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 in The
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 Cruiser Pillar of Autumn, location unknown.
Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom
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 asleep at 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 hundred combat cruises, Marcus had clocked fewer than
seventy-two hours in cryostorage. Right now, though, he was so tired
that even the discomfort of cryorevival sounded appealing if it meant
that he could manage some uninterrupted sleep.
Of course, it was difficult to complain; Captain Keyes was
a brilliant tactician—and everyone aboard the Autumn knew just
how close they’d come to destruction when Reach fell to the enemy. A
major naval base destroyed, millions dead or dying as the Covenant
burned the planet to a cinder—and one of Earth’s few remaining defenses
transformed into corpses and molten slag.
All in all, they’d been damned lucky to get away—but Sam
couldn’t help but feel that everyone on the Autumn was living on
borrowed time.
The intercom buzzed again, and Sam swung himself out of
the bunk. He jabbed at the comm control. “Marcus here,” he growled.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Sam, but I need you down in Cryo
Two.” Tech Chief Shephard sounded exhausted. “It’s important.”
“Cryo Two?” Sam repeated, puzzled. “What’s the emergency,
Thom? I’m not a cryo specialist.”
“I can’t give you specifics, Sam. The Captain wants it
kept off the comm,” Shephard replied, his voice almost a whisper. “Just
in case we have eavesdroppers.”
Sam winced at the tone in his superior’s voice. He’d known
Thom Shephard since the Academy and had never heard the man sound so
grim.
“Look,” Shephard said, “I need someone I can depend on.
Like it or not, that’s you, pal. You’ve cross-checked on cryo systems.”
Sam sighed. “Months ago . . . but yes.”
“I’m sending a feed to your terminal, Sam,” Shephard
continued. “It’ll answer some of your questions anyway. Dump it to a
portable ’pad, grab your gear and get down here.”
“Roger,” Sam said. He stood, shrugged into his uniform
tunic, and stepped over to his terminal. He activated the computer and
waited for the upload from Shephard.
As he waited, his eyes locked on a small two-dee
photograph taped to the edge of the screen. Sam brushed his fingers
against the photo. The pretty young woman frozen in the picture smiled
back at him.
The terminal chimed as the feed from Shephard appeared in
Sam’s message queue. “Receiving the feed, Chief,” he called out to the
intercom pickup.
He opened the file. A frown creased his tired features as
a new message scrolled across his screen.
>FILE ENCRYPTED/EYES ONLY/MARCUS, SAMUEL
N./SN:18827318209-M.
>DECRYPTION KEY: [PERSONALIZED: “ELLEN’S ANNIVERSARY”]
He glanced back at the picture of his wife. He hadn’t seen
Ellen in almost three years—since his last shore leave on Earth, in
fact. He didn’t know anyone on active duty who’d been able to see their
loved ones for years. The war simply didn’t allow for it.
Sam’s frown deepened. UNSC personnel generally avoided
talking about the people back home. The war had been going badly for so
long that morale was rock-bottom. Thinking about the home front only
made things worse. The fact that Thom had personalized the security
encoding was unusual enough; reminding Sam of his wife in the process
was completely out of character for Chief Shephard. Someone was being
security-conscious to the point of paranoia.
He punched in a series of numbers—the date of his
wedding—and enabled the decryption suite. In seconds, the screen filled
with schematics and tech readouts. His practiced eye scanned the
file—and adrenaline suddenly spiked through his fatigue like a bolt of
lightning.
“Christ,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Thom, is
this what . . . who I think it is?”
“Damn right. Get down to Cryo Two on the double, Sam.
We’ve got an important package to thaw out—and we drop back into real
space soon.”
“On my way,” he said. He killed the intercom connection,
his exhaustion forgotten.
Sam quickly dumped the tech file to his portable compad
and deleted the original from his computer. He strode toward the door
to his cabin, then stopped. He snatched Ellen’s picture from the
workstation—almost as an afterthought—and shoved it into his pocket.
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 dare name
his people with their harsh, barbaric tongue, was beyond the pale.
He paused, and regained his composure. ’Fulsamee clicked
his lower mandibles—the equivalent of a shrug—and mentally recited one
of the True Sayings. Such is the Prophets’ decree, he thought.
One didn’t question such things, even when one was a Ship Master. The
Prophets had assigned names to the enemy craft, and he would honor
their decrees. Any less was a disgraceful dereliction of duty.
Like all of his kind, the Covenant officer appeared to be
larger than he actually was, due to the armor that he wore. It gave him
an angular, somewhat hunched appearance which, when combined with a
heavy, pugnacious jaw, caused him to look like what he was: a very
dangerous warrior. His voice was calm and well modulated as he assessed
the situation. “They must have followed one of our ships. The culprit
will be found and put to death at once, Exalted.”
The being who floated next to ’Fulsamee bobbed slightly as
a gust of air nudged his heavily swathed body. He wore a tall, ornate
headpiece made of metal and set with amber panels. The Prophet had a
serpentine neck, a triangular skull, and two bright green eyes which
glittered with malevolent intelligence. He wore a red overrobe, a gold
underrobe, and somewhere, hidden beneath all the fabric, an antigrav
belt which served to keep his body suspended one full unit off the
deck. Though only a Minor Prophet, he still outranked ’Fulsamee, as his
bearing made clear.
True Sayings aside, the Ship Master couldn’t help but be
reminded of the tiny, squealing rodents he had hunted in his childhood.
He immediately banished the memory of blood on his claws and returned
his attention to the Prophet, and his tiresome assistant.
The assistant, a lower-rank Elite named Bako ’Ikaporamee,
stepped forward to speak on the Prophet’s behalf. He had an annoying
tendency to use the royal “we,” a habit that angered ’Fulsamee.
“That is very unlikely, Ship Master. We doubt the humans
have the means to follow one of our vessels through a jump. Even if
they do, why would they send only a single cruiser? Is it not their way
to drown us in their own blood? No, we think it’s safe to surmise that
this ship arrived in the system by accident.”
The words dripped with condescension, a fact which made
the Ship Master angry, but couldn’t be addressed. Not directly, and
certainly not with the Prophet present, although ’Fulsamee wasn’t
willing to cave in completely. “So,” ’Fulsamee said, careful to direct
his comment to ’Ikaporamee alone, “you would have me believe that the
interlopers arrived here entirely by chance ?”
“No, of course not,” ’Ikaporamee replied loftily. “Though
primitive by our standards, the creatures are sentient, and like
all sentient beings, they are unconsciously drawn to the glory of the
ancients’ truth and knowledge.”
Like all the members of his caste, ’Fulsamee knew that the
Prophets had evolved on a planet which the mysterious truth-givers had
previously inhabited, and then, for reasons known only to the ancients
themselves, subsequently abandoned. This ring world was an excellent
example of the ancients’ power . . . and inscrutability.
’Fulsamee found it hard to believe that mere humans would
be drawn here, the ancients’ wisdom notwithstanding, but ’Ikaporamee
spoke for the Prophet, so it must be true. ’Fulsamee touched the light
panel in front of him. A symbol glowed red. “Prepare to fire plasma
torpedoes. Launch on my command.”
’Ikaporamee raised both hands in alarm. “No! We
forbid it. The human vessel is much too close to the construct! What if
your weapons were to damage the holy relic? Pursue the ship, board it,
and seize control. Anything else is far too dangerous.”
Angered by what he saw as ’Ikaporamee’s interference,
’Fulsamee spoke through gritted teeth. “The course of action that the
holy one recommends is likely to result in a high number of casualties.
Is this acceptable?”
“The opportunity to transcend the physical is a gift to be
sought after,” the other responded. “The humans are willing to spend
their
lives—can we do less?”
No, ’Fulsamee thought, but we should aspire to
more. He again clicked his lower mandibles, and touched the light
panel. “Cancel the previous order. Load four transports with troops,
and launch another flight of fighters. Neutralize the interloper’s
weaponry before the boarding craft reach their target.”
A hundred units aft, sealed within the destroyer’s fire
control center, a half-commander acknowledged the order and issued
instructions of his own. Lights began to strobe, the decks transmitted
a low frequency vibration, and more than three hundred battle-ready
Covenant warriors—a mix of what the humans called Elites, Jackals, and
Grunts—rushed to board their assigned transports. There were humans to
kill.
None of them wanted to miss the fun.
SECTION I
PILLAR OF AUTUMN
CHAPTER ONE
0127 Hours (Ship’s Time), September 19, 2552 (Military
Calendar) / UNSC Cruiser Pillar of Autumn, location unknown.
ThePillar of Autumn shuddered as her Titanium-A
armor took a direct hit.
Just another item in the Covenant’s bottomless arsenal,
Captain
Jacob Keyes thought. Not a plasma torpedo, or we’d already be
free-floating molecules.
The warship had taken a beating from Covenant forces off
Reach and it was a miracle that the hull remained intact and even more
remarkable that they’d been able to make a jump into Slipspace at all.
“Status!” Keyes barked. “What just hit us?”
“Covenant fighter, sir. Seraph-class,” the tactical
officer, Lieutenant Hikowa, replied. Her porcelain features darkened.
“Tricky bastard must have powered down and slipped past our sentry
ships.”
A humorless grin tugged at Keyes’ mouth. Hikowa was a
first-rate tactical officer, utterly ruthless in a fight. She seemed to
take the Covenant fighter pilot’s actions as a personal insult. “Teach
him a lesson, Lieutenant,” he said.
She nodded and tapped a series of orders into her
panel—new orders for the Autumn’s fighter squadron.
A moment later, there was radio chatter as one of the Autumn
’s C709 Longsword fighters went after the Seraph, followed by a cheer
as the tiny alien ship transformed into a momentary sun, complete with
its own system of co-orbiting debris.
Keyes wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. He
checked his display—they’d reverted back into real space twenty minutes
ago.Twenty minutes, and the Covenant picket patrols had already
found them and started shooting.
He turned to the bridge’s main viewport, a large
transparent bubble slung beneath the Autumn’s bow
superstructure. A massive purple gas giant—Threshold—dominated the
spectacular view. One of the Longsword fighters glided past as it
continued its patrol.
When Keyes had been given command of the Pillar of
Autumn
, he’d been skeptical of the large, domed viewport. “The Covenant are
tough enough,” he had argued to Admiral Stanforth. “Why give them an
easy shot into my bridge?”
He’d lost the argument—captains don’t win debates with
admirals, and in any case there simply hadn’t been time to armor the
viewport. He had to admit, though, the view was almost worth the risk.
Almost.
He absently toyed with the pipe he habitually carried,
lost in thought. It ran completely counter to his nature to slink
around in the shadow of a gas giant. He respected the Covenant as a
dangerous, deadly enemy, and hated them for their savage butchery of
human colonists and fellow soldiers alike. He had never feared them,
however. Soldiers didn’t hide from the enemy—they met the enemy head-on.
He moved back to the command station and activated his
navigation suite. He plotted a course deeper in-system, and fed the
data to Ensign Lovell, the navigator.
“Captain,” Hikowa piped up. “Sensors paint a squadron of
enemy fighters inbound. Looks like boarding craft are right behind
them.”
“It was just a matter of time, Lieutenant.” He sighed. “We
can’t hide here forever.”
The Pillar seemed to glide out of the shadow cast
by
the gas giant, and into bright sunlight.
Keyes’ eyes widened with surprise as the ship cleared the
gas giant. He had expected to see a Covenant cruiser, Seraph fighters,
or some other military threat.
He hadn’t expected to see the massive object floating in a
Lagrange point between Threshold and its moon, Basis.
The construct was enormous—a ring-shaped object that
shimmered and glowed with reflected starlight, like a jewel lit from
within.
The outer surface was metallic and seemed to be engraved
with deep geometric patterns. “Cortana,” Captain Keyes said. “What is
that?”
A foot-high hologram faded into view above a small holopad
near the captain’s station. Cortana—the ship’s powerful artificial
intelligence—frowned as she activated the ship’s long-range detection
gear. Long lines of digits scrolled across the sensor displays and
rippled the length of Cortana’s “body” as well.
“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana
announced, “and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic
analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant
materials, sir.”
Keyes nodded. The preliminary finding was interesting,
very
interesting, since Covenant ships had already been present when the
Autumn
dropped out of Slipspace and right into their laps. When he first saw
the ring, Keyes had a sinking feeling that the construct was a large
Covenant installation—one far beyond the scope of human engineering.
The thought that the construct might also be beyond Covenant
engineering held some small comfort.
It also made him nervous.
Under intense pressure from enemy warships in the Epsilon
Eridani system—the location of the UNSC’s last major naval base,
Reach—Cortana had been forced to launch the ship toward a random set of
coordinates, a standard procedure to lead the Covenant forces away from
Earth.
Now it appeared that the men and women aboard the
Pillar
of Autumn had succeeded in leaving their original pursuers behind,
only to encounter even more Covenant forces here . . . wherever
“here” was.
Cortana aimed a long-range camera array at the ring and a
close-up snapped into focus. Keyes let out a long, slow whistle. The
construct’s inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and
browns—trackless desert, jungles, glaciers, and oceans. Streaks of
white clouds cast deep shadows on the terrain below. The ring rotated
and brought a new feature into view: a tremendous hurricane forming
over a large body of water.
Equations again scrolled across the AI’s semitransparent
body as she continued to evaluate the incoming data. “Captain,” Cortana
said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that
controls the ring’s spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. I can’t say
with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an
oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and Earth-normal gravity.”
Keyes raised an eyebrow. “If it’s artificial, who the hell
built it, and what in God’s name is it?”
Cortana processed the question for a full three seconds.
“I don’t know, sir.”
Regulations be damned,Keyes thought. He took out
his pipe, used an old-fashioned match to light it, and produced a puff
of fragrant smoke. The ring world shimmered on the status monitors.
“Then we’d better find out.”
Sam Marcus rubbed his aching neck with hands
that trembled with fatigue. The rush of adrenaline that had flooded him
when he’d received Tech Chief Shephard’s instructions had worn off. Now
he just felt tired, strung out, and more than a little afraid.
He shook his head to clear it and surveyed the small
observation theater. Each cryostorage bay was equipped with such a
station, a central monitoring facility for the hundreds of cryotubes
the storage bays held. By shipboard standards, the Cryo Two Observation
Theater was large, but the proliferation of life-sign monitors,
diagnostic gauges, and computer terminals—tied directly into the
individual cryotubes stored in the bay below—made the room seem cramped
and uncomfortable.
A chime sounded and Sam’s eyes swept across the status
monitors. There was only one active cryotube in this bay, and its
monitor pinged for his attention. He double-checked the main instrument
panel, then keyed the intercom. “He’s coming around, sir,” he said. He
turned and looked out the observation bay’s window.
Tech Chief Thom Shephard waved up at Sam from the floor of
Cryostorage Unit Two. “Good work, Sam,” he called back. “Almost time to
pop the seal.”
The status monitors continued to feed information to the
observation theater. The subject’s body temperature was approaching
normal—at least, Sam assumed it was normal; he’d never awakened a
Spartan before—and most of the chemicals had already been flushed out
of his system.
“He’s in a REM cycle now, Chief,” Sam called out, “and his
brainwave activity shows he’s dreaming—that means he’s pretty much
thawed. Shouldn’t be long now.”
“Good,” Shephard replied. “Keep an eye on those neuro
readings. We packed him in wearing his combat armor. There may be some
feedback effects to watch out for.”
“Acknowledged.”
A red light winked to life on the security terminal, and a
new series of codes flashed across the screen:
>WAKE-UP SERIES STANDBY. SECURITY LOCK [PRIORITY ALPHA]
ENGAGED.
>x-CORTANA.1.0—CRYOSTOR.23.4.7
“What the hell?” Sam muttered. He keyed the bay intercom
again. “Thom? There’s something weird here . . . some kind of security
lockout from the bridge.”
“Acknowledged.” There was a static-spotted click as
Shephard looped in the bridge channel. “Cryo Two to Bridge.”
“Go ahead, Cryo Two,” a female voice replied, laced with
the telltale warble of synthesized speech.
“We’re ready to pop the seal on our . . . guest, Cortana,”
Shephard explained. “We need—”
“—the security code,” the AI finished. “Transmitting.
Bridge out.”
Almost instantly, a new line of text scrolled across the
security screen:
>UNSEAL THE HUSHED CASKET.
Sam hit the execute command, the security lockout dropped
away, and a countdown timer began marking time until the wake-up
sequence would be completed.
The soldier was coming around. Respiration was up, ditto
his heart rate, as both returned to normal levels.Here he is,
Sam thought, a real honest-to-god Spartan. Not just any Spartan,
but maybe the last Spartan. The shipboard scuttlebutt said that
the rest of them had bought the farm at Reach.
Like his fellow techs, Sam had heard of the program,
though he’d never seen an actual Spartan in person. In order to
deal with increasing civil turmoil the Colonial Military Administration
had secretly launched Project ORION back in 2491. The purpose of the
program was to develop supersoldiers, code-named “Spartans,” who would
receive special training and physical augmentation.
The initial effort was successful, and in 2517 a new group
of Spartans, the II-series, had been selected as the next generation of
supersoldier. The project had been intended to remain secret, but the
Covenant War had changed all that.
It was no secret that the human race was on the verge of
defeat. The Covenant’s ships and space technology were just too
advanced. While human forces could hold their own in a ground
engagement, the Covenant would simply fall back into space and glass
the planet from orbit.
As the situation grew increasingly grim, the Admiralty was
faced with the ugly prospect of fighting a two-front war—one against
the Covenant in space, and another against the collapsing human society
on the ground. The general public and the rank-and-file in the military
needed a morale boost, so the existence of the SPARTAN-II project was
revealed.
There were now successful heroes to rally behind, men and
women who had taken the fight to the enemy and won several decisive
battles. Even the Covenant seemed to fear the Spartans.
Except they were gone now, all but one, sacrificed to
protect the human race from the Covenant and the very real possibility
of extinction. Sam gazed on the soldier in front of him with something
akin to awe. Here, about to rise as if from a grave, was a true hero.
It was a moment to remember, and if he was lucky enough to survive, to
tell his children about.
It didn’t make him any less afraid, however. If the
stories were true, the man gradually regaining consciousness in the bay
below was almost as alien, and certainly as dangerous, as the Covenant.
He was floating in the never-never land
somewhere between cryo and full consciousness when the dream began.
It was a familiar dream, a pleasant dream, and one which
had nothing to do with war. He was on Eridanus II—the colony world he’d
been born on, long since destroyed by the Covenant. He heard laughter
all around.
A female voice called him by name—John. A moment later,
arms held him, and he recognized the familiar scent of soap. The woman
said something nice to him, and he wanted to say something nice in
return, but the words wouldn’t come. He tried to see her, tried
to penetrate the haze that obscured her face, and was rewarded with the
image of a woman with large eyes, a straight nose, and full lips.
The picture wavered, indistinct, like a reflection in a
pond. In an eyeblink, the woman who held him transformed. Now she had
dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and pale skin.
He knew her name: Dr. Halsey.
Dr. Catherine Halsey had selected him for the SPARTAN-II
project. While most believed that the current generation of Spartans
had been culled from the best of the UNSC military, only a handful of
people knew the truth.
Halsey’s program involved the actual abduction of
specially-screened children. The children were flash-cloned—which made
the duplicates prone to neurological disorders—and the clones covertly
returned to the parents, who never suspected that their sons and
daughters were duplicates. In many ways, Dr. Halsey was the only
“mother” that he had ever known.
But Dr. Halsey wasn’t his mother, nor was the pale
semitranslucent image of Cortana that appeared to replace her.
The dream changed. A dark, nebulous shape loomed behind
the Mother/Halsey/Cortana figure. He didn’t know what it was, but it
was a threat—of that he was certain.
His combat instincts kicked in, and adrenaline coursed
through him. He quickly surveyed the area—some kind of playground, with
high wooden poles, distantly familiar—and decided on the best route to
flank the new threat. He spied an assault rifle, a powerful MA5B,
nearby. If he placed himself between the woman and the threat, his
armor could take the brunt of an attack, and he could return fire.
He moved quickly, and the dark shape howled at him—a
fierce and terrifying war cry.
The beast was impossibly fast. It was on him in seconds.
He grabbed the assault rifle and turned to open fire—and
discovered to his horror that he couldn’t lift the weapon. His arms
were small, underdeveloped. His armor was gone, and his body was that
of a six-year-old child.
He was powerless in the face of the threat. He roared back
at the beast in rage and fear—angry not just at the threat, but at his
own sudden powerlessness . . .
The dream started to fade, and light appeared in front of
the Spartan’s eyes. Vapor vented, swirled, and began to dissipate. A
voice came, as if from a great distance. It was male and matter-of-fact.
“Sorry for the quick thaw, Master Chief—but things are a
bit hectic right now. The disorientation should pass quickly.”
A second voice welcomed him back and it took the Spartan a
moment to remember where he’d been prior to entering the cryotube.
There had been a battle, a terrible battle, in which most if not all of
his Spartan brothers and sisters had been killed. Men and women with
whom he had been raised and trained since the age of six, and who,
unlike the dimly remembered woman of his dreams, constituted his real
family.
With the memory, plus subtle changes to the gas mix that
filled his lungs, came strength. He flexed his stiff limbs. The Spartan
heard the tech say something about “freezer burn,” and pushed himself
up and out of the cryotube’s chilly embrace.
“God in heaven,” Sam whispered.
The Spartan was huge, easily seven feet tall. Encased in
pearlescent green battle armor, the man looked like a figure from
mythology—otherworldly and terrifying. Master Chief SPARTAN-117 stepped
from his tube and surveyed the cryo bay. The mirrored visor on his
helmet made him all the more fearsome, a faceless, impassive soldier
built for destruction and death.
Sam was glad that he was up here in the observation
theater, rather than down on the Cryo Two main floor with the Spartan.
He realized that Thom was waiting for diagnostic data. He
checked the displays—neural pathways clear, no fluctuations in
heartbeat or brainwave activity. He opened an intercom channel. “I’m
bringing his health monitors on-line now.”
Sam watched as Thom led the Spartan to the various test
stations in the bay, pitching in where he was required. In short order,
the soldier’s gear had been brought on-line—recharging shield system,
real-time health monitors, targeting and optical systems all read in
the green.
The suit—code-named MJOLNIR armor—was a marvel of
engineering, Sam had to admit. According to the specs he’d received,
the suit’s shell consisted of a multilayered alloy of remarkable
strength, a refractive coating that could disperse a fair amount of
directed energy, a crystalline storage matrix that could support the
same level of artificial intelligence usually reserved for a starship,
and a layer of gel which conformed to the wearer’s skin and functioned
to regulate temperature.
Additional memory packets and signal conduits had been
implanted into the Spartan’s body, and two externally accessible input
slots had been installed near the base of his skull. Taken together,
the combined systems served to double his strength, enhance his already
lightning-fast reflexes, and make it possible for him to navigate
through the intricacies of any high-tech battlefield.
There were substantial life-support systems built into the
MJOLNIR gear. Most soldiers went into cryo naked, since covered skin
generally reacted badly to the cryo process. Sam had once worn a
bandage into the freezer and discovered the affected skin blistered and
raw when he woke up.
The Spartan’s skin must have hurt like hell, he realized.
Through it all, though, the soldier remained silent, simply nodding
when asked questions or quietly complying with requests from Thom. It
was eerie—he moved with mechanistic efficiency from one test to the
next, like a robot.
Cortana’s voice rang from the shipwide com: “Sensors show
inbound Covenant boarding craft. Stand by to repel boarders.”
Sam felt a pang of fear—and sorrow for the Covenant troops
that would have to face this Spartan in combat.
The neural interface which linked the Master
Chief to his MJOLNIR armor was working perfectly, and immediately fed
data to his helmet’s heads-up-display on the inside surface of his
visor.
It felt good to move around, and the Master Chief quietly
flexed his fingers. His skin itched and stung, a side effect of the
cryo gases, but he quickly banished the pain from his awareness. He had
long ago learned how to disassociate himself from physical discomfort.
He’d heard Cortana’s announcement. The Covenant were on
their way. Good. He scanned the room for weapons, but there was no arms
locker present. The lack of weapons wasn’t of great concern to him;
he’d taken weapons away from Covenant soldiers before.
The intercom crackled again: “Bridge to Cryo Two—this is
Captain Keyes. Send the Master Chief to the bridge immediately.”
One of the techs started to object, pointing out that more
tests were required, when Keyes cut in. He said, “On the double,
crewman,” and the rating gave the only reply he could.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The tech chief turned and faced him. “We’ll find weapons
later.”
The Master Chief nodded and was about to move for the door
when an explosion echoed through the cryo bay.
The first blasts slammed into the
observation theater’s door with a noise that made Sam jump. His heart
pounded as he quickly hit the door controls, engaging an emergency
lockout. A heavy metal barrier slammed into place with a crash—then
began to glow red as Covenant energy weapons burned their way through.
“They’re trying to get through the door!” he yelled.
He glanced down into the bay and saw Thom, a stricken look
on his face. Sam could see his own startled reflection in the Spartan’s
mirrored visor.
Sam lunged for the alarm, and had time to call in an
alert. Then, the security door exploded in a shower of fire and molten
steel.
He heard the whine of plasma rifle fire, then felt
something punch him in the chest. His vision blurred, and he groped to
feel the wound. His hands came away sticky with blood. It doesn’t
hurt, he thought. It should hurt, shouldn’t it?
He felt disoriented, confused. He could see a flurry of
movement, as armored figures swarmed into the observation theater. He
ignored them and focused on his wife’s picture—smeared with his own
blood—which had somehow fallen to the deckplates. He fell to his knees
and scrambled for the photograph, his hands shaking.
His field of vision narrowed as he struggled to reach the
discarded photo. It was only inches away now, but the distance felt
like miles. He’d never been so tired. His wife’s name echoed in his
mind.
Sam’s fingers had just brushed the edge of the photograph
when an armored boot pinned his arm to the deck. Long, clawed fingers
plucked the picture from the floor.
Sam cursed weakly and struggled to face his attacker. The
alien—an Elite—cocked his head at the image in puzzlement. He glanced
down, as if noticing Sam for the first time. The human continued to
reach for the picture.
He dimly heard Thom’s voice call out in anguish: “Sam!”
The Elite aimed the plasma rifle at Sam’s head and fired.
The Master Chief bristled. Covenant forces
were in close proximity, and a fellow soldier had just died. He longed
to climb to the observation bay and engage the enemy—but orders were
orders. He needed to get to the bridge.
The cryo tech keyed open a hatchway. “Come on!” he yelled,
“we’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
The Master Chief followed the crewman through the hatch
and down the corridor. A sudden explosion blew the next door to
smithereens, hurled what remained of the technician’s body down the
passageway, and caused the Chief’s shields to flare.
He mentally reviewed the schematics of the Halcyon-class
line of ships and doubled back. He vaulted over a pair of power
conduits, and landed in the dimly lit maintenance hallway beyond. An
emergency beacon strobed and alarms wailed. The rumble of a second
explosion echoed down the corridor.
He pushed ahead, past a dead crewman, and into the next
section of hallway.
The Master Chief saw a hatch, its security panel pulsing
green, and hurried forward. There was a third explosion, but his armor
deflected the force of the blast.
The Spartan forced open the partially melted door, saw an
opening to his left, and heard someone scream. A naval crewman fired
his sidearm at a target the Master Chief couldn’t see—and the deck
shuddered as a missile struck the Autumn’s hull.
The Master Chief ducked under a half-raised door just in
time to see the crewman take an energy bolt through the chest as the
rest of the human counterboarders returned fire. Covenant forces backed
through a hatch and were forced to retreat into an adjoining
compartment.
Chaos reigned as the ship’s crew did the best they could
to push the boarders back toward the air locks or to trap them in
compartments where they could be contained and dispatched later.
Unarmed, and well aware of the fact that Captain Keyes
needed him on the bridge, the Master Chief had little choice but to
follow the signs, and avoid the firefights that raged all around. He
made his way down a darkened access corridor—the Covenant boarders must
have shorted out the illumination circuits in this compartment—and
nearly ran headlong into a Covenant Elite.
The alien’s personal shields sparked and he roared in
surprise and anger. The Spartan crouched and prepared to meet the alien
soldier’s charge—then ducked, as a Marine fire-team unleashed a barrage
of assault-rifle fire at the Elite. Purple gore splashed the bulkhead,
and the alien dropped in a crumpled heap.
The Marines moved forward to secure the area, and the
Chief nodded in thanks to the squad leader. He turned, sprinted down
the passageway, and made it to the bridge without further incident.
He looked out through the main viewport, saw the
strange-looking construct that floated out beyond the cruiser’s hull,
and was momentarily curious about what it was. No doubt the Captain
would fill him in. He strode toward the captain’s station, near the
center of the bridge.
A variety of naval personnel sat hunched at their consoles
as they struggled to control their beleaguered vessel. Some battled the
latest wave of Seraph fighters, others worked on damage control, and
one grim-faced Lieutenant made use of the ship’s environmental systems
to suck the atmosphere out of those compartments which had been
occupied by Covenant forces. Some of the enemy carried their own
atmosphere, but some of them didn’t, and that made them vulnerable.
There were crew in some of those spaces, perhaps some she knew
personally, but there was no way to save them. If she didn’t kill them,
then the enemy would.
The Chief understood the situation well. Better a quick
death in vacuum than at the hands of the Covenant.
He spotted Keyes near the main tactical display. Keyes
studied the screens intently, particularly a large display of the
strange ring.
The Spartan came to attention. “Captain Keyes.”
Captain Keyes turned to face him. “Good to see you, Master
Chief. Things aren’t going well. Cortana did her best—but we never
really had a chance.”
The AI arched a holographic eyebrow. “A dozen Covenant
battleships against a single Halcyon-class cruiser . . . With those
odds we still had three—” She paused, as if distracted, then amended:
“—make that four kills.”
Cortana looked at the Chief. “Sleep well?”
“Yes,” he replied. “No thanks to your driving.”
Cortana smiled. “So, you did miss me.”
Before he could reply, another blast rocked the entire
ship. He grabbed a nearby support pillar and braced himself, as several
crewers crashed to the deck nearby.
Keyes grabbed onto a console for support. “Report!”
Cortana shimmered blue. “It must have been one of their
boarding parties. My guess is an antimatter charge.”
The fire control officer turned in his seat. “Ma’am! Fire
control for the main cannon is off-line!”
Cortana looked at Keyes. The loss of the ship’s primary
weapon, the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, was a crippling blow to their
holding action. “Captain, the cannon was my last defensive option.”
“All right,” Keyes said gruffly, “I’m initiating Cole
Protocol, Article Two. We’re abandoning the Autumn . That means
you too, Cortana.”
“While you do what? Go down with the ship?” she shot back.
“In a manner of speaking,” Keyes replied. “The object we
found—I’m going to try and land the Autumn on it.”
Cortana shook her head. “With all due respect . . . this
war has enough dead heroes.”
The Captain’s eyes locked with hers. “I appreciate your
concern, Cortana—but it’s not up to me. The Protocol is clear. The
destruction or capture of shipboard AI is absolutely unacceptable. That
means you are abandoning ship. Lock in a selection of emergency
landing zones and upload them to my neural lace.”
The AI paused, then nodded. “Aye, aye, sir.”
“Which is where you come in,” Keyes continued as
he
turned to face the Spartan. “Get Cortana off this ship. Keep her safe
from the enemy. If they capture her, they’ll learn everything. Force
deployment, weapons research.” He paused, then added: “Earth.”
The Spartan nodded. “I understand.”
Keyes glanced at Cortana. “Are you ready?”
There was a pause as the AI took one last look around. In
many ways the ship was her physical body and she was reluctant to leave
it. “Yank me.”
Keyes turned to a console, touched a series of controls,
and turned back again.
The holo shivered and Cortana’s image swirled into the
pedestal below and disappeared from view. Keyes waited until the holo
had disappeared, removed a data chip from the pedestal, and offered it
to the Spartan, along with his sidearm. “Good luck, Master Chief.”
SPARTAN-117 accepted the chip and reached back to slot the
device into the neural interface, located at the base of his skull.
There was a positive click, followed by a flood of sensation as the AI
joined him within the confines of the armor’s neural network. At first
it felt as if someone had poured a cup of ice water into his mind,
followed by a momentary jab of pain, and a familiar presence. He’d
worked with Cortana before—just prior to the disaster at Reach.
The AI-human interface was intrusive in a way, yet
comforting too, since he knew what Cortana could do. He would depend on
her during the hours and days ahead—just as she would depend on him. It
was like being part of a team again.
The Master Chief saluted and left the bridge. The sounds
of fighting were even louder now, indicating that, in spite of the
crew’s best efforts, Covenant forces had still managed to fight their
way out of the areas adjacent to the air locks and made it all the way
up to the area around the command deck.
Bodies lay strewn around the corridor, roughly fifty
meters from the bridge. The human defenders had pushed them back, but
the Chief could tell that the last assault had been close. Too close.
The Master Chief paused to kneel next to a dead ensign,
took a moment to close her eyelids, and appropriated the fallen
trooper’s ammo. The pistol the Captain had given him was standard Navy
issue; it fired 12.7 mm semi-armor piercing high-explosive ammo from
twelve-round clips. Not what he would choose to tackle an Elite
with—but good enough for Grunt work.
There was a metallic click as the first clip slid
into the pistol’s handle, followed by the sudden appearance of a blue
circle in his HUD—a targeting reticle—as his armor made electronic
contact with the weapon in his hand.
Then, conscious of the need to get Cortana off the ship,
he made his way down the corridor. He heard the strange high-pitched
squeaks and barks before he actually saw the Covenant Grunts
themselves. Consistent with his status as a veteran, the first alien to
come around the corner wore red-trimmed armor, a methane rig, and a
Marine’s web pistol belt. The alien wore the captured gear Pancho
Villa–style and dragged it across the deck. Two of his comrades brought
up the rear.
Confident that there were more of the vaguely simian
aliens on the way, the Master Chief paused long enough to let more of
them appear, then opened fire. The recoil compensators in his armor
dampened the effect, but he could still feel the handgun kick against
his palm. All three of the Grunts went down from head shots.
Phosphorescent blue ichor spattered the deck.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
The Master Chief stepped over their bodies and moved on.
A lifeboat. That was his real goal—and he would do
whatever it took to find one.
Ashamed by the ignominy of it, but
consistent with his orders, the Elite named Isna ’Nosolee waited until
the Grunts, Jackals, and two members of his own race had charged out
through the human air lock before leaving the assault boat himself.
Though armed with a plasma pistol, plus a half-dozen grenades, he was
there to observe rather than fight, which meant that the Elite would
rely on both his energy shielding and active camouflage to keep him
alive.
His role, and an unaccustomed one at that, was to function
as an “Ossoona,” or Eye of the Prophet. The concept, as outlined to
’Nosolee by his superior, was to insert experienced officers into
situations where intelligence could be gleaned, and to do so early
enough to obtain high-quality information.
Though both intelligent and brave, the Prophets felt that
the Elites had an unfortunate tendency to destroy everything in their
path, leaving very little for their analysts to analyze.
Now, by adding Ossoonas to the combat mix, the Prophets
hoped to learn more about the humans, ranging from data on their
weapons and force deployments to the greatest prize of all: the
coordinates for their home planet, “Earth.”
’Nosolee had three major objectives: to retrieve the enemy
ship’s AI, to capture senior personnel, and to record everything he saw
via the cameras attached to his helmet. The first two goals were bound
to be difficult, but a quick check confirmed that the video gear was
working, and the third objective was assured.
So, even though the assignment was empty of honor,
’Nosolee understood its purpose, and was determined to succeed, if only
as a means to return to the regular infantry where he belonged.
The Elite heard the rhythmic clatter of a human weapon as
a group of their Marines backed around a corner, closely pursued by a
pack comprised of Grunts and Jackals. The Ossoona considered killing
the humans, thought better of it, and flattened himself against a
bulkhead. None of the combatants noticed the point where the metal
appeared to be slightly distorted, and a moment later the spy slipped
away.
It seemed as if the Autumn was
infested with chrome-armored demons spouting plasma fire. The Master
Chief had acquired an MA5B assault rifle along with close to four
hundred rounds of 7.62mm armor piercing ammunition. In this situation,
with plenty of ordnance lying around, he preferred to reload when the
ammo indicator on his weapon dropped to around 10. Failure to do so
could result in disaster if he ran into serious opposition. With that
in mind, the Chief hit the release, allowed a nearly empty magazine to
fall, and shoved a new clip into its place. The weapon’s digital ammo
counter reset, as did its cousin in his HUD.
“We’re closer,” Cortana said from someplace just outside
his head. “Duck through the hatch ahead and go up one level.”
The Master Chief ran into a shimmery, black-clad Elite,
and opened fire. There were Grunts in the area as well, but he knew
that the Elite posed the real danger. He expertly sprayed a
trio
of bursts at the alien.
The Elite roared defiance and fired in return, but the
sheer volume of the specially hardened 7.62mm projectiles caused the
Elite’s shielding to flare, overload, and fail. The bulky alien fell to
his knees, bent forward, and collapsed. Frightened by what had happened
to their leader, the Grunts made barking noises, turned, and began to
scurry away.
Individually, the Grunts were cowards, but the Spartan had
seen what a pack of the creatures could do. He opened fire again. Alien
bodies tumbled and fell.
He continued on through a hatch, heard more firing, and
turned in that direction. Cortana called out: “Covenant! On the landing
above us!”
He ran toward a flight of metal stairs, and charged
straight for the landing.
Boots rang on metal as he slammed a fresh magazine into
the weapon’s receiver and passed a wounded Marine. The Spartan
remembered the soldier from his last action on one of Reach’s orbiting
defense stations. The Marine held a dressing to a plasma burn and
managed to smile. “Glad you could make it, Chief . . . we saved some
party favors just for you.”
The Spartan nodded, paused on the landing, and took aim at
a Jackal. The vaguely birdlike aliens carried energy shields—handheld
units, rather than the full-body protection the Elites favored. The
Jackal shifted to take aim at the wounded Marine, and the Chief saw his
opening. He fired a burst at the Jackal’s unprotected flank and the
alien hit the deckplates, dead.
He continued the climb up the flight of stairs, and came
nearly visor-to-visor with another Elite. The alien roared, charged
forward, and attempted to use his plasma rifle like a club. The Master
Chief evaded the blow—he’d fought Elites hand-to-hand before, and knew
they were dangerously strong—and backed away. He leveled the assault
weapon at the Elite’s belly, and squeezed the trigger.
The Covenant soldier seemed to absorb the bullets like a
sponge, continued to advance, and was just about to swing when a final
round cut through his spinal cord. The alien soldier slammed into the
deck, twitched once, and died.
SPARTAN-117 reached for another magazine. Another Elite
roared, as did another . There was no time to reload, so the
Master Chief turned to take them on. He discarded the assault rifle and
drew his sidearm. There were a pair of dead Marines at the aliens’
feet, roughly twenty-five meters away. Well within range, he
thought, and opened fire.
The lead Elite snarled as the powerful handgun rounds tore
into the shielding around his head. Sensing the Spartan’s threat, the
aliens shifted all of their fire in his direction only to watch as it
dissipated against his shields and armor.
Now, free to direct their fire wherever they chose, the
Marines launched a hastily organized counterattack. A fragmentation
grenade blew one Elite into bloody ribbons, shredded the Jackals who
had the poor judgment to stand next to him, and sent pieces of shrapnel
flying across the stairwell to slam into the bulkhead.
The other Elite was consumed by a hail of bullets. He
seemed to wilt, fold, and fly apart. “That’s what I’m talking about!” a
Marine crowed. He fired a coup de grâce into the alien’s
head.
Satisfied that the area was reasonably secure, the Master
Chief moved on. He passed through a hatch, helped a pair of Marines
take out a group of Grunts, and marched down a corridor drenched with
blood—both human and alien. The deck shook as the Autumn took a
new hit from a ship-to-ship missile. There was a muffled clang, and a
light flared beyond a viewport.
“The lifeboats are launching,” Cortana announced. “We
should hurry!”
“I am hurrying,” the Master Chief replied. “I’ll
get
there as soon as I can.”
Cortana started to reply, reconsidered, and processed the
equivalent of an apologetic shrug. Sometimes, fallible though they
were, humans were right.
Flight Officer Captain Carol Rawley, better
known to the ship’s Marine contingent by her call sign, “Foehammer,”
waited for the Grunt to round the corner. She shot him in the head, and
the little methane-breathing bastard dropped like a rock. The pilot
took a quick peek, verified that the next corridor was clear, and
motioned to those behind her. “Come on! Let’s get while the getting’s
good!”
Three pilots, along with an equal number of ground crew,
followed as Rawley thundered down the hall. She was a tall,
broad-shouldered woman, and she ran with a flat-footed determination.
The plan, if the wild-assed scheme she’d concocted could be dignified
as such, was to make it down to the ship’s launch bay, jump into their
D77-TC “Pelican” dropships, and get off the Autumn before the
cruiser smacked into the construct below. At best, it would be a tricky
takeoff, and a messy landing, but she’d rather die behind the stick of
her bird than trust her fate to some lifeboat jockey. Besides, maybe
some transports would come in handy, if anybody actually made it off
the ship alive.
That was looking like an increasingly big maybe.
“They’re behind us!” somebody yelled. “Run faster!”
Rawley wasn’t a sprinter—she was a pilot, damn it. She
turned to take aim on her pursuers, when a globe of glowing-green
plasma sizzled past her ear.
“Screw this,” she yelled, then ran with renewed energy.
As the battle with the interlopers continued
to rage, a Grunt named Yayap led a small detachment of his own kind
through a half-melted hatch and came upon the scene of a massacre. The
nearest bulkhead was drenched in shimmering blue blood. Spent shell
casings were scattered everywhere and a tangled pile of Grunt bodies
testified to an engagement lost. Yayap keened in brief mourning for his
fallen brethren.
That most of the dead were Grunts like Yayap didn’t
surprise him. The Prophets had long made use of his race as cannon
fodder. He hoped that they had gone to a methane-rich paradise, and was
about to pass by the gruesome heap, when one of the bodies groaned.
The Grunt paused and, accompanied by one of his fellows—a
Grunt named Gagaw—he waded into the gory mess, only to discover that
the noise was associated with a black-armored member of the Elite, one
of the “Prophet-blessed” types who were in charge of this
ill-considered raid. By law and custom, Yayap’s race was required to
revere the Elites as near-divine envoys of the Prophets. Of course, the
implementation of law and custom was somewhat flexible on the
battlefield.
“Leave him,” Gagaw advised. “That’s what he would do
if it were one of us lying wounded.”
“True,” Yayap said thoughtfully, “but it would take all
five of us to carry him back to the assault boat.”
It took Gagaw ten full heartbeats to assimilate the idea
and finally appreciate the genius of it. “We wouldn’t have to fight!”
“Precisely,” Yayap said, as the sounds of battle grew
louder once more, “so let’s slap some dressings on his wounds, grab his
arms and legs, and drag his ass out of here.”
A quick check revealed that the Elite’s wounds weren’t
mortal. A human projectile had punched its way through the warrior’s
visor, sliced along the side of his head, and flattened itself on the
inside surface of the Elite’s helmet. The force of the blow had knocked
him unconscious. Aside from that, and some cuts and bruises sustained
when he fell, the Elite would survive. A pity, Yayap thought.
Satisfied that their ticket off the ship would live long
enough to get them where they wanted to go, the Grunts grabbed the
warrior’s limbs and waddled down the corridor. Their battle was over.
The Autumn ’s contingent of Orbital
Drop Shock Troopers, also known as ODST, or “Helljumpers,” had been
assigned to protect the cruiser’s experimental power plant, which
consisted of a unique network of fusion engines.
The engine room was served by two main access points, each
protected by a Titanium-A hatch. Both were connected by a catwalk and
were still under human control. The fact that Major Antonio Silva’s
Marines had been forced to stack the Covenant bodies like firewood in
order to maintain clear fields of fire testified to how effective the
men and women under his command had been.
There had been human casualties as well, plenty of
them, including Lieutenant Melissa McKay, who waited impatiently while
“Doc” Valdez, the platoon’s medic, bandaged her arm. There was a lot to
do—and clearly McKay wanted to get up and do it.
“Got some bad news for you, Lieutenant,” the medic said.
“The tattoo on your bicep, the one with the skull and the letters
‘ODST,’ took a serious hit. You can get a new one, of course . . . but
scar tissue won’t take the ink in quite the same way.”
McKay knew the patter had a purpose, knew it was Doc’s way
of taking her mind off Dawkins, Al-Thani, and Suzuki. The medic secured
the bandage in place and the officer rolled her sleeve down over the
dressing. “You know what, Valdez? You are truly full of it. And I mean
that as a compliment.”
Doc wiped his forehead with the back of a sleeve. It came
away with Al-Thani’s blood on it. “Thanks, El-Tee. Compliment accepted.”
“All right,” Major Silva boomed as he strode out onto the
center of the catwalk. “Listen up! Play time is over. Captain Keyes is
tired of our company and wants us to leave this tub. There’s a
construct down there, complete with an atmosphere, gravity, and the one
thing Marines love like beer—and that’s dirt beneath our feet.”
The ODST officer paused at that point, allowing his
bright, beady eyes to sweep the faces around him, his mouth straight as
a crease. “Most of the crew—not to mention your fellow jarheads—will be
leaving the ship in lifeboats. They’ll ride to the surface in
air-conditioned comfort, sipping wine, and nibbling on appetizers.
“Not you , however. Oh no, you’re going to leave the
Pillar
of Autumn by a different method. Tell me, boys and girls . . . How
will you leave?”
It was a time-honored ritual, and the ODST Marines roared
the answer in unison. “WE GO FEET FIRST, SIR!”
“Damned right you do,” Silva barked. “Now let’s get to
those drop pods. The Covenant is holding a picnic down on the surface
and every single one of you is invited. You have five minutes to strap
in, hook up, and shove a cork in your ass.”
It was an old joke, one of their favorites, and the
Marines laughed as if they had just heard it for the first time. Then
they formed into squads, and followed their noncoms out into a corridor
that ran down the port side of the ship.
McKay led her platoon down the hall, past the troopers
assigned to guard the intersection, and through what had been a
battlefield. Bodies lay sprawled where they had fallen, plasma burns
marked the bulkheads, and a long line of 7.62mm dimples marked the last
burst that one of the dead soldiers would ever fire.
They pounded around a corner, and into what the Marines
referred to as “Hell’s waiting room.” The troopers streamed down the
center of a long narrow compartment that housed two rows of oval-shaped
individual drop pods. Each pod bore the name of an individual trooper,
and was poised over a tube that extended down through the ship’s belly.
Most combat landings were made via armed assault boats,
but the boats were slow, and subject to antiaircraft fire. That was why
the UNSC had invested the time and money necessary to create a second
way to deliver troops through an atmosphere: the HEV, or Human Entry
Vehicle.
Computer-controlled antiaircraft fire would nail some of
the pods, but they made small targets, and each hit would result in one
death rather than a dozen.
There was just one problem. As the ceramic skins that
covered the HEVs burned away, the air inside the pods became
unbelievably hot, sometimes fatally so, which was why ODST personnel
were referred to as “Helljumpers.” It was an all-volunteer outfit, and
it took a special kind of crazy to join up.
McKay remained on the central walkway until each of her
men had entered his particular pod. She knew that meant she would have
sixty seconds less to make her own preparations, and was quick to enter
her HEV once the last hatch had closed.
Once inside, McKay’s hands were a blur as she secured her
harness, ran the obligatory systems check, removed a series of
safeties, armed her ejection tube, and eyed the tiny screen mounted in
front of her. The Autumn ’s fire control computer had already
calculated the force required to blow the pod free and drop the HEV
into the correct entry path. All she had to do was hang on, pray that
the pod’s ceramic skin would hold long enough for the chute to open,
and try to ignore how fragile the vehicle actually was.
No sooner had the officer braced her boots against the
bulkhead, and looked up at the countdown, than the last digit clicked
from one to zero.
The pod dropped, accelerated out of the ejection tube, and
fell toward the ring-shaped world below. Her stomach lurched and her
heart rate spiked.
Somebody popped a tiny disk into a data player, touched a
button, and pushed the hyped-up strains of the Helljumpers’ anthem out
over the team freq. The regs made it clear that unauthorized use of
UNSC communications facilities was wrong, very wrong, but McKay
knew that at that particular moment it was right, and Silva must
have agreed, because nothing came in over the command freq. The music
pounded in her ears, the HEV shuddered as it hit the outer layer of the
ring-construct’s atmosphere, and the Marines fell feet first through
the ring.
The deck jumped as the Pillar of Autumn
absorbed yet another blow and the battle continued to rage within. The
Master Chief was close now, and prepared to sprint for a lifeboat. That
was when Cortana said, “Behind you!” and the Master Chief felt a plasma
bolt hit him squarely between the shoulder blades.
He rolled with the blow and sprang to his feet. He whirled
to face his attacker and saw that a Grunt had dropped out of an
overhead maintenance way. The diminutive alien stood with his feet
planted on the deck, a plasma pistol over-charging in his claws. The
Master Chief took three steps forward, used the assault rifle to knock
the creature off its feet, and followed it with a three-round burst.
The Grunt’s pistol discharged its stored energy into the ceiling. Drips
of molten metal sizzled on the Master Chief’s shields.
The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien’s breathing
apparatus, released a stream of methane, and caused the body to spin
like a top.
A trio of additional Grunts landed on the Master Chief’s
shoulders and grabbed hold. It was almost laughable, until the Spartan
realized that one of them was trying to remove his helmet. A second
alien carried an ignited plasma grenade—the little bastards meant to
drop the explosive into his armor.
He flexed his shoulders, and shook himself like a dog.
Grunts flew in every direction as the Master Chief used
short controlled bursts to put them down. He turned toward the
lifeboats. “Now!” Cortana urged. “Run!”
The Spartan ran, just as the door started to close. A
nearby Marine fell while running for the escape craft, and the Chief
paused long enough to scoop the soldier up and hurl him into the boat.
Once inside, they joined a small group of crew members
already on board the escape craft. “Now would be a very good time to
leave,” Cortana commented coolly, as something else exploded and the
cruiser shuddered in response.
The Master Chief stood facing the hatch. He waited for it
to close all the way, saw the red light appear, and knew it was sealed.
“Punch it.”
The pilot triggered the launch sequence and the lifeboat
blasted free of the ship, balanced on a column of fire. The boat
skimmed along the surface of the Autumn at dizzying speed.
Plasma
blasts from a Covenant warship slammed into the Autumn ’s hull.
In seconds, the lifeboat dropped away from the cruiser and dove toward
the ring.
The Master Chief killed his external com system, and spoke
directly to Cortana. “So, any idea what this thing is?”
“No,” Cortana admitted. “I managed to slice some data out
of the Covenant battle network. They call it ‘Halo,’ and it has some
kind of religious significance to them, but . . . your guess is as good
as mine.” She paused, and the Spartan sensed the AI’s amusement. “Well,
almost
as good.”
“Halo,” he repeated. “Looks like we’re going to be calling
it ‘home’ for a while.”
The lifeboat was too small to mount a Shaw-Fujikawa
faster-than-light drive so there was nowhere to go but the ring. There
were no shouts of jubilation, no high-fives, only silence as the boat
fell through the blackness of space. They were alive, but that was
subject to change, and that left nothing to celebrate.
One Marine said, “This duty station really sucks.” No one
saw any reason to contradict him.
Rawley and her companions skidded to a halt,
turned back the way they had come, and let loose with everything they
had. Their weaponry included two pistols, one assault rifle, and a
plasma rifle that a pilot had scooped up along the way. Not much of an
arsenal but sufficient to knock three Jackals off their feet and put
the aliens down for good. Rawley caved the last Jackal’s skull in with
her boot.
Eager to get aboard their ships, the group ducked through
the docking bay hatch, closed it behind them, and ran for the Pelicans.
Foehammer spotted her bird, gave thanks for the fact that it was
undamaged, and ran up the ramp. As always, it was fueled, armed, and
ready to fly. Frye, her copilot, dropped into position behind her, with
Crew Chief Cullen bringing up the rear.
Once in the cockpit, Rawley strapped in, ran an
abbreviated preflight checklist, and started the transport’s engines.
They joined with the rest to create a satisfying roar. The outer hatch
cycled open. Loose gear tumbled into space as the bay explosively
decompressed.
Moments later, the cruiser entered the ring world’s
atmosphere, which meant that the transports could depart . . . but they
had to do it soon. Reentry friction was already creating a wall of fire
around the ship.
“Damn!” Frye exclaimed, “Look at that!” and pointed
forward.
Rawley looked, saw a Covenant landing craft coming
straight toward the bay, braving the heat generated by the Autumn
’s reentry velocity. There was a limited window of opportunity to get
off this sinking ship, and the Covenant bastard was right in the way.
She swore and released the safety on the Pelican’s 70mm
chain gun. The weapon shook the entire ship, punched holes through
alien
armor, and hit something vital. The enemy vessel shuddered, lost
control, and spun into the Autumn ’s hull.
“All right,” the wing leader said over the ship-to-ship
frequency, “Let’s go down and meet our hosts. See you on the ground.
Foehammer out.”
She clicked off the transmitter and whispered, “Good luck.”
One by one the dropships left the bay, did a series of
wingovers, and dropped through the overarching ring. Rawley struggled
to maintain control as the atmosphere tore at her ship. The status
panel flashed a heat warning as friction created a massive thermal
buildup along the Pelican’s fuselage. The leading edges of the ship’s
short, stubby wings started to glow.
“Jeez, boss,” Frye said, his teeth rattling from the
constant jouncing of the Pelican, “maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
Foehammer made some adjustments, managed to improve the
ship’s glide angle, and glanced to her right. “If you’ve got a better
idea,” she yelled, “bring it up at the next staff meeting.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Until then,” she added, “shut the hell up and let me
fly
this thing.”
The Pelican hit an air pocket, dropped like a rock, and
caught itself. The transport shook like a thing possessed. Rawley
screamed with anger and battled her controls as her ship plummeted
toward the surface of the ring.
Covenant forces had launched a concerted
attack on the command deck about fifteen minutes earlier but the
defenders had beaten them back. Since that time the fighting had
lessened and there were reports that at least some of the aliens were
using their assault boats to leave the ship.
It wasn’t clear whether that was due to the considerable
number of casualties Covenant forces had suffered, or the realization
that the ship was in danger of falling apart, but it hardly mattered.
The important thing was that the area around the bridge was clear,
which meant that Keyes, plus the command team who remained to help him,
could carry out their duties without fear of being shot in the back. At
least for the moment.
Their next task was to take the Autumn down into
the
atmosphere. No small order considering the fact that, like all vessels
of her tonnage, the cruiser had been constructed in zero-gee conditions
and wasn’t equipped to operate in a planetary atmosphere.
Keyes believed it was possible. With that in mind he
planned to close with the ring world, hand control to the subroutine
that Cortana had left for that purpose, and use the last lifeboat to
make his escape. Maybe the ship would pancake in the way he had
planned—and maybe it wouldn’t. Whatever the case, it was almost sure to
be a landing that would best be experienced from a safe distance.
Keyes turned to look at the data scrolling across the nav
screen and detected motion out of the corner of his eye. He looked, saw
the primary weapons control station shimmer like a mirage in the
desert, and rubbed his eyes. By the time the Naval officer looked for a
second
time, the phenomena had vanished.
Keyes frowned, turned back to the nav screen, and began
the sequence of orders that would put the Autumn in the place
she
was least equipped to go: on solid ground.
Isna ’Nosolee held his breath. The human had
looked straight into his eyes, given no alarm, and turned away. Surely
his activities had been blessed by those who went before and from whom
all knowledge flowed.
The camouflage, combined with his own talent for stealth,
had proven to be extremely effective. Since he had come aboard,
’Nosolee had toured both the ship’s engine room and fire control center
prior to arriving on the bridge. Now, standing in front of a vent, the
Elite contemplated what to do next.
The ship’s AI had either been removed or destroyed, he was
sure of that. At least some senior personnel remained, however—which
meant there was still a chance.
In fact, based on the manner in which the other humans
interacted with him, ’Nosolee felt certain that the man named “Keezz”
held the position of Ship Master. A very valuable prize indeed.
But how to capture the human? He wouldn’t come willingly,
that was obvious, and his companions were armed. The moment ’Nosolee
deactivated his camouflage they would shoot him. Individually, the
humans were weaklings, but they were dangerous in packs. And animals
grew all the more dangerous the nearer they came to extinction.
No, patience was the key, which meant that the Elite would
have to wait. Vapor continued to roll out of the cold air vent, and the
air seemed to shimmer, but no one noticed.
“All right,” Keyes said, “let’s put her down. . . . Stand
by to fire the bow thrusters . . . Fire!”
The bow thrusters ignited and slowed the ship’s rate of
descent. The Pillar of Autumn wobbled for a moment as it battled
the ring’s gravity field, then corrected its angle of entry.
Cortana took over after that, or rather, the part of
herself that she had left behind did. The Autumn’s thrusters
fired in increments so small that they were like single notes in an
ongoing melody. The highly adaptive subroutine tracked variables,
monitored feedback, and made thousands of decisions per second.
The much-abused hull shuddered as it entered the
atmosphere, started to shake, and sent a host of loose items tumbling
to the deck. “That’s as far as we can take her,” Keyes announced.
“Delegate all command and control functions to Cortana’s cousin, and
let’s haul ass off this boat.”
There was a ragged chorus of “Aye, ayes,” as the bridge
crew disengaged from the ship they had worked so hard to save, took one
last look around, and drew their sidearms. The fighting had died down,
but that didn’t mean all of the Covenant forces had left.
’Nosolee watched anxiously as the humans started to leave
the bridge. He waited for the last person to exit, and fell into step
behind. The beginnings of a plan had started to form in his mind. It
was audacious—no, make that outrageous—but the Elite figured that made
the scheme all the more likely to succeed.
The lifeboat reserved for the bridge crew
was close by. Six Marines had been detailed to guard it and three of
them were dead. Their bodies had been dragged off to one side and laid
in a row. A corporal shouted, “Attention on deck!”
Keyes said, “As you were,” and gestured toward the hatch.
“Thanks for waiting, son. I’m sorry about your buddies.”
The corporal nodded stiffly. He must have been off duty
when the attack began—one half of his face needed a shave. “Thank you,
sir. They took a dozen of the bastards with them.”
Keyes nodded. Three lives for twelve. It sounded like a
good trade-off but how good was it really? How many Covenant troops
were there, anyway? And how many would each human have to kill? He
shook the thought off and jerked his thumb toward the opening.
“Everybody into the boat, on the double!”
The survivors streamed onto the boat, and
’Nosolee followed, though it was difficult to avoid touching the human
vermin in such tight quarters. There was a little bit of space toward
the front and a handhold which would be useful once the gravity
generated by the larger ship disappeared. Later, after the lifeboat
landed, the Elite would find an opportunity to separate Keezz from the
rest of the humans and seize him. In the meantime all he had to do was
hang on, avoid detection, and make it to the surface.
The human passengers strapped in. The lifeboat exploded
out of the bay, and it fell toward the ring world below. Jets fired,
the small craft stabilized, and followed a precalculated glide path
toward the surface.
Keyes was seated three slots aft of the
pilot. He frowned, as if looking for something, then waited for the
boat to clear. He leaned toward the Marine in front of him. “Excuse me,
Corporal.”
“Sir?” The Marine looked exhausted, but somehow managed to
snap to a form of attention, despite being belted into an acceleration
chair.
“Hand me your sidearm, son.”
The expression on his face made it plain that the last
thing the soldier wanted to do was part company with one of his
weapons, particularly in close quarters. But the Captain was the
Captain, so he had very little choice. The words, “Yes, sir,” were
still making their way from the noncom’s brain to his mouth when he
felt the M6D pistol being jerked out of his holster.
Would one of the 12.7 mm rounds punch its way through the
lifeboat’s relatively thin hull? Keyes wondered. Cause a blowout and
kill everyone aboard?
He didn’t know, but one thing was certain: The Covenant
son of a bitch standing in this lifeboat was about to die. Keyes raised
the weapon, aimed at the very center of the strange, ghostly shimmer,
and pulled the trigger.
The Elite saw the movement, had nowhere to
run, and was busy reaching for his own pistol when the first bullet
struck.
The M6D bucked, the barrel started to rise, and the third
slug from the top of the clip passed through the slit in ’Nosolee’s
helmet, blew his brains out through the back of his skull, and freed
him from the tyranny of physical reality.
No sooner had the noise of the last shot
died away than the camo generator failed, and an Elite appeared as if
from thin air. The alien’s body floated back toward the rear of the
cabin. Thousands of globules of alien blood escorted bits of brain
tissue on their journey to the lifeboat’s stern.
Lieutenant Hikowa ducked as one of the Elite’s boots
threatened to hit her head. She pushed the corpse away, her face
impassive. The rest of the passengers were too shocked to do or say
anything at all.
The Captain calmly dropped the clip from the gun, ejected
the round in the chamber, and handed the weapon back to the stunned
corporal.
“Thanks,” Keyes said. “That thing works pretty well. Don’t
forget to reload it.”
SECTION II
HALO
CHAPTER TWO
Deployment+00 hours:03 minutes:24 seconds (Major
Silva Mission Clock) / Command HEV, in combat drop to surface of Halo.
Consistent with standard UNSC insertion protocols, Major
Antonio Silva’s HEV accelerated once it was launched so that it was
among the first to enter Halo’s atmosphere. There were a number of
reasons for this, including the strongly held belief that officers
should lead rather than follow, be willing to do anything their troops
were asked to do, and expose themselves to the same level of danger.
There were still other reasons, however, beginning with
the need to collect, sort, and organize the troops the moment their
boots touched ground. Experience demonstrated that whatever the
Helljumpers managed to accomplish during the first so-called golden
hour would have a disproportionate effect on the success or failure of
the entire mission. Especially now, as the Marines dropped onto a
hostile world without any of the Intel briefings, virtual reality sims,
or environment-specific equipment mods they would normally receive
prior to such an insertion. To offset this, the command pod was
equipped with a lot of gear that the regular “eggs” weren’t, including
some high-powered imaging gear, and the Class C military AI required to
operate it.
This particular intelligence had been programmed with a
male persona, the name Wellsley—after the famous Duke of Wellington—and
a personality to match. Though he was a good deal less capable than a
top-level AI like Cortana, all of Wellsley’s capabilities were
focused on things military, which made him extremely useful if somewhat
narrow-minded.
The HEV shook violently and flipped end for end as the
interior temperature rose to 98 degrees. Sweat poured down Silva’s face.
“So,” Wellsley continued, his voice coming in via the
officer’s ear plugs, “based on the telemetry available from space, plus
my analysis, it appears that the structure tagged as HS2604 will meet
your needs.” The AI’s tone changed slightly as a conversational
subroutine kicked in. “Perhaps you would like to call it ‘Gawilghur,’
after the fortress I conquered in India?”
“Thanks,” Silva croaked as the pod inverted a second time,
“but no thanks. First: you didn’t take the fortress, Wellington
did. Second: There weren’t any computers in 1803. Third: none of my
troops would be able to pronounce ‘Gawilghur.’ The designator ‘Alpha
Base’ will do just fine.”
The AI issued a passable rendition of a human sigh. “Very
well, then. As I was saying, ‘Alpha Base’ is located at the top
of this
butte.” The curvilinear screen located just six inches from the end of
the Marine’s nose seemed to shiver and the video morphed into a picture
of a thick, pillarlike formation topped by a mesa with some variegated
flat-roofed structures located at one end.
That was all Silva got to see before the HEV’s skin
started to slough away revealing the alloy crash cage that contained
the officer and his equipment. The air turned cold and ripped at his
clothes. A moment later, the chute unfurled and assumed the shape of an
airfoil. Silva winced as the pod decelerated with a bone-rattling jerk.
His harness bit into his shoulders and chest.
Wellsley sent an electronic signal to the rest of the
Helljumpers. The remains of their HEVs turned in whatever direction was
necessary in order to orient themselves on the command pod and follow
it down through the atmosphere.
All except for Private Marie Postly, who heard a snap
as her main chute tore away. There was a sickening moment of freefall,
then a jolt as the back-up chute deployed. A red light flashed on the
instrument panel in front of her. She started to scream on freq two,
until Silva cut her off. He closed his eyes. It was the death that
every Helljumper feared, but none of them talked about. Somewhere, down
toward Halo’s surface, Postly was about to dig her own grave.
