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Halo Lighting System First Strike Games User Manual

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HALO: FIRST STRIKE

The Chief grabbed a battle rifle and, for close use, a pair of

submachine guns. He took a pair of silencers for the SMGs and

hip holsters for the smaller weapons. He picked up a dozen frag

grenades in their plastic ring carrier and slotted that into the left

thigh section of his armor.

He'd need ammunition, a lot of it, if things got hot. So he took

extra clips for the SMGs and the battle rifle and taped them onto

his chest, arms, and right thigh. More clips went into a back-

pack, along with two Lotus antitank mines, a few cans of C-7 ex-

plosive, detonators, timers, two field first-aid kits, and a fiber-optic

probe.

While the rest of Blue Team got their gear together, John told

them, "Stay off the COM from now on."

They all nodded.

Lead lining or not, they were close to too many listening

Covenant ears to take any more chances with the COM.

He moved to the still-open port hatch, slid the fiber-optic

probe outside, and plugged it into his helmet. Grainy images ap-

peared on his heads-up display.

Hundreds of Covenant ships swarmed into view. In their

midst a speck glowed and grew larger until the Master Chief saw it

was a ship of similar design to their own: two U-shaped hulls,

each the size of their dropship, sat on top of one another. This

ship accelerated toward them and separated—one part moved to

their dropship's stern and the other drifted to the nose.

The clanging of metal on metal reverberated through the

hull, and the Master Chief felt a gentle motion in the pit of his

stomach.

He looked back and passed on a thumbs-up to Fred, indicating

that their tow had arrived, and Fred passed this signal on to the

rest of the team.

On the fiber-optic feed the Master Chief saw that the Covenant

tug maneuvered them through the fleet, up, over, and around

ships a hundred times their size. There was a moment when they

dived and there was nothing on screen save the stars and black of

space. The Master Chief got a glimpse of the gold-colored star

on his heads-up display, and then the video feed moved over to a

planet of ocher smeared with clouds of sulfur dioxide and an or-

biting moon of silver.