PROLOGUE 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