Silva felt his HEV stabilize and took another look at the
butte. It was tall enough to provide anyone who owned it with a good
view of the surrounding countryside, plus the sheer cliffs would force
attackers to either come by air or fight their way up along narrow
paths. As a bonus, the structures located on top would provide his
Marines with defensible shelter. “It looks good. I like it.”
“I thought you would,” Wellsley replied smugly. “There is
one little problem, however.”
“What’s that?” Silva shouted as the last section of the
HEV’s skin peeled away and the slipstream tore at his mask.
“The Covenant owns this particular piece of real estate,”
the AI replied, calmly, “and if we want it, we’ll have to take it.”
Deployment+00 hours:02 minutes:51 seconds
(SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Lifeboat Lima Foxtrot
Alpha 43, in emergency descent to surface of Halo.
The Master Chief watched the ring open up in front of him
as the pilot guided the lifeboat in past a thick silvery edge, and down
“under” the construct’s inner surface, before putting the tiny ship
into a shallow dive calculated to place it on the strange landscape
below. As he looked forward, he saw mountains, hills, and a plain that
curved up and eventually out of focus as the ring swooped upward to
complete itself somewhere over his head. The sight was beautiful,
strange, and disorienting all at the same time.
Then the sightseeing was over as the ground came up to
meet them. The Master Chief couldn’t tell whether the lifeboat took
enemy fire, suffered an engine failure, or nicked an obstacle on final
approach. It really didn’t matter; the result was the same.
The pilot had time to yell, “We’re coming in too fast!” A
moment later, the hull bounced off something solid, and the Spartan was
knocked off his feet.
Pain stabbed through his temples as his helmet slammed
into the bulkhead on his way to the deckplates—followed by clinging
blackness . . .
“Chief . . . Chief . . . Can you hear me?”
Cortana’s voice echoed in his head.
The Spartan opened his eyes and found himself facing the
overhead light panels. They flickered and sparked. “Yes, I can hear
you,” he replied. “There’s no need to shout.”
“Oh, really ?” the AI replied in an arch tone.
“Maybe you’d like to file a complaint with the Covenant. The crash
triggered a lot of radio traffic and it’s my guess that the welcome
wagon is on the way.”
The Master Chief struggled to his feet and was just about
to answer in kind when he saw the bodies. The impact of the crash had
ripped the boat open and mangled the unprotected people within. No one
else had survived.
There was no time to dwell on that, not if he wanted to
stay alive, and keep Cortana from falling into enemy hands.
He hurried to gather as much ammo, grenades, and supplies
as he could carry. He had just finished checking the pins on a quartet
of frag grenades when Cortana piped up in alarm: “Warning—I’ve detected
multiple Covenant dropships on approach. I recommend moving into those
hills. If we’re lucky, the Covenant will believe that everyone aboard
the lifeboat died in the crash.”
“Acknowledged.”
Cortana’s plan made sense. The Spartan surveyed the area
for threats, then hurried toward a canyon and the bridge that crossed
it. The span was devoid of safety railings, and was constructed from a
strange, burnished metal. Beneath the bridge, a towering waterfall
thundered down a massive drop-off.
The rest of the world arched high overhead. Large
outcroppings of weather-smoothed gray rock rose ahead, and a scattering
of what looked like conifers reminded him of the forests he’d trained
in on Reach.
There were differences, however, like the way the ring
tapered up from the horizon, the manner in which its shadow fell upon
the land, and the crisp, clean air that came in through his filters. It
was beautiful, breathtakingly so, but potentially dangerous as well.
“Alert—Covenant dropship inbound.” Cortana’s voice was
calm but insistent.
The prophecy soon proved correct as a large shadow floated
over the far end of the bridge and the ship’s engines screamed a
warning. There was very little doubt that the Spartan had been spotted,
so he made plans to deal with it.
He reached the end of the bridge, saw a likely-looking
boulder off to his left, and hurried to take advantage of it. He
skirted the cliff edge, ignoring the long drop. Careful to watch his
footing, the Master Chief circled the rock and found a crevice where
the boulder touched the cliff. Now, with his back to the wall, he had a
chance to defend himself.
He checked his motion tracker, and realized that a pair of
Covenant Banshees were practically on top of him. The alien aircraft
boasted plasma cannon and fuel rod guns. Though not especially fast,
they were still dangerous, especially against ground troops.
Combined with air support, the Grunts and Elites that
dropped from the fork-shaped alien troop carrier were a serious threat.
He steadied his aim and sighted on the nearest Banshee.
Careful not to fire early, the Spartan waited for the Banshee to come
within range, then squeezed the trigger. The first assault ship came
straight at him, which made it relatively easy to stay on target.
Bullet impacts sparked on the Banshee’s hull as his ammo counter
dwindled.
The ship shuddered as at least some of the armor-piercing
rounds penetrated the fuselage, pulled up out of its dive, and started
to trail smoke.
The Master Chief was in no position to appreciate the
results of his efforts, however, as the second Banshee swooped out of
the sun, pounded the area around him with plasma fire. His shield
display dropped, then pulsed red. An alarm whined in his helmet
speakers.
The Master Chief returned fire. Without pause, he thumbed
the magazine release and slammed a fresh clip into the receiver.
He crouched, searched the sky for targets, and spotted
Banshee number one in the nick of time. He braced himself for another
assault. The Spartan allowed the enemy aircraft to approach, took a
slight lead, and squeezed the trigger again. The Covenant ship ran into
the stream of bullets, exploded into flames, and slammed into the cliff
wall.
The second ship was still up there, flying in lazy
circles, but the Spartan knew better than to stand around and watch it.
A half dozen red dots had appeared on his motion sensors. Each blip
represented a potential assailant and most were located to his rear.
The Master Chief waited for his shields to return to their
full charge, then turned, jumped up onto the boulder, and took a quick
look around. The Covenant dropship had deposited a clutch of Grunts on
the far side of the canyon where they were busy examining the wreckage
of his lifeboat.
But that wasn’t all. To his left, on his side of the
bridge, another group of Grunts was working its way through the
trees, moving in his direction. They were still a ways off,
however—which gave him a few seconds to prepare.
Though not armed with the standard S2 AM Sniper’s Rifle,
his weapon of choice for this sort of situation, the Spartan was
packing the M6D pistol that Keyes had given him. It was equipped with a
2X scope and, in the hands of an expert, it could reach out and touch
someone.
The Master Chief drew the sidearm, turned to the group
gathered around the wreckage, and placed the targeting circle over the
nearest Grunt. In spite of the fact that they were of no immediate
threat, the aliens on the other side of the canyon were in an ideal
position to flank him, which meant he would deal with them first.
Twelve shots rang out, and seven Grunts fell.
Satisfied that his right flank was reasonably secure, he
slammed a fresh clip into the pistol and shifted his attention to the
enemy troops that were emerging from the trees. This group of Grunts
was closer now, much closer, and they opened fire. The Master
Chief chose to target the most distant alien first, thereby ensuring
that he would still get a crack at the others, even if they turned and
tried to escape.
The pistol shots came in quick succession. The Grunts
barked, hooted, and gurgled as the well-aimed bullets hurled their
lifeless carcasses down the reverse slope.
When there were no more targets to fire at, the Master
Chief took a moment to reload the handgun, clicked on the safety, and
returned the weapon to its holster. He jumped off the boulder and
crouched under an outcropping of rock.
He eyed the Banshee above. It was still there, circling
well out of range, waiting to pounce should he emerge from cover. That
meant he could sit there and wait for more ground forces to arrive, or
he could abandon his hiding place and attempt to slip away.
The Spartan had never been one for standing around, so he
readied his assault rifle and slid forward over the rock. Once on open
ground it was a short dash past the scattering of dead Grunts. He
crouched beneath the cover offered by a copse of trees.
He counted to three, then dashed from boulder to boulder.
He leapfrogged uphill, still very much aware of the Banshee at his
back, but reasonably certain he’d given the aircraft the slip.
There were no blips on his threat detector, until he
topped the rise and paused to examine the terrain ahead. A telltale red
dot popped onto his HUD. The Master Chief eased his way forward,
waiting for the moment of contact.
Then he saw movement as hunched bodies dashed from one
scrap of cover to the next. There were four of them, including a
blue-armored Elite. The Elite charged recklessly forward, firing as he
came.
He’d engaged such Elites before—there was some
significance to the aliens’ armor colors—and they always fought like
aggressive rookies. A thin smile touched the Master Chief’s lips. He
ignored the alien’s badly-placed shots, stood, and returned fire. The
Elite’s advance stalled, and the Grunts began to fall back toward a
stand of trees. His threat indicator sounded a warning and a red arrow
pointed to the right. The Master Chief drew and primed an M9 HE-DP
grenade.
He turned just in time to see another Elite—this one in
the scarlet armor of a veteran—charge him. The grenade was already in
hand, and the distance to the target was sufficient, so the soldier let
the M9 fly. The grenade detonated with a loud whump! and tossed
the enemy soldier into the air, while stripping a nearby tree of half
its branches.
The rookie was close now, and roared a battle cry. The
alien hosed the Master Chief with plasma fire. His shields dropped
precipitously.
The Spartan backed away, fired his assault rifle in short
controlled bursts, and finally managed to knock the remaining Elite off
his feet.
With their leader down, the Grunts broke ranks and began
to scamper away. The Master Chief cut their retreat short in a hail of
bullets.
He eased up on the trigger, felt the silence settle in
around him, and knew he had made a mistake. The veteran had damned near
blindsided him. How?
He realized with a start that he was still fighting like
part of a unit. Though he was trained to act independently, he had
spent most of his military career as part of a team. The Elite had
managed to flank him because his was simply accustomed to one of his
fellow Spartans watching out for him.
He was cut off from the chain of command, alone, and most
likely surrounded by the enemy. He nodded, his face grim behind the
mirrored visor. This mission would require a major revision in his
tactics.
He pushed his way up through a meadow thick with
knee-high, spiky grass. He could hear the distant chatter of automatic
weapons fire and knew some Marines were somewhere up ahead.
He sprinted toward the sound of battle. Perhaps he
wouldn’t be on his own for long.
Deployment+00 hours:05 minutes:08 seconds
(Captain Keyes’ Mission Clock) / Lifeboat Kilo Tango Victor 17, in
emergency descent to surface of Halo.
Maybe it was because the Autumn ’s navigator,
Ensign
Lovell, was at the controls, or maybe it was simply a matter of good
luck, but whatever the reason, the rest of the trip down through Halo’s
atmosphere was completely uneventful. So peaceful that it made Keyes
nervous.
“Where would you like me to put her down, sir?” Lovell
inquired, as the lifeboat skimmed a grassy plain.
“Anywhere,” Keyes answered, “so long as there aren’t any
Covenant forces around. Some cover would be nice—since this boat will
act like a magnet if we leave it out in the open.”
Like most of its kind, the lifeboat had never been
intended for extended atmospheric use; it flew like a rock, in fact.
But the suggestion made sense, so the pilot turned toward what he had
arbitrarily designated as the “west,” and the point where the
grasslands met a tumble of low rolling hills.
The lifeboat was low, so low that the
Covenant patrol barely had time to see what it was before the tiny
vessel flashed over their heads and disappeared.
The veteran Elites, both of whom were mounted on small
single-seat hoversleds, Ghosts, stood to watch the lifeboat skim the
plain.
The senior of the pair called the sighting in. They turned
toward the hills and opened their throttles. What had promised to be a
long, boring day suddenly seemed a great deal more interesting. The
Elites glanced at each other, bent over their controls, and raced to
see which of them could reach the lifeboat first—and which of them
would score the first kill of the afternoon.
Deep in the hills ahead, Lovell fired the
lifeboat’s bow thrusters, dropped what flaps the stubby little wings
had, and jazzed the boat’s belly jets. Keyes watched in admiration as
the young pilot dropped the boat into a gully where it would be almost
impossible to spot, except from directly overhead. Lovell had been a
troubled officer, well on his way to a dishonorable discharge, when
Keyes had recruited him. He’d come a long way since then.
“Nice job,” the Captain said as the lifeboat settled onto
its skids. “Okay, boys and girls, let’s strip this ship of everything
that might be useful, and put as much distance between it and ourselves
as we can. Corporal, post your Marines as sentries. Wang, Dowski,
Abiad, open those storage compartments. Let’s see what brand of
champagne the UNSC keeps in its lifeboats. Hikowa, give me a hand with
this body.”
There was a certain amount of commotion as ’Nosolee’s
corpse was carried outside and unceremoniously dumped into a crevice,
the boat was stripped, and the controls were disabled. With emergency
packs on their backs, the bridge crew started up into the hills. They
hadn’t gone far when a sonic boom rolled over the land, the Pillar
of
Autumn roared across the sky, and dropped over the horizon to the
arbitrary “south.”
Keyes held his breath as he waited to see what would
happen. He, like all COs, had neural implants that linked him to the
ship, the ship’s AI, and key personnel. There was a pause, followed by
what felt like a mild earth tremor. A moment later, a terse message
from Cortana’s subroutine scrolled across his vision, courtesy of his
neural lace:
>CSR-1 :: BURST BROADCAST ::
>PILLAR OF AUTUMN IS DOWN. THOSE SYSTEMS WHICH
REMAIN
FUNCTIONAL ARE ON STANDBY. OPERATIONAL READINESS STANDS AT 8.7%.
>CSR-1 OUT.
It wasn’t the sort of message that any commanding officer
would want to receive. In spite of the fact that the Autumn
would
never swim through space again, Keyes took some small comfort from the
fact that his ship still had the equivalent of a pulse, and might still
come in handy.
He forced a smile. “Okay, people, what are we waiting for?
Our cave awaits. The last one to the top digs the latrine.”
The bridge personnel continued their climb.
In spite of efforts to keep the HEVs
together, the Helljumpers came down in a landing zone that stretched
approximately three kilometers in diameter. Some of the landings were
classic two-point affairs in which the more fortunate Marines were able
to jettison their crash cages about fifty meters off the ground, and
land like sim soldiers in a training vid.
Others were a good deal less graceful, as the skeletal
remains of their drop pods smashed against cliffs, dropped into lakes,
and in one unfortunate case rolled into a deep ravine. As the surviving
Helljumpers extricated themselves from their HEVs, a homing beacon
snapped to life, and they were able to orient themselves to the red
square which appeared on their transparent eye-screens. That was where
Major Silva had landed, a temporary HQ had been established, and the
battalion would regroup.
Each pod was stripped of extra weapons, ammo, and other
supplies, which meant that the force which converged on the hot dry
plateau was well equipped. Helljumpers were supposed to be able to
operate without external resupply for two-week periods, and Silva was
pleased that his troops had retained most of their gear, despite the
difficult drop conditions.
In fact, Silva thought as he watched his troops
stream in from every direction, the only thing we lack is a fleet
of
Warthogs and a squad of Scorpions. But those assets would come, oh,
yes they would, shortly after the butte was wrenched from enemy hands.
In the meantime, the Helljumpers would use what ground-pounders always
use: their feet.
First Lieutenant Melissa McKay had landed
safely, as had most of her 130-person company. Three of her people had
been killed in action on the Autumn, and two were missing and
presumed dead. Not too bad, all things considered.
As luck would have it, McKay hit the dirt only half a
klick away from the homing beacon, which meant that by the time a
perimeter had been established she had already humped her gear across
the hardpan, located Major Silva, and reported in. McKay was one of his
favorites. The ODST officer nodded by way of a greeting. “Nice of you
to drop in, Lieutenant . . . I was beginning to wonder if you’d taken
the afternoon off.”
“No, sir,” McKay responded. “I dozed off on the way down
and slept through my wake-up alarm. It won’t happen again.”
Silva managed to keep a straight face. “Glad to hear it.”
He paused, then pointed. “You see that butte? The one with
the structures on top? I want it.”
McKay looked, brought her binoculars up, and looked again.
The butte’s range appeared along the bottom of the image and was soon
chased out of the frame by coordinates that Wellsley inserted to
replace the concepts of longitude and latitude which worked on most
planetary surfaces, but not here.
The sun was “setting” but there was still enough light to
see by. As she surveyed the target area, a Covenant Banshee took off
from the top of the butte, circled out toward the “west,” and came
straight at her. The only thing that was surprising about that was the
fact that it had taken the enemy so long to respond to their landing.
“It looks like a tough nut to crack, sir. Especially from
the ground.”
“It is,” Silva agreed, “which is why we’re going to tackle
it from both the air and the ground. Lord only knows how they
did
it, but a group of Pelican pilots were able to launch their transports
before the Old Man brought the Autumn down, and they’re hidden
about ten klicks north of here. We can use them to support an airborne
operation.”
McKay lowered her binoculars. “And the Autumn ?”
“She’s KIA back thataway,” Silva replied, hooking his
thumb back over a shoulder. “I’d like to go pay my final respects, but
that will have to wait. What we need is a base, something we can
fortify, and use to hold the Covenant at bay. Otherwise they’re going
to hunt our people down one, two, or three at a time.”
“Which is where the butte comes in,” McKay said.
“Exactly,” Silva answered. “So, start walking. I want your
company at the foot of that butte ASAP. If there’s a path to the top I
want you to find it and follow it. Once you get their attention, we’ll
hit them from above.”
There was a loud bang as one of the first
company’s
rocket jockeys fired her M19 SSM man-portable launcher, blew the
incoming Banshee out of the sky, and a put a period to Silva’s
sentence. The battalion cheered as the Banshee bits dribbled smoke and
wobbled out of the sky.
“Sir, yes sir,” McKay answered. “When we get up there, you
can buy me a beer.”
“Fair enough,” Silva agreed, “but we’ll have to brew it
first.”
Even Grunts had to be granted some rest once
in a while, which was why long, cylindrical tanks equipped with air
locks had been shipped to Halo’s surface, where they were pumped full
of methane and used in lieu of barracks.
Having survived the nearly suicidal attack on the Autumn
by rescuing a wounded Elite, and insisting that the warrior be
evacuated rather than left to die, Yayap had extended the duration of
his own life, not to mention those of the Grunts directly under his
command.
Now, by way of celebrating that victory, the alien soldier
was curled in a tiny ball, fast asleep. One leg twitched slightly as
the Grunt dreamed of making his way through the swamps of his home
world, past naturally occurring pillars of fire, to the marshy estuary
where he had grown up.
Then, before he could cross a row of ancient
stepping-stones to the reedy hut on the far side of the family’s
ancestral fish pond, Gagaw shook his arm. “Yayap! Get up quick!
Remember the Elite we brought down from the ship? He’s outside, and he
wants to see you!”
Yayap sprang to his feet. “Me? Did he say why?”
“No,” the other Grunt replied, “but it can’t be good.”
That much was certainly true, Yayap reflected as he waded
through the chaos of equipment that hung in untidy clusters along the
length of the cylinder. He entered the communal lavatory, and hurried
to don his armor, breathing apparatus, and weapons harness.
Which was more dangerous, he wondered, to show up
disheveled, and have the Elite find fault with his appearance, or to
show up later because he had taken the time required to ensure that his
appearance would be acceptable? Dealing with Elites always seemed to
involve such conundrums, which was one of the many reasons that Yayap
had a hearty dislike for their kind.
Finally, having decided to favor speed over appearance,
Yayap entered the air lock, waited for it to cycle him through, and
emerged into the bright sunlight. The first thing he noticed was that
the sentries, who could normally be found leaning against the tank
discussing how awful the rations were, stood at rigid attention.
“Are you the one called Yayap?” The deep voice came from
behind him and caused the Grunt to jump. He turned, came to attention,
and tried to look soldierly. “Yes, Excellency.”
The Elite named Zuka ’Zamamee wore no helmet. He couldn’t,
not with the dressing that was wrapped around his head, but the rest of
his armor was still in place. It was spotlessly clean, as were the
weapons he wore. “Good. The medics told me that you and your file not
only pulled me off the ship—but forced the assault boat to bring me
down to the surface.”
Yayap felt a lump form in his throat and struggled to
swallow it. The pilot had been somewhat reluctant, citing orders to
wait for a full load of troops before breaking contact with the human
ship, but Gagaw had been quite insistent—even going so far as to pull
his plasma pistol and wave it about.
“Yes, Excellency,” Yayap replied, “but I can explain—”
“There’s no need,” ’Zamamee replied. Yayap almost jumped;
the Elite’s voice lacked the customary bark of command. It sounded
almost . . . reassuring.
Yayap was anything but reassured.
“You saw that a superior had been wounded,” the Elite
continued, “and did what you could to ensure that he received timely
medical treatment. That sort of initiative is rare, especially among
the lower classes.”
Yayap stared at the Elite, unable to reply. He felt
disoriented. In his universe, Elites didn’t offer accolades.
“To show my appreciation I’ve had you transferred.”
Yayap liked the normally sleepy unit to which he
was
attached, and had no desire to leave it. “Transferred, Excellency? To
what unit?”
“Why, to my unit,” the Elite replied, as if nothing
could be more natural. “My assistant was killed as we boarded the human
ship. You will take his place.”
Yayap felt his spirits plummet. The Elites who acted as
special operatives of the Prophets were fanatics, chosen for their
limitless willingness to risk their lives—and the lives of those under
their command. “Th-thank you, Excellency,” Yayap stuttered, “but I
don’t deserve such an honor.”
“Nonsense!” the Elite replied. “Your name has already been
added to the rolls. Gather your belongings, say good-bye to your
cohort, and meet me here fifteen units from now. I’m scheduled to
appear in front of the Council of Masters later this evening. You will
accompany me.”
“Yes, Excellency,” Yayap said obediently. “May I inquire
as to the purpose of the meeting?”
“You may,” ’Zamamee replied, allowing a hand to touch the
bandage that circled his head. “The human who inflicted this wound was
a warrior so capable that he represents a danger to the entire battle
group. An individual who, if our records can be believed, is personally
responsible for the deaths of more than a thousand of our soldiers.”
Yayap felt his knees start to give. “By himself,
Excellency?”
“Yes. But never fear, those days are over. Once I receive
authorization, you and I will find this human.”
“Find him?” Yayap exclaimed, protocol forgotten. “Then
what?”
“Then,” ’Zamamee growled, “we will kill him.”
The dawn air was cold, and McKay could see
her breath as she stared upward and wondered what awaited her. Half the
night had been spent marching across the stretch of intervening hardpan
to get into position below the butte, and the other half had been spent
between trying to find a way up to the top, and grabbing a little bit
of sleep.
The second task had been easy, perhaps a little too
easy, because other than a sloppily constructed barricade, the foot of
the four-foot-wide ramp was entirely unguarded. Still, the last thing
the Covenant expected was for a human ship to appear out of Slipspace,
and land infantry on the surface of the construct. Viewed in that
light, a certain lack of preparation was understandable.
In any case, the path started at ground level, spiraled
steadily upward, and hadn’t been used in some time judging from what
she could see. That’s the way it appeared, anyway, although it
was hard to be sure from below, and Silva was understandably reluctant
to send in one of the Pelicans lest it give the plan away.
No, McKay and her troops would have to wind their way up
along the narrow path, engage whatever defenses the Covenant might have
in place, and hope that the Pelicans arrived quickly enough to take the
pressure off.
The Lieutenant eyed the readout on the transparent
boom-mounted eye-screen attached to her helmet, waited for the
countdown to complete itself, and started up the steep incline. Company
Sergeant Tink Carter turned to face the men and women lined up behind
him. “What the hell are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Let’s
get it in gear.”
While B Company marched toward the butte,
and C Company marched off to rendezvous with the Pelicans, the rest of
the battalion used the remaining hours of darkness to prepare for the
following day under Major Silva’s watchful eye. Wireless sensors were
placed two hundred meters out and monitored by Wellsley; three-person
fire teams took up positions a hundred fifty meters out; and a rapid
response team was established to support them.
There wasn’t any natural cover here, so the Helljumpers
moved their gear up onto a low rise, and did what they could to place
fortifications around it. Dirt excavated from the firing pits was used
to build a low barrier around the battalion’s perimeter, connecting
trenches were dug, and a landing pad was established so that Pelicans
could put down within the battalion’s footprint.
Now, standing at the very highest point of the pad, and
gazing off to the west, Silva listened as Wellsley spoke into his ear.
“I have good news and bad news. The good news is that
Lieutenant
McKay has started her climb. The bad news is that the Covenant
is
about to attack from the west.”
Silva lowered his glasses, turned, and looked to the west.
An enormous dust cloud had appeared during the five minutes that had
passed since he looked that way. “What kind of attack?” the ODST
officer demanded curtly.
“That’s rather difficult to say,” Wellsley replied
deliberately, “especially without the ships, satellites, and recon
drones that I normally rely on for information. However, judging from
the amount of dust, plus my knowledge of the Covenant weapons
inventory, it looks like an old-fashioned cavalry charge similar to the
one that Napoleon threw my way at Waterloo.”
“You weren’t at Waterloo,” Silva reminded the AI as he
brought the binoculars up to his eyes. “But, assuming you’re correct,
what are they riding?”
“Rapid attack and reconnaissance vehicles which our forces
refer to as Ghosts,” Wellsley replied pedantically. “Perhaps a hundred
of them . . . judging from the dust.”
Silva swore. The timing couldn’t have been worse. The
Covenant had to respond to his presence, he knew that, but he had hoped
for a little more time. Now, with fully half his strength committed
elsewhere, he was left with roughly two hundred troops. Still, they
were ODST troops, the best in the UNSC.
“All right,” Silva said grimly, “if they want to charge,
let’s give them the traditional counter. Order the pickets to pull
back, tell Companies A and D to form an infantry square, and let’s get
all the backup ammo below ground level. I want assault weapons in the
pits, launchers halfway up the slope, and snipers up on the pad. No one
fires until I give the command.”
Like Silva, Wellsley knew that the Roman legions had used
the infantry square to good effect, as had Lord Wellington, and many
since. The formation, which consisted of a box with ranks of troops all
facing outward, was extremely hard to break.
The AI relayed the instructions to the troops, who, though
surprised to be deployed in such an archaic way, knew exactly what to
do. By the time the Ghosts arrived and washed around the rise like an
incoming tide, the square was set.
Silva studied the rangefinder in his tac display and
waited until the enemy was in range. He keyed the all-hands freq and
gave the order: “Fire!Fire! ”
Sheets of armor-piercing bullets sleeted through the air.
The lead machines staggered as if they had run into a wall, Elites
tumbled out of their seats, and a runaway machine skittered to the east.
But there were a lot of the attack vehicles and as the
oncoming horde sprayed the Marines with plasma fire, ODST troopers
began to fall. Fortunately, the weapons that fired the energy bolts
were fixed, which meant that the rise would continue to offer the
humans a good deal of protection, so long as the Ghosts weren’t allowed
to climb the slopes.
Also operating in the Helljumpers’ favor were the skittish
nature of the machines themselves, some poor driving, and a lack of
overall coordination. Many of the Elites seemed eager to score a kill:
They broke formation and raced ahead of their comrades. Silva saw one
attack craft take fire from another Ghost, which crashed into a third
machine, which subsequently burst into flame.
The majority of the Elites were quite competent, however,
and after some initial confusion, they went to work devising tactics
intended to break the square. A gold-armored Elite led the effort.
First, rather than allowing the riders to circle the humans in whatever
direction they chose, he forced them into a counterclockwise rotation.
Then, having reduced collisions by at least a third, the enemy officer
chose the lowest pit, the one against which the fixed plasma cannons
would be most effective, and drove at it time and time again. Marines
were killed, the outgoing fire slackened, and one corner of the square
became vulnerable.
Silva countered by sending a squad to reinforce the weak
point, ordering his snipers to concentrate their fire on the gold
Elite, and calling on the rocket jockeys to provide rotating fire. If
the humans’ launchers had a weakness, it was the fact that they could
only fire two rockets before being reloaded, which left at least five
seconds between volleys. By alternating fire, and concentrating on the
Ghosts closest to the hill, the Marine defenders were able to leverage
the weapons’ effectiveness.
This strategy proved effective. Wrecked, burned, and
mangled Ghosts formed a metal barricade, further protecting the humans
from plasma fire, and interfering with new attacks.
Silva lifted his binoculars and surveyed the smoke-laced
battle area. He offered a silent thanks to whatever deity watched over
the infantry. Had he led the assault, Silva would have sent in
air support first to pin the Helljumpers down—followed by Ghosts from
the west. His opposite number had been trained differently, had too
much confidence in his mechanized troops, or was just plain
inexperienced.
Whatever the reason, the Banshees were thrown into the mix
late, apparently as an afterthought. Silva’s rocket jockeys knocked two
of the aircraft out of the air on the first pass, nailed another one on
the second pass, and sent the fourth running south with smoke trailing
from its failing engines.
Finally, with the gold Elite dead, and more than half of
their number slaughtered, the remaining Elites withdrew. Some of the
Ghosts remained untouched, but at least a dozen of the surviving ships
carried extra riders, and most were riddled with bullet holes. Two,
their engines destroyed, were towed off the field of battle.
This is why we need the butte,Silva thought as he
surveyed the carnage, to avoid another victory like this one.
Twenty-three Helljumpers were dead, six were critically injured, and
ten had lesser wounds.
Static burped in his ear, and McKay’s voice crackled
across the command freq.“Blue One to Red One, over.”
Silva swung toward the butte, raised his glasses, and saw
smoke drift away from a point about halfway up the pillarlike
formation. “This is Red One—go. Over.”
“I think we have their attention, sir.”
The Major grinned. It looked more like a grimace. “Roger
that, Blue One. We put on a show for them, as well. Hang tight . . .
help is on the way.”
McKay ducked back beneath a rocky overhang as the latest
batch of plasma grenades rained down from above. Some kept on falling,
others found targets, bonded to them, and exploded seconds later.
A trooper screamed as one of the alien bombs landed on top
of his rucksack. A sergeant yelled, “Dump the pack!” but the Marine
panicked, and backpedaled off the path. The grenade exploded and
sprayed the cliff face with what looked like red paint. The infantry
officer winced.
“Roger, Red One. Sooner would be a whole helluva lot
better than later. Over and out.”
Wellsley ordered the Pelicans into the air as Silva stared
out over the plain. He wondered if his plan would work, and if he could
stomach the price.
CHAPTER THREE
D+03:14:26 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Surface.
Up ahead the Master Chief saw a light so bright that it
seemed to compete with the sun. It originated somewhere beyond the
rocks and trees ahead, surged up between the horns of a large U-shaped
construct, and raced into the sky where the planet Threshold served as
a pastel backdrop. Was the pulse some sort of beacon? Part of what held
the ring world together? There was no way for him to know.
Cortana had already warned the Spartan that a group of
Marines had crash-landed in the area, so he wasn’t surprised to hear
the rattle of automatic weapons fire or the characteristic whine as
Covenant energy weapons answered in kind.
He eased his way through the scrub and onto the hillside
above the U-shaped edifice and the blocky structures that surrounded
it. He could see a group of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites dashing back
and forth as they tried to overwhelm a group of Marines.
Rather than charge in, assault weapon blazing, the Master
Chief chose to use his M6D pistol instead. He raised the weapon,
activated the 2X magnification, and took careful aim. A series of
well-placed shots knocked a trio of Grunts off their feet.
Before the Covenant forces could locate where the incoming
fire had originated, the Master Chief opened fire on a blue-armored
Elite. It took a full magazine to put the warrior down, but it beat the
hell out of going toe-to-toe with the alien when there wasn’t any need
to.
The quick, unexpected sniping attack gave the Marines the
opportunity they needed. There was a quick flurry of fire as the
Spartan made his way down the slope, paused to strip some plasma
grenades off a dead Grunt, and was welcomed by a friendly private.
“Good to see you, Chief. Welcome to the party.”
The Spartan’s reply was a curt nod. “Where’s your CO,
Private?”
“Back there,” the Marine said. He turned and called over
his shoulder. “Hey, Sarge!”
The Master Chief recognized the tough-looking Sergeant who
trotted to join them. He’d last seen Sergeant Johnson during a
search-and-destroy run aboard one of Reach’s orbital docking facilities.
“What’s your status here, Sergeant?”
“It’s a mess,” Johnson growled. “We’re scattered all over
this valley.” He paused, and added in a quiet voice, “We called for
evac, but until you showed up, I thought we were done for.”
“Don’t worry,” Cortana said over the Spartan’s
external speakers,“we’ll stay here till evac arrives. I’ve been in
touch with AI Wellsley. The Helljumpers are in the process of taking
over some Covenant real estate—and one of the Pelicans has been
dispatched to pick you up.”
“Glad to hear it,” Johnson replied. “Some of my people
need medical attention.”
“Here comes another Covenant dropship,” the Private put
in. “It’s time to roll out the welcome mat!”
“Okay, Bisenti,” Johnson barked. “Re-form the squad. Let’s
get to work.”
The Master Chief looked up and saw that the Marine was
correct—another Covenant landing craft hovered for a moment, then
dropped close to the ground. The oddly shaped vehicle dipped slightly,
and the mandible structures that formed the bulk of the dropship’s
fuselage hinged open. A clutch of Grunts and an Elite dropped to the
ground.
The Master Chief moved fifty meters to the right, and
raised his pistol once again. In seconds, a team of Marines poured fire
into the Covenant LZ and flushed them out. As the aliens scattered and
dove for cover, the Spartan put them down one by one.
There was a brief respite, and the Master Chief paused to
survey the situation. Cortana pulled up the Marine positions, tagged
them as FIRE TEAM C , and highlighted their locations on
his HUD. Several of them had climbed the large structure that dominated
the area, and the rest patrolled the perimeter.
He had just readied his assault rifle when a Marine voice
called out: “Contact! Enemy dropship sighted! They’re trying to flank
us!”
Seconds later, the Spartan’s motion sensor painted a
contact—a large one—nearby. He stayed close to a large boulder and used
it for cover, then cautiously checked for targets.
The dropship disgorged another contingent of
troops—including a trio of Jackals. Their distinctive, glowing shields
flared as Sergeant Johnson’s men opened fire. Bullets ricocheted as the
birdlike aliens crouched behind their protective devices, like medieval
footmen forming a shield wall.
Behind them, more Grunts and a blue Elite spread out in an
enveloping formation. It was a good tactic, particularly if there were
more dropships inbound. Eventually, the Covenant would wear down the
Marine defenses and overrun the position.
There was just one problem with their plan: He was in a
perfect flanking position. He crouched, then sprinted forward into the
Jackal’s line. His assault rifle barked and bullets tore into the
exposed aliens. They had barely hit the ground as the Spartan spun,
primed a captured plasma grenade, and threw it at the Elite, almost
thirty meters away.
The alien only had time to roar in surprise before the
glowing plasma orb struck him in the center of his helmet. The weapon
fused to the alien’s helmet and began to pulse a sickly blue-white. A
moment later, as the alien attempted to tear off his helmet, the
grenade detonated.
After that it was a relatively simple matter for the
Master Chief to move through the ruins and hunt down the remainder of
the Covenant reaction force.
A welcome voice sounded from his radio receiver.“This
is Echo 419. Does anyone read me? Repeat: any UNSC personnel, respond.”
Cortana was quick to reply on the same frequency.“Roger,
Echo 419, we read you. This is Fire Team Charlie. Is that you,
Foehammer?”
“Roger, Fire Team Charlie,”Foehammer drawled,“it’s
good to hear from you!”
There was a distant rumbling, and the Master Chief turned
to identify the source of the noise. In the distance, he saw
movement—lifeboats, trailing smoke and fire as their friction-heated
hulls tore through the atmosphere.
“They’re coming in fast,” Cortana warned. “If they make it
down, the Covenant will be right on top of them.”
The Chief nodded. “Then we should find them first.”
“Foehammer, we need you to disengage your Warthog. The
Master Chief and I are going to see if we can save some soldiers.”
“Roger.”
The Pelican rounded the spire of the alien structure,
circled the area once, then hovered above the crest of a nearby hill.
Slung beneath the Pelican was a four-wheeled vehicle—an M12 LRV
Warthog. The light reconnaissance vehicle hung beneath the dropship for
a moment, then dropped to the ground as Foehammer released it from her
craft. The Warthog bounced once on its heavy suspension, slid five
meters down the hill, then was still.
“Okay, Fire Team Charlie—one Warthog deployed,”Foehammer
said.“Saddle up and give ’em hell!”
“Roger, Foehammer, stand by to load survivors and evac
them to safety.”
“That’s affirmative . . . Foehammer out.”
As the Marines sprinted for the Pelican, the Master Chief
made his way to the Warthog. The all-terrain vehicle was mounted with a
standard M41 light antiaircraft gun, or LAAG. The weapon fired five
hundred rounds of 12.7X99 mm armor-piercing rounds per minute and was
effective on both ground and airborne targets. The vehicle was capable
of carrying up to three soldiers, and one Marine had already taken his
place behind the gun. His rank and ID scrolled across the Spartan’s
display: PFC .FITZGERALD, M.
“Hey, Chief!” Fitzgerald said. “Sergeant Johnson said you
could use a gunner.”
The Spartan nodded. “That’s right, Private. There’s two
boatloads of Marines on the far side of that ridge, and we’re going
after them.”
Fitzgerald pulled the gun’s charging lever back toward his
chest, and released it with a metallic snap. A shell slipped into the
first of the weapon’s three barrels. “I’m your man, Chief! Let’s roll.”
The Master Chief pulled himself up behind the wheel,
started the engine, and strapped himself into the seat. The engine
roared and the wheels kicked up geysers of dirt. The Warthog
accelerated to the top of a rise, caught some air, and landed with a
spine-jarring thump.
“I put a nav indicator on your HUD,” Cortana said, “just
follow the arrow.”
“Figures,” the Spartan said, a hint of amusement in his
level voice. “You always were a backseat driver.”
True to the aircraft’s nickname, Keyes heard
the Banshee long before he actually caught a glimpse of the attack
aircraft. The alien pilot had them on his sensors—Keyes was sure of
that—and it wouldn’t be long before another team dropped out of the sky
in an attempt to root them out.
The hills, which had seemed so welcoming when the command
party first landed, had been transformed into a hellish landscape where
the humans scuttled from one rocky crevice to the next, always on the
run, and never allowed to rest.
They had faced capture on three different occasions, but
each time Corporal Wilkins and his Marines had managed to blow a hole
in the Covenant’s tightening net and lead the naval personnel to safety.
But for how much longer? Keyes wondered. The
continuous scrambling through the rocks, the lack of sleep, and the
constant danger not only left them exhausted but levied a toll on
morale as well.
Abiad, Lovell, and Hikowa were still in fairly good shape,
as were Wang and Singh, but Ensign Dowski had started to crack. It had
started with a little self-concerned whining, grown into a stream of
nonstop complaints, and now threatened to escalate into something worse.
The humans were gathered in a dry grotto. Jagged rocks
projected over their heads to provide some protection from the Banshee
above. Wang knelt next to the thin, dirt-choked stream that gushed
through the rocky passageway. He splashed water on his face. Singh was
busy filling the command party’s canteens while Dowski sat on a rock
and glowered. “They know where we are,” the junior officer said
accusingly, as if her commanding officer were somehow at fault.
Keyes sighed. “ ‘They know where we are, sir .’ ”
“Okay,” the Ensign replied, “They know where we are, sir.
So why continue to run? They’ll catch us in the end.”
“Maybe,” Keyes agreed as he dabbed ointment onto a burst
blister, “and maybe not. I’ve been in contact with both Cortana and
Wellsley. They’re both busy at the moment, but they’ll send help as
soon as they can. In the meantime, we tie up as many of their resources
as possible, avoid capture, and kill some of the bastards if we can.”
“For what?” Dowski demanded. “So you can make
Admiral? I submit that we’ve done all we could reasonably be expected
to do, that the longer we delay the harsher the Covenant will be. It
makes sense to surrender now .”
“And you are an idiot ,” Lieutenant Hikowa put in,
her eyes blazing with uncharacteristic anger. “First of all, the
Captain rates the honorific ‘sir.’ You will render that honorific or I
will plant my foot in your ass.
“Secondly, use your brain, assuming that you have one. The
Covenant doesn’t take prisoners, everyone knows that, so surrender
equals death.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dowski said defiantly. “Well, why haven’t they
already killed us then? They could strafe us with cannons, fire rockets
into the rocks, or drop bombs on our position, but they haven’t.
Explain that
.”
“Explain this ,” Singh said, inserting the barrel
of
his M6D into the Ensign’s left ear. “I’m starting to think that you
look a lot like a Grunt. Lovell . . . check her face. I’ll bet it peels
right off.”
Keyes closed the fastener on the light-duty deck shoes,
wished he had a pair of combat boots like the Marines wore, and knew
Dowski was partially correct, insubordination aside. It did
seem
as though the aliens were intent on capturing his party rather than
killing them, but why? It didn’t square with their behavior in the past.
Of course, the Covenant had changed tactics on him
before—when he’d beaten the tar out of them at Sigma Octanus, and again
when they’d returned the favor at Reach.
The officer watched the tableau as it unfolded in front of
him. Hikowa stood with her fists on her hips, face contorted with
anger, while Singh screwed his weapon into Dowski’s ear. The rest of
the bridge crew were frozen, uncertain. The Marines weren’t present,
thank God, but it would be naÏve to think they weren’t aware of
the Ensign’s opinions, or of the discord among their superiors. The
enlisted ranks always knew, one way or another. So, what to do?
Dowski wasn’t about to change her mind, that was obvious, and she was
becoming a liability.
The Banshee whined loudly as it passed over the grotto for
the second time. They needed to move and do it soon.
“Okay,” Keyes said, “you win. I should charge you with
cowardice, insubordination, and dereliction of duty, but I’m a little
pressed for time. So I hereby give you permission to surrender. Hikowa,
relieve her of her weapon, ammo, and pack. Singh, truss her up. Nothing
too tight . . . just enough so she can’t follow us.”
A look of horror came over Dowski’s face. “You’re going to
leave me? All by myself? With no supplies?”
“No,” Keyes answered calmly, “you wanted to
surrender, remember? The Covenant will keep you company, and as for
supplies, well, I have no idea what sort of rations they eat, but it
should be interesting if they allow you a last meal. Bon
appétit.”
Dowski started to babble incoherently but Singh grew tired
of it, shoved a battle dressing into the Ensign’s mouth, and used some
all-purpose repair tape to hold it in place. He used some of the same
tape to hog-tie the officer. “That should keep her out of trouble for a
while.”
Rocks clattered as Corporal Wilkins and two of his fellow
Marines made their way down the streambed. The noncom saw Dowski,
nodded as if everything were perfectly normal, and looked to Keyes. “A
Covenant dropship landed a squad of Elites about one klick to the
south, sir. It’s time to move.”
The Naval officer nodded. “Thank you, Corporal. The
command team is ready. Please lead the way.”
Meanwhile, a few hundred meters above, and
half a klick to the north, the Elite named Ado ’Mortumee put his
Banshee into a wide turn, and watched the dropship touch down. There
weren’t many places to land, which meant that once on the ground his
fellow Elites would still have a ways to go.
Rather than drop hundreds of troops onto the rocky
hillsides, and leave them to scramble over the exhausting up-and-down
terrain, the Covenant command structure decided to use its air
superiority to locate the humans and capture them.
And there,’Mortumee mused, is the problem.
Locating the aliens is one thing—capturing them is another. During
the time since they had landed, the humans had proven themselves to be
quite resourceful. Not only had they evaded capture, they had killed
six of their pursuers, who, acting under strict orders to take the
aliens alive, were at a considerable disadvantage. It made more sense
simply to kill the humans. Of course, he was a mere pilot and soldier,
not privy to the machinations of the Prophets or the Ship Masters.
After the human lifeboat had been located, it wasn’t long
before Covenant scouts found Isna ’Nosolee’s body, and ran a check on
his identity. Intelligence was notified, official wheels began to turn,
and the Covenant commanders were confronted with a problem: Why would
an Ossoona risk his life to board a human lifeboat and ride it to the
surface? The answer seemed obvious: Because someone important was on
that boat.
All of which served to explain why none of the humans had
been killed. There was no way to know which alien ’Nosolee had
been after—so all of them had to be preserved. ’Mortumee glanced down
at the instruments arrayed in front of him. A change! A string of seven
heat blobs was winding its way to arbitrary “north,” while one remained
behind. What did that signify?
It wasn’t long before ’Mortumee’s Banshee circled above
the grotto. Dowski wrestled to free herself from the tape, and the
Covenant closed in around her.
Smoke swirled around the top of the butte as
a Pelican pilot made use of his 70 mm chin gun to silence a Covenant
gun
emplacement. Satisfied that the Covenant plasma turret—a powerful
weapon that could be easily deployed and recovered—was silent, he
dropped down to within four feet of the top of the butte.
Fifteen ODST Helljumpers—three more than the Pelican’s
operational maximum—leaped from the Pelican’s troop bay and fanned out.
Cramming extra troops into a Pelican was a risky move, but
Silva wanted to put as many soldiers as possible on the mesa, and
Lieutenant “Cookie” Peterson knew his ship. The Pelican was still in
reasonably good shape, he had the best maintenance crew in the
Navy—what more could a pilot ask for?
Peterson felt the dropship drift upward as the Marines
bailed out, and he fought to keep the ship steady and level. He spotted
movement in the landing zone. The chain gun—linked to his helmet
sensors—followed the movement of Peterson’s head. He spotted a column
of Covenant troopers and fired. The heavy rotary cannon uttered a
throaty roar and pounded the enemy formation into a puddle of
blue-green paste.
As the last of the Helljumpers jumped off, the Crew Chief
yelled “Clear!” over the intercom. Peterson fired the ship’s belly
jets, demanded additional power from the twin turbine engines, and left
the butte behind.
“This is Echo 136,” the pilot said into his mike. “We are
green, clean, and extremely mean. Over.”
“Roger that,” Wellsley replied emotionlessly. “Please
return to way point two-five for another load of troopers. And, if
you’re going to insist on poetry, try some Kipling. You might find some
of it rather instructive. Over and out.”
Peterson grinned, directed a one-fingered salute in the
general direction of battalion HQ, and banked the dropship into a wide
turn.
Resistance had slackened within minutes of
the first landing, which allowed Lieutenant Melissa McKay and the
surviving members of her company to advance upward. A significant
number of the path’s defenders were pulled away in a last-ditch attempt
to hold their position.
McKay discovered that the path was blocked by an ancient
rockfall about thirty meters up, but saw the side door that was located
just downhill of it, and knew what the aliens had been trying to
defend. Here was the back door, the way she could enter the butte’s
interior, and push upward from there.
Plasma fire stuttered out of the entryway, struck the
cliff above her head, and blew rocky divots out of the smooth surface.
McKay motioned for her troops to retreat back around the
pillar’s broad curvature, and waved a hand in the air. “Hey, Top! I
need a launcher!”
The company sergeant was six troopers back so that a
single well-placed grenade couldn’t kill both leaders at once. He
signaled assent, bawled an order, and passed one of the M19s forward.
McKay accepted the weapon from the private behind her,
checked to ensure that it packed a full load of rockets, and inched
around the curve. Plasma fire sizzled out of the door, but the officer
forced herself to remain perfectly still. She triggered the weapon’s 2X
scope, sighted carefully, and squeezed the trigger. The tube jumped as
the 102 mm rocket raced away, sailed through the hole, and detonated
with a loud roar.
There must have been some ammo stored inside, because
there was a blue-white secondary explosion which shook the rock beneath
the ODST officer’s boots. A gout of fire flared from the side of the
cliff.
It was difficult to imagine anyone or anything having
survived such a blast, so McKay passed the launcher to the rear, and
waved her troops forward.
There was a cheer as the Marines ran up the path,
shouldered their way through the smoke, and entered the butte’s ancient
interior. There were bodies, or what had been bodies.
Fortunately, the tunnel was intact.
A couple of troopers collected plasma weapons, tried them
out on the nearest wall, and added them to their personal armament.
Others, McKay included, stared up through a
thirty-meter-wide well toward the circle of daylight above. She saw a
shadow pass overhead as one of the Pelicans dropped even more
Helljumpers onto the mesa. The distant thump! of a frag grenade
detonation made dust and loose soil tumble down on them.
“Hey, Loot,” Private Satha said, “what’s the deal with this
?”
Satha stomped on the floor and it rang in response. That
was when McKay realized that she and her troops were standing on a
large metal grating.
“What’s it for?” the private wondered aloud. “To keep us
out?”
McKay shook her head. “No, it looks old , too old
to
have been put in place by the Covenant.”
“I found a lift!” one of the Marines yelled. “That’s what
it looks like, anyway—come check it out!”
McKay went to investigate. Was this a way to reach the
mesa? Her boot dislodged a shell casing which fell through one of the
grating’s rectangular holes and dropped into the darkness below. It was
a long time before it could be heard clanging off ancient stone.
Silva, Wellsley, and the rest of the Major’s headquarters
organization were on top of the butte waiting for her by the time McKay
rode the antigrav lift to the surface and stepped out into the harsh
sunlight. She blinked as she looked around.
Bodies lay everywhere. Some wore Marine green but the vast
majority were dressed in the rainbow colors that the Covenant used to
identify its various ranks and specialties. A squad of Helljumpers
moved through the carnage, searching for wounded humans, and kicking
corpses to make sure that the enemy soldiers were actually dead. One of
them attempted to rise and received a burst from an assault weapon for
his trouble.
“Welcome to Alpha Base,” Major Silva said as he arrived at
McKay’s side. “You and your company did a damn good job, Lieutenant.
Wellsley will have the rest of the battalion up here within the hour.
It looks like I owe you that beer.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay replied happily. “You sure as hell do.”
The tunnel was huge , plenty large
enough to handle a Scorpion tank, which meant that the Master Chief had
little difficulty steering the Warthog through the initial opening.
He’d almost missed the entry, at the bottom of a large dry
wash. Cortana’s sensors had identified the entrance to the tunnel
system. “It’s not a natural formation,” she’d warned him.
That meant someone built it. Logically, it meant that the
tunnel led somewhere—and it might shave precious time off his
search for the crashed lifeboats.
Once inside, things became a little more difficult as the
Spartan was forced to maneuver the LRV up ramps, through a series of
tight turns, and right to the very edge of a pit.
A quick recon confirmed that the gap was narrow enough to
jump, assuming the ’Hog had a running start. The Master Chief backed
away, warned the gunner to hang on, and put his foot to the floor. The
LRV raced up the ramp, sailed through air, and jounced to a hard
landing on the other side.
“I’m picking up lots of Covenant traffic,” Cortana said.
“It sounds like Major Silva and the Helljumpers have captured an enemy
position. If we can round up the rest of the survivors, and find
Captain Keyes, we’ll have a chance to coordinate some serious
resistance.”
“Good,” the Master Chief answered. “It’s about time
something broke our way.”
The Warthog’s headlights swung across ancient walls as the
Spartan turned the wheel, and the LRV emerged into a large open area,
dotted with mysterious installations. It was dark; the road ended in
front of a deep chasm. It wasn’t long before Covenant troops emerged
like maggots spilling out of a rotting corpse.
Plasma fire splashed across the Warthog’s windscreen. The
Spartan dove from the vehicle, crouched near the driver’s-side front
tire, and drew his pistol. Fitzgerald opened up with the LAAG and swept
the area with fire. Spent shell casings rained all around them.
The Chief peered over the edge of the Warthog. They were
dangerously exposed. The roadway they’d been using was devoid of cover,
elevated roughly three meters above the rest of the massive vaulted
chamber. Worse, it bisected the chamber, which left them exposed on
virtually all sides.
The giant enclosure was dimly lit; visibility was poor and
the muzzle flash from the Warthog’s gun played hell with his night
vision. He blinked his eyes to clear them, then activated his pistol’s
scope.
The metal floor dropped away to either side, and every
surface was engraved with the strange geometric patterns that festooned
Halo’s mysterious architecture. Set well back from their position were
a number of small structures, pillars, and support pylons. The Covenant
were dug in among them.
A Grunt popped out from cover, his plasma pistol glowing
green—he’d overcharged the weapon. The little SOBs liked to dump energy
into the weapon, and discharge it all at once. It drained the weapon
damn quick, but it also inflicted hellish damage on a target. A pulsing
green-white orb of plasma sizzled past the Warthog.
The Master Chief returned fire, then dropped back behind
the ’Hog. “Fitzgerald,” he barked. “Keep fire on them. I’ll move up on
the left and take them out.”
“Got it.” The tribarreled gun thundered, and fire hosed
the Covenant position.
The Spartan was prepared to charge ahead and into the
fight when his motion sensor painted movement from the rear. The LAAG
ceased fire as Fitzgerald yelled in pain and fell from the back of the
Warthog. The Marine’s helmet cracked into the metal floor.
A shard of glassy, translucent material, tapered to a
wicked point, protruded from the Marine’s bicep. The shard glowed a
ghostly purple. “God damn it!” Fitzgerald grunted, as he tried
to
regain his footing. Two seconds later, the purple shard exploded, and
blood sprayed from the wound. Fitzgerald howled in agony.
There was no time to tend to Fitzgerald’s injuries. A pair
of Grunts charged up the slight incline and opened fire. A barrage of
the glassy projectiles arced toward them and ricocheted madly from the
Warthog.
They were too close. The Chief fired at the nearest Grunt,
three shots in succession. A trio of bullet pocks formed a neat cluster
in the alien’s chest. The Grunt’s partner squealed in anger and brought
his gun to bear—an odd, hunchbacked device with a ridge of the glassy
projectiles protruding from it like dorsal fins. The weapon spat
purple-white needles at him.
He sidestepped and slammed the butt of the pistol into the
Grunt’s head. The alien’s skull caved in. He kicked the corpse back
down the incline.
Fitzgerald had crawled to cover behind the Warthog. He was
pale, but didn’t look shocky yet. The Spartan grabbed a first aid kit
and expertly treated the wound. Self-sealing bio-foam filled the wound,
packed it off, and numbed it. The young Marine would need some stitches
and some time to rebuild the torn, savaged muscle of his arm, but he’d
live—if either of them made it out of here alive.
“You okay?” he asked the wounded soldier. Fitzgerald
nodded, wiped sweat from his forehead with a bloody hand, then
struggled back to his feet. Without another word, he manned the LAAG.
It took the better part of fifteen minutes for the Master
Chief and the gunner to sweep the area clear of Covenant forces. The
Spartan patrolled the perimeter. To the left of the Warthog, the
chamber stretched roughly eighty meters, then ended—as did the road
ahead—in a massive chasm.
“Any ideas?” he asked Cortana.
There was a brief pause as the AI examined the data. “The
roadway ahead ends in a gap, but it’s logical to assume that there’s
some kind of bridge mechanism. Find the controls that extend the bridge
and we should be able to get across.”
He nodded. He turned back and crossed the roadway and
headed off to the right of the parked Warthog. As he passed the
vehicle, he called over his shoulder to Fitzgerald. “Wait here. I’m
going to find us a way across.”
The Master Chief marched across the chamber, and checked
the odd structures that dotted the landscape. Some were illuminated by
the dim glow from some kind of light panels, but there was no
indication what powered them, or what the structures contained.
He frowned. There didn’t seem to be any sign of mechanisms
or controls. He was about to head back to the Warthog and backtrack
their course, then stopped. He stared at one of the massive pillars
that stretched to the ceiling far overhead.
There was nothing down here, but perhaps the mechanism he
sought was above them.
He moved as far to the end of the area as he could. Unlike
the opposite side of the chamber, this half was bordered by a high,
grooved metal wall. He followed the edge of the barrier and was
gratified to locate a gap in the wall—a doorway.
Inside, a ramp led up twenty meters, then turned ninety
degrees to the left. The Spartan drew his pistol, activated his helmet
lamp, and crept up the ramp.
His caution was justified. As he reached the top, his
motion sensor showed a contact—right on top of him. He ducked around
the corner just in time to meet the charge of a crimson-armored Elite.
The Elite growled a challenge and swung a vicious blow at the Chief’s
head.
He ducked, and his shields took the brunt of the blow. He
fired at point-blank range, not even bothering to aim. The Elite reared
and returned fire and plasma blasts slashed through the narrow corridor.
In one fluid motion, the Chief drew, primed, and dropped a
frag grenade, practically at the Elite’s feet. The alien warbled in
surprise as the Spartan spun and ducked back around the corner.
He was rewarded by a flash of smoke and fire. A spray of
purple-black blood splashed the metal wall. He rounded the corner,
pistol at the ready, and stepped over the Elite’s smoking corpse.
The Chief continued along the corridor, which opened onto
a narrow ledge. Directly to his right, the thick metal walls stretched
up and out of sight. To his left, the metal sloped away at a steep
angle that led back to the main floor, that gradually gave way to the
yawning abyss as he continued forward. Ahead of him, there was a
pulsing glow, like the strobe of a Pelican’s running lights.
He stopped at the source of the light: A pair of small,
glowing orbs hung suspended above a roughly rectangular frame of blue
matte metal. Floating within the frame were a series of pulsing,
shifting displays—semitransparent, like Cortana’s holographic
appearance, though there was no visible projection device. The
display’s shimmering geometric patterns nagged at him, as if he should
recognize them somehow. Even with his enhanced memory, he couldn’t
place where he’d seen them before. They just seemed . . . familiar.
He reached a finger out to one of the symbols, a
blue-green circle. The Spartan expected his finger to pass through
nothing more than air. He was surprised when his finger met
resistance—and the panel lights began to pulse more quickly.
“What did you do?” Cortana asked, her voice alarmed. “I’m
detecting an energy spike.”
“I . . . don’t know,” the Spartan admitted. He wasn’t sure
why he touched the “button” on the display. He just knew it felt right.
There was a high-pitched whine and, from his vantage
point, he could see the gap in the roadway in the distance. At its
edges, harsh white light sprang into view, forming a path across the
break in the road, like a flashlight beam in smoke.
The light brightened, and there was a tremendous ripping
sound. “I’m showing a lot of photonic activity,” Cortana said. “The
excited photons have displaced the air around the light path.”
“Which means?”
“Which means,” she continued, “that the light has become
coherent. Solid.”
She paused, then added, “How did you know what control to
push?”
“I didn’t. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The ride across the light bridge was
harrowing. He had tested the phenomenon with his foot, and discovered
that it was as solid and unyielding as rock. Then he’d shrugged, told
Fitzgerald to hang on, and sped the Warthog directly at the beam of
illumination. He could hear Fitzgerald alternate between cursing and
praying as they drove over the seemingly bottomless chasm on nothing
more than a beam of light.
Once on the other side, they followed the tunnel out into
the valley beyond, where the Master Chief guided the ’Hog up through a
scattering of rocks and trees, to the top of a grassy rise. A sheer
cliff threatened to block progress to the right, forcing them to stay
to the left, as they headed toward a gap to the south.
The vehicle splashed through a shallow river. They saw the
mouth of a passageway off to the right, decided that it would be best
to investigate, and guided the all-terrain vehicle up through a rocky
pass.
It was only a matter of minutes before the Warthog arrived
on a ledge that looked out over a valley below. The Master Chief could
see a UNSC lifeboat and a scattering of Covenant troops, but no
Marines. Not a good sign.
A vaguely pyramidal structure rose to dominate the very
center of the valley. The Master Chief saw a pulse of light race toward
the sky, and knew that the structure had to be similar to whatever
caused the flash he’d seen earlier.
There was only a moment to take in the situation before
the aliens opened fire and the gunner replied in kind. It was time to
put the ’Hog into motion. The Master Chief drove as the M41 LAAG
whirred and rattled behind him. Marine Fitzgerald shouted, “You like
that? Here, have some more!” and fired another sustained burst. A pair
of Grunts rolled in opposite directions, as a squat, long-armed Jackal
was cut in half, and the heavy-caliber slugs blew divots out of the
ground beyond.
As the LRV swung past the pyramid, Cortana said, “There
are some Marines hiding up on the hill. Let’s give them a hand.”
The Spartan aimed for a gap between two trees and saw a
tall, angular Elite step out from cover. The Elite raised a weapon but
was quickly transformed into a speed bump as the Warthog knocked him
down and the huge tires crushed his body.
The Marines appeared soon after that, holding their
assault weapons in the air, and calling greetings. A sergeant nodded.
“It’s good to see you, Chief. It was starting to get a little bit warm
around here.”
Covenant forces made a run at the hill after that, but the
12.7X99 mm rounds made short work of them, and the slope was soon
littered with their bodies.
The Master Chief heard a burst of static, followed by
Foehammer’s voice.“Echo 419 to Cortana . . . come in.”
“We read you, 419. We have survivors and need immediate
dust-off.”
“Roger, Cortana. On my way. I spotted additional
lifeboats in your area.”
“Acknowledged,”Cortana answered.“We’re on our
way.”
It took the better part of the afternoon to check the
interlocking valleys, locate the rest of the survivors, and deal with
the Covenant forces who attempted to interfere. But finally, having
rounded up a total of sixty-three Marines and naval personnel, the
Spartan watched Echo 419 land for the last time, and jumped aboard.
Foehammer looked back over her shoulder. “You put in a long day, Chief.
Nice job. Our ETA at Alpha Base is thirty minutes.”
“Acknowledged,” the Spartan said. He exhaled, then
softened his clipped tone. He allowed himself to lean back against the
bulkhead and added, “Thanks for the ride.”
Thirty seconds later he was asleep.
Captain Jacob Keyes stood, hands on knees,
panting in front of a vertical cliff face. He and the rest of the
command party had been running off and on for three hours. Even the
Marines were exhausted, as the shadow cast by the Covenant dropship
drifted over them and blocked the sun.
Keyes considered making use of Dowski’s pistol to fire at
the aircraft but couldn’t summon the energy. The voice that boomed
through the externally mounted speakers was all too familiar.“Captain
Keyes? This is Ellen Dowski. This is a box canyon. There’s no place for
you to run. You might as well pack it in.”
The darkness cast by the ship shifted as the aircraft
lowered itself onto the bottom of the canyon. The engines howled and
blew dust in all directions before eventually spooling down. A hatch
opened and Dowski jumped to the ground. She appeared to be unharmed and
wore what could only be described as a self-satisfied smirk. “You see?
It’s just like I told you it would be.”
A half dozen veteran Elites dropped to the ground,
followed by a brace of Grunts. All were heavily armed. Gravel crunched
as they approached the cliff face. One of the aliens spoke, his booming
voice warbling the human speech with detectable discomfort. “You will
drop your weapons. Now. ”
The command crew looked at Keyes. He shrugged, bent over,
and laid the M6D on the ground. The others did likewise.
The Grunts scurried about and collected the weapons. One
of them chortled in his own language, as he collected all three of the
Marines’ assault weapons, and carried them away.
“Which?” the Elite with the translator demanded, and
looked at Dowski.
“That one!” the renegade officer proclaimed, and pointed
at Keyes.
Hikowa started forward. “You little bitch! I’ll—”
No one ever learned what Hikowa would do, because the
Elite shot her dead. Keyes lunged forward and attempted to tackle the
Elite, to no avail. A lightning-fast blow clipped the side of his head,
hard enough that his vision grayed out. He fell to the dirt.
The Elite was methodical. Starting with the Marines, he
shot each captured human in the head. Wang attempted to run but a
plasma bolt hit him between the shoulder blades. Lovell made a grab for
the pistol, and took a blast to the face.
Keyes struggled to his feet again, dizzy and disoriented,
and attempted to rush the Elite. He was clubbed to the ground a second
time. Hikowa’s dead eyes stared vacantly back at him.
Finally, after the last plasma bolt had been fired and
while the odor of burned flesh still hung in the air, only two members
of the command crew were still alive: Keyes and Dowski. The Ensign was
pale. She shook her head and wrung her hands. “I didn’t know, sir,
honest I didn’t. They told me—”
The Elite snapped up a fallen M6D pistol and shot Dowski.
The bullet hit her in the center of her forehead. The pistol’s report
echoed down the canyon. The Ensign’s eyes rolled back in her head, her
knees gave way, and she collapsed in a heap.
The Elite turned the M6D over in his hand. The weapon was
small compared to his pistol—and his finger didn’t fit easily
inside the trigger guard. “Projectiles. Very primitive. Take him away.”
Keyes felt the other Elites grab him by the arms and drag
him up a ramp into the dropship’s murky interior. It seemed that the
Covenant’s rules had changed again. Now they did take
prisoners—just not very many. The ship lifted, and the only human to
survive sincerely wished that he hadn’t.
Alpha Base didn’t offer a whole lot of
amenities, but the Spartan took full advantage of what few there were.
First came a full ten hours of completely uninterrupted sleep, followed
by components selected from two MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, and a
two-minute hot shower.
