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ERIC NYLUND
45
The flagship's turrets turned to bear on the Longsword and
Pelican. They glowed like angry eyes in the dark.
"Three hundred kilometers."
Light sparkled along the length of the Covenant craft as it pre-
pared to fire; dull red plasma gathered; three torpedoes extruded
and raced toward them.
"Evasiv—" the Chief said.
Cortana banked hard port, starboard, and then hit the after-
burners and pulled up. Streaks of hell&e brushed close to the hulls
of the Longsword and Pelican—then were gone behind them.
The Chief had hoped for this: Their extreme oblique approach
angle combined with their speed made them hard to hit, even for
the notoriously accurate Covenant plasma weapons.
"Ten kilometers," Cortana announced. "Scanning in burst
mode."
They flashed over the three-kilometer-long ship in the blink of
an eye. The Chief saw gun turrets straining to track their ap-
proach. The alien craft had sleek lines, relatively flat top to bot-
tom, but it curved from stem to stern into three distinct bulb
sections. Along its hull ran glowing blue conduits of super-
heated plasma; surrounding the ship was a faint shimmer of sil-
ver energy shields.
He eased back into his seat. The Chief hadn't realized that
he'd been holding his breath, and he exhaled. "Good," he said.
"Very good."
"Burning into a high slingshot orbit," Cortana announced.
The Longsword's engines rumbled. The acceleration played
hell with the Chief's inner ear. He wasn't certain for a moment
which way was up.
"Bring us closer to the Pelican," he said. "Right on top. Give
me a hard dock on its top access hatch."
Cortana set her hands on her hips and frowned. "Readjusting
burn parameters. But you know a linked-ship configuration dur-
ing an orbital burn is not stable."
"We won't be linked long," he said and slipped out of his har-
ness. He drifted aft, pulled himself down to the floor and opened
the Longsword's access hatch. Green lights on the intervening
pressure door winked on in succession. He removed the safeties
and popped the seal.