Halo First Strike Games, User Manual

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
0002 hours, September 7,2552 (Military Calendar) \ ONI
underground facility, planet Reach.
Fred followed the trail of odd symbols along the left-hand
stone wall until they twisted into a spiral mosaic and vanished
into ever-smaller curls. The symbols were part of the rock, com-
posed of glittering mica inclusions in the granite matrix. There
were a series of squares, triangles, bars, and dots, similar to
Covenant calligraphy he had seen—but at the same time it was
simpler, cleaner, and when Fred focused on them, the characters
seemed to blur around their edges and fade from his stare.
He blinked, and the symbols were there again.
Following these symbols like a trail of bread crumbs had been
his primary mission for the last five days. Dr. Halsey and the
Spartans had explored the extensive caverns, hoping to find two
things: a way out, and what Dr. Halsey called "the most impor-
tant discovery of the millennium." She had, however, refused to
speculate on what exactly this discovery would be. "I'm a scien-
tist," she'd told them, "not a soothsayer."
Fred would have settled for finding an airhole to the surface—
but he recognized that the symbols were important, too. They
were important because the Covenant thought they were impor-
tant. And that made whatever Dr. Halsey was searching for
worth finding, if only to keep the enemy from getting it.
The Covenant hadn't stopped digging overhead, although
the pace and methods they used had changed. There had been
no further explosions. There was only the constant and gentle
scraping sound of equipment as they slowly but steadily re-
moved the mountain. Every hour the sound intensified as they