As the Covenant warrior fell, the Master Chief made a mad dash for the ramp that led up toward the surface, reloading as he went. Walking into the once-cleared room too quickly had been stupid—and he was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that Cortana was there, seeing the world via his sensors, made such errors that much more embarrassing.

Somehow, for reasons he hadn’t had time to sort out, the human wanted the AI’s approval. Silly? Maybe so, if one thought of Cortana as little more than a fancy computer program, but she was more than that. In the Chief’s mind at least.

He smiled at the irony of the thought. The human-AI interface meant that, in many ways, Cortana was literally in the Chief’s mind, using some of his wetware for processing power and storage.

The Spartan made his way up the ramp, through a hall, and out into bright sunlight. He paused on a platform, and dropped to the slope below, as Cortana cautioned him to keep an eye peeled for Bravo 22.

Covenant troops were patrolling the beach below—a mix of Jackals and Grunts. The Master Chief drew his sidearm, switched to the 2X magnification, and decided to work from right to left. He nailed the first Jackal, missed the next, and killed a pair of Grunts who were waddling around on top of the mesa opposite his position.

As he moved farther down the slope, he could see Bravo 22’s wreckage, half buried in the side of the mesa. There were no signs of life. Either the crew and passengers had been killed on impact, or some had survived and been executed by the enemy.

The possibility made him particularly angry. He turned to the right, caught the surviving Jackal on the move, and put him down. He switched to his MA5B and made his way down the grassy slope to the sand beyond. It was a short walk to the smoking wreckage and the scattering of bodies. Plasma burns on some of the bodies served to confirm the Spartan’s suspicions.

Though not the most pleasant of tasks, the Chief knew he had to obtain ammo and other supplies wherever he could, and took advantage of the situation in order to stock up.

“Don’t forget to grab a launcher,” Cortana put in. “There’s no telling what might be waiting for us when we go back to looking for the Control Room.”

The Master Chief took the AI’s advice and decided to ride rather than walk.

The Warthog that had been tucked under the dropship’s belly had come loose during the final moments of flight, hit the ground, and flipped over on its side. He approached the vehicle, reached upward, got a good purchase, and pulled. Metal creaked as the ’Hog swayed, tilted in the Spartan’s direction, and started to fall. He stepped back, waited for the inevitable bounce, and climbed up behind the wheel. After a quick check to ensure that the LRV was still operable, he was off.

He skidded the Warthog into a slewing turn, then headed back to the mission LZ—the beachhead the Marines had been left to hold.

The Helljumpers had fought off two assaults during his absence, but they still owned the real estate they had originally taken, and remained undeterred.

“Welcome back,” a Corporal said as she took her place behind the three- barreled gun. “It was getting boring without you.” She had a grimy face, the wordsCUT HERE tattooed around the circumference of her neck, and a short, stocky body.

The Chief eyed the hastily dug weapons pits and foxholes, the large pile of Covenant corpses, and the plasma-scorched sand. “Yeah, I can see that.”

A freckle-faced PFC jumped into the passenger seat, a captured plasma rifle cradled in his arms. The Spartan turned back in the direction he had come from, and raced along the edge of the water. Spray flew up along the left side of the LRV and he wished he could feel the moisture on his face.

A kilometer ahead, a Hunter named Igido Nosa Hurru fumed as he paced back and forth across a docking platform still stained with Covenant blood.

Word had come down from an Elite named Zuka ’Zamamee that a lone human had killed two of his brothers a few hours earlier, and was about to attack his newly reinforced position, as well. This was something the spined warrior hoped would happen so that he, and his bond brother Ogada Nosa Fasu, could have the honor of killing the alien.

So, when Hurru heard the whine of the surface vehicle’s engine, and saw it round the headland, both he and his bond brother were ready. Having received the other Hunter’s characteristic nod, Hurru took up a position directly outside the entrance to the complex. If the vehicle was some sort of trick, a ruse to lure both guards away from the door long enough for the human to slip inside, it wasn’t going to work.

