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Or as Chief Mendez had put it: "Start tumbling in this gear, start praying."
Green status lights winked back at Kurt.
"ETA three minutes," he said.
"Roger," Kelly replied and then she added, "Something wrong?"
"No," Kurt said.
Fred's voice came over the COM: "When you say 'no' like that, you mean 'yes.'"
"Just a feeling," he admitted.
Silence hissed over their linked single-beam COMs.
Kurt watched in his rear-angle display as Kelly and Fred activated their MA5B assault rifles. A data cable linked each rifle to their T-PACK microprocessor to give the proper counterthrust when the weapon fired.
Kurt sighed, momentarily fogging his faceplate. Now they were jumpy, too. But maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Too many things weren't adding up.
There was the echo and the inactive spy satellite. And why had CENTCOM picked them to go on a low-risk recon mission? This was just a simple look to check out reported suspicious activity at a decommissioned USNC shipyard. Sure, a long space walk was a high-risk maneuver… but not something you'd send three Spartans on.
"Coming up on the twilight zone," Kurt said. "Go to radio silent."
They drifted toward the razor line that marked night to day on the smooth icy moon. There was no atmosphere, so the transition into the light would be quick, no sparkling sunrise, just a blinding flash of glare.
They crossed into the light. Kurt's faceplate automatically polarized, and they got their first glimpse of the shipyard.
Station Delphi was a floating city of welded scaffolding, cranes, docking pods, tubes, and grappling claws. There were no lights. No thermal emissions. Kurt snapped on his high-def recorder to capture every square meter of the derelict. Whoever had been responsible for the station's decommissioning three years ago had done a sloppy job. There was a halo of debris: spinning steel girders, bolts, and battle plate flashing as it caught and reflected the dull red sunlight from the distant binary stars.
It looked deserted, so Kurt winked his green status light three times—the all-clear to resume single-beam communication-Fred sent an image over TEAMCOM, the skeletal frame of a
partially constructed ship, about three times the size of their prowler. He said, "That TR steel alloy exposed to solar radiation is supposed to turn white."
"It's silver," Kurt replied. "New construction?"
"Check this out," Kelly said.
She uploaded a series of images, capturing at increasing magnification a hull-support cradle whose shape suggested the oddly angular structure of a stealth ship. Only this vessel had to be as large as a UNSC destroyer—which was impossible. A large stealth ship was an oxymoron. The bigger the ship, the more radiation leaked, the more thermals, the more stealth-coated surfaces had to be kept in perfect repair so they didn't reflect radar.
"Send that image on a single beam back to the Circumference," Kurt ordered.
Kelly's status light went green.
Kurt swept his left hand forward, gathering data on his sensors-encrusted glove. Still no thermals. No, wait, as Station Delphi rotated slowly, a tiny white flare appeared.