Halo: Contact Harvest Read Online Free PDF

my note to the lady’s. No need to cut the red tape twice, right?
> * VIOLATION! YOUR INFRACTION HAS BEEN LOGGED—
<\ Hey! Whoa there!
>-- AND WILL BE SUBMITTED TO DCS-S--SSSSSSsss* \\\
> (…) ~ STANDBY/REBOOT
> (..)
> ()
<\ Partner?
<\ You OK?
> APOLOGY. UNKNOWN SYSTEM ERROR.
> PLEASE REPEAT PRIOR REQUEST.
<\ Nah, we’re all set. Have a safe slip, you hear?
> AFFIRMATIVE. \>

The NAV computer had no idea why it had temporarily shut down. It had no memory of its COM with Mack. The AI’s file was there—encrypted and attached to Sif’s report. But the NAV computer believed the two documents had always been linked. It rechecked its slip calculations and increased reactor flow to its Shaw-Fujikawa drive. Exactly five seconds later, a sunburst of sundered space-time appeared off Wholesale Price ’s prow.
The rift remained open after the freighter disappeared, its shimmering edges warping the surrounding stars. The blazing hole flickered stubbornly, as if it was determined to choose the moment of its closure. But once Wholesale Price moved deeper into the Slipstream, pulling its sustaining power with it, the rift collapsed in an insignificant burst of gamma radiation—the quantum mechanical equivalent of a shrug.

CHAPTER
    TWO

EARTH,
GREATER CHICAGO INDUSTRIAL ZONE,
AUGUST 10, 2524

When Avery woke, he was already home. Chicago, the onetime heart of the American Midwest, was now an urban sprawl that covered the former states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The territory wasn’t part of the United States, not in any formal sense. Some people who lived in the Zone still considered themselves American, but like everyone else on the planet they were citizens of the United Nations—a sea change in governance that was inevitable once humanity began to colonize other worlds. First Mars, then the Jovian moons, and then planets in other systems.
Checking his COM pad on the military shuttle from orbit to the Great Lakes Spaceport, Avery confirmed he was on a two-week pass—that he’d be able to enjoy his first extended break from operation TREBUCHET. There was a note on the pass from Avery’s CO detailing the injuries sustained by the marines on his last mission. All of Avery’s alpha squad had survived with minor injuries. But bravo squad hadn’t been so lucky; three marines were killed-in-action (KIA), and Staff Sergeant Byrne was hanging by a thread in a UNSC hospital ship.
The note said nothing about civilian casualties. But Avery remembered the force of the hauler’s blast, and he doubted any had survived.
He tried not to think—let his mind go blank—as he boarded a maglev passenger train from the spaceport to the Zone. Only later, when Avery stepped out onto the elevated platform of the Cottage Grove terminal, did the hot and humid air of a late Chicago summer snap his senses back into focus. As the sun dove to a fiery finish, he enjoyed what little breeze was coming off Lake Michigan—lukewarm gusts that hammered up the east-west blocks of tumbledown gray-stone apartments, scattering the autumn leaves of the sidewalk maples.
Arms laded with duffel bags, and wearing his navy-blue dress pants, collared shirt, and cap, Avery was drenched with sweat by the time he reached The Seropian, a center for active retirement—or so its hospitality computer told him—as he stepped into the tower’s stifling lobby. Avery’s Aunt Marcille had moved to the complex a few years after he’d joined the marines, vacating the same walkup apartment on Blackstone Avenue they’d shared since Avery was a boy. His aunt’s health was failing, and she’d needed the extra care. And more to the point: she was lonely without him.
As Avery waited for an elevator that would take him up to the thirty-seventh floor, he stared into a recreation room filled with many of The Seropian ’s bald and silver-haired residents. Most were clustered around a video display tuned to one of the public COM’s all-news channels. There was a report