文档介绍：THE
FLOOD
WILLIAM C. DIETZ
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
For Marjorie, with love and gratitude.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks go to Steve Saffel for charting the course, to Doug Zartman for
coordinating the pieces, to Eric S. Trautmann for polishing ’til it sparkled, to
Eric Nylund who led the way inThe Fall of Reach , to Nancy Figatner and
the Franchise Development Group for their support, and to Jason Jones,
who, along with the rest of the outstanding Bungie team, created one helluva
pulse-pounding game.
PROLOGUE
0103 Hours, September 19, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
UNSC CruiserPillar of Autumn, location unknown.
Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the 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 asleepat all .
“Jesus,” he muttered, “this better be good.”
The Old Man had put the tech crews on triple shifts after thePillar 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 bat
cruises, Marcus had clocked fewer than seventy-two hours in cryostorage.
Right now, though, he was so tired that even the fort of cryorevival
sounded appealing if it meant that he could manage some uninterrupted
sleep.
Of course, it was difficult plain; Captain Keyes was a brilliant
tactician—and everyone aboard theAutumn knew just how close they’d
come to destruction when Reach fell to the ene