings, they are unconsciously drawn to the glory of the ancients’ truth and
knowledge.”
Like all the members of his caste, ’Fulsamee knew that the Prophets had evolved on a planet which the
mysterious truth-givers had previously inhabited, and then, for reasons known only to the ancients
themselves, subsequently abandoned. This ring world was an excellent example of the ancients’ power . .
. and inscrutability.
’Fulsamee found it hard to believe that mere humans would be drawn here, the ancients’ wisdom
notwithstanding, but ’Ikaporamee spoke for the Prophet, so it must be true. ’Fulsamee touched the light
panel in front of him. A symbol glowed red. “Prepare to fire plasma torpedoes. Launch on my
command.”
’Ikaporamee raised both hands in alarm. “No!We forbid it. The human vessel is much too close to the
construct! What if your weapons were to damage the holy relic? Pursue the ship, board it, and seize
control. Anything else is far too dangerous.”
Angered by what he saw as ’Ikaporamee’s interference, ’Fulsamee spoke through gritted teeth. “The
course of action that the holy one recommends is likely to result in a high number of casualties. Is this
acceptable?”
“The opportunity to transcend the physical is a gift to be sought after,” the other responded. “The humans
are willing to spendtheir lives—can we do less?”
No,’Fulsamee thought,but we should aspire to more. He again clicked his lower mandibles, and
touched the light panel. “Cancel the previous order. Load four transports with troops, and launch another
flight of fighters. Neutralize the interloper’s weaponry before the boarding craft reach their target.”
A hundred units aft, sealed within the destroyer’s fire control center, a half-commander acknowledged
the order and issued instructions of his own. Lights began to strobe, the decks transmitted a low
frequency vibration, and more than three hundred battle-ready Covenant warriors—a mix of what the
humans called Elites, Jackals, and Grunts—rushed to board their assigned transports. There were
humans to kill.
None of them wanted to miss the fun.
SECTION I
PILLAR OF AUTUMN
CHAPTER ONE
0127 Hours (Ship’s Time), September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) / UNSC CruiserPillar of
Autumn , location unknown.
ThePillar of Autumn shuddered as her Titanium-A armor took a direct hit.
Just another item in the Covenant’s bottomless arsenal,Captain Jacob Keyes thought.Not a plasma
torpedo, or we’d already be free-floating molecules.
The warship had taken a beating from Covenant forces off Reach and it was a miracle that the hull
remained intact and even more remarkable that they’d been able to make a jump into Slipspace at all.
“Status!” Keyes barked. “What just hit us?”
“Covenant fighter, sir. Seraph-class,” the tactical officer, Lieutenant Hikowa, replied. Her porcelain
features darkened. “Tricky bastard must have powered down and slipped past our sentry ships.”
A humorless grin tugged at Keyes’ mouth. Hikowa was a first-rate tactical officer, utterly ruthless in a
fight. She seemed to take the Covenant fighter pilot’s actions as a personal insult. “Teach him a lesson,
Lieutenant,” he said.
She nodded and tapped a series of orders into her panel—new orders for theAutumn ’s fighter
squadron.
A moment later, there was radio chatter as one of theAutumn ’s C709 Longsword fighters went after the
Seraph, followed by a cheer as the tiny alien ship transformed into a momentary sun, complete with its
own system of co-orbiting debris.
Keyes wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. He checked his display—they’d reverted back into
real space twenty minutes ago.Twenty minutes , and the Covenant picket patrols had already found
them and started shooting.
He turned to the bridge’s main viewport, a large transparent bubble slung beneath theAutumn ’s bow
superstructure. A massive purple gas giant—Threshold—dominated the spectacular view. One of the
Longsword fighters glided past as it continued its patrol.
When Keyes had been given command of thePillar of Autumn , he’d been skeptical of the large,
domed viewport. “The Covenant are tough enough,” he had argued to Admiral Stanforth. “Why give
them an easy shot into my bridge?”
He’d lost the argument—captains don’t win debates with admirals, and in any case there simply hadn’t
been time to armor the viewport. He had to admit, though, the view was almost worth the risk. Almost.
He absently toyed with the pipe he habitually carried, lost in thought. It ran completely counter to his
nature to slink around in the shadow of a gas giant. He respected the Covenant as a dangerous, deadly
enemy, and hated them for their savage butchery of human colonists and fellow soldiers alike. He had
never feared them, however. Soldiers didn’t hide from the enemy—they met the enemy head-on.
He moved back to the command station and activated his navigation suite. He plotted a course deeper
in-system, and fed the data to Ensign Lovell, the navigator.
“Captain,” Hikowa piped up. “Sensors paint a squadron of enemy fighters inbound. Looks like boarding
craft are right behind them.”
