HALO: Renegades by Kelly Gay

Author:Kelly Gay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

CHAPTER 24

* * *

Ace of Spades, slipspace to Etran Harborage, June 29, 2557

Rion stood at the tactical table, keeping a tight watch on the slipspace feed, curious about the armiger’s chosen destination and dreading the unknown.

The crew had assembled on the bridge, quietly sitting at their stations, waiting and monitoring systems. There was no way to tell where they were headed, because the destination wasn’t inherently known to the new star charts they’d had to buy back on Venezia.

When they’d scrubbed all their previous navigational logs and star charts, also gone were the many notations, more than a decade of discoveries and out-of-the-way locales that weren’t often found on standard maps. Her many backups were gone too, victims of ONI’s warehouse thefts. Rion’s chest ached at the loss. Light-years’ worth of travel and navigational knowledge simply not there anymore.

Not that it mattered in this instance. The long-lost Forerunner world the armiger had in mind wouldn’t be on any of her charts, old or new.

Speaking of which . . . The metallic echo of footsteps beyond the bridge bristled along Rion’s spine. The sound grew with each step closer, until the armiger appeared in the doorway. All she could see for a moment, before it ducked its head to enter the bridge, were those strange eyes and the lines denoting cheekbones and mouth glowing blue in the dimness.

Once inside, it straightened to its nearly three-meter height, took four steps forward, and then stopped behind her captain’s chair.

Save for Niko, they’d done a good job of avoiding it up until now, and it’d seemed content to remain mostly in the cargo hold during their journey.

Rion withdrew her attention as a low ping told them they were exiting the slipspace portal. Unease had her gripping the ends of the tactical table as Ace dropped smoothly out of slipspace and into . . . chaos.

“What the—”

“Contact!” Ram shouted as a shrill alert blared through the bridge. He scrambled from one chair to another, taking up the weapons systems and immediately maneuvering Ace’s cannons to let loose on two Seraphs screaming past their bow. “They’re coming around!”

Rion hurried to her chair, knowing exactly where they were. “You took us back to the debris field!” she yelled in disbelief, sliding into her seat and taking immediate evasive action. “Hold on!”

The single-piloted Seraphs were quick and agile combat fighters. During the Covenant War, they would’ve been armed with pulse lasers and plasma cannons, but she could only pray that postwar, their firepower was severely lacking. If not, Ace was in a world of trouble.

With each maneuver made, the Seraphs countered, staying glued to Ace’s tail as Rion piloted the ship between chunks of rock and metal. Debris exploded around them, bouncing against the shields and spraying into their path as the Seraphs’ plasma cannons missed their mark.

“Damn it,” Rion cursed at their luck.

“Captain, if you would allow me control—”

“You’ve done enough.” She had zero time to deal with the armiger or her own shock. All her focus was on getting out of this mess in one piece.

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