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"I am aware of our trajectory, Warrant Officer," she said and snapped off the COM. The last thing she needed was a flying lesson.
The leading edge of the plasma overtook them. It roiled in their wake, churned explosively with the atmosphere. The flag?ship pitched and dropped in the unstable air, but the plasma dif?fused and caused them no further damage. Behind the flagship was an unfurling trail hundreds of kilometers long, a wide flam?ing gash upon Threshold.
80 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
Cortana experienced a moment of triumph—then squelched it.
There was a new problem: The concussion from that blast had altered their flight path. The heat and overpressure wave had thinned the atmosphere ... just enough to cause the flagship to drop seven hundred meters. Wisps of ice crystals washed over the prow.
They were too deep now. They didn't have enough power to break orbit. They would spiral into the atmosphere, and would ultimately be crushed by the titanic gravitational forces of Threshold.
The Chief spun in midair and planted his feet on the "ground." The gravity had been disabled in this elevator shaft. That had made traversing the many intervening decks easy ... as long as he'd been willing to jump and trust that the power in this part of the ship wouldn't be restored.
The Engineer clutching his shoulder tapped the tiny control panel on the wall. The doors at the bottom of the shaft sighed and slowly slid apart.
Funny how the creature didn't care what or who John was. Didn't it know their races were enemies? It was clearly intelli?gent and could communicate. Maybe it didn't care about ene?mies or allies. Maybe all it wanted to do was its job.
There was a corridor ahead, five meters wide, with a vaulted ceiling. Past a final arch, the passage opened up into the cav?ernous reactor room. The ambient lights in the hallway and room were off. Along the far wall of the room, however, the ten-meter-high reactor coils pulsed with blue-white lightning and threw hard shadows onto the walls.
The Master Chief adjusted his low-light filters to screen out the glow from the reactor. He made out the silhouettes of crates and other machinery. He also saw one of those shadows on the wall move ... with the distinct slouching waddle of a Covenant Grunt. Then the motion was gone.
An ambush. Of course.
He paused, listened, and heard the panting of at least half a dozen Grunts, and then the high-pitched uneasy squeaks the creatures emitted when they were excited.
This came as a relief to the Master Chief. If there was an Elite
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here, it would have maintained better discipline and silenced the Grunts.
Still, the Master Chief hesitated. His shields were gone, his armor breached. He had been fighting almost nonstop for what felt like years. He was forced to admit that he was at the limits of his endurance.
A good soldier always assessed the tactical situation—and right now, his situation was serious. A single lucky plasma shot could inflict third-degree burns along his arm and shoulder and incapacitate him, which would give the Grunts an opportunity to finish him off.