In the meantime, enjoy Chapter Five, and thanks for your patience!
2330, October 2, 2552 Eridanus System:This time, the trip was longer. Most of the Marines either dozed in their seats or carefully cleaned their various weapons in a meticulous routine that was designed to keep their minds busy. An air of calm had settled over the Pelican. Even Mitchell stared quietly out at the scintillating lights of slip space, apparently lost in thought.
But for the Master Chief, every minute seemed to take forever. Even though he appeared outwardly calm, his mind was furiously working over dozens of different scenarios, trying to make sure that he'd be ready, that no matter what happened after they dropped out of slip space and boarded the Eternity, he'd have a plan of action. Several of the possibilities he came up with were bloody, but he'd been fighting for too long to simply dismiss them. Everything had to be considered… even the nightmares.
"Coming up on the Eridanus system," Mitchell's voice broke into his thoughts. "We'll be dropping back to normal space in fifteen."
John nodded wordlessly and reached up to flip on the intercom to the aft compartment. "Fifteen minutes until reversion to normal space," he said calmly. "Make sure all your gear is ready to go, and then strap in. We don't know what kind of welcome we're going to be in for. Have your air breathers ready; the planet has an atmosphere, but the air levels are too low for you to breathe for very long."
Before he'd even finished talking, the Marines had launched into a flurry of last minute checks and rechecks, moving with the hurried calm that experienced soldiers displayed just before entering combat. Minutes later, all of them were strapped in their seats and ready to go.
"Here we go," Mitchell said. He took a deep breath, then dropped the Pelican out of slip space.
As it almost always was, the reversion was anti-climactic. There were no bolts of plasma already streaking out to meet them, no screeching alarms warning them of hostile contacts, no comm chatter filtering in from dead or dying UNSC vessels.
There was only silence… and empty space.
For John, it was the first time in a long time that he'd entered a system that wasn't already firmly in UNSC control, and hadn't been called into a firefight almost immediately. It was an eerie change, and – for the battle-hardened Spartan – vaguely disturbing. And yet, deep down inside, he welcomed it.
Too bad it was only an illusion.
"I've got Eridanus II on sensors," Mitchell reported, "but your coordinates dropped us almost two light minutes out."
"I know," John replied. "We've got something to check first."
The Gunnery Sergeant looked like he was about to ask the obvious question, then thought better of it and kept silent.
John's coordinates had, just as Mitchell said, dropped them about two light minutes from the planet's current location. Before it was lost in a long and bloody battle with the Covenant, Eridanus II had boasted a defense network that could detect ships dropping out of slip space almost ten light minutes out. But that entire network had been wiped out, and the Covenant hadn't replaced it with their own sensor net. That meant that any Covenant ship in the system would have to rely on its own sensors. The best sensor suites could detect other ships at three to four light minutes, and there was no doubt that the Echoes of Eternity was equipped with the best. But she was down and damaged, and any scans she was able to make would be distorted by what was left of Eridanus II's atmosphere.
It was still a gamble, but one that had to be taken.
Approximately three minutes after their reversion to real space, the Pelican's passive sensors picked up the galactic survey probe that had logged the Eternity's arrival not so long ago. John wanted to see if there'd been any more Covenant activity in the system. If there hadn't been, it would make the mission a whole lot easier. If there had been… things would get ugly.
"Head for that probe," he told Mitchell, tapping the probe's blinking icon on the sensor display.
As Mitchell started to guide the Pelican toward the probe, John opened a channel to the Longsword that was trailing them.
"Cortana."
"Go ahead, Master Chief," came the AI's voice.
"As soon as we're in range of the galactic survey probe, I want you to hack into its systems and download its sensor logs," he said. "Send a copy of them to the Pelican's hard drives. Once that's done, update its profile lists with the most recent intel that we have on Covenant vessels, and rewrite its reporting protocols so that it reports any Covenant activity directly to us, instead of the UNSC Science Council."
"Well, you're easy to please, aren't you?" Cortana returned wryly.