The water was provided by the ring itself, the heat was
courtesy of a Covenant power plant, and the showerhead had been
fabricated by one of the techs from the Pillar of Autumn. Though
brief, the shower felt good,very good, and the Spartan enjoyed
every second of it.
The Master Chief had dried off, scrounged a fresh set of
utilities, and was just about to run a routine maintenance check on his
armor when a private stuck his head into the Spartan’s quarters, a
prefab memory-plastic cubicle that had replaced the archaic concept of
tents.
“Sorry to bother you, Chief, but Major Silva would like to
see you in the Command Post . . . on the double.”
The Spartan wiped his hands with a rag. “I’ll be right
there.”
The Master Chief was just about to take the armor off
standby when the Marine reappeared. “One more thing . . . The Major
said to leave your armor here.”
The Spartan frowned. He didn’t like to be separated from
his armor, especially in a combat zone. But an order was an order, and
until he determined what had happened to Keyes, Silva was in command.
He nodded. “Thank you, Private.” He checked to ensure that
his gear was squared away, activated the armor’s security system, and
buckled an M6D around his waist.
The Major’s office was located in Alpha Base’s CP, the
centermost of the alien structures at the top of the butte. He made his
way through the halls, and down a bloodstained corridor. A pair of
manacled Grunt POWs were hard at work scrubbing the floor under the
watchful gaze of a Navy guard.
Two Helljumpers stood guard outside of Silva’s door. Both
looked extremely sharp for troopers who had been in combat the day
before. They favored the Spartan with the casually hostile look that
members of the ODST reserved for anyone or anything that wasn’t part of
their elite organization. The larger of the pair eyed the noncom’s
collar insignia. “Yeah, Chief, what can we do for you?”
“Master Chief SPARTAN-117, reporting to Major Silva.”
“SPARTAN-117” was the only official designation he had in
the eyes of the military. It occurred to him that, after Reach fell,
there was no one left who knew his name was John.
“SPARTAN-117?” the smaller of the two Marines inquired.
“What the hell kind of name is that?”
“Look who’s talking,” McKay interrupted, as she approached
the Master Chief from behind. “That’s a pretty strange question coming
from a guy named Yutrzenika.”
Both of the Helljumpers laughed, and McKay waved the
Spartan through the door. “Never mind those two, Chief. They’re jump
happy. My name is McKay. Go on in.”
The Spartan said “Thank you, ma’am,” took three steps
forward, and found himself standing in front of a makeshift desk. Major
Silva looked up from what he was doing and met the Master Chief’s eyes.
The Chief snapped to attention. “Sir! Master Chief SPARTAN-117,
reporting as ordered, sir!”
The chair had been salvaged from a UNSC lifeboat. It made
a gentle hissing noise as Silva leaned backward. He held a stylus which
he used to tap his lips. That was the moment when most officers would
have said, “At ease,” and the fact that he didn’t was a clear
indication that something was wrong. But what?
McKay circled around to Silva’s left, where she leaned on
the wall and watched the scene through hooded eyes. She wore her hair
Helljumper style, short on the sides so that the tattoos on her scalp
could be seen, and flat on top. She had green eyes, a slightly
flattened nose, and full lips. It managed to be both a soldier’s face
and
a woman’s face at the same time.
When Silva spoke, it was as if he could read the Spartan’s
mind. “So, you’re wondering who I am, and what this is all about.
That’s understandable, especially given your elite status, your close
relationship with Captain Keyes, and the fact that we now know he has
been captured. Loyalty is a fine thing, one of the many virtues for
which the military is known, and a quality I admire.”
Silva stood and started to pace back and forth behind his
chair. “However, there is a chain of command, which means that you
report to me. Not to Keyes, not to Cortana, and
not
to yourself.”
The Marine stopped, turned, and looked the Master Chief
square in the eye. “I thought it would be a good idea for you and I to
pull a com check. So, here’s the deal. I’m short a Captain, so
Lieutenant McKay is serving as my Executive Officer. If either one of
us says ‘crap,’ then I expect you to ask ‘what color, how much, and
where do you want it?’ Do you read me?”
The Chief stared for a moment and clenched his jaw.
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Good. Now one more thing. I’m familiar with your record
and I admire it. You are one helluva soldier. That said, you are also a
freak
, the last remaining subject in a terribly flawed experiment, and one
which should never be repeated.”
McKay watched the Master Chief’s face. His hair was worn
short, not as short as hers, but short. He had serious eyes, a firm
mouth, and a strong jaw. His skin hadn’t been exposed to the sun for a
long time and it was white, too white, like something that
lived
in the deep recesses of a cave. From what she had heard he had been a
professional soldier since the age of six, which meant he was an expert
at controlling what showed on his face, but she could see the words hit
like bullets striking a target. Nothing overt, just a slight narrowing
of the eyes, and a tightness around his mouth. She looked at Silva, but
if the Major was aware of the changes, he didn’t seem to care.
“The whole notion of selecting people at birth, screwing
with their minds, and modifying their bodies is wrong. First, because
the candidates have no choice, second, because the subjects of the
program are transformed into human aliens, and third, because the
Spartan program failed.
“Are you familiar with a man named Charles Darwin? No,
probably not, because he never went to war. Darwin was a naturalist who
proposed a theory called ‘natural selection.’ Simply put, he believed
that those species best equipped to survive would do so—while other,
less effective organisms would eventually die out.
“That’s what happened to the Spartans, Chief: They died
out. Or will, once you’re gone. And that’s where the ODST comes in.
It was the Helljumpers who took this butte, son—not a bunch of
augmented freaks dressed in fancy armor.
“When we push the Covenant back, which I sincerely believe
we will, that victory will be the result of work by men and women like
Lieutenant McKay. Human beings who are razor-sharp, metal tough, and
green to the core. Do you read me?”
The Master Chief remembered Linda, James, and all the rest
of the seventy-three boys and girls with whom he learned to fight. All
dead, all labeled as “freaks,” all dismissed as having been part of a
failed experiment. He took a deep breath.
“Sir, no sir!”
There was a long moment of silence as the two men stared
into each other’s eyes. Finally, after a good five seconds had elapsed,
the Major nodded. “I understand. ODSTs are loyal to our dead, as well.
But that doesn’t change the facts. The Spartan program is over .
Human beings will win this war . . . so you might as well get used to
it. In the meantime, we need every warrior we have—especially those who
have more medals than the entire general staff put together.”
Then, as if some sort of switch had been thrown, the ODST
officer’s entire demeanor changed. He said, “At ease,” invited both of
his guests to sit down, and proceeded to brief the Master Chief on his
upcoming mission. The Covenant had Captain Keyes, recon had confirmed
it, and Silva was determined to get him back.
Though their ship had been damaged by the
Pillar
of Autumn during her brief rampage through the system, the
Covenant’s Engineers were hard at work making repairs to the Truth
and Reconciliation. Now, hovering only a few hundred units off
Halo’s surface, the ship had become a sort of de facto headquarters for
those assigned to “harvest” the ring world’s technology.
The warship was at the very center of the command
structure’s activities. The corridors were thick with officer Elites,
major Jackals, and veteran Grunts. There was also a scattering of
Engineers, amorphous-looking creatures held aloft by gas bladders, who
had a savantlike ability to dismantle, repair, and reassemble any
complex technology.
But all of them, regardless of how senior they might be,
hurried to get out of the way as Zuka ’Zamamee marched through the
halls, closely followed by a reluctant Yayap. Not because of his rank,
but because of his appearance and the message it sent. The arrogant
tilt of his head, the space-black armor, and the steady click-clack
of his heels all seemed to radiate confidence and authority.
Still, formidable as ’Zamamee was, no one was allowed onto
the command deck without being screened, and no less than six
black-clad Elites were waiting when he and his aide stepped off the
gravity lift. If these Elites were intimidated by their fellow’s
demeanor they gave no sign of it.
“Identification,” one of them said brusquely, and extended
his hand.
’Zamamee dropped his disk into the other warrior’s hand
with the air of someone who was conferring a favor on a lesser being.
The security officer accepted ’Zamamee’s identity disk and
dropped it into a handheld reader. Data appeared and scrolled from
right to left. “Place your hand in the slot.”
The second machine took the form of a rectangular black
box which stood about five units high. Green light sprayed out of a
slot located in the structure’s side.
’Zamamee did as instructed, felt a sudden stab of pain as
the machine sampled his tissue, and knew that a computer was busy
comparing his DNA with that on file. Not because he might be human, but
because politics were rife within the Covenant, and there had been a
few assassinations of late.
“Confirmed,” the Elite said. “It appears as though you are
the same Zuka ’Zamamee that’s scheduled to meet with the Council of
Masters fifteen units from now. The Council is running behind schedule,
however, so you’ll have to wait. Please hand all personal weapons to
me. There’s a waiting room over there—but the Grunt will have to remain
outside. You will be called when the Council is ready.”
Though not burdened by his energy rifle, which he had
given to Yayap to carry, the Elite did have a plasma pistol, which he
surrendered butt first.
’Zamamee made his way into the makeshift holding area and
discovered that a number of other beings had been forced to wait as
well. Most sat hunched over, kept to themselves, and stared at the deck.
Making matters even worse was the fact that, rather than
first come, first served, it seemed as though rank definitely had its
privileges, and the most senior penitents were seen first.
Not that the Elite could complain. Had it not been for
his
rank the Council would never have agreed to see him at all. But
finally, after what seemed like an eternity, ’Zamamee was ushered into
the chamber where the Command Council had convened.
A minor Prophet sat, legs folded, at the center of a table
which curved around a podium at which the Elite was clearly expected to
stand. Whenever a gust of air hit the exalted one he seemed to bob
slightly, suggesting that rather than sit on a chair, he preferred to
let his antigrav belt support him, either as a matter of habit, or as a
stratagem designed to remind others of who and what he was. Something
’Zamamee not only understood, but admired.
The Prophet wore a complex headpiece. It was set with
gemstones and wired for communications. A silver mantle rested on his
shoulders and supported a fancifully woven cluster of gold wires which
extended forward to place a microphone in front of his bony lips.
Richly embroidered red robes cascaded down over his lap and fell to the
deck. Obsidian black eyes tracked the Elite all the way to the podium
while an assistant whispered in his ear.
The other Elite, an aristocrat named Soha ’Rolamee, raised
a hand palm outward. “I greet you ’Zamamee. How is your wound? Healing
nicely, I hope.”
’Rolamee outranked ’Zamamee by two full levels. The junior
officer gloried in the respectful manner with which the other Elite had
greeted him. “Thank you, Excellency. I will heal.”
“Enough,” the Prophet said officiously, “we’re running
late, so let’s get on with it. Zuka ’Zamamee comes before the Council
seeking special dispensation to take leave of the unit he commands, in
order to locate and kill one particular human. A rather strange notion,
since all of them look alike and are equally annoying. However,
according to our records, this particular human is responsible for
hundreds of Covenant casualties.
“The Council notes that Officer ’Zamamee was wounded
during an encounter with this human, and reminds Officer ’Zamamee that
the Covenant has no tolerance for personal vendettas. Please keep that
in mind as you make your case, and be mindful of the time. A measure of
brevity will serve you well.”
’Zamamee lowered his eyes as a signal of respect. “Thank
you, Excellency. Our spies suspect that the individual in question was
raised to be a warrior from a very young age, surgically altered to
enhance his abilities, and furnished with armor which may be superior
to our own.”
“Better than our own?” the Prophet inquired, his tone
making it clear that he considered such a possibility extremely
unlikely. “Mind your words, Officer ’Zamamee. The technology underlying
the armor you wear came straight from the Forerunners. To say that it
is in any way inferior verges on sacrilege.”
“Still, what ’Zamamee says is true,” ’Rolamee put in. “The
files are full of reports which, though contradictory in some cases,
all make mention of one or more humans clad in reactive special armor.
Assuming that the eyewitness accounts are accurate, it appears that
this individual or group of individuals can absorb a great deal of
punishment without suffering personal injury, have exceptional combat
skills, and demonstrate superior leadership capabilities. Wherever he
or they appear, other humans rally and fight with renewed vigor.”
“Exactly,” ’Zamamee said gratefully. “Which is why I
recommend that a special Hunter-Killer team be commissioned to find the
human and retrieve his armor for analysis.”
“Noted,” the Prophet said gravely. “Withdraw while the
Council confers.”
’Zamamee had little choice but to lower his eyes, back
away from the podium, and turn to the door. Once out in the hallway,
the Elite was required to wait for only a few units before his name
again was called, and he was ushered back into the room. ’Zamamee saw
that both the Prophet and the second Elite had disappeared, leaving
’Rolamee to deliver the news.
The other officer stood as if to reduce the width of the
social gap that separated them. “I regret, ’Zamamee, that the Prophet
places little weight on the reports, labeling them ‘combat-induced
hysteria.’ More than that, we all agreed that you are far too valuable
an asset to expend on a single target. Your request has been denied.”
’Zamamee knew that ’Rolamee had invented the “far too
valuable” aspect of his report in order to cushion the blow, but
appreciated the intent behind the words. Though severely disappointed,
he was a soldier, and that meant following orders. He lowered his eyes.
“Yes, Excellency. Thank you, Excellency.”
Yayap saw the Elite emerge, read the slight
droop of his shoulders, and knew his prayers had been answered. The
Council had denied the Elite’s insane request, he would be allowed to
return to his unit, and life would return to normal.
If ’Zamamee had been intimidating on his way to see the
Council, he was a good deal less so on his way out. He walked even
faster, however, forcing Yayap to break into a run. The Grunt weaved
his way through the foot traffic arrayed in front of him and struggled
to keep pace with ’Zamamee.
Yayap squealed in surprise when he slammed into the back
of ’Zamamee’s armored legs; the Elite had come to a sudden halt. The
Grunt noticed with unease that his new master’s hands were clenched. He
followed ’Zamamee’s gaze and spotted a group of four Jackals.
They dragged a uniformed human between them.
Keyes had just been interrogated for the
third time. Some sort of neural shock treatment had been administered
to make him talk, and his nerve endings continued to buzz as the aliens
prodded his back, yelled incomprehensible gibberish into his ears, and
laughed at his discomfort. He tasted his own blood.
The procession came to a sudden stop as an Elite in black
combat armor blocked the way, pointed a long slender finger at the
human, and said “You! Tell me where the I can find the human who wears
the special armor.”
Keyes looked up, struggled to focus his eyes, and faced
the alien. He saw the dressing and guessed the rest. “I don’t have the
foggiest idea,” he said. He managed a weak smile. “But the next time
you run into him, you might consider ducking.”
’Zamamee took a full step forward and backhanded the human
across the face. Keyes staggered, recovered his balance, and wiped a
trace of blood away from the corner of his mouth. He locked eyes with
the alien for the second time. “Go ahead—shoot me.”
Yayap saw the Elite consider doing just that, as his right
hand went to the pistol, touched the butt, and fell away. Then, without
another word, ’Zamamee walked away. The Grunt followed. Somehow, by
means Yayap wasn’t quite sure of, the human had won.
CHAPTER FOUR
D+17:11:04 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Pelican
Echo 419, in flight.
Recon flights conducted the day before had revealed that
the sensors aboard Covenant vessel Truth and Reconciliation
might
have a blind spot down-spin of the alien vessel’s current position,
where a small mountain rose to block the electronic view.
Even more important, Wellsley had concocted an array of
signals designed to trick the Covenant technicians into believing that
any UNSC dropship was actually one of their own. Fifty meters above the
deck, and cloaked in electronic camouflage, the Master Chief and a
Pelican-load of Helljumpers waited to find out if their ruse would work.
Only time would tell if the fake signals were effective.
One thing was for certain: Though conceived for the express purpose of
rescuing Captain Keyes, the mission put together by Silva, Wellsley,
and Cortana bore still another, even more important purpose.
If the rescue team did manage to penetrate a
Covenant vessel, and successfully remove a prisoner, the human presence
on Halo would be transformed from an attempt merely to survive into a
full-fledged resistance movement.
The ship shuddered as it hit a series of air pockets, then
swayed from side to side as the pilot who referred to herself as
Foehammer wove back and forth through an obstacle course of low-lying
hills. The Master Chief took the opportunity to assess the Marines
seated around him. They were Helljumpers, the same people Silva said
would ultimately win the war, relegating “freaks” like himself to the
dustbin of history.
Maybe Silva was right, maybe the Spartan program would
end with him, but that didn’t matter. Not here—not now. The Marines
would help him take out the sentries, cope with weapons emplacements,
and reach the gravity lift located directly below the Truth and
Reconciliation ’s belly, and he was glad to have their help. Even
with the element of surprise, plus support from the ODST troops, things
were likely to be pretty hot by the time they made it to the lift.
That’s when a second dropship would land and discharge a group
of
regular Marines that would join the assault on the ship itself.
There was some concern that the Truth and Reconciliation
might simply lift at that point, but Cortana had been monitoring
Covenant communications, and was convinced that critical repairs were
still being made to the alien cruiser.
Assuming that they were able to reach the gravity lift,
meet up with their reinforcements, and fight their way aboard the ship,
all they had to do was find Keyes, eliminate an unknown number of
hostiles, and show up for the dust-off. A walk in the park.
Foehammer’s voice came over the intercom. “We are five to
dirt . . . repeat five to dirt.”
That was Sergeant Parker’s cue to stand and eye his
troops. His voice came over the team freq and grated on the Spartan’s
ears. “All right, boys and girls . . . lock and load. The Covenant is
throwing a party and you are invited. Remember, the Master Chief goes
in first, so take your cues from him. I don’t know about you, but I like
having a swabbie on point.”
There was general laughter. Parker gave the Spartan a
thumbs-up, and he offered the same gesture in return. It felt good to
have some backup for a change.
He mentally reviewed the plan, which called for him to
insert ahead of the Helljumpers, and clear a path with his S2 AM
sniper’s rifle. Once the outer defenses were cleared, the Marines would
move up. Then, once the element of surprise had been lost, the Master
Chief planned to switch to his MA5B assault rifle for the close-in
work. Like the rest of the troops, the Spartan was carrying a full
combat load of ammo, grenades, and other gear, plus two magazines for
the M19 launchers.
“Thirty seconds to dirt!” Foehammer announced. “Shoot some
of the bastards for me!”
As the Pelican hovered a foot above the surface, Parker
yelled, “Go, go, go!” and the Master Chief sprang down the ramp. He
sidestepped and swept the area. The Helljumpers thundered down the ramp
and onto the ground, right behind him.
It was dark, which meant they had nothing beyond the light
reflected off the moon that hung in the sky and the glow of Covenant
work lights to guide them to their objective. Seconds later, Echo 419
was airborne again. The pilot turned down-spin, fed fuel to her
engines, and disappeared into the night.
The Master Chief heard the aircraft pass over his head,
gathered his bearings, and spotted a footpath off to the right. The
ODST troops spread out to either side as Parker and a three-Marine fire
team turned to cover the group’s six.
He crept along the rocky footpath, which rose to a
two-meter-high embankment. As he neared a cluster of rocks, Cortana
warned the Spartan of enemy activity ahead. A host of red dots appeared
on his motion sensor. Several meters ahead and to the left was a deep
pit—some kind of excavation, judging from the Covenant work lights that
dotted the area with pools of illumination. He briefly wondered what
the aliens were looking for.
He clicked the rifle’s safety off. What they were looking
for didn’t matter. In the end, he’d make sure they never lived to find
it.
The Master Chief found a patch of cover next to a tree,
raised the rifle, and used the scope’s 2X and night optics setting to
find the Covenant gun emplacements located on the far side of the
depression. There were lots of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites in the area,
but it was imperative to neutralize the plasma cannons—known as
Shades—before the Marines moved out into the open. His MJOLNIR armor
and shields could handle a limited amount of the Shades’ plasma fire.
The Helljumpers’ ballistic armor, on the other hand, just couldn’t
handle that kind of firepower.
Once both Shades had been located, the Spartan switched to
the 10X setting, practiced the move from one target to the next, and
tried it yet again.
Once he was sure that he could switch targets quickly
enough, he exhaled quietly, then held his breath. His hand squeezed the
trigger and the rifle kicked against his shoulder. The first shot took
the nearest gunner in the chest. As the Grunt tumbled from the Shade’s
seat, the Master Chief panned the rifle to the right, and put a 14.5 mm
round through the second Grunt’s pointy head.
The rifle’s booming report alerted the Covenant and they
returned fire. He moved forward along the low ridge and took a new
firing position behind the scaly bark of a tree. The rifle barked twice
more, and a pair of Jackals fell. He reloaded with practiced ease, and
continued sniping. Without the Shades to support them, the enemy fell
in ones, twos, and threes.
The Master Chief reloaded again, fired until there were no
more targets of opportunity, and made the switch to his assault rifle.
He jumped down into the open pit and crouched behind a large boulder,
one of several that were strewn around the depression.
“Helljumpers: move up!” he barked into the radio. In
seconds, the ODSTs charged into the pit. As the lead soldiers entered,
a trio of Grunts burst from hiding, shot one of the Marines in the
face, and tried to run. The Helljumper’s body hadn’t even hit the
ground before the Spartan and another ODST hosed the aliens with
bullets.
The gunshots echoed through the twisting canyons, then
faded. The Spartan frowned; there was no way the fracas would go
unnoticed. The element of surprise was gone.
There was no time to waste. The Master Chief led the
Helljumpers through the depression, up a hill on the far side of the
pit, and along the side of a sheer cliff face. He stayed close to this
rock wall on his right, mindful of the sheer drop that awaited any who
strayed too far to the left. He could just make out the glint of
moonlight on a massive ocean, far below him.
His motion sensor pinged two contacts and he waved the
ODSTs to a halt. He crouched behind a clump of brush at the top of the
cliff path, conscious of the massive drop on the other side. A pair of
Jackals rounded the bend ahead, their overcharged plasma pistols
pulsing green, and paid dearly for their enthusiasm.
The Spartan sprang from his cover and slammed the butt of
his rifle into the nearest Jackal’s shield. The energy field flared and
died, and the force of the blow sent the alien tumbling off the path.
The alien screamed and plummeted off the cliff.
The Chief pivoted and fired his rifle from the hip. The
burst struck the second alien in the side. The Jackal slammed to the
ground as his finger tightened on his weapon’s trigger as he died. A
massive hole blossomed in the rock above the Master Chief’s head.
He slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon, and continued
to advance.
“Here’s a little something to remember me by,” one of the
Marines growled, and shot each Jackal in the head.
As the team continued up the path, they encountered
another Shade, more Grunts, and a pair of Jackals, all of whom seemed
to melt away under the combined assault by the Master Chief’s sniper
rifle, the Marine’s assault weapons, and a few well-placed grenades.
The rescue force pressed on, toward the lights beyond.
Covenant resistance was determined but spotty, and before long the
Master Chief could hear the thrumming sound of the alien ship as it
hovered more than a hundred meters above them. His skin crackled with
static electricity. In the center of a steep dip in the rock lay a
large metal disk, the gravity lift that the Covenant used to move
troops, supplies, and vehicles to and from the ring world’s surface.
Purple light shimmered around the platform where the beam was anchored.
“Come on!” the Master Chief shouted, pointing at the lift.
“That’s our way in. Let’s move!”
There was a mad dash through a narrow canyon followed by a
pitched battle as the Master Chief and the Helljumpers entered the area
directly below the ship.
The depression was ringed with Shades, and all of them
opened fire at once. The Chief made use of the sniper rifle to kill the
nearest gunner, charged up the intervening slope, and jumped into the
now vacant seat. The first order of business was to silence the other
guns.
He yanked the control yoke to the left and the gun
swiveled to face a second Shade, across the defile. A glowing image of
a hollow triangle floated in front of his face. When it lined up with
the other gun, it flashed red. He thumbed the firing studs, and lances
of purple-white energy lashed the enemy emplacement. The Grunt gunner
struggled to leap free of his Shade, fell into the path of the
Spartan’s fire, and was speared by a powerful blast. He slumped against
the base of his abandoned Shade, a smoking hole burned through his
chest.
The Master Chief swiveled the captured gun and took aim on
the remaining Shades. He hosed the targets with a hellish wave of
destructive energy, then, satisfied that the emplacements were
silenced, went to work on the enemy ground troops.
He had just burned a pair of Jackals to the ground when
Cortana announced that a Covenant dropship was inbound, and the Master
Chief was forced to shift his fire to the alien aircraft and the troops
that spilled out onto the ground.
The human walked the blue Shade fire across the aliens,
cutting them down, and pounding what remained into mush. He was still
at it when a Marine yelled, “Look at that! There’s more of them!” and a
dozen figures floated down through the gravity lift. A pair of the
newcomers were huge and wore steel-blue armor as well as handheld
plate-armor shields.
The Chief had faced such creatures before, not long before
Reach fell. Covenant Hunters were tough, dangerous foes—practically
walking tanks. They were slow and appeared clumsy, but the cannons
mounted on their arms were equivalent to the heavy weapons a Banshee
carried, and they could leap into motion with startling suddenness.
Their metal shields could withstand a tremendous amount of punishment.
Worse, they would never stop until the enemy lay dead at their feet . .
. or they were dead themselves.
The Helljumpers opened fire, grenades exploded, and the
pair of Hunters roared defiance. One of them lifted his right arm and
fired his weapon, a fuel rod gun. One of the ODSTs screamed and fell,
his flesh melting. The Marine’s rocket fired into the air, slid into
the grav lift beam, and detonated harmlessly.
The Hunters lumbered from the grav lift and strode up the
edge of the pit. Behind them, a swarm of Jackals and Elites formed a
rough phalanx and peppered the human positions with plasma fire.
Sergeant Parker yelled, “Hit ’em, Helljumpers!” and the
ODSTs poured fire onto the massive alien juggernauts. Bullets pinged
from their armor and whined through the rocks.
The Spartan swiveled around, and heard a warning tone as a
Hunter’s weapon discharged. Burning energy smashed into him. The Shade
shook under the force of the incoming fire as the Master Chief clenched
his jaw and forced himself to bring the targeting reticle down onto the
target. His shield bled energy and began to shriek a shrill alarm.
The instant the targeting display pulsed red, he mashed
down the firing studs and unleashed a flood of incandescent blue light.
The Hunter didn’t have time to bring its shield fully into play, and
plasma blasts burned through multiple layers of armor, and exited
through his spine.
The Spartan heard a cry of what sounded like anguish as
the second alien saw his bond brother fall. The Hunter spun and fired
his fuel rod gun at the Master Chief’s captured emplacement. The Shade
took a direct hit, flipped over onto its side, and threw him to the
ground.
The ground vibrated as the enraged alien charged up the
slope, right for the downed Spartan. The Chief rolled to his right and
came up in a low crouch. The alien was close now, within five meters. A
row of razor-sharp spines sprang up along the Hunter’s back. With his
shields depleted, the Chief knew that those spines could cut him in two.
He dropped to one knee and unslung his assault rifle.
Bullets bounced harmlessly from the alien’s armor. At the last second,
he dodged left and slid down the slope. The Hunter didn’t anticipate
the move, and the razor-spines passed over the Spartan’s head, missing
him by mere inches.
The Chief rolled onto his belly—and saw his opportunity. A
patch of orange, leathery skin was visible along the Hunter’s curved
spine. He emptied the MA5B’s magazine into the unprotected target, and
thick orange blood gouted from a cluster of bullet wounds. The Hunter
gave a low, keening wail, then collapsed in a puddle of his own gore.
He rose to one knee, fed a fresh magazine into the assault
rifle, and scanned the area for enemies. “All clear,” he called out.
The remaining ODSTs called in all clears as well. That
opened the way to the lift and Cortana was quick to seize on the
opportunity. She activated the armor’s communication system.“Cortana
to Echo 419. We made it to the gravity lift—and are ready for
reinforcements.”
“Copy that, Cortana . . . Echo 419 inbound. Clear the
drop zone.”
“What’s the matter?” Sergeant Parker demanded of his
troops, several of whom were looking longingly at the fast-approaching
Pelican’s running strobes. “Never seen a UNSC dropship before? Keep
your eyes on the rocks, damn it—that’s where the bastards will come
from.”
The Spartan waited for Echo 419 to unload the fresh
Marines, waved them forward, and joined the surviving Helljumpers on
the lift pad. “Looks like we made it,” a private said, just before an
invisible hand reached down to pluck him off the surface.
Sergeant Parker looked up toward the belly of the ship,
and said, “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” then rose as if suspended from a
rope.
“Once we’re in the ship I can home in on the Captain’s
Command Neural Interface,” Cortana said. “The CNI will lead us to him.
He’ll probably be in or near the ship’s brig.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the Chief answered dryly, and felt
the beam pull him upward. Someone else yelled, “Yeehaw!” and vanished
into the belly of the ship. The Covenant didn’t realize it yet—but the
Marines had landed.
None of the humans understood, much less had
the ability to predict, the ring world’s weather. So, when big drops of
blood-warm rain fell on the mesa, it came as a complete surprise. The
Helljumpers grumbled as the water streamed off their faces, soaked
their uniforms, and started to pool on the surface of the landing pad.
McKay saw things differently, however. She liked the wet
stuff, not just because it felt good on her skin, but because bad
weather would offer the insertion team that much more cover.
“Listen up, people!” Sergeant Lister bellowed. “You know
the drill. Let’s shake, rattle, and roll.”
There weren’t many lights, just enough so that people
could move around without running into one another, but the fact that
Silva had been on such missions himself meant that he could visualize
what his eyes couldn’t see.
The troopers carried a full combat load, which meant that
their packs were festooned with weapons, ammo, grenades, flares,
radios, and med packs—all of which would make noise unless properly
secured. Noise would bring a world of trouble down on their heads
during an op. That’s why Lister passed through the ranks and forced
each Marine to jump up and down. Anything that clicked, squeaked, or
rattled was identified and restowed, taped, or otherwise fastened into
place.
Once all the troops had passed inspection, the Helljumpers
would board the waiting dropships for a short flight to the point where
the Pillar of Autumn had crashed. The Covenant had placed guards
in and around the fallen cruiser, so McKay and her Marines would have
to retake the ship long enough to fill the extensive shopping list that
Silva had given her.
According to Wellsley, Napoleon I once said, “What makes
the general’s task so difficult is the necessity of feeding so many men
and animals.”
Silva didn’t have any animals to feed, but he did have a
flock of Pelicans, and the essence of the problem was the same. With
the exception of the ODST troopers, who carried extra supplies in their
HEVs, the rest of the Navy and Marine personnel had bailed out of the
Autumn
with very little in the way of supplies. Obtaining more of everything,
and doing it before the Covenant launched an all-out attack on Alpha
Base, would be the key to survival. Later, assuming there was a later,
the infantry officer would have to find a way to get his people the
hell off the ring world.
Silva’s thoughts were interrupted as Echo 419 raced in
over the mesa, flared nose up, and settled onto what had been
designated as Pad 3.
The assault on the Truth and Reconciliation had
gone
well so far, which meant that Second Lieutenant Dalu, who had been
assigned to follow along behind the rescue team and scoop up everything
he could, was having a good evening. Each time Echo 419 dropped a load
of troops she brought enemy arms and equipment back in. Plasma rifles,
plasma pistols, needlers, power packs, hand tools, com equipment, and
even food packs. Dalu loved them all.
Silva grinned as the Lieutenant waved a team of Naval
techs in under the Pelican’s belly to take delivery of the Shade he and
his team had lifted right out from under the Covenant’s collective
noses. That was the third gun acquired since the beginning of the
operation, and would soon take its place within the butte’s steadily
growing air defense system.
Sergeant Lister shouted, “Ten-shun!”, did a smart
about-face, and saluted Lieutenant McKay. She returned the salute, and
said, “At ease.”
Silva walked out into the rain and felt it pelt his face.
He turned to look at the ranks of black, brown, and white faces. All he
saw were Marines.
“Most, if not all of you, are familiar with my office
aboard the Pillar of Autumn . In the rush to leave it seems that
I left a full bottle of Scotch in the lower left-hand drawer of my
desk. If one or more of you would be so kind as to retrieve that
bottle, not only would I be extremely grateful, I would show my
gratitude by sharing it with the person or persons who manage to bring
it in.”
There was a roar of approval. Lister shouted them down.
“Silence! Corporal, take that man’s name.” The Corporal to whom the
order was directed had no idea which name he was supposed to take down,
but knew it didn’t matter.
Silva knew the Helljumpers had been briefed, and
understood the true
purpose of the mission, so he brought his
remarks to a close.
“Good luck out there . . . I’ll see you in a couple of
days.” Except that he wouldn’t see them, not all of them. Good
commanding officers had to love their men—and still be willing to order
their deaths if needed. It was the aspect of command he hated the most.
The formation was dismissed. The Marines jogged up into
the back of the waiting Pelicans, and the dropships soon disappeared
into the blackness of the night.
Silva remained on the pad until the sound of the engines
could no longer be heard. Then, conscious of the fact that every war
must be won on the equivalent of paper before it can be won on the
ground, he turned back toward the low-lying structure that housed his
command post. The night was still young—and there was plenty of work
left to do.
The gravity lift deposited the rescue team
three feet above the deck. They hung suspended for a moment, then fell.
Parker gave a series of hand signals, and the ODSTs crept forward into
the lift bay.
The Covenant equivalent of gear crates—tapered rectangular
boxes made from the shimmering, striated purple metal the aliens
favored—were stacked around the high compartment. A pair of Covenant
tanks, “Wraiths,” were lined along the right side of the bay.
The Master Chief moved forward toward one of the high
metal doors that were spaced along the perimeter of the compartment.
Parker gave the all clear signal and the Marines relaxed a
bit. “There’s no Covenant here,” one of them whispered, “so where the
hell are they?”
The door was proximity activated, and as he neared the
portal, it slid open and revealed a surprised Elite. Without pause, the
Spartan tackled the alien and slammed its armored head into the
burnished deckplates. With luck, he’d finished the Elite quietly enough—
Another set of doors flashed open on the other side of the
bay, and Covenant troops boiled into the compartment.
A second Marine turned to the Corporal who’d just spoken.
“ ‘No Covenant,’ ” he snarled, mocking his fellow trooper. “You just
had
to open your mouth, didn’t you?”
Inside the Covenant ship, chaos reigned. The
Master Chief charged ahead, and the rescue team fought their way
through a maze of interlocking corridors, which eventually emerged into
a large shuttle bay. A Covenant dropship passed through a bright blue
force field as all hell broke loose. Fire stuttered down from a
platform above. A Marine took a flurry of needles in the chest and was
torn in half by the ensuing explosion.
A Grunt dropped from above and landed on a Corporal’s
shoulders. The Marine reached up, got a grip on the alien’s methane
rig, and jerked the device off. The Grunt started to wheeze, fell to
the deck, and flopped around like a fish. Someone shot him.
Numerous hatches opened into the bay and additional
Covenant troops poured in from every direction. Parker stood up and
motioned his men forward. “It’s party time!” he bellowed.
He spun and opened fire, and was soon joined by all the
rest. Within a matter of seconds what seemed like a dozen different
firefights had broken out. Wounded and dead—humans and Covenant
alike—littered the deck.
The Master Chief was careful to keep his back to a Marine,
a pillar, or the nearest bulkhead. His MJOLNIR armor, and the
recharging shield it carried, provided the Spartan with an advantage
that none of the Marines possessed, so he focused most of his attention
on the Elites, leaving the Jackals and Grunts for others to handle.
Cortana, meanwhile, was hard at work tapping into the
ship’s electronic nervous system in an attempt to find the best way out
of the trap. “We need a way out of this bay now ,” the Master
Chief told her, “or there won’t be anyone left to complete the mission.”
He ducked behind a crate, emptied his magazine into a
charging Grunt who wielded a plasma grenade, then paused to reload.
A Hunter gave a bloodcurdling roar as it charged into the
fray. The Spartan turned and saw Sergeant Parker fire at the massive
alien. A trio of bullets spat from his assault rifle—the last three
rounds in the weapon. He discarded the empty gun and backpedaled in an
attempt to buy himself some time. His hand dipped for his sidearm.
The Hunter sprang forward and the tips of the beast’s
razor-spines shredded through the Marine’s ballistic armor. He crashed
to the deck.
The Master Chief cursed under his breath, slapped a fresh
clip into place, racked a round into the chamber and took aim on the
Hunter. The alien was coming on fast,
too fast, and the Spartan
knew he wasn’t going to get a kill-shot in time.
The Hunter stepped past Sergeant Parker’s prone form. The
alien’s razor spines sprang into view, and it roared again as the
Spartan sprayed it with gunfire, knowing the gesture was futile, but
unwilling to let the enemy at his teammate’s exposed flank.
Without warning, the Hunter reared up, howled, and crashed
to the ground. The Master Chief was puzzled, and briefly checked his
weapon. Could he have gotten in a lucky shot?
He heard a cough, and saw Sergeant Parker struggling to
his feet, a smoking M6D pistol in his hand. Blood flowed from the
gashes in his side, and he was unsteady on his feet, but he found the
strength to spit on the Hunter’s fallen corpse.
The Chief took a covering position near the wounded
sergeant. He gave him a brisk nod. “Not bad for a Marine. Thanks.”
The sergeant grabbed a fallen assault rifle, slammed a
fresh magazine into place, and grinned. “Any time, swabbie.”
His motion sensor showed more contacts inbound, but they
were keeping their distance. Their failed assault on the bay must have
left them disorganized.Good, he thought.We need all the time
we can get. “Cortana,” he said, “how much longer before you get a
door open?”
“Got it!” Cortana proclaimed exultantly. One of the heavy
doors hissed open. “Everyone should move through the door now. I can’t
guarantee that it won’t lock when it closes.”
“Follow me!” he barked, then led the surviving Marines out
of the shuttle bay and into the comparative safety of a corridor beyond.
The next fifteen minutes were like a slow-motion nightmare
as the rescuers fought their way through a maze of corridors, up a
series of narrow ramps, and onto the launch bay’s upper level. With
Cortana’s guidance, they plunged back into the ship’s oppressive
passageways.
As they proceeded through the bowels of the large warship,
Cortana finally gave them good news: “The Captain’s signal is strong.
He must be close.”
The Chief frowned. This was taking too long. Every passing
second made it that much less likely that any of the rescue party would
be able to get off the Truth and Reconciliation alive, let alone
with Captain Keyes. The ODSTs were good fighters, but they were slowing
him down.
He turned to Sergeant Parker and said, “Hold your men
here. I’ll be back soon—with the Captain.”
She started to protest, then nodded. “Just don’t tell
Silva,” she said.
“I won’t.”
The Master Chief ran from door to door until one of them
opened to reveal a rectangular room lined with cells. It appeared that
the translucent force fields served in place of bars. He dashed inside
and called the Captain’s name, but received no answer. A quick check
confirmed that, with the exception of one dead Marine, the detention
center was empty.
Frustrated, yet reassured by Cortana’s insistence that the
CNI signal remained strong, the Spartan exited the room, entered the
hall, and literally went door to door, searching for the correct hatch.
Once he located it, the Master Chief almost wished he hadn’t.
The portal slid open, a Grunt yelled something the Master
Chief couldn’t understand, and a plasma beam lashed past the human’s
helmet.
The Master Chief opened fire, heard a Marine yell from
within one of the cells, “Good to see you, Chief!” and knew he was in
the right place.
A plasma beam appeared out of nowhere, hit the Spartan in
the chest, and triggered the armor’s audible alarm. He ducked behind a
support column, just in time to see an energy beam slice through the
spot he had just vacated. He scanned the room, looking for his
assailant.
Nothing.
His motion sensor showed faint trace movements, but he
couldn’t spot their source.
His eyes narrowed, and he noticed a slight shimmer in the
air, directly in front of him. He fired a sustained burst through the
middle of it, and was rewarded with a loud howl. The Elite seemed to
materialize out of thin air, made a grab for his own entrails, and
managed to catch them before he died.
He strode to the access controls and, with Cortana’s help,
killed the force fields. Captain Keyes stepped out of his cell, paused
to scoop a Needler off the floor, and met the Chief’s eyes. “Coming
here was reckless,” he said, his voice harsh. The Chief was about to
explain his orders when Keyes’ expression warmed, and the Autumn
’s CO smiled. “Thanks.”
The Spartan nodded. “Any time, sir.”
“Can you find your way out?” Keyes inquired doubtfully.
“The corridors of this ship are like a maze.”
“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” the Master Chief replied.
“All we have to do is follow the bodies.”
Lieutenant “Cookie” Peterson put Echo 136
down a full klick from the Pillar of Autumn , looked out through
the rain-spattered windscreen, and saw Echo 206 settle in approximately
fifty meters away. It had been an uneventful flight, thanks in part to
the weather, and the fact that the assault on the Truth and
Reconciliation had probably served to distract the Covenant from
what was going on elsewhere.
Peterson felt the ship shudder as the ramp hit the ground,
waited for the Crew Chief to call “Clear!”, and fired the Pelican’s
thrusters. The ship was extremely vulnerable while on the ground—and he
was eager to return to the relative safety of Alpha Base. Then,
assuming the Helljumpers got the job done, he and his crew would be
back to transport some of the survivors and their loot.
Back at Alpha Base, McKay watched Echo 136
wobble as a gust of wind hit the Pelican from the side, saw the ship
gather speed, and start to climb out. Echo 206 took off a few moments
later and both ships were gone within a matter of seconds.
Her people knew what they were doing, so rather than make
a pest of herself, McKay decided to wait and watch as the platoon
leaders sorted things out. The officer felt the usual moments of fear,
of self-doubt regarding her ability to accomplish the mission, but took
comfort from something an instructor once told her.
“Take a look around,” the instructor had advised. “Ask
yourself if there’s anyone else who is better qualified to do the job.
Not in the entire galaxy, but right there, at that point in time. If
the answer is ‘yes,’ ask them to accept command, and do everything you
can to support them. If the answer is ‘no,’ which it will be
ninety-nine percent of the time, then take your best shot. That’s all
any of us can do.”
It was good advice, the kind that made a difference, and
while it didn’t erase McKay’s fears, it certainly served to ease them.
Master Sergeant Lister and Second Lieutenant Oros seemed
to materialize out of the darkness. Oros had a small, pixielike face
which belied her innate toughness. If anything happened to McKay, Oros
would take over, and if she bought the farm Lister would step in. The
battalion had been short of officers before the shit hit the
fan,
and what with Lieutenant Dalu off playing Supply Officer, McKay was one
Platoon Leader short of a full load. That’s why Lister had been called
upon to fill the hole.
“Platoons one and two are ready to go,” Oros reported
cheerfully. “Let us at ’em!”
“You just want to raid the ship’s commissary,” McKay said,
referring to the Platoon Leader’s well-known addiction to chocolate.
“No, ma’am,” Oros replied innocently, “the Lieutenant
lives only to serve the needs of humanity, the Marine Corps, and the
Company Commander.”
Even the normally stone-faced Lister had to laugh at that,
and McKay felt her own spirits lift as well. “Okay, Lieutenant Oros,
the human race would be grateful if you would put a couple of your best
people on point and lead this outfit to the ship. I’ll ride your six
with Sergeant Lister and the second platoon walking drag. Are you okay
with that?”
Both Platoon Leaders nodded and melted into the night.
McKay looked for the tail end of the first platoon, slid into line, and
let her mind roam ahead. Somewhere, about one kilometer ahead, the Pillar
of Autumn lay sprawled on the ground. The Covenant owned the ship
for the moment—but McKay was determined to take her back.
It was time to get off the Truth and
Reconciliation . As Covenant troops ran hither and yon, the
recently freed Marines armed themselves with alien weapons, then linked
up with the rest of the rescue team. Keyes and Cortana convened a quick
council of war. “While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I heard
them talking about the ring world,” Keyes said, “and its destructive
capabilities.”
“One moment, sir,” Cortana interrupted, “I’m accessing the
Covenant battle net.” She paused, as her vastly powerful intrusion
protocols sifted through the Covenant systems. Information systems
seemed to be the one field where human technologies held their own
against those of the Covenant.
Seconds later, she finished her sift of the alien data
stream. “If I’m interpreting the data correctly, they believe Halo is
some kind of weapon, one that possesses vast, unimaginable power.”
Keyes nodded thoughtfully. “The aliens who interrogated me
kept saying that ‘whoever controls Halo controls the fate of the
universe.’ ”
“Now I see,” Cortana put in thoughtfully. “I intercepted a
number of messages about a Covenant search team scouting for a control
room. I thought they were looking for the bridge of the ship I damaged
during the battle above the ring—but they must be looking for Halo’s
control room.”
“That’s bad news,” Keyes responded gravely. “If
Halo
is a weapon, and the Covenant gains control of it, they’ll use it
against us. Who knows what power that would give them?
“Chief, Cortana, I have a new mission for you. We
need to beat the Covenant to Halo’s control room.”
“No offense, sir,” the Master Chief replied, “but it might
be best to finish this mission before we tackle another one.”
Keyes offered a tired grin. “Good point, Chief. Marines!
Let’s move!”
“We should head back to the shuttle bay and call for
evac,” Cortana said, “unless you’d like to walk home.”
“No thanks,” Keyes said. “I’m Navy—we prefer to ride.”
The journey out of the detention area and back to the
launch bay was hairy but not quite as bad as the trip in. It wasn’t
long before they all realized that they really could follow the
trail of dead bodies back to the launch bay. Sadly, some of the dead
wore Marine green, which served to remind the Chief of how many humans
the Covenant had murdered since the war had begun more than twenty-five
years before. Somehow, in some way, the Covenant would be made to pay.
The tactical situation was made even more risky by the
Captain’s condition. He didn’t complain, but the Spartan could tell
that Keyes was sore and weak from the Covenant interrogation. It was a
struggle for him to keep up with the others.
The Master Chief signaled for the team to halt. Keyes—out
of breath—favored him with a sour look, but seemed grateful for the
breather.
Two minutes later, the Chief was about to signal the group
to move forward when a trio of Grunts scuttled into view. Needler
rounds bounced from the bulkhead and angled right for him.
His shields took the brunt of it, and he returned fire, as
did the rest of the group. Keyes blew one Grunt apart with a barrage of
the explosive glassy needles. The rest were finished off by a
combination of plasma rifle fire and the Chief’s assault rifle.
“Let’s get moving,” the Spartan advised. He took point and
moved down the corridor, bent low and ready for trouble. He’d barely
gotten twenty meters down the passageway when more Covenant moved
in—two Jackals and an Elite.
The enemy was getting closer, and more determined, the
longer they remained. He finished off the Jackals with his last frag
grenade, then pinned the Elite down with assault rifle fire. Keyes
directed the Marines to fire on the alien’s flank, and he went down.
“We need to go, sir,” the Chief warned Keyes.
“With
respect, we’re moving too slowly.”
Keyes nodded, and as a group they sprinted down the
twisting passages, stealth abandoned. Finally, after numerous twists
and turns, they reached the shuttle bay. The Spartan thought it was
empty at first, until he noticed what appeared to be two light wands,
floating in midair.
Fresh from his encounter with the stealth Elite who had
been stationed in the brig, the Master Chief knew better than to take
chances. He drew his pistol, linked in the scope, and took careful aim.
He squeezed the trigger several times and put half a clip into the area
just to the right of the energy blade. A Covenant warrior faded into
view and toppled off the platform.
A Marine yelled, “Watch it!” and “Cover the Captain!” as
the second blade sliced the air into geometric shapes, and started to
advance as if on its own. The Spartan put three quick bursts into the
second alien, hit his stealth generator, and the Elite was revealed.
Fire poured in from all sides and the warrior went down.
There was a blast of static as Cortana activated the
MJOLNIR’s communication relays.“Cortana to Echo 419 . . . We have
the Captain and need extraction on the double.”
The reply was nearly instantaneous.“Negative, Cortana!
I have a flock of Banshees on my tail . . . and I can’t seem to shake
them. You’ll be better off finding your own ride.”
“Acknowledged, Foehammer. Cortana out.”The radio
clicked as Cortana switched from the suit’s radio to its external
speakers.
“Air support is cut off, Captain. We’ll need to hold here
until Foehammer can move in.”
A Marine heard the interchange and, already traumatized by
the time spent as a Covenant prisoner, began to lose it. “We’re
trapped! We’re all gonna die!”
“Stow the bellyaching, soldier,” Keyes growled. “Cortana,
if you and the Chief can get us into one of those Covenant dropships, I
can fly us out of here.”
“Yes, Captain,” the AI replied. “There’s a Covenant ship
docked below.”
The Master Chief saw the nav indicator appear on his HUD,
followed the arrow through a hatch, down a series of corridors, and out
into the troopship bay.
Unfortunately, the bay was well defended, and another
firefight broke out. The situation was getting worse. The Chief slammed
his last full clip into the MA5B and fired short, controlled bursts.
Grunts and Jackals scattered and returned fire.
The ammo counter dropped rapidly. A pair of Grunts fell
under the Spartan’s hail of fire. Within seconds, the ammo counter readOO
—empty.
He tossed the rifle away and drew his pistol, and
continued firing at the alien forces that had begun to regroup at the
far side of the bay. “If we’re going,” he called out, “we need to go
now.”
The dropship was shaped like a giant U. It rode a grav
field and bobbed slightly as some of the outside air swirled around it.
As they approached it, Keyes said, “Everybody mount up! Let’s get on
board!” and led the Marines through an open hatch.
The Spartan waited until everyone else had boarded and
backed into the aircraft—just in time. He was down to a single round in
his sidearm.
Cortana said, “Give me a minute to interface with the
ship’s controls.”
Keyes shook his head. “No need. I’ll take this bird up
myself.”
“Captain!” one of the Marines called. “Hunters!”
The Master Chief peered out through the nearest viewport
and saw that the private was correct. Another pair of the massive
aliens had arrived on the loading platform and were making for the
ship. Their spines stood straight up, their fuel rod guns were swinging
into position, and they were about to fire.
“Hang on!” Keyes said as he disengaged the ship’s gravity
locks, brought the ship up over the edge of the platform, and pushed
one of two joysticks forward. The twin hulls straddled a column, struck
both Hunters with what appeared to be glancing blows, and withdrew.
Even a glancing blow from a ship that weighs thousands of
kilos proved to be a serious thing indeed. The dropship’s hull crushed
the Hunters’ chest armor and forced it through their body cavities,
killing both of them instantly. One corpse somehow managed to attach
itself to one of the twin bows. It fell as the dropship cleared the
Truth
and Reconciliation’s hull.
The Master Chief leaned back against the metal wall. The
Covenant craft’s troop bay was cramped, uncomfortable, and dimly
lit—but it beat hell out of wandering through one of their cruisers.
He braced himself as Keyes put the alien aircraft into a
tight turn, and accelerated out into the surrounding darkness. He
forced his shoulders to relax, and closed his eyes. The Captain had
been rescued, and the Covenant had been put on notice: The humans were
determined to be more than an annoyance—they were going to be a major
pain in the ass.
Dawn had just started to break when Zuka
’Zamamee and Yayap passed through the newly reinforced perimeter that
surrounded the gravity lift, and were forced to wait while a crew of
hardworking Grunts pulled a load of Covenant dead off the
blood-splattered pad, before they could step onto the sticky surface
and be pulled up into the ship.
Although the Truth and Reconciliation’s commanding
officer believed that all of the surviving humans had left the ship,
there was no way to be certain of that without a
compartment-by-compartment check. The shipboard sensors read clear, but
this raid had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the humans had learned
how to trick Covenant detection gear.
The visitors could feel the tension as teams of grim-faced
Elites, Jackals, and Grunts performed a deck-by-deck search of the ship.
As the pair made their way through the corridors to the
lift that would carry them up to the command deck, ’Zamamee was shocked
by the extent of the damage that he saw. Yes, there were long stretches
of passageway that were completely untouched, but every now and then
they would pass through a gore-streaked section of corridor, where
bullet-pocked bulkheads, plasma-scorched decks, and half-slagged
hatches told of a hard-fought running gun battle.
’Zamamee stared in wonder as a grav cart loaded with
mangled Jackals was towed past, blood dripping onto the deck behind it.
Finally, they made their way to the appropriate lift, and
stepped out onto the command deck. The Elite expected the same level of
security scrutiny as the last time he addressed the Prophet and the
Council of Masters; no doubt he’d be dumped into the holding room for
another interminable wait.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. No sooner
did ’Zamamee clear security than he and Yayap were whisked into the
compartment where the Council of Masters had been convened during his
last visit.
There was no sign of the Prophet, or any of ’Zamamee’s
immediate superiors—but the hardworking Soha ’Rolamee was there, along
with a staff of lesser Elites. There was no mistaking the crisis
atmosphere as reports flowed in, were evaluated, and used to create a
variety of action plans. ’Rolamee saw ’Zamamee and raised his hand by
way of a greeting.
“Welcome. Please sit.”
’Zamamee complied. It didn’t occur to either one of the
Elites to offer the same courtesy to Yayap, who continued to stand. The
diminutive Grunt rocked back and forth, ill at ease.
“So,” ’Rolamee inquired, “how much have you heard about
the latest . . . ‘incursion’?”
“Not much,” ’Zamamee was forced to admit. “The humans
managed to board the ship via the gravity lift. That’s the extent of my
knowledge.”
“That’s correct in so far as it goes,” ’Rolamee agreed.
“There is more. The ship’s security system recorded quite a bit of the
action. Take a look at this .”
The Elite touched a button and moving images popped into
view and hovered in the air nearby. ’Zamamee found himself looking at
two Grunts and a Jackal standing in a corridor. Suddenly, without
warning, the same human he had encountered on thePillar of Autumn
—the large one with the unusual armor—stepped around the corner,
spotted the Covenant troops, and opened fire on them.
The Grunts went down quickly, but the Jackal scored a hit,
and ’Zamamee saw plasma splash the front of the human’s armor.
However, rather than fall as he should have, the
apparition shot the Jackal in the head, stepped over one of the dead
Grunts, and marched toward the camera. The image froze as ’Rolamee
touched another control. ’Zamamee felt an almost unbelievable tightness
in his chest. Would he have the courage to face the human again? He
wasn’t sure—and that frightened him as well.
“So,” ’Rolamee said, “there he is, the very human you
warned us about. A dangerous individual who is largely responsible for
the six-score casualties inflicted during this raid alone, not to
mention the loss of a valuable prisoner, and six Shades which the enemy
managed to steal.”
“And the humans?” ’Zamamee inquired. “How many of them
were our warriors able to kill?”
“The body count is incomplete,” the other Elite replied,
“but the preliminary total is thirty-six.”
’Zamamee was shocked. The numbers should have been
reversed. Would have been reversed had it not been for the alien
in the special armor.
“You will be pleased to learn that your original request
has now been approved,” ’Rolamee continued. “We have preliminary
reports from other strike groups that most of these unusual humans were
killed in the last large engagement. This one is believed to be the
last of his kind. Take whatever resources you need, find the human, and
kill him. Do you have any questions?”
“No, Excellency,” ’Zamamee said as he stood to leave.
“None at all.”
SECTION III
THE SILENT CARTOGRAPHER
CHAPTER FIVE
D+128:15:25 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock) /
On the plain surrounding the Pillar of Autumn.
The rain stopped just before dawn—not gradually but all at
once, as if someone had flipped a switch. The clouds melted away, the
first rays of the sun appeared, and darkness surrendered to light.
Slowly, as if to reveal something precious, the golden
glow slid across the plain to illuminate the Pillar of Autumn ,
which lay like an abandoned scepter, her bow hanging out over the edge
of a steep precipice.
She was huge, so huge that the Covenant had
assigned two Banshees to fly cover over her, and a squad of six Ghosts
patrolled the area immediately around the fallen cruiser’s hull.
However, from the listless manner with which the enemy soldiers went
about their duties, McKay could tell they were unaware of the threat
that had crept up on them during the hours of rain-filled darkness.
Back on Earth, before the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa
Translight Engine, and the subsequent efforts to colonize other star
systems, human soldiers had frequently staged attacks at dawn, when
there was more light to see by, and the enemy sentries were likely to
be tired and sleepy. In order to counter, the more sophisticated armies
soon developed the tradition of an early morning “stand-to,” when every
soldier went to barricades in case the enemy chose that particular
morning to attack.
Did the Covenant have a similar tradition, McKay wondered?
Or were they dozing a bit, relieved that the long period of darkness
was finally over, their fears eased by the first rays of the sun? The
officer would soon find out.
Like all sixty-two members of her Company, the Helljumper
was concealed just beyond the border of the roughly U-shaped area that
the Covenant actively patrolled. And now, with daylight only minutes
away, the time had arrived either to commit herself or to withdraw.
McKay took one last look around. Her arm ached, and her
bladder was full, but everything else was A-okay. She keyed the radio
and gave the order that both platoons had been waiting for. “Red One to
Blue One and Green One . . . Proceed to objective. Over.”
The response came so quickly that McKay missed whatever
acknowledgments the two Platoon leaders might have sent. The key was to
neutralize the Banshees and the Ghosts so quickly, so decisively, that
the ODST troopers would be able to cross the long stretch of open
ground and reach the Autumn virtually unopposed. That’s why no
fewer than three of the powerful M19 rocket launchers were aimed at
each Banshee—and three Marines had been assigned to each of the half
dozen target Ghosts.
Two of the four rockets fired at the Covenant aircraft
missed their marks, but both Banshees took hits, and immediately
exploded. Wreckage rained on the Covenant position.
The Ghost drivers on both sides of the ship were still
looking upward, trying to figure out what had occurred, when more than
two dozen assault weapons opened up on them.
Four of the rapid attack vehicles were destroyed within
the first few seconds of the battle. The fifth, piloted by a mortally
wounded Elite, described a number of large overlapping circles before
crashing into the cruiser’s hull and finally putting the driver out of
his misery. The Elite behind the controls of the sixth and last Ghost
panicked, backed away from the wholesale destruction, and toppled over
the edge of the precipice.
If the alien screamed on the way down McKay wasn’t able to
hear it, especially with the steady crack, crack,
crack of
multiple S2 Sniper Rifles going off all around her. She keyed her radio
to the command freq and ordered her platoon leaders to move up.
The assault force crossed the open area in a run, and
headed toward the ship’s sternmost air locks.
Covenant troops stationed within the ship heard the ruckus
and hurried outside, and were met by the sight of the still-smoking
wrecks of their mechanized support, and an enthusiastic—if somewhat
thin—infantry assault.
Most were simply standing there, waiting for someone to
tell them what to do, when the snipers’ 14.5 mm armor-piercing,
fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot rounds began to cut them down. The
impact was devastating. McKay saw Elites, Jackals, and Grunts alike
throw up their arms and collapse as the rolling fusillade took its toll.
Then, as the aliens started to pull back into the relative
safety of the ship’s interior, McKay jumped to her feet, knowing that
one of her noncoms would do likewise on the far side of the hull, and
waved the snipers forward. “Switch to your assault weapons! The last
one to the lock has to stay and guard it!”
All the ODST troopers knew there were plenty of things to
scrounge inside the hull, and they were eager to do so. The possibility
that they might end up guarding a lock rather than pillaging the Autumn
’s interior was more than sufficient motivation to make each Marine run
as fast as possible.
The purpose of the exercise was to get the last members of
the Company across what could have been a Covenant killing ground and
to do so as quickly as possible. McKay thought she’d been successful,
thought she’d made a clean break, when a momentary shadow passed over
her and someone yelled, “Contact! Enemy contact!”
The officer glanced back over her shoulder and spied a
Covenant dropship. The ungainly looking craft swept in from the east,
and was about to deploy additional forces. Its plasma cannon opened
fire and stitched a line of black dots in the dirt, out toward the edge
of the drop-off.
A sniper disappeared from the waist down, and still had
enough air to scream as his forward motion slowed, and his torso landed
on a pile of his own intestines.
McKay skidded to a halt, yelled, “Snipers! About face,
fire!” and hoped that the brief parade ground–style orders would be
sufficient to communicate what she wanted.
Each Covenant dropship had side slots, small cubicle-like
spaces where their troops rode during transit, and from which they were
released when the aircraft arrived over the landing zone. Had the pilot
been more experienced he would have positioned the aircraft so that it
was nose-on to the enemy and fired his cannon while the troops bailed
out—but he wasn’t, or he’d simply made a mistake, as he presented the
ship’s starboard side to the humans and opened the doors.
More than half the ODST snipers had switched back to their
S2s and had shouldered their weapons up as the drop doors opened. They
opened fire before the Covenant troops could leap to the ground. One of
their rounds hit a plasma grenade and caused it to explode. A control
line must have been severed, because the dropship lurched to port,
pitched forward, and nosed into the ground. Twin waves of soil were
gouged out of the plateau as the aircraft slid forward, hit a boulder,
and exploded into flame.
Secondary explosions cooked off and the twin hulls
disintegrated. The sound of the blast bounced off the Autumn’s
hull and rolled across the surrounding plain.
The Marines waited a moment to see if any of the aliens
would try to crawl, walk, or run away, but none of them did.
McKay heard the muffled thump, thump, thump
of
automatic weapons fire coming from within the ship behind her, knew the
job was only half done, and waved to the half dozen Marines. “What are
you waiting for? Let’s go!”
The Helljumpers looked at one another, grinned, and
followed McKay into the ship. The El-tee might look like a
wild-eyed maniac, but she knew her stuff, and that was good enough for
them.
The soil was still damp from the rain, so
when the sun hit the top of the mesa a heavy mist started to form, as
if a battalion of spirits had been released from bondage.
Keyes, exhausted by his captivity, not to mention the
harrowing escape from the Truth and Reconciliation, had
literally collapsed in the bed the Helljumpers had prepared for him and
slept hard for the next three hours.
Now, awakened by both a nightmare and the internal clock
that was still attuned to the arbitrarily set ship time, the Naval
officer was up and prowling about.
The view from the rampart was nothing less than
spectacular, looking out over a flat plain to the gently rolling hills
beyond. A bank of ivory-white clouds scudded above the hills. The vista
wasso beautiful, so pristine, that it was difficult to
believe that Halo was a weapon.
He heard the scrape of footsteps, and turned to watch
Silva emerge from the staircase that led up to the observation
platform. “Good morning, sir,” the Marine said. “I heard you were up
and around. May I join you?”
“Of course,” Keyes said, gesturing to a place at the
waist-high wall. “Please do. I took a self-guided tour of the landing
pads, the Shade emplacements, and the beginnings of the maintenance
shop. Good work, Major. You and your Helljumpers are to be
congratulated. Thanks to you, we have a place to rest, regroup, and
plan.”
“The Covenant did some of the work for us,” Silva replied
modestly, “but I agree, sir, my people did a hell of a job. Speaking of
which, I thought I should let you know that Lieutenant McKay and two
platoons of ODST troops are fighting their way into the Autumn
even as we speak. If they retrieve the supplies we need, Alpha Base
will be able to hold for quite a while.”
“And if the Covenant attacks before then?”
“Then we are well and truly screwed. We’re running short
on ammo, food, and fuel for the Pelicans.”
Keyes nodded. “Well, let’s hope McKay pulls it off. In the
meantime there are some other things we need to consider.”
Silva found the easy, almost offhanded manner in which
Keyes had reassumed command to be a bit irritating, even though he knew
it was the other officer’s obligation to do so. There was a clear-cut
chain of command, and now that Keyes was free, the Naval officer was in
charge. There was nothing the Marine could do except look
interested—and hope his superior came up with at least some of the
right ideas.
“Yes, sir. What’s up?”
So Keyes talked, and Silva listened, as the Captain
reviewed what he had learned while in captivity. “The essence of the
matter is that while the races which comprise the Covenant seem
to possess a high level of technology, most if not all of it may have
been looted from the beings they refer to as the ‘Forerunners,’ an
ancient race which left ruins on dozens of planets, and presumably was
responsible for constructing Halo.
“In the long run, the fact that they are adaptive, rather
than innovative, may prove to be their undoing. For the moment,
however, before we can take advantage of that weakness, we must first
find the means to survive. If Halo is a weapon, and if it
has the capacity to destroy all of humanity as they seem to believe,
then we must find the means to neutralize it—and perhaps turn it
against the Covenant.
“That’s why I ordered Cortana and the Master Chief to find
the so-called Control Room to which the aliens have alluded, and see if
there’s a way to block the Covenant’s plan.”
Silva placed his forearms on the top of the wall that
fronted the rampart and looked out over the plain. If one knew where to
look, and had a good eye, he could see the blast-scarred ground where
the Ghosts had attacked, the Helljumpers had held, and some of his
Marines lay buried.
“I see what you mean, sir. Permission to speak freely?”
