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Keyes gripped the arms of the command chair. “Cradle’s crew bought this shot for us, Lieutenant,”Captain Keyes growled. “Make it count.”
TheIroquois shuddered as the MAC gun fired. On the status display, Keyes watched as the rest of theUNSC fleet fired simultaneously. A twenty-one-gun salute three times over for those on board thestation who had given their lives.
“All ships: break and attack!” Admiral Stanforth bellowed. “Pick your targets and fire at will. Take asmany of these bastards out as you can! Stanforth out.”
They had to move before the Covenant plasma weapons recharged.
“Give me fifty percent on our engines,” Captain Keyes ordered, “and come about to course two eightzero.”
“Aye,” Ensign Lovell and Lieutenant Hall replied in unison.
“Lieutenant Hikowa, release safeties on the Archer missile system.”
“Safeties disengaged, sir.”
TheIroquois moved away at a near-right angle from the phalanx formation. The other UNSC shipsscattered at all vectors. One UNSC destroyer, theLancelot , accelerated straight toward the Covenant line.
As the UNSC ships scattered, the MAC salvo reached the Covenant ships. The Admiral’s firingsolutions had targeted the remainder of the Covenant battlegroup’s smaller ships. Their shields sparkled,rippled, and then flickered out of existence. Their frigates shattered under the impact of the firepower.Holes ripped through their hulls. Wrecked spacecraft drifted lazily through the battle area.
The surprise second salvo had cost the Covenant dearly—a dozen enemy ships were out of the fight.
That left eight Covenant vessels—destroyers and cruisers.
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Pulse lasers and Archer missiles fired, and every ship onscreen accelerated towards one another. BothCovenant and UNSC ships released their single-ship fighters.
The tac computer was having trouble tracking everything—Keyes cursed to himself over the lack of aship AI—as the missile fire and plasma discharges strobed in the blackness. Single ships—the humans’Longsword fighters and the flat, vaguely piscine Covenant fighters—dove, and fired, and impacted intowarships. Archer missiles left trails of exhaust. Blue pulse lasers scattered inside the clouds of ventedpropellant and atmosphere, and cast a ghostly blue glow over the scene.
“Orders, sir?” Lovell asked nervously.
Captain Keyes paused—something felt . . . wrong. The battle was utter chaos, and it was nearlyimpossible to tell exactly what was happening. Sensor data was thrown off by the constant detonationsand the fire of the aliens’ energy weapons.
“Scan near the planet, Lieutenant Hall,” Keyes said. “Ensign Lovell, move us closer to Sigma OctanusFour.”
“Sir?” Lieutenant Dominique said. “We’re not engaging the Covenant fleet?”
“Negative, Lieutenant.”
The bridge crew paused for a fraction of a second—all except Ensign Lovell, who tapped on the controlsand plotted a new course. The bridge crew had all had a taste of being heroes in their last battle, and theywanted more. Captain Keyes knew what that was like . . . and he knew how dangerous it was.