Ackerson nodded.

The three Naval officers thumbed their tablet readers and the files erased. They rose, and without another word, left the cage.

They had never been here.

None of this had ever been discussed.

Alone now, Ackerson reviewed his files and made plans. The first matter of business was already in the works: on-screen appeared the career record of SPARTAN-051.

CHAPTER THREE

0940 HOURS, NOVEMBER 7, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ GROOMBRIDGE 34 SYSTEM, NEAR CONSTRUCTION PLATFORM 966A (DECOMMISSIONED)

SPARTAN-051, Kurt, jumped into utter emptiness. It was a hundred-kilometer drop to the moon under his feet. He mentally made the adjustment to the free-floating world of space, and noted that technically there was no "under" or "above" in space—just vectors, masses, and velocities.

He switched on his reverse-angle camera and saw Kelly and Fred jump from the lock of the prowler after him. He knew not to turn his head to look. The motion would make him gyrate out of control. Besides, in the vacuum-enhanced variant of MJOLNIR armor, his mobility was a fraction of normal.

A green status light winked on, confirming they were all on the same vector.

They'd coast for several kilometers before they activated long-range thruster packs.

Although slow, there were two good reasons to be cautious.

First, when their prowler. Circumference, had reentered normal space, the NAV Officer had picked up an echo, a partial ship silhouette, prowler class. He had dismissed this as an echo from their reentry to normal space that had bounced off the moon. The NAV Officer had assured them there was nothing to worry about. Still, the anomaly bugged Kurt. In case there was another ship, Kurt wanted to be well away before igniting packs. No need to needlessly give away the stealth ship's position.

Second, they had detected an inert COM satellite on the dark side of the moon— something you'd expect if the system was being monitored for a sneak attack. No signal had emitted from the thing. The Circumference had jammed, and then fried it with a burst from a pulse laser.

Kurt just made the assumption this simple recon mission would be hot. That way, he'd be happy to be disappointed.

He activated the single-beam laser TEAMCOM system, and said, "ETA to day-night demarcation in five minutes. System check thrusters."

Kurt ran his own diagnostic. They couldn't take any chances with the packs. Designed for long-range deep-space operations, it was one of the riskiest pieces of equipment they'd been trained on. Even with triple redundancy in NAV system and stabilizers, one accident and there was enough compressed tri-amino hydrazine in the double fuel tanks to propel you so far and so fast off course, rescue would be an astronomically remote possibility.

Or as Chief Mendez had put it: "Start tumbling in this gear, start praying."

Green status lights winked back at Kurt.

"ETA three minutes," he said.

"Roger," Kelly replied and then she added, "Something wrong?"

"No," Kurt said.

Fred's voice came over the COM: "When you say 'no' like that, you mean 'yes.'"

"Just a feeling," he admitted.

Silence hissed over their linked single-beam COMs.

Kurt watched in his rear-angle display as Kelly and Fred activated their MA5B assault rifles. A data cable linked each rifle to their T-PACK microprocessor to give the proper counterthrust when the weapon fired.

Kurt sighed, momentarily fogging his faceplate. Now they were jumpy, too. But maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Too many things weren't adding up.

There was the echo and the inactive spy satellite. And why had CENTCOM picked them to go on a low-risk recon mission? This was just a simple look to check out reported suspicious activity at a decommissioned USNC shipyard. Sure, a long space walk was a high-risk maneuver… but not something you'd send three Spartans on.

"Coming up on the twilight zone," Kurt said. "Go to radio silent."

They drifted toward the razor line that marked night to day on the smooth icy moon.

There was no atmosphere, so the transition into the light would be quick, no sparkling sunrise, just a blinding flash of glare.

They crossed into the light. Kurt's faceplate automatically polarized, and they got their first glimpse of the shipyard.

Station Delphi was a floating city of welded scaffolding, cranes, docking pods, tubes, and grappling claws. There were no lights. No thermal emissions. Kurt snapped on his high-def recorder to capture every square meter of the derelict. Whoever had been responsible for the station's decommissioning three years ago had done a sloppy job. There was a halo of debris: spinning steel girders, bolts, and battle plate flashing as it caught and reflected the dull red sunlight from the distant binary stars.

It looked deserted, so Kurt winked his green status light three times—the all-clear to resume single-beam communication-Fred sent an image over TEAMCOM, the skeletal frame of a partially constructed ship, about three times the size of their prowler. He said, "That TR steel alloy exposed to solar radiation is supposed to turn white."

"It's silver," Kurt replied. "New construction?"

"Check this out," Kelly said.