Keyes looked at Silva, then back to the view. “Of course.
You’re second in command here, and obviously you know your way around
ground engagements far better than I do. If you have ideas,
suggestions, or concerns, I want to hear them.”
Silva nodded respectfully. “Thank you, sir. My question
has to do with the Spartan. Like everyone else, I have nothing but
respect for the Chief’s record. However, is he the right person for the
mission you have in mind? Come to think of it, is any one person
right for that kind of operation?
“I know that the Master Chief has an augmented body,”
Silva continued, “not to mention the advantage that the armor gives
him, but take a look around. This base, these defenses, were the work
of normal human beings.
“The Spartan program is a failure, Captain—the fact that
the Chief is the only one left proves that, so let’s put your mission
into the hands of some real honest-to-god Marines and let them earn
their pay.
“Thanks for hearing me out.”
Keyes had been in the Navy for a long time.
He knew Silva was ambitious, not only for himself, but for the ODST
branch of the Marine Corps. He also knew that Silva was brave,
well-intentioned, and in this case, flat-out wrong . But how to
tell him that? He needed Silva’s enthusiastic support if any of them
were going to make it out of this mess alive.
The Captain considered Silva’s words, then nodded. “You
make some valid points. What you and your ‘honest-to-god’ Marines have
accomplished on this butte is nothing short of miraculous.
“However, I can’t agree with your conclusions regarding
the Chief or the Spartan program. First, it’s important to understand
that what makes the Chief so effective isn’t what he is, but
who
he is. His record is not the result of technology—not because of what
they’ve done to him but in spite of what they’ve done to him,
and
the pain he has suffered.
“The truth is that the Chief would have grown up to be a
remarkable individual regardless of what the government did or didn’t
do to him. Do I think children should be snatched away from their
families? Raised by the military? Surgically altered? No, I don’t, not
during normal times.”
He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “Major,
one of my first assignments was to escort the Spartan’s project leader
during the selection process for the II-series candidates. At the time,
I didn’t know the full scope of the operation—and I probably would have
resigned had I known.
“These aren’t normal times. We’re talking about
the
very real possibility of total extinction, Major. How many
people did we lose in the Outer Colonies? How many did the Covenant
kill on Jerico VII? On Reach? How many will be glassed if they locate
Earth?”
It was a rhetorical question. The Marine shook his head.
“I don’t know, sir, but I do know this. More than twenty-five
years ago, when I was a second lieutenant, the people who invented the
Chief thought it would be fun to test their new pet weapon on some
real
meat. They engineered a situation in which four of my Marines would run
into your friend, take offense at something he did, and try to teach
him a lesson.
“Well, guess what? The plan worked perfectly. The plan
sucked my people in, and the freak not only kicked the hell out of
them, he left two of them dead—beaten to death in a goddamned ship’s
gymnasium. I don’t know what you call that, sir, but I call it murder.
Were there repercussions? Hell, no. The windup toy got a pat on the
head and a ticket to the showers. It was all in a day’s bloody work.”
Keyes looked bleak. “For whatever it’s worth I’m truly
sorry about what happened to your men, Major, but here’s the truth:
Maybe it isn’t nice—hell, maybe it isn’t even right —but if I
could get my hands on a million Chiefs I’d take every single one of
them. As for this particular mission, yes, I believe it’s possible that
your people could get the job done, and if that’s all we had, I
wouldn’t hesitate to send them in. But the Chief has a number of
distinct advantages, not the least of which is Cortana, and by taking
this task on he will free your Helljumpers to handle other things. Lord
knows there’s plenty to do. My decision stands.”
Silva nodded stiffly. “Sir, yes sir. My people will do
everything they can to support both the Chief and Cortana.”
“Yes,” Keyes said, as he gazed up into the gently curving
ring, “I’m sure they will.”
The normally dark room was bright with
artificial light. Zuka ’Zamamee had studied the raid on the Truth
and
Reconciliation, taken note of the manner in which the human AI had
accessed the Covenant battle net, and analyzed the nature of the
electronic intrusions to see what the entity seemed most interested in.
Then, based on that analysis, he had constructed
projections of what the humans would do next. Not all of the
humans, since that lay outside the parameters of his mission, but the
one person in whom he was truly interested. An individual who appeared
to be part of a specialized, elite group similar to his own, and would
almost certainly be sent to follow up on what the humans had learned.
Now, in the room that led directly into the Security
Control Center, ’Zamamee laid a trap. The armored human would come, he
felt sure of that, and once inside the snare, the human would meet his
end. The thought cheered ’Zamamee immensely and he hummed a battle hymn
as he worked.
There was a flash, followed by a loud
bang!
as the fragmentation grenade went off. A Jackal screamed, an assault
weapon stuttered, and a Marine yelled, “Let me know if you want some
more!”
“Good work!” McKay exclaimed. “That’s the last of them.
Close the hatch, lock it, and post a fire team here to make sure they
don’t cut their way out. The Covenant is welcome to the upper decks.
What we need is down here.”
The battle had been raging for hours by then as McKay and
her Marines fought to push the remaining enemy forces out of key
portions of the Autumn and into the sections of the ship that
weren’t mission-critical.
As the Helljumpers sealed the last interdeck ladder not
already secured, they had what they’d been striving for: free and
unfettered access to the ship’s main magazine, cargo holds, and vehicle
bays.
In fact, even as the second platoon pushed the last of the
aliens out of the lower decks, the first platoon, under the leadership
of Lieutenant Oros, had begun the important task of hitching trailers
to the fleet of Warthogs stowed in the Autumn ’s belly and
loading them with food, ammo, and the long list McKay had brought with
her of other supplies. Then, once each ’Hog-trailer combo was ready,
the Marines drove them down makeshift ramps onto the hardpan below.
Once outside, and positioned laager style, the combined
power of the LRV-mounted M41 light antiaircraft guns formed a potent
defense against possible attack by Covenant dropships, Banshees, and
Ghosts. It wouldn’t hold out forever, but it would do the most
important job: It would buy them time .
Adding to the supply column’s already formidable firepower
were four M808B Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, or MBTs, which rumbled down
off the ramps, and threw dirt rooster tails up off their powerful
treads as they growled into position within the screen established by
the Warthogs.
The MBTs’ ceramic-titanium armor provided them with
excellent protection against small arms fire—although the vehicles were
vulnerable should the aliens manage to get in close. That’s why
provision had been made for up to four Marines to ride on top of each
Scorpion’s track pods.
Now, free to withdraw from the grounded cruiser and
supervise final loading, McKay left Lister in charge of keeping the
aliens penned up.
As she exited the ship, McKay caught sight of two
heavily-loaded Pelicans flying off in the general direction of the
butte, each with a ’Hog clutched beneath its belly. And there, arrayed
on the hardpan in front of her, twenty-six Warthog-trailer combinations
sat ready to roll, with still more coming off the ship.
Their only problem was personnel. As a result of the work
only fifty-two effectives remained, which meant that the stripped-down
infantry company would be hard-pressed to crew thirty-four vehicles and
fight, should that become necessary. Both McKay and her noncoms would
all play a role as drivers or gunners during the return trip.
Oros saw the Company Commander emerge from the Autumn’s
hull. The Platoon Leader was caged inside one of the loader-type
exoskeletons taken from the ship. Servos whined in sympathy with her
movements as she crossed the intervening stretch of wheel-churned dirt
to the point where McKay waited with hands on hips. Grime covered her
face and her body armor was charred where a plasma pulse had hit. “You
look good in orange.”
Oros grinned. “Thanks, boss. Did you see the Pelicans?”
“As a matter of fact I did. They looked a bit overloaded.”
“Yeah, the pilots were starting to whine about weight, but
I bribed them with a couple of candy bars. They’ll be back in about
forty-five minutes. When they do we’ll wrestle fuel bladders into the
cargo compartments, fill them from the ship, and top their tanks all at
the same time. Then, just to make sure we get our money’s worth, we’ll
hook a 50mm MLA autocannon under each fuselage and take those out as
well.”
McKay raised both eyebrows. “Autocannons? Where did you
get those?”
“They were part of the Autumn’s armament,” the
other officer answered cheerfully. “I thought it would be fun to spot
the occasional Covenant dropship from the top of the mesa.”
He paused then added, “That’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“A lot of gear didn’t survive the crash. No missile or
rocket pods for the Pelicans, and we’re almost bone dry on 70 mm for
their chain guns. We can’t count on air support for much more than bus
rides.”
“Damn.” She scowled. Without well-armed air support, Alpha
Base was going to be a lot tougher to defend.
“Affirmative,” Oros agreed. “Oh, and I ordered the pilots
to bring fifteen additional bodies on the return trip. Clerks, medics,
anybody who can drive or fire an M41. That would allow me to squeeze
some additional ’Hogs into the column and put at least two people on
each tank.”
McKay raised an eyebrow. “You ‘ordered’ them to bring more
bodies?”
“Well, I kind of let them believe that you whistled
them up.”
McKay shook her head. “You are amazing.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Oros replied shamelessly.“Semper Fi.”
The Pelicans swept over the glittering sea,
passed over a line of gently breaking surf, and flew parallel with the
beach. Foehammer saw a construct up ahead, a headland beyond, and a
whole lot of Covenant troops running around in response to the sudden
and unexpected arrival of two UNSC dropships. Rawley fought the urge to
trigger the Pelican’s 70 mm chain gun. She’d expended the last of her
ammo on the last pass—had watched geysers of sand chase an Elite up the
beach, and was rewarded by the sight of the alien disappearing in a
cloud of his own blood—and it didn’t look like more were coming anytime
soon.
She keyed open a master channel. “The LZ is hot, repeat,
hot,” Foehammer emphasized. “Five to dirt.”
The Master Chief stood next to the open hatch, and waited
for Foehammer’s signal: “Touchdown! Hit it, Marines!”
He was among the first to step off the ramp, his boots
leaving deep impressions in the soft sand.
He paused for a quick look around, then started down-spin
to the point where the aliens waited. No sooner had the last member of
the landing party disembarked than the Pelicans were airborne once
more—and flying up-spin.
Plasma fire stuttered down from the top of a rise as the
Marines advanced up the sandy slope, careful to fire staggered bursts,
so the entire group didn’t wind up reloading at the same time. The
Spartan ran forward, added his fire to the rest, and sent an Elite
sprawling to the ground. The Covenant forces were outnumbered for once
and the human attackers wasted little time cutting them down. The whole
fight lasted only ten minutes.
Time to get moving. He reviewed the mission objectives as
he surveyed the LZ: find and secure a Covenant-held facility, some kind
of map room—which the enemy had already captured.
The Covenant called the site “the Silent
Cartographer”—which could presumably pinpoint the location of Halo’s
control room. Keyes had been very adamant about the urgency of the
mission. “If the Covenant figure out how to turn Halo into a weapon,
we’re cooked.”
Maybe, with Cortana’s help, they had a good chance of
figuring out where the hell the ring’s control systems were housed. All
they had to do is take it away from an entrenched enemy.
The Spartan heard a burst of static followed by
Foehammer’s cheerful voice as her Pelican swooped back into the LZ area.“Echo
419 inbound. Did someone order a Warthog?”
A Marine said, “I didn’t know that you made house calls,
Foehammer.”
The pilot chuckled.“You know our motto: ‘we deliver.’ ”
The Master Chief waited for the dropship to deposit the
LRV on the beach, saw two Marines jump on board, and climbed up behind
the wheel. The soldier riding shotgun nodded. “Ready when you are,
Chief.”
The Spartan put his foot on the accelerator, sand shot out
from under the vehicle’s tires, and the ’Hog left parallel tracks as it
raced along the edge of the beach.
They rounded the headland in minutes, and entered the open
area beyond. There was a scattering of trees, some weathered boulders,
and a swath of green ground cover. “Firing!” the gunner called, and
pulled his trigger. The petty officer saw Covenant troops scurry for
cover, steered right to give the three-barreled weapon a better angle,
and was soon rewarded with a batch of dead Grunts and a badly mangled
Jackal.
The Spartan drove the Warthog uphill, turning to avoid
obstacles, careful to maintain the vehicle’s traction. It wasn’t long
before the humans neared the top of the slope and spotted the massive
structure beyond. The top curved downward, cut dramatically in, and
gave way to a flat area where a Covenant dropship had been docked.
It appeared that the aircraft had just finished loading:
It backed out of a U-shaped slot, swung out toward the ocean, and
quickly disappeared. The noise generated by its engines covered the
sound made by the Warthog and provided the defenders with something to
look at.
The gunner tracked the aircraft but knew better than to
open fire and attract unwanted attention. The area beyond was crawling
with Covenant troops. “Anyone else see what I see?” the second
leatherneck inquired. “How are we supposed to get around that ?”
The Master Chief killed the ’Hog’s engine, motioned for
the Marines to remain where they were, and eased his way up to a point
where a fallen log offered him some cover. He drew his pistol, took
aim, and opened fire. Four Grunts and an Elite fell beneath the quick
barrage of gunfire.
The response was nearly instantaneous as the surviving
troops ran for cover and a series of plasma bolts blew chunks of wood
out of the protective log and set it ablaze.
Confident that he had whittled the opposition down to a
more manageable size, the Chief eased his way back to the LRV and
pulled himself up into the driver’s seat. The Marines waited to see
what he would do next. “Check your weapons,” he advised, as he hit the
ignition switch and the big engine roared to life. “We have some
clean-up to do.”
“Roger that,” the gunner said grimly. “It looks like we
have KP duty again.”
There was no telling what the Covenant troops expected the
humans to do, but judging from the way they ran around screaming, the
possibility of an old-fashioned frontal assault just hadn’t occurred to
them.
The Spartan aimed the vehicle for the front of the
complex, spotted the hallway that extended back toward the face of the
cliff, and drove straight inside. It was a tight fit, and the Warthog
wallowed a bit as the big off-road tires rolled over a couple of dead
Grunts, but the strategy worked. Both Marines opened up on the Covenant
troops and the Chief ran one of them down.
Then, once the outer part of the structure had been
cleared, the Master Chief parked the LRV where the Marines could
provide him with fire support, and ventured inside. A series of ramps
led down through darkened hallways to the antechamber below. It was
full of aliens. The Master Chief tossed a grenade in among them, backed
up out of the way, and sprayed the ramp with bullets. The grenade went
off with a satisfying wham! and body parts flew high into the
air
before thumping to the floor.
Cortana said, “Don’t let them lock the doors!”
Too late. The doors noiselessly flashed shut.
The Spartan polished off the last of the resistance,
checked to confirm that the doors were locked, and was already on his
way back to the surface when the AI accessed the suit’s radio.“Cortana
to Keyes . . .”
“Go ahead, Cortana. Have you found the Control Center?”
“Negative, Captain. The Covenant have impeded our
progress. We can’t proceed unless we can disable the installation’s
security system.”
“Understood,”Keyes replied.“Use any means
necessary to force your way into the facility and find Halo’s Control
Center. Failure is not an option.”
The Master Chief was back in the ’Hog and halfway to the
LZ by the time the Captain signed off.“Good luck, people. Keyes out.”
If the front door is locked—then go around back.
That’s
what the Spartan figured as the LRV rolled back the way it had come,
through the LZ. The Marine seated next to him exchanged insults with a
buddy stationed on the beach.
They had just rounded a bluff when Cortana said, “Look up
to the right. There’s a path that leads toward the interior of the
island.”
The AI had no more than finished her sentence when the
gunner said, “Freaks at two o’clock!” and opened fire.
The Spartan ran the Warthog up a slope, allowed the M41
LAAG to handle the heavy lifting, and positioned the vehicle so the
gunner could put fire on the ravine ahead. “Tell me something,
Cortana,” the Master Chief said, as he lowered himself to the ground.
“How come you’re always advising me to go up gravity lifts, run down
corridors, and sneak through forests while making no mention of all the
enemy troops that seem to inhabit such places?”
“Because I don’t want you to feel unnecessary,” the AI
replied easily. “For example, given the fact that your sensors are
telling both of us that there are at least five Covenant soldiers lying
in wait farther up the ravine, it’s logical to suppose that there are
even more beyond them. Does that make you feel better?”
“No,” the Spartan admitted as he checked to ensure that
both of his weapons were fully loaded.
He charged up the ravine and took cover behind a large
outcropping of rock. Plasma bolts melted the stone near his head, and
he snapped a quick shot in return. The Grunt snarled and dove for
cover, as a pair of his partners opened up on the Spartan’s position.
Behind them, a cobalt-armored Elite urged them forward.
The Master Chief took a deep breath. Time to go to work,
he thought. He sprinted from his cover and his pistol’s reports echoed
through the narrow ravine.
The skirmish took mere minutes. His shield indicator
pulsed a warning yet again, and he paused at the top of the ravine to
allow it time to recharge. His gun swept the area, and noted the
circular structure that dominated a small depression at the top of the
ravine.
His shield had just begun a recharge cycle, feeding off
the armor’s capacious power plant, when the pair of Hunter aliens burst
from cover and lobbed fire at his position.
The first blast struck him square in the chest and sent
him tumbling backward. The second shot was stopped by a thick-trunked
tree. A trickle of blood pooled in the corner of his left eye. He shook
his head to clear his blurred vision and rolled to his left. A third
shot kicked up a plume of soil where he had lain just seconds before.
The Chief tossed a frag grenade, counted to three, then
sprang to his feet and sidestepped to his right, firing all the way.
He’d timed it perfectly. The grenade detonated, and the
flash and smoke briefly confused the aliens. His rounds bounced from
their thick armor plates. In unison, they spun to face him, their
weapons glowing green as they charged for another salvo.
Another grenade detonated in their path and slowed the
Hunters’ advance. They fired through the smoke and the crash of their
weapons thundered through the low ravine.
The Hunters moved forward, eager for the kill—and realized
too late that he’d doubled back and closed in on them. His assault
rifle barked and tore into the gaps in their armor at close range. They
screamed and died.
The Master Chief followed the terrain as it gradually
sloped back down to the west. He dealt with a brace of sentries, then
located his objective: a way into the massive structure that loomed
above. The human saw a dark, shadowy door, slipped through the opening.
He felt the gloom settle around him.
His biochemically altered eyes quickly adjusted to the
darkness, and he moved deeper into the structure, pausing only to feed
a fresh magazine into his assault rifle.
One level below, Zuka ’Zamamee listened.
Someone was on the way, the desperate radio traffic testified to that,
and it seemed safe to assume that it was the very human he had set out
to kill. The fact that the transmissions ceased amid the clatter of
human weaponry attested to the fact that the armored human was here.
But would he enter the trap? He had carefully seeded
references to the map room into the stream of battle updates. If the
humans had tapped into the network using the downed ship’s AI, then
they would have no choice but to send this fearsome soldier to find it.
Yes, the Elite thought, as his highly sensitive
ears
heard the scrape of a booted foot, a muted click as a new
magazine slid home, and the subtle rasp of armor. It won’t be long
now.
’Zamamee looked left and right, assured himself that the
Hunters were in position, and withdrew to his hiding place. Others were
present inside the cargo module as well, including Yayap and a team of
Grunts.
The Master Chief hit the bottom of the ramp,
saw the alien cargo modules that populated the center of the dimly lit
room, and knew that damned near anything could be lurking among them.
Something—instinct, or perhaps only luck—caused his heart to beat a
little faster as he put his back to a wall and slid sideways. Something
wasn’t right.
Light filtered in through an ornate window which enabled
the Spartan to see that there was an alcove to his left. He eased in
that direction, felt a cold weight hit the bottom of his stomach as he
heard movement, and turned toward the sound.
The Hunter rushed out of the darkness, intent on smashing
the Chief with his shield, and finishing him with razor-sharp spines. A
steady stream of 7.62 mm bullets hammered the Hunter’s chest plate and
slowed his rate of advance.
’Zamamee, backed by Yayap and his team of Grunts, chose
that moment to emerge from the relative safety of the cargo module. The
Elite was frightened, but determined to conceal it, and he raised his
weapon. But the Hunter was in his line of fire.
Then, as if the melee weren’t confusing enough, the
second
Hunter charged in, bumped into the Elite, and sent him spinning to the
cold metal floor.
Yayap, who found himself standing out in the
middle of the floor, was about to order a retreat when one of his
subordinates, a Grunt named Linglin, fired a weapon.
It was a stupid thing to do since there was no clear
target to shoot at, but that’s what Grunts were encouraged to do when
in doubt: shoot. Linglin fired, and the plasma bolt flew straight and
true. It hit the second Hunter in the back, and threw the spined
warrior forward, and caused him to collide with his bond brother.
“Uh-oh,” Yayap muttered.
The Master Chief saw his opponent start to
go down, shot him in the back, and brought the assault weapon back up.
The fact that the second Hunter was already down came as something of a
surprise, albeit a pleasant one, and he looked for something else to
shoot.
No doubt stunned by the enormity of his
error, and terrified regarding the potential consequences, Linglin was
still backing away when the bulky, armored human raised his weapon and
fired. Yayap felt Linglin’s blood spray the side of his face as he
tripped over his own feet, fell over backward, and used his hands to
push himself back into the shadows. A hand grabbed hold of his combat
harness, jerked the Grunt into the still yawning cargo module, and held
him in place. “Silence!” ’Zamamee instructed. “This battle is over. We
must live to fight another.”
That sounded very good, maybe the most sensible
thing he’d heard in a hundred units, so Yayap held his breath as the
human walked past the open cargo module. He briefly wondered if there
was some way he could get a transfer back to a normal frontline unit.
To the diminutive alien trooper, such an assignment seemed considerably
less dangerous.
His nerves on edge, fully expecting yet
another
attack, the Spartan circled the room. But there was nothing for him to
deal with except his own twitchiness and the heavy silence which
settled over the room.
“Nice job, Chief,” Cortana said. “Head through the cargo
modules. The security center lies beyond.”
The Master Chief followed Cortana’s directions, entered a
hall, and followed it into a room that featured a small constellation
of lights floating at its very center. “Use the holo panel to shut down
the security system,” Cortana suggested, and, eager to complete the job
before anyone else could attack him, the Spartan hurried to comply. He
was again struck by an odd near-familiarity with the glowing controls.
Cortana used the suit sensors to examine the results.
“Good!” she exclaimed. “That should open the door that leads into the
main shaft. Now all we have to do is find the Silent Cartographer and
the map to the Control Room.”
“Right,” the Master Chief replied. “That, and avoid
capture in unknown territory, possibly held by the enemy, with no air
support or backup.”
“Do you have a plan?” she asked.
“Yes. When we get there, I’m going to kill every single
Covenant soldier I find.”
CHAPTER SIX
D+144:38:19 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock) /
The hills between Alpha Base and the Pillar of Autumn.
Three parallel columns of vehicles are pretty hard to
hide, and McKay didn’t even try. The combination of some thirty
Warthogs and four Scorpions raised a cloud of dust that was visible
from more than two kilometers away. No doubt the heat produced by the
machines registered on sensors clear out in space. Banshee recon
flights could have tracked them from the minute they hit the trail, and
there was only one logical place the vehicles could be headed: the
butte called Alpha Base.
It wasn’t too surprising that the Covenant not only
organized a response, but a massive one. Here, after days of
humiliation, was the opportunity to revenge themselves on the beings
who had taken the butte away from them, paid a surprise visit to the
Truth
and Reconciliation, and raided more than a dozen other locations
besides.
Knowing she was in for a fight, McKay organized the
vehicles into three temporary platoons. The first platoon was comprised
of Warthogs under the command of Lieutenant Oros. She had orders to
ignore ground targets and concentrate on defending the column from
airborne attacks.
Sergeant Lister was in charge of the second platoon’s
Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, which, because of their vulnerability to
infantry, were kept at the center of the formation.
The third platoon, under McKay herself, was charged with
ground defense, which meant keeping Ghosts and infantry off the other
two platoons. A third of her vehicles, five Warthogs in all, were
unencumbered by trailers and left free to serve as a quick reaction
force.
By giving each platoon its own individual assignment, the
officer hoped to leverage the Company’s overall effectiveness, ensure
fire discipline, and reduce the possibility of casualties caused by
friendly fire, a real danger in the kind of melee that she expected.
As the Marines headed east toward Alpha Base, the first
challenge lay at the point where the flat terrain ended. Hills rolled
up off the plain to form a maze of canyons, ravines, and gullies which,
if the humans were foolish enough to enter them, would force the
vehicles to proceed single file, which rendered the convoy vulnerable
to air and ground attacks. There was a different route, however, a pass
approximately half a klick wide. All three columns could pass through
it without breaking formation.
The problem, and a rather obvious one, was the fact that a
pair of rather sizable hills stood guard to either side of the pass,
providing the Covenant with the perfect platform from which to fire
down on them.
As if that weren’t bad enough, a third hill lay
just
beyond, creating a second gate through which the humans would have to
pass before gaining the freedom of the plain beyond. It was a daunting
prospect—and McKay felt a rising sense of despair as the company drew
within rifle shot of the opposing hills. She wasn’t especially
religious—but the ancient psalm seemed to form itself in her mind.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”
Screw it, she thought. She ordered the convoy to
lock and load and prepare for a fight. Psalms weren’t going to win the
coming fight. Firepower would.
From his vantage point high on what Covenant
forces had designated as “Second Hill,” the Elite Ado ’Mortumee used a
powerful monocular to eye the human convoy. With the exception of five
vehicles, the rest of the alien LRVs were hooked to heavily laden
trailers, which prevented them from making much speed. Also serving to
slow the convoy down was the presence of four of the humans’ cumbersome
tanks.
Rather than risk passage through the hills, their
commanding officer had opted to use the pass. Understandable, but a
mistake for which the human would pay.
’Mortumee lowered the monocular and turned to look at the
Wraith. Though not normally a fan of the slow-firing, lumpy-looking
tanks, he had to admit that the design was perfect for the work at
hand, and in combination with an identical unit stationed on First
Hill, the monster at his elbow was certain to make short work of the
oncoming convoy.
The counterthreat, if that’s what it was, would come from
the armored behemoths which rolled along at the very center of the
human formation. They looked powerful, but never having seen
one
in action, and having found precious little data on them within the
Intel files, ’Mortumee wasn’t sure what to expect.
“So,” a voice said from behind him, “the Council of
Masters has sent me a spy. Tell me, spy, who are you here to
watch: the humans or me?”
’Mortumee turned to find that Field Master Noga ’Putumee
had approached him from behind, something he did rather quietly for
such a large being. Though known for his bravery, and his leadership in
the field, ’Putumee was also famous for his blunt, confrontational, and
paranoid ways. There was a good deal of truth in the officer’s
half-serious suggestion, however, since ’Mortumee had been sent to
watch both the Field Master and the enemy.
’Mortumee ignored the field commander’s blunt tone, and
clicked his mandibles. “Someone has to count all the human bodies,
write the report celebrating your latest victory, and lay the
groundwork for your next promotion.”
If there was a chink in ’Putumee’s psychological armor it
was in the vicinity of his ego, and ’Mortumee would have sworn that he
saw the other officer’s already massive chest expand slightly in
response to the praise.
“If words were troops you would lead a mighty army indeed.
So, spy, are the Banshees ready?”
“Ready and waiting.”
“Excellent,” ’Putumee replied. The gold-armored Elite
turned his own monocular on the approaching convoy. “Order the attack.”
“As you order, Excellency.”
’Putumee nodded.
McKay heard the incoming Banshees and the
prospect of action banished her butterflies to a less noticeable sector
of her stomach. The sound started as a low drone, quickly transformed
itself into a buzz, then morphed into a bloodcurdling wail as the
officer keyed her mike.
“This is Red One: We have hostile aircraft inbound. First
Platoon is clear to engage. Everyone else will remain on standby. This
is the warm-up, people, so stay sharp. There’s more on the way. Over
and out.”
There were five flights of ten Banshees
each, and the first group came through the pass so low that ’Mortumee
found himself looking down on the wave of aircraft. Sun glinted
off the burnished, reflective metal of the Banshees’ wings.
It was tempting to jump into his own aircraft and join
them, thrilling to the feel of the low altitude flight, as well as the
steady booming of outgoing plasma fire. Such pleasures were
denied the spy if he was to maintain the objectivity required to carry
out his important work.
Eager to have the first crack at the humans, and
determined to leave nothing for subsequent flights to shoot at, the
pilots of the first wave fired the moment they came within range.
First Platoon’s Marines saw the aircraft
appear low on the horizon, watched the blobs of lethal energy blip
their way, and knew better than to engage individual targets. Not yet,
anyway. Instead, consistent with the orders that Lieutenant Oros had
given, the Helljumpers aimed their M41 LAAGs at a point just west of
the pass, and opened fire all at once. The Banshees didn’t have brakes,
and the pilots had just started to turn, when they ran right into the
meat grinder.
’Mortumee understood the problem right away,
as did ’Putumee, who ordered the following waves to break up and attack
the convoy independently.
The orders came too late for eight of the first ten
aircraft, which were ripped into thousands of pieces, and fell like
smoking snow.
A pair of the flyers got through the storm of gunfire. One
of the Banshees managed to hit a Warthog with a burst of superheated
plasma, killing the gunner, and slagging his weapon. The LRV continued
to roll, however—which meant that the trailer and its load of supplies
did as well.
Once through the hail of bullets, the surviving Banshees
turned and lined up for a second pass.
As the second flight of Covenant aircraft arrived from the
east, split up, and launched individual attacks, Field Master ’Putumee
barked an order into his radio. The mortar tanks on First and Second
Hills fired in unison. Blue-white orbs of fire, trailing tendrils of
energy, shot high into the sky, hung suspended for a moment, then began
to fall.
The plasma mortars fell with a deliberate, almost casual
slowness. They arced gracefully into the ground and a deafening
thunderclap shook the ground. Neither round found a target, but these
were ranging shots, and that was to be expected.
McKay heard a Marine say, “What the hell
was that?” over the command freq, then heard Lister tear a strip
off
him.
She couldn’t help but wonder the same thing herself. The
truth was that while the officer knew the vehicles existed, she’d never
seen a Wraith tank in action, and wasn’t sure if that was what she
faced. It didn’t matter much, though, because the weapon in question
was quite clearly lethal, and would cause havoc in the close quarters
of the pass. She keyed her radio.
“Red One to Green One: Those ‘energy bombs’ originated
from those hilltops. Let’s give the bastards a haircut. Over.”
“This is Green One,”Lister acknowledged.“Roger
that, over.”
There was a burst of static as Lister switched to his
platoon’s freq, though McKay could hear every word on the command
channel.
“Green One to Foxtrot One and Two: lay some high
explosive on the hill to the left. Over.”
“Green One to Foxtrot Three and Four: ditto the hill to
the right. Over.”
Banshees wheeled, turned, and poured fire
down on the hapless humans as one of the pilots fired his fuel rod
cannon and scored a direct hit. A trailer full of precious ammo
exploded, wrapped the Warthog in a fiery embrace, and took the LRV with
it. Covenant forces watching from the hilltops felt a sense of
exultation, and more than that, the pleasure of revenge.
’Mortumee was there to document the battle, not celebrate
it, though he watched in fascination as two of the tank turrets
swiveled to his left in order to fire on First Hill, while two turned
in the opposite direction and seemed to point directly at him.
The Elite wondered if he should seek cover, but before the
message to move could reach his feet, he heard a reverberating roar as
the 105 mm shell passed through the intervening air space, followed by
a
loud craack! as the shell landed about fifty units away. A
column
of bloody dirt flew high into the air. Body parts, weapons, and pieces
of equipment continued to rain down as the half-deafened ’Mortumee
recovered his composure and ran for cover.
Field Master ’Putumee laughed out loud and pointed to show
a member of his staff where ’Mortumee had taken shelter behind some
rocks. That was when the second round detonated just below the summit
of the hill and started a small landslide. “This,” the Elite said
happily, “is a real battle. Keep an eye on the spy.”
Stung by the loss of a Warthog, a
trailer-load of ammo, and three Marines, McKay was starting to question
the division of labor she had imposed, and was just about to free her
platoon’s gunners to fire on the Banshees, when her driver said,
“Uh-oh, look at that!”
A series of plasma bolts stitched a line along the ’Hog’s
side, scorched the vehicle’s paint, and kicked up geysers of dirt as
the officer followed the pointing finger. A force of Ghosts skittered
into the pass.
“Red One to all Romeo units . . . follow me!” McKay yelled
into her mike, and tapped the driver’s arm. “Go get ’em, Murphy—let’s
clear that gap.”
No sooner had the officer spoken than the Marine put his
foot into it, the gunner whooped, and the LRV leapt forward.
The rest of the five-vehicle reaction force followed just
as the Wraith on Hill One hurled a third then a fourth plasma ball high
into the sky.
McKay looked up, saw the fireball slow to a near stop at
the point of apogee, and knew it would be a race. Would the bomb land
on top of the reaction force? Or, would the fast-moving ’Hogs slip out
from under it, leaving the plasma charge to explode harmlessly on the
ground?
The gunner saw the threat as well, and yelled, “Go! Go!
Go!” as the driver swerved to avoid a clutch of rocks, did his best to
push the accelerator through the floor. He mumbled, “Damn, damn, damn,”
as he felt something wet and warm puddle on his seat.
The energy bomb fell with increasing velocity. The first
LRV slipped underneath it, quickly followed by the second and third.
Heart in her throat, McKay looked back over her shoulder
as the plasma weapon landed, detonated, and blew a large crater out of
the ground.
Then, like a miracle on wheels, Romeo Five flew through
the smoke, bounced as it hit the edge of the newly created crater, and
lurched up over the rim.
There was no time to celebrate as the Ghosts pulled into
range and the lead vehicle opened fire. McKay raised her assault rifle,
took aim at the nearest blur, and squeezed the trigger.
Master Sergeant Lister faced a harsh
reality. Never mind Banshees that swooped overhead, or the Ghosts up
ahead, it was his job to do something about the mortar fire, and as the
hills loomed ahead, Second Platoon’s Scorpions were coming up on the
point when their main guns would no longer be able to elevate high
enough to engage the primary target. One more salvo, that’s what the
tanks could deliver, before their weapons could no longer be brought to
bear.
“Wake up, people,” Lister said over the platoon frequency,
“the last group on the left was at least fifteen meters too low, and
the last group on the right overshot the hill. Make adjustments, take
the tops off those hills, and do it now. We don’t have time to
screw around.”
Each tank commander adjusted aim, sent their shells on the
way, and prayed for a hit. They all knew that facing the Covenant would
be easier than suffering Lister’s wrath should the shells miss their
marks.
Field Master ’Putumee watched impassively as
the Wraith on First Hill exploded, taking a file of Jackals with it. He
was sorry to lose the mortar tank, but the truth was that with two
dozen Ghosts milling around in the pass below, he was going to have to
cease fire anyway. Either that or risk killing his own troops. The
Elite snapped an order, saw one last fireball sail into the air, and
watched the humans enter the gap.
Lance Corporal “Snaky” Jones was screwed, he
knew that, had known it ever since the front end of his ’Hog took a hit
and flipped end-for-end. He was standing behind the LAAG, firing
forward over the driver’s head, when he was suddenly catapulted into
the air. Jones saw a blur, hit hard, and tumbled head over heels. Once
his body came to a stop the Marine discovered that it was almost
impossible to breathe, which was why he just lay there at first,
staring up into the amazing blue sky as he gasped for air.
It was pretty, very pretty, until a Banshee
screamed
through the picture and a Warthog roared past on the left.
That was when Jones managed to scramble to his feet, and
yelled into his boom mike, only to discover that it was missing. Not
just the mike, but his entire helmet, which had come loose during the
fall. No helmet meant no mike, no radio, and no
possibility of a pickup.
The Lance Corporal swore, ran toward the wrecked Warthog,
and gave thanks for the fact that it hadn’t caught fire. The vehicle
was resting on its side and the S2 was right where he had left
it—clamped butt down behind the driver’s seat.
It was hard to see Sergeant Corly strewn over the rear
fender with half her face blown away, so Jones averted his eyes. His
rucksack, the one that contained extra ammo, a med pack, and the stuff
he had looted from the Pillar of Autumn, was right where he had
left it, secured to the bottom of the gun pedestal.
Jones grabbed the pack, slung it across his back, and
grabbed the sniper rifle. He made sure the rifle was ready to fire,
then clicked on the safety and ran for the nearest hill. Maybe he could
find a cave, wait for the battle to end, and haul ass back to Alpha
Base. Dust puffed away from the Marine’s boots and death hung all
around.
Lieutenant Oros estimated that First Platoon
had reduced the number of attacking aircraft by two thirds—and she had
a plan to deal with the rest. McKay wouldn’t approve—but what was the
CO going to do? Send her to Halo? The Lieutenant grinned, gave the
necessary order, and jumped down to the ground.
She waved to the volunteers from four of the thirteen
Warthogs she had remaining, then scampered toward a group of
likely-looking rocks. All five of the Marines carried M19 SSM Rocket
Launchers slung across their backs, plus assault weapons, and as many
spare rockets as they could carry in the twin satchels that hung from
their hands. They pounded across the hardpan, scurried into the
protection offered by the surrounding boulders, and set up shop.
When everyone was ready, Oros pulled the pins on one flare
after another, tossed them out beyond the circle of rocks, and watched
the orange smoke billow up into the sky.
It wasn’t long before the Banshee pilots spotted the smoke
and, like vultures attracted to fresh carrion, hurried to the scene.
The Marines held their fire, waited until no less than
thirteen of the Covenant aircraft were circling above them, and fired
five rockets, all at once. A second volley followed the first—and a
third followed that. There was a steady drumbeat of explosions as ten
Banshees took direct hits, some from multiple rockets, and ceased to
exist.
Of the aircraft that survived the barrage of rockets, two
bugged out immediately. The last staggered in response to a near miss,
belched smoke from its port engine, and looked like it would go down.
Oros thought it was over at that point, that she and her volunteers
would be free to fade into the hills, and beat feet for home.
But it wasn’t to be. Unlike most of his peers, the pilot
in the damaged Banshee must have had a strong desire to transcend the
physical, because he turned toward the enemy, put the aircraft into a
steep dive, and plunged into the pile of boulders. Oros tried to make
the shot but missed—and barely had time to swear before the mortally
wounded Banshee augered into the rocks and swallowed the ambush team in
a ball of fire.
The fact that Lance Corporal Jones made it
all the way to the base of the hill without getting killed was just
plain luck. The subsequent scramble up through the loose tumble of
rocks was instinctual. The desire to gain elevation is natural to any
soldier, but especially to a sniper, which was what Jones had been
trained to be when he wasn’t busy humping supplies, operating LAAGs, or
taking crap from sergeants.
The fact that Jones was about to go on the offensive,
about to take it to the Covenant, that was a decision. Maybe not
the smartest decision he’d ever made, but one he knew to be right, and
to hell with the consequences.
Jones was only halfway up the side of the hill, but that
was high enough to see the top of the opposite hill, and the
tiny
figures who stood there. Not the Grunts who were running this way and
that, not the Jackals who lined the edge of the summit, but the shiny
armor of the Elites. Those were the targets he wanted, and they seemed
to leap forward as the Marine increased the magnification on his scope,
and let the barrel drift slightly. Which life should he take? The one
on the left with the blue armor? Or the one on the right, the shiny
gold bastard? At that moment in time, in that particular place, Lance
Corporal Jones was God.
He clicked the sniper rifle’s safety catch, and lightly
rested his finger on the trigger.
’Mortumee had emerged from hiding by that
time and was standing next to Field Master ’Putumee as the human convoy
cleared the pass and turned up-ring. There was a third hill off to his
left—and it, too, was topped with a Wraith.
The mortar tank opened fire. For one brief moment
’Mortumee harbored the hope that the remaining tank would accomplish
what the first two had not and decimate the convoy. But the humans were
still out of range, and, knowing that the Wraith couldn’t do them any
harm, they took the time to put their own tanks into a line abreast.
A single salvo was all it took. All four of the shells
landed on target, the mortar tank was destroyed, and the way was clear.
’Putumee lowered his monocular. His face was
expressionless. “So, spy, how will your report read?”
’Mortumee looked at the other Elite with a pitying
expression. “I’m sorry, Excellency, but the facts are clear, and the
report will practically write itself. Had you deployed your forces
differently, down on the plain perhaps, victory would have been ours.”
“An excellent point,” the Field Master replied, his tone
mild. “Hindsight is always perfect.”
’Mortumee was about to reply, about to say something about
the value of foresight, when his head exploded.
Lance Corporal Jones steadied his aim for a
second shot. The first shot had been perfect. The 14.5 mm slug had
flown
true, entered the base of Blue Boy’s neck, and exited through the top
of his head. That blew his helmet off, allowing a mixture of blood and
brains to fountain into the air.
’Putumee snarled and threw himself
backward—and thereby escaped the second bullet.
Moments later, the twin reports echoed back and forth
between the two hillsides. The Field Master crabbed back to cover and
fed position information to the Banshee commander, and snarled into his
communications gear: “Sniper! Kill him!”
Satisfied that the sniper would be dealt with, ’Putumee
stood and looked down at ’Mortumee’s headless body. He bared his fangs.
“It looks like I’ll have to write that report myself.”
Jones spat into the dirt, angry that the
gold Elite had evaded the second shot. Next time, he promised
himself. You’re mine next time, pal. Banshees banked
overhead, searching for his position. Jones backed into a deep crevice
among the rocks. Fortunately, thanks to the loot gathered aboard the Autumn,
he had twenty candy bars to sustain him.
The security system neutralized, the Master
Chief made his way back through the alien construct, and headed toward
the surface. Time to find this “Silent Cartographer” and complete this
phase of the mission.
“Mayday! Mayday! Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Repeat, we
are taking fire and losing altitude.”The dropship pilot’s strained
voice was harsh and grating—the sound of a man about to lose it.
“Understood,” Cortana replied. “We’re on our way.”
Then, in an aside to the Spartan, the AI said, “I don’t
like the sound of that—I’m not certain they’re going to make it.”
The Master Chief agreed, and in his eagerness to get
topside, made a potentially fatal error. Having just cleared the room
adjacent to what appeared to be the ring world’s Security Center, he
assumed that it was still clear.
Fortunately, the Elite—equipped with another of the
Covenant’s camouflage devices—announced his presence with a throaty
roar just prior to firing his weapon. Plasma fire still splashed the
Chief’s chest, followed by a brief moment of disorientation as he tried
to figure out where the attack was coming from. His motion sensor
detected movement, and he aimed his weapon as best he could. He fired a
sustained burst and was rewarded with an alien scream of pain.
As the Covenant warrior fell, the Master Chief made a mad
dash for the ramp that led up toward the surface, reloading as he went.
Walking into the once-cleared room too quickly had been stupid—and he
was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that
Cortana was there, seeing the world via his sensors, made such errors
that much more embarrassing. Somehow, for reasons he hadn’t had time to
sort out, the human wanted the AI’s approval. Silly? Maybe so, if one
thought of Cortana as little more than a fancy computer program, but
she was more than that. In the Chief’s mind at least.
He smiled at the irony of the thought. The human-AI
interface meant that, in many ways, Cortana was literally in the
Chief’s mind, using some of his wetware for processing power and
storage.
The Spartan made his way up the ramp, through a hall, and
out into bright sunlight. He paused on a platform, and dropped to the
slope below, as Cortana cautioned him to keep an eye peeled for Bravo
22.
Covenant troops were patrolling the beach below—a mix of
Jackals and Grunts. The Master Chief drew his sidearm, switched to the
2X magnification, and decided to work from right to left. He nailed the
first Jackal, missed the next, and killed a pair of Grunts who were
waddling around on top of the mesa opposite his position.
As he moved farther down the slope, he could see Bravo
22’s wreckage, half buried in the side of the mesa. There were no signs
of life. Either the crew and passengers had been killed on impact, or
some had survived and been executed by the enemy.
The possibility made him particularly angry. He turned to
the right, caught the surviving Jackal on the move, and put him down.
He switched to his MA5B and made his way down the grassy slope to the
sand beyond. It was a short walk to the smoking wreckage and the
scattering of bodies. Plasma burns on some of the bodies served to
confirm the Spartan’s suspicions.
Though not the most pleasant of tasks, the Chief knew he
had to obtain ammo and other supplies wherever he could, and took
advantage of the situation in order to stock up.
“Don’t forget to grab a launcher,” Cortana put in.
“There’s no telling what might be waiting for us when we go back to
looking for the Control Room.”
The Master Chief took the AI’s advice and decided to ride
rather than walk. The Warthog that had been tucked under the dropship’s
belly had come loose during the final moments of flight, hit the
ground, and flipped over on its side. He approached the vehicle,
reached upward, got a good purchase, and pulled. Metal creaked as the
’Hog swayed, tilted in the Spartan’s direction, and started to fall. He
stepped back, waited for the inevitable bounce, and climbed up behind
the wheel. After a quick check to ensure that the LRV was still
operable, he was off.
He skidded the Warthog into a slewing turn, then headed
back to the mission LZ—the beachhead the Marines had been left to hold.
The Helljumpers had fought off two assaults during his
absence, but they still owned the real estate they had originally
taken, and remained undeterred.
“Welcome back,” a Corporal said as she took her place
behind the three-barreled gun. “It was getting boring without you.” She
had a grimy face, the words CUT HERE tattooed around
the
circumference of her neck, and a short, stocky body.
The Chief eyed the hastily dug weapons pits and foxholes,
the large pile of Covenant corpses, and the plasma-scorched sand.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
A freckle-faced PFC jumped into the passenger seat, a
captured plasma rifle cradled in his arms. The Spartan turned back in
the direction he had come from, and raced along the edge of the water.
Spray flew up along the left side of the LRV and he wished he could
feel the moisture on his face.
A kilometer ahead, a Hunter named Igido Nosa
Hurru fumed as he paced back and forth across a docking platform still
stained with Covenant blood. Word had come down from an Elite named
Zuka ’Zamamee that a lone human had killed two of his brothers a few
hours earlier, and was about to attack his newly reinforced position,
as well. This was something the spined warrior hoped would happen so
that he, and his bond brother Ogada Nosa Fasu, could have the honor of
killing the alien.
So, when Hurru heard the whine of the surface vehicle’s
engine, and saw it round the headland, both he and his bond brother
were ready. Having received the other Hunter’s characteristic nod,
Hurru took up a position directly outside the entrance to the complex.
If
the vehicle was some sort of trick, a ruse to lure both guards away
from the door long enough for the human to slip inside, it wasn’t going
to work.
Fasu, always one to seize the initiative, and something of
an artist with the fuel rod cannon attached to his right arm, waited
for the LRV to come within range, led the vehicle to ensure that the
relatively slow-moving energy pulse would have an adequate amount of
time to reach its destination, and fired a single shot.
The Master Chief saw the yellow-green blob
appear in his peripheral vision, and made the decision to turn toward
the enemy both to make the ’Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal
an opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just
started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side
of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over.
All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master Chief
scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter drop
down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive knees,
and move forward.
Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were
back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter
before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, “Come on, Hosky!
Let’s take this bastard out!”
The Spartan yelled, “No! Fall back!” and bent over to
retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew
there simply wasn’t time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge
out of the way in time, but the Helljumpers didn’t have a prayer.
The distance between the alien and the two Marines had
closed by then and they couldn’t disengage. The Corporal threw a
fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster,
and stared in disbelief as the alien kept on coming. The alien charged
right through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and
lowered a gigantic shoulder.
Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic shield
hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what was left
onto the ground. The private remained conscious, however, which meant
he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot high
into the air, and brought it down on his face.
The Master Chief had the launcher up on his shoulder by
then and was just about to fire when the Corporal screamed something
incoherent, dashed into the line of fire, and blocked his shot. The
Chief yelled at her to hit the deck and was moving sideways in an
attempt to get a clear line of fire when Fasu blew a hole the size of a
dinner plate through the leatherneck’s chest.
The Spartan hit the firing stud, and a rocket whooshed
for the Hunter. With surprising agility, the massive alien hunched
and sidestepped, and the rocket skimmed past him. It detonated behind
the Hunter, and showered them both with debris.
The Hunter charged.
The Master Chief stepped back, knew there wouldn’t be time
to reload, and that the next rocket would have to fly straight and
true. The surf swirled around his knees as he backed out into the
ocean, fought to maintain his footing in the soft sand, and saw the
alien fill his sight. Was the target too close? There wasn’t time to
check. He pulled the trigger, and a second rocket streaked ahead on a
column of smoke and fire.
The Hunter had reached full speed and couldn’t dodge in
time. The creature’s massive feet dug into the soft ground as it tried
to alter course to avoid the rocket—to no avail. The 102 mm shaped
charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter’s chest armor,
blew through his torso, and severed his spine. There was a mighty
splash as the alien creature fell face first into the water. A pool of
vibrant orange blood stained the surf around the fallen Hunter.
The Master Chief took a moment to reload the launcher then
slogged back up onto the beach. A distant howl of anguish issued from
the other alien’s throat. Serves you right, he thought. You
only lost one brother. I lost all of mine.
He felt a pang of sorrow for the two dead Marines. He should
have anticipated the long-range attack, should have briefed the
leathernecks about the possibility of Hunters, should have reacted more
quickly. All of which meant that it was his fault that the
Marines were dead.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Cortana said gently. “Now be
careful—there’s another Hunter up on the platform.”
The words were like a bucket of cold water in the face.
“Mental combat,” that’s how his teacher, Chief Mendez, had referred to
it, always stressing the importance of a cool head.
Slowly, methodically, the Master Chief worked his way up
the slope, killing Covenant soldiers with machine precision. The small
groups of Grunts were irrelevant. The real challenge waited
above.
Hurru heard the firing, knew he was being
flanked, and welcomed it. Rage, sorrow, and self-pity all churned
around inside him causing him to fire his fuel rod cannon again and
again, as if to obliterate the human by the weight of his barrage.
The human made good use of what cover there was, put his
left arm against the cliff face, and inched his way forward. The Hunter
saw him and attempted to fire, but the fuel rod cannon hadn’t had time
to recharge after the last shot. That left the human free to fire,
which he did. Hurru felt warm relief.
He was about to join his bond brother.
The rocket was a hair high, hit Hurru in the
head, and blew it off. Orange blood fountained straight up, splashed
the alien metal around the Hunter, and splattered his body as it
collapsed.
The Spartan paused, switched to his assault weapon, and
waited for the feeling of satisfaction. It never arrived. The Marines
were still dead, would always be dead, and nothing would change
that. Was it fair that he remained alive? No, it wasn’t. All he could
do was accomplish what they would want him to do. Forge ahead, find the
map, and make their deaths count for something.
With that thought in mind, the Master Chief reentered the
complex on foot, made his way through halls still slick with alien
blood from his last visit, turned down the ramp, proceeded to the lower
level, and passed through the door he had worked so hard to open.
The Master Chief moved into the bowels of the structure.
From outside, the spires stood several stories high, which was
misleading. The interior of the structure plunged deep below the
surface.
He wound down a curving ramp. The air was still and
slightly stale, and thick pillars of the first large chamber he moved
through made the room feel like a crypt.
He slipped through heavily shadowed rooms, padded down
spiral ramps, passing through galleries filled with strange forms. The
walls and floors were made of the same burnished, heavily engraved
metal that he’d encountered elsewhere on the ring. He clicked on his
light and noticed new patterns in the metal, like the swirls in
marble—as if the material were some kind of metal-stone hybrid.
The tomblike silence was shattered by the squalling of
several Grunts and Jackals. There was opposition, plenty of it,
as the human was forced to deal with dozens of Grunts, Jackals, and
Elites. “It’s as if they knew we were on the way,” Cortana observed. “I
think someone is tracking our progress, and has a pretty good idea of
where we’re headed.”
“No kidding,” the Master Chief replied dryly as he shot a
Grunt and stepped over the body. “I hope we reach the Cartographer
before I run out of ammo.”
“We’re close,” the AI assured him, “but be careful.
There’s bound to be more Covenant ahead.”
The Master Chief took Cortana’s counsel to heart. He hoped
that he would find a way to bypass whatever the Covenant had in store,
but that wasn’t to be. As the Spartan entered a large room, he saw that
two Hunters had been assigned to patrol the far side of it. He slung
his rifle and readied the rocket launcher. It was the right weapon for
Hunters, no question about that—so long as he didn’t allow either one
of the monsters to get too close. A rocket fired under those conditions
would kill him if it detonated nearby.
One of the spined aliens spotted the intruder and bellowed
a challenge. The Hunter was already in motion when the rocket flashed
across the room, struck him in the right shoulder, and blasted him to
hell.
A second Hunter howled and fired his fuel rod cannon. The
Chief swore as the wash from a slightly off-target plasma bolt set off
the audible alarm, and the indicator in the upper right hand corner of
his HUD morphed to red.
The Spartan turned, hoping to put the second Hunter in his
sight, but the massive alien slid behind a wall.
Unable to fire, he backed off. The Hunter lunged forward,
and the deadly razor-spines raked across his already-weakened shields.
The Chief grunted in pain as the tip of the uppermost
spine spiked through his armor’s shoulder joint. He felt a sickly
tearing as the meat of his arm parted beneath the scalpel-sharp limb.
He spun, and the spine wrenched free.
The Master Chief felt a rising sense of frustration as he
switched to the assault weapon, backed up a ramp, and used his greater
mobility to circle behind the alien. Then he had it, a brief glimpse of
unprotected flesh, and the opportunity he needed. He put a quick burst
into the warrior’s back, spun away, and barely escaped a blast from the
plasma pistols of the Jackals that had dropped into view and opened
fire.
The Master Chief hurled three grenades over a divider. One
of them scored a direct hit, sprayed the walls with chunks of alien
flesh, and finally brought the frantic firefight to an end.
Cortana, whose life had been on the line as
well, and who had been forced to watch as the Spartan fought for both
of them, processed a sense of relief. Somehow, against all odds, her
human host had come through again, but it had been close, very
close, and he was still in something akin to shock, his back pressed
into a corner, his vital signs badly elevated, his eyes jerking from
one shadow to the next.
The AI hesitated as she processed the dilemma. It was
difficult to balance the need to move ahead and complete the mission
with her concern that she might push the Master Chief too hard,
and possibly endanger them both. Cortana’s affection for the human,
plus her own desire to survive, made it difficult for her to arrive at
the kind of clear, rational decision that she expected of herself.
Then, just as Cortana was about to say something,
anything, even if it was wrong, the Chief recovered and took the
initiative. “All right,” he said—whether to himself or to Cortana
wasn’t exactly clear. “It’s time to finish this mission.”
Working carefully, so as not to walk into an ambush, the
Master Chief left the large room, found his way onto a downward
slanting ramp. He backed into a corner and, satisfied that the area was
reasonably secure, disengaged the shoulder plates of the MJOLNIR armor.
The wound was ragged, and blood flowed freely. The Chief
could ignore the pain, but the blood loss would take its toll and
jeopardize the mission. He made sure the motion sensor was still
active, then slung his weapon.
He dug into his equipment pack and drew out his med kit.
The Spartan had been wounded before, and had on several occasions
performed first aid on injured comrades and himself. He quickly cleaned
the wound, sprayed a stinging puff of bio-foam into the wound, then
applied a quick-adhesive dressing.
In minutes, he had suited up, popped a wake-up stim, and
moved on.
“Foehammer to ground team: You’ve got two
Covenant dropships coming fast!”
The Master Chief stood at the edge of a massive chasm and
monitored his allies’ radio chatter. In the distance, he could barely
see the twinkling of the luminescent panels that Halo’s creators had
left behind to illuminate these subterranean warrens. Below him, the
abyss yawned and appeared to be bottomless.
He recognized the next voice as belonging to Gunnery
Sergeant Waller, the Helljumper in charge of their LZ.“Okay, people,”
Waller drawled,“we got company coming. Engage enemy forces on sight.”
“It’ll be easier to hold them off from inside the
structure,” Cortana put in. “Can you get inside?”
“Negative!”Waller replied.“They’re closing in
too fast. We’ll keep ’em busy as long as we can.”
“Give ’em hell, Marine,” the AI said grimly, and
broke the connection. “We’ll all be in a tight spot if we don’t
get out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive.”
“Roger that,” the Master Chief replied, as he pushed his
way down a ramp, through a pair of hatches, and into the gloomy spaces
beyond. He marched over some transparent decking, crossed a footbridge
and killed a pair of Grunts he found there, followed another ramp to
the floor below, tossed a grenade into a group of enemies that
patrolled the area, and hurried through a likely looking opening. There
was a roar of outrage as an Elite fired up at him from the platform
below while some Grunts barked and gibbered.
The Spartan used a grenade to grease the entire group and
hurried down to see what they had been guarding. He recognized the Map
Room the moment he saw the opening, and had just stepped inside when
another Elite opened up on him from across the way. A sustained burst
from his assault weapon was sufficient to drop the alien’s personal
shields, and he put the alien down with a stroke of his rifle butt.
“There!” Cortana said. “That holo panel should activate
the map.”
“Any idea how to activate it?”
“No,” she replied, her tone arch. “You’re the one
with the magic touch.”
The Master Chief took a couple of steps forward and
reached a hand toward the display. He seemed to know instinctively how
to activate the panel—it almost seemed hard-wired, like his
fight-or-flight response.
He banished the random thought and returned to the
mission. He slid his armored hand across the panel and a glowing
wire-frame map appeared and seemed to float in front of him.
“Analyzing,” the AI said. “Halo’s Control Center is”—she highlighted a
section of the map in his HUD—“there. Interesting. It looks like
some sort of shrine.”
She opened a channel.“Cortana to Captain Keyes.”
There was silence for a moment, followed by Foehammer’s
voice.“The Captain has dropped out of contact, Cortana. His ship may
be out of range or may be having equipment problems.”
“Keep trying,”the AI replied.“Let me know when
you reestablish contact. And then tell him that the Master Chief and I
have determined the location of the Control Center.”
Captain Jacob Keyes tried to ignore the
incessant slam-bam beat of the Sergeant’s colonial flip music
that pounded over the intercom as the pilot lowered the dropship into a
swamp. “Everything looks clear—I’m bringing her down.”
The Pelican’s jets whipped the water into a frenzy as the
ramp was lowered and the cargo compartment was flooded with thick,
humid air. It carried the nauseating stench of rotting vegetation, the
foul odor of swamp gas, and the slight metallic tang typical of Halo
itself. Somebody said,“Pe-euu,” but was drowned out by Staff
Sergeant Avery Johnson, who shouted, “Go! Go! Go!” and the Marines
jumped down into the calf-deep water.
Somebody said, “Damn!” as water splashed up their legs.
Johnson said, “Stow it, Marine,” as Keyes cleared the ramp. Freed from
its burden, the dropship fired its jets, powered its way up out of the
glutinous air, and started to climb.
Keyes consulted a small hand comp. “The structure we’re
looking for is supposed to be over there .”
Johnson eyed the pointing finger and nodded. “Okay, you
slackers, you heard the Captain. Bisenti, take point.”
Private Wallace A. Jenkins was toward the rear, which was
almost as bad as point, but not quite. The ebony water topped his
boots, seeped down through his socks, and found his feet. It wasn’t all
that cold—for which the Marine was thankful. Like the rest of the team,
he knew that the ostensible purpose of the mission was to locate and
recover a cache of Covenant weapons. Still an important thing to do,
even in the wake of Lieutenant McKay’s efforts to raid the Pillar of
Autumn, and the fact that Alpha Base had been strengthened as a
result.
It was a crap detail, however—especially slogging through
this dark, mist-clogged swamp.
Something loomed ahead. Bisenti hoped it was
what the Old Man had dragged their sorry butts into this swamp for. He
hissed the word back to the topkick. “I see a building, Sarge.”
There was the sound of water splashing as Johnson came
forward. “Stay close, Jenkins. Mendoza, move it up! Wait here for the
Captain and his squad. And get your asses inside.”
Jenkins saw Keyes materialize out of the mist. “Sir!”
Johnson saw Keyes, nodded, and said, “Okay, let’s move!”
Keyes followed the Marines inside. The entire situation
was different from what he had expected. Unlike the Covenant, who
killed nearly all of the humans they got their hands on, the Marines
continued to take prisoners. One such individual, a rather
disillusioned Elite named ’Qualomee, had been interrogated for hours.
He swore that he’d been part of a group of Covenant soldiers who had
delivered a shipment of arms to the forces guarding this very structure.
But there was no sign of a Covenant security team, or the
weapons ’Qualomee claimed to have delivered, which meant that he had
probably been lying. Something the Captain planned to discuss with the
alien upon his return to Alpha Base. In the meantime, Keyes planned to
push deeper into the complex and see what he could find. The second
squad, under Corporal Lovik, was left to cover their line of retreat,
while the rest of the team continued to press ahead.
Ten minutes had passed when a Marine said, “Whoa! Look at
that. Something scrambled his insides.”
Johnson looked down at a dead Elite. Other Covenant bodies
lay sprawled around the area as well. Alien blood slicked the walls and
floor. Keyes approached from behind. “What do we have, Sergeant?”
“Looks like a Covenant patrol,” the noncom answered.
“Badass Special Ops types—the ones in the black armor. All KIA.”
Keyes eyed the body and looked up at Bisenti. “Real
pretty. Friend of yours?”
The Marine shook his head. “No, we just met.”
It took another five minutes to reach a large metal door.
It was locked and no amount of fooling around with the keypad seemed
likely to open it. “Right,” Keyes said, as he examined the obstacle.
“Let’s get this door open.”
“I’ll try, sir,” the Tech Specialist, Kappus, replied,
“but it looks like those Covenant worked pretty hard to lock it down.”
“Just do it, son.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kappus pulled the spoofer out of his pack, attached the
box to the door, and pressed a series of keys. Outside of the gentle
beeping noises that the black box made as it tapped into the door’s
electronics and ran through thousands of combinations per second, there
was nothing but silence.
The Marines shifted nervously, unwilling to relax. Sweat
dripped down Kappus’ forehead.
They held position for another few minutes, until Kappus
nodded with satisfaction and opened the door. The Marines drifted
inside. The electronics expert raised a hand. “Sarge! Listen!”
All of the Marines listened. They heard a soft, liquid,
sort of slithery sound. It seemed to come from every direction at once.
Jenkins felt jumpy but it was Mendoza who actually put it
into words. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . .”
“You’ve always got a bad feeling,” the Sergeant put in,
and was about to chew Mendoza out when a message came in over the team
freq. It sounded like the second squad was in some sort of trouble, but
Corporal Lovik wasn’t very coherent, so it was difficult to be sure.
In fact, it almost sounded like screaming.
Keyes responded. “Corporal? Do you copy? Over.”
There was no reply.
Johnson turned to Mendoza. “Get your ass back up to second
squad’s position and find out what the hell is going on.”
“But Sarge—”
“I don’t have time for your lip, soldier! I gave you an
order.”
“What is that?” Jenkins asked nervously, his eyes
darting from one shadow to the next.
“Where’s that coming from, Mendoza?” Sergeant Johnson
demanded, the second squad momentarily forgotten.
“There!” Mendoza proclaimed, pointing to a clutch of
shadows as the Marines heard the muffled sound of metal striking metal.
There was a cry of pain as something landed on Private
Riley’s back, drove a needlelike penetrator through his skin, and aimed
it down toward his spine. He dropped his weapon, tried to grab the
thing that rode his shoulders, and thrashed back and forth.
“Hold still! Hold still!” Kappus yelled, grabbing onto one
of the bulbous creatures and trying to pull it off his friend.
Avery Johnson had been in the Corps for most
of his adult life, and had logged more time humping across the surface
of alien planets than any of the other men in the room combined. Along
the way, he’d seen a lot of strange stuff—but nothing like what
skittered across the metal floor and attached itself to one of his men.
He saw a dozen white blobs, each maybe half a meter in
diameter, and equipped with a cluster of writhing tentacles. They
skittered and bobbed in a loose formation, then sprang in his
direction. The tentacles propelled them several meters in a single
leap. He fired a short, almost panicked burst. “Let ’em have it!”
Keyes, pistol in hand, fired at one of the
creatures. It popped like a balloon, with surprising force. The tiny
explosion caused three more to burst into feathery shards, but it
seemed as if dozens more took their place.
Keyes realized that Private Kappus had been correct. The
Covenant had locked the door for a reason, and this was it. But
maybe, just maybe, they could pull back and close the blobs inside
again. “Sergeant, we’re surrounded.”
But Johnson’s attention was elsewhere. “God damn it,
Jenkins, fire your weapon !”
Jenkins, his face tight with fear, clutched
his assault rifle with white-knuckled hands. It seemed like the little
things were boiling from thin air. “There’s too many!”