“It was just a matter of time, Lieutenant.” He sighed. “We can’t hide here forever.”
ThePillar seemed to glide out of the shadow cast by the gas giant, and into bright sunlight.
Keyes’ eyes widened with surprise as the ship cleared the gas giant. He had expected to see a Covenant
cruiser, Seraph fighters, or some other military threat.
He hadn’t expected to see the massive object floating in a Lagrange point between Threshold and its
moon, Basis.
The construct was enormous—a ring-shaped object that shimmered and glowed with reflected starlight,
like a jewel lit from within.
The outer surface was metallic and seemed to be engraved with deep geometric patterns. “Cortana,”
Captain Keyes said. “Whatis that?”
A foot-high hologram faded into view above a small holopad near the captain’s station. Cortana—the
ship’s powerful artificial intelligence—frowned as she activated the ship’s long-range detection gear.
Long lines of digits scrolled across the sensor displays and rippled the length of Cortana’s “body” as
well.
“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana announced, “and twenty-two point three
kilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant
materials, sir.”
Keyes nodded. The preliminary finding was interesting,very interesting, since Covenant ships had already
been present when theAutumn dropped out of Slipspace and right into their laps. When he first saw the
ring, Keyes had a sinking feeling that the construct was a large Covenant installation—one far beyond the
scope of human engineering. The thought that the construct might also be beyondCovenant engineering
held some small comfort.
It also made him nervous.
Under intense pressure from enemy warships in the Epsilon Eridani system—the location of the UNSC’s
last major naval base, Reach—Cortana had been forced to launch the ship toward a random set of
coordinates, a standard procedure to lead the Covenant forces away from Earth.
Now it appeared that the men and women aboard thePillar of Autumn had succeeded in leaving their
original pursuers behind, only to encounter even more Covenant forceshere . . . wherever “here” was.
Cortana aimed a long-range camera array at the ring and a close-up snapped into focus. Keyes let out a
long, slow whistle. The construct’s inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and browns—trackless
desert, jungles, glaciers, and oceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows on the terrain below.
The ring rotated and brought a new feature into view: a tremendous hurricane forming over a large body
of water.
Equations again scrolled across the AI’s semitransparent body as she continued to evaluate the incoming
data. “Captain,” Cortana said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that controls the
ring’s spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, but it
appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and Earth-normal gravity.”
Keyes raised an eyebrow. “If it’s artificial, who the hell built it, and what in God’s name is it?”
Cortana processed the question for a full three seconds. “I don’t know, sir.”
Regulations be damned,Keyes thought. He took out his pipe, used an old-fashioned match to light it,
and produced a puff of fragrant smoke. The ring world shimmered on the status monitors. “Then we’d
better find out.”
Sam Marcus rubbed his aching neck with hands that trembled with fatigue. The rush of adrenaline that
had flooded him when he’d received Tech Chief Shephard’s instructions had worn off. Now he just felt
tired, strung out, and more than a little afraid.
He shook his head to clear it and surveyed the small observation theater. Each cryostorage bay was
equipped with such a station, a central monitoring facility for the hundreds of cryotubes the storage bays
held. By shipboard standards, the Cryo Two Observation Theater was large, but the proliferation of
life-sign monitors, diagnostic gauges, and computer terminals—tied directly into the individual cryotubes
stored in the bay below—made the room seem cramped and uncomfortable.
A chime sounded and Sam’s eyes swept across the status monitors. There was only one active cryotube
in this bay, and its monitor pinged for his attention. He double-checked the main instrument panel, then
keyed the intercom. “He’s coming around, sir,” he said. He turned and looked out the observation bay’s
window.
Tech Chief Thom Shephard waved up at Sam from the floor of Cryostorage Unit Two. “Good work,
Sam,” he called back. “Almost time to pop the seal.”
The status monitors continued to feed information to the observation theater. The subject’s body
temperature was approaching normal—at least, Sam assumed it was normal; he’d never awakened a
Spartan before—and most of the chemicals had already been flushed out of his system.
“He’s in a REM cycle now, Chief,” Sam called out, “and his brainwave activity shows he’s
dreaming—that means he’s pretty much thawed. Shouldn’t be long now.”
“Good,” Shephard replied. “Keep an eye on those neuro readings. We packed him in wearing his
combat armor. There may be some feedback effects to watch out for.”
“Acknowledged.”
A red light winked to life on the security terminal, and a new series of codes flashed across the screen:
>WAKE-UP SERIES STANDBY. SECURITY LOCK [PRIORITY ALPHA] ENGAGED.
