She wouldn't have "accidentally" touched him unless she meant it, and the gesture spoke volumes.

Before he could say anything to her, the Pelican angled and gravity settled the Spartans' stomachs.

"Rough ride ahead," the pilot warned.

The Spartans bent their knees as the Pelican rolled into a tight turn. A crate broke its retaining straps, bounced, and stuck to the wall.

The COM channel blasted static and resolved into the voice of the Longsword's pilot: "Bravo Two-Six, engaging enemy fighters. Am taking heavy incoming fire—" The channel was abruptly swallowed in static.

An explosion buffeted the Pelican, and bits of metal pinged off its thick hull.

Patches of armor heated and bubbled away. Energy blasts flashed through the boiling metal, filling the interior with fumes for a split second before the ship's pressurized atmosphere blew the haze out the gash in its side.

Sunlight streamed though the lacerated Titanium-A armor.

The dropship lurched to port, and Fred glimpsed five Covenant Seraph fighters driving after them and wobbling in the turbulent air. "Gotta shake 'em," the pilot screamed. "Hang on!"

The Pelican pitched forward, and her engines blasted in full overload. The dropship's stabilizers tore away, and the craft rolled out of control.

The Spartans grabbed on to cross beams as their gear was flung about inside the ship.

"It's going to be a helluva hot drop, Spartans," their pilot hissed over the COM. "Autopilot's programmed to angle. Reverse thrusters. Gees are takin' me out. I'll—"

A flash of light outlined the cockpit hatch, and the tiny shock-proof glass window shattered into the passenger compartment.

The pilot's biomonitor flatlined.

The rate of their dizzying roll increased, and bits of metal and instruments tore free and danced around the compartment.

SPARTAN-029, Joshua, was closest to the cockpit hatch. He pulled himself up and looked in. "Plasma blast," he said. He paused for a heartbeat, then added: "I'll reroute control to the terminal here." With his right hand, he furiously tapped commands onto the keyboard mounted on the wall. The fingers of his left hand dug into the metal bulkhead.

Kelly crawled along the starboard frame, held there by the spinning motion of the out-of-control Pelican. She headed aft of the passenger compartment and punched a keypad, priming the explosive bolts on the drop hatch.

"Fire in the hole!" she yelled.

The Spartans braced.

The hatch exploded and whipped away from the plummeting craft. Fire streamed along the outer hull. Within seconds the compartment became a blast furnace. With the grace of a high-wire performer, Kelly leaned out of the rolling ship, her armor's energy shields flaring in the heat.

The Covenant Seraph fighters fired their lasers, but the energy weapons scattered in the superheated wake of the dropping Peli- can. One alien ship tumbled out of control, too deep in the atmo- sphere to easily maneuver. The others veered and arced up back into space.

"Too hot for them," Kelly said. "We're on our own."

"Joshua," Fred called out. "Report."

"The autopilot's gone, and cockpit controls are offline," Joshua answered. "I can counter our spin with thrusters." He tapped in a command; the port engine shuddered, and the ship's rolling slowed and ceased.

"Can we land?" Fred asked.

Joshua didn't hesitate to give the bad news. "Negative. The computer has no solution for our inbound vector." He tapped rapidly on the keyboard. "I'll buy as much time as I can."

Fred ran over their limited options. They had no parasails, no rocket-propelled drop capsules. That left them one simple choice: They could ride this Pelican straight into hell... or they could get off.

"Get ready for a fast drop," Fred shouted. "Grab your gear.

Pump your suits' hydrostatic gel to maximum pressure. Suck it up, Spartans—we're landing hard."

"Hard landing" was an understatement. The Spartans—and their MJOLNIR armor—were tough. The armor's energy shields, hydrostatic gel, and reactive circuits, along with the Spartans' augmented skeletal structure, might be enough to withstand a high-speed crash landing... but not a supersonic impact.

It was a dangerous gamble. If Joshua couldn't slow the Peli- can's descent—they'd be paste.

"Twelve thousand meters to go," Kelly shouted, still leaning over the edge of the aft door.

Fred told the Spartans: "Ready and aft. Jump on my mark."

The Spartans grabbed their gear and moved toward the open hatch.

