The secondary launch bay of the orbital base was mostly deserted. A handful of techs were busily working on the gutted hulk of a Longsword fighter off to one side, while closer to the rear of the bay, an automated system was meticulously scanning the hull of a carbon-scored Pelican dropship. None of them paid any attention to the three people that entered the bay quietly and started toward one of the other craft sitting on the titanium deck.
"I'm sorry we couldn't do any better," General Tannery said, indicating another Longsword fighter, its hull streaked with carbon from several near hits. "She's a bit banged up, but she's still solid, and my chief engineer assures me her engines are well above specs. She's the fastest we've got, and she's slip-capable."
"What about armaments?" John asked quietly.
Neither he nor Linda were wearing their armor. Their suits were carefully stowed in the gravsled that Linda pushed ahead of her, along with an array of explosives, sidearms, and monitoring and sensing equipment. Without their armor on, only their voices could give them away, and then only to people who knew them well. But there was no sense in taking any unnecessary risks. The fewer people that knew about a pair of Spartans being mobilized, the better – especially on a mission like this.
"She's fully loaded with her standard weapons – cannons and Archer missile pods – and she's also carrying a Shiva nuclear warhead. We prefer that you don't use it, but," Tannery shrugged, "if worst comes to worst, we want you to be able to give the Covenant something to worry about."
"Understood," John replied.
"Your first set of orders are encrypted on the fighter's computer," the General went on. "They'll be unlocked when you make your first slip jump."
"First set?" Linda asked.
"It's a complicated mission. You'll understand when you get the orders. Now, you'd better get going. At this point, time is on our side, but we don't know how long that will last. We need to move quickly."
"Yes, sir," John answered, saluting, as Linda did the same.
Tannery returned the salute. "Good luck."
They turned and walked up the boarding ramp into the Longsword, and set about stowing their gear. It was not an easy challenge; the fighter was not designed to serve as an assault ship, and the Spartans had as much gear as any six Marines. But eventually, everything was either locked up in stowage compartments, or securely tied down to the deck and bulkheads. Once that was done, they donned their armor again; they didn't necessarily need it right away, but John was a firm believer in not taking any chances that didn't need to be taken. Even if the fighter lost atmospheric containment, their suits would keep them alive for at least a few minutes – a few minutes which they could use to find a solution to the problem.
"Remember how to fly this thing?" Cortana piped as John settled into the pilot's seat.
"Of course," he replied, missing the humor in her voice. "Go ahead and patch into the systems. Pay special attention to monitoring our sensors. I don't want anything sneaking up on us while we're out there."
"I'm on it," she said, and lights started flickering on the control consoles as she accessed the fighter's systems.
John glanced over at Linda. "Make sure our weapons are primed," he ordered. "Don't set them to active yet. I don't want their signatures to give us away to any Covenant scans."
"Copy that," Linda replied, typing in the appropriate activation authorization sequences.
"Cortana, what's our Shiva warhead mounted on?" John asked.
"Checking," the AI replied. "We're equipped with one Mark II Shiva warhead, mounted on a Standard Archer solid fuel cell flight frame, equipped with Type B thrusters."
"So it packs a punch, but it's slow," John muttered. "Anything other than a point-blank shot would leave it vulnerable to getting picked off."
"Well, hopefully it won't come to that," Cortana said. "Remember, the whole idea is not to put ourselves in a situation where we have to use it."
"All the same," he countered, "I would have been happier with a grav-accel frame, or at least Type A thrusters."
"Beggars can't be choosers now, can they?" Cortana retorted wryly.
John grunted. "Seems like we're getting a lot more of the beggar's position of late, and a lot less of the chooser's." He switched on the Longsword's navigation and flight control systems. "Looks like General Tannery has already gotten us our launch clearance," he said as he glanced over at Linda. "That will make our departure that much quieter. Systems check?"
"All sensors reading green, Chief," the female Spartan answered. "We're ready to go."
"Cortana?"
"All personnel are clear," she said. "Opening launch bay doors now."
