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268
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
with her team. She sat cross-legged before a disassembled
SRS99C sniper rifle and selected gyro compensators, optics,
and adaptive texture barrel sheaths. Linda proceeded to re-
assemble the precision-made weapon with the care of a loving
mother caressing her newborn child.
Without looking up from her rifle she said, "Now I know what
you have to do to get a couple of days' R-and-R in this outfit."
"I heard," Fred remarked, "that you spent the whole time
sleeping, too."
"That's why she likes to snipe," Will replied. "I caught her
snoring last time she posted in that tower on Europa."
John was glad they could joke about her return from the dead.
He couldn't bring himself to join in, though. He had accepted
the mantle of command, and CPO Mendez had taught him to re-
press his external emotional reactions to preserve his authority.
Right now, he resented that.
Kelly rolled over and woke up. She nudged Grace, and they
sat up, shaking their helmets. "0400," Kelly told them. "That
was six hours."
"Felt like a fifteen-minute nap," Grace muttered. "I just closed
my eyes. You're kidding, right?"
Kelly looked over to Linda and drew her two fingers across
her helmet in the smile gesture. Linda returned a rare, bare smile
to her.
The smile looked odd to John. He wanted to smile, too, but
nothing much—apart from Linda—in a long time had given him
cause: not the hordes of rebels crawling over and through the
Gettysburg whom Admiral Whitcomb trusted too much, nor the
imminent return of Covenant forces before their engines and
weapons could be repaired. .. and certainly not the hundreds of
dead crew members aboard the Gettysburg, whom they had col-
lected and placed in cargo bay seven.
The slight click of metal on metal alerted every Spartan in
the room. Pistols drew in a blur of motion and rifles leveled at the
side hatch as it eased open with a squeak.
Sergeant Johnson and Corporal Locklear stood in the doorway—
frozen.
"No one told me this was target practice," Locklear muttered.
"Else I woulda painted a bull's-eye on my chest."