"Is that too much for you?" John asked nonchalantly.
"I'm already done," she answered haughtily. "No further Covenant activity is logged."
"All right, then. Give us a beacon on the Eternity's position."
A yellow icon started flashing on the sensor display even as the words left his mouth.
"Already one step ahead of you," Cortana said. Her voice made it clear that, if she'd been in holographic form at the moment, she'd be grinning.
"I see it. Once we attain the correct approach vector, we'll cut our engines and coast in, to minimize the chance that we'll be spotted. We'll keep them powered down until we enter atmosphere. Maintain radio silence from here on in. We'll see you dirtside."
"And here I was hoping to have the pleasure of your engaging conversation," she quipped. "You got it, Chief. Cortana out."
"She always like that?" Mitchell asked as he brought the Pelican around towards the new coordinates on the planet's surface.
The Master Chief was quiet for a moment, then nodded. "Pretty much."
At half a million kilometers out from the planet, Mitchell cut the Pelican's engines. Behind them, Linda did the same with the Longsword's. The two ships used their momentum to coast in toward Eridanus II; if they were picked up on any sensor scans at all, they'd look like space debris. Linda used the Longsword's attitude thrusters to make small adjustments to her trajectory, tucking the fighter in close behind and beneath the Pelican. Then the craft's energy signature faded, little more than a ghost even on the Pelican's sensors.
"I estimate we'll hit atmosphere in about ten minutes," Mitchell said as he checked his navigation readouts. "Of course, we'll have to bring our engines back online if we don't want to crash and burn, but if we're lucky –"
"Hold on," John said, holding up a hand as something flashed on his sensor readout. A second later, there was another, brighter flash.
"What is it?" Mitchell asked, leaning over to take a closer look.
"We just got pinged," the Master Chief replied. "Looks like Eternity is taking an interest in us."
The Gunnery Sergeant breathed a curse. "She's got a better sensor suite than we thought. Should we bring engines back up?"
"No, not yet. She knows we're here, but she may not be able to identify us. The moment she tries something though, we go in, full burn."
"Got it," Mitchell nodded, his finger already poised over the engine ignition switches.
Keeping an eye on the sensor display, John started tapping commands into the communications console.
"What are you doing?" Mitchell asked.
"Locking down our comms," he replied. "Eternity doesn't have any way to communicate with the Covenant, so she'll use ours if she can." Hopefully, Linda would be doing the same thing with the Longsword's comm equipment.
"And what if she can't use it?"
"She'll get mad."
"Great."
Silence settled over the cockpit again as John finished with the communications console and continued to watch the sensors. Mitchell watched him, waiting for the signal to re-ignite the engines. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The sensor readout remained quiet; there were no more probes from Eternity, and the icon marking her location slowly drew closer.
"Atmosphere in five," Mitchell said quietly. "Maybe she –" He was interrupted by a chirping alarm from the communications console.
It was the unauthorized access warning.
"She made us!" John exclaimed. "Go, go, go!"
The Pelican's engines roared as Mitchell hit the ignition switches, and they were thrust back into their seats as the transport sprang forward. The Longsword's icon flared to life a split second later, riding their exhaust hard, so close that it was probably losing paint in their flame trail.
"Atmosphere in sixty seconds!" Mitchell called.
Another alarm started screaming, one that echoed through both the cockpit and the troop bay. Red lights lit up across several different consoles, and a handful of other alarms quickly joined it.
"We don't have sixty seconds," John replied grimly. "She's overriding our engine core safety interlocks. Our failsafes just went down. Shut down the engines."
"You mean go ballistic?" Mitchell asked in disbelief. "From this high up, that's suicide!"
"Either that, or we blow up in about ten seconds," John returned. "Core temperatures are already way too high."
Mitchell ground out a curse, but he shut the engines down, the locked out the controls. "All right, then, you better hold on," he warned, "'cause this is gonna get rough! Attitude thrusters won't help much. Atmosphere in ten!"
