The black wing caught a breeze, jerked him back on his feet, and dragged him across the grass and dirt. He gasped for air, but he wasn't scared. He was angry that he'd look so stupid having to wrestle with this parachute.

The Falcon Wing hit the fence, and stuck there, fluttering.

Shane got up and undipped himself from the harness. Something hot trickled down his legs. There was no way he'd been so scared he pissed his pants. With dread, he looked. It was blood. The skin on the back of his legs was raw. He took a tentative step and fire crawled up both thighs.

He laughed. Blood or piss, what did it matter? He'd made it.

"Hey, dumbass. What's so funny?"

Shane turned and saw the kid who had pushed him. He lay on the grass, half tangled in his harness.

Shane marched over to him, ignoring the pain in his legs.

The kid got to one knee and held out his hand to shake. "I'm Rob—"

Shane hit him square in the nose. Blood gushed from the kid's face and he reeled over.

He was going to pay for shoving him. He was the only one who knew that Shane had frozen on the edge and chickened out. He'd have to pay for that, too.

Shane started pounding him with right and left fists.

The kid held up his arms to fend off the blows, but Shane landed a few good ones, skinning his knuckles.

Robert headbutted Shane, and he fell off.

Robert stood, shook off his harness, then growling, leapt onto Shane.

They rolled on the grass, kicking and punching.

Shane heard a loud snap and he wasn't sure if it was his or Rob's bone breaking; he didn't care, he kept hitting and hitting until blood spilled into his eyes and he couldn't see anymore.

Large hands grabbed Shane and pulled him off. Still swinging, Shane connected with one of the Navy men, bruising the bone over his eye.

The man dropped him.

"Stand down!" barked a voice with godlike authority.

Shane blinked and wiped blood from his eyes. The silver-haired man who had given the order to jump stood between him and the other kid.

The Navy man he'd hit pressed one hand to his swollen eye and said, "Chief, these two were going to kill each other."

"I see that," the old man said. He nodded approvingly at Shane, and then turned to Robert.

Robert ignored the old man and took a step toward Shane with his hands raised.

"I said STAND DOWN!"

Robert dropped his hands and staggered back as if he'd been struck.

"I think you're right, Sergeant," the older Navy man said. "They really might have killed each other." He smiled, only it wasn't a smile. It was more like he was baring his teeth. "Very good. That kind of fight left in them after their first jump? A night jump? My God, I only hope the rest of them are like this."

CHAPTER SEVEN

0000 HOURS, JANUARY 19, 2532 CMILITARY CALENDAR) / NARROW-BAND POINT-

TO-POINT TRANSMISSION: ORIGIN UNKNOWN; TERMINATION: SECTION THREE,

OMEGA SECURE ANTENNA ARRAY, UNSC HO EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM, REACH

MILITARY COMPLEX

///AUTOMATED REROUTE UNSC SHIP REG-96667 ABY/// FILE ACCESS

GRANTED///WORM-PROTOCOL FIREWALL ENABLED/FILE ERASED///

PLNB TRANSMISSION XX087R-XX

ENCRYPTION CODE: GAMMA

PUBLIC KEY: N/A

FROM: CODE NAME COALMINER

TO: CODE NAME SURGEON

SUBJECT: PROGRESS REPORT/OPERATION HYPODERMIC

CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY, CODE-WORD XXXX

XXXX TOP SECRET (SECTION THREE X-RAY DIRECTIVE)

/FILE EXTRACTION-RECONSTITUTION COMPLETE/ /START FILE/

INSTITUTIONAL RECORDS ALTERED AS PER INSTRUCTIONS.

INITIAL CONTACT WITH BASE AI MADE. HELPFUL, BUT I DON'T TRUST IT .

PACKAGES DELIVERED. SELECTION PROCESS STARTED. OPERATION UNDERWAY AND ON SCHEDULE.

CANDIDATES EXHIBIT MARKED AGGRESSION WELL OUT OF BOUNDS OF THE SMITH- KENSINGTON INDEX . AS MUCH WORK TRAINING THEM AS IT IS KEEPING THEM FROM MURDERING EACH OTHER. THEY'RE REAL HELLCATS .

LIEUTENANT CLAIMS ALL UNDER CONTROL. HE HAS A PLAN FOR EVERYTHING. UNSURE WHERE HE'S GETTING THIS CONFIDENCE, BUT I DO BELIEVE HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING.

ARE YOU SURPRISED?

