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John brushed off the frost buildup that clouded the top half of the cryotube, and revealed the green-armored figure sprawled behind the plastasteel shell.
SPARTAN-058. Linda.
She'd been mortally wounded during the raid on Gamma Sta?tion, just before Reach fell. He'd dragged her burned, limp body back to the Pillar of Autumn, and the medics had placed her in deep cryostasis just before the jump.
When the Autumn crashed on Halo, Keyes must have jetti?soned the active cryotubes—standard operating procedure.
They had frozen her while she'd still been in her suit. That was for the best, considering the extent of her injuries ... but he would have given anything to see her face one last time.
Linda had been unique among the Spartans with her bloodred hair and dark emerald eyes, but her appearance was not what set her apart. She was the unit's best sniper-scout and could hit tar?gets the rest of them couldn't. While the other Spartans pre?ferred to operate as a team, Linda was content to separate, hide and post in some remote location, and wait for days for the sin?gle, critical shot that could turn the tide of battle. Although snipers in the UNSC were always trained to function in pairs, a shooter and a spotter, Linda was the exception to that rule—she had proven time and again that she was most effective on her own. If any one of the Spartans could be called a "lone wolf," it was Linda. In many ways that made her the strongest of them.
To see her like this ...
ERIC NYLUND 151
John wiped away the condensation that formed over her hel-meted head. She was neither dead nor alive. She was in some twilight place in between.
That uncertainty was worse than seeing her broken and burned body on Gamma Station. It felt like an open wound in John's chest.
Linda's prognosis was good. The occupants of the other two cryopods hadn't made it. Some kind of energy discharge had de?activated the units, and those inside had died cold bleak deaths.
There was a gentle knock on the hull of the Pelican, and Sergeant Johnson pulled himself inside. "Master Chief," he said. "You got the air scrubbers? The remote COM? Polaski says she's ready to call it a day with that Covenant dropship. We need to get on board and work."
The Master Chief stood and nodded to the aft hatch, where he had stripped the air scrubbers and COM from the Pelican.
The Sergeant picked up the gear, and then he and the Chief crawled out of the Pelican. The Chief hesitated and looked back atthecryotube.
"Don't you worry about her," Johnson said. "Hell, I been hit worse and she's three times the soldier I am. She'll pull through."
The Chief sealed the hatch without comment. He had heard the same hollow promises a hundred times before with critically wounded men. Why was it that soldiers would face their own deaths without blinking an eye... but when faced with the death of a squadmate, they turned away and lied to themselves?
They silently marched across the hangar. It had been cleared of debris and bodies, and Warrant Officer Polaski had, for the last six hours, been practicing inside the space with the intact Covenant dropship. She spun the odd U-shaped craft around on its center axis, shimmied to port, rose, and then floated down for a landing.