Eric Nylund - The Fall of Reach

The Covenant had followed them into Slipstream space. And they had always been faster and more accurate than UNSC navigators in the elusive dimension.

Captain Keyes and the Master Chief would get their chance to disable and capture one of those vessels. Their “luck” had so far defied all probability and statistical variations. She hoped their defiance of the odds continued.

“Captain Keyes? Wake up, sir,” Cortana said. “We will enter normal space in three hours.”

Captain Keyes sat up in the cryo tube. He licked his lips and gagged. “I hate that stuff.”

“The inhalant surfactant is highly nutritious, sir. Please regurgitate and swallow the protein complex.”

Captain Keyes swung his legs out of the tube. He coughed and spat the mucus onto the deck. “You wouldn’t say that, Cortana, if you ever tasted this stuff. Ship status?”

“Reactor two has been fully repaired,” she replied. “Reactors one and three are inoperable. That gives us twenty percent power. Archer missile pods I and J rows serviceable. Autocannon ammunition at ten percent. Our two remaining Shiva warheads are intact.” She paused and double-checked the MAC gun. “Magnetic Accelerator Gun’s capacitors depolarized. We cannot fire the system, sir.”

“More good news,” he grumbled. “Continue.”

“Hull breaches patched—but the majority of decks eleven, twelve, and thirteen are destroyed—that includes the Spartans’ weapons locker.”

“Are there any infantry weapons left?” Keyes asked. “We may need to repel boarders.”

“Yes, Captain. A substantial number of standard Marine infantry weapons survived the engagement. Would you like an inventory?”

“Later. What about the crew?”

“All crew accounted for. Spartan 117 is in cryo sleep with the Marine and security personnel. Waking bridge officers and all essential personnel.”

“And the Covenant?”

“We’ll know in a moment if they were able to track us, sir.”

“Very well. I’ll be on the bridge in ten minutes.” He eased out of the tube. “I’m getting too damn old to be frozen and shot through space at light speed,” he muttered.

Cortana checked the status of the waking crew. There was a minor flutter in Lieutenant Dominique’s heart, which she corrected. Otherwise, status normal.

The Captain and crew assembled on the bridge. They waited.

“Five minutes until normal space, sir,” Cortana announced.

She knew they could see the countdown timer, but Cortana noticed that the crew responded well to her calm voice in stressful situations. Their reaction times generally improved by as much as 15 percent—give or take. Sometimes, human imperfection made calculations maddeningly imprecise.

She ran another check on all intact systems. The Pillar of Autumn had taken a tremendous beating at Reach. It was a wonder it was still in one piece.

“Entering normal space in thirty seconds,” she informed Captain Keyes.

“Shut down all systems, Cortana. I want us to be dark when we hit normal space. If the Covenant did follow us—maybe we can hide.”

“Aye, sir. Running dark.”

The view screen filed with green light; smears of stars came into focus. A purple-hued gas giant filled a third of the screen.

Captain Keyes said, “Fire thrusters to position us in orbit around the planet, Ensign Lovell.”

“Aye, sir,” he replied.

The Pillar of Autumn glided around the gravity well of the moon.

Cortana detected a radar echo ahead, an object hidden in the shadow.

As the ship rounded the dark side of the gas giant, the object came into full view. It was a ring-shaped structure... gigantic.

“Cortana,” Captain Keyes whispered. “What is that?”

Cortana noted a sudden spike in pulse and respiration among the bridge crew... particularly the Captain.

The object spun serenely in the heavens. The outer surface was gray metal, reflecting the brilliant starlight. From this distance, the surface of the object seemed to be engraved with deep, ornate geometric patterns.

“Could this be some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon?” Dominique asked.

“Unknown,” Cortana replied.

She activated the ship’s long-range detection gear. Cortana’s holo image frowned. The Pillar of Autumn’s scanning systems were fine for combat... but for this kind of analysis it was like using stone tools. She diverted processing power away from ancillary systems and channeled it into the task.

Figures scrolled across the sensor displays.

“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana announced, “and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant materials, sir.”

She paused and aimed the long-range camera array at the ring. A moment later a close-up of the object snapped into focus.

Keyes let out a low whistle.

The inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and browns—trackless desert; jungles; glaciers and vast oceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows upon the terrain. The ring rotated and brought a new feature into view—a tremendous hurricane forming over an unimaginably wide body of water.

Equations scrolled furiously across Cortana as she studied the ring. She checked and rechecked her numbers—the rotational speed of the object and its estimated mass. They didn’t quite add up. She ran through a series of passive and active scans... and found something.

“Captain,” Cortana said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that controls the ring’s spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. At this range—and with this gear—I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and Earth-normal gravity.”

“If it’s artificial, who the hell built it... and what in God’s name is it?”

Cortana processed that question for a full three seconds, then finally answered: “I don’t know, sir.”

Captain Keyes took out his pipe, lit it, and puffed once. He examined the curls of smoke thoughtfully. “Then we’d better find out.”