/END FILE/

/SCRAMBLE-DESTRUCTION PROCESS ENABLE/

PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE.

CHAPTER EIGHT

0900 HOURS, JULY 30, 2537 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ABOARD UNSC POINT OF NO RETURN, LOCATION CLASSIFED (15 YEARS AFTER ALPHA COMPANY INDOCTRINATION)

Lieutenant Ambrose and SCPO Mendez had been escorted to this catwalk through a series of corridors and high-security biometric vaults into the bowels of the stealth cruiser Point of No Return.

The security officers had then left them standing at attention on the catwalk, and sealed the vaultlike door behind them. Below the metal grating of the catwalk, the shadows swallowed all sound.

Three meters to Kurt's left was a slightly curved white wall. No door. Beyond was Odin's Eye, the high-security conference room where he'd first been told of the SPARTAN-III program by Colonel Ackerson.

"Think this is some Section Three test?" Mendez finally whispered. "Or maybe someone doesn't like getting news about the lousy selection results for the Beta Company candidates?"

"I'm not sure," Kurt replied. "My requested upgrades for the Mark-II SPI armor were over budget."

Mendez raised an eyebrow. "Where did you hear that?"

"The new AI talks a lot."

"'Deep Winter,'" muttered Mendez. "I wonder if AIs pick their own names, or if some officer in Section Three does it."

Kurt was about to offer his opinion when he noticed there now was a door in the curved white wall. Colonel Ackerson stood there. "Gendemen, join us." Ackerson then retreated into a brightly lit chamber.

Kurt noticed that he hadn't met their eyes. That was always a bad sign.

They entered, and as he crossed the threshold, Kurt felt static crawl over his skin. The concave illuminated walls of the chamber were disorienting. Kurt focused on the center of the half-spherical room, on the black conference table. Two officers sat there, gazing at holographic screens that floated in the air over its surface.

Ackerson waved them closer.

A woman sat with her back to them; opposite her sat a middle-aged gentleman.

The man was gray and balding. The woman appeared older than regs permitted before mandatory retirement. Her osteoporotic slump, slender frail arms, and thinning white hair indicated extreme age.

Kurt froze as he spotted the one- and three-star rank insignia on their collars and snapped off a salute. "Vice Admiral, ma'am," he said. "Rear Admiral, sir."

The Vice Admiral ignored Mendez and scrutinized Kurt. "Sit," she said, "both of you."

Kurt didn't recognize either of these high-ranking officers, and they didn't bother to introduce themselves.

He did as he was ordered, as did Mendez. Even sitting, though, his back was ramrod straight, his chest out, and eyes forward.

"We were reviewing the record of your SPARTAN-IIIs since they went operational nine months ago," she said. "Impressive."

The Rear Admiral gestured at floating holographic panes that contained after-action reports, still shots of battlefields filled with Covenant corpses, and ship damage-assessment profiles. "The insurrection of Mamore," he said "that nasty business at New Constantinople, actions in the Bonanza asteroid belt and the Far-gone colony platforms, and half a dozen other engagements—this reads like the campaign record of a cracking good battalion, not a company of three hundred. Dammed impressive."

"That was only a fraction of the SPARTAN-III program potential," Colonel Ackerson said.

His eyes stared at some distant point.

"I'm sorry, sir," Kurt said. " 'Was'?"

The Vice Admiral stiffened. It was clear that she was not accustomed to her junior officers asking questions.

But Kurt had to. These were his men and women they were talking about. He'd kept his eyes and ears open for news on Alpha Company, and had cultivated intelligence sources outside ONI, Section Three, and Beta-5. Being Commandant of Camp Currahee had its privileges, and he had learned how to use them. He had managed to track his Spartans during the last seven months, until his sources had mysteriously gone silent six days ago.

Only the AI Deep Winter had given a clue as to their whereabouts: Operation PROMETHEUS.

"Tell me about the selection process for the next class of SPARTAN-IIIs," the Vice Admiral asked Kurt.

"Ma'am," Kurt said, "we are operating under Colonel Acker-son's expanded selection criteria, but there are not enough age-appropriate genetic matches to meet the larger second-class target number."

"There are sufficient genetic matches," Colonel Ackerson corrected. His face was an impassive mask. "What's missing are data to find additional matches. We need to proscribe mandatory genetic screening in the outer colonies. Those untapped populations are—"

"That's the last thing we need in the outer colonies," the Rear Admiral said. "We're just getting a handle on a near civil war. You tell an O.C. they got to register their kids' genes, and they'll all be reaching for their rifles."