Fasu, always one to seize the initiative, and something of an artist with the fuel rod cannon attached to his right arm, waited for the LRV to come within range, led the vehicle to ensure that the relatively slow-moving energy pulse would have an adequate amount of time to reach its destination, and fired a single shot.

The Master Chief saw the yellow-green blob appear in his peripheral vision, and made the decision to turn toward the enemy both to make the ’Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal an opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over.

All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master Chief scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter drop down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive knees, and move forward.

Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, “Come on, Hosky! Let’s take this bastard out!”

The Spartan yelled, “No! Fall back!” and bent over to retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew there simply wasn’t time.

Another Spartan might have been able to dodge out of the way in time, but the Helljumpers didn’t have a prayer.

The distance between the alien and the two Marines had closed by then and they couldn’t disengage. The Corporal threw a fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster, and stared in disbelief as the alien kept on coming. The alien charged right through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and lowered a gigantic shoulder.

Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic shield hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what was left onto the ground. The private remained conscious, however, which meant he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot high into the air, and brought it down on his face.

The Master Chief had the launcher up on his shoulder by then and was just about to fire when the Corporal screamed something incoherent, dashed into the line of fire, and blocked his shot. The Chief yelled at her to hit the deck and was moving sideways in an attempt to get a clear line of fire when Fasu blew a hole the size of a dinner plate through the leatherneck’s chest.

The Spartan hit the firing stud, and a rocket whoosh ed for the Hunter. With surprising agility, the massive alien hunched and sidestepped, and the rocket skimmed past him. It detonated behind the Hunter, and showered them both with debris.

The Hunter charged.

The Master Chief stepped back, knew there wouldn’t be time to reload, and that the next rocket would have to fly straight and true. The surf swirled around his knees as he backed out into the ocean, fought to maintain his footing in the soft sand, and saw the alien fill his sight. Was the target too close? There wasn’t time to check. He pulled the trigger, and a second rocket streaked ahead on a column of smoke and fire.

The Hunter had reached full speed and couldn’t dodge in time. The creature’s massive feet dug into the soft ground as it tried to alter course to avoid the rocket—to no avail. The 102mm shaped charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter’s chest armor, blew through his torso, and severed his spine. There was a mighty splash as the alien creature fell face first into the water. A pool of vibrant orange blood stained the surf around the fallen Hunter.

The Master Chief took a moment to reload the launcher then slogged back up onto the beach. A distant howl of anguish issued from the other alien’s throat. Serves you right, he thought. You only lost one brother. I lost all of mine.

He felt a pang of sorrow for the two dead Marines. He should have anticipated the long-range attack, should have briefed the leathernecks about the possibility of Hunters, should have reacted more quickly. All of which meant that it was his fault that the Marines were dead.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Cortana said gently. “Now be careful— there’s another Hunter up on the platform.”

The words were like a bucket of cold water in the face. “Mental combat,”

that’s how his teacher, Chief Mendez, had referred to it, always stressing the importance of a cool head.

Slowly, methodically, the Master Chief worked his way up the slope, killing Covenant soldiers with machine precision. The small groups of Grunts were irrelevant. The real challenge waited above.

Hurru heard the firing, knew he was being flanked, and welcomed it. Rage, sorrow, and self-pity all churned around inside him causing him to fire his fuel rod cannon again and again, as if to obliterate the human by the weight of his barrage.

The human made good use of what cover there was, put his left arm against the cliff face, and inched his way forward. The Hunter saw him and attempted to fire, but the fuel rod cannon hadn’t had time to recharge after the last shot. That left the human free to fire, which he did. Hurru felt warm relief.

He was about to join his bond brother.

The rocket was a hair high, hit Hurru in the head, and blew it off. Orange blood fountained straight up, splashed the alien metal around the Hunter, and splattered his body as it collapsed.

The Spartan paused, switched to his assault weapon, and waited for the feeling of satisfaction. It never arrived. The Marines were still dead, would always be dead, and nothing would change that. Was it fair that he remained alive? No, it wasn’t. All he could do was accomplish what they would want him to do. Forge ahead, find the map, and make their deaths count for something.