She uploaded a series of images, capturing at increasing magnification a hull-support cradle whose shape suggested the oddly angular structure of a stealth ship. Only this vessel had to be as large as a UNSC destroyer—which was impossible. A large stealth ship was an oxymoron. The bigger the ship, the more radiation leaked, the more thermals, the more stealth-coated surfaces had to be kept in perfect repair so they didn't reflect radar.

"Send that image on a single beam back to the Circumference," Kurt ordered.

Kelly's status light went green.

Kurt swept his left hand forward, gathering data on his sensors-encrusted glove. Still no thermals. No, wait, as Station Delphi rotated slowly, a tiny white flare appeared.

"Hot spot," he said, and tagged the region on his display, sending coordinates to Fred and Kelly.

Kurt's hand twitched; years of communicating by silent, efficient hand signals were something you just didn't unlearn. Talk, even using a single beam, didn't feel right on this mission. One simple wave, however, could send him spinning, and while his T-PACK could compensate, Kurt wanted to continue to stealth without thrusters.

Kelly moved her optics package on the spot, zoomed in, and they all saw a splash of rainbow colors.

Kurt's radiation counter clicked wildly and then went dead. "Broad-spectrum pulse," he reported.

"I've seen one of those before," Fred told them. "They had to repair the Shaw-Fujikawa translight engine on the Magellan. It was a risky op. Those things aren't meant to be taken apart once they go active."

Shaw-Fujikawa engines allowed UNSC ships to leave normal space and plow through a dimensional subdomain colloquially known as "Slipstream space." Kurt had received rudimentary training in how it worked. The drive used particle accelerators to rip apart normal space-time by generating micro black holes. Those holes evaporated via Hawking radiation in a nanosecond. The real quantum mechanical "magic" of the drive was how it manipulated those holes in space-time, squeezing a hundred-thousand-ton cruiser into Slipspace. The mathematics of how this worked and how a ship reentered normal space was well beyond him. It was, actually, beyond most human geniuses.

Kurt, however, did know this about Shaw-Fujikawa drives: they were dangerous. There was radiation and anecdotal evidence that the normal laws of nature "bent" in close proximity to an active unit.

"Update your mission logs and beam them back to the Circumference," Kurt said. 'We're going to take a closer look at that thing and confirm it's what Fred thinks it is before we call in HAZMAT."

There was a slight delay before Kelly's and Fred's acknowledgment lights blinked green.

Kurt activated his T-PACK, puffed the thrusters, and angled toward Station Delphi. He tapped the attitude controls, adjusting pitch, roll, and yaw to avoid colliding with the bolts, beams, and tools spinning in the debris field.

As they closed to within one hundred meters of the sputtering, partially disassembled drive coils, his rear-angle camera fuzzed with static.

"Getting interference here," Kurt said. "You two hold position. I'll scout it out."

"Roger," Kelly said. There was an edge of concern in her voice, "Grapple lines ready."

Kurt crept closer and got a glimpse into the heart of the drive: a near-ultraviolet glow that didn't match the thermal output. It wasn't possible for a hole into Slipspace to exist for more than a fraction of an instant, but he couldn't help feeling that's exactly what this was… and the closer he drifted the more likely he'd get pulled in and forever lost.

But that was just a feeling.

He hesitated.

Kurt altered his direct trajectory and drifted toward a beam thirty meters over the Shaw- Fujikawa engine. The space near the drive rippled like heat waves rising… impossible in a hard vacuum.

His heads-up display flickered.

Kelly spoke over the COM, her transmission filled with noise. "Your IFF tag is breaking up. It shows your position in multiple regions. Abort the recon. If your electronics malfunction—"

The COM broke into a hiss of static.

"I've seen enough," Kurt said.

Static answered him.

"I'm heading back."

He tapped his altitude thrusters to spin around. The switch worked, but there was no action from the T-PACK nozzles.

Kurt released the controls. Triple redundancy in the processors or not—if his T-PACK was affected by the nearby radiation, the last thing he wanted to do was give it a command to fire.

He grasped the steel beam, and bracing, he waved back to his team. He couldn't see them out there, but he knew they were watching him. He knew they wouldn't let him down.

With Kelly and Fred at his back, he could have been at the edge of hell, and they would have gotten him out.

Of course, with a malfunctioning, partially deconstructed Shaw-Fujikawa drive within spitting distance… that might be exactly where he stood.

He spotted motion in the dark, a snaking orange-and-white striped rope and gyrating blob on one end: Kelly's rescue line. Perfect. No worries now.

