CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

0534 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)

UNSC Pillar of Autumn , Epsilon Eridani System The Pillar of Autumn detonated its port emergency thrusters. The ship slid out of the path of the asteroid, missing it by ten meters—

—The Covenant plasma trailing them did not. It impacted the city-sized rock and sent fountains of molten iron and nickel spewing into space.

Nine of the ten teardrop-shaped Covenant fighters—nicknamed “Seraphs” by ONI—dodged the asteroid as well. The tenth ship slammed into the asteroid and vanished from the bridge’s view screen.

The other single ships accelerated and swarmed around the Pillar of Autumn , harassing her with pulse laser fire.

“Cortana,” Captain Keyes said, “activate our point defense system.”

The Pillar of Autumn ’s 50mm cannons flashed—chipping away at the Covenant ships’ shields.

“Already engaged, Captain,” Cortana said calmly.

“Ensign Lovell,” Captain Keyes said. “Engines all stop and bring us about one hundred eighty degrees.

Lieutenant Hikowa, ready our MAC gun and arm Archer missile pods A1 through A7. I want a firing solution that has our Archer missiles hitting with the third MAC round.”

“On it, sir,” Lieutenant Hikowa replied.

“Aye, sir,” Ensign Lovell said. “Answering engines all stop. Coming about. Brace yourselves.”

The Pillar of Autumn ’s engines sputtered and died. Navigational thrusters fired and rotated the ship to face the real threat—a Covenant carrier.

The enormous alien craft had materialized aft of the Pillar of Autumn and launched their single ships.

The carrier had then launched two salvos of plasma—which Captain Keyes had only shaken by entering the asteroid field.

Cortana maneuvered the massive Pillar of Autumn like it was a sporting yacht; she nimbly dodged tumbling rocks, used them to screen Covenant plasma and pulse laser bolts.

But the Pillar of Autumn would emerge from the asteroid field in twenty seconds.

“Firing solution online, sir,” Lieutenant Hikowa said. “MAC gun hot and missile safety interlocks removed. Ready to launch.”

“Fire missiles at will, Lieutenant.”

Rapid-fire thumps echoed though the Pillar of Autumn ’s hull and a swarm of Archer missiles sped toward the incoming carrier.

“MAC gun is hot,” Hikowa said. “Booster capacitors ready. Firing in eight seconds, sir.”

“I must make one small adjustment to your trajectory, Lieutenant,” Cortana said. “Covenant single ships are concentrating their attacks on our underside. Captain? With your permission?”

“Granted,” Keyes said.

“Firing solution recalculated,” Cortana said. “Hang on.”

Cortana fired thrusters and the Pillar of Autumn rotated belly up—brought the majority of her 50mm cannons to bear on the Covenant Seraph fighters underneath her.

Overlapping fields of fire wore down their shields—punctured their armored hulls with a thousand rounds, tore through the pilots with a hail of projectiles, and peppered their reactors. Nine puffs of fire dropped behind the Pillar of Autumn and vanished into the darkness.

“Enemy single ships destroyed,” Cortana said. “Approaching firing position.”

“Cortana, give me a countdown. Lieutenant Hikowa, fire on my mark.” Captain Keyes said.

“Ready to fire, aye,” Lieutenant Hikowa said.

Cortana nodded; her trim figure projected in miniature inside the bridge holotank. As she nodded, a time display appeared, the numbers counting down rapidly.

Keyes gripped the edge of the command chair, his eyes glued to the countdown. Three seconds, two, one . . . “Mark.”

“Firing!” Hikowa answered.

A triple flash of lightning saturated the forward view screen and bled in from the viewport; three white-hot projectiles crossed the black distance between the Pillar of Autumn and the Covenant carrier.

Along the side of the carrier, motes of light collected as they rebuilt the charges of their plasma weapons.

Archer missiles were pinpoints of exhaust in the distance; the carrier’s pulse lasers fired and melted a third of the incoming missiles.