John looked up through the canopy of the fighter. Directly in front of them, the massive doors to the launch bay ground open, sliding back to either side on huge tracks. On the life support console to John's left, a light switched from green to red as the sensors indicated that the bay was now a vacuum. Beyond the doors, the red arc of Mars' northern hemisphere was stark against the sable backdrop of space.
"Flight control has verified our clearance and has given us an outbound vector on course 213," Cortana instructed. "Hold on a moment. That can't be right. My scans indicate there's an entire battle group heading out on that vector."
John's fingers danced across the console, giving power to the thrusters, and with a low whine, the Longsword rose from the deck and eased forward toward the bay doors and the open space beyond.
"What are you doing?" Cortana exclaimed. "We need to get a clear vector!"
As soon as the fighter left the bay, he brought the main engines online, and the whine changed to a roar as the fighter accelerated away from the station. Seconds later, three more Longswords slid in next to them on matching courses, and together they joined the battle group formation.
"A single Longsword headed out of the system is going to raise questions," he said. "And I'd rather those questions never get a chance to reach Covenant ears." He nodded toward the ships spread out in front of them. "This is our cover. We'll stay on course 213, until we can quietly slip away."
"I'd still recommend changing course at least twice once we're clear of them," the AI replied.
"Agreed," John said.
The Longsword continue to accelerate, keeping in tight formation with the other fighters and light capital ships around them. By the time they'd reached normal cruising speed, they had left Mars well behind, and the asteroid belt was looming large on the three-dimensional readout of the sensor inputs. The range started to drop quickly, and the numbers changed from green to yellow. A collision alert started to beep, warning of the closing distance. Then the numbers flashed red.
Suddenly, the fighter directly ahead of them tipped its wings briefly left to right, and its running lights flashed for a split second as the entire battle group peeled away hard to port. John gripped the controls tighter as the first flanks of the asteroid belt rose ahead of them, and held his course.
"Cortana, did you catch that?" he asked.
"Got it," she replied. "That fluctuation in his running lights was accelerated Morse code. Replaying now." She was silent for a moment. "It reads, 'Marks sends his regards. Godspeed.'"
John nodded. "Looks like the Admiral has all the bases covered. Hold on. We'll make our first course change once we're inside the belt."
During the first few decades of Earth's space colonization era, the Sol system asteroid belt had been extensively mined, blown apart, or simply towed away as hordes of eager colonists descended upon it to use its raw materials for the dozens of new settlements that were springing up all across the solar system. If anything, the activity had only made the area more dangerous, for large asteroids had been broken into multiple smaller ones, and others had been pushed into erratic orbits. And there were always bits and pieces of abandoned equipment and deserted asteroid bases to watch out for.
John was forced to decelerate as the Longsword approached the belt, and he carefully watched the sensors as they eased closer to the whirling, careening hulks of broken rock and ice.
"Would you like me to take over?" Cortana asked. "I can see in every direction at once, unlike you."
John shook his head. "I've got it."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
The AI gave an approximation of a sigh of exasperation. "Men."
The comment was meant for Linda, but the female Spartan just tightened her crash harness, and kept her attention on the sensor readouts.
John rolled the Longsword onto its starboard side – relative to the elliptic plane – and slid the craft in between two mountains of stone and ice as they rumbled by. They were so close that their gravitic forces made the space craft shake slightly, and behind the cockpit, the gear started to rattle within its restraints.
"Better double check some of that gear," John said, gesturing with one hand over his shoulder. "Turn your magnetic clamps on; I can't turn off the artificial gravity without getting disoriented."
"Wouldn't be a problem if I was flying," Cortana said.
"I've got it."
Linda switched on the magnetic clamps in her boots through the HUD in her helmet, then unfastened her crash harness and made her way aft. Her footsteps made heavy thumping noises as her half-ton suit of armor magnetically attached itself to the deck with each step.
John pitched the fighter into another hairpin turn, arcing around another asteroid and rolling out of the turn to glide over a second, then dive under a third. "Coming to course 337," he announced.
Behind him, Linda was busily tightening the straps that held down their gear.