With that thought in mind, the Master Chief reentered the complex on foot, made his way through halls still slick with alien blood from his last visit, turned down the ramp, proceeded to the lower level, and passed through the door he had worked so hard to open.

The Master Chief moved into the bowels of the structure. From outside, the spires stood several stories high, which was misleading. The interior of the structure plunged deep below the surface.

He wound down a curving ramp. The air was still and slightly stale, and thick pillars of the first large chamber he moved through made the room feel like a crypt.

He slipped through heavily shadowed rooms, padded down spiral ramps, passing through galleries filled with strange forms. The walls and floors were made of the same burnished, heavily engraved metal that he’d encountered elsewhere on the ring. He clicked on his light and noticed new patterns in the metal, like the swirls in marble—as if the material were some kind of metal-stone hybrid.

The tomblike silence was shattered by the squalling of several Grunts and Jackals. There was opposition, plenty of it, as the human was forced to deal with dozens of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. “It’s as if they knew we were on the way,” Cortana observed. “I think someone is tracking our progress, and has a pretty good idea of where we’re headed.”

“No kidding,” the Master Chief replied dryly as he shot a Grunt and stepped over the body. “I hope we reach the Cartographer before I run out of ammo.”

“We’re close,” the AI assured him, “but be careful. There’s bound to be more Covenant ahead.”

The Master Chief took Cortana’s counsel to heart. He hoped that he would find a way to bypass whatever the Covenant had in store, but that wasn’t to be. As the Spartan entered a large room, he saw that two Hunters had been assigned to patrol the far side of it. He slung his rifle and readied the rocket launcher. It was the right weapon for Hunters, no question about that—so long as he didn’t allow either one of the monsters to get too close. A rocket fired under those conditions would kill him if it detonated nearby.

One of the spined aliens spotted the intruder and bellowed a challenge. The Hunter was already in motion when the rocket flashed across the room, struck him in the right shoulder, and blasted him to hell.

A second Hunter howled and fired his fuel rod cannon. The Chief swore as the wash from a slightly off-target plasma bolt set off the audible alarm, and the indicator in the upper right hand corner of his HUD morphed to red.

The Spartan turned, hoping to put the second Hunter in his sight, but the massive alien slid behind a wall.

Unable to fire, he backed off. The Hunter lunged forward, and the deadly razor-spines raked across his already-weakened shields.

The Chief grunted in pain as the tip of the uppermost spine spiked through his armor’s shoulder joint. He felt a sickly tearing as the meat of his arm parted beneath the scalpel-sharp limb.

He spun, and the spine wrenched free.

The Master Chief felt a rising sense of frustration as he switched to the assault weapon, backed up a ramp, and used his greater mobility to circle behind the alien. Then he had it, a brief glimpse of unprotected flesh, and the opportunity he needed. He put a quick burst into the warrior’s back, spun away, and barely escaped a blast from the plasma pistols of the Jackals that had dropped into view and opened fire.

The Master Chief hurled three grenades over a divider. One of them scored a direct hit, sprayed the walls with chunks of alien flesh, and finally brought the frantic firefight to an end.

Cortana, whose life had been on the line as well, and who had been forced to watch as the Spartan fought for both of them, processed a sense of relief.

Somehow, against all odds, her human host had come through again, but it had been close, very close, and he was still in something akin to shock, his back pressed into a corner, his vital signs badly elevated, his eyes jerking from one shadow to the next.

The AI hesitated as she processed the dilemma. It was difficult to balance the need to move ahead and complete the mission with her concern that she might push the Master Chief too hard, and possibly endanger them both.

Cortana’s affection for the human, plus her own desire to survive, made it difficult for her to arrive at the kind of clear, rational decision that she expected of herself.

Then, just as Cortana was about to say something, anything, even if it was wrong, the Chief recovered and took the initiative. “All right,” he said— whether to himself or to Cortana wasn’t exactly clear. “It’s time to finish this mission.”

Working carefully, so as not to walk into an ambush, the Master Chief left the large room, found his way onto a downward slanting ramp. He backed into a corner and, satisfied that the area was reasonably secure, disengaged the shoulder plates of the MJOLNIR armor.

