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332
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
afraid. Just a few good soldiers fighting for what's right made the
difference."
"Yes, sir."
John remembered all those who had made a difference for
him. Sam. James. CPO Mendez. Captain Keyes. The men and
women who had fought and died on Halo. And now two more
names to add to that list: Whitcomb and Haverson.
The bulkhead blasted off its mounts and clattered onto the
deck of the Ascendant Justice's bridge. Silhouetted in the pas-
sage were dozens of Elites, their energy swords blurs of motion
and light. Admiral Whitcomb fired a submachine gun.
The central viewscreen dissolved into static.
John watched for a moment, hoping the Admiral and the Lieu-
tenant would reappear ... but screen number two remained
offline.
Video feed from the Clarion spy drone filled the side screens.
There were two hundred warships clustered tightly about the
figure-eight-shaped Unyielding Hiewphant. A similar number of
ships circled in loose orbital trajectories. The formation reminded
John of a miniature spiral galaxy... with a supernova core.
The dorsal bulb of the space station shot with color—red, or-
ange, and blurred with blue-white heat in a heartbeat; plasma
tendrils erupted from the surface like solar flares. Internal explo-
sions chained down the station's length through the narrow center
portion and into the ventral bulb, shattering that section and
discharging bolts of lightning that arced along the station's frag-
ments and to the nearby ships.
The Unyielding Hierophant became a roiling cloud of fiery
plasma and smoke and static charges that enveloped the ships
that had come to engage Ascendant Justice, ships that flashed
white hot and, in an instant, vaporized.
This thunderhead of superheated and pressurized gas bal-
looned outward to engulf the rest of the orbiting flotilla; heated
their shields, which shimmered silver and popped like soap bub-
bles; melted their hulls and consumed them.
The blast cooled and the cloud dissipated—but ejected debris
continued outward, leaving comet trails, and impacted on stray
ships not near the epicenter.
"Move the drone back into the moon's shadow," John ordered.