The steel beam sparked. Kurt reflexively let go, and arcs played across the alloy— radiation inducing a charge.

Every display in his helmet exploded into static. Rows of status lights blinked amber, then all red. Life support, hydraulics, power all fluctuated… and failed.

He had to get out of here before that Shaw-Fujikawa trans-light drive completely shut down his suit.

The basic laws of physics still worked here. Action and reaction. Energy transfer and momentum.

He pushed off the beam, back to Fred and Kelly—hoping to grab the rescue line on his way. If he missed, they would still find him. The only thing he cared about right now was getting away from the source of his suit's malfunction.

He drifted. With his suit shut down, all he could do now was coast. And wait.

Lightning stuck. He was ground zero, and thunder kicked Kurt forward like a rag doll.

He'd absorbed a near-direct grenade explosion once, and it had felt something like this.

Only this particular explosion hadn't been near him; it had been on his armor.

His first thought was sniper fire—an ambush. But then his vision cleared and he saw stars, the dull red binary suns, and Station Delphi whirling around.

His T-PACK had busted a line. He could feel the propellant gushing out… even though the tanks had been designed with redundant shutoff valves, and emergency self-sealing foam to prevent such a decompression.

He heard CPO Mendez's voice in his head, again: "Start tumbling in this gear, start praying."

"Mayday," he called out. "Suit malfunction! Mayday!"

Kurt had no idea where he was, where his team was now positioned, or how fast he was rocketing away from them.

Of course, they didn't open radio channels on this mission. Point-to-point single-beam lasers carried their COM signal. Gyrating out of control, any signal that hit a tiny Spartan-sized target in the vast volume of open space would be nothing short of a miracle.

He finally got enough bearings to tap the system override. No response. He hit the harness emergency release. It was jammed.

"I'm okay," he said over the COM. "Life support's minimal, but still functional. Going to deep breathing mode to conserve air and power. I'll ride it out. You should be able to pick up my IFF transponder once I'm clear. Activating rescue beacon now. I'll be okay. I'll be o—"

CHAPTER FOUR

ADDENDUM \ AFTER-ACTION REPORT \ UNSC-NAVSPECWEP OPS, FILE EHY-97

SUBJECT: SPARTAN-051

DURING AFOREMENTIONED OPERATION (SEE ATTACHED MISSION PROFILE) TO INVESTIGATE POSSIBLE

REBEL ACTIVITY ON THE DECOMMISSIONED CONSTRUCTION PLATFORM 966A, UNOFFICIALLY NAMED

STATION DELPHI, A CATASTROPHIC MALFUNCTION OF A THRUSTER PACK (MODEL 050978, UNIT

SERIAL #82.10923.192) OCCURRED.

AT 1000 HOURS, A THRUSTER MALFUNCTION PROPELLED SPARTAN-051 OFF MISSION AND INTO

INTERPLANETARY SPACE.

IMMEDIATE RESCUE ATTEMPTS COMMENCED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE UNSC PROWLER

CIRCUMFERENCE, JOINED ON 1/13/2535, 1105 HOURS, BY THE UNSC FRIGATE TANNENBERG.

THREE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO MINUTES AFTER PROJECTED OXYGEN IN SPARTAN-051'S VARIANT-V

MJOLNIR SUIT EXPIRED, OPERATION TERMINATED AS NEARBY COVENANT ACTION (SEE ATTACHED

REFERENCES) PROMPTED AN IMMEDIATE CALL TO ACTION OF ALL NEARBY UNSC FORCES.

CAUSE OF THRUSTER MALFUNCTION REMAINS UNKNOWN, PENDING FURTHER INVESTIGATION, BUT IT

IS HYPOTHESIZED THAT A PARTIALLY DECOMMISSIONED SHAW-FUJIKAWA TRANSLIGHT ENGINE CORE ON

THE PLATFORM AND IN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO SPARTAN-051 AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT MAY

HAVE CAUSED A SERIES OF CATASTROPHIC ELECTRICAL MALFUNCTIONS. ANOMALOUS ELECTRICAL

ACTIVITY ALSO OBSCURED FURTHER, LATER RESCUE EFFORTS IN THE REGION.

PLATFORM 966A HAS BEEN TAGGED WITH A HAZNAV SATELLITE, PENDING HMAT TEAM

DISPATCH (FLEETCOM ORDER D-88934).

SPARTAN-051 STATUS: MISSING IN ACTION.

CHAPTER FIVE

1950 HOURS, DECEMBER 14, 2531 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ABOARD UNSC POINT OF NO RETURN, LOCATION CLASSIFIED