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"Understood," Lash replied. Two minutes could be forever. "Continue dark protocols," he ordered Yang. "Lock down all external systems." To Lieutenant Durruno he said, "Use docking jets to present minimal aspect to the incoming vessels while they're on the blind side."
"Aye, sir." She activated the thrusters and tapped a joystick to manually reposition the ship.
On-screen the moon tilted as they realigned.
The Covenant destroyer pair emerged from the far side of the moon… and grew larger on-screen. Sleek and dangerous as hell, their gray-blue hulls bore down on the Dusk.
"Replot their course," Lash told Lieutenant Commander Waters.
Waters stood over his station, checked and rechecked his numbers. "Not an intercept course," he whispered, "… but dammed close."
A coincidence? Or had the enemy seen them and were coming for revenge?
"Stay dark," Lash ordered.
There was little else they could do.
The destroyers' smooth blue curves filled their viewscreens.
Lash felt the butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation of quantum fluctuations from the Covenant repulsor engines.
The Dusk tumbled and spun.
The viewscreen cleared, revealing a rotating field of untwin-kling stars.
"Thirty-one meters off the port bow," Waters breathed.
"Repulsor wake has set us adrift off the Lagrange point, sir," Lieutenant Durruno said.
"Let us drift, Lieutenant," Lash said. "Fix cameras on the Stalingrad."
The spinning stars on the viewscreens slowed and then centered on the four UNSC warships as they rounded the moon at flank speed, chasing the two Covenant destroyers.
"They're lining up for a shot," Waters said. "They've got six MAC slugs left. That should be enough."
"Energy spike!" Yang shouted, "Not from our ships. Not from the Covenant vessels, either, sir."
"Location?" Lash asked, and he pushed himself out of the captain's chair.
Yang shook his head, opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Waters went to the SENSOR-OPS station and looked. "Power profile indicative of a Slipspace field," he said. "A big one. Deconvoluting signature. Location is"—his features went slack— "everywhere."
The space around the UNSC fleet rippled and blue lines appeared, connected, and intertwined like waves of sapphire water. Slipspace fields ruptured normal dimensions and Cherenkov radiation dazzled the night—as dozens of Covenant destroyers, carriers, and cruisers appeared, swarms of them formed a phalanx between the UNSC battle group and the two surviving enemy vessels.
"Counting thirty-two Covenant ships," Yang croaked.
Lieutenant Durruno froze at her station, eyes wide with terror.
The Covenant armada fired.
Spotlight energy projectors flashed, and pure white light cleaved the dark. The UNSC ships' titanium armor boiled and vaporized, mixed with venting oxygen, and photonic pressure blasted the flames into wavering plumes.
Archer missiles and magnetic accelerator cannons fired in a desperate counterstrike. The missiles detonated a fraction of