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He entered the Command elevator and punched the button for the bridge. The gentle acceleration made new pain flare along
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his arms, and ligaments popped in his chest—but he gritted his teeth and banished the pain from his awareness.
When the doors parted, the Master Chief paused, taking in the sad state of the Gettysburg's bridge. The front viewports had been blown out and recently replaced with welded plates of hull armor. A trio of monitors had been hastily bolted in place over them. Crystallized freeze-dried blood covered the navigation and ops consoles. Only three control stations were lit: engineer?ing, computer status, and MAC ops.
But most disconcerting was that only Admiral Whitcomb and Lieutenant Haverson were present on a bridge that usually needed a staff of thirty officers. The room was as still and empty as a tomb.
"Master Chief," Admiral Whitcomb said, slightly surprised.
"Sir." He stood at attention and snapped off a crisp salute. "Permission to enter the bridge."
"Granted, son," the Admiral said.
"What's your status, Chief?" Haverson asked. "Doctor Halsey told us it would be days before you recovered."
"I'm one hundred percent, sir," he said.
As if she had heard this statement, Dr. Halsey opened a COM channel, and a tiny video feed popped onto his heads-up display. Her glasses reflected an ambient orange light from wherever she was, and he could not see her eyes.
"John, I need to speak with you."
"I'm with Admiral Whitcomb and Lieutenant Haverson, ma'am. When I'm done I can speak with you."
She was silent a moment, then said, "Very well." The COM winked off.
The Master Chief felt a pang of regret for being so terse with her.
"Get over here, son," the Admiral said. He returned his atten?tion to the clear plastic wall dotted with stars and the diamond symbols that represented UNSC military outposts in this region of space. "We're in something of a tough spot."
He marched to the Admiral and Haverson and studied the chart with them. "Cortana's briefed me, sir. The Covenant know Earth's location and are on the move, most likely preparing a massive attack."
"That's the gist of it, I'm afraid," Haverson said, and the Chief
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noticed deep circles of fatigue ringing the younger man's eyes. "To complicate matters, we can barely navigate. We've been working around the clock to restore our ships, but we'd need an engineering crew of a hundred and a space dock to get these wrecks into fighting shape."
Admiral Whitcomb frowned at the Lieutenant's dour assess?ment and added, "Another trick is that the crystal we picked up on Reach emits radiation in Slipspace. Enough to kill everyone after only a few more hours of exposure.
"But we're hanging on to the alien device. It changes the prop?erties of Slipspace, as you already saw—but with one more twist. In the few minutes we were in that tangled version of Slip-space, we traveled here"—he drew a tiny circle on the map, cen?tered on their position—"which under normal circumstances should have taken us days."