"Brace for ballistic entry," John warned over the intercom. The Marines should already be strapped in, but he wanted to make sure none of them got any bright ideas about securing loose gear at the last minute.
The Pelican bucked hard as it punched through the uppermost level of the planet's atmosphere a moment later. Fortunately, Mitchell had already lined the craft up on an appropriate approach vector, else it could have bounced right back into space, ricocheting from the denser layers of gases like a stone skipped off the surface of a pond. At the moment, John wasn't sure what would be worse: getting stuck in orbit, waiting for Eternity to find a way to kill them, or risking being obliterated while trying to land on a planet's surface some thirty miles below them without the use of engines.
Mitchell cursed as the controls were wrenched from his hands, and the dropship started to roll. John punched a command sequence into his console, and activated the co-pilot's station. He took hold of the control yoke, trying to keep the craft from flipping over, struggling even with the aid of his MJOLNIR armor. Mitchell did what he could from his own station, lending his strength.
It was enough to keep the Pelican from rolling, barely.
Just when they thought they had control, the craft tried to go into a dive. They managed to bring the nose up, even as it started to drift to starboard, threatening to put the dropship into a slide.
"We're going to lose our stabilizers!" Mitchell said as the groan of severely strained metal alloy echoed through the cockpit. "These things aren't exactly the most aerodynamic. They weren't designed for ballistic re-entries!"
"Use the attitude thrusters," John instructed calmly. The controls trembled violently in his iron grip, fighting him the entire way as he brought the Pelican out of its slide.
"We're going way too fast! We need the main engines!"
"If we ignite them this high up, Eternity will turn us into a miniature supernova," John responded. "We'll use them at the last minute to slow our velocity. Don't start them until I give the word.
Mitchell very much looked like he wanted to start them now, but he wiped sweat from his forehead with one sleeve of his gray battle fatigues, nodded grimly, and concentrated on using the attitude thrusters to keep the Pelican from careening completely out of control.
John glanced at his sensor readouts, and was gratified to see that the Longsword was still with them. Even though it was larger than the Pelican, it was more aerodynamic. It was mimicking the smaller dropship's erratic flight path so precisely that there was no doubt Cortana was the one doing the flying now. The fighter was staying so close that, even if Eternity knew there were two ships, she'd have a hard time getting a sensor lock on the fighter.
As the Pelican's velocity continued to increase, John kept a careful eye on its altitude. If they could ignite their main engines at approximately one thousand meters, they should be able to slow down enough to keep their landing from being fatal.
As the dropship fell ever deeper into the vestiges of the planet's atmosphere, wind started to howl around it, and control became even more difficult. The seconds passed with agonizing slowness while the ground began to rush up at them.
"Five thousand meters," Mitchell ground through clenched teeth as the craft rolled onto its port side. "I won't be able to keep control with the thrusters much longer! Our velocity is too high!"
"Just a few more seconds," John muttered.
At their current speed, a few more seconds was all they had.
A high-pitched shriek echoed through the cockpit, the sound of metal actually being torn like a piece of paper, and the Pelican started to spin like a top on its vertical axis. The sky turned into a wheeling, nauseating whirlpool, and the horizon that was rushing toward them became nothing more than a blurred line. A moment later, Eridanus II's surface was looming large, filling the entire canopy.
John glanced at the altimeter just in time to see it hit one thousand.
"Power up the engines, now!" he commanded.
Mitchell hit the ignition switches. The dropship's powerful engines sputtered for a moment, then howled to life. The Marine was already pulling up on his control yoke, and the Master Chief joined him, hauling back as hard as he could. The vector thrusters responded immediately, aiming the thrust output of the engines straight down to slow the craft. But it was too little, too late.
The craft was still spinning wildly, but John could see that the ground was far too close, and it was getting closer way too fast. He could see individual outcroppings of obsidian rock now, and that meant it was too late to make a safe landing.
"Brace for impact!" he shouted over the comm.
The echoes of his voice hadn't even finished sounding from the speakers in the troop bay when the Pelican slammed down, and the world went dark.