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CHAPTER FIVE
1637 hours, September 22,2552 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard
Longsword fighter, uncharted system, Halo debris field. Three
weeks later.
The Master Chief settled into the pilot's seat of the Longsword
attack craft. He didn't fit. The contoured seat had been engi-
neered to mate with a standard-issue Navy flight suit, not the
bulky MJOLNIR armor.
He scratched his scalp and breathed deeply. The air tasted odd—
it lacked the metallic quality of his suit's air scrubbers. This was the
first quiet moment he'd had to sit, think, and remember. First there
was the satisfaction after the successful space op at Reach, which
went sour after Linda was killed and the Covenant glassed the
planet... and Red Team. Then the time spent in a Pillar of Autumn
cryotube, the flight from Reach, and the discovery of Halo.
And the Flood.
He stared out from the front viewport and fought down his
revulsion at the memory of the Flood outbreak. Whoever had
constructed Halo had used it to contain the sentient, virulent
xenoform that had nearly claimed them all. The rapidly healing
wound in his neck, inflicted by a Flood Infection Form during
the final battle on Halo's surface, still throbbed.
He wanted to forget it all.. . especially the Flood. Everything
inside him ached.
The system's moon, Basis, was a silver-gray disk against the
darkness of space, and beyond it was the muted purple of the
gas giant Threshold. Between them lay a glistening expanse
of debris—metal, stone, ice, and everything else that had once
been Halo.