The Pillar of Autumn rolled to starboard and dove.

Captain Keyes floated in free fall for a heartbeat, then landed awkwardly on the deck. The crenellated surface of an asteroid appeared on their port camera—meters away—then vanished.

Captain Keyes was grateful that he never had time to initialize the Pillar of Autumn ’s AI. Cortana performed superbly.

The trio of blazing MAC rounds struck the carrier. The shield flashed once, twice. The third round got through—gutting the ship from stem to stern.

The carrier spun sideways. Her shields stuttered once, trying to reestablish a protective screen. A hundred Archer missiles struck, cratered the hull, blossomed into fire and sparks and smoldering metal.

The alien carrier listed and crashed into the asteroid the Pillar of Autumn had just narrowly avoided. It stuck there, hull broken and cracked. Columns of fire blossomed from the shattered vessel.

Captain Keyes sighed. A victory.

The Spartans, however, would not be taking that ship into Covenant space. It wasn’t going anywhere.

“Cortana, mark the location of the destroyed ship and the asteroid. We may have a chance to salvage her later.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Ensign Lovell,” Captain Keyes said, “turn us around and give me best speed to rally point Zulu.”

Lovell tapped the thrusters and rotated the Pillar of Autumn to relative space normal with Reach. The rumble of the engines shook the decks as the ship accelerated in-system.

“ETA twenty minutes at best speed, sir.”

The battle for Reach could be over by the time he got there. Captain Keyes wished he could move through Slipspace for short, precision jumps like the Covenant. That carrier had materialized a kilometer behind the Pillar of Autumn . If he had that kind of accuracy, he could be at the rally point now—and be of some use. Any attempt to jump in-system, however, would be foolish at best. At worst, it would be a fatal move. Jump targets varied by hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Theoretically, they could reenter normal space inside Reach’s sun.

“Cortana, give me maximum magnification on the fore cameras.”

“Aye sir,” she said.

The view on the forward screen zoomed in—jumped and refocused on planet Reach.

Twenty thousand kilometers from the planet, a cluster of a hundred UNSC ships collected at rally point Zulu: destroyers, frigates, three cruisers, two carriers—and three refit and repair stations hovering over them . . . waiting to be used as sacrificial shields.

“Fifty-two additional UNSC warships inbound to rally point Zulu,” Cortana reported.

“Shift focus to section four by four on-screen, Cortana. Show me those Covenant forces.”

The scene blinked and transferred to the approaching Covenant fleet. There were so many ships Captain Keyes couldn’t estimate their numbers.

“How many?” he asked.

“I count three hundred fourteen Covenant ships, Captain,” Cortana replied.

Captain Keyes couldn’t tear his gaze away from the ships. The UNSC only won battles with the Covenant when they outnumbered the enemy forces three to one . . . not the other way around.

They had one advantage: the MAC orbital guns around Reach—the UNSC’s most powerful nonnuclear weapon. Some called them “Super” MAC guns or the “big stick.”

Their linear accelerator coils were larger than a UNSC cruiser. They propelled a three-thousand-ton projectile at tremendous speed, and could reload within five seconds. They drew power directly from the fusion reactor complex planetside.

“Pull back the camera angle, Cortana. Let me see the entire battle area.”

The Covenant ships accelerated toward Reach. The fleet at rally point Zulu fired their MAC guns and missiles. The orbital Super MAC guns opened fire as well—twenty streaks of white hot metal burned across the night.

The Covenant answered by launching a salvo of plasma torpedoes at the orbital guns—so much fire in space that it looked like a solar flare.

Deadly arcs of flame and metal raced through space and crossed paths.

The engines of the three refit stations flared to life and the platelike ships moved toward the path of the flaming vapor.

A plasma bolt caught the edge of the leading station—fire splashed over its flat surface. More bolts hit, and the station melted, sagged, and boiled. The metal glowed red, then white-hot, tinged with blue.

