Halo: Bad Blood by Matt Forbeck;

Author:Matt Forbeck;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

As Veronica gunned us toward the edge of the system, I slipped into the weapons station and accessed the nav display to set a slipspace course for our next destination. “What’s the name of this hidden Front paradise of yours?” I asked Veronica.

“The natives call it the Hole in the Wall.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

She punched the coordinates into the navigational system for me. “It’s named after a famous outlaw hideout from the American frontier days.”

I snickered. “The jokes for this name: How do you stop them from, ah, erupting?”

“The people there take it very seriously,” she said. “They identify with that kind of culture, and we need their help. Do not mock them.”

“Is that a direct order?”

“Would it help if it were?”

“Probably not.”

“Give it a shot,” she said. “Go back and give your friends a proper hello. Once I get us into slipspace, I’ll come back so I can brief everyone.”

I wasn’t looking forward to that. I sighed, then unbuckled myself from my seat and went back to the bay.

Dutch and Gretchen were there, and they’d already taken off their helmets. I hung mine on a rack next to theirs. Before I was even done, Dutch stood up and grabbed me in a massive bear hug. He whooped with joy as he swung me around, and it was all I could do not to bash my head on the ship’s ceiling.

“Whoa there, pal!” I said to him as he set me down. “Good to see you, too.”

He put me on my feet and grinned at me. “Dammit, Buck! I can’t believe it’s you. And to run into you like that? Whoo-eee!”

Gretchen stood up next to him and cleared her throat. Dutch’s eyes went wide, and he spun around to usher her toward me. “You remember my wife, Gretchen.”

“We’ve met,” she said as she offered her hand to me.

I shook it. “Never seen you in combat gear before, though.” Gretchen had been an ODST at one point, too, but she’d stepped on a mine and been discharged from the service before I’d even met Dutch. “It suits you.”

“I’m active duty again,” she said with a smile. “The whole way. The docs in the SPARTAN-IV program set me up with the best prosthetic an unlimited military budget can buy. Works so well in the armor that you can’t tell the difference at all.”

I looked to both her and Dutch. “So that’s what brought you out of retirement?”

Dutch gave me a game shrug. “Once they offered to make her a Spartan, you think I was going to let her leave me behind?”

“What I don’t get,” Romeo said, “is why you two didn’t tell somebody? This is pretty big. We should’ve known about it.”

Gretchen blushed a little at that. “Well . . . there was a chance that the prosthetic wouldn’t quite take. You know how tight they lock down communications from the training station. We were going to notify you as soon as we got through and were handed our deployment orders. That’s when everything would have been official.

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