Read Halo: Ghosts of Onyx for Free Online Page B

"above" in space—just vectors, masses, and velocities.
    He switched on his reverse-angle camera and saw Kelly and Fred jump from the lock of the prowler after him. He knew not to turn his head to look. The motion would make him gyrate out of control. Besides, in the vacuum-enhanced variant of MJOLNIR armor, his mobility was a fraction of normal.
    A green status light winked on, confirming they were all on the same vector.
    They'd coast for several kilometers before they activated long-range thruster packs. Although slow, there were two good reasons to be cautious.
    First, when their prowler. Circumference, had reentered normal space, the NAV Officer had picked up an echo, a partial ship silhouette, prowler class. He had dismissed this as an echo
    from their reentry to normal space that had bounced off the moon. The NAV Officer had assured them there was nothing to worry about. Still, the anomaly bugged Kurt. In case there was another ship, Kurt wanted to be well away before igniting packs. No need to needlessly give away the stealth ship's position.
    Second, they had detected an inert COM satellite on the dark side of the moon— something you'd expect if the system was being monitored for a sneak attack. No signal had emitted from the thing. The Circumference had jammed, and then fried it with a burst from a pulse laser.
    Kurt just made the assumption this simple recon mission would be hot. That way, he'd be happy to be disappointed.
    He activated the single-beam laser TEAMCOM system, and said, "ETA to day-night demarcation in five minutes. System check thrusters."
    Kurt ran his own diagnostic. They couldn't take any chances with the packs. Designed for long-range deep-space operations, it was one of the riskiest pieces of equipment they'd been trained on. Even with triple redundancy in NAV system and stabilizers, one accident and there was enough compressed tri-amino hydrazine in the double fuel tanks to propel you so far and so fast off course, rescue would be an astronomically remote possibility.
    Or as Chief Mendez had put it: "Start tumbling in this gear, start praying."
    Green status lights winked back at Kurt.
    "ETA three minutes," he said.
    "Roger," Kelly replied and then she added, "Something wrong?"
    "No," Kurt said.
    Fred's voice came over the COM: "When you say 'no' like that, you mean 'yes.'"
    "Just a feeling," he admitted.
    Silence hissed over their linked single-beam COMs.
    Kurt watched in his rear-angle display as Kelly and Fred activated their MA5B assault rifles. A data cable linked each rifle to their T-PACK microprocessor to give the proper counterthrust when the weapon fired.
    Kurt sighed, momentarily fogging his faceplate. Now they were jumpy, too. But maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Too many things weren't adding up.
    There was the echo and the inactive spy satellite. And why had CENTCOM picked them to go on a low-risk recon mission? This was just a simple look to check out reported suspicious activity at a decommissioned USNC shipyard. Sure, a long space walk was a high-risk maneuver… but not something you'd send three Spartans on.
    "Coming up on the twilight zone," Kurt said. "Go to radio silent."
    They drifted toward the razor line that marked night to day on the smooth icy moon. There was no atmosphere, so the transition into the light would be quick, no sparkling sunrise, just a blinding flash of glare.
    They crossed into the light. Kurt's faceplate automatically polarized, and they got their first glimpse of the shipyard.
    Station Delphi was a floating city of welded scaffolding, cranes, docking pods, tubes, and grappling claws. There were no lights. No thermal emissions. Kurt snapped on his high-def recorder to capture every square meter of the derelict. Whoever had been responsible for the station's decommissioning three years ago had done a sloppy job. There was a halo of debris: spinning steel girders, bolts, and battle plate flashing as it caught and reflected the dull red sunlight from