The Pelican's engines screamed and pulsed as Joshua angled the thruster cams to reverse positions. The deceleration pulled at the Spartan team, and everyone grabbed, or made, a handhold.

Joshua brought what was left of the craft's control flaps to bear, and the Pelican's nose snapped up. A sonic boom rippled through the ship as its velocity dropped below Mach 1. The frame shuddered and rivets popped.

"Eight kilometers and this brick is still dropping fast," Kelly called out.

"Joshua, get aft," Fred ordered.

"Affirmative," Joshua said.

The Pelican groaned and the frame pinged from the stress— and then creaked as the craft shuddered and flexed. Fred set his armored glove on the wall and tried to will the craft to hold to- gether a little longer.

It didn't work. The port engine exploded, and the Pelican tum- bled out of control.

Kelly and the Spartans near the aft drop hatch dropped out.

No more time.

"Jump," Fred shouted. "Spartans: Go, go, go!"

The rest of the Spartans crawled aft, fighting the gee forces of the tumbling Pelican. Fred grabbed Joshua—and they jumped.

CHAPTER TWO

0631 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon

Eridani system, unknown aerial position, planet Reach.

Fred saw the sky and earth flashing in rapid succession before his faceplate. Decades of training took over. This was just like a parasail drop ... except this time there was no chute. He forced his arms and legs open; the spread-eagle position controlled his tumble and slowed his velocity.

Time seemed to simultaneously crawl and race—something Kelly had once dubbed "SPARTAN Time." Enhanced senses and augmented physiology meant that in periods of stress Spartans thought and reacted faster than a normal human. Fred's mind raced as he absorbed the tactical situation.

He activated his motion sensors, boosting the range to maxi- mum. His team appeared as blips on his heads-up display. With a sigh of relief he saw that all twenty-six of them were present and pulling into a wedge formation.

"Covenant ground forces could be tracking the Pelican," Fred told them over the COM. "Expect AA fire."

The Spartans immediately broke formation and scattered across the sky.

Fred risked a sidelong glance and spotted the Pelican. It tum- bled, sending shards of armor plating in glittering, ugly arcs, be- fore it impacted into the side of a jagged snowcapped mountain.

The surface of Reach stretched out before them, two thousand meters below. Fred saw a carpet of green forest, ghostly mountains in the distance, and pillars of smoke rising from the west. He spied a sinuous ribbon of water that he recognized: Big Horn River.

The Spartans had trained on Reach for most of their early lives. This was the same forest where CPO Mendez had left them when they were children. With only pieces of a map and no food, water, or weapons, they had captured a guarded Pelican and re- turned to HQ. That was the mission where John, now the Master Chief, had earned command of the group, the mission that had forged them into a team.

Fred pushed the memory aside. This was no homecoming.

UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B training facility would be due west. And the generators? He called up the terrain map and overlaid it on his display. Joshua had done his work well: Cortana had delivered decent satellite imagery as well as a topo- graphic survey map. It wasn't as good as a spy-sat flyby, but it was better than Fred had expected on such short notice.

He dropped a NAV marker on the position of the generator complex and uploaded the data on the TACCOM to his team.

He took a deep breath and said: "That's our target. Move toward it but keep your incoming angle flat. Aim for the treetops.

Let them slow you down. If you can't, aim for water... and tuck in your arms and legs before impact."

Twenty-six blue acknowledgment lights winked, confirming his order.

"Overpressurize your hydrostatics just before you hit."

That would risk nitrogen embolisms for his Spartans, but they were coming in at terminal velocity, which for a fully loaded Spartan was—he quickly calculated—130 meters per second.

They had to overpressurize the cushioning gel or their organs would be crushed against the impervious MJOLNIR armor when they hit.

The acknowledgment lights winked again ... although Fred sensed a slight hesitation.

Five hundred meters to go.

He took one last look at his Spartans. They were scattered across the horizon like bits of confetti.

He brought up his knees and changed his center of mass, try- ing to flatten his angle as he approached the treetops. It worked, but not as well or as quickly as he had hoped.

One hundred meters to go. His shield flickered as he brushed the tops of the tallest of the trees.

He took a deep breath, exhaled as deeply as he could, grabbed his knees, and tucked into a ball. He overrode the hydrostatic sys- tem and overpressurized the gel surrounding his body. A thou- sand tiny knives stabbed him—pain unlike any he'd experienced since the SPARTAN-II program had surgically altered him.

