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That web of fissures spread: fingers that stretched and split along the length of the window... slowed and stopped.
John fired the Banshee's plasma cannons. Fred opened fire as well, and four blobs of plasma splashed across the glassy surface fifty meters away.
The window flexed, crackled, tiny flakes popped off... but the translucent material remained stubbornly intact.
John was thirty meters from the surface—he'd have to veer off now, or impact upon it. He gritted his teeth and braced himself.
Ten meters.
The window's smooth surface flashed into a jigsaw mosaic. The squealing of glass over glass filled the air. It shattered.
The entire length crumbled and instantly blasted into the vacuum of space—swept out by the pressurized atmosphere fill?ing the interior of the station.
John tried to maneuver the Banshee. He bounced into the repair bay, rolled the craft over and upright—fell off, tumbled though the air lock . . . and drifted away into the darkness of space.
He flailed his limbs in the zero gravity, and the tether on his belt snapped taut. He recoiled back toward the Banshee. Linda held on with one hand and held out the other to him. He climbed back aboard and tapped the thrusters to stabilize their pitch and yaw.
Behind them the station vented gas as well as the bodies of Covenant Engineers, Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. Clouds of metal junk bled from the ruptures. Tendrils of steam flash froze into glittering ice crystals.
The Covenant fleet moved as well—some cruisers closed with the station, others moved farther away. There were five hun?dred alien warships without leadership from their command-and-control center, and they reminded John of motes of dust in a sunbeam—silently floating in every direction.
ERIC NYLUND
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John spotted a dropship drifting a kilometer ahead, dead in space.
He clicked his COM once and dropped a NAV marker onto a Covenant craft. Fred and Will's acknowledgment lights winked on.
John pulsed the Banshee's engines once and let its inertia carry them to the dropship. He hoped the rest of the Covenant Fleet was trying to figure out what had just happened... and not paying any attention to one more piece of debris floating in space.
The Banshees gently impacted onto the tumbling dropship. John grasped the hull, and Linda scrabbled over him, opened the port access hatch, and entered. Fred and Will drifted closer, and John helped them aboard.
He hesitated and took another look at the Covenant fleet. Hundred of ships without control. But how long would that last? Even if the station's reactors chained and blew... the Covenant still had enough force to destroy Earth's defenses and burn it to a cinder.
All they had done was buy a little time: as long as it took for someone to take charge of the Covenant fleet. That wasn't enough, but John wasn't sure what else to do.
He crawled to the hatch, entered the ship, and sealed it be?hind him.
Linda stood at the pilot's console while Fred stood beside her manning the ops station. An engine schematic appeared in front of Linda, and power pulsed through its plasma coils. The interior lights dimly glowed.