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CHAPTER TWELVE
0744 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon
Eridani system, Longhorn Valley, planet Reach. Five days ago.
Steamy clouds parted like a drawn curtain; a fireball one hun-
dred meters across roared over Fred and Kelly's position. Fred
traced the line of flames back through the sky and spotted the
faint outlines of dozens of Covenant warships in low orbit.
Fred's Banshee skimmed over the treetops, down the mountain-
side. He pushed the craft to its maximum speed. Kelly followed,
and they swooped into a valley and up onto the zigzagging
ridge-line where Joshua had first spotted the Covenant invasion
force.
He put aside thoughts of his fallen comrade. He had to focus
on keeping his remaining team members alive.
Fred called up the mapping system on his heads-up display. A
blue NAV marker, nestled in the crux of topological lines, identi-
fied their fallback position: ONI Section Three's
secure-and-secret research facility buried under Menachite
Mountain. Two decades ago it had been a titanium mine, and then
the abandoned tunnels were used as storage until Section Three
had taken over the mountain for their own purposes.
"We'll need to find a safe route through—"
A hail of purple-white crystalline shards hissed through the
air, arcing up from the forest beneath them. Each shard looked
like the projectile fired by a Covenant needier—but far larger.
The shard that slashed past Fred's cockpit was the size of his
forearm.
Kelly dodged one projectile, which exploded in midair.
Needle-like fragments bounced from the Banshee's fuselage.