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308
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
group of Jackals passed the mouth of the alley only five meters
from his position. He ducked ... and none of the vulturelike
creatures saw him in the dark.
When they passed he looked up and saw that the fiber-optic
probe had not been broken after all.
The space station was hollow inside, and a light beam shot
lengthwise through its center: a blue light that provided full day-
light illumination. Along the curved inner surface were
needle-thin spires, squat stair-step pyramids, and columned
temples. Catwalks with moving surfaces crisscrossed the space,
as did tubes with capsules that whisked passengers. Water flowed
along the walls in inward-spiral patterns and then waterfalled
"up" into great hollow towers that sprouted from the opposite
wall.
Banshees flew in formation through the center space of the
great room, as did flocks of headless birds and great clouds of
butterflies. It could have been an Escher etching come to life.
John felt extreme vertigo for a moment. Then he understood
that with advanced Covenant gravity technology, there didn't
have to be an up or down here.
Odd that a military station would have so much unnecessary
ornamentation. Yet Fleet HQ had a large atrium in their lobby.
Maybe this was the Covenant equivalent—multiplied a
hundredfold.
John spied a band of translucent material set into a far wall,
glistening. "Is that the window to the repair bays, Cortana?"
"Correct," she replied.
"Then at least we know the way out. And the structure we
need to enter?"
"One o'clock," she said. "The one with the carved columns. It
is the most direct route to the reactor chambers."
John moved out of the hole and hugged the nearby wall. The
shadows in the bright daylight would do a decent job of camou-
flaging them.
"Okay, Blue Team. Get oriented.. . as much as you can. Our
target is the columned building at one o'clock. I make it to be a
three-hundred-meter sprint across open ground. We'll make a
break for it. Unless anyone has a better plan?"
Linda emerged, looked around, and said, "Permission to post
on the rooftop and provide cover."