Halo First Strike 33

And there was one other thing-neither Will nor Fred checked John's status over the COM. That silence meant trouble. John fumbled for his fiber-optic probe, but it had been lost in the scuffle with the Brute. He eased around the basalt pillar. Grace lay face-first on the floor, five meters from the temple entrance.

A puddle of hydrostatic gel and blood spread across
the floor. John clicked the COM once, a status query. The instant he did this, two Brutes wheeled from their cover on either side of the entrance archway.

John moved up. The entrance was sealed. They were safe for a few seconds. He knelt next to Grace. Her biosigns had flatlined. He tried to roll her upright-but there was no need. The detonations he
had heard while wrestling the first Brute had been three of their high-velocity grenades . . . which had blown Grace's midsection apart.

Fred and Will emerged from their cover. John looked at them and shook his head. John opened the tiny access panel on Grace's armor power pack and entered the fail-safe code. They still had a mission to finish, which meant they couldn't carry her out; it would slow them down too much. They wouldn't be leaving her for the Covenant either, though. Her armor's tiny fusion reactor would
overload and burn everything within a ten-meter radius- Grace's funeral pyre.-Chpt.34 pgs.376-377