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They were here because Admiral Whitcomb had ordered the Spartans to repair their equipment and get at least six hours of sleep. The machine shop was a solid room, reinforced, and un?likely to breach in case they were attacked again.
Linda sat in the corner with her helmet, back torso, and shoul?der MJOLNIR armor sections removed.
Fred and Will used two robotic arms to hold her armor in place. They swapped out damaged plates and components with the spare parts they'd found in ONI's CASTLE facility on Reach.
Angry red scars crisscrossed Linda's pale body—the only external trace of her double transplant operation. Against Dr. Halsey's advice for strict bed rest, Linda had hobbled down here
268 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
with her team. She sat cross-legged before a disassembled SRS99C sniper rifle and selected gyro compensators, optics, and adaptive texture barrel sheaths. Linda proceeded to re?assemble the precision-made weapon with the care of a loving mother caressing her newborn child.
Without looking up from her rifle she said, "Now I know what you have to do to get a couple of days' R-and-R in this outfit."
"I heard," Fred remarked, "that you spent the whole time sleeping, too."
"That's why she likes to snipe," Will replied. "I caught her snoring last time she posted in that tower on Europa."
John was glad they could joke about her return from the dead. He couldn't bring himself to join in, though. He had accepted the mantle of command, and CPO Mendez had taught him to re?press his external emotional reactions to preserve his authority. Right now, he resented that.
Kelly rolled over and woke up. She nudged Grace, and they sat up, shaking their helmets. "0400," Kelly told them. "That was six hours."
"Felt like a fifteen-minute nap," Grace muttered. "I just closed my eyes. You're kidding, right?"
Kelly looked over to Linda and drew her two fingers across her helmet in the smile gesture. Linda returned a rare, bare smile to her.
The smile looked odd to John. He wanted to smile, too, but nothing much—apart from Linda—in a long time had given him cause: not the hordes of rebels crawling over and through the Gettysburg whom Admiral Whitcomb trusted too much, nor the imminent return of Covenant forces before their engines and weapons could be repaired. .. and certainly not the hundreds of dead crew members aboard the Gettysburg, whom they had col?lected and placed in cargo bay seven.
The slight click of metal on metal alerted every Spartan in the room. Pistols drew in a blur of motion and rifles leveled at the side hatch as it eased open with a squeak.
Sergeant Johnson and Corporal Locklear stood in the doorway— frozen.
"No one told me this was target practice," Locklear muttered. "Else I woulda painted a bull's-eye on my chest."
ERIC NYLUND
269
"Master Chief," the Sergeant said. "Reporting as you requested."
John nodded and lowered his gun, as did the other Spartans. "Come in, Marines."
As he holstered his weapon, John's hand brushed against the belt compartment that held Dr. Halsey's data crystals. He hadn't decided which to give to Lieutenant Haverson. Did he sacrifice the Sergeant to save billions from potential Flood infestation? Did it even matter? He had every reason to believe that the Flood had been destroyed with Halo—but what if he was wrong?