Read Online Halo: Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten - Free Book Online

radical Innie factions abandoned politics for violence. At first they hit military targets and known CA sympathizers. But as the UNSC began its counterinsurgency operations, more and more innocent people were caught in the crossfire.
As a raw recruit, Avery didn’t understand why the Insurrection hadn’t flared in outer systems such as Cygnus, where colonists were united by shared creed and ethnicity—one of the main reasons for the collapse of Earth’s old nation-state system and the rise of the UN as a unifying force. Instead, the fighting had broken out right where the UNSC was best equipped to stop it: Epsilon Eridanus, the most populous and carefully administered system outside of Sol.
With all the resources at its disposal in that system, Avery wondered why the UNSC hadn’t been able to pacify the Innies before things got out of hand. FLEETCOM on Reach, Circumstance’s universities and courts of justice, the industrial zones of Tribute—couldn’t these powerful institutions and engines of economic prosperity have come up with a plan palatable for both sides? As the war dragged on, Avery began to realize all these resources were exactly the problem: in Epsilon Eridanus, the UNSC just had too much to lose.
Avery flinched in reaction to his rising body temperature. But also to the quickening images in his head….
Pockmarked houses whipping past gun slits. An unexpected boom. Bodies strewn around the burning shell of the convoy’s lead armored transport. Muzzle flashes from rooftops. A run for cover through the carnage. Ricochets and radio chatter. Phosphorous plumes from ordnance dropped by drones. Women and children running from burning houses, leaving footprints in blood thick as caramel.
Eyes darting behind his lids, Avery remembered his aunt’s instructions: Become the man I know you can be.
He struggled to move his doped-up limbs, but the computer increased his dose and kept him down. The nightmarish final act would not be stopped….
A crowded roadside restaurant. A desperate woman surrounded by determined men. The kicking feet of a choking child. A father’s lunge and the moment Avery let slip, reducing all to shock and heat that sent his Hornet spinning.
Avery woke and gasped, drawing in a mouthful of the freezing vapor that filled his cryo-tube. Quickly, the computer initiated an emergency purge. Somehow, despite more than three times the recommended amount of sleep-inducers, Avery had overridden the final stages of the thaw. The computer noted the anomaly, carefully withdrew Avery’s IV and catheter, and opened the tube’s curved, clear plastic lid.
Avery rolled onto an elbow, leaned over the edge of his tube, and coughed—a series of violent, wet heaves. As he caught his breath, he heard the slap of bare feet on the bay’s rubberized floor. A moment later a small, square towel appeared in his down-turned field of view.
“I got it,” Avery spat. “Back off.”
“Zero to jerk in less than five.” A man’s voice, not much older than Avery. “I’ve met grunts who are faster. But that’s pretty good.”
Avery looked up. Like him, the man was naked. But his flesh was alarmingly pale. Blond hair was just starting to burr from his recently shaved head—like the first tufts of silk from an ear of corn. The man’s chin was long and narrow. When he smiled, his gaunt cheeks puffed mischievously.
“Healy. Petty Officer First Class. Corpsman.”
All of which meant Healy was navy—not a marine. But he seemed friendly enough. Avery snatched the towel, wiped his clean-shaven face and chin. “Johnson. Staff Sergeant.”
Healy’s grin widened. “Well, at least I don’t have to salute you.”
Avery swung his legs out of the cryo-pod and let his feet settle onto the floor. His head felt swollen—ready to burst. He breathed deep and tried to speed the sensation’s passage.
Healy nodded toward a bulkhead door at the other end of the bay. “C’mon, lockers are this way. Don’t know what kind of