The Sarge started to bellow a reply, but it was as if a
floodgate had opened somewhere, as a new wave of the obscene, podlike
creatures rolled out of the darkness to overwhelm the humans. Marines
fired in every direction. Many lost their balance as two, three, or
even four of the aliens managed to get a grip on them and pull them
down.
Jenkins began to back away as fear overwhelmed him.
Keyes threw up his hands with the intention
of protecting his face and accidentally caught one of the monsters. He
squeezed and felt the creature explode. The little bastards were
fragile—but there were so damned many of them. Another attacker
latched onto his shoulder. The Captain screamed as a razor-sharp
tentacle plunged through both his uniform and his skin, wriggled under
the surface of his skin, and tapped his spinal cord. There was an
explosion of pain so intense that he blacked out, only to be brought
back to consciousness by chemicals the thing had injected into his
bloodstream.
He tried to yell for help, but couldn’t make a sound. His
heart raced as his extremities grew numb, one by one. His lungs felt
heavy.
As Keyes began to lose touch with the rest of his body,
something foul entered it, pushing his consciousness down and back even
as it claimed most of his cerebral cortex, polluting his brain with a
hunger so base that it would have made him vomit, had he any possession
of his own body.
This hunger was more than a desire for food, for sex, or
for power. This hunger was a vacuum, an endless vortex that consumed
every impulse, every thought, every measure of who and what he was.
He tried to scream, but it wouldn’t let him.
The sight of Captain Keyes struggling with
this new adversary had frozen Private Jenkins in place. When the
Captain’s struggles ceased, however, he snapped into motion. He turned
to flee, and felt one of the little beasts slam into his back. Pain
knifed into him as the creature inserted its tendrils into his body,
then subsided.
His vision clouded, then cleared. He had some sensation
that time had passed, but he had no way to tell how long he’d been out.
Private Jenkins, Wallace A., found himself in a strange half-world.
Due to some fluke, some random toss of the galactic dice,
the mind that invaded his body had been severely weakened
during
the long period of hibernation, and while strong enough to take over
and begin the work necessary to create a combat form, it lacked the
force and clarity required to completely dominate its host the way it
was supposed to.
Jenkins, helpless to do anything about it, was fully aware
of the invading intelligence as it seized control of his musculature,
jerked at his limbs like a child experimenting with a new toy, and
marched him around in circles even as his friends, who no longer had
any consciousness at all, were completely destroyed. He screamed, and
the air left his lungs, but no one turned to look.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Seventh Cycle, 49 units (Covenant Battle Calendar) /
Aboard Cruiser, Truth and Reconciliation, above Halo’s surface.
Zuka ’Zamamee had entered theTruth and Reconciliation
via the ship’s main gravity lift, taken a secondary lift up to the
command deck, suffered through the usual security check, and been shown
into the Council Chambers in record time. All of which seemed quite
appropriate until he entered the room to find that only a single light
was on, and it was focused on the spot where visitors were expected to
stand. There was no sign of Soha ’Rolamee, of the Prophet, or of the
Elite to whom he had never been introduced.
Perhaps the Council had been delayed, there had been a
scheduling error, or some other kind of bureaucratic error. But then,
why had he been admitted? Surely the staff knew whether the Council was
in session or not.
The Elite was about to turn and leave when a second spot
came on and ’Rolamee’s head appeared. Not attached to his body the way
it should have been, but sitting on a gore-drenched pedestal, staring
vacantly into space.
An image of the Prophet appeared and seemed to float in
midair. He gestured toward the head. “Sad, isn’t it? But discipline
must be maintained.”
The Prophet made what ’Zamamee took to be a mystical
gesture. “Halo is old, extremely old, as are its secrets.
Blessings, really, which the Forerunners left for us to find, knowing
that we would put them to good use.
“But nothing comes without risk, and there are dangers
here as well, things which ’Rolamee promised to keep contained, but
failed to do so.
“Now, with the humans blundering about, his failures have
been amplified. Doors have been opened, powers have been released, and
it is now necessary to shift a considerable amount of our strength to
the process of regaining control. Do you understand?”
’Zamamee didn’t understand, not in the least, but had no
intention of admitting that. Instead he said, “Yes, Excellency.”
“Good,” the Prophet said, “and that brings us to you
. Not only were your most recent efforts to trap the marauding human a
total failure, he went on to neutralize part of Halo’s security system,
found his way in to the Silent Cartographer, and will no doubt use it
to cause us even more trouble.
“So,” the Prophet added conversationally, “I thought it
might be instructive for you to come here, take a good look at the
price of failure, and decide whether you can afford the cost. Do you
understand me?”
’Zamamee gulped, then nodded. “Yes, Excellency, I do.”
“Good,” the Prophet said smoothly. “I’m gratified to hear
it. Now, having failed once, and having determined never to do so
again, tell me how you plan to proceed. If I like the answer, if
you can convince me that it will work, then you will leave this room
alive.”
Fortunately ’Zamamee not only had a plan, but an exciting
plan, and he was able to convince the Prophet that it would work.
But later, after the Elite had rejoined Yayap, and the two
of them were leaving the ship, it wasn’t a vision of glory that he saw,
but ’Rolamee’s vacant stare.
The Master Chief paused just inside the
hatch to ensure that he wasn’t being followed, checked to make certain
that his weapons were loaded, and wondered where the hell he was. Based
on instructions from Cortana, Foehammer had dropped her Pelican through
a hole in Halo’s surface, flown the dropship through one of the
enormous capillary-like maintenance tunnels that crisscrossed just
below the ring world’s skin, and dropped the unlikely twosome off on a
cavernous landing platform. From there the Spartan felt his way through
a maze of passageways and rooms, many of which had been defended.
Now, as he walked the length of another corridor, he
wondered what lay beyond the hatch ahead.
The answer was quite unexpected. The door opened to admit
cold air and a sudden flurry of snowflakes. It appeared as if he was
about to step out onto the deck of a footbridge. A barrier blocked some
of the view, but the noncom could see traction beams that served in
place of suspension cables, and the gray cliff face beyond.
“The weather patterns here seem natural, not artificial,”
Cortana observed thoughtfully. “I wonder if the ring’s environmental
systems are malfunctioning—or if the designers wanted this
particular installation to have inclement weather.”
“Maybe this isn’t even inclement weather to them,” he said.
The Chief, who wasn’t sure it made a hell of a lot of
difference, not to him anyway, stuck his nose around the edge
of
the hatch to see what might be waiting for them.
The answer was a Shade, with a Grunt seated at the
controls. A quick glance to the right confirmed the presence of a
second
energy weapon, this one unmanned.
Then, just as he was about to make his move, a Pelican
appeared off to the left, roared over the bridge, and settled into the
valley below. There was a squawk of static, followed by a grim-sounding
male voice.
“This is Fire Team Zulu requesting immediate assistance
from any USNC forces. Does anyone copy? Over.”
The AI recognized the call sign as belonging to one of the
units operating out of Alpha Base and made her reply.“Cortana to
Fire Team Zulu. I read you. Hold position. We’re on the way.”
“Roger that,”the voice replied.“Make it quick.”
So much for the element of surprise, he thought.
The
Spartan stepped out of the hatch, shot the Grunt in the head, and
hurried to take the alien’s place on the Shade. He could hear the
commotion the sudden attack had caused and knew he had only seconds to
bring the barrel around.
He swiveled the weapon into position, saw the sight glow
red, and pulled the trigger. A Grunt and a Jackal were snatched off
their feet as the ravening energy bolts consumed not only them, but a
chunk of the bridge as well. All the rest of the enemy forces seemed to
melt back into the woodwork.
Then, with no clear targets left in sight, he took a
moment to inspect the bridge. It appeared to have been built for use by
pedestrians rather than vehicles, had two levels, and was held aloft by
the traction beams he had observed earlier. Snow swirled down from
above, hissed when it hit the glowing cables, then ceased to exist.
There was movement farther down the bridge deck, which he
rewarded with a steady stream of glowing energy. He used the plasma
like water from a hose, squirting the deadly fire into every nook and
cranny he could find, thereby clearing the way.
Then, satisfied that he had nailed all the obvious
targets, the Spartan jumped to the deck. The bridge was large enough
that it featured a variety of islands, turn-outs, and pass-throughs,
all of which could be used for cover. That cut two ways, of
course—meaning that the Covenant had plenty of places to hide.
Moving from one bit of protection to the next, he fought
his way across the span, dropping down to the lower level to deal with
Covenant forces there, then resurfacing at the far end, where he
spotted an Elite armed with an energy blade. The Elite ducked behind a
wall.
The Chief saw no reason to close with such a dangerous
opponent if it could be avoided, and tossed a plasma grenade over the
wall. He heard the startled reaction as the explosive device latched
onto the Elite’s armor and refused to let go. The alien emerged from
hiding, and vanished in a flash of light.
Thankful to put the bridge behind him, the Chief activated
the hatch, made his way through the mazelike room beyond, and entered a
lift. It dropped for a long time before coming to a relatively smooth
stop and allowing him to exit. A short passageway took him to a hatch
and the battle that raged beyond.
As the door opened the Master Chief looked up, saw the
bridge directly above, and had a good idea where he was. Then, looking
down, he saw a snow-covered valley, punctuated by groups of boulders,
and the occasional stand of trees.
Judging from the fact that most of the Covenant fire was
directed toward the corner of the valley off to his left, the Spartan
assumed that at least part of Fire Team Zulu was trapped there. They
were under fire from at least two Shades and a Ghost, but putting up a
good fight nonetheless.
He knew that the heavy weapons offered the greatest danger
to the Marines. He sprinted from the protection of the tunnel, paused
to shoot the nearest gunner with his pistol, then headed toward the
dead Grunt’s Shade. He could feel the heat radiating off the weapon’s
barrel as he jerked the corpse out of the seat and took his place
behind the controls. There were plenty of targets, a rather busy Ghost
primary among them, so the Chief decided to tackle that first. A couple
of bursts were sufficient to get the pilot’s attention and bring him
into range.
Both the human and the Elite opened fire at the same
moment, their reciprocal fire drawing straight lines back and forth,
but the Shade won out. The attack vehicle shuddered, skittered
sideways, and blew up.
But there was no opportunity to celebrate as a Wraith
mortar tank turned its attention to that corner of the valley, lobbed
cometlike energy bombs high into the air, and started to walk them
toward the Marines.
The Spartan sent a stream of energy bolts toward the tank,
but the range was too great, and the fire couldn’t penetrate the
monster’s armor.
Convinced that he would have to find some other way to
deal with the tank, the Chief decided to bail out, and was twenty
meters away when one of the bombs scored a direct hit on the Shade he
had just occupied.
The Marines saw him coming and took heart from his sudden
appearance on the scene. A Corporal tossed him a weak grin, and
whooped, “The cavalry has arrived!”
“We can sure use your help—that Shade has us pinned,”
another Marine chimed in.
The soldier pointed and the Spartan saw that the Covenant
had dropped a Shade onto the top of a huge rock overlooking the valley.
The elevation allowed the weapon to command half the depression and
even as the Chief looked, the gunner continued to pound the area where
Fire Team Zulu had taken refuge.
The Marines’ Warthog had flipped, spilling supplies out
onto the ground. The Master Chief paused to grab a rocket launcher, but
knew the range was extreme, and that it would pay to get closer.
So he slung the launcher across his back, checked the load
on his assault weapon, and moved into the trees. A party of Grunts made
a run at the Marines, and were pushed back even as the Spartan spotted
a likely looking tree trunk. He moved up, killed the Jackal that lurked
behind the tree cover, then brought the launcher up to his shoulder.
The Shade winked blue light as he peered through the sight, increased
the magnification, and saw the gun leap toward him. Then, careful to
hold the tube steady, he fired.
There was an explosion on top of the rock, and the Shade
toppled off the side of a cliff.
The Marines cheered, but the Master Chief had already
shifted priorities. He ran for the ’Hog.
A mortar bomb exploded behind him and blew the tree cover
he’d just vacated into splinters. A Marine screamed as a meter-long
shard of wood penetrated his abdomen and nailed him to the ground.
The Spartan grabbed hold of the Warthog’s bumper, then
used his armor’s strength enhancements to flip it back onto its tires.
One Marine jumped aboard and manned the LAAG, and another jumped into
the passenger seat.
Snow sprayed out from behind both of the rear tires as the
Spartan put his foot down, felt the ’Hog break loose, and steered into
the skid.
The sudden movement gave their position away to the
Wraith. It belched, and a comet arced their way and slid sideways
across the center of the valley as if to block the humans from reaching
the other end.
The Spartan saw the fireball, raced to pass under it, and
heard the LAAG open up as the range to the Wraith began to close.
But there was an infantry screen to penetrate before they
could dance with the tank, and both the LAAG gunner and the Marine in
the passenger seat were forced to deal with a screen comprised of
Elites, Jackals, and Grunts as the Chief slammed on the brakes, backed
out of a crossfire, and turned to provide them with a better angle.
The M41 roared as it sent hundreds of rounds downrange,
plucked Grunts like flowers, and hurled them back into the bloodied
snow.
The Marine in the passenger seat yelled, “Youw ant
me? You want some of this? Come and get it!” as he emptied a
clip
into an Elite. The eight-foot-tall warrior staggered under the impact
and fell over backward. He wasn’t dead, however, not yet, not until the
front of the Warthog sucked him under and spit chunks out the back.
Then they were through the screen, and more important,
inside the dead area where the Wraith couldn’t fire mortar bombs
without risking dropping them on itself. That was the key, the factor
that made the attack possible. The Chief braked on a patch of ice, and
felt the ’Hog start to slide. “Hit him!” he ordered.
The gunner, who couldn’t possibly miss at that range,
opened fire. There was an earsplitting roar as large-caliber rounds
pounded the side of the tank. Some glanced off, others shattered, but
none of them managed to penetrate the Wraith’s thick armor.
“Watch out!” the Marine in the passenger seat exclaimed.
“The bastard is trying to ram!”
The Spartan, who had just managed to bring the Warthog to
a stop, saw that the private was correct. The tank surged forward, and
was just about to crush the LRV, when the Master Chief slammed the
lighter vehicle into reverse. All four wheels spun as the ’Hog backed
away, guns blazing, suddenly on the defensive.
Then, having opened what he hoped was a sufficient gap,
the Spartan braked. He slammed the shifter forward and swung the wheel
to the right. The vehicles were so close as they passed each other that
the Wraith scraped the ’Hog’s flank, hard enough to tip the left-side
wheels off the snowy ground. They hit with a thump, the LAAG came
off-target, and the gunner brought it to bear again. “Hammer it from
behind!” the Chief yelled. “It might be weaker there!”
The gunner obeyed and was rewarded with a sharp explosion.
A thousand pieces of metal flew up into the air, turned lazy circles,
and drifted downward. Black smoke boiled up out of the wreckage. What
remained of the tank slammed into a boulder, and the battle was over.
The valley belonged to Fire Team Zulu.
Cortana’s intelligence revealed there were other valleys,
all connected by one means or another, and he would have to negotiate
every one of them in order to reach his objective. A drop-off prevented
the Spartan from taking the Warthog any farther.
He bailed out and made his way through the snow. A cold
wind whistled past his visor and snowflakes dusted the surface of his
armor. “Damn,” one of the Marines remarked, “I forgot my mittens.”
“Stow the BS,” a sergeant growled. “Watch those trees . .
. this ain’t no picnic.”
Strangely, the Chief felt very calm. Right then, right
there, he was home.
It was sunny, only a few clouds dotted the
sky, and the strangely uniform hills piled one on top of the other as
if eager to reach the low-lying mountain ridge beyond. It had been dry
in this region, which meant that the vehicles sent wisps of dust into
the air as they climbed up off the plain, and made for the heights
above.
The patrol consisted of two captured Ghosts, or “Gees” as
some of the Marines called them, plus two of the Warthogs that had
survived the long, arduous journey back from the Pillar of Autumn.
Various combinations had been tried, but McKay liked the
two-plus-two configuration best, combining as it did the best features
of both designs. The alien attack craft were faster than the
LRVs, which meant they could cover a lot of ground in a short period of
time, thereby reducing the wear and tear on both the four-wheelers and
the troops who rode them. But the Ghosts couldn’t handle broken ground
the way the Warthogs could and, not having anything like the M41 LAAG,
they were vulnerable to Banshees.
Therefore, if an enemy aircraft appeared, it was standard
procedure for the Gees to scuttle in under the protection offered by
the three-barreled weapons mounted on the ’Hogs. Each Warthog carried a
passenger armed with a rocket launcher as well, which provided the
Marines with even more antiaircraft capability.
Of course the real stick, the one the Covenant had
learned to respect, was a Pelican full of Helljumpers sitting on a pad
back at Alpha Base ready to launch on two minutes’ notice. It could put
as many as fifteen ODST Marines on any point inside the designated
patrol area within ten minutes. No small threat.
The purpose of the patrols was to monitor a circle ten
kilometers in diameter with Alpha Base at its center. Now that the
Marines had taken the butte and fortified it, they had to hold onto the
high keep. And while there had been some air raids, and a couple of
ground-based probes, the Covenant had yet to launch an all-out attack,
something that bothered both Silva and McKay. It was almost as if the
aliens were content to let the humans sit there while they tended to
something else—although neither one of the officers could imagine what
the something else could be.
That didn’t mean a complete cessation of activity; far
from it, since the enemy had taken to watching the humans, making note
of which routes they took, and setting ambushes along the way.
McKay tried to ensure that she never followed the same
path twice in a row, but often the terrain dictated where the vehicles
could go, and that meant that there were certain river crossings, rocky
defiles, and mountain passes where the enemy could safely lie in
wait—assuming they had the patience for it.
As the patrol approached one such spot, a pass between two
of the larger hills, the Marine on the lead Ghost called in.“Red
Three to Red One, over.”
McKay, who had decided to ride shotgun in the first ’Hog,
keyed her mike. “This is One. Go . . . Over.”
“I see a Ghost, Lieutenant. It’s on its side—like it
crashed or something. Over.”
“Stay clear of it,” the officer advised. “It could be some
sort of trap. Hold on, we’ll be there shortly. Over.”
“Affirmative. Red Three, out.”
The Warthog bounced over some rocks, growled as the driver
downshifted, and entered an open area that led up to the pass. “Red One
to team: We’ll leave the vehicles here and proceed on foot. Gunners,
stay on those weapons, and split the sky. The last thing we need is to
get bounced by a Banshee. Ghost Two, keep an eye on the back door.
Over.”
There was a series of double-clicks by way of
acknowledgment as McKay took the Warthog’s rocket launcher, jumped to
the ground, and followed her driver up the path. A scorched rock, and
what might have been a patch of dried blood, served as reminder of the
patrol that had been ambushed there not long ago.
The sun beat down on the officer’s back, the air was hot
and still, and gravel crunched under her boots. The hill could have
been on Earth, up in the Cascade Mountains. McKay wished that it were.
Yayap lay next to a pile of wreckage and
waited to die. Like most of ’Zamamee’s ideas, this one was totally
insane.
After failing to find and kill the armored human, ’Zamamee
had concluded that the elusive alien must be on top of the recently
captured butte. Or, if not on the butte, then coming and going
from the butte, which was the only base the humans had established. The
butte was a strong point that the Council of Masters would very much
like to take back.
The only problem was that ’Zamamee had no way to know when
the human was there, and when he wasn’t, because while taking the butte
would be something of a coup, doing so without killing the human might
or might not be sufficient to keep his head on his shoulders.
So, having given the problem extensive thought, and aware
of the fact that humans did take prisoners, the Elite came up
with the idea of putting a spy on top of the butte, someone who could
send a signal when the target was in residence, thereby triggering a
raid.
But who to send? Not him, since it would be his
role to lead the attack, and not some other Elite, because they were
deemed too valuable for such a dangerous scheme—nor could they be
trusted not to steal the glory of the kill—especially given the
increased demands associated with countering the mysterious “powers” to
which the Prophet had referred.
That suggested a lower ranking member of the Covenant
forces, but someone ’Zamamee could trust. Which was why Yayap had been
equipped with an appropriate cover story, enthusiastically beaten up,
and laid out next to a wrecked Ghost which one of the transports had
dropped in during the hours of darkness.
The final scene had been established just prior to dawn,
which meant that the Grunt had been there for nearly five full units.
Unable to do more than flex his muscles lest he unknowingly give
himself away, with nothing to drink, and subject to his own
considerable fears, Yayap silently cursed the day he “rescued”
’Zamamee. Better to have died in the crash of the human vessel.
Yes, ’Zamamee swore that the humans took prisoners, but
what did he know? Thus far, Yayap had been unimpressed with
’Zamamee’s plans. Yayap had seen Marines shoot more than one downed
warrior during the battle on the Pillar of Autumn, and saw no
reason why they would spare him. And what if they discovered the
signaling device that had been incorporated into his breathing
apparatus?
No, the odds were against him, and the more he thought
about it, the more the Grunt realized that he should have run. Taken
what he could, headed out onto the surface of Halo, sought shelter with
the other deserters who lurked there. The dignity of his eventual
suffocation when his methane bladder finally emptied had considerable
appeal.
It was too late for that now. Yayap heard the crunch of
gravel, smelled the musky, unpleasant meat odor he had come to
associate with humans, and felt a shadow fall over his face. It seemed
best to appear unconscious, so that’s exactly what he did. He fainted.
“It sounds like he’s alive,” McKay observed,
as the Grunt took a breath, and the methane rig wheezed in response.
“Check for booby traps, free that leg, and search him. I don’t see much
blood, but if he’s leaking, plug the holes.”
Yayap didn’t understand a word the human
said, but the tone was even, and no one put a gun to his head. Maybe,
just maybe, he was going to survive.
Five minutes later the Grunt had been hog-tied, thrown
into the back of an LRV, and left to bounce around back there.
McKay recovered two saddlebag-style
containers from the wrecked Ghost, one of which contained some clothes
wrapped around what she took to be rations. She sniffed the tube of
bubbling paste and winced. It smelled like old socks wrapped in rotting
cheese.
She stuffed the alien food back into its pack, and
investigated the second. It held a pair of Covenant memory blocks,
brick-shaped chunks of some superdense material that could store who
knew how many gazillion bytes of information. Probably a kilo’s worth
of BS? Yes, probably, but it wasn’t for her to judge. Wellsley loved
that kind of crap, and would have fun trying to sort it out.
If they were lucky, it would distract him from quoting the
Duke of Wellington for a few precious minutes. That alone was almost
worth recovering the devices.
As the humans got back on their vehicles and
went up over the pass, ’Zamamee watched them from a carefully
camouflaged hiding spot on a neighboring hill. He felt a thrill of
vindication. The first part of his plan was a success. The second
phase—and his inevitable victory—would follow.
Finally, after battling his way through
wintry valleys twisting passageways, and mazelike rooms, the Master
Chief opened still another hatch and peered outside. He saw snow, the
base of a large construct, and a Ghost which patrolled the area beyond.
“The entrance to the Control Center is located at the top
of the pyramid,” Cortana said. “Let’s get up there. We should
commandeer one of those Ghosts, we’re going to need the firepower.”
The Spartan believed her, but as he stepped through the
hatch, and more Ghosts appeared and began shooting at him, none of the
pilots seemed ready to surrender their machines. He destroyed one of
them with a long, controlled burst from his assault rifle, then
scurried up through a jumble of boulders, and perched on one of the
pyramid’s long, sloping skirts.
From his new position he saw a Hunter patrolling the area
above, and wished he had a rocket launcher. He might as well have
wished for a Scorpion tank.
The pyramid’s support structures offered some cover, which
allowed the Master Chief to climb unobserved, and toss a fragmentation
grenade at the monster above. It went off with a loud craack! ,
peppered the alien’s armor with shrapnel, and generally pissed him off.
Alerted now, the Hunter fired his fuel rod cannon, just as
the Chief hurled a plasma grenade and hoped his aim was better this
time. The energy pulse missed, the grenade didn’t, and there was a
flash of light as the Covenant warrior went down.
It was tempting to run for the top, but if there was one
lesson the Spartan had learned over the last few days it was that
Hunters traveled in pairs.
Rather than leave such a potent enemy guarding his six,
the Master Chief climbed up to the first level, ducked around the wall
that separated one side of the pyramid from the next, and took a peek.
Sure enough, there was Hunter number two, gazing down-slope, unaware of
the fact that his bond brother was dead. The human put a burst into the
alien’s unprotected back. The spined warrior fell and slid, face first,
to the bottom of the structure.
The Chief worked his way farther up, zigzagging back and
forth across the front of the massive pyramid while an extremely
determined Banshee pilot tried to bag him from above, and all manner of
Grunts, Jackals, and Elites emerged to try and block his progress.
He took a deep breath, and continued his climb.
At the top of the pyramid, the Spartan
paused and allowed his long-suffering shield system to recharge. He
stepped over the fallen body of a Grunt, and loaded his last clip into
the assault rifle.
A huge door fronted the top level. There was no way to
tell what waited on the other side, but it wasn’t likely to be
friendly—a series of motion sensor traces ghosted at the edge of the
device’s range.
“What’s the plan?” Cortana inquired.
“Simple.” The Spartan took a deep breath, hit the switch,
spun on his heel, and ran.
It was about twenty meters back to the Shade, and the
Chief covered the distance in seconds. Once at the controls he swiveled
the barrel around just in time to see the doors part and a horde of
Covenant soldiers pour out.
The Shade was up to the job. Just as quickly as they
appeared, the aliens died.
Dismounting once again, the Spartan entered a large,
hangarlike space, took the time required to deal with stragglers, and
activated the next set of doors.
“Scanning,” Cortana said. “Covenant forces in the area
have been eliminated. Nicely done. Let’s move on to Halo’s Control
Center.”
He made his way through the doors and out onto an immense
platform. A gleaming reflective bridge, apparently without supports,
extended over a vast emptiness and ended in a circular walkway. In the
center of this walkway was a moving holographic model of the Threshold
system: a giant transparent image of the gas giant overhead, the small
gray moon Basis in orbit around it, and suspended between the two, the
tiny shining ring of Halo itself.
Outside of the walkway, stretching almost to the edges of
the enormous space, was another model of Halo, this one thousands of
feet across, displaying as it rotated a detailed map of the terrain on
its inner surface.
The span lacked any kind of railing, as if to remind those
who passed over it of the dangers attendant to the power they were
about to encounter. Or so it seemed to the Master Chief.
“This is it . . . Halo’s Control Center,” Cortana said as
the Master Chief approached a large panel. It was covered with glyphs,
all of which glowed as if lit from within, and went together to form
what looked like a piece of abstract art.
“That terminal,” the AI said. “Try there.”
The Spartan reached out to touch one of the symbols, then
stopped.
He felt Cortana’s presence dwindle in his mind as she
transmitted herself into the alien computer station. A moment later,
she appeared—giant-sized—over the control panel. Data scrolled across
her body, energy seemed to radiate out of her holographic skin, and her
features were alight with pleasure.
Her “skin” shifted from blue to purple, to red, then
cycled back as she gazed around the room and sighed.
“Are you all right?” the Master Chief inquired. He hadn’t
expected this.
“Never been better!” Cortana affirmed. “You can’t imagine
the wealth of information—so much, so fast. It’s glorious!”
“So,” the Master Chief asked, “what sort of weapon is it?”
The AI looked surprised. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s stay focused,” the Spartan responded. “Halo. How do
we use it against the Covenant?”
The image of Cortana frowned. Suddenly her voice was
filled with disdain. “This ring isn’t a cudgel, you barbarian, it’s
something else. Something much more important. The Covenant were right,
this ring—”
She paused, and her eyes moved back and forth as she
scanned the tidal wave of data she now accessed. A puzzled look flashed
across her face. “Forerunner,” she muttered. “Give me a moment to
access . . .”
A moment later, she began to speak, and her words rushed
out in a flood, as if the constant stream of new information was
sweeping her along.
“Yes, the Forerunners built this place, what they called a
fortress world, in order to—”
The Chief had never heard the AI talk like that before,
didn’t like being referred to as a “barbarian,” and was about to cut
her down to size when she spoke again. Plainly alarmed, her voice had a
hesitant quality. “No, that can’t be . . . Oh, those Covenant fools,
they must have known, there must have been signs.”
The Chief frowned. “Slow down. You’re losing me.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “The Covenant found
something, buried in this ring, something horrible. Now
they’re afraid.”
“Something buried?”
Cortana looked off into the distance as if she could
actually see Keyes. “Captain—we’ve got to stop the Captain. The weapons
cache he’s looking for, it’s not really—we can’t let him get inside.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no time!” Cortana said urgently. Her eyes were
neon pink and they focused on the Spartan like twin lasers. “I have to
remain here. Get out, find Keyes, stop him. Before it’s too late!”
SECTION IV
343 GUILTY SPARK
CHAPTER EIGHT
D+58:36:31 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Pelican
Echo 419, approaching Covenant arms cache.
Echo 419’s engines roared as the Pelican descended through
the darkness and rain into the swamp. The surrounding foliage whipped
back and forth in response to the sudden turbulence, the water beneath
the transport’s metal belly was pressed flat, and the stench of rotting
vegetation flooded the aircraft’s cargo compartment as the ramp
splashed into the evil-looking brew below.
Foehammer was at the controls and it was her voice that
came over the radio. “The last transmission from the Captain’s ship was
from this area. When you locate Captain Keyes, radio in and I’ll
come pick you up.”
The Master Chief stepped down off the ramp and immediately
found himself calf-deep in oily-looking water. “Be sure to bring me a
towel.”
The pilot laughed, fed more fuel to the engines, and the
ship pushed itself up out of the swamp. In the three hours since she
had plucked the Spartan off the top of the pyramid, he’d scarfed a
quick meal and a couple hours of sleep. Now, as Foehammer dropped her
passenger into the muck, she was glad to be an aviator. Ground-pounders
worked too damn hard.
Keyes floated in a vacuum. A gauzy white
haze clouded his vision, though he could occasionally make out images
in lightning-fast bursts—a nightmare tableau of misshapen bodies and
writhing tentacles. A muted gleam of light glinted from some highly
polished, engraved metal. In the distance, he could hear a droning
buzz. It had an odd, musical quality, like Gregorian chant slowed to a
fraction of its normal speed.
He realized with a start that the images were from his own
eyes. The knowledge brought back a flood of memory—of his own body. He
struggled, and realized in mounting horror that he could just barely
feel his own arms. They seemed softer somehow, as if filled with a
spongy, thick liquid.
He couldn’t move. His lungs itched, and the effort of
breathing hurt.
The strange droning chant suddenly sped into an insect
buzz, painfully echoing through his consciousness. There was something
. . . distant, something definitively other about the sound.
Without warning, a new image flashed across his mind, like
images on a video screen.
The sun was setting over the Pacific, and a trio of gulls
wheeled overhead. He smelled salt air, and felt gritty sand between his
toes.
He felt a sickening sensation, a feeling of indescribable
violation, and the comforting image vanished. He tried to remember what
he was seeing, but the memory faded like smoke. All he could feel now
was a sense of loss. Something had been taken from him . . . but what?
The insistent buzz returned, painfully loud now. He could
sense tendrils of awareness—hungry for data—wriggling through his
confused mind like diseased maggots. A host of new images filled him.
. . . the first time he killed another human being, during
the riots on Charybdis IX. He smelled blood, and his hands shook as he
holstered the pistol. He could feel the heat of the weapon’s barrel . .
.
. . . the pride he felt after graduating at the Academy,
then a hitch—as if a bad holorecord was being scrolled back—then a knot
in his gut. Fear that he wouldn’t be able to meet the Academy’s
standards . . .
. . . the sickening smell of lilacs and lilies as he stood
over his father’s coffin . . .
Keyes continued to float, mesmerized by the parade of
memories that began to pile on him, each one appearing faster than the
last. He drifted through the fog. He didn’t notice, or indeed care,
that as soon as the bursts of memory ended, they disappeared entirely.
The strange otherness receded from his awareness,
but not entirely. He could still sense the other probing him,
but
he ignored it. The next burst of memory passed . . . then another . . .
then another . . .
The Chief checked his threat indicator,
found nothing of concern, and allowed the swamp to close in around him.
“Make friends with your environment.” That’s what Chief Mendez had told
him many years ago—and the advice had served him well. By listening
to the constant patter of the rain, feeling the warm humid air
via his vents, and seeing the shapes natural to the swamp, the
Spartan would know what belonged and what didn’t. Knowledge that could
mean the difference between life and death.
Satisfied that he was attuned to the environment around
him, and hopeful of gaining a better vantage point, he climbed a slight
rise. The payoff was immediate.
The Pelican had gone in less than sixty meters from the
spot where Echo 419 had dropped him off—but the surrounding foliage was
so thick Foehammer had been unable to see the crash site from the air.
The Chief moved in to inspect the wreckage. Judging from
appearances, and the fact that there weren’t many bodies lying around,
the ship had crashed during takeoff, rather than on landing. The
impression was confirmed when he discovered that while they were
dressed in fatigues, all of the casualties wore Naval insignia.
That suggested that the dropship had landed successfully,
discharged all of its Marine passengers, and was in the process of
lifting off when a mechanical failure or enemy fire had brought the
aircraft down.
Satisfied that he had a basic understanding of what had
taken place, the Chief was about to leave when he spotted a shotgun
lying next to one of the bodies, decided it might come in handy, and
slipped the sling over his right shoulder.
He followed a trail of bootprints away from the Pelican
and toward the glow of portable work lights—the same kind of lights
he’d seen in the area around the Truth and Reconciliation. The
aliens were certainly industrious, especially when it came to stealing
everything that wasn’t nailed down.
As if to confirm his theory regarding Covenant activity in
the area, it wasn’t long before the Spartan came across a second
wreck, a Covenant dropship this time, bows down in the swamp muck.
Aside from swarms of mothlike insects and the distant chirp of swamp
birds, there were no signs of life.
Cargo containers were scattered all around the crash site,
which raised an interesting question. When the transport nosed in, were
the aliens trying to deliver something, weapons perhaps, or taking
material away? There was no way to be certain.
Whatever the case, there was a strong likelihood that
Keyes had been attracted to the lights, just as he had, followed them
to the crash site, and continued from there.
With that in mind, he swung past a tree that stood on
thick, spiderlike roots, followed a trail up over a rise, and spotted a
lone Jackal. Without hesitation, he snapped the assault rifle to his
shoulder and brought the alien down with a burst.
He crouched, waiting for the inevitable
counterattack—which never came. Curious. Given the lights, the crash
site, and the scattering of cargo modules, he would have expected to
run into more opposition.
A lot more.
So where were they? It didn’t make sense. Just one more
mystery to add to his growing supply.
The rain pattered against the surface of his armor, and
swamp water sloshed around his boots as the Master Chief pushed his way
through some foliage and suddenly came under fire. For one brief moment
it seemed as if his latest question had been answered, that Covenant
forces were still in the area, but the opposition soon proved to
be little more than a couple of hapless Jackals, who, upon hearing the
sound of gunfire, had come to investigate. As usual they came in low,
crouching behind their shields, so it was almost impossible to score a
hit from directly in front of them.
He shifted position, found a better angle, and fired. One
Jackal went down, but the other rolled, and that made it nearly
impossible to hit him. The Spartan held his fire, waited for the alien
to come to a stop, and cut him down.
He worked his way up the side of a steep slope, and Chief
spotted a Shade sited on top of the ridge. It commanded both slopes, or
would have, had someone been at the controls. He paused at the top of
the ridge and considered his options. He could jump on the Shade, hose
the ravine below, and thereby let everyone know that he had arrived, or
slip down the slope, and try to infiltrate the area more quietly.
The Chief settled on the second option, started down the
slope in front of him, and was soon wrapped in mist and moist
vegetation. Not too surprisingly, some red dots appeared on the
Spartan’s threat indicator. Rather than go around the enemy, and expose
his six, the Master Chief decided to seek them out. He slung the MA5B
and drew out the shotgun—better suited for close-up work. He pumped the
slide, flicked off the safety, and moved on.
Broad variegated leaves caressed his shoulders, vines
tugged at the barrel of the shotgun, and the thick half-rotten humus of
the jungle floor gave way under the Chief’s boots as he made his way
forward.
The Grunt perhaps heard a slight rustling, debated whether
to fire, and was still in the process of thinking it over when the butt
of the shotgun descended on his head. There was a solid thump!
as
the alien went down, followed by two more, as more methane breathers
rushed to investigate.
Satisfied with his progress so far, the Spartan paused to
listen. There was the gentle patter of rain on wide, welcoming leaves,
and the constant sound of his own breathing, but nothing more.
Confident that the immediate perimeter was clear, the
Master Chief turned his attention to the Forerunner complex that loomed
off to his right. Unlike the graceful spires of other installations,
this one appeared squat and vaguely arachnid.
He crept down onto the flat area immediately in front of
it. He decided that the entrance reminded him of a capital A, except
that the top was flat, and was bracketed by a pair of powerful
floodlights.
Was this what Keyes had been looking for? Something
caught his eye—a pair of twelve-gauge shotgun shells, and a carelessly
discarded protein bar wrapper, tossed near the entrance.
He must be getting closer.
Once through the door he came across a half dozen Covenant
bodies lying in a pool of commingled blood. Struck once again by the
absence of serious opposition, the Master Chief knelt just beyond the
perimeter established by the blood, and peered at the bodies.
Had the Marines killed them? No, judging from the nature
of their wounds it appeared as if the aliens had been hosed with
plasma
fire. Friendly fire perhaps? Humans armed with Covenant weapons? Maybe,
but neither explanation really seemed to fit.
Perplexed, he stood, took a long, slow look around, and
pushed deeper into the complex. In contrast with the swamp outside,
where the constant drip, drip, drip of the rain
served to provide a constant flow of sound, it was almost completely
silent within the embrace of the thick walls. The sudden sound of
machinery startled him, and he spun and brought the shotgun to bear.
Summoned by some unknown mechanism, a lift surfaced right
in front of him. With nowhere else to go, the Master Chief stepped
aboard.
As the platform carried him downward a group of
overlapping red blobs appeared on his threat indicator, and the Spartan
knew he was about to have company. There was a screech of tortured
metal as the lift came to a stop, but rather than rush him as he
expected them to, the blobs remained stationary.
They had heard the lift many times before, the Chief
reasoned, and figured it was loaded with a group of their friends. That
suggested Covenant, stupid Covenant.
His favorite kind, in fact—apart from the dead kind.
Careful to avoid the sort of noise that might give him
away, he completed a full circuit of the dimly lit room, and discovered
that the blobs were actually Grunts and Jackals, all of whom were
clustered around a hatch.
The Chief suppressed a grin, slung the shotgun, and
unlimbered the assault rifle.
Their punishment for not guarding the lift consisted of a
grenade, followed by forty-nine rounds of automatic fire, and a series
of shorter bursts to finish them off.
The hatch opened onto a large four- or five-story-high
room. The Master Chief found himself on a platform along with a couple
of unsuspecting Jackals. He immediately killed them, heard a reaction
from the floor below, and moved to the right. A quick peek revealed a
group of seven or eight Covenant, milling around as if waiting for
instructions.
The noncom dropped an M9 HE-DP calling card into their
midst, took a step back to avoid getting hit by the resulting
fragments, and heard a loud wham! as the grenade detonated.
There
were screams, followed by wild firing. The Spartan waited for the
volume of fire to drop off and moved forward again. A series of short
controlled bursts was sufficient to silence the last Covenant soldiers.
He jumped down off the platform to check the surrounding
area.
Still looking for clues as to where Keyes might have gone,
the Master Chief conducted a quick sweep of the room. It wasn’t long
before he picked up some plasma grenades, circled a cargo container,
and came across the bodies.
Two Marines, both killed by plasma fire, their weapons
missing.
He cursed under his breath. The fact that both dog tags
had been taken suggested that Keyes and his team had run into the
Covenant just as he had, taken casualties, and pushed on.
Certain he was on the right trail, the Spartan crossed the
troughlike depression that split the room in two, and was forced to
step over and around a scattering of Covenant corpses as he approached
the hatch. Once through the opening he negotiated his way through a
series of rooms, all empty, but painted with Covenant blood.
Finally, just as he was beginning to wonder if he should
turn back, he entered a room and found himself face-to-face with a
fear-crazed Marine. His eyes jerked from side to side, as if seeking
something hidden within the shadows, and his mouth was twisted into a
horrible grimace. There was no sign of the soldier’s assault weapon,
but he had a pistol, which he fired at a shadow in the corner. “Stay
back! Stay back! You’re not turning me into one of those things!”
The Master Chief raised a hand, palm out. “Put the weapon
down, Marine . . . we’re on the same side.”
But the Marine wasn’t having any of that, and pressed his
back against the solidity of the wall. “Get away from me! Don’t touch
me, you freak! I’ll die first!”
The pistol discharged. The Spartan felt the impact as the
12.7 mm slug rocked him back onto his heels, and decided that enough
was
enough.
Before the Marine had time to react, the Chief snatched
the M6D out of his hand. “I’ll take that,” he growled. The Marine
leaped to his feet, but the Chief planted his feet and gently but
firmly shoved the soldier back to the floor.
“Now,” he said, “where is Captain Keyes, and the rest of
your unit?”
The private turned fierce, his features contorted, spittle
flying from his lips. “Find your own hiding place!” he screamed. “The
monsters are everywhere! God, I can still hear them! Just leave me
alone.”
“What monsters?” the Spartan asked gently. “The
Covenant?”
“No! Not the Covenant. Them! ”
That was all the Spartan could get from the crazed Marine.
“The surface is back that way,” the Master Chief said, pointing toward
the door. “I suggest that you reload this weapon, quit wasting ammo,
and head topside. Once you get there hunker down and wait for help.
There’ll be a dust-off later on. Do you read me?”
The Private accepted the weapon, but continued to blather.
A moment later he curled into a fetal ball, whimpered, then fell
silent. The man would never make it out alone.
One thing was clear from the Marine’s ramblings. Assuming
that Keyes and his troops were still alive, they were in a heap of
trouble. That left the Chief with little choice; he had to put
the greatest number of lives first. The young soldier had clearly been
through the wringer—but he’d have to wait for help until the Master
Chief completed his mission.
Slowly, reluctantly, he turned to investigate the rest of
the room. The remains of a badly shattered ramp led up over a small
fire toward the walkway on the level above. He felt heat wash around
him as he stepped over a dead Elite, took comfort from the fact that
the body had been riddled with bullets, and made his way up onto a
circular gallery. From there, the Master Chief proceeded through a
series of doorways and mysteriously empty rooms, until he arrived at
the top of a ramp where a dead Marine and a large pool of blood caused
him to pause.
He had long ago learned to trust his instincts—and they
nagged at him now. Something felt wrong . It was quiet, with
only
a hollow booming sound to disturb the otherwise perfect silence. He was
close to something, he could feel it, but what?
The Chief descended the ramp. He arrived on the level spot
at the bottom, and saw the hatch to his left. Weapon at the ready, he
cautiously approached the metal barrier.
The door sensed his presence, slid open, and dumped a dead
Marine into his arms.
The Spartan felt his pulse quicken, as he bent slightly to
catch the body before it crashed into the ground. He held the MA5B
one-handed and covered the room beyond as best he could, searching for
a target. Nothing.
He stepped forward, then spun on his heel and pointed the
gun back the way he’d come.
Damn it, it felt like eyes bored into the back of his
head. Someone was watching him. He backed into the room, and the door
slid shut.
He lowered the body to the ground, then stepped away. The
toe of his boot hit some empty shell casings which rolled away. That’s
when he realized that there were thousands of empties—so many
that they very nearly carpeted the floor.
He noticed a Marine helmet, and bent to pick it up. A name
had been stenciled across the side. JENKINS.
A vid cam was attached, the kind worn by the typical
combat team so they could critique the mission when they returned to
base, feed data to the ghouls in Intelligence, and on occasions like
this one, provide investigators with information regarding the
circumstances surrounding their deaths.
The Spartan removed the camera’s memory chip, slotted the
device into one of the receptacles on his own helmet, and watched the
playback via a window on his HUD.
The picture was standard quality—which meant pretty awful.
The night-vision setting was active, so everything was a sickly green,
punctuated by white flares as the camera panned across a light source.
The picture bounced and jostled, and intermittent spots of
static marred the image. It was pretty routine stuff at first, starting
with the moment the doomed dropship touched down, followed by the trek
through the swamp, and their arrival in front of the A-shaped structure.
He spooled ahead, and the video became more ominous after
that, starting with the dead Elite, and growing even more uncomfortable
as the team opened the final door and went inside. Not just any
door, but the same door through which the Master Chief had passed only
minutes before, only to have a dead Marine fall into his arms.
He was tempted to kill the video, back his way through the
hatch, and scrub the mission, but he forced himself to continue
watching as one of the Marines said something about a “. . . bad
feeling.” A badly garbled radio transmission came in, odd rustling
noises were heard, a hatch gave way, and hundreds of fleshy balls
rolled, danced, and hopped into the room.
That was when the screaming started, when the Master Chief
heard Keyes say that they were “surrounded,” and saw the picture jerk
as something hit Jenkins from behind, and the video snapped to black.
For the first time since parting company with the AI back
in the Control Room, he wished that Cortana were with him. First,
because she might understand what the hell was going on, but also
because he had come to rely on her company, and suddenly felt very much
alone.
However, even as one aspect of the Spartan’s mind sought
comfort, another part had directed his body to back toward the hatch,
and was waiting to hear the telltale sound as it opened. But the door
didn’t
open, something which the Master Chief knew meant trouble. It caused a
rock to form at the bottom of his gut.
As he stood there, gripped by a growing sense of dread, he
saw a flash of white from the corner of his eye. He turned to face it,
and that was when he saw one, then five, twenty, fifty of the fleshy
blobs dribble into the room, pirouette on their tentacles, and dance
his way. His motion sensor painted a sudden blob of movement—speeding
closer by the second.
The Spartan fired at the ugly-looking creatures. Those
which were closest popped like air-filled balloons, but there were more,
many
more, and they rolled toward him over the floor and walls. The Spartan
opened up in earnest, the obscene-looking predators threw themselves
forward, and the battle was joined.
It was dark outside. Only one mission had
been scheduled for that particular night, and it had returned to the
butte at 02:36 arbitrary. That meant the Navy personnel assigned to the
Control Center didn’t have much to do, and were busy playing a round of
cards when the wall-mounted speakers burped static, and a desperate
voice was heard.“This is Charlie 2-1-7, repeat 217, to any UNSC
forces . . . Does anyone copy? Over.”
Com Tech First Class Mary Murphy glanced at the other two
members of her watch and frowned. “Has either one of you had previous
contact with Charlie 217?”
The techs looked at each other and shook their heads.
“I’ll check with Wellsley,” Cho said, as he turned toward a jury-rigged
monitor.
Murphy nodded and keyed the boom-style mike that extended
in front of her lips. “This is UNSC Combat Base Alpha. Over.”
“Thank God!”the voice said fervently.“We took a
hit after clearing the Autumn, put down in the boonies, and
managed to make some repairs. I’ve got wounded on board—and request
immediate clearance to land.”
Wellsley, who had been busy fighting a simulation of the
battle of Marathon, materialized on Cho’s screen. As usual, the image
that he chose to present was that of a stern-looking man with longish
hair, a prominent nose, and a high-collared coat. “Yes?”
“We have a Pelican, call sign Charlie 217, requesting an
emergency landing. None of us have dealt with him before.”
The AI took a fraction of a second to check the myriad of
data stored within his considerable memory and gave a curt nod. “There
was a unit designated as Charlie 217 on board the Autumn. Not
having heard from 217 since we abandoned ship, and not having received
any information to the contrary, I assumed the ship was lost. Ask the
pilot to provide his name, rank, and serial number.”
Murphy heard and nodded. “Sorry, Charlie, but we need some
information before we can clear you in. Please provide name, rank and
serial number. Over.”
The voice that came back sounded increasingly frustrated.“This
is First Lieutenant Rick Hale, serial number 876-544-321. Give me a
break, I need clearance now.Over. ”
Wellsley nodded. “The data matches . . . but how would
Hale know that Alpha Base even existed?”
“He could have picked up our radio traffic,” Cho offered.
“Maybe,” the AI agreed, “but let’s play it safe. I
recommend you bring the base to full alert, notify the Major, and send
the reaction force to Pad Three. You’ll need the crash team, the
emergency medical team, and some people from Intel all on deck. Hale
should be debriefed before he’s allowed to mix with base
personnel.”
The third tech, a Third Class Petty Officer named Pauley,
slapped the alarm button, and put out the necessary calls.
“Roger that,” Murphy said into her mike. “You are cleared
for Pad Three, repeat, Pad Three, which will be illuminated two minutes
from now. A medical team will meet your ship. Safe all weapons and cut
power the moment you touch down. Over.”
“No problem,” Hale replied gratefully. Then, a few
moments later,“I see your lights. We’re coming in. Over.”
The pilot keyed his mike off and turned to
his copilot. Bathed in the green glow produced by the ship’s instrument
panel, the Elite looked all the more alien. “So,” the human inquired,
“how did I do?”
“Extremely well,” Special Operations Officer Zuka ’Zamamee
said from behind the pilot’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
And with that ’Zamamee dropped what looked like a circle
of green light over Hale’s head, pulled the handles in opposite
directions, and buried the wire in the pilot’s throat. The human’s eyes
bulged, his hands plucked at the garrote, and his feet beat a tattoo
against the control pedals.
The Elite who occupied the copilot’s position had already
taken control of the Pelican and, thanks to hours of practice, could
fly the dropship extremely well.
’Zamamee waited until the kicking had stopped, released
the wire, and smelled something foul. That’s when the Elite realized
that Hale had soiled himself. He gave a grunt of disgust, and returned
to the Pelican’s cargo compartment. It was crammed with heavily armed
Elites, trained for infiltration. They carried camouflage generators,
along with their weapons. Their job was to take as many landing pads as
possible, and hold them until six dropships loaded with Grunts,
Jackals, and more Elites could land on the mesa.
The troops saw the officer appear and looked expectant.
“Proceed,” ’Zamamee said. “You know what to do.
Turn
on the stealth generators, check your weapons, and remember this
moment. Because this battle, this victory, will be woven
into your family’s battle poem, and sung by generations to come.
“The Prophets have blessed this mission, have blessed
you, and want every soldier to know that those who transcend the
physical
will be welcomed into paradise. Good luck.”
A blur of lights appeared out of the darkness, the
dropship shed altitude, and the warriors murmured their final
benedictions.
Like most AIs, Wellsley had a pronounced
tendency to spend more time thinking about what he didn’t have
rather than what he did, and sensors were at the very top of his list.
The sad truth was that while McKay and her company had recovered a
wealth of supplies from the Autumn, there had been insufficient
time to strip the ship of the electronics that would have given the AI
a real-time, all-weather picture of the surrounding air space. That
meant he was totally reliant on the data provided by remote ground
sensors which the patrols had planted here and there around the butte’s
ten-kilometer perimeter.
All of the feeds had been clear during the initial radio
contact with Charlie 217, but now, as the Pelican flared in to land,
the package in Sector Six started to deliver data. It claimed that six
heavy-duty heat signatures had just passed overhead, that whatever
produced them was fairly loud, and that they were inbound at a speed of
approximately 350 kph.
Wellsley reacted with the kind of speed that only a
computer is capable of—but the response was too late to prevent Charlie
217 from putting down. Even as the AI made a series of strongly worded
recommendations to his human superiors, the Pelican’s skids made
contact with Pad 3’s surface, thirty nearly invisible Elites thundered
down the ramp, and the men and women of Alpha Base soon found
themselves fighting for their lives.
One level down, locked into a room with
three other Grunts, Yayap heard the distant moan of an alarm, and
thought he knew why. ’Zamamee had been correct: The human who wore the
strange armor, and was believed to be responsible for more than a
thousand Covenant casualties, did frequent this place. Yayap
knew
that because he had seen the soldier more than six units before,
triggered the transmitter hidden inside his breathing apparatus, and
thereby set the raid in motion.
That was the good news. The bad news was that
’Zamamee’s quarry might very well have left the base during the
intervening period of time. If so, and the mission was categorized as a
failure, the Grunt had little doubt as to who would receive the blame.
But there was nothing Yayap could do but grip the crudely welded bars
with his hands, listen to the distant sounds of battle, and hope for
the best.
At this point, “the best” would likely be a quick,
painless death.
All the members of the crash team, half the
medics, and a third of the reaction team were already dead by the time
McKay had rolled out of her rack, scrambled into her clothes, and
grabbed her personal weapons. She followed the crowd up to the landing
area to find that a pitched battle was underway.
Energy bolts seemed to stutter out of nowhere, plasma
grenades materialized out of thin air, and throats were slit by
invisible knives. The landing party had been contained, but just
barely, and threatened to break out across the neighboring pads.
Silva was there, naked from the waist up, shouting orders
as he fired short bursts from an assault weapon. “Flood Pad Three with
fuel! But keep it inside the containment area. Do it now!”
It was a strange order, and civilians would have balked,
but the soldiers reacted with unquestioning obedience and a Naval
rating ran toward the Pad 3 refueling station. He flipped the safety
out of the way, and grabbed hold of the nozzle.
The air seemed to shimmer in the floodlit area off to the
sailor’s right, and Silva fired a full clip into what looked like empty
air. A commando Elite screamed, seemed to strobe on and off as his camo
generator took a direct hit, and folded at the waist.
Undeterred, and unaware of his close call with death, the
rating turned, gave the handgrip a healthy squeeze, and sent a steady
stream of liquid out onto the surface of Pad 3. A Covenant work crew
had been forced to build a curb around the area during the days
immediately after the butte had been taken. The purpose of the barrier
was to contain fuel spills, and it worked well, as the high-octane fuel
crept in around the Pelican’s skids and wet the area beyond.
“Get back!” Silva shouted, and rolled a fragmentation
grenade in under Charlie 217’s belly. There was an explosion followed
by a loud whump! as the fuel went up and the rating shut off the
hose.
The general effect was to turn those Elites who remained
on the pad into shimmering torches—screaming, dancing torches. The
response was immediate as the Marines opened fire, put the commandos
down, and were then forced to turn their efforts to fire fighting.
Charlie 217 was fully involved by that time, and shuddered as the fuel
in one of her tanks blew.
But there were other Pelicans to protect and while some
had lifted off, others remained on their pads.
Silva turned to McKay. “Show time,” the Major said, as
Wellsley spoke into his ear. “This was little more than a warm-up, no
pun intended. The real assault force is only five minutes out.
Six Covenant dropships, if Wellsley has it right. They can’t land here,
so they’ll put down out on the mesa somewhere. I’ll handle the pads—you
take the mesa.”
McKay nodded, said, “Yes, sir,” and spotted Sergeant
Lister and waved him over. The noncom had a squad of her Marines in
tow. “Round up the rest of my company, tell them to dig in up-spin of
the landing pads, and get ready to handle an attack from the mesa.
Let’s give the bastards a warm reception.”
Lister tossed a glance at the raging fires and grinned at
McKay’s unintentional pun. “Yes, ma’am!” he said and trotted away.
Elsewhere, out along the butte’s irregularly shaped rim,
the commandeered Shade emplacements opened fire. Pulses of bright blue
energy probed the surrounding blackness, found the first ship, and cut
the night into slices.
’Zamamee and a file of five commando Elites
had already cleared the landing pad by the time the humans flooded Pad
3 with fuel. In fact, the Elite officer wasn’t even on the surface of
the Forerunner installation during the ensuing inferno—he and his
commandos were already one level down, moving from room to room,
slaughtering every human they could find. There had been no sign of the
one enemy soldier they wanted most, but it was early yet, and he could
be around the next corner.
Murphy had just taken the safeties off the
50mm MLA autocannons, and delegated control to Wellsley, when she felt
something brush her shoulder. The petty officer started to turn, saw
blood spray, and realized that it belonged to her. An Elite produced a
deep throaty chuckle as both Cho and Pauley met similar fates. The
Control Room was neutralized.
But Wellsley witnessed the murders via the camera mounted
over the main video monitor, killed the lights, and notified Silva.
Within a matter of minutes six three-person fire teams, all equipped
with heat-sensitive night-vision goggles, were busy working their way
down through the mazelike complex. The Covenant’s camo generators
didn’t block heat, they actually generated it, and that put both
sides on an even footing.
In the meantime, thanks to a dead officer’s personal
initiative, Wellsley had a 50mm surprise waiting for the incoming
dropships. Though effective against Banshees, the Shades lacked the
power necessary to knock a dropship out of the sky, something the
Covenant had clearly known in advance.
But, just as an Elite couldn’t withstand fifty rounds of
7.62 mm armor-piercing ammo, the enemy transports proved vulnerable to
the 50 mm high explosive shells that suddenly blasted their way. Not
only that, but the fifties were computer-controlled—which was to say Wellsley
controlled, which meant that nearly every round went exactly where it
was supposed to.
Control had been delegated too late for the AI to nail the
first dropship, but the second was right where he wanted it to be. It
exploded as a dozen rounds of HE went off inside the fuselage.
Ironically, the compartments that held the troops preserved most of
their lives so they could die when the aircraft hit the foot of the
butte.
But there were only two of the guns, one to the west, and
one to the east, which meant that the surviving transports were safely
through the eastern MLA’s field of fire before the AI could fire on
them. Still, the destruction of that single ship had reduced the
assault force by one sixth, which struck Wellsley as an acceptable
result.
Machine-generated death stabbed the top of the mesa as the
Covenant dropships made use of their plasma cannons to strafe the
landing zone. A fire team was caught out in the open and cut to shreds
even as a barrage of shoulder-fired rockets lashed up to meet the
incoming transports. There were hits, some of which inflicted
casualties, but none of the enemy aircraft was destroyed.
Then, hovering like obscene insects, the U-shaped
dropships turned down-ring, and spilled troops out their side slots,
scattering them like evil seeds across the top of the mesa. McKay did
the mental math. Five remaining transports, times roughly thirty troops
each, equaled an assault force of about one hundred and fifty troops.
“Hit ’em!” Lister shouted. “Kill the bastards before they
can land!”
The response was a steady crack! crack! crack! as
the company’s snipers opened fire, and Elites, Grunts, and Jackals
alike tumbled to the ground dead.
But there were plenty left—and McKay steeled herself
against the coming assault.
The lights had gone off for reasons that the
Grunt could only guess at, a factor which added to the fear he felt.
Unable to do anything more, Yayap listened to the muffled sounds of
battle, and wondered which side to root for. He didn’t like being a
prisoner but was starting to wonder if he wouldn’t be better off with
the humans. For a while at least, until—
A blob of light appeared, slid down the opposite wall,
crossed the floor, and found its way into the cell. “Yayap? Are you in
there?”
There were other lights now, and the Grunt saw the air
shimmer in front of him. It was ’Zamamee! Much to Yayap’s amazement,
the Elite had kept his word and actually come looking for him.
Realizing that the breathing apparatus made it difficult for others to
tell his kind apart, the Grunt pushed his face up against the bars.
“Yes, Excellency, I am here.”
“Good,” the Elite said. “Now stand back so we can blow the
door.”
All of the Grunts in the cell retreated to the back of the
room while one of the commandos attached a charge to the door lock,
backed away, and made use of a remote to trigger it. There was a small
flash of light, followed by a subdued bang! as the explosive was
detonated. Hinges squeaked as Yayap pushed the gate out of the way.
“Now,” ’Zamamee said eagerly, “lead us to the human. We’ve
been through most of the complex, but haven’t run into him yet.”
So, Yayap thought to himself, the only reason
you
came looking for me was to find the human. I should have known. “Of
course, Excellency,” the Grunt replied, surprised by his own
smoothness. “The aliens captured some of our Banshees. The human was
assigned to guard them.”
Yayap expected ’Zamamee to challenge the claim, to ask how
he knew, but the Elite took him at his word. “Very well,” ’Zamamee
replied. “Where are the aircraft kept?”
“Up on the mesa,” Yayap answered truthfully, “west of the
landing pads.”
“We will lead the way,” the Elite said importantly, “but
stay close. It would be easy to become lost.”
“Yes, Excellency,” the Grunt replied, “whatever you say.”
Unable to land on or near the pads as
originally planned, Field Master ’Putumee had been forced to drop his
assault team on the area up-spin of the Forerunner complex. That meant
that his troops would have to advance across open ground, with very
little cover, and without benefit of heavy weapons to clear the way.
The wily field officer had a trick up his sleeve, however.
Rather than release the dropships, he ordered them to remain over the
LZ, and strafe the ground ahead of his steadily advancing troops. It
wasn’t what the transports had been designed for, and the pilots didn’t
like it, but so what? ’Putumee, who saw all aviators as little more
than glorified chauffeurs, wasn’t especially interested in how they
felt.
So, the U-shaped dropships drifted down toward the human
fortifications, plasma cannons probing the ground below, while volleys
of rockets lashed upward, exploding harmlessly against their flanks.
The field officer, who advanced along with the second rank
of troops, waved his Jackals forward as the humans were forced to pull
out of their firing pits, and withdraw to their next line of defense.
’Putumee paused next to one of the now empty pits and
looked into it. Something about the excavation bothered him, but what?
Then he had it. The rectangular hole was too neat, too
even, to have been dug during the last half unit. What other
preparations had the aliens made, the officer wondered?
The answer came in a heartbeat. McKay said, “Fire!” and
the Scorpion’s gunner complied. The tank lurched under the officer’s
feet as the shell left the main gun and the hull started to vibrate as
the machine gun opened up. The explosion, about six hundred meters
downrange, erased an entire file of Grunts. The other MBT, one of two
which Silva had ordered his battalion to bring topside, fired two
seconds later. That round killed an Elite, two Jackals, and a Hunter.
Marines cheered and McKay smiled. Though doubtful that the
Covenant would try to put troops on the mesa, the Major was a careful
man, which was why he ordered the Helljumpers to dig firing pits
up-ring of the installation, and create bunkers for the tanks.
Now, firing with their barrels nearly parallel to the
ground, the MBTs were in the process of turning the area in front of
them into a moonscape as each shell threw half a ton of soil up into
the air, and carved craters out of the plateau.
Unbeknownst to McKay, or any other human, for that matter,
the third shell to roar down range blew Field Master ’Putumee in half.
The assault continued, but more slowly now, as lower-ranked Elites
assumed command, and tried to rally their troops.
Though pursuing his own sub-mission,
’Zamamee had been monitoring the command net, and knew that the assault
had stalled. It was only a matter of time before the dropships would be
ordered to swoop in, pick up those who could crawl, walk, or run to
them, and leave for safer climes.
That meant that he should be pulling out, looking for a
way to slip through the human lines, but the session with the Prophet
continued to haunt him. His best chance, no, his only chance,
was
to find the human and kill him. He would keep his head, all would be
forgiven, and who knew? A lot of Elites had been killed—so there might
be a promotion in the offing.
Thus reassured, he drove ahead.
The commandos were up on the first level by then, just
approaching a door to the outside, when one of three waiting Marines
saw a line of green blobs start to pass the alcove in which he was
hiding, and opened fire.
There was complete pandemonium as the humans ran through
clip after clip of ammunition, Grunts were blown off their feet, Elites
fired in every direction, and soon started to fall.
’Zamamee felt his plasma rifle cycle open as it attempted
to cool itself, and knew he was about to die, when a plasma grenade
sailed in among the humans and locked onto a human soldier’s arm. He
yelled, “No!” but it was already too late, and the explosion
slaughtered the entire fire team.
Yayap, who had appropriated both the grenade and a pistol
from one of the dead commandos, tugged on ’Zamamee’s combat harness.
“This way, Excellency. . . . Follow me!”
The Elite did. The Grunt led the officer out through a
door, down a walkway, and onto the platform where ten Banshees stood in
an orderly row. There were no guards. ’Zamamee looked around. “Where is
he?”
Yayap shrugged. “I have no idea, Excellency.”
’Zamamee felt a mixture of anger, fear, and hopelessness
as a dropship passed over his head and disappeared down-spin. The
entire effort had been a failure.
“So,” he said harshly, “you lied to me. Why?”
“Because you know how to fly one of these things,”
the Grunt answered simply, “and I don’t.”
The Elite’s eyes seemed to glow as if lit from within. “I
should shoot you and leave your body for the humans to throw off the
cliff.”
“You can try ,” Yayap said as he pointed the
plasma
pistol at his superior’s head, “but I wouldn’t advise it.” It took all
the courage the Grunt could muster to point his weapon at an Elite—and
his hand shook in response to the fear he felt. But not much, not
enough so that an energy bolt would miss, and ’Zamamee knew it.
