PROLOGUE 0103 Hours, September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) UNSC Cruiser Pillar of Autumn, location unknown. Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom roused him from fitful sleep. He rubbed his blurry eyes and glanced at the Mission Clock bolted to the wall above his bunk. He’d been asleep for three hours— his first sleep cycle in thirty-six hours, damn it. Worse, this was the first time since the ship had jumped that he’d been able to fall asleep at all. “Jesus,” he muttered, “this better be good.” The Old Man had put the tech crews on triple shifts after the Pillar of Autumn jumped away from Reach. 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. Nearly one third of the tech staff had died during the flight from Reach, and every department was running a skeleton crew. Everyone else went into the freezer, of course—nonessential personnel always got an ice-nap during a Slipspace jump. In over two hundred combat cruises, Marcus had clocked fewer than seventy-two hours in cryostorage. 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. Of course, it was difficult to complain;