The MJOLNIR armor's shields flared as he broke through branches—then drained in one sudden burst as he impacted dead-center on a thick tree trunk. He smashed through it like an armored missile.

He tumbled, and his body absorbed a series of rapid-fire im- pacts. It felt like taking a full clip of assault rifle fire at point-blank range. Seconds later Fred slammed to a bone-crunching halt.

His suit malfunctioned. He could no longer see or hear any- thing. He stayed in that limbo state and struggled to stay con- scious and alert. Moments later, his display was filled with stars.

He realized then that the suit wasn't malfunctioning... he was.

"Chief!" Kelly's voice echoed in his head as if from the end of a long tunnel. "Fred, get up," she whispered. "We've got to move."

His vision cleared, and he slowly rolled onto his hands and knees. Something hurt inside, like his stomach had been torn out, diced into little pieces, and then stitched back together all wrong. He took a ragged breath. That hurt, too.

The pain was good—it helped keep him alert.

"Status," he coughed. His mouth tasted like copper.

Kelly knelt next to him and on a private COM channel said, "Al- most everyone has minor damage: a few blown shield generators, sensor systems, a dozen broken bones and contusions. Nothing we can't compensate for. Six Spartans have more serious injuries.

They can fight from a fixed position, but they have limited mobil- ity." She took a deep breath and then added, "Four KIA."

Fred struggled to his feet. He was dizzy but remained upright.

He had to stay on his feet no matter what. He had to for the team, to show them they still had a functioning leader.

It could have been much worse—but four dead was bad enough.

No Spartan operation had ever seen so many killed in one mis- sion, and this op had barely begun. Fred wasn't superstitious, but he couldn't help but feel that the Spartans' luck was running out.

"You did what you had to," Kelly said as if she were reading his mind. "Most of us wouldn't have made it if you hadn't been thinking on your feet."

Fred snorted in disgust. Kelly thought he'd been thinking on his feet—but all he'd done was land on his ass. He didn't want to talk about it—not now. "Any other good news?" he said.

"Plenty," she replied. "Our gear—munitions boxes, bags of extra weapons—they're scattered across what's passing for our LZ. Only a few of us have assault rifles, maybe five in total."

Fred instinctively reached for his MA5B and discovered that the anchoring clips on his armor had been sheared away in the impact.

No grenades on his belt, either. His drop bag was gone, too.

He shrugged. "We'll improvise," he said.

Kelly picked up a rock and hefted it.

Fred resisted the urge to lower his head and catch his breath.

There was nothing he wanted to do more right now than sit down and just rest and think. There had to be a way to get his Spartans out of here in one piece. It was like a training exercise—all he needed to do was figure out how best to accomplish their mis- sion with no more foul-ups.

There was no time, though. They'd been sent to protect those generators, and the Covenant sure as hell weren't sitting around waiting for them to make the first move. The columns of smoke that marked where Reach HighCom once stood testified to that.

"Assemble the team," Fred told her. "Formation Beta. We're heading toward the generators on foot. Pack out our wounded and dead. Send those with weapons ahead as scouts. Maybe our luck will change."

Kelly barked over the SQUADCOM: "Move, Spartans. For- mation Beta to the NAV point."

Fred initiated a diagnostic on his armor. The hydrostatic sub- system had blown a seal, and pressure was at minimal functional levels. He could move, but he'd have to replace that seal before he'd be able to sprint or dodge plasma fire.

He fell in behind Kelly and saw his Spartans on the periphery of his tactical friend-or-foe monitor. He couldn't actually see any of them because they were spread out and darted from tree to tree to avoid any Covenant surprises. They all moved silently through the forest: light and shadow and an occasional muted flash of luminous green armor, then gone again.

"Red-One this is Red-Twelve. Single enemy contact ...

neutralized."

"One here, too," Red-Fifteen reported. "Neutralized."

There had to be more. Fred knew the Covenant never traveled in small numbers.

Worse, if the Covenant were deploying troops in any signifi- cant numbers, that meant the holding action in orbit had turned ugly . . . so it was only a matter of time before this mission went from bad to worse.