Singled out for conspicuous merit and bravery under fire are the following personnel:

Eric S. Trautmann went far above and beyond the call of duty providing background material, editing, reality checks, and a constant supply of caffeine and encouragement.

Bungie for making a superb game, and in particular: Jason Jones, Alex Seropian, John Howard, and Lorraine McLees.

The brilliant tactical unit at Microsoft’s Franchise Development Group: Nancy Figatner, Brannon Boren, and Doug Zartman.

Microsoft’s User Experience fireteam: Keith Cirillo, Jo Tyo, and Matt Whiting.

The troopers at Ballantine/Del Rey: Caron Harris, David Stevenson, Steve Palmer, Crystal Velasquez—and special thanks to Steve Saffel.

0500 Hours, February 12, 2535 (Military Calendar)

Lambda Serpentis System, Jericho VII Theater of Operations

“Contact. All teams stand by: enemy contact, my position.”

The Chief knew there were probably more than a hundred of them—motion sensors were off the scale. He wanted to see them for himself, though; his training made that lesson clear: “Machines break. Eyes don’t.”

The four Spartans that composed Blue Team covered his back, standing absolutely silent and immobile in their MJOLNIR combat armor. Someone had once commented that they looked like Greek war gods in the armor... but his Spartans were far more effective and ruthless than Homer’s gods had ever been.

He snaked the fiber-optic probe up and over the three-meter-high stone ridge. When it was in place, the Chief linked it to his helmet’s heads-up display.

On the other side he saw a valley with eroded rock walls and a river meandering through it... and camped along the banks as far as he could see were Grunts.

The Covenant used these stocky aliens as cannon fodder. They stood a meter tall and wore armored environment suits that replicated the atmosphere of their frozen homeworld. They reminded the Chief of biped dogs, not only in appearance, but because their speech—even with the new translation software—was an odd combination of high-pitched squeaks, guttural barks, and growls.

They were about as smart as dogs, too. But what they lacked in brainpower, they made up for in sheer tenacity. He had seen them hurl themselves at their enemies until the ground was piled high with their corpses... and their opponents had depleted their ammunition.

These Grunts were unusually well armed: needlers, plasma pistols, and there were four stationary plasma cannons. Those could be a problem.

One other problem: there were easily a thousand of them.

This operation had to go off without a hitch. Blue Team’s mission was to draw out the Covenant rear guard and let Red Team slip through in the confusion. Red Team would then plant a HAVOK tactical nuke. When the next Covenant ship landed, dropped its shields, and started to unload its troops, they’d get a thirty-megaton surprise.

The Chief detached the optics and took a step back from the rock wall. He passed the tactical information along to his team over a secure COM channel.

“Four of us,” Blue-Two whispered over the link. “And a thousand of them? Piss-poor odds for the little guys.”

“Blue-Two,” the Chief said, “I want you up with those Jackhammer launchers. Take out the cannons and soften the rest of them. Blue-Three and Five, you follow me up—we’re on crowd control. Blue-Four: you get the welcome mat ready. Understood?”

Four blue lights winked on his heads-up display as his team acknowledged the orders.

“On my mark.” The Chief crouched and readied himself. “Mark!”

Blue-Two leaped gracefully atop the ridge—three meters straight up. There was no sound as the half ton of MJOLNIR armor and Spartan landed on the limestone.

She hefted one launcher and ran along the ridge—she was the fastest Spartan on the Chief’s team. He was confident those Grunts wouldn’t be able to track her for the three seconds she’d be exposed. In quick succession, Blue-Two emptied both of the Jackhammer’s tubes, dropped one launcher, and then fired the other rockets just as fast. The shells streaked into the Grunts’ formation and detonated. One of the stationary guns flipped over, engulfed in the blast, and the gunner was flung to the ground.

She ditched the launcher, jumped down—rolled once—and was back on her feet, running at top speed to the fallback point.

The Chief, Blue-Three, and Blue-Five leaped to the top of the ridge. The Chief switched to infrared to cut through the clouds of dust and propellant exhaust just in time to see the second salvo of Jackhammers strike their targets. Two consecutive blossoms of flash, fire, and thunder decimated the front ranks of the Grunt guards, and most importantly, turned the last of the plasma cannons into smoldering wreckage.

The Chief and the others opened fire with their MA5B assault rifles—a full automatic spray of fifteen rounds per second. Armor-piercing bullets tore into the aliens, breaching their environment suits and sparking the methane tanks they carried. Gouts of flame traced wild arcs as the wounded Grunts ran in confusion and pain.

Finally the Grunts realized what was happening—and where this attack was coming from. They regrouped and charged en masse. An earthquake vibration coursed through the ground and shook the porous stone beneath the Chief’s boots.

The three Spartans exhausted their AP clips and then, in unison, switched to shredder rounds. They fired into the tide of creatures as they surged forward. Line after line of them dropped. Scores more just trampled their fallen comrades.

Explosive needles bounced off the Chief’s armor, detonating as they hit the ground. He saw the flash of a plasma bolt—side stepped—and heard the air crackle where he had stood a split second before.

“Inbound Covenant air support,” Blue-Four reported over the COM link. “ETA is two minutes, Chief.”

“Roger that,” he said. “Blue-Three and -Five: maintain fire for five seconds, then fall back. Mark!”

Their status lights winked once, acknowledging his order.

The Grunts were three meters from the wall. The Chief tossed two grenades. He, Blue-Three, and Blue-Five stepped backward off the ridge, landed, spun, and ran.

Two dull thumps reverberated though the ground. The squeals and barks of the incoming Grunts, however, drowned out the noise of the exploding grenades.

The Chief and his team sprinted up the half-kilometer sandstone slope in thirty-two seconds flat. The hill ended abruptly—a sheer drop of two hundred meters straight into the ocean.

Blue-Four’s voice crackled over the COM channel: “Welcome mat is laid out, Chief. Ready when you are.”

The Grunts looked like a living carpet of steel-blue skin, claws, and chrome weapons. Some ran on all fours up the slope. They barked and howled, baying for the Spartans’ blood.

“Roll out the carpet,” the Chief told Blue-Four.

The hill exploded—plumes of pulverized sandstone and fire and smoke hurtled skyward.

The Spartans had buried a spiderweb pattern of Lotus antitank mines earlier that morning.

Sand and bits of metal pinged off of the Chief’s helmet.