He could not fight the enemy—he was severely outgunned. He couldn’t outrun them, either. There had to be another option.

Hadn’t he always told his students that when you were out of options, then you were using the wrong tactics? You had to bend the rules. Shift perspective—anything to find a way out of a hopeless situation.

The black space near Sigma Octanus IV boiled and frothed with motes of green light.

“Ships entering normal space,” Lieutenant Jaggers announced, panic tingeing his voice.

Commander Keyes got to his feet.

He had been wrong. There weren’t four Covenant frigates. A pair of enemy frigates emerged from Slipspace... escorting a destroyer and a carrier.

His blood ran cold. He had seen battles in which a Covenant destroyer had made Swiss cheese of UNSC ships. Its plasma torpedoes could boil through the Iroquois’ two meters of titanium-A battleplate in seconds. Their weapons were light-years ahead of the UNSC’s.

“Their weapons,” Commander Keyes muttered under his breath. Yes... he did have a third option.

“Continue at emergency speed,” he ordered, “and come about to heading zero three two.”

Lieutenant Jaggers swiveled in his seat. “That will put us on collision course with their destroyer, sir.”

“I know,” Commander Keyes replied. “In fact, I’m counting on doing just that.”

0320 Hours, July 17, 2552 (Military Calendar)

UNSC Iroquois en route to Sigma Octanus IV

Commander Keyes stood with his hands behind his back and tried to look calm. Not an easy thing to do when his ship was on a collision course with a Covenant battlegroup. Inside, adrenaline raced through his blood and his pulse pounded.

He had to at least appear in control for his crew. He was asking a lot from them... probably everything, in fact.

His junior officers watched their status monitors; they occasionally glanced nervously at him, but their gazes always drifted back to the center view screen.

The Covenant ships looked like toys in the distance. It was dangerous to think of them as harmless, however. One slip, one underestimation of their tremendous firepower, and the Iroquois would be destroyed.

The alien carrier had three bulbous sections; its swollen center had thirteen launch bays. Commander Keyes had seen hundreds of fighters stream out of them before—fast, accurate, and deadly craft. Normally his ship’s AI would handle point defense... only this time, there was no AI installed on the Iroquois.

The alien destroyer was a third again as massive as the Iroquois. She bristled with pulse laser turrets, insectlike antennae, and chitinous pods. The carrier and destroyer moved together... but not toward Iroquois. They slowly drifted in-system toward Sigma Octanus IV.

Were they going to ignore him? Glass the planet without even bothering to swat him out of the way first?

The Covenant frigates, however, lagged behind. They turned in unison and their sides faced the Iroquois—preparing for a broadside. Motes of red light appeared and swarmed toward the frigate’s lateral lines, building into a solid stripe of hellish illumination.

“Detecting high levels of beta particle radiation,” Lieutenant Dominique said. “They’re getting ready to fire their plasma weapons, Commander.”

“Course correction, sir?” Lieutenant Jaggers asked. His fingers tapped in a new heading bound out-system.

“Stay on course.” It took all Commander Keyes’ concentration to say that matter-of-factly.

Lieutenant Jaggers turned and started to speak—but Commander Keyes didn’t have time to address his concerns.

“Lieutenant Hikowa,” Commander Keyes said. “Arm a Shiva missile. Remove all nuclear launch safety locks.”

“Shiva armed. Aye, Commander.” Lieutenant Hikowa’s face was a mask of grim determination.

“Set the fuse on radio transmission code sequence detonation only. Disable proximity fuse. Stand by for a launch pilot program.”

“Sir?” Lieutenant Hikowa looked confused by his order, but then said, “Sir! Yes, sir. Making it happen.”

The alien frigates in the center of the view screen no longer looked remotely like toys to Commander Keyes. They looked real and larger every second. The red glow along their sides had become solid bands... almost too bright to look directly at.

Commander Keyes picked up his data pad and quickly tapped in calculations: velocity, mass, and heading. He wished they had an AI online to double-check his figures. This amounted to no more than an educated guess. How long would it take the Iroquois to orbit Sigma Octanus IV? He got a number and cut it by 60 percent, knowing they’d either pick up speed... or be dead by the time it mattered.

“Lieutenant Hikowa, set the Shiva’s course for mark one eight zero. Full burn for twelve seconds.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, tapped in the parameters, and locked them into the system. “Missile ready, sir.”

“Sir!” Lieutenant Jaggers swiveled around and stood. His lips were drawn into a tight thin line. “That course fires the missile directly away from our enemies.”

“I am aware of that, Lieutenant Jaggers. Sit down and await further orders.”

Lieutenant Jaggers sat. He rubbed his temple with a trembling hand. His other hand balled into a fist.

Commander Keyes linked to the NAV system and set a countdown timer on his data pad. Twenty-nine seconds. “On my mark, Lieutenant Hikowa, launch that nuke... and not a moment before.”

“Aye, sir.” Her slender hand hovered over the control panel. “MAC guns are still hot, Commander,” she reminded him.

“Divert the energy keeping the capacitors at full charge and route them to the engines,” Commander Keyes ordered.

Lieutenant Hall said, “Diverting now, sir.” She exchanged a glance with Lieutenant Hikowa. “Engines now operating at one hundred fifty percent of rated output. Red line in two minutes.”

“Contact! Contact!” Lieutenant Dominique shouted. “Enemy plasma torpedoes away, sir!”

Scarlet lightning erupted from the alien frigates—twin bolts of fire streaked through the darkness. They looked as if they could burn space itself. The torpedoes were on a direct course for the Iroquois.

“Course correction, sir?” Lieutenant Jaggers’ voice broke with strain. His uniform was soaked with perspiration.

“Negative,” Commander Keyes replied. “Continue on this heading. Arm all aft Archer missile pods. Rotate launch arcs one eight zero degrees.”

“Aye, sir.” Lieutenant Hikowa wrinkled her brow, and then she slowly nodded and silently mouthed, “... yes.”

Boiling red plasma filled half the forward view screen. It was beautiful to watch in an odd way—like a front-row seat at a forest fire.

Keyes found himself strangely calm. This would either work or it would not. The odds were long, but he was confident that his actions were the only option to survive this encounter.

Lieutenant Dominique turned. “Collision with plasma in nineteen seconds, sir.”

Jaggers turned from his station. “Sir! This is suicide! Our armor can’t withstand—”

Keyes cut him off. “Mister, man your station or I will have you removed from the bridge.”

Jaggers looked pleadingly at Hikowa. “We’re going to die, Aki—”

She refused to meet his gaze and turned back to her controls. “You heard the Commander,” she said quietly. “Man your post.”

Jaggers sank into his seat.

“Collision with plasma in seven seconds,” Lieutenant Hall said. She bit her lower lip.

“Lieutenant Jaggers, transfer emergency thruster controls to my station.”

“Yes... yes, sir.”

The emergency thrusters were tanks of trihydride tetrazine and hydrogen peroxide. When they mixed, they did so with explosive force—literally blasting the Iroquois onto a new course. The ship had six such tanks strategically placed on hardened points on the hull.