The wound was ragged, and blood flowed freely. The Chief could ignore the pain, but the blood loss would take its toll and jeopardize the mission. He made sure the motion sensor was still active, then slung his weapon.

He dug into his equipment pack and drew out his med kit. The Spartan had been wounded before, and had on several occasions performed first aid on injured comrades and himself. He quickly cleaned the wound, sprayed a stinging puff of bio-foam into the wound, then applied a quick-adhesive dressing.

In minutes, he had suited up, popped a wake-up stim, and moved on.

“Foehammer to ground team: You’ve got two Covenant dropships coming fast!”

The Master Chief stood at the edge of a massive chasm and monitored his allies’ radio chatter. In the distance, he could barely see the twinkling of the luminescent panels that Halo’s creators had left behind to illuminate these subterranean warrens. Below him, the abyss yawned and appeared to be bottomless.

He recognized the next voice as belonging to Gunnery Sergeant Waller, the Helljumper in charge of their LZ. “Okay, people,” Waller drawled, “we got company coming. Engage enemy forces on sight.”

“It’ll be easier to hold them off from inside the structure,” Cortana put in.

“Can you get inside?”

“Negative!” Waller replied. “They’re closing in too fast. We’ll keep ’em busy as long as we can.”

“Give ’em hell, Marine,” the AI said grimly, and broke the connection.

“We’ll all be in a tight spot if we don’t get out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive.”

“Roger that,” the Master Chief replied, as he pushed his way down a ramp, through a pair of hatches, and into the gloomy spaces beyond. He marched over some transparent decking, crossed a footbridge and killed a pair of Grunts he found there, followed another ramp to the floor below, tossed a grenade into a group of enemies that patrolled the area, and hurried through a likely looking opening. There was a roar of outrage as an Elite fired up at him from the platform below while some Grunts barked and gibbered.

The Spartan used a grenade to grease the entire group and hurried down to see what they had been guarding. He recognized the Map Room the moment he saw the opening, and had just stepped inside when another Elite opened up on him from across the way. A sustained burst from his assault weapon was sufficient to drop the alien’s personal shields, and he put the alien down with a stroke of his rifle butt.

“There!” Cortana said. “That holo panel should activate the map.”

“Any idea how to activate it?”

“No,” she replied, her tone arch. “You’re the one with the magic touch.”

The Master Chief took a couple of steps forward and reached a hand toward the display. He seemed to know instinctively how to activate the panel—it almost seemed hard-wired, like his fight-or-flight response.

He banished the random thought and returned to the mission. He slid his armored hand across the panel and a glowing wire-frame map appeared and seemed to float in front of him. “Analyzing,” the AI said. “Halo’s Control Center is”—she highlighted a section of the map in his HUD— “there. Interesting. It looks like some sort of shrine.”

She opened a channel. “Cortana to Captain Keyes.”

There was silence for a moment, followed by Foehammer’s voice. “The Captain has dropped out of contact, Cortana. His ship may be out of range or may be having equipment problems.”

“Keep trying,” the AI replied. “Let me know when you reestablish contact.

And then tell him that the Master Chief and I have determined the location of the Control Center.”

Captain Jacob Keyes tried to ignore the incessant slam-bam beat of the Sergeant’s colonial flip music that pounded over the intercom as the pilot lowered the dropship into a swamp. “Everything looks clear—I’m bringing her down.”

The Pelican’s jets whipped the water into a frenzy as the ramp was lowered and the cargo compartment was flooded with thick, humid air. It carried the nauseating stench of rotting vegetation, the foul odor of swamp gas, and the slight metallic tang typical of Halo itself. Somebody said, “Pe-euu,” but was drowned out by Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, who shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”

and the Marines jumped down into the calf-deep water.

Somebody said, “Damn!” as water splashed up their legs. Johnson said, “Stow it, Marine,” as Keyes cleared the ramp. Freed from its burden, the dropship fired its jets, powered its way up out of the glutinous air, and started to climb.

Keyes consulted a small hand comp. “The structure we’re looking for is supposed to be over there .”