>x-CORTANA.1.0—CRYOSTOR.23.4.7
“What the hell?” Sam muttered. He keyed the bay intercom again. “Thom? There’s something weird here
. . . some kind of security lockout from the bridge.”
“Acknowledged.” There was a static-spotted click as Shephard looped in the bridge channel. “Cryo
Two to Bridge.”
“Go ahead, Cryo Two,” a female voice replied, laced with the telltale warble of synthesized speech.
“We’re ready to pop the seal on our . . . guest, Cortana,” Shephard explained. “We need—”
“—the security code,” the AI finished. “Transmitting. Bridge out.”
Almost instantly, a new line of text scrolled across the security screen:
>UNSEAL THE HUSHED CASKET.
Sam hit the execute command, the security lockout dropped away, and a countdown timer began
marking time until the wake-up sequence would be completed.
The soldier was coming around. Respiration was up, ditto his heart rate, as both returned to normal
levels.Here he is, Sam thought,a real honest-to-god Spartan. Not just any Spartan, but maybe thelast
Spartan. The shipboard scuttlebutt said that the rest of them had bought the farm at Reach.
Like his fellow techs, Sam had heard of the program, though he’d never seen anactual Spartan in
person. In order to deal with increasing civil turmoil the Colonial Military Administration had secretly
launched Project ORION back in 2491. The purpose of the program was to develop supersoldiers,
code-named “Spartans,” who would receive special training and physical augmentation.
The initial effort was successful, and in 2517 a new group of Spartans, the II-series, had been selected as
the next generation of supersoldier. The project had been intended to remain secret, but the Covenant
War had changed all that.
It was no secret that the human race was on the verge of defeat. The Covenant’s ships and space
technology were just too advanced. While human forces could hold their own in a ground engagement,
the Covenant would simply fall back into space and glass the planet from orbit.
As the situation grew increasingly grim, the Admiralty was faced with the ugly prospect of fighting a
two-front war—one against the Covenant in space, and another against the collapsing human society on
the ground. The general public and the rank-and-file in the military needed a morale boost, so the
existence of the SPARTAN-II project was revealed.
There were now successful heroes to rally behind, men and women who had taken the fight to the enemy
and won several decisive battles. Even the Covenant seemed to fear the Spartans.
Except they were gone now, all but one, sacrificed to protect the human race from the Covenant and the
very real possibility of extinction. Sam gazed on the soldier in front of him with something akin to awe.
Here, about to rise as if from a grave, was a true hero. It was a moment to remember, and if he was
lucky enough to survive, to tell his children about.
It didn’t make him any less afraid, however. If the stories were true, the man gradually regaining
consciousness in the bay below was almost as alien, and certainly as dangerous, as the Covenant.
He was floating in the never-never land somewhere between cryo and full consciousness when the dream
began.
It was a familiar dream, a pleasant dream, and one which had nothing to do with war. He was on
Eridanus II—the colony world he’d been born on, long since destroyed by the Covenant. He heard
laughter all around.
A female voice called him by name—John. A moment later, arms held him, and he recognized the familiar
scent of soap. The woman said something nice to him, and he wanted to say something nice in return, but
the words wouldn’t come. He tried tosee her, tried to penetrate the haze that obscured her face, and was
rewarded with the image of a woman with large eyes, a straight nose, and full lips.
The picture wavered, indistinct, like a reflection in a pond. In an eyeblink, the woman who held him
transformed. Now she had dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and pale skin.
He knew her name: Dr. Halsey.
Dr. Catherine Halsey had selected him for the SPARTAN-II project. While most believed that the
current generation of Spartans had been culled from the best of the UNSC military, only a handful of
people knew the truth.
Halsey’s program involved the actual abduction of specially-screened children. The children were
flash-cloned—which made the duplicates prone to neurological disorders—and the clones covertly
returned to the parents, who never suspected that their sons and daughters were duplicates. In many
ways, Dr. Halsey was the only “mother” that he had ever known.
But Dr. Halseywasn’t his mother, nor was the pale semitranslucent image of Cortana that appeared to
replace her.
The dream changed. A dark, nebulous shape loomed behind the Mother/Halsey/Cortana figure. He
didn’t know what it was, but it was a threat—of that he was certain.
His combat instincts kicked in, and adrenaline coursed through him. He quickly surveyed the area—some
kind of playground, with high wooden poles, distantly familiar—and decided on the best route to flank
the new threat. He spied an assault rifle, a powerful MA5B, nearby. If he placed himself between the
woman and the threat, his armor could take the brunt of an attack, and he could return fire.
He moved quickly, and the dark shape howled at him—a fierce and terrifying war cry.
The beast was impossibly fast. It was on him in seconds.