"Watch out," Cortana cautioned.
"I see them," John replied. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder at Linda. "Hold on."
Ahead of them, a trio of asteroids were careening toward one another, creating an ever-narrowing gap between them. They were massive, easily as large as small moons. There was no way the fighter could go around them at its present speed. It was either slow down to a near stop and let the imminent collision take place ahead of them, or –
"Don't even think about it!" Cortana warned.
John didn't reply, but snapped the fighter into an inverted dive, accelerating straight for the gap between the stone mammoths.
Behind him, Linda was hanging upside down from the deck by her boots, but she kept working calmly.
As soon as the fighter drew level with the quickly closing opening, John brought it out of its dive, and gunned the engines, unleashing the full power of its mighty twin thrusters. The whole ship started to shake again as the gravity of the monoliths before them reached out like invisible hands grasping at a toy. Proximity warning lights started to flash on the control readouts.
"That opening is getting really small, Chief," Cortana said.
"I can see that."
The Longsword bounded and dove and tried to spin out of control as it plowed deeper into the gravitic turbulence, and the hull started creaking around them from the stresses.
"We're not going to make it!" Cortana exclaimed.
"We'll make it," John replied calmly.
"We're not going to make it!" the AI repeated.
"Hold on," was his reply.
Linda finally turned around to see what Cortana was so animated about. Her expression was unreadable behind her helmet's faceplate, but she stopped what she was doing and took hold of one of the cargo straps with both hands as she saw exactly how large the asteroids were.
"Here we go," John said.
The light of the sun behind them was blotted out as the fighter streaked into the narrow channel between the asteroids. The proximity alarms continued to shriek with growing insistence as the walls of stone closed about them.
At first, it was just a matter of guiding the Longsword straight down the gauntlet, but as it closed, smaller pieces of rock – satellites that had orbited the larger ones – quickly became a hazard as they darted back and forth, their orbits destroyed by the changing gravity of the impending cataclysm.
John started weaving the craft back and forth, dodging the rocks and chunks of ice as if they were missiles. Some of the smaller ones pinged off the hull, giving the collision alarms fits, but he charged onward. It was too late to go back now.
"Collision in twenty seconds, Chief!" Cortana exclaimed. "And we've still got a long way to go! Almost two thousand kilometers to be exact!"
John didn't answer, but instead engaged the emergency thrusters, giving the Longsword an extra burst of speed. His fingers deftly moved over the controls, taking the fighter craft into a spin followed by a trio of short, tight turns that took it around a series of jagged peaks that partially blocked the gap like rows of teeth.
Cortana brought up a holographic display and overlaid it on the forward canopy of the cockpit, showing how much time was left until the asteroids would crush them, and how far they still had to go, as well as highlighting in bright green a suggested route through the growing number of obstacles.
"Almost there!" the AI said.
John darted the fighter under another jagged spine of stone, brought it up just enough to slip over another…
"Coming from starboard!" Cortana yelled.
John glanced right just in time to see yet another piece of rock – this one easily as big as the fighter – careening toward them. He looked back at his readouts, evaluating his options in the matter of a heartbeat. He had no room to go to port, away from the new collision threat, no room to dive, and another horizontal spire was quickly closing off what little space he had above. A nanosecond later, he acted, pulling the controls back and bringing the Longsword up and over the hurtling boulder, then pushing it back to level with no time to spare.
The narrow opening between the boulder and the spire was just a millimeter too small. The fighter jerked hard as it lost its forward momentum, slamming John into his crash harness. Sparks flew from the control panels, the engines sputtered and roared, and yet more alarms wailed.
And then it was through, jetting out into open space, leaving behind a half millimeter of armor from both its upper and lower fuselage.
John turned to check on Linda, and found her clamped securely to the ceiling. He cocked his head to one side in puzzlement. She just shrugged in reply.
"Well," Cortana huffed, "I hope you got your kicks for the day out of that."
It was John's turn to shrug. "At least now I know no one is following us."
"You did that on purpose?"
John faced forward again and leaned back in his seat. "I never fly like that by accident."
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