The Elite nodded. Moments later, a heavily loaded Banshee
wobbled off the ground, slipped over the edge of the butte, and
immediately began to lose altitude. A Shade gunner caught a glimpse of
it, and sent three bursts of plasma racing after the assault craft, but
the Banshee was soon out of range.
The battle for Alpha Base was over.
The Spartan fired into what seemed like a
tidal wave of tentacled horrors, backed away, and resolved to keep
moving. He was vulnerable, in particular from behind, but the armor
would help, especially since the monsters liked to jump on people.
What happened next wasn’t clear, but could make Marines
scream, and put them out of action in a relatively short period of
time. Ammo would be a concern, he knew that, so rather than fire
wildly, he forced himself to aim, trying to pop as many of the things
as he could.
They came at him in twos, threes, and fours, flew into
fleshy bits as the bullets ripped them apart and seemed to melt away.
The problem was that there were hundreds of the little bastards, maybe
thousands
, which made it difficult to keep up as they flooded in his direction.
There were strategies, though, things the Chief could do
to help even the odds, and they made all the difference. The first was
to run, firing as he went, stretching their ragged formation thin,
forcing them to skitter from one end of the room to the other. They
were numerous and determined, but not particularly bright.
The second was to watch for breakouts, concentrations of
the creatures where a well-thrown grenade could destroy hundreds of
them all at once.
And the third was to switch back and forth between the
assault weapon and the shotgun, thereby maintaining a constant rate of
fire, only pausing to reload when there was a momentary lull in the
fighting.
These strategies suddenly became even more critical as
something new leaped out of the darkness. A mass of tattered
flesh and swinging limbs lashed at his head. During the first moments
of the attack the Chief wondered if a corpse had somehow fallen on him
from above, but soon learned the truth, as more of the horribly
misshapen creatures appeared and hurled themselves forward. Not just
ran, but vaulted high into the air, as if hoping to crush him
under their weight.
The creatures were roughly humanoid, hunchbacked figures
that looked partially rotted. Their limbs seemed to be stretched to the
breaking point. Clusters of tentacles protruded from ragged holes in
the skin.
They were susceptible to bullets, however, something for
which the Chief was thankful, although it often took fifteen or twenty
rounds to put one down for good. Strangely, even the live ones looked
like they were dead, which on reflection the Master Chief was starting
to believe they were. That would explain why some of the ugly sons of
bitches had a marked resemblance to Covenant Elites, or to what an
Elite would look like if you killed him, buried the body, and dug it up
two weeks later.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, two of the
reanimated Elites barged in through the hatch, and were promptly put
down. That provided the Chief with an opportunity to escape.
There were more of the two-legged freaks right on his
tail, though, along with a jumble of the tumbling, leaping swarms of
spherical creatures, and it was necessary to scrub the entire lot of
them with auto fire before he could disengage and slip through a door.
The Spartan found himself on the upper gallery of a large,
well-lit room. It was packed with the bipedal, misshapen creatures, but
none seemed to be aware of him. He intended to keep it that way, and
slid silently along the right-hand wall to a hatch.
A short journey brought the Chief to a similar space where
what looked like full-fledged battle was underway between Covenant
troops and the new hostiles.
The Spartan briefly considered engaging the targets—there
was certainly no shortage of them. He held his fire instead, and
lingered behind a fallen cargo module. After a hellish battle, the
combatants had annihilated one another, which left him free to cross
the bridge that led to the far end back along the walkway, and exit via
the side door.
Another of the hunchbacked creatures dropped from above
and slammed into him. The Spartan staggered back, dipped, and hurled
the monster back over his shoulder. It crunched into the wall and left
a trail of mottled gray-green, viscous fluid as it slid to the floor.
The Master Chief turned to continue on, when his motion
sensor flickered red—illuminating a contact right behind him. He spun
and was startled to see the crumpled, badly damaged creature struggle
to its feet. Its left arm dangled uselessly and brittle bone protruded
from its pale, gangrenous flesh.
The thing’s right arm was still functional, however. A
twisting column of tentacles burst from the creature’s right wrist and
he could hear the bones inside break as they forced its right hand
roughly aside.
The tentacle flashed out, cracked like a whip and hurled
the Master Chief to the floor. His shields were almost completely
drained from the single blow.
He rolled into a crouch and opened fire. The 7.62mm
armor-piercing rounds nearly cut the monster in half. He kicked the
fallen hostile, put two in its chest. This time, the damn thing
should stay dead, he thought.
He moved farther along the hallway. Two Marines lay where
they had fallen, proving that at least some of the second squad had
managed to get this far, which opened the possibility that more had
escaped as well.
The Master Chief checked, discovered that they still wore
their dog tags, and took them. He crept through the wide galleries and
narrow corridors, past humming machinery and entered a dark, gloomy
vault. His motion tracker flashed crimson warnings—he was in Hostile
Central.
Another of the misshapen bipedal hostiles shambled by, and
he recognized the shape of the creature’s head—the long, angular snout
of an Elite faced him. What held his fire was where the head was
located.
The alien’s skull was canted at a sickening angle, as if
the bones of its neck had been softened or liquefied. It hung limply
down the creature’s back, lifeless—like a limb that needed amputation.
It was as if something had rewritten the Elite, reshaped
it from the inside out. The Spartan felt an unaccustomed emotion: a
trill of fear. An image of helplessness—of screaming at a looming
threat, powerless—flashed through his mind, a snapshot of his
cryo-addled dreams aboard the Pillar of Autumn.
No way is that going to happen to me, he thought.
No
way .
The beast shuffled by, and moved out of sight.
He took a deep breath, exhaled, then burst from his
position and charged for the center of the room. He battered aside the
shambling beasts, and crushed a handful of the small spherical
creatures beneath his boots. His shotgun boomed and thick, green blood
splashed the floor.
He reached his objective: a large lift platform, identical
to the one he’d ridden down into this hellhole. He reached for the
activation panel, and hoped that he’d find the up button.
One of the hostiles leaped high in the air and landed next
to him.
The Chief dropped to one knee, shoved the barrel of the
shotgun into the creature’s belly and fired. The beast flipped end over
end, and fell back into a clot of the smaller, round hostiles.
He dove for the activation panel, and stabbed at the
controls.
The elevator platform dropped like a rock, so far down and
so fast that his ears popped.
Where the hell was Cortana when you needed her?Always
telling him to “go through that door,” “cross that bridge,” or “climb
that pyramid.” Annoying at times, but reassuring as well.
The basement, if that’s what it was, had all the charm of
a crypt. A passageway took him into another large space where he had to
fight his way across the floor to a door and the tunnel-like corridor
beyond. That’s when the Spartan came face-to-face with something he
hadn’t seen before and would have preferred never to see again: one of
the combative, bipedal beasts—this one a horribly mutated human.
Though the creature was distorted by whatever had ravaged his body, the
Chief recognized him nonetheless.
It was Private Manuel Mendoza, the soldier that Sergeant
Johnson loved to yell at, and one of the Marines who had been with
Keyes when he disappeared into this nightmare.
Though twisted by what had been done to him, the Private’s
face still retained a trace of humanity, and it was that which caused
the Master Chief to remove this finger from the shotgun’s trigger, and
try to make contact.
“Mendoza, come on, let’s get the hell out of here. I know
they did something to you but the medics can fix it.”
The reanimated Marine, now possessed of superhuman
strength, struck the Chief with such force that it nearly knocked him
off his feet, and triggered the suit’s alarm. Mendoza—or rather, the
thing
that had once been Mendoza—waved a whiplike tentacle and lashed out
again. The Spartan staggered backward, pulled the trigger, and was
subsequently forced to pull it again as the twelve-gauge buckshot tore
what had been Mendoza apart.
The results were both spectacular and disgusting. As the
corpselike horror came apart, the Chief saw that one of the small,
spherical creatures had taken up residence inside the soldier’s chest
cavity, and seemed to have extended its tentacles into other parts of
what had been Mendoza’s body. A third shotgun blast served to
destroy it as well.
Was that how these things worked? The little round
pod-things infected their hosts, and mutated the victim into some kind
of combat form. He considered the possibility that this was some kind
of new Covenant bio-weapon, and discarded it. The first of these combat
forms he’d seen had once been Elites.
Whatever these damned things were, they were lethal to
humans and Covenant alike.
He quickly fed shells into his shotgun, then moved on. The
Spartan moved as fast as he could—at a dead run. He charged into
another room, scrambled up onto the gallery above, blew an Elite form
right out of his boots, and ducked through a waiting door.
The area on the other side was more of a challenge. The
Chief had the second floor to himself, but an army of the freaks owned
the floor below, and that’s where he needed to go.
Height conferred advantages. Some well-placed grenades,
followed by a jump from the walkway, and sixty seconds of
close-quarters action were sufficient to see him through. Still, it was
a tremendous relief to pass through a completely uncontested space, and
into a compartment where he found a new development to cope with.
In addition to their battering attacks, the creatures had
acquired both human and Covenant weapons from their victims, and these
combat forms were even more dangerous as a result. The combat forms
weren’t the smartest foes he’d ever encountered, but they weren’t
mindless automatons, either—they could operate machines and fire
weapons.
Bullets pinged from the metal walls, plasma fire stuttered
through the air, and a grenade detonated as the Master Chief cleared
the area, discovered a place where some Marines had staged a last stand
on top of a cargo container. He paused to recover their dog tags,
scavenged some ammo, and kept on going.
Something nagged at him, but what was it?
Something he’d forgotten?
It came to him all at once: He had nearly forgotten his
own name.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The droning chant that had lurked at the edge of his
awareness buzzed more loudly, and he felt some kind of pressure—some
sense of anger.
Why was he angry?
No, something else was angry . . . because he’d
remembered his own name?
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
Where was he? How did he get here? He struggled to find
the memory.
He remembered parts of it now. There was a dark, alien
room, hordes of some terrifying enemy, gunfire, then a stabbing pain .
. .
They must have captured him. That was it. This might be
some new trick by the enemy. He’d give them nothing. He struggled to
remember who the enemy was.
He repeated the mantra in his head: Keyes, Jacob. Captain.
Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The buzzing pressure increased. He resisted, though he was
unsure why. Something about the drone frightened him. The sense of
invasion deepened.
Is this a Covenant trick? he wondered. He tried to
scream, “It won’t work. I’ll never lead you to Earth,” but couldn’t
make his mouth work, couldn’t feel his own body.
As the thought of his home planet echoed through Keyes’
consciousness, the tone and tenor of the drone changed, as if pleased.
He—Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK—was startled
when new images played across his mind.
He realized, too late, that something was sifting through
his mind, like a grave robber looting a tomb. He had never felt so
powerless, so afraid . . .
His fear vanished in a flood of emotion as he felt the
warmth of the first woman he’d ever kissed . . .
He tried to scream as the memory was ripped from him and
discarded.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
As each of the fragments of his past played out and was
sucked into the void, he could feel the invader enveloping him like an
ocean of evil. But, like the pieces of flotsam that remain after a ship
has gone down, random pieces of himself remained, a sort of makeshift
raft to which he could momentarily cling.
The image of a smiling woman, a ball spiraling through the
air, a crowded street, a man with half his face blown away, tickets to
a show he couldn’t remember, the gentle sound of wind chimes, and the
smell of newly baked bread.
But the sea was too rough, waves crashed down on the raft,
and broke it apart. Swells lifted Keyes up, others pushed him down, and
the final darkness beckoned. But then, just as the ocean was about to
consume him, Keyes became aware of the one thing the creature that
raped his mind couldn’t consume: the CNI transponder’s carrier wave.
He reached for it like a drowning man, clutched the
lifeline with all his might, and refused to let go. For here, deep
within his watery grave, was a thread that led back to what he had been.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The Master Chief fired the last of his
shotgun rounds into the collapsed hulk of a combat form. It twitched
and lay still.
After winding through the confusion of subterranean
chambers and passageways for what seemed like hours, he’d finally found
a lift to the surface. He carefully tapped the activation panel—worried
for a moment that this lift would also drop him deeper into the
facility—and felt the lift lurch into a rapid ascent.
As the lift climbed, Foehammer’s worried voice crackled
from his comm system.
“This is Echo 419. Chief, is that you? I lost your
signal when you disappeared inside the structure. What’s going on down
there? I’m tracking movement all over the place.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” the Master Chief
replied, his voice grim, “and believe me: you don’t want to know. Be
advised: Captain Keyes is missing, and is most likely KIA. Over.”
“Roger that,”the pilot replied.“I’m sorry to
hear it, over.”
The lift jerked to a halt, the Spartan stepped off, and
found himself surrounded by Marines. Not the shambling combat forms
he’d spent the last eternity fighting, but normal, unchanged human
beings. “Good to see you, Chief,” a Corporal said.
The Chief cut the soldier off. “There’s no time for that,
Marine. Report.”
The young Marine gulped, then started talking. “After we
lost contact we headed for the RV point, and these things, they
ambushed us. Sir: Advise we get the hell out of here, ASAP.”
“That’s command thinking, Corporal,” the Chief replied.
“Let’s go.”
It was a short walk up the ramp and into the rain.
Strangely, and much to his surprise, it felt good to enter the stinking
swamp. Very good indeed.
CHAPTER NINE
D+60:33:54 (Flight Officer Captain Rawley
Mission Clock) / Pelican Echo 419, above Covenant arms cache.
“There’s a large tower a few hundred meters from your
current position. Find a way above the fog and foliage canopy and I can
move in and pick you up,” Rawley said. Her eyes were glued to her
scopes as SPARTAN-117 took the lead and the Marines left the ancient
complex and entered the fetid embrace of the swamp. The rain and some
kind of interference from the structure played hell with the Pelican’s
detection gear, but she was damned if she was going to lose this team
now. She had a reputation to maintain, after all.
“Roger that,”the Chief replied,“we’re on our
way.”
She kept the Pelican circling, her eyes peeled for
trouble. There was no immediate threat. That made her even more
nervous. Ever since they’d made it down to the surface of the ring,
trouble always seemed to strike without warning.
For the hundredth time since lifting off from Alpha Base,
she cursed the lack of ammunition for the Pelicans.
Knowing the dropship was somewhere above the
mist, and eager to get the hell out, the Marines forged ahead. The
Spartan cautioned them to slow down, to keep their eyes peeled, but it
wasn’t long before he found himself back toward the middle of the pack.
The tower Foehammer had mentioned appeared up ahead. The
base of the column was circular, with half-rounded supports that
protruded from the sides, probably for stability. Farther up, extending
out from the column itself, were winglike platforms. Their purpose
wasn’t clear, but the same could be said for the entire structure. The
top of the shaft was lost in the mist.
The Master Chief paused to look around, heard one of the
leathernecks yell “Contact!” quickly followed by the staccato rip of an
assault weapon fired on full automatic. A host of red dots had appeared
on the Spartan’s threat indicator. He saw a dozen of the spherical
infection forms bounce out of the mist and knew that any possibility of
containing the creatures underground had been lost.
The Pelican’s sensors suddenly painted
dozens—correction, hundreds—of new contacts on the ground. Rawley
cursed and wheeled the Pelican around, expecting ground fire.
No fire was directed at the dropship. “What the hell?” she
muttered. First, the contacts appeared out of nowhere, charged into the
open, but didn’t shoot at the air cover? Maybe the Covenant were
getting stupid as well as ugly.
She hit the radio to warn the troops and winced as the
muffled pop of automatic weapons fire burst from her headset. “Heads
up, ground team!” she yelled. “Multiple contacts on the ground—they’re
right on top of you!”
The radio squealed, then static filled her speakers. The
interference worsened. She thumped the radio controls with a gloved
fist. “Damn it!” she yelled.
“Uh, boss,” Frye said. “You better take a look at this.”
She glanced back at her copilot, followed his gaze, and
her own eyes widened. “Okay,” she said, “any idea what the hell that
is?”
The Chief fired short bursts from his
assault weapon, popped dozens of the alien pods, and turned to confront
a combat form. It was armed with a plasma pistol but chose to throw
itself forward rather than fire. The Chief’s automatic weapon was
actually touching the creature when he pulled the trigger. The
ex-Elite’s chest opened like an obscene flower and the infection form
hidden within exploded into fleshy pieces.
He heard a burst of static in his comm system.
Interference whined as the MJOLNIR’s powerful communications gear tried
to scrub the signal, to no avail. It sounded like Foehammer, but he
couldn’t be sure.
It hovered in front of the Pelican’s cockpit
for a moment, and light stabbed Rawley’s eyes. It was made from some
kind of silvery metal, roughly cylindrical but with angular edges.
Winglike, squarish fins shifted and slid like rudders as the device
bobbed in the air. It—whatever it was—shone a bright light into
the cockpit, then turned away and dropped altitude. Below her, she
could see dozens of the things flying in a loose line. In seconds, they
dropped below the tree line and out of sight.
“Frye,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry, “tell Chief
Cullen to work the comm system and punch me a hole in this
interference. I need to talk to the ground team now .”
The tide of hostiles fell back into the
ankle-deep water and regrouped. A dozen exotic-looking cylindrical
machines drifted out of the trees to float over the clearing. The
nearest Marine yelled, “What are they?” and was about to shoot at them
when the Chief raised a cautionary hand. “Hold on, Marine . . . let’s
see what they do.”
What happened next was both unexpected and gratifying.
Each machine produced a beam of energy, speared one of the hostiles,
and burned it down.
Some of the combat forms took exception to this treatment,
and attempted to return fire, but were soon put out of action by the
combined efforts of the Marines and their newfound allies.
Despite the help, the Marines didn’t fare well. There were
just too many of the hostile creatures around. The squad dwindled until
a pair of PFCs remained, then one, then finally the last of the Marines
fell beneath a cluster of the little infectious bastards.
As the newcomers overhead rained crimson laser fire on a
cluster of the combat forms, the Chief slogged through the swamp toward
the tower. High ground—and the possibility of signaling Foehammer for
evac—drew him on.
He climbed a supporting strut and pulled himself onto one
of the odd, leaflike terraces that ringed the tower. He had a good
field of fire, and he fired a burst into a combat form that strayed too
close.
He tried the radio again, but was rewarded with more
static.
The Spartan heard what sounded like someone humming and
turned to discover that another machine had approached him from
behind. Where the other newcomers were cylindrical in design, with
angular, winglike cowlings, this construct was rounded, almost
spherical. It had a single, glowing blue eye, a wraparound housing, and
a cheerfully businesslike manner.
“Greetings! I am the Monitor of installation zero-four.
I am 343 Guilty Spark. Someone has released the Flood. My function is
to prevent it from leaving this installation. I require your
assistance. Come this way.”
The voice sounded artificial. This “343 Guilty Spark” was
some kind of artificial construct, the Spartan realized. From above the
little machine, he could see Foehammer’s Pelican moving into position.
“Hold on,” the Chief replied, trying to sound friendly.
“The Flood? Those things down there are called ‘Flood’?”
“Of course,” 343 Guilty Spark replied, a note of confusion
in its synthesized voice. “What an odd question. We have no time for
this, Reclaimer.”
Reclaimer? The Chief wondered. He was about to ask
what the little machine meant by that, but his words never came. Rings
of pulsating gold light traveled the length of his body, he felt
light-headed, and saw an explosion of white light.
Rawley had just gotten the Pelican into
position for a run on the tower, and could see the distinctive bulk of
the Spartan standing on the structure. She eased the throttle forward,
and the Pelican slid ahead, and nosed toward the structure. She glanced
up just in time to see the Spartan disappear in a column of gold light.
“Chief!” Foehammer said.“I lost your signal!
Where did you go? Chief! Chief!”
The Spartan had vanished, and there was very little the
pilot could do except pick up the Marines, and hope for the best.
Like the rest of the battalion’s officers,
McKay had worked long into the night supervising efforts to restore the
butte’s badly mauled defenses, ensure that the wounded received what
care was available, and restore something like normal operations.
Finally, at about 0300, Silva ordered her below, pointing
out that someone had to be in command at 0830, and it wasn’t going to
be him.
With traces of adrenaline still in her bloodstream, and
images of battle still flickering through her brain, the Company
Commander found it impossible to sleep. Instead she tossed, turned, and
stared at the ceiling until approximately 0430 when she finally drifted
off.
At 0730, with only three hours of sleep,
McKay paused to collect a mug of instant coffee from the improvised
mess hall before climbing a flight of bloodstained stairs to arrive on
top of the mesa. The wreckage of what had been Charlie 217 had been
cleared away during the night, but a large patch of scorched metal
marked the spot where the fuel had been set ablaze.
The officer paused to look at it, wondered what happened
to the human pilot, and continued her tour. The entire surface of Halo
had been declared a combat zone, which meant it was inappropriate for
the enlisted ranks to salute their superiors lest they identify them to
enemy snipers. But there were other ways to signal respect, and as
McKay made her way past the landing pads and out onto the battlefield
beyond, it seemed as if all the Marines wanted to greet her.
“Morning, ma’am.”
“How’s it going, Lieutenant? Hope you got some sleep.”
“Hey, skipper, guess we showed them, huh?”
McKay replied to them all and continued on her way. Just
the fact that she was there, strolling through the plasma-blackened
defenses with a cup of coffee in her hand, served to reassure the
troops.
“Look,” one of them said as she walked past, “there’s the
Loot. Cool as ice, man. Did you see her last night? Standing on that
tank? It was like nothin’ could touch her.” The other Marine didn’t say
anything, just nodded in agreement, and went back to digging a firing
pit.
Somehow, without consciously thinking about it, McKay’s
feet carried her back to the Scorpions and the point from which her
particular battle had been fought. The Covenant knew about the metal
behemoths now, which was why both machines were being dug out and run
up onto solid ground.
The officer wondered what Silva planned to do with them,
and sipped the last of her coffee before wandering onto the plateau
beyond. Covenant POWs, all chained together at the ankles, were busy
digging graves. One section for members of their armed forces, and one
for the humans. It was a sobering sight, as were the rows of
tarp-covered bodies, and all for what?
For Earth, she told herself, and the billions who would go
unburied if the Covenant found them.
There was a lot to do—the morning passed quickly. Major
Silva was back on duty by 1300 hours and sent a runner to find McKay.
As she entered his office she saw that he was sitting behind his
makeshift desk, working at a computer. He looked up and pointed to a
chair salvaged from a lifeboat. “Take a load off, Lieutenant. Nice job
out there. I should take naps more often! How are you feeling?”
McKay dropped into the chair, felt it adjust to fit her
body, and shrugged. “I’m tired, sir, but otherwise fine.”
“Good,” Silva said, bringing his fingers together into a
steeple. “Because there’s plenty of work to do. We’ll have to drive
everyone hard—and that includes ourselves.”
“Sir, yes sir.”
“So,” Silva continued, “I know you’ve been busy, but did
you get a chance to read the report Wellsley put together?”
A crate of small but powerful wireless computers like the
one sitting on the Major’s desk had been recovered from the Autumn
but McKay had yet to turn hers on. “I’m afraid not, sir. Sorry.”
Silva nodded. “Well, based on information acquired during
routine debriefings, our digital friend believes that the raid was both
less and more than we assumed.”
McKay allowed her eyebrows to rise. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that rather than the real estate itself, the
Covies were after something, or more precisely someone they
thought they would find here.”
“Captain Keyes?”
“No,” the other officer replied, “Wellsley doesn’t think
so, and neither do I. A group of their stealth Elites were able to
penetrate the lower levels of the complex. They killed everyone they
came into contact with, or thought they did, but one tech played dead,
and another was knocked unconscious. They were in different rooms but
both told the same story. Once in the room, and having gained control
of it, one of those commando Elites—the bastards in the black combat
suits—would momentarily reveal himself. He spoke passable standard—and
asked both groups the same question. ‘Where is the human with the
special armor?’ ”
“They were after the Spartan,” McKay said thoughtfully.
“Exactly.”
“So, where is the Chief?”
“That,” Silva replied, “is a very good question.
Where indeed? He went looking for Keyes, surfaced in the middle of a
swamp, told Foehammer that the Captain was probably dead, and
disappeared a few minutes later.”
“Think he’s dead?” McKay inquired.
“I don’t know,” Silva replied grimly, “although it
wouldn’t make too much difference if he were. No, I suspect that he and
Cortana are out there playing games.”
With Keyes out of the picture once more, Silva had
reassumed command, and McKay could understand his frustration. The
Master Chief was an asset, or would have been if he were around, but
now, out freelancing somewhere, the Spartan was starting to look like a
liability. Especially given how many of Silva’s troops had died in
order to defend a man who wasn’t even there.
Yes, McKay could understand the Major’s frustration, but
couldn’t sympathize with it. Not after seeing the Chief in that very
room, his skin unnaturally white after too much time spent in his
armor, his eyes filled with—what? Pain? Suffering? A sort of wary
distrust?
The officer wasn’t sure, but whatever it was didn’t have
anything to do with ego, with insubordination, or a desire for personal
glory. Those were truths that McKay could access, not because she was a
seasoned soldier, but because she was a woman, something Silva could
never aspire to be. But it wouldn’t do any good to say that, so she
didn’t.
Her voice was level. “So, where does that leave us?”
“Situation normal: We’re cut off and probably surrounded.”
The chair sighed as Silva leaned back. “Like the old saying goes, ‘a
good defense is a good offense.’ Rather than just sit around and wait
for the Covenant to attack again, let’s take the hurt to them. Nothing
big, not yet anyway, but the kind of pinpricks that still draw blood.”
McKay nodded. “And you want me to come up with some ideas?”
Silva grinned. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay said, coming to her feet. “I’ll have
something by morning.”
Silva watched the Company Commander exit his office,
wasted five seconds wishing he had six more just like her, and went
back to work.
The Master Chief felt himself rush back
together like a puzzle with a million pieces, wondered what had
happened, and where he was. He felt disoriented, nauseated, and angry.
A quick look around was sufficient to ascertain that the
machine named 343 Guilty Spark had somehow transported him from the
swamp into the bowels of a dark, brooding structure. He saw the machine
hovering high above, glowing a thin, ghostly blue.
The Spartan raised his assault weapon, and fired half a
clip into it. The bullets were dead on, but had no effect other than to
elicit a bemused response.
“That was unnecessary, Reclaimer. I suggest that you
conserve your ammunition for the effort ahead.”
No less angry, but with little choice but to accept the
situation, the Chief looked around. “So where am I?”
“The installation was specifically built to study and
contain the Flood,” the machine answered patiently. “Their survival as
a race was dependent on it. I am grateful to see that some of them
survived to reproduce.”
“ ‘Survived’? ‘Reproduce’? What the hell are you talking
about?” the Chief demanded.
“We must collect the Index,” Spark said, leaving the
Spartan’s questions unanswered. “And time is of the essence. Please
follow me.”
The blue light zipped away at that point, forcing the
Chief to follow, or be left behind. He checked both his weapons as he
walked. “Speaking of you, who the hell are you, and what’s your
function?”
“I am 343 Guilty Spark,” the machine said,
pedantically. “I am the Monitor, or more precisely, a self-repairing
artificial intelligence charged with maintaining and operating this
facility. But you are the Reclaimer—so you know that already.”
The Master Chief didn’t know anything of the kind, but it
seemed wise to play along, so he did. “Yes, well, refresh my memory . .
. how long has it been since you were left in charge?”
“Exactly 101,217 local years,” the Monitor replied
cheerfully, “many of which were quite boring. But not anymore! Hee,
hee, hee. ”
The Spartan was taken aback by the sudden giggle from the
small machine. He knew that the AIs humans used could, over time,
develop personalities politely described as “quirky.” 343 Guilty Spark
had been here for tens of thousands of years.
It was quite possible that the little AI was insane.
The Monitor chattered on, nattering about “effecting
repairs to substation nine” and other non sequiturs.
His dialogue was interrupted as a variety of Flood forms
bounced, waddled, and leaped out of the surrounding darkness. Suddenly
the Chief was fighting for his life again, moving back and forth to
stretch the enemy out, blasting anything that moved.
That was when he first identified a new Flood form.
They were large misshapen things that would explode when fired upon,
spewing up to a dozen infection forms in every direction, thereby
multiplying the number of targets that the shooter had to track and
kill.
Finally, like water turned off at a tap, the assault came
to an end, and the Chief had a chance to reload his weapons.
The Monitor hovered nearby, all the while humming to
himself, and occasionally giggling. “There’s no time to dawdle! We have
work to do.”
“What kind of work?” the Chief inquired as he stuffed the
final shell into the shotgun and hurried to follow.
“This is the Library,” the machine explained, hovering so
the human could catch up. “The energy field above us contains the
Index. We must get up there.”
The Spartan was about to ask, “Index? What Index?” when a
combat form lurched out of an alcove and opened fire. The Chief fired
in return, saw the creature fall, and saw it jump back up again. The
next burst took the Flood’s left leg off.
“That should slow you down,” he said as he turned to deal
with a new horde of shambling, leaping hostiles. A steady stream of
brass arced away from the Chief’s assault weapon as he worked the mob
over, felt something strike him from behind, and spun around to
discover that the one-legged combat form had limped back into the fight.
The Spartan blew the creature’s head off this time,
sidestepped to evade a charging carrier form, and shot the bulbous
monster in the back. There was an explosion of green mist mixed with
balloonlike infection forms and pieces of wet flesh. The next ten
seconds were spent popping pods.
After that the Monitor took off again and the noncom had
little choice but to follow. He soon arrived in front of a huge metal
door. Built to contain the Flood perhaps? Maybe, but far from
effective, since the slimy bastards seemed to be leaking out of every
nook and cranny.
The Monitor hovered over the human’s head. “The security
doors are locked automatically. I will go access the override to open
them. I am a genius,” the Monitor said matter-of-factly.“Hee, hee,
hee.”
“A pain in the ass is more like it,” the Master Chief said
to no one in particular as a red blob appeared on his threat indicator,
quickly joined by a half dozen more.
Then, as part of what would become a familiar pattern,
combat forms leaped fifteen meters through the air, only to shrivel as
the 7.62 mm slugs tore them apart. Carrier forms waddled up like old
friends, came apart like wet cardboard, and spewed pods in every
direction. Infection forms danced on delicate legs, dodging this way
and that, each hoping to claim the human as its very own.
But the Chief had other ideas. He killed the last of them
just as the double doors started to part, and followed the monitor
through. “Please follow closely,” 343 Guilty Spark admonished. “This
portal is the first of ten.”
The Chief replied as he followed the AI past a row of huge
blue screens. “More doors. I can hardly wait.”
343 Guilty Spark appeared immune to sarcasm as it babbled
about the first-class research facilities that surrounded them—and
blithely led its human companion into still another ambush. And so it
went, as the Chief worked his way through Flood-infested galleries,
subfloor maintenance tunnels, and more galleries, before
rounding
a corner to confront yet another group of monstrosities.
The Spartan had help this time, as a dozen of the
hunter-killer machines he’d seen in the swamp appeared in the air above
the scene, and attacked the Flood forms congregated below.
“These Sentinels will assist you, Reclaimer,” the Monitor
trilled. Lasers hissed and sizzled as the robots struck their opponents
down, and having done so, moved in to sterilize what remained.
The Spartan watched in fascination as the machines took
care of the heavy lifting. He lent a helping hand when that seemed
appropriate, and started to gag when the air that came through his
filters grew thick with the stench of cooked flesh.
As the Spartan fought his way through the facility, the
Monitor, who floated above it all, offered commentary. “These Sentinels
will supplement your combat systems. But I suggest you upgrade to at
least a Class Twelve Combat Skin. Your current model only scans as a
Class Two—which is unsuited for this kind of work.”
If there’s a battle suit six times as powerful as
MJOLNIR armor, he thought, I’ll be first in line to try it on.
He jumped to avoid an attack from one of the Flood combat
forms, pressed the shotgun muzzle into its back, and blew a foot-wide
hole through the creature.
Finally, after the hardworking Sentinels had reduced the
Flood to little more than a lumpy paste, the Spartan made his way
through the carnage and out onto a circular platform. It was enormous,
easily large enough to handle a Scorpion, and in reasonably good repair.
Machinery hummed, bands of white light pulsated down from
somewhere above, and the lift carried the human upward. Maybe things
would be better up above, maybe the Flood hadn’t reached that level
yet, he thought. He didn’t hold out much hope, however. So far, nothing
else
had gone right on this mission.
Deep within the recesses of Halo, Flood
specimens were confined to facilitate future study, and to prevent them
from escaping. Aware of the extreme danger the Flood posed, and their
capacity to multiply exponentially as well as take over even advanced
life forms, the ancient ones constructed the walls of their prison with
great care, and trained their guards well. With nothing to feed upon,
and nowhere to go, the Flood lay dormant for more than a hundred
thousand years.
Then the intruders came, broke the prison open, and
nourished the Flood with their bodies. With a way to escape, and food
to sustain it, the tendrils of the malevolent growth slithered through
the maze of tunnels and passageways that lay below Halo’s skin, and
gathered wherever there was a potential route to the surface.
One such location was in a chamber located beneath a tall
butte, where little more than a metal grating prevented the Flood from
bursting out of its underground lair and shooting to the surface.
Unbeknownst to the men and women of Alpha Base, they had a new
enemy—and it lived directly below their feet.
The lift jerked to a halt. The Master Chief
made his way through a narrow passageway into the gallery beyond. The
Flood attacked immediately, but with no threat at his back, he was free
to retreat into the corridor from which he had just come, which forced
the mob of monstrosities to come at him through the same narrow
channel. Before long, the bodies of the fallen Flood began to
accumulate.
He paused, waiting for another wave of attackers, then
shoved aside a pile of the dead and moved into the next section of the
complex. They gave under his feet, made gurgling sounds, and vented
foul-smelling gas. The Chief was grateful when his boots were back on
solid ground again.
The Sentinels reappeared shortly thereafter and led the
Spartan past a row of huge blue screens. “So, where were you bastards a
few minutes ago?” the human inquired. But if the robots heard him, they
made no reply as they glided, circled, and bobbed through the hallway
ahead.
“Flood activity has caused a failure in a drone control
system. I must reset the backup units,” 343 Guilty Spark said. “Please
continue on—I will rejoin you when I have completed my task.”
The Monitor had left him on his own before—and each
absence coincided with a fresh wave of Flood attackers. “Hold on,” the
human protested, “let’s discuss this—” but it was too late. 343 Guilty
Spark had already darted through an aperture in the wall and
disappeared down some kind of travel conduit.
Sure enough, no sooner had the Monitor left than a
lumpy-looking carrier form waddled out into the light, spotted its
prey, and hurried to greet it. The Spartan shot the Flood form, but let
the Sentinels clean up the resulting mess, while he conserved his ammo.
A fresh onslaught of Flood came out of the woodwork, and
the Spartan adopted a more cautious strategy: He allowed the sentry
robots to mop them up. At first, the defense machines mowed through a
wave of the podlike infection forms with little difficulty. Then more
of the hostiles appeared, then more, then still more. Soon, the
Chief was forced to fall back. He crushed one of the pods with his
foot, smashed another out of the air with the butt of his assault
rifle, and killed a dozen more with a trio of quick AR bursts.
The Monitor drifted back into the chamber, spun as if
surveying the carnage, and made an odd, metallic clicking that sounded
very much like a cluck of disapproval. “The Sentinels can use their
weapons to manage the Flood for a short time, Reclaimer. Speed is of
the essence.”
“Then let’s go,” the Master Chief growled.
The Monitor made no reply, but scooted ahead. The small
construct led the Spartan deeper into the Library’s gloomy halls. They
passed through a number of large open gates prior to arriving in front
of one that was closed. The Chief paused for a moment, expecting that
343 Guilty Spark might open it for him, but the Monitor had
disappeared. Again.
The hell with it, he thought. The little machine
was
rapidly draining his reserves of patience.
Determined to move ahead with or without the services of
his on-again, off-again guide, the Chief retraced his steps to the
point where a steeply sloping ramp emerged from below, followed it
downward, and soon found himself in a maintenance corridor packed with
Flood.
But the narrow confines of the passageway again made it
that much easier to kill the parasitic life forms, and five minutes
later the human walked up a ramp on the other side of the metal door to
find that the Monitor was there, humming to himself.
“Oh, hello! I’m a genius.”
“Right. And I’m a Vice Admiral.”
The Monitor darted ahead, leading him across a circular
depression to another enormous door. Machinery whirred, and the Chief
was forced to pause as the doors started to part. Then he heard a
clank, followed by a groan, as the movement stopped.
“Please wait here,” Spark said, and promptly vanished.
Just as the Master Chief pulled a fresh clip and rammed it
home, dozens of red dots appeared on his threat indicator. He stood
with his back to the door as what looked like a platoon of Flood forms
prepared to rush him. Rather than simply open up on them, and risk the
possibility that they might roll him under, the Chief threw a grenade
into their midst, and half his opponents went up in a single blast. It
took a few minutes plus a few hundred rounds of ammo to put the rest of
them down, but the Spartan managed to do so.
That was when the machinery restarted, the doors opened,
and the Monitor reappeared, humming to itself. “I am a genius!”
He had moved through the new chamber—a high,
vaulted gallery, dimly lit with pools of gold-yellow light. For the
first time since Spark had dragged him here, he had a moment of
respite. Ever since entering the Library, the Spartan’s head had been
on a swivel. Wave after wave of hostile creatures had attacked him from
all sides.
He popped a stim-pack, downed a nutrient supplement, and
gathered up his weapon. Time to move out.
As he proceeded deeper into the Library, he found a
corpse—a human one. He stooped to examine the body.
It wasn’t pretty. The Marine’s body was so mangled that
even the Flood couldn’t make use of him. He lay at the center of a
large bloodstain wreathed by spent brass.
“Ah,” 343 Guilty Spark said, peering down over the
Spartan’s shoulder. “The other Reclaimer. His combat skin proved
even less suitable than yours.”
The soldier looked up over his shoulder. “What do you
mean?”
“Is this a test, Reclaimer?” the Monitor seemed genuinely
puzzled. “I found him wandering through a structure on the other side
of the ring, and brought him to the same point where you
started.”
The Chief looked down at the body and marveled at the fact
that anyone could make it that far. Even with his physical
augmentation, and the advantages of his armor, the Spartan was reaching
the end of his endurance.
He checked, found the leatherneck’s dog tags, and read the
name. MOBUTO, MARVIN, STAFF
SERGEANT, followed
by a service number.
The Chief put the tags away. “I didn’t know you, Sarge,
but I sure as hell wish I had. You must have been one hard-core son of
a bitch.”
It wasn’t much as eulogies go, but he hoped that, had
Sergeant Marvin Mobuto been there to hear it, he would have approved.
A good trap requires good bait, which was
why McKay had one of the Pelicans pick up Charlie 217’s burned-out
remains and drop them into the ambush site during the hours of
darkness. It took three trips to transport a sufficient amount of
wreckage, followed by hours of backbreaking effort to spread the pieces
around in a realistic way, then position her troops in the rocks above.
Finally, just as the sun speared the area with early
morning light, everything was ready. A phony distress call went out,
and a specially prepared fire was lit deep within the wreckage.
Scattered around the “crash site” were some “volunteers”—the bodies of
comrades killed on the butte had been laid out where they could be seen
from the air.
As half of the first platoon tried to get some sleep, the
rest kept watch. McKay used her glasses to scan the area. The fake
crash site was located between a low, flat-topped rise and a rocky
hillside, covered with a jumble of large boulders. The wreckage,
complete with a trickle of smoke, looked quite realistic.
Wellsley believed that having first dismissed the Marines
and Naval personnel as little more than a nuisance, the enemy had since
been forced to change their minds, and had started to take them more
seriously. That meant monitoring human radio traffic, conducting
regular recon flights, and all the other activities of modern warfare.
Assuming the AI was correct, the aliens would pick up the
distress call, backtrack to the source, and send a team to check the
situation out. That was the plan, at any rate, and McKay didn’t see any
reason why it wouldn’t work.
The sun inched higher in the sky, and down among the rocks
the temperature rose. The Marines took advantage of any bit of shade
that they could find, though McKay was privately pleased that the
customary bitching about the heat was kept to a minimum.
Thirty minutes into the wait McKay heard a sound like the
whine of a mosquito and started to quarter the sky with her binoculars.
It wasn’t long before she spotted a speck coming down-spin. Very
quickly, the speck grew into a Banshee. She keyed her mike.
“Red One to squad three—it’s show time.”
The officer didn’t dare say more lest any Covenant
eavesdroppers grow suspicious. She didn’t have to say much
more,
though. Her Marines knew what to do.
As the enemy aircraft came closer, members of the third
squad, some of whom were made up to look as if they were injured,
hurried out into the open, shaded their eyes as if watching for an
incoming Pelican, pantomimed surprise as they spotted the Banshee,
fired a volley of shots at it, then ran for the safety of the rocks.
The pilot sent a series of plasma bolts racing after them,
circled the crash site twice, and flew off in the direction from which
he had come. McKay watched it go. The hook had been set, the fish was
on the line, and it would be her job to reel it in.
Half a klick away from the phony crash site,
another Marine, or what had been a Marine, emerged from a
subsurface air shaft, and felt the sun hit his horribly ravaged face.
Well, not his face, because ever since the infection form had
inserted its penetrator into his spine, Private Wallace A. Jenkins had
been sharing his physical form with something he thought of as “the
other.” A strange being that didn’t have any thoughts, none that the
human could access, at any rate, and seemed unaware of the fact that
its host still retained some cognitive and possibly motor functions.
That awareness was entirely unique to him insofar as the
leatherneck could tell, because in spite of the fact that some of the
bodies in the group had once belonged to his squad mates, repeated
attempts to communicate with them had failed.
Now, as the untidy collection of infection forms, carrier
forms, and combat forms emerged to bounce, waddle, and walk across
Halo’s surface, Jenkins knew that wherever the column was headed it was
for one purpose: to find and subsume sentient life. He could dimly
sense the other’s yawning, icy hunger.
His goal, however, was considerably different.
After
it had been converted into a combat form, his body was still capable of
handling a weapon. Some of the other forms had them—and that’s what
Jenkins wanted more than anything. An M6D would be perfect, but an
energy weapon could do the job, as would any grenade. Not for use on
the Covenant, or the Flood, but on himself . Or what had been
him. That’s why he’d been careful to conceal the full extent of his
awareness from the other. So he had a chance of destroying the body in
which he had been imprisoned and escape the horror of each waking
moment.
The Flood came to a hill and, following one of the carrier
forms, soon started to climb. The other, with Jenkins in tow, tagged
along behind.
McKay knew the trap was going to work when
one of the U-shaped dropships appeared, circled the phony crash site,
and settled in for a landing. Once free of the ship the Elites,
Jackals, and Grunts would be easy meat for the Marines hidden in the
rocks and the snipers stationed on top of the flat-topped hill.
But war is full of surprises, and when the Covenant ship
took off again, McKay found herself looking at everything she had
expected to see plus a couple of Hunters. The mean-looking
bastards would be hard to kill and could rip the platoon to shreds.
The officer swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in
her throat, keyed her mike, and whispered some instructions. “Red One
to all snipers and rocket jockeys. Put everything you have on the
Hunters. Do it now. Over.”
It was hard to say who killed the Hunters, given the
sudden barrage of bullets and rockets that came their way, but McKay
didn’t care, so long as the walking tanks were dead . . . which
they definitely were. That was the good news.
The bad news was that the dropship returned, hosed the
boulders with plasma fire, and forced the Helljumpers to duck or lose
their heads.
Encouraged by the air support, the Covenant ground troops
rushed to enter the jumble of rocks, eager to find some cover, and kill
the treacherous humans. They were forced to pay a price, however, as
the snipers on the hill picked off five of the alien soldiers before
the dropship moved in to exact its revenge.
The Marines were forced to dive deep as the enemy aircraft
marched a double line of plasma bolts across the top of the tiny mesa,
killing two of the snipers and wounding a third.
Things soon started to get ugly on the rock-strewn
hillside as both humans and Covenant hunted one another between the
huge, weather-smoothed boulders. Energy bolts flew and assault weapons
chattered, as both sides took part in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.
This was not what McKay had envisioned, and she was looking for
a
way to disengage, when a wave of new hostiles entered the fight.
A torrent of the bizarre creatures attacked both
groups from the other side of the hill. McKay had a glimpse of
corpse-flesh, twisted and mangled bodies, and swarms of tiny little
spheres that bounced, leaped, and climbed over the rocks.
The first problem was that while the Covenant forces
seemed familiar with the creatures, the Helljumpers weren’t, and three
members of the second squad had already gone down under the combined
weight of multiple forms, and one member of the third had been
slaughtered by a grotesque biped, before McKay understood the extent of
the danger.
Even as the officer fought her way uphill through the maze
of boulders the radio calls continued to boom through her earpiece.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
“Get it off me!”
The radio traffic tripled and the command freq turned into
such a confusion of screams, requests for orders, and pleas for
extraction, that the Marines might as well have spoken in tongues.
McKay cursed. No way. No way were these things
going
to break them. No way. She rounded a boulder, saw a Grunt running
downhill with two of the spherical creatures clinging to its back. The
Grunt squealed and spun and she got her first close look at the
creatures. A sustained burst from the assault weapon brought all three
of them down.
As the Marine worked her way farther uphill, she soon
discovered that the new enemy took other forms as well. McKay
killed a two-legged form, saw a private put half a clip into a
lumpy-looking monster, and watched in disgust as the dying creature
spewed even more grotesqueries out into the world.
That was the moment when the third form emerged from
between a couple of boulders, saw the human, and launched itself into
the air.
Jenkins had the same view that the others
did, spotted the Lieutenant, and hoped she was a good shot. This was
better than suicide—this was . . .
But it wasn’t meant to be.
McKay tracked the incoming body,
sidestepped, and used the butt of her weapon to clip the side of the
creature’s head. It landed in a heap, flailed around, and was just
about to jump up when the Lieutenant pounced on it. “Give me a hand!”
she shouted. “I want this one alive!”
It took four Marines to subdue the creature, get
restraints on both its wrists and ankles, and finally bring it under
control. Even at that, one of the Helljumpers suffered a black eye,
another wound up with a broken arm, and a third bled from a ragged bite
wound on his arm.
The ensuing battle lasted for a full fifteen minutes, an
eternity in combat, with both humans and Covenant forces taking time
out from their battle with one another to concentrate on the new enemy.
The moment the last bulbous form was popped, however, they were back at
it again, tracking one another through the maze in a contest of life
and death, no quarter asked and none given.
McKay radioed for assistance, and with help from the
Reaction Force, plus two Pelicans and four captured Banshees, she was
able to drive the Covenant dropship away and kill those ground troops
who weren’t willing to surrender.
Then, on McKay’s orders, the Helljumpers combed the area
for reasonably intact specimens of the new enemy which could be
taken back to Alpha Base for analysis.
Finally, after the bodies were recovered, Jenkins was the
only specimen that was still alive. In spite of the way that he jerked,
bucked, and tried to bite his captors they threw him onto the Pelican,
roped him to the D-rings recessed into the deck, and delivered a few
kicks for good measure.
With fully half of her Marines making the
return trip in body bags, McKay sat through the seemingly endless
journey to Alpha Base. Tears cut tracks down through the grime on the
Helljumper’s face to wet the deck between her boots. The Covenant had
been bad enough—but now there was an even worse enemy to fight. Now,
for the first time since the landing on Halo, McKay felt nothing but
despair.
The Spartan left Sergeant Mobuto’s body
behind and approached one of the large metal doors, pleased to see that
it was open. He crouched and passed through. 343 Guilty Spark
disappeared on one of his mysterious errands a few moments later, and,
like clockwork, the Flood came out to play.
He was ready for them. The Flood swept into the
room—dozens of the bulbous infection forms scuttling along the walls
and floor, with another half dozen of the combat forms in tow.
They paused, as if in confusion. One of the combat forms
looked up—and the Spartan dropped from the pillar he’d shimmied up. His
metal boots pulped the creature’s face. Assault rifle fire raked the
leading edge of the cluster of infection forms. The pods detonated in a
chain-reaction string.
That got their attention, he thought. The Chief
turned and ran. He jumped up onto a raised platform as he fought,
disengaged, and fought again. Finally, as the last body fell, both the
Monitor and the Sentinels reappeared.
The Spartan looked at them in disgust as he reloaded his
weapons, scrounged ammo off the Flood combat forms, and followed 343
Guilty Spark out onto a lift that was identical to the last one he’d
been on.
The platform carried the human up to a still higher level,
where he got off, paused to let the Sentinels soften up the Flood
welcome wagon that waited out in the hall, then emerged to lend a hand.
There was a loud boom! as one of the combat forms leaped from
an
archway and landed right on top of a Sentinel. Its whip-tendril flailed
at the hovering robot’s back and was rewarded with a series of sparks
and a gout of flame. A moment later, the Sentinel exploded, and the
Flood and the wrecked drone crashed into the floor in a ball of flesh,
bone, and metal. The resulting shower of shrapnel cut three Flood forms
down and wounded a score of others.
The Spartan took another out with a burst from his assault
weapon and the other robots moved in to fry the remains.
Once that contingent of freaks had been dealt with, the
Chief followed the Monitor down a hall lined with blue screens, through
an area that was infested with Flood, and out onto a lift that looked
different from the last one he’d been on. Geometric patterns split the
floor into puzzlelike shapes, a series of raised panels stood guard
around a column of translucent blue light, and the whole thing seemed
to glow.
The Master Chief stepped on board, felt a slight jerk as
ancient machinery reacted to his presence, and saw the walls start to
rise. He was headed down this time—and hoped that his journey was near
an end. Without hesitation, he slammed fresh ammo into his weapon; it
seemed as if he emerged into a huge cluster of Flood every time he
traveled on a lift.
The lift made hollow, rumbling sounds, fell a long way,
and stopped with a reverberating thud.
343 Guilty Spark hovered over his shoulder as the Spartan
stepped off the lift and approached a pedestal. “You may now retrieve
the Index,” the Monitor said. The artifact glowed lime green; it was
shaped like the letter T. It slowly rose from the top of the
cylindrical tube in which it had been kept for so many millennia. A
series of metal blocks that encircled the device rotated and spun,
releasing their protective grip on the Index.
The Spartan took hold of the device, and pulled it up and
out of its tubular sheath. He held it up to examine the glowing
artifact—and was startled when a gray beam lanced from Spark. The Index
was yanked from his hand and disappeared inside a storage chamber in
the Monitor’s body.
“What the hell are you doing?” the Spartan demanded.
“As you know, Reclaimer,” Spark said, as if addressing an
errant child, “protocol requires that I take possession of the
Index for transport.”
343 Guilty Spark swooped and dived, then floated in place.
“Your biological form renders you vulnerable to infection. The Index
must not fall into the hands of the Flood before we reach the Control
Room and activate the installation.
“The Flood is spreading! We must hurry.”
The Master Chief was about to reply when he saw the bands
of pulsating light flowing down around his body, knew he was about to
be teleported, and again felt light-headed.
It wanted something, Keyes realized.
The memories that replayed like an endless library of video clips were
being sifted for something. The buzzing presence in his mind sought . .
.what?
He grasped at the thought, and pushed back against the
wall of resistance the other that burrowed through his consciousness
had erected. He brushed up against it and it almost slipped away . . .
Then he had it—escape. Whatever this thing was, it wanted
off
the ring. It hungered, and there was a perfect feeding ground to be
found.
The other plunged a barbed-wire tendril into his mind and
ripped forth an image of a lunar Earthrise, which blurred into images
of cattle in a slaughterhouse. He felt the other’s tendrils eagerly
grasp at the image of Earth. Where? It thundered. Tell.
The pressure increased and battered through Keyes’
resistance, and in desperation he summoned up a new memory. The alien
presence seemed startled at the image of Keyes and a childhood friend
kicking a soccer ball on a vibrant green field.
The pressure eased as the hungry other examined the memory.
Keyes felt a stab of regret. He knew what he had to do now.
He dragged all he remembered of Earth—its location, his
ability to find it, its defenses—and shoved them down, as deep as he
could.
Keyes felt the gaping sense of loss as the memory of the
soccer field was ripped away and discarded forever. He quickly summoned
up another—the taste of a favorite meal. He began to feed his memories
to the invading presence in his mind, one scrap at a time.
Of all the battles he’d ever fought, this one was the
toughest—and the most important.
The Chief rematerialized back on the walkway
which seemed to float over the black abyss below—the Control Room. He
saw the replica of Halo which arched above, the globe that floated at
the center of the walkway, and the control panel where he had last seen
Cortana. Was she still there?
343 Guilty Spark hovered above his head. “Is something
wrong?”
“No, nothing.”
“Splendid. Shall we?”
The Spartan made his way forward. The control board was
long and curved at either end. An endless light show played across the
surface of the panel as various aspects of the ring world’s extremely
complicated electronic and mechanical machinery fed a constant flow of
data to the display, all of which appeared as a mosaic of constantly
morphing glyphs and symbols.
Here, if one knew how to read it, were the equivalents of
the ring world’s pulse, respirations, and brain waves. Reports that
provided information on the rate of spin, the atmosphere, the weather,
the highly complex biosphere, the machinery that kept all of it
running, plus the activities of the creatures around whom the world had
been formed: the Flood. It was awesome to look at—and even more awesome
to consider.
343 Guilty Spark hovered above the control panel and
looked down on the human who stood in front of him. There was something
supercilious about the tone of the construct’s voice. “My role in this
particular endeavor has come to an end. Protocol does not allow units
from my classification to perform a task as important as the
reunification of the Index with the Core.”
The Monitor zipped around to hover at the Master Chief’s
side. “That final step is reserved for you , Reclaimer.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” the Chief asked. Spark
kept silent.
The Spartan shrugged, accepted the Index, and gazed at the
panel in front of him. One likely-looking slot pulsed the same glowing
green that shone from the Index. He slid it home. The T-shaped device
fit perfectly.
The control panel shivered as if stabbed, the displays
flared as if in response to an overload, and an electronic groan was
heard. 343 Guilty Spark tilted slightly as if to look at the control
board.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Spark chirped.
There was a sudden shimmer of light as Cortana’s
holographic figure appeared and continued to grow until she towered
over the control panel. Her eyes were bright pink, data scrolled across
her body, and the Chief knew she was pissed. “Oh, really?” she said.
She gestured, and the Monitor fell out of the air and hit the deck with
a clank.
The Spartan looked up at her. “Cortana—”
The AI stood with hands on hips. “I spent hours cooped in
here watching you toady about helping that . . . thing get set
to
slit our throats.”
The Chief turned toward the Monitor and back. “Hold on
now. He’s a friend.”
Cortana brought a hand up to her mouth in mock surprise.
“Oh, I didn’t realize. He’s your pal, is he? Your chum?
Do you have any idea what that bastard almost made you do?”
“Yes,” the Spartan said patiently. “Activate Halo’s
defenses and destroy the Flood. Which is why we brought the Index to
the Control Center.”
Cortana’s image plucked the Index out of its slot and held
it out in front of her. “You mean this ?”
Now reanimated, 343 Guilty Spark hovered just off the
floor. He was furious. “A construct in the core? That is absolutely
unacceptable!”
Cortana’s eyes glowed as she bent forward. “Piss off.”
The Monitor darted higher. “What impertinence! I shall
purge you at once.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Cortana inquired as she
waved the Index, then added the data contained within it to her memory.
“How dare you!” Spark exclaimed. “I’ll—”
“Do what?” Cortana demanded. “I have the Index. You
can float and sputter.”
The Master Chief held both hands up. One held the assault
rifle. “Enough! The Flood is spreading. If we activate Halo’s defenses
we can wipe them out.”
Cortana looked down on the human with an expression of
pity. “You have no idea how this ring works, do you? Why the
Forerunners built it?”
She leaned forward, her face grim. “Halo doesn’t kill
Flood—it kills their food . Human, Covenant, whatever. You’re
all
equally edible. The only way to stop the Flood is to starve them to
death. And that’s exactly what Halo is designed to do. Wipe the galaxy
clean of all sentient life. You don’t believe me?” the AI
finished. “Ask him!” and she pointed to 343 Guilty Spark.
The ramifications of what Cortana said hit home, and he
gripped his MA5B tightly. He rounded on the Monitor. “Is it true?”
Spark bobbed slightly. “Of course,” the construct said
directly. Then, sounding more like his officious self again, “This
installation has a maximum effective radius of twenty-five thousand
light years, but once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite
devoid of life, or at least any life with sufficient biomass to sustain
the Flood.
“But you already knew this,” the AI continued contritely.
The little device sounded genuinely puzzled. “I mean, how couldn’t
you?”
Cortana glowered at the Chief. “Left out that little
detail, did he?”
“We followed outbreak containment procedure to the
letter,” the Monitor said defensively. “You were with me each step of
the way as we managed the process.”
“Chief,” Cortana interrupted, “I’m picking up movement—”
“Why would you hesitate to do what you’ve already done?”
343 Guilty Spark demanded.
“We need to go,” Cortana insisted. “Right now!”
“Last time you asked me: if it were my choice, would I do
it?” the Monitor continued, as a flock of Sentinels arrayed themselves
behind him. “Having had considerable time to ponder your query, my
answer has not changed. There is no choice. We must activate the ring.”
“Get. Us. Out. Of. Here,” Cortana said, her eyes tracking
the Sentinels.
“If you are unwilling to help—I will simply find another,”
Spark said conversationally. “Still, I must have the Index. Give your
construct to me or I will be forced to take it from you.”
The Spartan looked up at Spark and the machines arrayed in
the air behind him. The assault weapon came up ready to fire. “That’s
not going to happen.”
“So be it,” the Monitor said wearily. Then, in a comment
directed to the Sentinels, he added: “Save his head. Dispose of the
rest.”
SECTION V
TWO BETRAYALS
CHAPTER TEN
D+68:03:27 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Halo
Control Room.
The vast platform that extended out over the Control
Room’s black abyss felt small and confining as the Master Chief was
attacked from every direction at once. Ruby red energy beams sizzled,
and the smell of ozone filled the air as the airborne Sentinels
circled, searching for a chink in his armor. All they needed was one
good hit, a chance to put him down, and they would be able not only to
take his head, but the Index as well.
Cortana’s intrusion skills had become much less
conventional since the landing on Halo. He had been surprised when
she’d used his suit comm as a de facto modem to broadcast her way into
the Control Room computers. He was also unprepared for her sudden
return. After so much time in the ring’s massive systems, she felt
somehow larger. He pondered her unusual behavior—her shortness, the
flare of temper.
There was no time to consider Cortana’s “mental state.”
There was still a mission to achieve: protect Cortana, and keep Spark
the hell away from the Index. For his part the Spartan wove back and
forth, conscious of the fact that the walkway had no rails, and how
easy it would be to fall off the edge. That made hitting his targets a
great deal more difficult. Still, he had seen the Flood bring Sentinels
down, and figured that if the combat forms could do it, so could he. He
decided to tackle the lowest machines first.
He was careful to get a good lead on each target. The
assault rifle stuttered, and the nearest target exploded. He switched
to the shotgun and fired methodically. He pumped a new round into the
chamber, and fired again. Thanks to the broad pattern provided by each
shell, the pump gun soon proved itself to be an extremely effective
weapon against the Sentinels.
One of the machines exploded, another hit the deck with a
loud clang, and a third trailed smoke as it spiraled into the darkness
below.
The battle became somewhat easier after that, as there was
less and less incoming fire, and he was able to knock three more robots
out of the air in quick succession.
He started to move, reloading as he went. One especially
persistent machine took advantage of the interlude to score three hits
on his back, which triggered the audible alarm, and pushed his shield
to the very edge.
With only four shells in his weapon, the Chief turned,
blew the robot out of the air, and spun to nail another. Then, weapon
raised, he turned in a circle, searching for more targets. There
weren’t any.
“So,” he said as he lowered the shotgun and pushed more
shells into the receiver, “don’t tell me—let me guess. You have a plan.”
“Yes,” Cortana replied unabashedly, “I do. We can’t let
the Monitor activate Halo. We have to stop him—we have to destroy Halo.”
The Spartan nodded and flexed his stiff shoulders. “And
how do we do that?”
“According to my analysis of the available data I believe
the best course of action is somewhat risky.”
Naturally, the Chief thought.
“An explosion of sufficient size,” Cortana explained,
“will help destabilize the ring—and will cut through a number of
primary systems. We need to trigger a detonation on a large scale,
however. A starship’s fusion reactors going critical would do the job.
“I’m going to find out where the Pillar of Autumn
went down. If the ship’s fusion reactors are still relatively intact,
we can use them to destroy Halo.”
“Is that all?” the Spartan inquired dryly. “Sounds
like a walk in the park. By the way, it’s nice to have you back.”
“It’s nice to be back,” Cortana said, and he knew
she meant it. Although there were any number of “natural” bio-sentients
that she thought of as friends, the bond the AI shared with the Spartan
was unique. So long as they shared the same armor they would share the
same fate. If he died then she died. Relationships don’t
get any more interdependent than that, something that struck Cortana as
both wonderful and frightening.
His boots made a hollow sound as he approached the
gigantic blast doors and hit the switch. They parted to reveal a battle
in progress between a group of Sentinels and Covenant ground troops.
Red lasers split the air into jagged shapes as robots burned a Jackal
down. The contest was far from one-sided, however, as one of the
machines exploded and showered the Covenant with bits of hot metal.
The room was a long rectangular affair with a strangely
corrugated floor. Standing at one end of the space, and well out of
harm’s way, the Spartan was content to watch and let the two groups
whittle each other down. However, when the last robot crashed, leaving
two Elites still on their feet, the Master Chief knew he’d have to take
them on.
The Covenant spotted the human, knew he’d have to come to
them, and stood waiting. The Chief took advantage of what little bit of
cover there was and made his way down the length of the room. With only
half a clip of ammo left in his assault rifle, he had little choice but
to tackle them with the shotgun—far from ideal at this range.
He fired a couple of rounds just to get their attention,
waited for the Elites to charge, and lobbed a plasma grenade into the
gap between them. The explosion killed one soldier and wounded the
other. A single blast from the shotgun was sufficient to finish the
job. Striding though the carnage, he exchanged the assault weapon for a
plasma rifle.
From there it was a short journey through an empty room
and out onto the top level of the pyramid. It was dark, and a fresh
layer of snow had fallen since the time when the noncom had battled his
way up to the Control Room from the valley below.
There were guards, but all of them had their backs to the
hatch, and didn’t bother to turn until the doors were halfway open.
That was when they saw the human, did a series of double takes, and
started to respond. But the Chief was ready and used the energy weapon
to hose them down. The Elites jerked and fell, quickly followed by
several Jackals and Grunts.
Then, just as suddenly as the violence had started, it was
over. Snow swirled around the sole figure who remained standing, began
the long, painstaking job of covering each body with a shroud of white,
and fostered an illusion of peace.
Cortana took advantage of the momentary pause to update
the Spartan regarding her plan. “We need to buy some time in case the
Monitor or his Sentinels find a way to activate Halo’s final weapon
without the Index.
“The machines in these canyons are Halo’s primary firing
mechanisms. They consist of three phase pulse generators that amplify
Halo’s signal and allow it to fire deep into space. If we damage or
destroy the generators, the Monitor will need to repair them before
Halo can be used. That should buy us some time. I’m marking the
location of the nearest pulse generator with a nav point. We need to
move and neutralize the device.”
“Roger that,” the Chief said, as he made his way down the
first ramp to the platform below. Once again the element of surprise
worked in his favor. He killed two Elites, caught a couple of Jackals
as they tried to run, and nailed a Grunt as it appeared from below.
The wind whistled around the side of the pyramid. The
Spartan left a trail of large bootprints as he made his way down to the
point where the ramp met the next level walkway, crossed to the other
side of the structure, and ran into a pair of Elites as they hit the
top of the up ramp and rounded the corner.
There wasn’t enough time to do anything but fire, and keep
on firing, in an attempt to overwhelm the Covenant armor. It wouldn’t
have worked had the aliens been farther away, but the fact that the
plasma pulses were pounding them in close made all the difference. The
first Elite made a horrible gurgling sound as he fell and the second
got a shot off but lost half of his face. He brought his hands up to
the hole, made a gruesome discovery, and was just about to scream when
an energy bolt took his life.
Then, as the Spartan prepared to descend into the valley
below, Cortana said, “Wait, we should commandeer one of those Banshees.
We’ll need it to reach the pulse generator in time.” Like many of the
AI’s suggestions, this was easier said than done, but the Chief was in
favor of speed, and filed the possibility away.