He grabbed the assault rifle and turned to open fire—and discovered to his horror that he couldn’t lift the
weapon. His arms were small, underdeveloped. His armor was gone, and his body was that of a
six-year-old child.
He was powerless in the face of the threat. He roared back at the beast in rage and fear—angry not just
at the threat, but at his own sudden powerlessness . . .
The dream started to fade, and light appeared in front of the Spartan’s eyes. Vapor vented, swirled, and
began to dissipate. A voice came, as if from a great distance. It was male and matter-of-fact.
“Sorry for the quick thaw, Master Chief—but things are a bit hectic right now. The disorientation should
pass quickly.”
A second voice welcomed him back and it took the Spartan a moment to remember where he’d been
prior to entering the cryotube. There had been a battle, a terrible battle, in which most if not all of his
Spartan brothers and sisters had been killed. Men and women with whom he had been raised and trained
since the age of six, and who, unlike the dimly remembered woman of his dreams, constituted hisreal
family.
With the memory, plus subtle changes to the gas mix that filled his lungs, came strength. He flexed his stiff
limbs. The Spartan heard the tech say something about “freezer burn,” and pushed himself up and out of
the cryotube’s chilly embrace.
“God in heaven,” Sam whispered.
The Spartan was huge, easily seven feet tall. Encased in pearlescent green battle armor, the man looked
like a figure from mythology—otherworldly and terrifying. Master Chief SPARTAN-117 stepped from
his tube and surveyed the cryo bay. The mirrored visor on his helmet made him all the more fearsome, a
faceless, impassive soldier built for destruction and death.
Sam was glad that he was up here in the observation theater, rather than down on the Cryo Two main
floor with the Spartan.
He realized that Thom was waiting for diagnostic data. He checked the displays—neural pathways clear,
no fluctuations in heartbeat or brainwave activity. He opened an intercom channel. “I’m bringing his
health monitors on-line now.”
Sam watched as Thom led the Spartan to the various test stations in the bay, pitching in where he was
required. In short order, the soldier’s gear had been brought on-line—recharging shield system, real-time
health monitors, targeting and optical systems all read in the green.
The suit—code-named MJOLNIR armor—was a marvel of engineering, Sam had to admit. According
to the specs he’d received, the suit’s shell consisted of a multilayered alloy of remarkable strength, a
refractive coating that could disperse a fair amount of directed energy, a crystalline storage matrix that
could support the same level of artificial intelligence usually reserved for a starship, and a layer of gel
which conformed to the wearer’s skin and functioned to regulate temperature.
Additional memory packets and signal conduits had been implanted into the Spartan’s body, and two
externally accessible input slots had been installed near the base of his skull. Taken together, the
combined systems served to double his strength, enhance his already lightning-fast reflexes, and make it
possible for him to navigate through the intricacies of any high-tech battlefield.
There were substantial life-support systems built into the MJOLNIR gear. Most soldiers went into cryo
naked, since covered skin generally reacted badly to the cryo process. Sam had once worn a bandage
into the freezer and discovered the affected skin blistered and raw when he woke up.
The Spartan’s skin must have hurt like hell, he realized. Through it all, though, the soldier remained silent,
simply nodding when asked questions or quietly complying with requests from Thom. It was eerie—he
moved with mechanistic efficiency from one test to the next, like a robot.
Cortana’s voice rang from the shipwide com: “Sensors show inbound Covenant boarding craft. Stand by
to repel boarders.”
Sam felt a pang of fear—and sorrow for the Covenant troops that would have to face this Spartan in
combat.
The neural interface which linked the Master Chief to his MJOLNIR armor was working perfectly, and
immediately fed data to his helmet’s heads-up-display on the inside surface of his visor.
It felt good to move around, and the Master Chief quietly flexed his fingers. His skin itched and stung, a
side effect of the cryo gases, but he quickly banished the pain from his awareness. He had long ago
learned how to disassociate himself from physical discomfort.
He’d heard Cortana’s announcement. The Covenant were on their way. Good. He scanned the room for
weapons, but there was no arms locker present. The lack of weapons wasn’t of great concern to him;
he’d taken weapons away from Covenant soldiers before.
The intercom crackled again: “Bridge to Cryo Two—this is Captain Keyes. Send the Master Chief to the
bridge immediately.”
摘要：

THEFLOODWILLIAMC.DIETZBALLANTINEBOOKS•NEWYORKForMarjorie,withloveandgratitude. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThanksgotoSteveSaffelforchartingthecourse,toDougZartmanforcoordinatingthepieces,toEricS.Trautmannforpolishing’tilitsparkled,toEricNylundwholedthewayinTheFallofReach,toNancyFigatnerandtheFranchiseDevelopment...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：184 页 大小：489.51KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

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