Johnson eyed the pointing finger and nodded. “Okay, you slackers, you heard the Captain. Bisenti, take point.”

Private Wallace A. Jenkins was toward the rear, which was almost as bad as point, but not quite. The ebony water topped his boots, seeped down through his socks, and found his feet. It wasn’t all that cold—for which the Marine was thankful. Like the rest of the team, he knew that the ostensible purpose of the mission was to locate and recover a cache of Covenant weapons. Still an important thing to do, even in the wake of Lieutenant McKay’s efforts to raid the Pillar of Autumn , and the fact that Alpha Base had been strengthened as a result.

It was a crap detail, however—especially slogging through this dark, mist- clogged swamp.

Something loomed ahead. Bisenti hoped it was what the Old Man had dragged their sorry butts into this swamp for. He hissed the word back to the topkick. “I see a building, Sarge.”

There was the sound of water splashing as Johnson came forward. “Stay close, Jenkins. Mendoza, move it up! Wait here for the Captain and his squad. And get your asses inside.”

Jenkins saw Keyes materialize out of the mist. “Sir!”

Johnson saw Keyes, nodded, and said, “Okay, let’s move!”

Keyes followed the Marines inside. The entire situation was different from what he had expected. Unlike the Covenant, who killed nearly all of the humans they got their hands on, the Marines continued to take prisoners.

One such individual, a rather disillusioned Elite named ’Qualomee, had been interrogated for hours. He swore that he’d been part of a group of Covenant soldiers who had delivered a shipment of arms to the forces guarding this very structure.

But there was no sign of a Covenant security team, or the weapons ’Qualomee claimed to have delivered, which meant that he had probably been lying. Something the Captain planned to discuss with the alien upon his return to Alpha Base. In the meantime, Keyes planned to push deeper into the complex and see what he could find. The second squad, under Corporal Lovik, was left to cover their line of retreat, while the rest of the team continued to press ahead.

Ten minutes had passed when a Marine said, “Whoa! Look at that.

Something scrambled his insides.”

Johnson looked down at a dead Elite. Other Covenant bodies lay sprawled around the area as well. Alien blood slicked the walls and floor. Keyes approached from behind. “What do we have, Sergeant?”

“Looks like a Covenant patrol,” the noncom answered. “Badass Special Ops types—the ones in the black armor. All KIA.”

Keyes eyed the body and looked up at Bisenti. “Real pretty. Friend of yours?”

The Marine shook his head. “No, we just met.”

It took another five minutes to reach a large metal door. It was locked and no amount of fooling around with the keypad seemed likely to open it. “Right,”

Keyes said, as he examined the obstacle. “Let’s get this door open.”

“I’ll try, sir,” the Tech Specialist, Kappus, replied, “but it looks like those Covenant worked pretty hard to lock it down.”

“Just do it, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kappus pulled the spoofer out of his pack, attached the box to the door, and pressed a series of keys. Outside of the gentle beeping noises that the black box made as it tapped into the door’s electronics and ran through thousands of combinations per second, there was nothing but silence.

The Marines shifted nervously, unwilling to relax. Sweat dripped down Kappus’ forehead.

They held position for another few minutes, until Kappus nodded with satisfaction and opened the door. The Marines drifted inside. The electronics expert raised a hand. “Sarge! Listen!”

All of the Marines listened. They heard a soft, liquid, sort of slithery sound.

It seemed to come from every direction at once.

Jenkins felt jumpy but it was Mendoza who actually put it into words. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . .”

“You’ve always got a bad feeling,” the Sergeant put in, and was about to chew Mendoza out when a message came in over the team freq. It sounded like the second squad was in some sort of trouble, but Corporal Lovik wasn’t very coherent, so it was difficult to be sure.

In fact, it almost sounded like screaming.

Keyes responded. “Corporal? Do you copy? Over.”

There was no reply.

Johnson turned to Mendoza. “Get your ass back up to second squad’s position and find out what the hell is going on.”

“But Sarge—”

“I don’t have time for your lip, soldier! I gave you an order.”

“What is that?” Jenkins asked nervously, his eyes darting from one shadow to the next.