The other two stations maneuvered into position and shielded the orbital guns from the fiery assault.

Plasma torpedoes collided with them and sprayed plumes of molten metal into space. After a dozen hits, clouds of ionizing metal enveloped the place where the three stations had been.

They had been vaporized.

The last of the Covenant plasma hit the haze—scattered, absorbed, and made the cloud glow a hellish orange.

Meanwhile, the fleet’s opening salvo and the Super MAC rounds hit the Covenant fleet.

The smaller ship-based MAC rounds bounced off the Covenant shields—it took three or more to wear them down.

The Super MAC rounds, however, were another story. The first Super MAC shell hit a Covenant destroyer. The ship’s shield flashed and vanished—the remaining impact momentum transferred to the ship—the hull rippled and shattered into a million fragments.

Four nuclear mines detonated in the center of the Covenant fleet. Dozens of ships with downed shields flared white and dissolved.

The other ships however, shrugged off the damage; their shields burned brilliant silver, then cooled.

The surviving Covenant vessels advanced in-system—a third of their number were left behind . . .

burning radioactive hulks or utterly destroyed by the Super MAC rounds.

Plasma charges collected on the lateral lines of the Covenant ships. They fired. Fingers of deadly energy reached across space . . . toward the UNSC fleet.

One Covenant ship sat in the center of the pack, a gigantic vessel, larger than three UNSC cruisers.

White-blue beams flashed from its prow—a split second later five UNSC vessels detonated.

“Cortana . . . what the hell was that?” Keyes asked. “Lovell, push those engine superchargers as hot as you can make them.”

“Running at three hundred ten percent, sir,” Lovell reported. “ETA fourteen minutes.”

“Replaying and digitally enhancing video record,” Cortana said.

She split the screen and zoomed in on the huge Covenant ship, replaying the video as the large ship fired. The Covenant energy beams looked like pulse lasers . . . but tinged silver white, the same scintillation effect that they’d seen when their shields were hit.

Cortana switched back to view the doomed UNSC destroyer Minotaur . The lance of energy was needle-thin. It struck the vessel on A deck, aft, near the reactor. Cortana pulled the view back and slowed the record frame by frame—the beam punctured through the entire ship, emanating below H deck by the engines.

“It drilled through every deck and both sets of battleplate,” Captain Keyes murmured.

The beam moved through the Minotaur , slicing a ten-meter-wide swath.

“Projected beam path cut through the Minotaur ’s reactors,” Cortana said.

“A new weapon,” Captain Keyes said. “Faster than their plasma. Deadlier, too.”

The large Covenant ship veered off course and accelerated away from the battle. Perhaps it didn’t want to risk getting too close to their orbital MAC guns. Whatever the reason, Keyes was grateful to see it withdraw.

The UNSC forces slowly scattered. Some launched missiles to intercept the plasma torpedoes, but the high-energy explosives did nothing to the stop the superheated bolts. Fifty UNSC ships went up like flares, burning, exploding, falling toward the planet.

The orbital Super MAC guns fired—sixteen hits and sixteen Covenant ships were blasted into flame and glittering fragments.

The Covenant fleet split into two groups: half accelerated to engage the dispersing UNSC fleet; the remainder of their ships arced upward relative to the plane of the system. That group maneuvered to get a clear shot around the cloud of vaporized titanium from the refit stations. They were going to target the orbital guns.

Plasma charges collected along their sides.

The orbital guns fired. The super-heavy rounds tore through the clouds of ionized metal vapor, leaving whorls and spirals in the haze. They impacted eighteen incoming Covenant ships—ripped through them like tinfoil, with enough momentum to pulverize their hulls.

Six Covenant ships cleared the interfering cloud of vapor. They had a clear shot.

The Super MAC guns fired again.

Plasma erupted from the sides of the nearby Convent ships.

The Super MAC rounds hit the vessels and obliterated the enemy.