Now, as he came down off the pyramid, he saw lots of
Covenant, but no Flood, and felt a strange sense of relief. The
Covenant were tough, but he understood them, and that lessened his
apprehension.
The alien plasma rifle lacked the precision offered by an
M6D pistol or a sniper’s rifle, but the Chief did the best he could to
pick off some of the Covenant below. Still, he had only nailed three of
the aliens when his efforts attracted the attention of a Wraith tank,
along with more troops. There was nothing he could do except
retreat back uphill.
The Wraith, which continued to hurl plasma bombs up-slope,
actually helped by preventing other Covenant forces from charging after
him. That advantage wouldn’t last long, though, which meant that he had
to find some additional fire power, and find it fast.
Even though there was no sign of the Flood at the moment,
some of their half-frozen bodies lay scattered about, suggesting that
there had been a significant battle within the last couple of hours. He
knew the Flood carried weapons acquired from dead victims, so the Chief
ran from corpse to corpse, looking for what he required. For a while it
seemed hopeless as he uncovered a series of M6Ds, energy pistols,
combat knives, and other gear—anything and everything except what he
needed most.
Then, just when he had nearly given up hope, he saw a few
inches of olive drab tubing protruding from under a dead combat form.
He rolled the ex-Elite over, and felt a rising sense of excitement. Was
the launcher loaded? If so, he was in luck.
A quick check revealed that the weapon was loaded,
and as if to prove that luck comes in threes, the Spartan found two
reloads only a few meters away.
Armed with the launcher, he was ready to go to work. The
Wraith represented the most significant threat, so he decided to deal
with that first. It took time to make his way back across the face of
the pyramid to a point where he could get a clear shot, but he did. The
monster was dangerously close as he put a pair of rockets into the
mortar tank, and watched it explode.
He ejected the spent rocket tubes, slammed a reload home,
and shifted his aim. Two more rockets lanced ahead, and detonated in
clusters of Covenant soldiers. He fell back and slung the rocket
launcher; he had a limited supply of rockets, and once they were gone,
he had no choice but to go down onto the valley floor and finish the
job the hard way.
He crept up on the pair of Elites who stood guard near a
Banshee. They went down from deadly, spine-cracking blows and he
stepped past their fallen corpses. He examined the Banshee’s controls
while Cortana pulled up files the tech boys in Intel had prepared based
on examinations of captured craft.
He boarded the single-seat aircraft, and activated its
power plant. He wondered why the aliens hadn’t used the ship against
him, was thankful that they hadn’t, and eyed the instrument panel. The
Master Chief had never flown one of the attack ships before, but was
qualified to fly most of the UNSC’s atmospheric and spacegoing ships
so, between his own experience and the tech files Cortana provided, he
found the controls relatively easy to understand. The takeoff was a bit
wobbly, but it wasn’t long before the flight began to smooth out, and
the Banshee started to climb.
It was dark, and snow continued to fall, which meant that
visibility was poor. He kept a close eye on both the nav point Cortana
had projected onto his HUD and the instrument panel. The design was
different, but an alien turn and bank indicator still looked like what
it was, and helped the human maintain his orientation.
The attack ship made good speed, and the valleys were
quite close together, so it wasn’t long before the Spartan spotted the
well-lit platform which jutted out from the face of the cliff, as well
as the enemy fire which lashed up to greet him. The word was out, it
seemed—and the Covenant didn’t want any visitors.
Rather than put down under fire, he decided to carry out a
couple of strafing runs first. He swooped low and used the Banshee’s
plasma and fuel rod cannons to sweep the platform clear of sentries
before decelerating for what he hoped would be an unopposed landing.
The Banshee crunched into the platform, bounced once, then
ground to a halt. The Chief dismounted, passed through a hatch, and
entered the tunnel beyond.
“We need to interrupt the pulse generator’s energy
stream,” Cortana informed him. “I have adjusted your shield system so
that it will deliver an EMP burst and disrupt the generator . . . but
you’ll have to walk into the beam to trigger it.”
The Master Chief paused just shy of the next hatch. “I’ll
have to do what?”
“You’ll have to walk into the beam to trigger it,”
the AI repeated matter-of-factly. “The EMP blast should neutralize the
generator.”
“Should?” the Chief demanded. “Whose side are you
on?”
“Yours,” Cortana replied firmly. “We’re in this
together—remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” the Spartan growled. “But
you’re
not the one with the bruises.”
The AI chose to remain silent as the Chief passed through
a hatch, paused to see if anyone would attempt to cancel his ticket,
and followed the nav indicator to the chamber located at the center of
the room.
Once he was there the pulse generator was impossible to
miss. It was so intensely white that his visor automatically darkened
in order to protect his eyes. Not only that, but the Chief could feel
the air crackle around him as he approached the delta-shaped guide
structures, and prepared to step in between them. “I have to walk into
that thing?” the Chief inquired doubtfully. “Isn’t there some easier
way to commit suicide?”
“You’ll be fine,” Cortana replied soothingly. “I’m almost
sure of it.”
The Spartan took note of the “almost,” clenched his teeth,
and pushed himself into the blindingly intense light. The response was
nearly instantaneous. There was something akin to an explosion, the
light started to pulsate, and the floor shook in response. The Chief
hurried to disengage, felt a bit of suction, but managed to pull free.
As he did so he noticed that his shields had been drained. His skin
felt sunburned.
“The pulse generator’s central core is off-line,” Cortana
said. “Well done.”
Another squadron of Sentinels arrived. They swooped into
the cramped pulse-generator chamber like vultures, fanned out, and
seared the area with ruby-red energy beams. Not only did the Monitor
take exception to the damage—he was after the Index too.
But the Chief knew how to deal with the mechanical
killers, and proceeded to dodge their lasers as he destroyed one after
another. Finally, the air thick with the stench of ozone, he was free
to withdraw. He went back through the same tunnel to the platform where
the Banshee waited.
“The second pulse generator is located in an adjacent
canyon,” Cortana announced easily. “Move out and I’ll mark the nav
point when we get closer.”
The Master Chief sent the Banshee into a wide bank, and
toward the next objective.
Minus the refrigeration required to preserve
them, the bodies laid out on the metal tables had already started to
decay, and the stench forced Silva to breathe through his mouth as he
entered the makeshift morgue and waited for McKay to begin her
presentation.
Six heavily armed Helljumpers were lined up along one wall
ready to respond if one or more of the Flood suddenly came back to
life. It seemed unlikely given the level of damage each corpse had
sustained, but the creatures had proven themselves to be extremely
resilient, and had an alarming tendency to reanimate.
McKay, who was still trying to deal with the fact that
more than fifteen Marines under her command had lost their lives in a
single battle, looked pale. Silva understood, even sympathized, but
couldn’t allow that to show. There was simply no time for grief,
self-doubt, or guilt. The Company Commander would have to do what he
did, which was to suck it up and keep on going. He nodded coolly.
“Lieutenant?”
McKay swallowed in an attempt to counter the nausea she
felt. “Sir, yes sir. Obviously there’s still a great deal that we don’t
know, but based on our observations during the fight, and information
obtained from Covenant POWs, here’s the best intelligence we have. It
seems that the Covenant came here searching for ‘holy relics’—we think
that means useful technology—and ran into a life form they refer to as
‘the Flood.’ ” She gestured at the fallen creatures on the slab. “Those
are
Flood.”
“Charming,” Silva muttered.
“As best we can figure out,” McKay said, “the Flood is a
parasitic life form which attacks sentient beings, erases their minds,
and takes control of their bodies. Wellsley believes that Halo was
constructed to house them, to keep them under control, but we have no
direct evidence to support that. Perhaps Cortana or the Chief can
confirm our findings when we’re able to make contact with them again.
“The Flood manifests in various forms starting with these
things,” McKay said, using her combat knife to prod a flaccid infection
form. “As you can see, it has tentacles in place of legs, plus a couple
of extremely sharp penetrators, which they use to invade the victim’s
central nervous system and take control of it. Eventually they work
their way inside the host body and take up residence there.”
Silva tried to imagine what that might feel like and felt
a shiver run down his spine. Outwardly he was unchanged. “Please
continue.”
McKay said, “Yes, sir,” and moved to the next table. “This
is what the Covenant call a ‘combat form.’ As you can see from what
remains of its face, this one was human. We think she was a Navy
weapons tech, based on the tattoos still visible on her skin. If you
peek through the hole in her chest you can see the remains of the
infection form that deflated itself enough to fit in around her heart
and lungs.”
Silva didn’t want to look, but felt he had to, and
moved close enough to see the wrinkled scalp, to which a few isolated
clumps of filthy hair still clung. His eyes catalogued a parade of
horrors: the sickly looking skin; the alarmingly blue eyes which still
bulged, as if in response to some unimaginable pain; the twisted,
toothless mouth; the slightly puckered 7.62 mm bullet hole through the
right cheekbone; the lumpy, penetrator-filled neck; the bony chest, now
split down the middle so that the woman’s flat breasts hung down to
either side; the grossly distorted torso, punctured by three
overlapping bullet wounds; the thin, sinewy arms; and the strangely
graceful fingers, one of which still bore a silver ring.
The Major didn’t say anything, but his face must have
telegraphed what he felt, because McKay nodded. “It’s pretty awful,
isn’t it, sir? I’ve seen death before, sir—” she swallowed and shook
her head, “—but nothing like this.
“For what it’s worth Covenant victims don’t look any
better. This individual was armed with a pistol, her own probably, but
the Flood seem to pick up and use any weapon they can lay their hands
on. Not only that, but they pack a very nasty punch, which can be
lethal.
“Most combat forms appear to be derived from humans and
Elites,” McKay continued, as she moved to the last table. “We suspect
that Grunts and Jackals are deemed too small for first-class combat
material, and are therefore used as a sort of nucleus around which
carrier forms can grow. It’s hard to tell by looking at the puddle of
crap on the table in front of you, but at one time this thing contained
four
of the infection forms you saw earlier, and when it popped the
resulting explosion had enough force to knock Sergeant Lister on his
can.”
That, or the mental picture that it conveyed, was
sufficient to elicit nervous grins from the Helljumpers who lined the
back wall. Apparently they liked the idea of something that could put
Lister on his ass.
Silva frowned. “Does Wellsley have scans of this stuff?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. Nice job. Have the bodies burned, send these
troops up for some fresh air, and report to my office in an hour.”
McKay nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Zuka ’Zamamee lay belly down on the
hard-packed dirt and used his monocular to scan the Pillar of Autumn.
It wasn’t heavily guarded; the Covenant was stretched too thin for
that, but the Council had reinforced the security force subsequent to
the human raid, and evidence of that was visible in the Banshees,
Ghosts, and Wraiths that patrolled the area around the downed ship.
Yayap, who lay next to the Elite, had no such device and was forced to
rely on his own vision.
“This plan is insane,” ’Zamamee said out of the side of
his mouth. “I should have killed you a long time ago.”
“Yes, Excellency,” the Grunt agreed patiently, knowing
that the talk was just that. The truth was that the officer was
afraid
to return to the Truth and Reconciliation, and now had very
little choice but to accept Yayap’s plan, especially in light of the
fact that he had been unable to come up with one of his own.
“Give it to me one more time,” the Elite demanded, “so
I’ll know that you won’t make any mistakes.”
Yayap eyed the readout on his wrist. He had two, maybe two
and a half units of methane left, before his tanks were empty and he
would suffocate, a problem which didn’t seem to trouble the Elite at
all. It was tempting to pull his pistol, shoot ’Zamamee in the head,
and implement the strategy on his own. But there were advantages to
being in company with the warrior—plus a giddy sense of power that went
with having threatened the warrior and survived. With that in mind
Yayap managed to suppress both his panic and a rising sense of
resentment.
“Of course, Excellency. As you know, simple plans are
often best, which is why there is a good chance this one will work. On
the possibility that the Council of Masters is actively looking for
Zuka ’Zamamee, you will choose one of the commandos who died on the
human encampment, and assume that individual’s identity.
“Then, with me at your side, we will report to the officer
in charge of guarding the alien ship, explain that we were taken
prisoner in the aftermath of the raid, but were subsequently able to
escape.”
“But what then?” the Elite inquired warily. “What if he
submits my DNA for a match?”
“Why would he do that?” the Grunt countered patiently.
“He’s shorthanded, and here, as if presented by the great ones
themselves, is a commando Elite. Would you run the risk of
having
such a find reassigned? No, I think not. Under circumstances such as
these you would seize the opportunity to add such a highly capable
warrior to your command, and give thanks for the blessing.”
It sounded good, especially the “highly capable warrior”
part, so ’Zamamee agreed. “Fine. What about later?”
“Later, if there is a later,” Yayap said wearily,
“we will have to come up with another plan. In the meantime this
initiative will assure us of food, water, and methane.”
“All right,” ’Zamamee said, “let’s jump on the Banshee and
make our appearance.”
“Are you sure that’s the best idea?” the Grunt inquired
tactfully. “If we arrive on a Banshee, the commanding officer might
wonder why we were so slow to check in.”
The Elite eyed what looked like a long, hard walk, sighed,
and acquiesced. “Agreed.” A hint of his former arrogance resurfaced.
“But you will carry my gear.”
“Of course,” Yayap said, scrambling to his feet. “Was
there ever any doubt?”
The inmate had attempted suicide twice,
which was why the interior of his cell was bare, and under
round-the-clock surveillance. The creature that had once been Private
Wallace A. Jenkins sat on the floor with both wrists chained to an
eyebolt located just over his head.
The Flood mind, which the human continued to think of as
“the other,” had been quiet for a while, but was present nonetheless,
and glowered in what amounted to a cognitive corner, angry but weak.
Hinges squealed as the metal door swung open. Jenkins turned to look,
and saw a male noncom enter the room followed by a female officer.
The private felt an almost overwhelming sense of shame—and
did what he could to turn away. Earlier, before the guards secured his
wrists to the wall, Jenkins had used pantomime to request a mirror. A
well-meaning Corporal brought one in, held it up in front of the
soldier’s devastated face, and was frightened when he tried to scream.
The initial suicide attempt followed thirty minutes later.
McKay took a look at the prisoner’s dry, parched lips and
guessed that he might be thirsty. She called for some water, accepted a
canteen, and started across the cell. “With respect, ma’am, I don’t
think you should do that,” the Sergeant said cautiously. “These suckers
are incredibly violent.”
“Jenkins is a Private in the UNSC Marine Corps,” McKay
replied sternly, “and will be referred to as such. And your concern has
been noted.”
Then, like a teacher dealing with a recalcitrant child,
she held the canteen out where Jenkins could see it. “Look!” she said,
sloshing the water back and forth. “Behave yourself and I’ll give you a
drink.”
Jenkins tried to warn her, tried to say “No,” but heard
himself gabble instead. Thus encouraged, McKay unscrewed the canteen’s
lid, took three steps forward, and was just about to lean over when the
combat form attacked. Jenkins felt his left arm break as the chain
brought it up short—and fought to counter the other’s attempt to grab
the officer in a scissor lock.
McKay stepped back just in time to evade the flailing legs.
There was a clacking sound as the guard pumped a shell
into the shotgun’s receiver and prepared to fire. McKay shouted, “No!”
and held up her hand. The noncom obeyed but kept his weapon aimed at
the combat form’s head.
“Okay,” McKay said, looking into the creature’s eyes,
“have it your way. But, like it or not, we’re going to have a talk.”
Silva had entered the cell by then and stood behind the
Lieutenant. The Sergeant saw the Major nod, and backed into a corner
with his weapon still held at the ready.
“My name is Silva,” the Major began, “and you already know
Lieutenant McKay here. First, let me say that both of us are extremely
sorry about what happened to you, we understand how you feel, and will
make sure that you receive the best medical care that the UNSC has to
offer. But first we have to fight our way off this ring. I think I know
how we can do that—but it will take some time. We need to hold this
butte until we’re ready to make our move. That’s where you come
in. You know where we are now—and you know how the Flood move around.
If you had my job, if you had to defend this base against the Flood,
where would you focus your efforts?”
The other used his right hand to grab his left, jerked
hard, and exposed a shard of broken bone. Then, as if hoping to use
that as a knife, the combat form lunged forward. The chains brought the
creature up short. Jenkins felt indescribable pain, began to lose
consciousness, but fought his way back.
Silva looked at McKay and shrugged. “Well, it was worth a
try, but it looks like he’s too far gone.”
Jenkins half expected the other to lunge forward again,
but having shared in the human’s pain, the alien consciousness chose
that moment to retreat. The human surged into the gap, made hooting
sounds, and used his good hand to point at Silva’s right boot.
The officer looked down at his boot, frowned, and was
about to say something when McKay touched his arm. “He isn’t pointing
at your boot, sir, he’s pointing down. At the area under the
butte.”
Silva felt something cold trickle into his veins. “Is that
right, son? The Flood could be directly below us?”
Jenkins nodded emphatically, rolled his eyes, and made
inarticulate gagging sounds.
The Major nodded and came to his feet. “Thank you,
Private. We’ll check the basement and be back to speak with you some
more.”
Jenkins didn’t want to talk, he wanted to die, but
nobody cared. The guards left, the door clanged shut, and the Marine
was left with nothing but a broken arm and the alien inside his head.
Somehow, without actually dying, he had been sentenced to hell.
As if to confirm that conclusion the other surged to the
fore, yanked at the chains, and beat its feet on the floor. Food had
been present, food had left, and it remained hungry.
The Master Chief spotted the next way point,
put the hijacked Banshee down on a platform, and entered the complex
via an unguarded hatch. He heard the battle before he actually saw it,
made his way through the intervening tunnel, and peered through the
next door. As had occurred before, the Covenant was busy taking it to
the Flood and vice versa, so he gave both groups some time to whittle
each other down, left the security of the tunnel, and proceeded to tidy
up.
Then, eager to replenish his supplies, the Spartan made
his ghoulish rounds, and soon was able to equip himself with an assault
weapon, a shotgun, and some plasma grenades. Even though he didn’t like
to think about where it came from, it felt good to dump the Covenant
ordnance he’d been saddled with, and lay his hands on some true-blue
UNSC issue for a change.
Pulse generator one had been dealt with, and he was eager
to disable number two, then move on to his final objective. He stepped
into the beam, saw the flash of light, felt the floor shake, and was in
the process of pulling away when the Flood attacked from every
direction.
There was no time to think and no time to fight. The only
thing he could do was run. He turned and sprinted for the corridor he’d
used to enter the chamber and took two powerful blows from a combat
form. He bulled his way between two carrier forms and leaped out of the
way as they detonated like grenades. New infection forms spewed from
their deflating corpses.
There was barely enough time to turn, hose the closest
forms with 7.62 mm, and toss a grenade at the group beyond. It went off
with a loud wham!, broke glass, and put three of the
monstrosities down.
He was out of ammo by then, knew he lacked the time
necessary to reload, and made the switch to the shotgun instead. The
gun blew huge holes through the oncoming mob. He charged through one of
them, and ran like hell.
Then, with some pad to work with, the human turned to gun
down the pursuers. The entire battle consumed no more than two minutes
but it left the Chief shaken. Could Cortana detect the slight tremor in
his hands as he reloaded both weapons? Hell, she had unrestricted
access to all of his vital signs, so she knew more about what was going
on with his body than he did. Still, if the AI was conscious of the way
he felt, there was no sign of it in her words. “Pulse generator
deactivated—good work.”
The Chief nodded wordlessly and made his way back through
the tunnel to the point where the Banshee waited. “The Pillar of
Autumn is located twelve hundred kilometers up-spin,” Cortana
continued. “Energy readings show her fusion reactors are still powered
up! The systems on thePillar of Autumn have fail-safes even I
can’t override without authorization from the Captain. We’ll have to
find him, or his neural implants, to start the fusion core detonation.
“One target remaining. Let’s take care of the
final
pulse generator.”
A nav indicator appeared on the noncom’s HUD as he lifted
off, took fire from a neighboring installation, and put the attack ship
into a steep dive. The ground came up fast, he pulled out, and guided
the alien assault craft through a pass and into the canyon beyond. The
nav indicator pointed toward the light that spilled out of a tunnel.
The Banshee began to take ground fire, and the Spartan knew his
piloting skills were about to be severely tested.
A rocket flashed by as he pushed the Banshee down onto the
deck, fired the aircraft’s weapons, and cut power. Flying into the
tunnel was bad enough—but flying into it at high speed verged on
suicidal.
Once inside the passageway the challenge was to stay off
the walls and make the tight right- and left-hand turns without killing
himself. A few seconds later the Spartan saw double blast doors and
flared in for a jarring landing.
He hopped down, made his way over to the control panel,
hit the switch, and heard a rumbling sound as the doors started to
part. Then there was a bang! as something exploded and the
enormous panels came to a sudden stop. The resulting gap was too small
for the Banshee, but sufficient for two carrier forms to scuttle
through. The beasts scrambled toward him on short, stubby legs. The
humpbacked bladders that formed their upper torsos pulsed and wriggled
as the infection forms within struggled for release.
The Chief blew both monsters away with twin shotgun
blasts, and mopped up the rest of the infection forms with another
shot. He paused and reloaded; there were bound to be more of the
creatures on the far side of the doors.
Resigned to a fight, he stepped through the crack and
paused. There was no sound beyond the gentle roar of machinery, the
drip,
drip, drip of water off to his right, and the rasp of his own
breathing. The threat indicator was clear, and there were no enemies in
sight, but that didn’t mean much. Not where the Flood were concerned.
They had a habit of coming out of nowhere.
The cave, if that was the proper word for the huge
cavernlike space, featured plenty of places to hide. Enormous pipes
emerged from the walls and dived downward, mysterious installations
stood like islands on the platform around him, and there was no way to
know what might lurk in the dark corners. Lights, mounted high above,
provided what little illumination there was.
The human stood on a broad platform that ran the full
length of the open area. A deep chasm separated his platform from what
appeared to be an identical structure on the other side of the canyon.
One of two bridges that had once spanned the gorge was down, leaving
only one over which he could pass—a made-to-order choke point for
anyone who wanted to establish an ambush.
There wasn’t a hell of a lot of choice, so he marched down
to the point where the remaining span was anchored, and started across.
He hadn’t gone more than thirty paces before fifty or sixty infection
forms emerged from hiding and danced out to block the way.
The Spartan held his position, waited for the Flood forms
to come a little closer, and tossed a fragmentation grenade into the
center of the group.
The cavern ate some of the sound, but the explosive device
still managed to produce a bang, and the resulting shrapnel laid
waste to all but a handful of the creatures.
There were two survivors, though, both optimists, who
continued to bounce forward in spite of the way in which the rest of
the group had been annihilated. A single shotgun blast was sufficient
to kill both of them.
He slipped some additional shells into the gun’s magazine
tube, took a deep breath, and moved forward again. He made it about
halfway to the other side before a mixed force of combat forms, carrier
forms, and infection forms started to gather at the far end of the
span. Another grenade inflicted casualties, but they charged him after
that, and the Master Chief was forced to retreat, firing the assault
weapon as he did so.
It was nip and tuck for a few seconds as combat forms
launched themselves fifteen meters through the air, carriers charged
straight in, and the omnipresent infection forms swarmed through the
gaps. Retreating, the Spartan had already reloaded three times before
his back hit the wall, and the last combat form collapsed at his feet,
started to rise, and took a blast in the head.
Once again it was time to reload both weapons, step out
onto the gore-splattered bridge deck, and attempt another crossing.
This one was successful, with only light opposition on the other side,
and an opportunity to replenish his ammo.
The next set of blast doors opened flawlessly, allowing
the Spartan to enter a relatively short section of tunnel that led back
to the surface. Determined to use stealth if at all possible, he
slipped out of the passageway, scrambled up over the snow embankment to
his right, and ran into a group of four Flood. A grenade took care of
two—and the assault weapon finished the rest.
A Banshee swooped in, burned a long line of dashes into
the snow, and continued up the valley. The Chief was surprised to get
off so lightly, but given the darkness and all of the confusion, it was
possible that the pilot had mistaken him for a combat form. A worthy
target, to be sure, but not something to turn around for. Particularly
not when the valley was full of combat forms.
He was careful to hug the face of the cliff and stay
within the cover provided by the boulders and trees that lined the edge
of the valley. The incessant thud of automatic weapons and the whine of
plasma weapons testified to the intensity of a conflict raging off to
his left.
Then, just as he was starting to believe that he could
slide by without firing a shot, he came up over a slight rise to see
that the Covenant and Flood were engaged in hand-to-hand combat within
the depression below. A grenade followed with bursts of fire from the
MA5B decimated both groups.
Snow crunched as the human made his way down through the
bloodstained snow, past the spot where a trio of greedy infection forms
squabbled over a wounded Elite, and up another rise to a stand of trees
where a combat form and a carrier tried to jump him. Both of the Flood
staggered as bursts of 7.62 mm slugs cut them down, and they flopped
onto the snow.
Having broken through the perimeter of the battle, the
Master Chief was able to follow the nav indicator into a second valley
where he came upon a group of dead Marines, loaded up on ammo, and
tried to decide whether to stay with the scatter gun or trade it in for
a sniper’s rifle or a rocket launcher. It would have been nice to have
all three, but that many weapons would be unwieldy, not to mention
damned heavy. In the end he went with the rifle and shotgun and hoped
it was the right decision.
The Spartan checked the Marines for dog tags, discovered
that they had already been taken by someone else, and took the time
required to drag the bodies into a nearby cave in the hope that the
infection forms wouldn’t find them. That seemed like a good place to
stash the extra weapons—so that’s what he did.
Then, having followed the second valley to the point where
it opened onto a third valley, he came across a now-familiar
scene. The Covenant were battling the Flood with everything they had,
including Shades, a brace of Ghosts, and two extremely active Wraiths,
but the Flood had plenty of bodies to throw back at them and didn’t
hesitate to do so.
What the Chief wanted was the Banshee that was parked at
the head of the valley, but in order to get at the aircraft it would be
necessary to cut both groups down to size. He stayed right, slipped
along the cliff face, made use of a thin screen of trees and boulders
to hide his movements from those out toward the center of the valley.
Finally, having passed behind a house-sized rock and found a vantage
point that allowed him to look out on the area where the vast majority
of the Covenant were congregated, the Spartan unlimbered the S2 AM,
selected the 10X setting for the scope, and began his bloody work.
In this particular situation he selected the softest
targets first, starting with the Grunts on the Shades, followed by the
outlying Jackals, all in hope that he could inflict a lot of casualties
before the Elites took notice and sent the tank to get him.
The problem was that the little world inside the scope was
all-consuming—a fact that caused him to let down his guard. The first
hint he had that a Flood form had come up behind him was when it
whacked the Spartan in the head.
The blow would have killed anyone else, but the armor
saved him, and the Chief rolled in the direction of the blow. The
long-barreled S2 wasn’t well suited for close-in combat but that’s what
he had in his hands. There was no time to aim as the Flood form
charged, only time to fire, and that’s what he did.
The slug caught the ex-Elite in the chest. The combat form
didn’t even flinch as the bullet passed through its spongy center of
mass. A tiny spurt of gray-green ichor trailed from the entry wound, as
the creature swung a vicious blow at the Master Chief.
He ducked the attack and dropped the rifle. He dived,
tucked into a roll and came up with his sidearm in his hand. He emptied
the clip into the beast. One round blew its left arm off, and the final
round made a foot-wide exit wound in the Flood’s back.
He kicked in the creature’s chest, crushing the infection
form within. He collected the S2, and frowned. He studied the fallen
Flood for a moment, and saw that the creature’s insides were rapidly
liquefying. The velocity of the S2’s projectile had passed through the
nonvital mass of the creature’s chest and just kept going.
Another nasty surprise, courtesy of the Flood.
After a quick look around to make sure that there weren’t
any more surprises lurking in the vicinity, with his heart still
beating like a trip-hammer, the Chief went back to his grisly work.
Three more Covenant warriors fell before a barrage of fireballs arced
high into the air to land all around his position. One came so close
that just the bleed off it was enough to push his shielding into the
red and trigger the alarm.
He pulled back, switched to the assault weapon long enough
to ice a couple of overly ambitious Grunts, and switched back to the S2
as he rounded the opposite side of the big boulder. He selected a spot
where he could go to work on both the Covenant and the Flood,
and
settled in.
He wanted to nail the Elites now and, thanks to the
powerful 14.5mm armor-piercing rounds, he could drop most of them with
a single shot. Combat forms were a different story, so he switched to
the pistol. It was less accurate, but did the job. It wasn’t long
before more than a dozen bodies were laid out in the snow. But then the
word was out. Soon the mortar tank moved into position to bombard his
new position, and it was necessary to pull back.
The Wraith was a problem, a serious problem, which
meant there was only one thing the Spartan could do: hike back to the
weapons cache and trade the rifle for the launcher. It was a major pain
in the ass, but he didn’t have much choice, so he pulled out.
It took a full half hour to make the round trip between
the valley and the weapons cache, so he expected things to have calmed
down a bit by the time he returned. That wasn’t the case, however,
which suggested that the Flood had thrown even more forms into the
battle.
The Chief followed his own footprints back to the hiding
place next to the big boulder, put the launcher on his shoulder, and
hit the zoom. The Wraith, which was busy hurling bombs down valley,
seemed to leap forward. As if somehow aware of his presence, the tank
spun on its axis, and launched a bomb toward the rock.
The Spartan forced himself to ignore the artificial comet,
locked onto the target, and triggered the rocket. There was an impact
and a loud crump! followed by smoke—but the Wraith continued to
fire nonetheless.
Now, with fireballs exploding all around him, the Master
Chief had to take a deep breath, hold the tank at the center of his
sight, and pull the trigger again. The tube jerked, the second missile
ran straight and true, and hit with a loud craack! The Wraith
opened like a red flower, burped pitch-black smoke, and nosed into a
snowbank.
“Nice shot,” Cortana said admiringly, “but watch the
Ghost.”
It was good advice, because although the attack vehicle
had held back up to that point, it came skittering into sight, opened
up with its plasma weapons, and threatened to accomplish what the rest
of the Covenant soldiers hadn’t.
But the Chief had reloaded by then. The rocket tube was
the right weapon for the job, and a single missile was sufficient to
send the attack vehicle flipping end-for-end to finally wind up with
its belly in the air and flames licking at the engine compartment.
With that problem out of the way the Chief came to his
feet, slapped a fresh load into the launcher, and made a beeline for
the Banshee. He was halfway across, with nowhere to hide, when a pair
of Hunters emerged from a jumble of boulders.
Now, grateful that he still had some rockets, he had no
choice but to stop, drop to one knee, and take them on. The first shot
was dead on, hit the alien in the chest, and blew the bastard apart.
Another rocket flew over the second Hunter’s right shoulder and cut a
tree in half. The big alien started to lumber across open ground,
picking up speed and charging its arm-mounted cannon.
It was a waste of ammo to pepper the front end of a Hunter
with 7.62 mm rounds, and slow though he was, the alien could still
bring
him down with a blast from his arm-mounted fuel rod cannon.
So he put his sight onto a target so big he didn’t need to
zoom, and let fly.
The Hunter saw the missile coming, tried to deflect it
with his shield, and failed. Seconds later pieces of warm meat showered
the area, melted holes in the snow, and continued to steam.
The Chief ran past without a second look, jumped onto the
Banshee, and strafed the rest of the Covenant forces on his way down
the valley. Judging from the way the nav indicator was oriented, the
Spartan needed altitude, a lot of it, so he put the alien attack ship
into a steep climb.
Finally, when the red delta flipped over, and started to
point down, he knew he was high enough. He did a nose-over and caught
his first glimpse of the way point below. The surrounding area was
dark, and snow continued to fall, but the platform was nicely lit. He
lowered the Banshee onto the pad and had just bailed out of the pilot’s
seat when the Sentinels attacked. “This is the last one,” Cortana said.
“The Monitor will do anything to stop us.”
The Chief blew three of the pesky machines out of the air,
backed through the hatch, and let the door close on the rest.
“We’re close,” the AI commented. “The generator is up
ahead.”
The Chief nodded, stepped out into a room, and felt a
laser burn across the front of his armor. It seemed that the Monitor
had posted Sentinels inside the complex, as well. Not only
that,
but these machines had benefit of intermittent force fields, which were
resistant to automatic weapons fire.
Still, he had a couple of 102mm surprises in store for the
electromechanical enforcers, which he fired into the center of the
hovering pack. Three Sentinels were blown out of the air. A fourth did
loops as it tried to rid itself of a plasma grenade, failed, and took
another machine with it. The fifth and sixth succumbed to a hail of
bullets as their shields recharged, while the seventh slammed into a
wall, crashed to the floor, and was busy trying to lift off again when
the Chief stomped it to death.
The way was clear at that point and the Spartan was quick
to take advantage of it. A few quick strides were sufficient to carry
him into the central chamber where he was free to approach the final
pulse generator.
“Final target neutralized,” Cortana said as the noncom
stepped back a few moments later. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Let’s find a ride and get to the Captain,” the Chief
agreed, as he prepared to leave.
“No, that’ll take too long.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“There’s a teleportation grid that runs around Halo.
That’s how the Monitor moves about so quickly,” the AI explained. “I
learned how to tap into the grid when I was in the Control Center.”
“So,” the Chief asked, somewhat annoyed, “why didn’t you
just teleport us to the pulse generators?”
“I can’t. Unfortunately, each jump requires a rather
consequential expenditure of energy, and I don’t have access to Halo’s
power systems to reroute the energy we need.” She paused, then
reluctantly continued. “There may be another way, however.”
The Spartan frowned and shook his head. “Something tells
me I’m not going to like this.”
“I’m pretty sure I can pull the energy we need from your
suit without permanently damaging your shield system or the
armor’s power cells,” Cortana continued. “Needless to say, I think we
should only try this once.”
“Agreed. Tap into the Covenant network and see if you can
find him. If we’ve only got one shot at this, we should make it a good
one.”
There was a pause as Cortana worked her magic with the
intrusion and scan software. A moment later, she exclaimed, “I’ve got a
good lock on Captain Keyes’ CNI transponder signal. He’s alive! And the
implants are intact! There’s some interference from the cruiser’s
damaged reactor. I’ll bring us in as close as I can.”
“Do it,” the Master Chief growled. “Let’s get this over
with.”
No sooner had the Spartan spoken than bands of golden
light started to ripple down over his armor, the now-familiar feeling
of nausea returned, and the Master Chief seemed to vanish through the
floor. Once he was gone only a few motes of amber light remained to
mark his passing. Then, after a few seconds, they too disappeared.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
D+73:34:16 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / On
board the Truth and Reconciliation.
He wasn’t here, wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere
insofar as the Chief could tell from within the strange never-never
land of Halo’s teleportation net. He couldn’t see or hear anything,
save a sense of dizzying velocity. The Spartan felt his body stitched
back together, one molecule at a time. He saw snatches of what looked
like the interior of a Covenant ship as bands of golden light strobed
up and disappeared over his head.
Something was wrong and he was just starting to figure out
what it was—the inside of the ship seemed to be upside down—when he
flipped head over heels and crashed to the deck.
He’d materialized with his feet planted firmly on the
corridor’s ceiling.
“Oh!” Cortana exclaimed. “I see, the coordinate data needs
to be—”
The Chief came to his feet, slapped the general area where
his implants were, and shook his head. The AI sounded contrite. “Right.
Sorry.”
“Never mind that,” the Spartan said. “Give me a sit-rep.”
She patched back into the Covenant computing systems, a
much easier task now that they were aboard one of the enemy’s warships.
“The Covenant network is absolute chaos,” she replied.
“From what I’ve been able to piece together, the leadership ordered all
ships to abandon Halo when they found the Flood, but they were too
late. The Flood overwhelmed this cruiser and captured it.”
“I assume,” he said, “that’s bad .”
“The Covenant think so. They’re terrified that the Flood
will repair the ship and use it to escape from Halo. They sent a strike
team to neutralize the Flood and prepare the ship for immediate
departure.”
The Chief peered down the corridor. The bulkheads were
violet. Or was that lavender? Strange patterns marbled the material,
like the oily sheen of a beetle’s carapace. Whatever it was, he didn’t
care for it, especially on a military vessel, but who knew? Maybe the
Covenant thought olive drab was for wimps.
He started forward, but quickly came up short as a voice
that verged on a groan came in over his implants.“Chief . . . Don’t
be a fool . . . Leave me.”
It was Keyes’ voice.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number
01928-19912-JK. He clung to the tether of his CNI carrier wave, and
“heard” familiar voices. An iron-hard, rasping male voice. A tart, warm
female voice.
He knew them.
Was this another memory?
He was struggling to dredge up new pieces of his past to
delay the numbing advance of the alien presence in his mind. It was
harder to maintain a grasp on who he was, as the various pieces of his
life—the things that made him who he was—were stripped away, one at a
time.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The voices. They were talking about him. The Master Chief,
the AI Cortana.
He felt a sense of mounting panic. They shouldn’t be
here.
The other grew stronger, and pressed forward, eager to
learn more about these creatures that were so important to the
struggling prisoner who clung so stubbornly to identity.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
Chief, Cortana, you shouldn’t have come. Don’t be a
fool. Leave me. Get out of here. Run.
The presence descended, and he could feel its anticipation
of victory. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Captain?” Cortana inquired desperately. “Captain!
I’ve
lost him.”
Neither one of them said anything further. The pain in
Keyes’ voice had been clear. All they could do was drive deeper into
the ship and hope to find him.
The Chief passed through a hatch, noticed that the right
bulkhead was splattered with Covenant blood, and figured a battle had
been fought there. That meant he could expect to run into the Flood at
any moment. As he continued down the passageway his throat felt
unusually dry, his heart beat a little bit faster, and his stomach
muscles were tight.
His suspicions were soon confirmed as he heard the sounds
of battle, took a right, and saw that a firefight was underway at the
far end of the corridor. He let the combatants go at it for a bit
before moving in to cut the survivors down.
From there he took a left, followed by a right, and came
to a hatch. It opened to reveal a black hole with jagged edges. Farther
back, beyond the drop-off, another firefight was underway.
“Analyzing data,” Cortana said. “This hole was caused by
some sort of explosion . . . All I detect down there are pools of
coolant. We should continue our search somewhere else.”
The AI’s advice made sense, so the Spartan turned to
retrace his steps. Then, as he took the first left, all hell broke
loose. Cortana said, “Warning! Threat level increasing!” and then, as
if to prove her point, a mob of Flood came straight at him.
He fired, retreated, and fired again. Carrier forms
exploded in a welter of shattered flesh, severed tentacles, and green
slime. Combat forms rushed forward as if eager to die, danced under the
impact of the 7.62 mm rounds, and flew apart. Infection forms skittered
across the decks, leaped into the air, and shattered into flaps of
flying flesh.
But there were too many, far too many for one person to
handle, and even as the Chief heard Cortana say something about the
black hole he accidentally backed into it, fell about twenty meters,
and plunged feetfirst into a pond of green liquid. Not in the ship, but
somewhere under it, on the surface below. The coolant was so
cold
that he could feel it through his armor. It was thick, too—which made
it more difficult to move.
The Master Chief felt his boots hit bottom, knew the
weight of his armor would hold him in place, and marched up onto what
had become a beach of sorts. The cavern was dark, lit mostly by the
luminescent glow produced by the coolant itself, although streaks of
plasma fire slashed back and forth up ahead, punctuated by the steady
thud,
thud, thud of an automatic weapon.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cortana said, “and find another
way back aboard the ship.”
He moved up toward the edge of the conflict and let the
combatants hammer each other for a bit before lobbing a grenade into
the mix, waiting for the body parts to fall, and strafing what was left.
Then, having moved forward, he was forced to fight his way
through a series of narrow, body-strewn passageways as what seemed like
an inexhaustible supply of Flood forms came at him from every possible
direction.
Eventually, having made his way through grottoes of
coolant, and past piles of corpses, Cortana said, “We should head this
way—toward the ship’s gravity lift,” and the Spartan saw a nav pointer
appear on his HUD. He followed the red arrow around a bend to a ledge
above a coolant-filled basin. Even as he watched, a dozen carrier forms
marched up out of the green lagoon to attack a group of hard-pressed
Covenant soldiers.
The Spartan knew there was no way in hell that he’d be
able to force his way through that mess, turned, and made his
way
back down the trail. A sniper rifle, just one of hundreds of weapons
scattered around the area, was half obscured by a headless combat form.
The petty officer removed the rifle, checked to ensure that it was
loaded, and returned to the overlook. Then, careful to make each shot
count, he opened fire.
The Elites, Jackals, and Grunts went down fairly easily.
But the Flood forms, especially the carriers, were practically
impossible to kill with this particular weapon. With few exceptions the
heavy round seemed to pass right through the lumpy-looking bastards
without causing any harm whatsoever.
When all of the 14.5 mm ammo was gone, the Chief went back
for the shotgun, jumped into the green liquid, and waded up onto the
shoreline. He heard an obscene sucking noise, saw an infection form
trying to enter an Elite’s chest cavity, and blew both of them away.
After that there was more clean-up to do as some combat
forms took a run at the human and a flock of infection forms tried to
roll him under. Repeated doses of shotgun fire turned out to be just
what the doctor ordered—the area was soon littered with severed
tentacles and scraps of wet flesh.
A pitch-black passageway led him back to another pool
where he arrived just in time to see the Flood overrun a Shade and the
Elite who was seated at the controls. The Spartan began firing, already
backpedaling, when the Flood spotted him and hopped, waddled, and
jumped forward. He fired, reloaded, and fired again. Always retreating,
always on the defensive, always hoping for a respite.
This wasn’t his kind of fight. Spartans were designed as
offensive weapons, but ever since they’d landed on the ring, he’d been
on the run. He had to find a way to take the offensive, and soon.
There was no break in the endless wall of Flood attackers.
He fired until his weapons were empty, pried energy weapons out of dead
fingers, and fired those until they were dry.
Finally, more by virtue of stubbornness than anything
else, and having reacquired human weapons from dead combat forms, the
Master Chief found himself standing all alone, rifle raised, with no
one to shoot at. He felt a powerful sense of elation—he wa salive.
It was a moment he couldn’t take time to enjoy.
Eager to reboard the cruiser and find Captain Keyes, he
made his way back along the path he had been forced to surrender to the
Flood, passed the Shade, rounded a bend, and saw a couple dozen
infection forms materialize out of the darkness ahead. A plasma grenade
strobed the night, pulverized their bodies, and produced a satisfying
boom!
It was still echoing off the canyon walls as the human eased his way
through a narrow passage and emerged at one end of a hotly contested
pool. About fifty meters away the Covenant and Flood surged back and
forth, traded fire with each other, and appeared to be on the verge of
hand-to-tentacle combat. Two well-thrown grenades cut the number of
hostiles in half. The MA5B took care of the rest.
“There’s the gravity lift!” Cortana said. “It’s still
operational. That’s our way back in.”
It sounded simple, but as the Master Chief looked up at
the hill on which the lift was sited, well-aimed plasma fire lashed
down to scorch the rock at his right elbow. It glowed as the human was
forced to pull back, wait for a lull, and dash forward again. Looking
ahead, he spotted the point where a group of hard-pressed Covenant were
trying to bar a group of Flood from making their way up a path toward
the top of the hill and the foot of the gravity lift. It was a last
stand, and the Covenant knew it. They fought harder than he’d ever seen
the aliens fight. He felt a moment of kinship with the Covenant
soldiers.
He stood and threw two grenades into the middle of the
melee, waited for the twin explosions and went in shooting. An Elite
sent plasma stuttering into the night sky as he fell over backward, a
combat form swung a Jackal’s arm like a club, and a pair of infection
forms rode a Grunt down into the pool of coolant. It was a madness, a
scene straight from hell, and the human had little choice but to kill
everything that moved.
As the last bodies crumpled to the ground, the Spartan was
free to follow the steadily rising path upward, turn to the right, and
enter the lift’s footprint. He felt static electricity crackle around
his armor, and heard plasma shriek through the air as a distant
Covenant took exception to his plans. Then the Chief was gone, pulled
upward, into the belly of the beast.
Keyes? Keyes, Jacob. Yes, that was it.
Wasn’t it?
He couldn’t remember—there was nothing left now but
navigation protocols, defense plans. And a duty to keep them safe.
A droning buzz filled his mind. He vaguely remembered
hearing it before, but didn’t know what it was.
It pressed in, hungry.
Metal rang under her boots as McKay jumped
down off the last platform onto the huge metal grating. It shivered in
response. The trip down from the mesa had taken more than fifteen
minutes. First, she had taken the still-functional lift down to the
point where she and her troops had forced their way into the butte,
back when the Covenant still occupied it, then transferred to the
circular staircase, which, like the rifling on the inside of a gun
barrel, wound its way down to the bottom of the shaft and the barrier
under her feet.
“Good to see you, ma’am,” a Private said, as he
materialized at her elbow. “Sergeant Lister would like to speak with
you.”
McKay nodded, said “Thanks,” and made her way over to the
far side of the grating where the so-called Entry Team were gathered
into a tight little group next to an assemblage of equipment that had
been lowered from above. A portable work light glowed at the very
center of the assemblage and threw huge shadows up onto the walls
around them. Bodies parted as McKay approached, and Lister, who was
down on his hands and knees, jumped to his feet. “Ten-hut!”
Everyone came to attention. McKay noticed the way that the
long hours and constant stress had pared what little bit of extra flesh
there was off the noncom’s face, leaving it gaunt and haggard. “As you
were. How does it look? Any contact?”
“No, ma’am,” Lister responded, “not yet. But take a look at
this
.”
A Navy tech directed a handheld spotlight down through the
grating and the officer knelt to get a better look. The stairs, which
had ended on the far side of the platform, appeared to pick up again
just below the grating and circled into the darkness below.
“Look at the metal,” Lister prompted, “and look at what’s
piled up on the stairs below.”
McKay looked, saw that the thick metal crosspieces had
been twisted out of shape, and saw a large pile of weapons below. No
human ordnance as far as she could tell, just Covenant, which was to
say plasma weapons. With no cutting torches to call upon, not yet
anyway, it looked as though the Flood had depleted at least a hundred
energy pistols and rifles in a futile attempt to cut their way through
the grating. Given some more time, say another day or two, they might
have succeeded.
“You’ve got to give the bastards credit,” McKay said
grimly. “They never give up. Well, neither do we. Let’s cut this sucker
open, go down, and lock the back door.”
Lister said, “Ma’am, yes ma’am,” but there were none of
the usual gung-ho responses from the others who stood around him. It
was dark down there—and nightmares lay in wait.
Once inside the Pillar of Autumn,
’Zamamee and Yayap found conditions to be both better and worse than
they had expected. Consistent with the Grunt’s predictions, the officer
in charge—an overworked Elite named ’Ontomee—had been extremely glad to
see them, and wasted little time placing ’Zamamee in charge of twenty
Jackals, with Yayap as senior NCO.
That, plus the fact that the security detachment had a
reasonable amount of supplies, including methane, meant that basic
physical needs had been met. That was the good news.
The bad news was that ’Zamamee, now known as Huki ’Umamee,
lived in constant fear that an Elite who knew either him or the
recently deceased commando he had decided to impersonate would come
along and reveal his true identity, or that the Prophets would
somehow pluck the information out of thin air, as they were rumored to
be able to do. These fears caused the officer to lay low, stay out of
sight, and delegate most of his leadership responsibilities to Yayap.
This would have been annoying but acceptable where a
contingent of Grunts was concerned, but was made a great deal more
difficult by the fact that the Jackals saw themselves as being superior
to the “gas suckers,” and were anything but pleased when they found
themselves reporting to Yayap.
Then, as if to add to the Grunt’s woes, the Flood had
located the Pillar of Autumn, and while they were unable to
infiltrate the vessel via any of the maintenance ways that ran back and
forth just below the ring world’s surface, they had become adept at
entering the vessel through rents in its severely damaged hull, the air
locks where lifeboats had once been docked, and on one memorable
occasion via one of the Covenant’s own patrols, which had been
ambushed, turned into combat forms, and sent back into the ship. The
ruse had been detected, but only after some of the “contaminated”
soldiers were inside the vessel. A few of them were still at large,
somewhere within the human vessel.
As the Grunt and his group of surly Jackals stood guard in
the Autumn ’s shuttle bay, a dropship loaded with supplies
circled over the downed ship, asked for and received the necessary
clearances, and swooped in for a landing.
Yayap eyed his recalcitrant troops, saw that three of them
had drifted away from their preassigned positions, and used his radio
to herd them back. “Jak, Bok, and Yeg, we have a shuttle coming in.
Focus on the dropship—not the area outside.”
The Jackals were too smart to say anything over the radio,
but the Grunt knew they were grumbling among themselves as they
returned to their various stations and the ship settled onto the
blast-scarred deck.
“Watch the personnel slots,” Yayap cautioned his troops,
referring to the small compartments that lined the outside surfaces of
the shuttle’s twin hulls. “They could be packed with Flood.”
In spite of the resentment he felt, Bok touched a switch
and opened all of the slots for inspection, a new security procedure
instituted three days before. The compartments were empty. The Jackals
sniggered, and there was nothing Yayap could do but suffer through the
indignity of it.
With that formality out of the way, a crew of Grunts moved
in to unload supplies from the cargo compartments that lined the inside
surface of the dropship’s hulls, and towed the heavily loaded antigrav
pallets out onto the deck. Then, with the unloading process complete,
the shuttle rose on its grav field, turned toward the hatch, and passed
out into bright sunlight.
The cargo crew checked the label on each cargo container
to see where it was supposed to go, gabbled at one another, and were
about to tow the pallets away when Yayap intervened.
“Stop! I want you to open those cargo mods one at a time.
Make sure they contain what they’re supposed to.”
If the previous order had been unpopular, this one met
with out-and-out rebellion, as Bok decided to take Yayap on. “You’re no
Elite! We’re under orders to deliver this stuff now. If we’re
late, they’ll take our heads.” He paused and clicked his beak
meaningfully. “And our kin will take yours , gas-sucker.”
The Jackals, all of whom were enjoying the interchange to
the maximum, looked at each other and grinned.
’Zamamee should have been there, should have been giving
the orders, and Yayap cursed the officer from the bottom of his heart.
“No,” he replied stubbornly. “Nothing leaves here until it has been
checked. That’s the new process. The Elites were the ones who came up
with it, not me. So open them up and we’ll get you and your crew out of
here.”
The other alien grumbled, but knew the rule-happy Elites
would back Yayap, and turned to his crew. “All right, you heard Field
Master Gas-sucker. Let’s get this over with.”
Yayap sighed, ordered his Jackals to form a giant U with
the open end toward the cargo containers, and took his own place in the
line.
What ensued was boring to say the least, as each cargo
module was opened, closed, and towed out of the way. Finally, with only
three containers left to go, Bok undogged a hatch, pulled the door
open, and disappeared under an avalanche of infection forms. One of the
attacking pods grabbed onto the Jackal’s head, wrapped its tentacles
around the creature’s skull, drove a penetrator down through his
throat, and had already tapped into the soldier’s spine by the time
Yayap yelled, “Fire!” and the rest of the Jackals opened up.
Nothing could live where the twenty plasma beams
converged—and most of the infection forms were dead within two or three
heartbeats. But Yayap thought he detected motion behind the mist
created by the exploding pus pods and lobbed a plasma grenade into the
cargo module. There was a flash of green-yellow light as the device
went off, followed by a resonant boom! as it detonated.
The cargo container shook like a thing possessed, and
chunks of raw meat flew out to spray the deck with gore. It was clear
that three, or maybe even four combat forms had been hiding in the
cargo compartment, hoping to enter the ship.
Now, as the last of the infection forms popped, a
momentary silence settled over the shuttle bay. Bok’s corpse smoldered
on the deck.
“That was close,” the Jackal named Jak said. “Those stupid
gassers damned near got us killed. Good thing our file leader kept ’em
in line.” The soldiers to either side of the former critic nodded
solemnly.
Yayap, who was close enough to hear the comment, wasn’t
sure whether to be angry or pleased. Somehow, for better or for worse,
he’d been elevated to the position of honorary Jackal.
A full company of heavily armed Marines
waited as torches cut through the metal grating, sparks fell into the
stygian blackness below, and each man or woman considered what awaited
them. Would they survive? Or leave their bones in the bottom of the
hole? There was no way to know.
Meanwhile, thirty meters away, two officers stood by
themselves. McKay had borne far more than her fair share of the burden
ever since the drop. Silva was aware of that and regretted it. Part of
the problem stemmed from the fact that she was his XO, an extremely
demanding position that could burn even the most capable officer out.
But the truth was McKay was a better leader than her peers, as
evidenced by the fact that the Helljumpers would follow her anywhere,
even into a pit that might be filled with life-devouring monstrosities.
But everyone had their limits, even an officer like McKay,
and the Major knew she was close to reaching them. He could see it in
the grim contours of her once rounded face, the empty staring eyes, and
the set of her mouth. The problem wasn’t one of strength—she was the
toughest, most hard-core Marine he knew—but one of hope.
Now, as he prepared to send her below, Silva knew she
needed something real to fight for, something more than
patriotism, something that would allow her to get at least some of the
Marines to safety.
That, plus the possibility that something could happen to
him, lay behind the briefing that ensued.
“So,” Silva began, “go down, get the lay of the land, and
see if you can slam the door on those bastards. Forty-eight hours of
Flood-free operation would be ideal, but twenty-four would be
sufficient, because we’ll be out of here by then.”
McKay had been looking over Silva’s shoulder, but the last
sentence brought her eyes back to his. Silva saw the movement and knew
he had connected. “ ‘Out of here,’ sir? Where would we go?”
“Home,” Silva said confidently, “to brass bands,
medals, and promotions all around. Then, with the credibility earned
here, we’ll have the opportunity to create an army of
Helljumpers, and push the Covenant back into whatever hole they evolved
from.”
“And the Flood?” McKay asked, her eyes searching his face.
“What about them?”
“They’re going to die,” Silva replied. “The AIs managed to
link up a few hours ago. It turns out that the Chief is alive, Cortana
is with him, and they’re trying to rescue Keyes. Once they have him
they’re going to rig the Autumn to blow. The explosion will
destroy Halo and everything on it. I’m not a fan of the Spartan
program, you know that, but I’ve got to give the bastard credit. He’s
one helluva soldier.”
“It sounds good,” McKay said cautiously. “But how do we
get off before the ring blows?”
“Ah,” Silva replied. “That’s where my idea comes
in.
While you’re down cleaning out the sewers, I’ll be up top, making the
preparations necessary to take the Truth and Reconciliation away
from the Covenant. She’s spaceworthy now, and Cortana can fly her, or,
if all else fails, we’ll let Wellsley take a crack at it. It would be a
stretch—but he might be able to pull it off.
“Imagine! Arriving back on Earth in a Covenant cruiser,
packed with Covie technology, and loaded with data on Halo! The
response will be incredible! The human race needs a victory right now,
and we’ll give them a big one.”
It was then, as McKay looked into the other officer’s
half-lit face, that she realized the extent to which raw ambition
motivated her superior’s actions, and knew that even if his wildest
dreams were to come true, she wouldn’t want any part of the glory that
Silva sought. Just getting some Marines home alive—that would be
reward enough for her.
An old soldier’s adage flashed across her mind: “Never
share a foxhole with a hero.” Glory and promotion were fine, but right
now, she’d settle for surviva , plain and simple.
First there was a loud clang, followed by
the birth of six blue-white suns, which illuminated the inside surface
of the shaft as they fell to the filth-encrusted floor below.
Then the invaders dropped, not one at a time down the
stairs as the infection forms might have assumed, but half a dozen all
at once, dangling on ropes. They landed within seconds of each other,
knelt with weapons at the ready, and faced outward. Each Helljumper
wore a helmet equipped with two lights and a camera. With simple back
and forth movements of their heads, the soldiers created overlapping
scans of the walls which were transmitted up to the grating above, and
from there to the mesa.
McKay stood on the grating, eyed the raw footage on a
portable monitor, and saw that four large arches penetrated the
perimeter of the shaft and would need to be sealed in order to prevent
access to the circular stairway. There was no sign of the Flood.
“Okay,” the officer said, “we have four holes to seal. I
want those plugs at the bottom of the shaft thirty from now. I’m going
down.”
Even as McKay spoke, and dropped into the hole which had
been cut into the center of the grate, Wellsley was calculating the
exact dimensions of each arch so that Navy techs could fabricate metal
“plugs” that could be lowered to the bottom of the shaft, manhandled
into position, and welded into place. Within a matter of minutes
computer-generated outlines were lasered onto metal plates, torches
were lit, and the cutting began.
McKay felt her boots touch solid ground, and took her
first look around. Now, finally able to see the surroundings with her
own eyes, the Company Commander realized that a bas relief mural
circled the lower part of the shaft. She wanted to go look at it, to
run her fingers across the grime-caked images recorded there, but knew
she couldn’t, not without compromising the defensive ring and placing
herself in jeopardy.
“Contact!” one of the Marines said urgently. “I saw
something move.”
“Hold your fire,” McKay said cautiously, her voice echoing
off the walls. “Conserve ammo until we have clear targets.”
As soon as she’d given the “hold fire” order, the Flood
gushed out into the shaft. McKay screamed: “Now! Pull!” and seven
well-anchored winches jerked the entire team into the air and out of
reach. The Marines fired as they ascended. One Helljumper screamed
curses at the combat form who was leading the charge.
The loudmouthed Marine dropped his clip, loaded a fresh
one into his rifle, and shouldered the weapon to resume fire. The
combat form he’d been shooting leaped fifteen meters into the air,
wrapped his legs around the Marine’s waist, and caved in the side of
the soldier’s head with a rock.
Then, with the fallen Marine’s assault weapon slung over
his shoulder, the creature climbed the rope like an oversized monkey,
and raced for the platform above.
Lister, who still stood on the grating above, aimed his
pistol straight down, put three rounds through the top of the combat
form’s skull, saw the form fall backward into the milling mass below,
and watched it disappear under the tide of alien flesh.
“Let’s move, people!” the noncom said. “Raise the
bait, and drop the bombs.”
Energy bolts stuttered upward as the winches whirred, the
Helljumpers rose, and twenty grenades fell through the grating and into
the mob below. Not fragmentation grenades, which would have
thrown shrapnel up at the Helljumpers, but plasma grenades, which
burned as the Flood congregated around them, then went off in quick
succession. They vaporized most of the gibbering monsters and left the
rest vulnerable to a round of gunfire and a second dose of grenades.
Ten minutes later word came down that the plugs were
ready, and a larger combat team was sent down, followed by four teams
of techs. The arches were blocked without incident, the shaft was
sealed, and the grating was repaired. Not forever, but for the next day
or so, and that was all that mattered.
The Master Chief arrived at the top of the
gravity lift and fought his way through a maze of passageways and
compartments, occupied by Flood and Covenant alike. He rounded a corner
and saw an open hatch ahead. “It looks like a shuttle bay,” Cortana
commented. “We should be able to reach the Control Room from the third
level.”
The CNI link that Cortana followed served to deliver a new
message from the Captain. The voice was weak, and sounded slurred.“I
gave you an order, soldier, now pull out!”
“He’s delirious,” Cortana said, “in pain. We have to find
him!”
. . . pull out! I gave you an order,
soldier!
The thought echoed in what was left of Keyes’ ravaged
mind. The invading presence descended. It could tell this one was
nearly expended—no more energy left to fight.
It pushed in on the memories that the creature so
jealously guarded, and recoiled at the sudden resistance, a defiance of
terrible strength.
Keyes clutched at the last of his vital memories,
and—inside his mind, where there was no one but he and the creature
that attempted to absorb him—screamed NO!
Death, held in abeyance for so long, refused to rush in.
Slowly, like the final drops of water from a recently closed faucet,
his life force was absorbed.
With the memory of the voice to spur him on,
the Master Chief made his way out onto a gallery over the shuttle bay,
found that a pitched battle was in progress, and lobbed two grenades
into the center of the conflict. They had the desired effect, but also
signaled the human’s presence, and the Flood came like iron filings
drawn to a magnet.
The Flood onslaught was intense, and the Spartan was
forced to retreat into the passageway whence he had come in order to
concentrate the targets, buy some time, and reload his weapons.
The pitched firefight ended, and he sprinted for the far
side of the gallery and passed through an open hatch. He fought his way
up to the next level of the gallery, where the Flood appeared to be
holding a convention at the far end of the walkway.
The Chief was fresh out of grenades by then, which meant
he had to clear the path the hard way. A carrier form exploded, and
sent a cluster of combat forms crashing to the ground.
The burst carrier spewed voracious infection forms in
every direction, and collapsed as one of the fallen combat forms hopped
forward, dragging a broken leg behind him, hands clutching a grenade as
if it were a bouquet of flowers.
The Spartan backed away, fired a series of ten-round
bursts, and gave thanks when the grenade exploded.
The carrier had given him an idea—when they blew, they
went up in a big way. A second of the creatures scuttled into view, and
made its ungainly way forward, accompanied by a wave of infection forms
and two more combat forms. He used his pistol scope to survey the
combat forms and was gratified that they fit the bill: Each carried
plasma grenades.
He stepped into view, and the combat forms instantly
vaulted high in the air. As soon as their feet left the deck, the Chief
dropped and fired—directly at the carrier.
The Spartan’s aim was perfect—as soon as they passed over
the carrier, it burst, and ignited the plasma grenades the combat forms
carried. They all went up in a blue-white flash of destructive energy.
“The Control Room should be this way,” Cortana said
as he charged ahead, eager to keep them moving in the right direction.
He moved fast, advancing across the blood-slicked floor,
and followed Cortana’s new nav coordinates toward the still-distant
hatch. He passed through the opening, followed the corridor to an
intersection, took a right, a left, and was passing through a door when
a horrible groan was heard over the link.
“The Captain!” Cortana said. “His vitals are fading!
Please Chief, hurry.”
The Spartan charged into a passageway packed with both
Covenant and Flood, and sprayed the tangle of bodies with bullets.
He kept running at top speed, sprinting past enemies and
ignoring their hasty snap-shots. Time was of the essence; Keyes was
fading fast.
He made it to the CNI’s carrier wave source: the cruiser’s
Control Room. The lighting was subdued, with hints of blue, and
reflections off the metal surfaces. Thick, sturdy columns framed the
ramp which led up to an elevated platform, where something strange
stood.
He thought it was a carrier at first glance, but soon
realized that the creature was far too large for that. It boasted
spines that connected it to the ceiling overhead, like thick,
gray-green spiderwebs.
There were no signs of opposition, not yet anyway, which
left him free to make his way up the ramp with his rifle at the ready.
As he moved closer the Chief realized that the new Flood form was huge
. If it was aware of the human presence, the creature gave no sign of
it, and continued to study a large holo panel as if committing the
information displayed there to memory.
“No human life signs detected,” Cortana observed
cautiously. She paused, and added: “The Captain’s life signs just
stopped.”
Damn. “What about the CNI?” he asked.
“Still transmitting.”
Then the Chief noticed a bulge in the monster’s side, and
realized that he was looking at an impression of the Naval officer’s
grotesquely distorted face. The AI said, “The Captain! He’s one of
them
!”
The Spartan realized then that he already knew that, had
known it ever since he had seen Jenkins’ video, but was unwilling to
accept it.
“We can’t let the Flood get off this ring!” Cortana said
desperately. “You know what he’d expect . . . What he’d want us to do.”
Yes, the Chief thought. I know my duty.
They needed to blow the Autumn’s engines to
destroy
Halo and the Flood. To do that, they needed the Captain’s neural
implants.
The Master Chief drew his arm back, formed his hand into a
stiff-fingered armored shovel, and made use of his enormous strength to
plunge the crude instrument into the Flood form’s bloated body.
There was momentary resistance as he punched his way
through the creature’s skin and penetrated the Captain’s skull to enter
the half-dissolved brain that lay within. Then, with his hand buried in
the form’s seemingly nerveless body, he felt for and found Keyes’
implants.
The Chief’s hand made a popping sound as it pulled out of
the wound. He shook the spongy gore onto the deck and slipped the chips
into empty slots in his armor.
“It’s done,” Cortana said somberly. “I have the code. We
should go. We need to get back to the Pillar of Autumn. Let’s go
back to the shuttle bay and find a ride.”
As if summoned by the lethargic beast that stood in front
of the ship’s controls, a host of Flood poured into the room, all of
whom were clearly determined to kill the heavily armored invader. A
flying wedge comprised of carrier and combat forms stormed the
platform, pushed the human back, and soaked up his bullets as if eager
to receive them.
