He sprinted for the lift. If the Captain wanted the inhabitant of Cryo Two revived, it meant that Keyes believed that the situation was about to go from bad to worse... or it already had.

Unlike vessels designed by humans – in which the command area was almost always located toward the ship’s bow – Covenant ships were constructed in a more logical fashion, which meant that their control rooms were buried deep within heavily armored hulls, making them impervious to anything less than a mortal blow.

The differences did not end there. Rather than surround themselves with all manner of control interfaces, plus the lesser beings required to staff them, the Elites preferred to command from the center of an ascetically barren platform held in place by a latticework of opposing gravity beams.

However, none of these things were at the forefront of Ship Master Orna ’Fulsamee’s mind as he stood at the center of his destroyer’s control room and stared at the data projections which appeared to float in front of him. One showed the ring world, Halo. Near that, a tiny arrow tracked the interloper’s course. The second projection displayed a schematic titled HUMAN ATTACK SHIP, TYPE C-11. A third scrolled a constant flow of targeting data and sensor readouts.

He fought a moment of revulsion. That these filthy primates somehow merited an actual name – let alone names for their inferior constructs – galled him to his core. It was perverse. Names implied legitimacy, and the vermin deserved only extermination.

The humans had “names” for his own kind – “Elites” – as well as the lesser races of the Covenant: “Jackals,” “Grunts,” “Hunters.” The appalling temerity of the filthy creatures, that they would darename his people with their harsh, barbaric tongue, was beyond the pale.