The Vice Admiral steepled her withered hands. "Say it is part of a vaccine program. We take a microscopic sample as we inject the children. Inform no one."

The Rear Admiral looked dubious, but offered no further comment.

"Go on. Lieutenant," she said.

"We have identified 375 candidates," Kurt said. "Slightly less than we started with for Alpha Company, but we have learned from our mistakes. We will be able to graduate a much higher percentage this time."

He nodded toward Mendez to give the Chief the credit he richly deserved. Mendez sat completely still and Kurt saw he wore his poker face.

Every instinct Kurt had screamed that something was wrong here.

"But," the Rear Admiral said, "that's nowhere near the one thousand projection for the second wave."

A brief scowl played over Ackerson's lip. "No, sir."

The Vice Admiral set her hands flat on the table and leaned closer to Kurt. "What if we loosen the new genetic selection criteria?"

Kurt took note of the "we" in her question. There was a subtle shift in the power structure at the table. With a single word, the Vice Admiral had made Kurt a part of their group.

"Our new bioaugmentation protocols target a very specific genetic set. Any deviation from that set would geometrically increase the failure rate," Kurt said. The thought of dozens of Spartans being tortured and ultimately crippled as they lay helpless in a medical bay filled him with revulsion. He managed to contain the feeling.

The Vice Admiral raised one threadbare brow. "You've done your homework.

Lieutenant."

"However, as our augmentation technology improves," Ackerson said, "one day we will be able to expand the selection parameters, maybe to include the entire general population."

"But not today, Colonel," the Rear Admiral said, and sighed. "So we're back to about three hundred SPARTAN-IIIs. That will have to do then."

Kurt wanted to correct him—three hundred new Spartans plus those in Alpha Company.

"Let's move on to the review of Alpha and Operation PROMETHEUS," the Vice Admiral said, and her face darkened.

Colonel Ackerson cleared his throat. "Operation PROMETHEUS occurred on the Covenant manufacturing site designated as K7-49."

A holographic asteroid materialized drifting over the table, a rock with molten cracks that made a spiderweb pattern over its surface.

"K7-49 was discovered when the prowler Razor's Edge managed to attach a telemetry probe on an enemy frigate during the Battle of New Harmony," Ackerson said. "They then followed the craft through Slipspace, the first and only time this technology has actually worked, I might add, and they discovered this rock seventeen light-years past the UNSC outer boundary."

The image magnified, revealing midaltitude images of factories on the surface that belched smoke and cinder, and showed that the volcanic fissures were canals of flowing molten metal. A gossamer lattice surrounded the asteroid, tiny lights winked on the filaments, and black specks drifted near.

"Spectral enhancement," the Rear Admiral said, "showed us what they're using all that metal for."

The view shifted closer. The latticework girders were hundred-meter-wide beams, and the black specks appeared to be the bones of whales in orbit over K7-49—a dozen partially constructed Covenant warships.

Kurt had a difficult time believing what he was seeing. So many ships. How large was the Covenant fleet? And only seventeen light-years from the UNSC frontier? It could be nothing less than a prelude to an all-out assault.

"K7-49 is one large orbital shipyard," Ackerson explained. "All the apparent volcanism is artificial, created by these." He tapped his tablet once more. Thirty infrared dots appeared on the surface of the asteroid. "High-output plasma reactors that Hquefy metallurgical components, which are refined, shaped, and then transported via gravity beams for final assembly."

"The PROMETHEUS op was a high-risk insertion onto the surface of K7-49," the Rear Admiral explained. "Three hundred Spartans hit dirt at 0700, July 27. Their mission was to disable as many of these reactors as possible—enough so the liquid contents of the facility would solidify and permanently clog their capacity to produce alloy."

Colonel Ackerson then tapped the holographic display. "STARS system and TEAMCAM recorded Alpha Company's process."

A handful of the hot infrared points on the asteroid's surface flared and then cooled to black.

"Initial resistance was light." Ackerson tapped a button and a new window opened.

On this display, Spartans in Semi-Powered Infiltration armor systems moved, their camouflaged patterns shifting imperfectly against the molten metal and black smoke of the factory Kurt wished his suggested upgrades for the SPI armor's software had been implemented before Alpha had graduated. There was a burp of suppressed submachine gun fire, and a pod of Grunt salve workers fell dead.

"After two days," the Admiral said, "seven rectors were rendered inoperative and a counterforce was finally organized by existing Covenant units."