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The cut shaft filled with a beam of purple light. It sparkled and shimmered with motes of dust.
"Grav lift," Fred shouted. "Incoming! Isaac and Vinh, take our six. Will, you're with me on Doctor Halsey. Kelly, find us a way out."
Kelly ran in a line directly away from the gravity beam.
A dozen Elites floated down through the shaft, and fired while still in the air. Plasma bolts slashed at them from the distance.
Fred and Will grabbed Dr. Halsey and moved her behind the pedestal, out of the line of fire. Isaac and Vinh fell back and opened fire.
"Suppression fire!" Fred barked. "Keep them pinned in that crater!"
The Spartans fired several bursts, but more Elites were drift?ing down, along with a Shade—a portable plasma turret. If they stayed here, they'd be overrun.
"Fall back," Fred told them over the COM. "It's too hot."
Kelly sprinted, digging in her heals with such force that the tiles buckled and shot out behind her. "Passage," she reported. "Ground floor. Dead ahead. I'll enter and clear."
"My apologies, Doctor," Fred said and unceremoniously scooped Dr. Halsey up in his arms. "Everyone move! Vinh, Isaac, drop those det sacks to cover our tracks."
Their acknowledgment lights winked on.
Will and Fred ran, weaving from side to side. Dr. Halsey clutched
148 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
onto Fred with one arm, and in her free hand she clutched the crystal.
Fred's motion tracker showed dozen of targets behind them, then hundreds.
A pair of detonations thumped, an overpressure wave blurred his motion tracker, subsided, and then half of those contacts were gone.
Will and Fred ran into an arched passage set in the wall of the great room. Kelly crouched in the hallway and fired past them with her pistols.
Fred opened his COM. "SPARTAN-029. SPARTAN-039. Acknowledge."
Static hissed through his speaker. Vinh's and Isaac's lights re?mained dark.
"Prep your det sack and seal this passage," Fred ordered Kelly.
Fred set down Dr. Halsey, turned, and bumped up his display's magnification.
Hundreds of Covenant Elites and Jackals poured from the grav shaft. They swarmed over the floor of the great chamber, a living tide as unstoppable as the ocean.
They weren't shooting anymore, though. Dr. Halsey was cor?rect: They wanted the crystal she'd taken.
"Go!" Fred said. "Kelly, blow the hallway. Let's move."
Kelly hesitated a heartbeat; Fred saw her searching for Vinh and Isaac in the mass of Covenant. They weren't there; not alive anyway. Kelly dropped the olive-green satchel of high explosives.
Will picked up Dr. Halsey, and they all ran deeper into the corridor.
Five seconds later the satchel detonated. A wave of acrid air washed up the hallway and choked the corridor with dust and smoke.
Kelly took the lead position, both pistols ready; she rounded a corner—and skidded to a halt.
The passage was a dead end.
SECTION 3
RESCUE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
0455 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Captured Covenant flagship, in Slipspace, location unknown.