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222
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
ton, post on top of the dropship. Li, you're at three o'clock. Will
at nine. I'll take the six."
Blue acknowledgment lights winked on.
John helped Fred and Grace set the plates in position. Grace
and Fred fired up the arc welder, and pinpoints of metal liquefied
beneath their tips. A shower of sparks swirled around them in the
evacuated environment like a swarm of fireflies.
"We're in position, Admiral," John reported. "ETA for repairs
is two minutes."
"Roger, Chief," Admiral Whitcomb replied. Ionization made
the channel flood with static. "When you're done, give the word
and get secure—we'll be accelerating immediately."
"Yes, sir."
So far, so good, John thought. Just another minute or two.
A streamer of plasma appeared from nowhere. The tangled,
crisscrossed Slipspace around them dropped the bolt of boiling
fire fifty meters overhead; it moved port to starboard—and van-
ished back into the void.
The COM shattered into white noise, and the motion sensors
blurred... as did the active camouflage shielding of the six Elites
who had been slowly—and until a moment ago imperceptibly—
crawling toward their position.
"Enemy contacts!" John shouted.
He crouched behind the dome of a sensor node and opened
fire. A hail of bullets caught the closest Elite dead-center in its
chest. The gunfire punched through its shielding and then tore
into its armor. It tumbled backward and spun off the hull.
In his peripheral vision John saw the silent muzzle flashes from
his team. He glanced back; Fred and Grace hadn't moved. They
stared at the beads of molten alloy under their arc welder's tip.
As if Fred could read his mind, he said, "I need another twenty
seconds, Chief."
A volley of crystalline needles fired from one of the Elites
peppered the sensor node. The Master Chief returned fire, but
the Elite's camouflage kicked in and it faded from view.
Another plasma bolt sizzled close to the hull, this one thirty
meters to port. It was a river of fire that lit the surface of Ascen-
dant Justice like a dozen suns. John's shields drained to a quarter.
"Okay, Chief," Fred told him, "I'm—"