第86页

　　Fred  glanced  at  Will  and  Dr.  Halsey.  Will  gave  him  a  thumbs-up,  indicating  that  the  doctor  hadn't  been  wounded  in  the  exchange.
　　After  the  exchange  of  gunfire,  there  was  no  need  for  secrecy.  "One  of  them  got  away,"  Fred  told  them.  "We  need  to  move,  too...  and  forget  quiet."
　　The  Spartans  ran  down  the  corridor.  They  heard  and  felt  an?other  explosion  directly  over  their  heads.
　　Kelly  skidded  to  a  halt  in  front  of  the  locked  elevator  doors.  She  gripped  one  of  the  panels;  Fred  and  Vinh  gripped  the  seam  of  the  other  side,  and  the  Spartans  pried  them  apart  as  if  the  five-centimeter  steel  alloy  were  no  tougher  than  the  rind  of  an  orange.
　　Kelly  grabbed  the  elevator  cables  and  slid  down.  Vinh  fol?lowed,  then  Fred  plummeted  more  than  five  hundred  meters  into
　　138 HALO:  FIRST  STRIKE
　　the  darkness.  The  three  of  them  ripped  open  the  doors  at  the  bot?tom  of  the  shaft.
　　Will  slid  down  next  with  Dr.  Halsey  holding  on  to  his  neck.  Isaac  followed.
　　"There  should  be  an  air  vent,"  Dr.  Halsey  whispered.  "There."
　　Kelly  ripped  off  the  vent  cover  and  peered  down.
　　"It  leads  to  the  old  mine  tunnels,"  Dr.  Halsey  told  them,  "and  more,  I  hope."
　　"Go,"  Fred  ordered.
　　Kelly  dived  in,  headfirst.  They  waited  ten  seconds,  and  her  ac?knowledgment  light  winked  on.
　　Fred  entered  next,  sliding  through  the  vent  duct.  It  twisted  and  turned  and  finally  dumped  him  into  a  long  tunnel  of  roughly  hewn  granite.  The  ceiling  was  ten  meters  high  and—judging  from  the  three-meter-wide  tire  tracks  in  the  dust—big  enough  for  heavy  equipment  to  have  rolled  through.
　　Will  slid  out  of  the  duct  with  Dr.  Halsey  riding  on  his  chest.  Vinh  and  Isaac  came  after  them.
　　"There's  more  to  this  place,"  Dr.  Halsey  told  them,  standing  up  and  brushing  the  dust  from  her  lab  coat.  "This  is  only  the  be?ginning.  We  have  to—"
　　A  thunderous  detonation  cut  her  off.  The  mountain  exploded,  and  ONI's  base  collapsed  over  their  heads.
　　CHAPTER  FIFTEEN
　　0002  hours,  September  7,2552  (Military  Calendar)  \  ONI  underground  facility,  planet  Reach.
　　Fred  followed  the  trail  of  odd  symbols  along  the  left-hand  stone  wall  until  they  twisted  into  a  spiral  mosaic  and  vanished  into  ever-smaller  curls.  The  symbols  were  part  of  the  rock,  com?posed  of  glittering  mica  inclusions  in  the  granite  matrix.  There  were  a  series  of  squares,  triangles,  bars,  and  dots,  similar  to  Covenant  calligraphy  he  had  seen—but  at  the  same  time  it  was  simpler,  cleaner,  and  when  Fred  focused  on  them,  the  characters  seemed  to  blur  around  their  edges  and  fade  from  his  stare.
　　He  blinked,  and  the  symbols  were  there  again.
　　Following  these  symbols  like  a  trail  of  bread  crumbs  had  been  his  primary  mission  for  the  last  five  days.  Dr.  Halsey  and  the  Spartans  had  explored  the  extensive  caverns,  hoping  to  find  two  things:  a  way  out,  and  what  Dr.  Halsey  called  "the  most  impor?tant  discovery  of  the  millennium."  She  had,  however,  refused  to  speculate  on  what  exactly  this  discovery  would  be.  "I'm  a  scien?tist,"  she'd  told  them,  "not  a  soothsayer."
　　Fred  would  have  settled  for  finding  an  airhole  to  the  surface—  but  he  recognized  that  the  symbols  were  important,  too.  They  were  important  because  the  Covenant  thought  they  were  impor?tant.  And  that  made  whatever  Dr.  Halsey  was  searching  for  worth  finding,  if  only  to  keep  the  enemy  from  getting  it.