A frown creased his tired features as a new message scrolled across his screen.ĭECRYPTION KEY: “Receiving the feed, Chief,” he called out to the intercom pickup. The terminal chimed as the feed from Shephard appeared in Sam’s message queue. The pretty young woman frozen in the picture smiled back at him. Sam brushed his fingers against the photo. He activated the computer and waited for the upload from Shephard.Īs he waited, his eyes locked on a small two-dee photograph taped to the edge of the screen. He stood, shrugged into his uniform tunic, and stepped over to his terminal. Dump it to a portable ’pad, grab your gear and get down here.” “It’ll answer some of your questions anyway. “I’m sending a feed to your terminal, Sam,” Shephard continued.

“Look,” Shephard said, “I need someone I can depend on. He’d known Thom Shephard since the Academy and had never heard the man sound so grim. Sam winced at the tone in his superior’s voice. Shephard replied, his voice almost a whisper. “What’s the emergency, Thom? I’m not a cryo specialist.” “I’m sorry to wake you, Sam, but I need you down in Cryo Two.” Tech Chief Shephard sounded exhausted.

The intercom buzzed again, and Sam swung himself out of the bunk. A major naval base destroyed, millions dead or dying as the Covenant burned the planet to a cinder-and one of Earth’s few remaining defenses transformed into corpses and molten slag.Īll in all, they’d been damned lucky to get away-but Sam couldn’t help but feel that everyone on the Autumn was living on borrowed time. Of course, it was difficult to complain Captain Keyes was a brilliant tactician-and everyone aboard the Autumn knew just how close they’d come to destruction when Reach fell to the enemy. Right now, though, he was so tired that even the discomfort of cryorevival sounded appealing if it meant that he could manage some uninterrupted sleep. In over two hundred combat cruises, Marcus had clocked fewer than seventy-two hours in cryostorage. Nearly one third of the tech staff had died during the flight from Reach, and every department was running a skeleton crew.Įveryone else went into the freezer, of course-nonessential personnel always got an ice-nap during a Slipspace jump. The ship was a mess after the battle, and what was left of the engineering crews worked around the clock to keep the aging cruiser in one piece. The Old Man had put the tech crews on triple shifts after the Pillar of Autumn jumped away from Reach. “Jesus,” he muttered, “this better be good.” Worse, this was the first time since the ship had jumped that he’d been able to fall asleep at all. He’d been asleep for three hours- his first sleep cycle in thirty-six hours, damn it.

He rubbed his blurry eyes and glanced at the Mission Clock bolted to the wall above his bunk. Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom roused him from fitful sleep. UNSC Cruiser Pillar of Autumn, location unknown.

Halo 1 flood