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“We’ll have it done in ten,”Sam replied. “Faster if those Longsword interceptor pilots get out of ourway.”
John would have given anything to be belowdecks with the others. He felt as if he were being left behind.
The radar screen flashed with blobs of eerie green light . . . almost as if the space aroundtheCommonwealth were boiling.
The collision alarm sounded.
“Brace for impact!” Captain Wallace said. He laced his arm around the brass railing.
John grabbed an emergency handhold on the wall.
Something appeared three thousand kilometers off theCommonwealth ’s prow. It was a sleek oval with asingle seam running along its lateral edge from stem to stern. Tiny lights winked on and off along itshull. A faint purple-tinged glow emitted from the tail. The ship was only a third the size oftheCommonwealth .
“A Covenant ship,” Dr. Halsey said, and she involuntarily backed away from the view screens.
Captain Wallace scowled. “COM officer: send a signal to Chi Ceti—see if they can send us somereinforcements.”
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“Aye, sir.”
Blue flashes flickered along the hull of the alien ship—so bright that even filtered through the externalcamera, they still made John’s eyes water.
The outer hull of theCommonwealth sizzled and popped. Three screens filled with static.
“Pulse lasers!” the lieutenant at the ops station screamed. “Communication dish destroyed. Armor insections three and four at twenty-five percent. Hull breach in section three. Sealing now.” TheLieutenant swiveled in his seat, sweat beaded on his forehead. “Ship AI core memory overloaded,” hesaid.
With the AI offline, the ship could still fire weapons and navigate through Slipstream space, but Johnknew it would take more time to make jump calculations.
“Come to heading zero three zero, declination one eight zero,” Caption Wallace ordered. “Arm Archermissile pods A through F. And give me a firing solution.”
“Aye aye,” the navigation and weapons officers said. “A through F pods armed.” They furiously tappedaway on their keypads. Seconds ticked by. “Firing solution ready, sir.”
“Fire.”
“Pods A through F firing!”
TheCommonwealth had twenty-six pods, each loaded with thirty Archer high-explosive missiles. Onscreen, pods A through F opened, and launched—180 plumes of rocket exhaust that traced a path fromtheCommonwealth to the alien ship.
The enemy changed course, rotated so that the top of the ship faced the incoming missiles. It then movedstraight up at an alarming speed.
The Archer missiles altered their trajectory to track the ship, but half their number streaked past thetarget, clean misses.
The others impacted. Fire covered the skin of the alien ship.
“Good work, Lieutenant,” Captain Wallace said, and he clapped the young officer on the shoulder.
Dr. Halsey frowned and stared at the screen. “No,” she whispered. “Wait.”
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The fire flared, then dimmed. The skin of the alien ship rippled like heat wavering off a hot road in thesummer. It fluttered with a metallic silver sheen, then brilliant white—and the fire faded, revealing theship beneath.