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"You haven't won," Kurt said. "You've still got me to get through."
The Ship Master assessed Kurt and nodded, perhaps understanding him, perhaps not. It gazed upon Kurt as an equal. A fellow warrior.
Around them the concentric rings settled to the floor, and with a whispered hiss, all of the ridges melded into a single smooth surface. The fins touched down silently, thirteen clamping armatures splayed two meters from the center of the room.
His countdown timer blinked at him: "0:00."
He exhaled. The rift was closed.
Kurt opened his team roster—subheading status—and moved Will, SPARTAN-043; Dante, SPARTAN-G188; and Holly, SPARTAN-G003 to the missing-in-action column, adhering to the tradition of never listing a fallen Spartan as "killed in action."
Kurt then highlighted Lieutenant Commandeer Kurt Ambrose… and moved that name to the MIA list as well—next to Kurt, SPARTAN-051.
The room started to spin. His mouth went dry He tried to swallow. Couldn't.
His vision doubled and he thought he saw Tom and Lucy
come back to get him… but it wasn't them. It was Shane, Robert, and Jane from Team Wolf Pack.
There were hundreds of Spartans with him on the platform— from Alpha and Beta Companies, Dante, Holly, Will, and even Sam… all ready to fight and win this last battle with him.
Hallucination? Maybe. It was nonetheless welcome.
The ghostly Spartans nodded, and gave him the thumbs-up "can-do" signal.
Kurt wouldn't let them down. All he had to do was single-handedly stop a Covenant army. One last impossible mission… the short definition of any Spartan. It was the least he owed them.
The Fleet Master Elite snarled at Kurt, and the translation filtered through his helmet's speaker: "One last fight, demon. You will die and we shall reopen the silver path."
"Die?" Kurt laughed. "Didn't you know?" he told the Elite. "… Spartans never die."
Kurt turned his gauntlet face-up and pressed the detonator.
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← ^ → EPILOGUE
SHIELD WORLD
CHAPTER
FORTY
2205 HOURS, NOVEMBER 4, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM \ THE MOON OF ONYX \ ABOARD THE UNSC PROWLER DUSK
"Sir, something!" Lieutenant Joe Yang hunched over his sensor station, energy spikes dancing on-screen. "Double BMP signature. Subsurface." He shook his head and tugged at one eyebrow nervously. "Multiple energy signatures now. Hundreds. All underground."
Commander Lash and Lieutenant Commander Waters stood over Yang's shoulder and tried to make sense of it.
"Definitely nukes," Waters breathed. "Radiological ratios indicate it's one of ours."
The electromagnetic pulses faded into a roiling sea of larger waveforms.
"That's a lot more energy than two FENRIS warheads," Lash said. "Something bigger is going on down there." He exhaled, and his breath came out in tremulous shudders. No one noticed.
He opened a SHIPCOM Channel to Cho. "Status of the Slipspace capacitors?"
"Seven-three percent," Cho answered, "losing point oh three percent per minute, sir.