The streams of plasma, however, had already launched. They streaked toward the orbital guns—

impacted and turned the installations into showers of sparks and molten metal.

When the haze cleared, fifteen of the Super MAC orbital installations remained intact . . . five had been vaporized.

The Covenant ships engaging the fleet turned and fled on an out-system vector.

The remaining UNSC ships did not pursue.

“Incoming orders, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique called out. “We’re being ordered to fall back and regroup.”

Keyes nodded. “Cortana,” he said, “can you give me damage and casualty estimates for the fleet?”

Her tiny holo image coalesced in the display tank. “Yes, Captain,” she said. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure you want the bad news?”

Damage estimates scrolled across his personal screen.

They had taken heavy losses—an estimated twenty ships remained. Nearly one hundred shattered and burning UNSC vessels floated, lifeless, in the combat area.

Captain Keyes realized that he was holding his breath. He exhaled. “That was too close,” he murmured.

“It could have been closer, Captain,” Cortana whispered.

He watched the retreating Covenant. Once again—it was too easy. No . . . it had been anything but

“easy” for the UNSC forces, but the Covenant were certainly giving up far earlier than in any previous battle. The aliens had never stopped once they engaged an enemy.

Except at Sigma Octanus, he thought.

“Cortana,” Captain Keyes said. “Scan the poles of planet Reach and filter out the magnetic interference.”

The view screen snapped to the Reach’s northern pole. Hundreds of Covenant dropships streamed toward the planet’s surface.

“Get FLEETCOM HQ online,” he ordered Lieutenant Dominique. “Copy this message to the Fleet Commander, as well.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “Channel connected.”

“Tell them they’re being invaded. Dropships inbound at both poles.”

Dominique sent the message, listened a moment, then reported, “Message received and acknowledged, sir.”

The Super MAC guns pivoted and fired—shattering dozens of the Covenant dropships in the shells’

supersonic wake.

The remains of the UNSC fleet split into two groups, moving toward either pole. Missiles and MAC

guns fired and blasted the dropships to bits. The poles were punctuated with thousands of meteoroids as the bits of hull burned up in the atmosphere.

Hundreds must have gotten through, Keyes thought. Reach had been invaded.

“Incoming distress signal from FLEETCOM HQ planetside, sir,” Lieutenant Dominique said, his voice breaking.

“On speakers,” Captain Keyes said.

“There are thousands of them. Grunts, Jackals, and their warrior Elites.” The transmission broke into static. “They have tanks and fliers. Christ, they’ve breached the perimeter. Fall back! Fall back! If anyone can hear this: the Covenant is groundside. Massing near the armory . . . they’re—” White noise filled the speakers. Captain Keyes winced as he heard screams, bones snapping, an explosion. The transmission went dead.

“Sir!” Lieutenant Hall said. “The Covenant fleet has altered their outbound trajectory. . . . they’re turning.” She rotated to face the Captain. “They’re coming in for another attack.”

Captain Keyes stood straighter and smoothed his uniform. “Good.” He addressed the crew in the calmest voice he could muster. “Looks like we’re not too late after all.”

Ensign Lovell nodded. “Sir, ETA to rally point Zulu in five minutes.”

“Remove all missile safety locks,” Captain Keyes ordered. “Get our remote-piloted Longsword into the launch tube. And make sure our MAC gun capacitors and boosters are hot.”

Captain Keyes pulled out his pipe. He lit it and puffed.

The Covenant were, of course, after the orbital guns. Their suicidal frontal charge—while almost effective enough—had been just another diversion. The real danger was on the ground; if their troops took out the fusion generators, the Super MAC guns would be so much floating junk in orbit.

“This is bad,” he muttered to himself.

Cortana appeared on the AI pedestal near the NAV station. “Captain Keyes, I’m picking up another distress signal. It’s from the Reach space dock AI. And if you think this—” she gestured at the incoming Covenant fleet on screen “—is bad, wait until you hear this. It gets worse.”