I'm up to the third fight against the Armigers. Kodiak, Holt, Luther, Usze, and Kola are stuck in a room, waiting for Vale to talk the Monitor out of sterilizing the galaxy, and then a wild Armiger shows up. Then more. Suddenly there's dozens pressing into the room, silently brandishing their guns and staves. The good guys are outnumbered about a dozen to one, and one of them doesn't have fancy energy shielding and ballistic armor.

But, there's no suspense there. Peter David is trying his level best to ratchet up the tension, but it's not working. I know that Usze and Kola are going to survive, because I can't see 343i killing them off after the outcry over Black Team and Saber. It's a small, small, small world, so Kodiak has his missing brother to take care of. Don't see Luther buying the farm, so that leaves Holt as pretty much the only one in any danger of dying.

And the Good Guys have already annihilated the Armigers in two separate engagements without suffering so much as a scratch, so there's no reason to worry there. Maybe it's because there's two elite Sangheili warriors and a pair of Spartan supersoldiers working together, but it probably has more to do with the fact that Armigers shoot worse than Imperial Stormtroopers and have the planning skills of Team Rocket. To my recollection, Usze and Kola are both armed with energy blades. Spartan Kodiak has an energy blade he's been resorting to in order to conserve ammunition. So, these geniuses close in to melee range before engaging. Kind of like the second encounter, when the Armigers waited for the Good Guys to avoid the Rolling Log of Doom before opening fire. Would have been smart to lay down suppressive fire first, which would pin down the vanilla humans and maybe even score some hits when everyone jumped over the log. I think Wile E. Coyote could have done a better job.

I don't know. Peter David's prose isn't really selling the narrative either. I think this story should have been written as a purely non-combat exploration of the Ark, because those are the best parts of the story. When it comes to combat, Hunters in the Dark suffers.