“Where’s that coming from, Mendoza?” Sergeant Johnson demanded, the second squad momentarily forgotten.

“There!” Mendoza proclaimed, pointing to a clutch of shadows as the Marines heard the muffled sound of metal striking metal.

There was a cry of pain as something landed on Private Riley’s back, drove a needlelike penetrator through his skin, and aimed it down toward his spine.

He dropped his weapon, tried to grab the thing that rode his shoulders, and thrashed back and forth.

“Hold still! Hold still!” Kappus yelled, grabbing onto one of the bulbous creatures and trying to pull it off his friend.

Avery Johnson had been in the Corps for most of his adult life, and had logged more time humping across the surface of alien planets than any of the other men in the room combined. Along the way, he’d seen a lot of strange stuff—but nothing like what skittered across the metal floor and attached itself to one of his men.

He saw a dozen white blobs, each maybe half a meter in diameter, and equipped with a cluster of writhing tentacles. They skittered and bobbed in a loose formation, then sprang in his direction. The tentacles propelled them several meters in a single leap. He fired a short, almost panicked burst. “Let ’em have it!”

Keyes, pistol in hand, fired at one of the creatures. It popped like a balloon, with surprising force. The tiny explosion caused three more to burst into feathery shards, but it seemed as if dozens more took their place.

Keyes realized that Private Kappus had been correct. The Covenant had locked the door for a reason, and this was it. But maybe, just maybe, they could pull back and close the blobs inside again. “Sergeant, we’re surrounded.”

But Johnson’s attention was elsewhere. “God damn it, Jenkins, fire your weapon !”

Jenkins, his face tight with fear, clutched his assault rifle with white- knuckled hands. It seemed like the little things were boiling from thin air.

“There’s too many!”

The Sarge started to bellow a reply, but it was as if a floodgate had opened somewhere, as a new wave of the obscene, podlike creatures rolled out of the darkness to overwhelm the humans. Marines fired in every direction.

Many lost their balance as two, three, or even four of the aliens managed to get a grip on them and pull them down.

Jenkins began to back away as fear overwhelmed him.

Keyes threw up his hands with the intention of protecting his face and accidentally caught one of the monsters. He squeezed and felt the creature explode. The little bastards were fragile—but there were so damned many of them. Another attacker latched onto his shoulder. The Captain screamed as a razor-sharp tentacle plunged through both his uniform and his skin, wriggled under the surface of his skin, and tapped his spinal cord. There was an explosion of pain so intense that he blacked out, only to be brought back to consciousness by chemicals the thing had injected into his bloodstream.

He tried to yell for help, but couldn’t make a sound. His heart raced as his extremities grew numb, one by one. His lungs felt heavy.

As Keyes began to lose touch with the rest of his body, something foul entered it, pushing his consciousness down and back even as it claimed most of his cerebral cortex, polluting his brain with a hunger so base that it would have made him vomit, had he any possession of his own body.

This hunger was more than a desire for food, for sex, or for power. This hunger was a vacuum, an endless vortex that consumed every impulse, every thought, every measure of who and what he was.

He tried to scream, but it wouldn’t let him.

The sight of Captain Keyes struggling with this new adversary had frozen Private Jenkins in place. When the Captain’s struggles ceased, however, he snapped into motion. He turned to flee, and felt one of the little beasts slam into his back. Pain knifed into him as the creature inserted its tendrils into his body, then subsided.

His vision clouded, then cleared. He had some sensation that time had passed, but he had no way to tell how long he’d been out. Private Jenkins, Wallace A., found himself in a strange half-world.

Due to some fluke, some random toss of the galactic dice, the mind that invaded his body had been severely weakened during the long period of hibernation, and while strong enough to take over and begin the work necessary to create a combat form, it lacked the force and clarity required to completely dominate its host the way it was supposed to.

Jenkins, helpless to do anything about it, was fully aware of the invading intelligence as it seized control of his musculature, jerked at his limbs like a child experimenting with a new toy, and marched him around in circles even as his friends, who no longer had any consciousness at all, were completely destroyed. He screamed, and the air left his lungs, but no one turned to look.