Finally, more by chance than design, the Spartan backed
off the command deck and plummeted to the deck below. That bought a
moment of respite. There wasn’t much time, though, just enough to
hustle up out of the channel that ran parallel to the platform above,
reload both of his weapons, and put his back into a corner.
The horde really came for him then, honking,
gibbering, and gurgling, climbing up over the bodies that were mounded
in front of them, careless of casualties, willing to pay whatever price
he required.
The storm of gunfire put out by the MJOLNIR-clad soldier
was too powerful, too well aimed, and the Flood started
to
wilt, stumble, and fall, many giving up their lives only inches from
the Spartan’s blood-drenched boots, clawing at his ankles. He gave
thanks as the last combat form collapsed, relished the silence that
settled over the room, and took a moment to reload both of his weapons.
“Are you okay?” Cortana asked hesitantly, both grateful
and amazed by the fact that the Chief was still on his feet.
He thought of Captain Keyes.
“No,” the Spartan replied. “Let’s get the hell out of here
and finish these bastards off.”
He was numb from creeping exhaustion, hunger, and combat.
The planned escape route back to the shuttle bay was littered with
Flood and Covenant alike. The Spartan moved almost as if he was on
autopilot—he simply killed and killed and killed.
The bay was filled with Covenant forces. A
dropship had deployed fresh troops into the bay and bugged out. A pair
of amped-up Elites patrolled near the Banshee at the base of the bay.
All the possibilities raced through his weary mind. What
if that particular machine was in for repairs? What if an Elite took
over the Shade and gunned him down? What if some bright light decided
to close the outer doors?
But none of those fears were realized as the aircraft came
to life, turned toward the planet that hung outside the bay doors, and
raced into the night. Energy beams followed, and tried to bring the
Banshee down, but ultimately fell short. They were free once more.
SECTION VI
THE MAW
CHAPTER TWELVE
D+76:18:56 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) /
Commandeered Banshee, on approach to the Pillar of Autumn.
The Banshee screamed through a narrow valley and out over
an arid wasteland. The assault ship’s shadow raced ahead as if eager to
reach the Pillar of Autumn first. The Master Chief felt the
slipstream fold in behind the aircraft’s nose and tug at his armor. It
felt good to be out of twisting corridors and cramped compartments if
only for a short while.
The first sign of the ship’s presence on the ring world’s
surface was the hundred-meter-deep trench the Autumn’s hull had
carved into Halo’s skin. It started where the cruiser had first touched
down, vanished where the vessel had bounced into the air, and
reappeared a half klick farther on. From there the depression ran
straight as an arrow to the point where the starship had finally come
to rest with its blunt bow protruding out over the edge of a massive
cliff. There were other aircraft in the area as well, all of which
belonged to the Covenant, and they had no reason to suspect the
incoming Banshee. Not yet, at any rate.
The Spartan, who was eager to make his approach look
normal, chose one of the many empty lifeboat bays that lined the
starship’s starboard side, and bored in. Unfortunately the engine cut
out at the last moment, the Banshee hit the Autumn ’s hull, and
although the Spartan was able to bail out, the alien fighter fell to
the rocks below. Not the low visibility arrival he had hoped
for.
Still, given Cortana’s plans for the vessel, his presence wouldn’t
remain secret for long anyway.
“We need to get to the bridge,” Cortana said. “From there
we can use the Captain’s neural implants to initiate an overload of the
ship’s fusion engines. The explosion should damage enough systems below
it to destroy the ring.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” the Chief commented as he made
his way toward the tiny air lock. “I don’t know who’s better at blowing
things up—you or me.”
The moment he stepped outside he saw a cluster of red dots
appear on his motion detector and knew some nasties were lurking off to
his left. The only question was, which hostiles did he face—the
Covenant or the Flood? Given a choice, he’d take the Covenant. Maybe,
just maybe, the Flood hadn’t located the ship yet.
The passageway ended to the right, which meant he had
little choice but to turn left. But, rather than run into the Covenant
or the Flood, the Spartan came under attack from a flock of Sentinels.
“Uh-oh,” Cortana said as the noncom opened fire, “it looks
like the Monitor knows where we are.”
I wonder if he knows what we’re up to, the Chief
mused.
A robot exploded, another hit the deck with a loud clang,
and the Master Chief shifted fire to a third. “Yeah, he’s after my
head, but it’s you that he really wants.”
The AI made no reply as the third machine exploded—and the
Chief made his way down the hall using the lifeboat bays for cover. Two
additional Sentinels appeared, were blown out of the air, and turned
into scrap.
Soon after that they arrived at the end of the corridor,
took a right, and spotted an open maintenance hatch. Not ideal, since
he didn’t relish the thought of having to negotiate such tight
quarters, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice. So he ducked
inside, found himself in a maze, and blundered about for a while before
spotting a hatch set flush into the deck in front of him. That’s when a
group of infection forms swarmed up out of the hole, and the Chief’s
question was answered. It appeared that the Flood had located the
Autumn
—and already taken up residence there.
He swore under his breath, backed away, and hosed the
Flood with bullets. He eased forward and looked down through the floor
hatch. He saw a carrier form, and knew there were bound to be more. He
dropped a plasma grenade down through the hole, backed away, and took a
certain amount of pleasure in the ensuing explosion.
The maintenance tunnels didn’t seem to be taking him where
he needed to go, so he dropped through the hole, crushed a handful of
infection forms, and shot two more. The blood-splattered corridor was
messy but well lit. He pried open a wall-mounted locker, and was
pleased to find four frag grenades and spare ammo. He quickly stowed
them, and moved on.
Two Sentinels nosed around a corner, opened fire with
their lasers, and got what they deserved. “They might have been looking
for us,” Cortana observed, “but it’s my guess that they were assigned
to Flood control.”
The theory made sense, but didn’t really help much as the
Master Chief was forced to fight the Sentinels, the Flood, and
the Covenant, while he made his way through a series of passageways and
into the ship’s heavily damaged mess, where a large contingent of
Elites and Grunts were waiting to have him for lunch.
There were a lot of them, too many to handle with the
assault weapon alone, so he served up a couple of grenades. One of the
Elites was blown to pieces by the overlapping explosions, another lost
a leg, and a Grunt was thrown halfway across the room.
They’d come full circle—he’d blasted Covenant troops apart
before the crash landing, and here he was again. The enemy just
didn’t learn, he thought.
There was a survivor, however, a tough Elite who threw a
plasma grenade of his own, and missed by a matter of centimeters. The
Master Chief ran and was clear of the blast zone by the time the device
went off. The Elite charged, took the better part of a full clip, and
finally slammed into the deck, dead.
It was a short distance to the burned-out bridge, where a
Covenant security team was on duty. Word had been passed: They knew the
human was on his way, and opened fire the moment they saw him.
Once again the Spartan made use of a grenade to even the
odds—then crushed the head of an Elite with his fist. The alien’s head
was turned to pulp and its body collapsed like a puppet with no
strings. The armor gave him enough strength to flip a Warthog over.
Then, just when he thought the battle was done, a Grunt shot him in the
back. The audible went off as his armor sought to recharge itself. A
second shot, delivered with sufficient speed, would kill him.
Time seemed to slow as the Master Chief turned toward his
right.
The Grunt, who had been hiding inside an equipment
cabinet, froze as the armored alien not only survived what should have
been a fatal shot, but turned to face him. They were only an arm’s
length away from each other, which meant that the Master Chief could
reach out, rip the breather off his assailant’s face, and close the
door on him.
There was a loud click followed by wild hammering
as
the Chief made his way forward to the spot where Captain Keyes had
issued his orders. Cortana appeared over the control panel in front of
him. Everywhere the AI looked she saw burned-out equipment,
bloodstained decks, and smashed viewports.
She shook her head sadly. “I leave home for a few days,
and look what happens.”
Cortana brought a hand up to her semitransparent forehead.
“This won’t take long— There, that should give us enough time to make
it to the lifeboat, and put some distance between ourselves and Halo before
detonation.”
The next voice the Chief heard belonged to 343 Guilty
Spark. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”
Cortana groaned. “Oh, hell.”
The Chief brought his weapon up but saw no sign of the
Monitor or his Sentinels. That didn’t prevent the construct from
babbling in his ears, though—the AI had tapped into his comm system.
“Ridiculous! That you would imbue your warship’s AI with such a wealth
of knowledge. Wouldn’t you worry that it might be captured? Or
destroyed?”
Cortana frowned. “He’s in my data arrays—a local tap.”
Though nowhere near the bridge, the Monitor was on
board, and flitted from one control panel to the next, sucking
information out of Cortana’s nonsentient subprocessors with the ease of
someone vacuuming a set of drapes. “You can’t imagine how exciting this
is! To have a record of all our lost time. Oh, how I will enjoy every
moment of categorization. To think that you would destroy this
installation, as well as this record . . . I am shocked. Almost
too shocked for words.”
“He stopped the self-destruct sequence,” Cortana warned.
“Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer?” Spark
demanded. “You cannot win! Give us the construct—and I will endeavor to
make your death relatively painless and—”
The rest of 343 Guilty Spark’s words were chopped off as
if someone had thrown a switch. “At least I still have control over the
comm channels,” Cortana said.
“Where is he?” the Chief asked.
“I’m detecting taps throughout the ship,” Cortana replied.
“Sentinels most likely. As for the Monitor—he’s in Engineering.
He must be trying to take the core off-line. Even if I could get the
countdown restarted . . . I don’t know what to do.”
The Spartan stared at the hologram in surprise. This was a
first—and it made her seem more human somehow. “How much firepower
would you need to crack one of the engine shields?”
“Not much,” Cortana replied, “a well-placed grenade
perhaps. But why?”
He produced a grenade, tossed the device into the air, and
caught it again.
The AI’s eyes widened and she nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”
The Spartan turned and started to leave.
“Chief!” Cortana said. “Sentinels!”
In unison, the machines attacked.
Major Silva stood at what amounted to parade
rest, feet spread, hands clasped behind his back, as he looked out over
the landing pads while the men and women under his command made final
preparations for the assault on the Covenant ship Truth and
Reconciliation.
Fifteen Banshees, all scrounged from different sites
across Halo’s embattled surface, sat waiting for the order to launch.
Pelicans, three of the four that the humans had left,
squatted ramps down as heavily loaded Marines filed aboard. Each of the
surviving 236 leathernecks was armed with weapons appropriate to the
mission at hand. No long-range stuff, like rocket launchers or sniper
rifles, just assault weapons, shotguns, and grenades, all of which were
lethal within enclosed spaces, and would be effective against both the
Covenant and the Flood.
Naval personnel, and there were seventy-six of them, were
armed with Covenant plasma rifles and pistols, which, thanks to their
light weight, and the fact that there was no need to tote additional
ammo, left the swabbies free to carry tools, food, and medical
supplies. They had orders to avoid combat, if possible—and concentrate
on running the ship. Some, a group of sixteen individuals, had skills
considered to be so critical that each one had been given two Marine
bodyguards.
Assuming that Cortana and the Master Chief were able to
complete their mission, they would take one of the Autumn’s
remaining lifeboats and rendezvous with the Truth and Reconciliation
out in space. Annoying though she sometimes was, the officer knew
Cortana would be able to pilot the alien vessel, and get them home.
Failing that, Silva hoped that Wellsley, with help from
the Naval personnel, would be able to take the cruiser through
Slipspace and back to Earth. An event he had already planned for, right
down to what he would wear, and a short but moving speech for the media.
As if summoned by his thoughts, Wellsley chose that moment
to intrude on the officer’s reverie. The AI, who rode in an armored
matrix slung from Silva’s shoulder, was characteristically
unapologetic. “Lieutenant McKay called in, Major. Force One is in
place.”
Silva nodded, remembered that Wellsley couldn’t actually
see him, and said, “Good. Now, if they can lay low for the next couple
of hours, we’ll be in good shape.”
“I have every confidence in the Lieutenant,” the AI
replied plainly.
The implication was obvious. While Wellsley had faith in
McKay, the AI had concerns where the Lieutenant’s superior was
concerned. Silva sighed. Had the artificial intelligence been human,
the officer would have put him in his place long ago. But Wellsley
wasn’t
human, couldn’t be manipulated in the same fashion that flesh-and-blood
subordinates could, and like the human on whom he had modeled himself,
tended to speak his mind. “All right,” the Major said reluctantly,
“what’s the problem?”
“The ‘problem,’ ” Wellsley began, “is the Flood. If the
plan is successful, and we manage to take the Truth and
Reconciliation, there will almost certainly be Flood forms on
board. In fact, based
on what Cortana and I have been able to piece together, that’s the only
reason the vessel remains where it is. All of the necessary repairs
have been made, and Covenant forces are trying to sterilize the ship’s
interior prior to lifting off.”
“Which answers your question,” Silva said, struggling to
contain his impatience. “By the time we take over, most of the Flood
will be dead. Once underway, I will dispatch hunter-killer teams to
find the survivors. With the exception of a few specimens which I will
place under heavy guard, the rest will be ejected into space. There,
are you satisfied?”
“No,”Wellsley replied firmly. “Were a carrier form
to escape onto Earth’s surface, the entire planet could fall. This
threat is as dangerous as, if not more so than, the Covenant. Cortana
and I agree—no Flood form can be allowed to leave this system.”
Silva took a quick look around to make sure no one was
close enough to hear him and let the anger enter his voice. “Both you
and Cortana have a tendency to forget one very important fact—I’m
in
command here and you are not. And I defy you to find anywhere
in
my orders that identifies a threat to Earth bigger than the
goddamned Covenant!
“Your role is to provide advice. Mine is to make
decisions. It’s my belief that we could find better ways to combat the
Flood if our scientists had live specimens with which to work. More
than that, our people need to see this new enemy, know
how
dangerous they are, and believe that they can be conquered.”
Wellsley considered taking the debate one step further, by
pointing out that Silva’s ambitions might well have clouded his
judgment, but knew it would be a waste of time. “That’s your final
decision?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then God help you,” the AI replied gravely, “because if
your plan fails, no one else will have the power to do so.”
The compartment, a space untouched by the
fighting, had once served as a ready room for the ship’s Longsword,
Pelican, and shuttle pilots. Now, with no modifications other than the
installation of some crude sleeping accommodations, a back table with
some food on it, and crates of supplies, the room functioned as an
unofficial HQ for Covenant forces stationed aboard the Pillar of
Autumn.
The command staff, or what was left of it, sat slumped in
the uncomfortably alien chairs, many too tired to move, and stared up
at their leader. His name was ’Ontomee, and he was confused,
frustrated, and secretly frightened. The situation aboard the Autumn
had deteriorated dramatically. In spite of all the efforts to stop
them, Flood forms continued to trickle into the ship.
The disgusting filth had even managed to seize control of
the ship’s engineering spaces before a new enemy, one which was
inimical to Covenant and Flood form alike, sent an army of flying
robots into the ship and took control of the Engine Room.
Now, as if to prove that ’Ontomee was truly cursed, still
another
threat had arrived on the scene, and he was reluctant to share the news
with the already exhausted Elites arrayed in front of him.
“So,” ’Ontomee began lamely, “it seems that a human
crashed a Banshee into the side of the ship, and is now on board.”
A veteran named ’Kasamee frowned. “ ‘A human’? As
in, a single human? With respect, Excellency, one human more or
less will hardly make a difference.”
’Ontomee swallowed. “Yes, well, normally I would agree
with you, except that this human is somewhat unusual. First,
because he wears special armor, second, because it appears that he’s on
some sort of mission, and third, because he singlehandedly killed every
member of Security Team Three, which had responsibility for the command
and control deck.”
Unnoticed by those in front of him, the seemingly
lethargic officer known as Huki ’Umamee started to look interested. He
sat up straighter, and began to pay close attention. Having chosen a
seat in the last row, ’Zamamee found it difficult to hear. The
discussion continued.
“One human accomplished all that?” ’Kasamee
demanded
incredulously. “That hardly seems possible.”
“Yes,” ’Ontomee agreed, “but he did. Not only that, but
having accomplished whatever he entered the control area to do, he
left, and is somewhere else on board this ship.” The Elite scanned the
faces in front of him. “Who has the skill and courage required to find
the alien and kill him?”
The response came with gratifying speed. “I do,”
’Zamamee said, now on his feet.
’Ontomee peered into the harsh human lights. “Who is that?”
“ ’Umamee,” the Elite lied.
“Ah, yes,” ’Ontomee replied gratefully. “A commando . . .
Just the sort of person we need to rid ourselves of this two-legged
vermin. The mission is yours. Keep me informed.
“Now, turning our attention to these new airborne
mechanisms . . .”
Later, as the meeting ended, ’Kasamee went looking for the
volunteer, fully intending to compliment the younger officer on his
initiative. But, like the human the Elite was supposed to find, the
Elite officer had disappeared.
Having fought his way clear of the bridge,
the Master Chief made his way through a series of passageways, ran into
more Flood and gunned them down. Cortana figured that they could access
the Engine Room via the cryo chamber, and that was where the Chief was
headed. The problem was that he kept running into jammed hatches,
locked doors, and other obstacles that kept him from taking a direct
route.
After he moved through a large, dark room strewn with
weapons, the Chief heard the sounds of combat coming from the area
beyond a closed hatch. He paused, heard the noises die away, and
slipped out into the corridor. Bodies lay all about as he slid along a
bulkhead, saw some spikes sticking up over a cargo module, and felt his
blood run cold. A Hunter! Or more accurately two Hunters, since
they traveled in pairs.
Lacking a rocket launcher, the Chief turned to the only
heavy-duty fire power that he had: grenades.
He threw two grenades in quick succession, saw the spined
behemoth go down, and heard a roar of outrage as the second Hunter
charged.
The Spartan fired just to slow the alien down, backed
through the hatch, and gave thanks as the door closed. That gave him
two or three seconds that he needed to plant his feet, pull another
grenade, and prepare to throw it.
The hatch opened, the fragmentation grenade flew straight
and true, and the explosion knocked the beast off its feet. The deck
shook as the body hit. The Hunter attempted to rise but fell under a
hail of armor-piercing bullets.
The Master Chief gave the corpse a wide berth as he left
the room, and passed back into the hall. As he made his way through the
ship’s corridors, he saw blood-splattered bulkheads, bodies sprawled in
every imaginable posture of death, blown hatches, sparks flying out of
junction boxes, and a series of small fires, which thanks to a lack of
combustible materials seemed to be fairly well contained.
He heard the sound of automatic weapons’ fire somewhere
ahead, and passed through another hatch. Inside, a fire burned at the
point where two large pipes traversed a maintenance bay. He was close
to the cryo chamber, or thought he was, but needed to find a way in.
Hesitant to jump through the flames unless it was
absolutely necessary, he took a right turn instead. The sounds of
combat grew louder as the hatch opened onto a large room where a full
array of Flood forms were battling a clutch of Sentinels. He paused,
shouldered his weapon, and fired. Sentinels crashed, carrier forms
exploded, and everyone fired at one another in a mad melee of
crisscrossing energy beams, 7.62 mm projectiles, and exploding needles.
Once the robots had been put out of action, and most of
the Flood had been neutralized, the Chief was able to cross the middle
of the room, climb a ladder, and gain the catwalk above. From that
vantage point he could look across into the Maintenance Control Room,
where a couple of Sentinels were hard at work trying to zap a group of
Flood, none of whom were willing to be toasted without putting up a
fight. The combatants were too busy to worry about stray humans,
however, and the noncom took advantage of that to work his way down the
walkway and into the Control Room.
And that, as he soon learned, was a big mistake.
It wasn’t too bad at first, or didn’t seem to be, as he
destroyed both of the Sentinels, and went to work on the Flood. But
every time he put one form down, it seemed as if two more arrived to
take its place, soon forcing him onto the defensive.
He retreated into the antechamber adjacent to the Control
Room. The human had little choice but to place his back against a
locked hatch. The larger forms came in twos and threes—while the
infection forms came in swarms. Some of the assaults seemed to be
random, but many appeared to be coordinated as one, or two, or three
combat forms would hurl themselves forward, die under the assault
weapon’s thundering fire, and fall just as the Spartan ran out of ammo,
and more carrier forms waddled into the fray.
He slung his AR, drew the shotgun—briefly hoping there
would be a lull during which to reload—and opened fire on the bloated
monstrosities before the force exerted by their exploding bodies could
do him harm.
Then, with newly spawned infection forms flying in every
direction it was clean-up time followed by a desperate effort to reload
both weapons before the next wave of creatures attempted to
roll
over him.
He dropped into a pattern of fire and movement. He made
his way through the ship, closer to the engineering spaces, pausing
only to pour fire into knots of targets of opportunity. Then, he
quickly disengaged, reloaded, and ran farther into the ship.
The noise generated by his own weapons hammered at the
Master Chief’s ears, the thick gagging odor of Flood blood clogged his
throat, and his mind eventually grew numb from all the killing.
After dispatching a Covenant combat team, he crouched
behind a support strut and fed rounds into the shotgun. Without
warning, a combat form leaped on his back and smashed a large wrench
into his helmet. His shield dropped away from the force of the blow,
which allowed an infection form to land on his visor.
Even as he staggered under the impact, and pawed at the
form’s slick body, a penetrator punched its way through his neck seal,
located his bare skin, and sliced it open.
The Spartan gave a cry of pain, felt the tentacle slide
down toward his spine, and knew it was over.
Though unable to pick up a weapon and kill
the infection form directly, Cortana had other resources, and rushed to
use them. Careful not to drain too much power, the AI diverted some
energy away from the MJOLNIR armor, and made use of it to create an
electrical discharge. The infection form started to vibrate as the
electricity coursed through it. The Chief jerked as the Flood form’s
penetrator delivered a shock to his nervous system, and the pod popped,
misting the Spartan’s visor with green blood spray.
The Chief could see well enough to fight, however, and did
so, killing the wrench-wielding combat form with a burst of bullets.
“Sorry about that,” Cortana said, as the Spartan cleared
the area around him, “but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“You did fine,” he replied, pausing to reload. “That was
close.”
Another two or three minutes passed before the Flood gave
up and he could take the moment necessary to remove his helmet, jerk
the penetrator out from under his skin, and slap a self-adhering
antiseptic battle dressing over the wound. It hurt like hell: The
Spartan winced as he lowered the helmet back over his head, and sealed
his suit.
Then, pausing only to kill a couple of stray infection
forms, and still looking for a way to gain entry to the cryo chamber,
the Chief made his way through a number of passageways, into a maze of
maintenance tunnels, and out into a corridor where he spotted a red
arrow on the deck along with the word ENGINEERING .
Finally, a break.
No longer concerned with finding a way into cryo, the
noncom passed through a hatch and entered the first passageway he’d
seen that was well lit, free of bloodstains, and not littered with
corpses. A series of turns brought him to a hatch.
“Engine Room located,” Cortana announced. “We’re here.”
The Spartan heard humming, and knew that 343 Guilty Spark
was somewhere in the vicinity. He had already started to back through
the hatch when Cortana said, “Alert! The Monitor has disabled all
command access. We can’t restart the countdown. The only remaining
option will be to detonate the ship’s fusion reactors. That
should do enough damage to destroy Halo.
“Don’t worry . . . I have access to all of the reactor
schematics and procedures. I’ll walk you through it. First we need to
pull back the exhaust coupling. That will expose a shaft that leads to
the primary fusion drive core.”
“Oh, good,” the Spartan replied. “I was afraid it might be
complicated.”
The Chief reopened the hatch, stepped out into the Engine
Room, and an infection form flew straight at his faceplate.
The attack on the Truth and Reconciliation
came with mind-numbing speed as a wing of fifteen Banshees came
screaming out of the sun, attacked the nearly identical number of
Covenant aircraft assigned to fly cover over the cruiser, and knocked
half of them out of the sky during the first sixty seconds of combat.
Then, even as individual dogfights continued, Lieutenant
“Cookie” Peterson and his fellow Pelican pilots delivered Silva,
Wellsley, and forty-five heavily armed Marines into the enemy cruiser’s
shuttle bay, where the first leathernecks off the ramps smothered the
Covenant security team in a hail of bullets, secured all the hatches,
and sent a team of fifteen Helljumpers racing for the ship’s Control
Room.
Conscious of the fact that occupying the
Control Room wouldn’t mean much unless they owned engineering as well,
the humans launched a nearly simultaneous ground attack. Thanks to the
previous effort, in which the Master Chief and a group of Marines had
entered the ship looking for Captain Keyes, McKay had the benefit of
everything learned during that mission, including a detailed
description of the gravity lift, video of the interior corridors, and
operational data which Cortana had siphoned out of the ship’s systems.
Not too surprisingly, security around the gravity lift had
been tripled since the previous incursion, which meant that even though
McKay and her force of Helljumpers had been able to creep within meters
of the hill on which the gravity field was focused, they still had six
Hunters, twelve Elites, and a mixed bag of Grunts and Jackals to cope
with before they could board the vessel above.
Having anticipated that problem, McKay had equipped her
fifteen-person team with eight rocket launchers, all of which were
aimed squarely at the Hunters.
The Covenant-flown Banshees had just come under attack,
and the spined monsters were staring up into a nearly cloudless sky,
when McKay gave the word: “Now!”
All eight launchers fired one, then two rockets,
putting a total of sixteen of the shaped charges on the aliens, so that
the Hunters never had a chance to fight as a series of red-orange
explosions blew them apart.
Even as gobbets of raw meat continued to rain out of the
sky, the launchers were reloaded, and another flight of rockets was
sent on its way.
Three or four of the Elites had been killed during the
initial attack, which meant that some of the survivors were targeted by
as many as two missiles, and simply ceased to exist as the powerful
102 mm rounds detonated.
Those who survived the volley, and there weren’t many,
fell quickly as the rest of the team hurled grenades into the enemy
positions, and hosed them with automatic fire. Total elapsed time: 36
seconds.
A full minute was consumed racing up the hill and greasing
the guard at the top, which meant that 1:36 had passed by the time the
murderous humans appeared inside the Truth and Reconciliation,
slaughtered the Grunts on guard duty, and deactivated the lift.
Jenkins was chained between a pair of burly Marines. McKay
waved the trio forward. “Let’s go, Marines. We’re supposed to take the
Engine Room—so let’s get to work.”
Jenkins, or what remained of Jenkins, could smell the
Flood. They were there, hiding in the ship, and he struggled to tell
McKay that. But the only thing that came out was a series of grunts and
hoots. The humans had taken the ship, but they had taken something else
as well, something that could kill every single one of them.
’Zamamee ushered Yayap into the heavily
guarded Covenant Communications Center—and gave the Grunt a moment to
look around. The space had once housed all of the communications gear
associated with the Pillar of Autumn’s auxiliary fighters,
shuttles, and transports. Human gear had been ripped out to make room
for Covenant equipment, but everything else was pretty much in the same
configuration. A team of six com techs were on duty, all with their
backs to the center of the room, banks of equipment arrayed in front of
them. A constant murmur of conversation could be heard via the overhead
speakers, some of which was punctuated by the sounds of combat, as
orders went out and reports came back in.
“This is where you will sit,” the Elite explained,
pointing toward a vacant chair. “All you have to do is listen to the
incoming traffic, make note of the reports that pertain to the human,
and pass the information along to me by radio.
“He has an objective, we can be sure of that, and once we
know where he’s going, I’ll be there to greet him. I know you would
prefer to be in on the kill, but you’re the only individual I can trust
to handle my communications, so I hope you’ll understand.”
Yayap, who didn’t want to be anywhere near the kill, tried
to look downcast. “I’ll do my part, Excellency, and take pleasure in
the team’s success.”
“That’s the spirit!” ’Zamamee said encouragingly. “I knew
I could count on you. Now sit down at the console, put on that headset,
and get ready to take some notes. We know he left what the humans refer
to as ‘the bridge,’ fought a battle near the Maintenance Control Room,
and was last spotted heading toward the Engine Room. We don’t have any
personnel in that compartment at the moment, but that doesn’t matter,
because the real challenge is to figure out where he’s headed next.
You feed the information to me, I’ll take my combat team to the right
place, and the human will enter the trap. The rest will be easy.”
Yayap remembered previous encounters with the human, felt
a chill run down his spine, and took his seat. Something told him that
when it came to a final confrontation between the Elite and the human,
it might be many things, but it wouldn’t be easy.
The Engine Room hatch opened, an infection
form went for the Master Chief’s face, and he fired a quarter of a clip
into it. A lot more bullets than the target required, but the memory of
how the penetrator had slipped in under the surface of his skin was
still fresh in his mind, and he wasn’t about to allow any of the pods
near his face again, especially with a hole in his neck seal. A red nav
indicator pointed the way toward a ramp at the far end of the enormous
room.
He pounded his way up onto a raised platform, ran past
banks of controls, and ducked through the hatch that led up to Level
Two. He followed a passageway out into an open area, and then up the
ramp to Level Three. Near the top, a pair of combat forms fell to his
well-placed fire. He policed the fallen creatures’ ammo and grenades
and kept going.
“Not acceptable, Reclaimer,” 343 Guilty Spark intoned. “You
must
surrender the construct.”
The Chief ignored the Monitor, made his way up to Level
Three, and encountered a reception party comprised of Flood. He opened
fire, took two combat forms and a carrier down off the top, and backed
away in order to reload.
Then, with a fresh clip in place, he opened fire, cut the
nearest form off at the knees, tossed a grenade into the crowd behind
him. The frag detonated, and blew them to hell.
Quick bursts of automatic fire were sufficient to finish
the survivors and allow the Master Chief to reach the far end of the
passageway. A group of forms were waiting there to greet him, but
quickly gave way to a determined assault as he made his way up the
blood-slicked steel, and through the hatch at the top of the ramp.
He moved onto the Level Three catwalk and immediately
started to take fire. There was total chaos as the Sentinels fired on
the Flood, the Flood shot back, and everyone seemed to want a piece of
him. It was important to concentrate, however, to focus on his mission,
so the Spartan made a mad dash for the nearest control panel. He hit
the control labeled OPEN , heard a beeper go off,
followed by the sound of Cortana’s voice.
“Good! Step one complete! We have a straight shot into the
fusion reactor. We need a catalytic explosion to destabilize the
magnetic containment field surrounding the fusion cell.”
“Oh,” the petty officer said as he jumped down onto a
thick slab of duracrete, and felt it start to move. “I thought I was
supposed to throw a grenade into a hole.”
“That’s what I said.”
The Chief grinned as a brightly lit rectangular slot
appeared, and he tossed a grenade in through the opening.
The ensuing explosion threw bits of charred metal around
the smoke-filled compartment.
One down, and three to go, the Spartan told
himself
as the Sentinels fired, and the laser beams hit his chest.
Thanks to the lightning-fast and extremely
well coordinated nature of the attack, the humans controlled more than
80 percent of theTruth and Reconciliation, and were
preparing to lift off. Those compartments not under human control could
be dealt with later on. There hadn’t been any contact with Cortana for
a while—and Silva intended to play it safe. If Halo was about to blow,
he wanted to be far away when the event took place.
The cruiser’s Control Room was a scene of frantic activity
as Wellsley wrestled with the ship’s nonsentient nav comp, Naval
personnel struggled to familiarize themselves with all manner of alien
control systems, and Silva gloated over his latest coup. The attack had
been so fast, so successful, that his Helljumpers had captured a being
who referred to himself as a “Prophet,” and claimed to be an important
member of the Covenant’s ruling class. Now, safely locked away, the
alien was slated to become yet another element in Silva’s triumphant
return to Earth. The officer smiled as the ship’s gravity locks were
released, the hull swayed slightly in response, and the final preflight
check began.
Many decks below, McKay felt someone touch
her arm. “Lieutenant? Do you have a moment?”
Though not in the same chain of command, Lieutenant
Commander Gail Purdy outranked the Helljumper, which was why McKay
responded by saying, “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
Purdy was an Engineering officer, and one of those sixteen
individuals who rated bodyguards, both of whom had their backs to the
officer and were facing out. She was middle-aged and stout, with
ginger-colored hair. Her eyes were serious and locked with McKay’s.
“Step over here. I’d like to show you something.”
McKay followed the other officer over to a large tube that
served to bridge the one-meter gap between one blocky-looking
installation and the next. Jenkins, who had no choice but to go
wherever his Marine guards went, was forced to follow.
“See that?” the Naval officer inquired, pointing at the
tube.
“Yes, ma’am,” McKay answered, mystified as to what such a
structure could possibly have to do with her.
“That’s an access point for the fiber-optic pathway that
links the Control Room to the engines,” the Engineer explained. “If
someone were to sever that connection, the power plants would run wild.
There may be a bypass somewhere—but we haven’t found it. Given the fact
that twenty percent of the ship remains under Covenant control I
suggest that you post a guard on this piece of equipment until all of
the Covenant are under lock and key.”
Purdy’s suggestion had the force of an order, and McKay
said, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll take care of it.”
The Naval officer nodded as the deck tilted and forced
both women to grab onto the fiber channel. Two people were thrown to
the deck. Purdy grinned. “Pretty sloppy, huh? Captain Keyes would have
a fit!”
Silva wasn’t worried about the finer points
of ship handling as the final loads of UNSC personnel were deposited in
the shuttle bay, the Pelicans were secured, the outer doors were
closed, and the Truth and Reconciliation struggled to break the
grip that Halo had on her hull.
No, Silva was satisfied merely to get clear of the
surface, to feel the deck vibrate as the cruiser’s engines struggled to
push countless tons of deadweight up through the ring world’s gravity
well, to the point where the ship would break free.
Spurred into action by the vibration, or
perhaps just tired of waiting, the Flood chose that moment to attack
the Engine Room. A vent popped open, an avalanche of infection forms
poured out and came under immediate fire.
Jenkins went berserk, and jerked on his chains, gibbering
incoherently as the Marine guards struggled to bring him under control.
The battle lasted for less than a minute before all of the
Flood forms were killed, the vent was sealed, and the cover welded into
place. But the attack served to illustrate the concerns that McKay
already had. The Flood were like an extremely deadly virus—and it was
naive to believe that they could be controlled by anything short
of extermination. The Marine used her status as XO to get through to
Silva, gave a report on the attack, and finished by saying, “It’s clear
that the ship is still infected, sir. I suggest that we put down and
sterilize every square centimeter prior to lifting again.”
“Negative, Lieutenant,” Silva replied grimly. “I
have reason to believe that Halo is going to blow, and soon. Besides, I
want
some specimens, so see what you can do to capture some of the ugly
bastards.”
“The Lieutenant is correct,” Wellsley put in
dispassionately. “The risk is too great. I urge you to
reconsider.”
“My decision is final,” Silva growled. “Now, return to
your duties, and that’s an order .”
McKay broke the connection. The military incorporated many
virtues, in her mind at least, one of the most important of which was
duty. Duty not just to the Corps, but to the billions of people on
Earth, to whom she was ultimately responsible. Now, faced with the
conflict between military discipline, the glue that held everything
together, and duty, the purpose of it all, what was she supposed to do?
The answer, strangely enough, came from Jenkins, who,
having been privy to her end of the conversation, jerked at his chain.
The action took one of the guards by surprise. He fell as Jenkins
lunged in the direction of the fiber-optic connection, and was still
trying to regain his feet when the combat form ran out of slack, and
came up short. Seconds later the Marines had Jenkins back under control.
Having failed to do what he knew was right, and with his
chains stretched tight, Jenkins looked imploringly into McKay’s eyes.
McKay realized that the decision lay in her hands, and
that although it was horrible almost beyond comprehension, it was
simple as well. So simple that even the grotesquely ravaged Jenkins
knew where his duty lay.
Slowly, deliberately, the Marine crossed the deck to the
point where the guard stood, told him to take a break, took one last
look around, and triggered a grenade. Jenkins, still unable to speak,
managed to mouth the words “thank you.”
Silva was too many decks removed to feel the explosion, or
to hear the muffled thump, but was able to witness the results
firsthand. Someone yelled, “The controls are gone!” The deck tilted as
the Truth and Reconciliation did a nose-over, and Wellsley made
one last comment.
“You taught her well, Major. Of that you can be
proud.”
Then the bow struck, a series of explosions rippled the
length of the hull, and the ship, as well as all of those aboard her,
ceased to exist.
“You’re sure?” ’Zamamee demanded, his voice
slightly distorted by both the radio and an increasing amount of static.
Yayap wasn’t sure of anything, other than the fact that
the reports flowing in around him were increasingly negative, as
Covenant forces came under heavy fire from both the Flood and
the
Sentinels. Something had caused a rock to form down in the Grunt’s
abdomen—and made him feel slightly nauseated.
But it would never do to say that, not to someone like
’Zamamee, so he lied instead. “Yes, Excellency. Based on the reports,
and looking at the schematics here in the Communications Center, it
looks like the human will have little choice but to exit via hatch
E-117, make his way to lift V-1269, and go up to a Class Seven service
corridor that runs along the ship’s spine.”
“Good work, Yayap,” the Elite said. “We’re on our way.”
For reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of, and in spite of
his many failings, the Grunt felt a strange sense of affection for the
Elite. “Be careful, Excellency. The human is extremely dangerous.”
“Don’t worry,” ’Zamamee replied, “I have a surprise for
our adversary. A little something that will even the odds. I’ll call
you the moment he’s dead.”
Yayap said, “Yes, Excellency,” heard a click, and knew it
was the last time he would hear the officer’s voice. Not because he
believed that ’Zamamee was going to die—but because he believed all
of them were about die.
That’s why the diminutive alien announced that he was
going on a break, left the Communications Center, and never came back.
Shortly thereafter he loaded a day’s worth of food plus a
tank of methane onto a Ghost, steered the vehicle out away from the
Pillar
of Autumn, and immediately found what he was searching for: a
sense of peace. For the first time in many, many days Yayap was happy.
As the final grenade went off, the Master
Chief felt the shaft he was standing on shake in sympathy and Cortana
yelled into his ears. “That did it! The engines will go critical. We
have fifteen minutes to get off the ship! We should move outside and
get to the third deck elevator. It will take us to a Class Seven
service corridor that runs the length of the ship. Hurry!”
The Chief jumped up onto the Level Three platform, blasted
a combat form, and turned toward the hatch off to his right. It opened,
he passed through, and ran the length of the passageway. A second door
opened onto the area directly in front of the large service elevator.
The Chief heard machinery whir, figured he had triggered a
sensor, and waited for the lift to arrive. For the first time in hours
there was no immediate threat, no imminent danger, and the Spartan
allowed himself to relax fractionally. It was a mistake.
“Chief!” Cortana said. “Get back!”
Thanks to the warning, he was already backing through the
hatch when the lift appeared from below, and the Elite, seated in the
plasma turret, opened fire.
Special Ops Officer Zuka ’Zamamee fired the
Shade. The energy cannon took up most of the platform, leaving barely
enough room for the Grunts who had helped the Elite wrestle the weapon
aboard. The bolt flared blue, hit the hatch as it started to close, and
slagged half the door.
He felt elation as the waves of energy slashed through the
air toward his target. Soon, victory would be complete, and his honor
could be restored. Then he’d deal with the tiresome Grunt, Yayap.
It was going to be a glorious day.
“Damn!” the Chief exclaimed. “Where did that
come from?”
“It looks like someone has been tracking you,” Cortana
said grimly. “Now, get ready—I’ll take control of the elevator and
cause it to drop. You roll a couple of grenades into the shaft.”
’Zamamee saw the energy bolt hit the hatch,
experienced a sense of exhilaration as the human hurried to escape, and
felt the platform jerk to a halt.
The Elite had just fired again, just blown what remained
of the human’s cover away, when he heard a clank and the lift started
to descend.
“No!”he shouted, sure that one of the Grunts was
responsible for the sudden movement, and desperate lest the human
escape his clutches. But it was too late, and there was nothing the
smaller aliens could do, as the elevator continued to fall.
Then, even as his target vanished from sight, and ’Zamamee
railed at his subordinates, a couple of grenades tumbled down from
above, rattled around the floor, and exploded.
The force of the blast lifted the Elite up and out of his
seat, gave him one last look at his opponent, and let him fall. He hit
with a thud, felt something snap, and waited for his first glimpse of
paradise.
Cortana brought the lift back up. The Master
Chief had little choice but to step onto the gore-splattered platform
and let it carry him toward the service corridor above. Cortana took
advantage of the moment to work on the escape plan.
“Cortana to Echo 419, come in Echo 419.”
“Roger, Cortana,” Foehammer said from somewhere
above,“I read you five-by-five.”
The Master Chief felt a series of explosions shake the
elevator, knew the ship was starting to come apart, and looked forward
to the moment when he would be free of it.
“The Pillar of Autumn’s engines are going critical,
Foehammer,” Cortana continued. “Request immediate extraction. Be ready
to pick us up at external access junction four-C as soon as you get my
signal.”
“Affirmative. Echo 419 to Cortana—things are getting
noisy down there . . . Is everything okay?”
The elevator shook again as the AI said, “Negative,
negative! We have a wildcat destabilization of the ship’s fusion core.
The engines must have sustained more damage than we thought.”
Then, as the platform jerked to a halt, and a piece of
debris fell from somewhere up above, the AI spoke to the Spartan. “We
have six minutes before the fusion drives detonate. We need to evacuate
now! The explosion will generate a temperature of almost a
hundred million
degrees. Don’t be here when it blows!”
That sounded like excellent advice. The Master Chief ran
through a hatch into a bay full of Warthogs, each stowed in its own
individual slot. He chose one that was located near the entry, jumped
into the driver’s seat, and was relieved when the vehicle started up.
The countdown timer which Cortana had projected onto the
inside surface of his HUD was not only running, but running fast,
or so it seemed to the Chief as he drove out of the bay, hooked a
left to avoid a burning ’Hog, and plowed through a mob of Covenant and
Flood. An Elite went down, was sucked under the big off-road tires, and
caused the vehicle to buck as it passed over him. The slope ahead was
thick with roly-poly infection forms. They popped like firecrackers as
the human accelerated uphill and plasma bolts raced to catch him from
behind. Then, cautious lest he make a mistake and lose valuable time,
he took his foot off the accelerator and paused at the top of the ramp.
A large passageway stretched before him, with walkways to
either side, a pedestrian bridge in the distance, and a narrow service
tunnel directly ahead. A couple of Flood forms were positioned on top
of the entrance and fired down at him as he pushed the Warthog forward,
and nosed into the opening ahead.
The ramp sloped down, the Spartan braked, and he was soon
glad that he had as something went boom! and hurled pieces of
jagged metal across the passageway in front of him. The Chief took his
foot off the brake, converted a carrier form into paste, and sent the
LRV up the opposite slope.
He emerged from the subsurface tunnel, and with a barrier
ahead, he swung left, ran the length of a vertical wall. He saw a
narrow ramp, accelerated up-slope, and jumped a pair of gaps that he
never would have tackled had he been aware of them. He hit a level
stretch, braked reflexively, and was thankful when the Warthog
nose-dived off the end of the causeway and plunged into another service
tunnel.
Now, with a group of Flood ahead, he pushed through them,
crushed the monsters under his tires.
“Nice job on that last section,” Cortana said admiringly.
“How did you know about the dive off the end?”
“I didn’t,” the Master Chief said as the LRV lurched up
out of the tunnel and nosed into another.
“Oh.”
This passage was empty, which allowed the Spartan to pick
up speed as he guided the Warthog up into a larger tunnel. The ’Hog
caught some air, and he put the pedal to the metal in an effort to pick
up some time.
The large passageway was smooth and clear, but took them
out into a hell of flying metal, homicidal Flood, and laser-happy
Sentinels, all of whom tried to cancel his ticket while he paused,
spotted an elevated ramp off to the left, and steered for it even as
crisscrossing energy beams sizzled across the surface of his armor and
explored the interior of the vehicle.
The Spartan fought to control the ’Hog as one tire rode up
onto the metal curb and threatened to pull the entire vehicle off into
the chaos below. It was difficult, with fire sleeting in from every
possible direction, but the Chief made the necessary correction, came
down off the ramp, hooked a left, and found himself in a huge tunnel
with central support pillars that marched off into the distance.
Careful to weave back and forth between the pillars in
order to improve his time, he rolled through a fight between the Flood
and a group of Covenant, took fire from a flock of Sentinels, and
gunned the LRV out into another open area with a barrier ahead. A quick
glance confirmed that another elevated ramp ran down the left side of
the enormous passageway, so he steered for that.
Explosions sent gouts of flame and smoke up through the
grating ahead of him, and threatened to heave the Warthog off the track.
Once off the ramp, things became a little easier as the
Spartan entered a large tunnel, sped the length of it, braked into an
open area, and pushed the vehicle down into a smaller service tunnel.
Infection forms made loud popping sounds as the tires ate them alive.
The engine growled, and the Chief nearly lost it as he came out of the
tunnel too fast, realized there was another subsurface passageway
ahead, and did a nose-over that caused the front wheels not only to hit
hard but nearly flipped the ’Hog end-for-end. Only some last-minute
braking and a measure of good luck brought the LRV down right side up
and allowed the Master Chief to climb up out of the passageway and into
a maze of pillars.
He swore as he was forced to wind his way between the
obstacles while precious seconds came off the countdown clock and every
alien, freak, and robot with a weapon took potshots at him while he did
so. Then came a welcome stretch of straight-level pavement, a quick dip
through a service tunnel, and a ramp into a sizable tunnel as Cortana
called for evac.
“Cortana to Echo 419! Requesting extraction now! On the
double!”
“Affirmative, Cortana,” the pilot replied, as the
Master Chief accelerated out onto a causeway.
“Wait! Stop!” Cortana insisted. “This is where Foehammer
is coming to pick us up. Hold position here.”
The Spartan braked, heard a snatch of garbled radio
traffic, and saw a UNSC dropship approach from the left. Smoke trailed
behind the Pelican and the reason was plain to see. A Banshee had
slotted itself in behind the transport and was trying to hit one of the
ship’s engines. There was a flash as the starboard power plant took a
hit and burst into flames.
The Chief could imagine Foehammer at the controls,
fighting to save her ship, eyeing the causeway ahead.
“Pull up! Pull up!” the Spartan shouted, hoping she could
pancake in, but it was too late. The Pelican lost altitude, passed
under the causeway, and soon disappeared from sight. The explosion came
three seconds later.
Cortana said, “Echo 419!” and, receiving no response,
said, “She’s gone.”
The Master Chief remembered the cheerful voice on the
radio, the countless times the pilot had saved somebody’s tail, and
felt a deep sense of regret.
There was a short pause while the AI tapped into what
remained of the ship’s systems. “There’s a Longsword docked in launch
bay seven. If we move now we can make it!”
Rubber screeched as the Chief put his foot to the floor,
steered the Warthog through a hatch, down a ramp, and into a tunnel.
Huge pillars marked the center of the passageway and a series of
concave gratings caused the LRV to wallow before it lurched up onto
smooth pavement again. Explosions sent debris flying from both sides of
the tunnel and made it difficult to hear Cortana as she said something
about “full speed” and some sort of a gap.
He hit the accelerator, but the rest was more a matter of
luck rather than skill. The Master Chief pushed the ’Hog up a ramp,
felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as the LRV flew through the
air, dropped two or three levels, hit hard, slewed sideways, and came
to a stop.
The Chief wrestled with the wheel, brought the front end
around, and glanced at the timer. It read: 01:10:20. He stamped on the
accelerator. The Warthog shot ahead, raced through a narrow tunnel,
then slowed as he spotted the array of horizontally striped barrels
that blocked the road ahead. Not only that—but the entire area was
swarming with Covenant and Flood. The Master Chief jumped out, hit the
ground running, and gunned an Elite who had the misfortune to get in
the way.
The fighter was straight ahead, ramp down, waiting for him
to come aboard. Plasma bolts stuttered past his head, explosions hurled
debris in every direction, and then he was there, boots pounding on
metal as he entered the ship.
The ramp came up just as a mob of Flood arrived, the
Longsword shook in sympathy as another explosion rocked the Pillar
of
Autumn, and the Spartan staggered as he made his way forward.
Precious seconds were consumed as he dropped into the pilot’s seat,
brought the engines on-line, and took the controls.
“Here we go.”
The Chief made use of the ship’s belly jets to push the
Longsword up off the deck. He turned the fighter counterclockwise, and
hit the throttles. Gee forces pushed him back into his seat as the
spacecraft exploded out of its bay and blasted up through the
atmosphere.
Yayap, who had made it to the edge of the
foothills by then, heard a series of dull thuds and turned in time to
see a line of red-orange flowers bloom along the length of the Autumn’s
much abused hull.
As the cruiser’s fusion drives went
critical, a compact sun blossomed on the surface of Halo. Its
thermonuclear sphere carved a five-kilometer crater into the superdense
ring material and sent powerful pressure waves rippling throughout the
structure. Both up- and down-spin of the explosion, the fireball
flattened and sterilized the surface terrain. Within moments, the
yellow-white core had consumed all of the available fuel, collapsed
upon itself, and winked out.
Still spinning, but unable to withstand the forces exerted
on this new weak point, the ring structure slowly tore itself apart.
Huge chunks of debris tumbled end over end out into space, as a
five-hundred-kilometer-long section of the ring world’s hull sliced
through an even longer curve of brilliantly engineered metal, earth,
and water, and produced a cascade of eerily silent explosions.
There was an insistent beeping sound as the
words ENGINE TEMP CRITICAL flashed on the control panel,
and Cortana said, “Shut them down. We’ll need them later.”
The Master Chief reached up to flick some switches, got up
out of his seat, and arrived in front of the viewport in time to see
the last intact piece of Halo’s hull sheared in half by the dreadful
slow-motion ballet of flying metal.
For some reason he thought of Lieutenant Melissa McKay,
her calm green eyes, and the fact that he had never gotten to know her.
“Did anyone else make it?”
“Scanning,” the AI replied. She paused, and he could see
scan data scroll across the main terminal. A moment later, she spoke
again, her voice unusually quiet. “Just dust and echoes. We’re all
that’s left.”
The Spartan winced. McKay, Foehammer, Keyes, and all the
rest of them. Dead. Just like the children he’d been raised with—just
like a part of himself.
When Cortana spoke it was as if the AI felt that she had
to justify what had transpired. “We did what we had to do—for
Earth. An entire Covenant armada obliterated. And the Flood —we
had no choice. Halo, it’s finished.”
“No,” the Chief replied, settling in behind the
Longsword’s controls. “The Covenant are still out there, and Earth is
at risk. We’re just getting started.”
The Master Chief saw the yellow-green
blob appear in his peripheral vision, and decided to turn toward the
enemy both to make the ’Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal an
opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just
started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side
of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over.
All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master
Chief scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter
drop down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive
knees, and move forward.
Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were
back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter
before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, “Come on, Hosky!
Let’s take this bastard out!”
The Spartan yelled, “No! Fall back!” and bent over to
retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew
there simply wasn’t time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge
in time, but the Helljumpers didn’t have a prayer.
The distance between the alien and the two Marines had
closed by then and they couldn’t disengage. The Corporal threw a
fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster,
and stared in disbelief as it kept on coming. The alien charged right
through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and lowered
a gigantic shoulder.
Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic
shield hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what
was left onto the ground. The private remained conscious however, which
meant he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot
high into the air, and brought it down on his face.
Halo: The Floodis a work of
fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey®Book
Published by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2003 by Microsoft Corporation
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States
by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.
Halo, Xbox, the Xbox and Microsoft Logos
are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation
in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license. ©
2001 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the
Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
e-ISBN 0-345-46357-9
v 1.1 (additional proofing and correction by Sithicus)
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 in The
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 Cruiser Pillar of Autumn, location unknown.
Tech Officer (3rd Class) Sam Marcus swore as the intercom
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 asleep at 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 hundred combat cruises, Marcus had clocked fewer than
seventy-two hours in cryostorage. Right now, though, he was so tired
that even the discomfort of cryorevival sounded appealing if it meant
that he could manage some uninterrupted sleep.
Of course, it was difficult to complain; Captain Keyes was
a brilliant tactician—and everyone aboard the Autumn knew just
how close they’d come to destruction when Reach fell to the enemy. A
major naval base destroyed, millions dead or dying as the Covenant
burned the planet to a cinder—and one of Earth’s few remaining defenses
transformed into corpses and molten slag.
All in all, they’d been damned lucky to get away—but Sam
couldn’t help but feel that everyone on the Autumn was living on
borrowed time.
The intercom buzzed again, and Sam swung himself out of
the bunk. He jabbed at the comm control. “Marcus here,” he growled.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Sam, but I need you down in Cryo
Two.” Tech Chief Shephard sounded exhausted. “It’s important.”
“Cryo Two?” Sam repeated, puzzled. “What’s the emergency,
Thom? I’m not a cryo specialist.”
“I can’t give you specifics, Sam. The Captain wants it
kept off the comm,” Shephard replied, his voice almost a whisper. “Just
in case we have eavesdroppers.”
Sam winced at the tone in his superior’s voice. He’d known
Thom Shephard since the Academy and had never heard the man sound so
grim.
“Look,” Shephard said, “I need someone I can depend on.
Like it or not, that’s you, pal. You’ve cross-checked on cryo systems.”
Sam sighed. “Months ago . . . but yes.”
“I’m sending a feed to your terminal, Sam,” Shephard
continued. “It’ll answer some of your questions anyway. Dump it to a
portable ’pad, grab your gear and get down here.”
“Roger,” Sam said. He stood, shrugged into his uniform
tunic, and stepped over to his terminal. He activated the computer and
waited for the upload from Shephard.
As he waited, his eyes locked on a small two-dee
photograph taped to the edge of the screen. Sam brushed his fingers
against the photo. The pretty young woman frozen in the picture smiled
back at him.
The terminal chimed as the feed from Shephard appeared in
Sam’s message queue. “Receiving the feed, Chief,” he called out to the
intercom pickup.
He opened the file. A frown creased his tired features as
a new message scrolled across his screen.
>FILE ENCRYPTED/EYES ONLY/MARCUS, SAMUEL
N./SN:18827318209-M.
>DECRYPTION KEY: [PERSONALIZED: “ELLEN’S ANNIVERSARY”]
He glanced back at the picture of his wife. He hadn’t seen
Ellen in almost three years—since his last shore leave on Earth, in
fact. He didn’t know anyone on active duty who’d been able to see their
loved ones for years. The war simply didn’t allow for it.
Sam’s frown deepened. UNSC personnel generally avoided
talking about the people back home. The war had been going badly for so
long that morale was rock-bottom. Thinking about the home front only
made things worse. The fact that Thom had personalized the security
encoding was unusual enough; reminding Sam of his wife in the process
was completely out of character for Chief Shephard. Someone was being
security-conscious to the point of paranoia.
He punched in a series of numbers—the date of his
wedding—and enabled the decryption suite. In seconds, the screen filled
with schematics and tech readouts. His practiced eye scanned the
file—and adrenaline suddenly spiked through his fatigue like a bolt of
lightning.
“Christ,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Thom, is
this what . . . who I think it is?”
“Damn right. Get down to Cryo Two on the double, Sam.
We’ve got an important package to thaw out—and we drop back into real
space soon.”
“On my way,” he said. He killed the intercom connection,
his exhaustion forgotten.
Sam quickly dumped the tech file to his portable compad
and deleted the original from his computer. He strode toward the door
to his cabin, then stopped. He snatched Ellen’s picture from the
workstation—almost as an afterthought—and shoved it into his pocket.
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 dare name
his people with their harsh, barbaric tongue, was beyond the pale.
He paused, and regained his composure. ’Fulsamee clicked
his lower mandibles—the equivalent of a shrug—and mentally recited one
of the True Sayings. Such is the Prophets’ decree, he thought.
One didn’t question such things, even when one was a Ship Master. The
Prophets had assigned names to the enemy craft, and he would honor
their decrees. Any less was a disgraceful dereliction of duty.
Like all of his kind, the Covenant officer appeared to be
larger than he actually was, due to the armor that he wore. It gave him
an angular, somewhat hunched appearance which, when combined with a
heavy, pugnacious jaw, caused him to look like what he was: a very
dangerous warrior. His voice was calm and well modulated as he assessed
the situation. “They must have followed one of our ships. The culprit
will be found and put to death at once, Exalted.”
The being who floated next to ’Fulsamee bobbed slightly as
a gust of air nudged his heavily swathed body. He wore a tall, ornate
headpiece made of metal and set with amber panels. The Prophet had a
serpentine neck, a triangular skull, and two bright green eyes which
glittered with malevolent intelligence. He wore a red overrobe, a gold
underrobe, and somewhere, hidden beneath all the fabric, an antigrav
belt which served to keep his body suspended one full unit off the
deck. Though only a Minor Prophet, he still outranked ’Fulsamee, as his
bearing made clear.
True Sayings aside, the Ship Master couldn’t help but be
reminded of the tiny, squealing rodents he had hunted in his childhood.
He immediately banished the memory of blood on his claws and returned
his attention to the Prophet, and his tiresome assistant.
The assistant, a lower-rank Elite named Bako ’Ikaporamee,
stepped forward to speak on the Prophet’s behalf. He had an annoying
tendency to use the royal “we,” a habit that angered ’Fulsamee.
“That is very unlikely, Ship Master. We doubt the humans
have the means to follow one of our vessels through a jump. Even if
they do, why would they send only a single cruiser? Is it not their way
to drown us in their own blood? No, we think it’s safe to surmise that
this ship arrived in the system by accident.”
The words dripped with condescension, a fact which made
the Ship Master angry, but couldn’t be addressed. Not directly, and
certainly not with the Prophet present, although ’Fulsamee wasn’t
willing to cave in completely. “So,” ’Fulsamee said, careful to direct
his comment to ’Ikaporamee alone, “you would have me believe that the
interlopers arrived here entirely by chance ?”
“No, of course not,” ’Ikaporamee replied loftily. “Though
primitive by our standards, the creatures are sentient, and like
all sentient beings, they are unconsciously drawn to the glory of the
ancients’ truth and knowledge.”
Like all the members of his caste, ’Fulsamee knew that the
Prophets had evolved on a planet which the mysterious truth-givers had
previously inhabited, and then, for reasons known only to the ancients
themselves, subsequently abandoned. This ring world was an excellent
example of the ancients’ power . . . and inscrutability.
’Fulsamee found it hard to believe that mere humans would
be drawn here, the ancients’ wisdom notwithstanding, but ’Ikaporamee
spoke for the Prophet, so it must be true. ’Fulsamee touched the light
panel in front of him. A symbol glowed red. “Prepare to fire plasma
torpedoes. Launch on my command.”
’Ikaporamee raised both hands in alarm. “No! We
forbid it. The human vessel is much too close to the construct! What if
your weapons were to damage the holy relic? Pursue the ship, board it,
and seize control. Anything else is far too dangerous.”
Angered by what he saw as ’Ikaporamee’s interference,
’Fulsamee spoke through gritted teeth. “The course of action that the
holy one recommends is likely to result in a high number of casualties.
Is this acceptable?”
“The opportunity to transcend the physical is a gift to be
sought after,” the other responded. “The humans are willing to spend
their
lives—can we do less?”
No, ’Fulsamee thought, but we should aspire to
more. He again clicked his lower mandibles, and touched the light
panel. “Cancel the previous order. Load four transports with troops,
and launch another flight of fighters. Neutralize the interloper’s
weaponry before the boarding craft reach their target.”
A hundred units aft, sealed within the destroyer’s fire
control center, a half-commander acknowledged the order and issued
instructions of his own. Lights began to strobe, the decks transmitted
a low frequency vibration, and more than three hundred battle-ready
Covenant warriors—a mix of what the humans called Elites, Jackals, and
Grunts—rushed to board their assigned transports. There were humans to
kill.
None of them wanted to miss the fun.
SECTION I
PILLAR OF AUTUMN
CHAPTER ONE
0127 Hours (Ship’s Time), September 19, 2552 (Military
Calendar) / UNSC Cruiser Pillar of Autumn, location unknown.
ThePillar of Autumn shuddered as her Titanium-A
armor took a direct hit.
Just another item in the Covenant’s bottomless arsenal,
Captain
Jacob Keyes thought. Not a plasma torpedo, or we’d already be
free-floating molecules.
The warship had taken a beating from Covenant forces off
Reach and it was a miracle that the hull remained intact and even more
remarkable that they’d been able to make a jump into Slipspace at all.
“Status!” Keyes barked. “What just hit us?”
“Covenant fighter, sir. Seraph-class,” the tactical
officer, Lieutenant Hikowa, replied. Her porcelain features darkened.
“Tricky bastard must have powered down and slipped past our sentry
ships.”
A humorless grin tugged at Keyes’ mouth. Hikowa was a
first-rate tactical officer, utterly ruthless in a fight. She seemed to
take the Covenant fighter pilot’s actions as a personal insult. “Teach
him a lesson, Lieutenant,” he said.
She nodded and tapped a series of orders into her
panel—new orders for the Autumn’s fighter squadron.
A moment later, there was radio chatter as one of the Autumn
’s C709 Longsword fighters went after the Seraph, followed by a cheer
as the tiny alien ship transformed into a momentary sun, complete with
its own system of co-orbiting debris.
Keyes wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. He
checked his display—they’d reverted back into real space twenty minutes
ago.Twenty minutes, and the Covenant picket patrols had already
found them and started shooting.
He turned to the bridge’s main viewport, a large
transparent bubble slung beneath the Autumn’s bow
superstructure. A massive purple gas giant—Threshold—dominated the
spectacular view. One of the Longsword fighters glided past as it
continued its patrol.
When Keyes had been given command of the Pillar of
Autumn
, he’d been skeptical of the large, domed viewport. “The Covenant are
tough enough,” he had argued to Admiral Stanforth. “Why give them an
easy shot into my bridge?”
He’d lost the argument—captains don’t win debates with
admirals, and in any case there simply hadn’t been time to armor the
viewport. He had to admit, though, the view was almost worth the risk.
Almost.
He absently toyed with the pipe he habitually carried,
lost in thought. It ran completely counter to his nature to slink
around in the shadow of a gas giant. He respected the Covenant as a
dangerous, deadly enemy, and hated them for their savage butchery of
human colonists and fellow soldiers alike. He had never feared them,
however. Soldiers didn’t hide from the enemy—they met the enemy head-on.
He moved back to the command station and activated his
navigation suite. He plotted a course deeper in-system, and fed the
data to Ensign Lovell, the navigator.
“Captain,” Hikowa piped up. “Sensors paint a squadron of
enemy fighters inbound. Looks like boarding craft are right behind
them.”
“It was just a matter of time, Lieutenant.” He sighed. “We
can’t hide here forever.”
The Pillar seemed to glide out of the shadow cast
by
the gas giant, and into bright sunlight.
Keyes’ eyes widened with surprise as the ship cleared the
gas giant. He had expected to see a Covenant cruiser, Seraph fighters,
or some other military threat.
He hadn’t expected to see the massive object floating in a
Lagrange point between Threshold and its moon, Basis.
The construct was enormous—a ring-shaped object that
shimmered and glowed with reflected starlight, like a jewel lit from
within.
The outer surface was metallic and seemed to be engraved
with deep geometric patterns. “Cortana,” Captain Keyes said. “What is
that?”
A foot-high hologram faded into view above a small holopad
near the captain’s station. Cortana—the ship’s powerful artificial
intelligence—frowned as she activated the ship’s long-range detection
gear. Long lines of digits scrolled across the sensor displays and
rippled the length of Cortana’s “body” as well.
“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana
announced, “and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic
analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant
materials, sir.”
Keyes nodded. The preliminary finding was interesting,
very
interesting, since Covenant ships had already been present when the
Autumn
dropped out of Slipspace and right into their laps. When he first saw
the ring, Keyes had a sinking feeling that the construct was a large
Covenant installation—one far beyond the scope of human engineering.
The thought that the construct might also be beyond Covenant
engineering held some small comfort.
It also made him nervous.
Under intense pressure from enemy warships in the Epsilon
Eridani system—the location of the UNSC’s last major naval base,
Reach—Cortana had been forced to launch the ship toward a random set of
coordinates, a standard procedure to lead the Covenant forces away from
Earth.
Now it appeared that the men and women aboard the
Pillar
of Autumn had succeeded in leaving their original pursuers behind,
only to encounter even more Covenant forces here . . . wherever
“here” was.
Cortana aimed a long-range camera array at the ring and a
close-up snapped into focus. Keyes let out a long, slow whistle. The
construct’s inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and
browns—trackless desert, jungles, glaciers, and oceans. Streaks of
white clouds cast deep shadows on the terrain below. The ring rotated
and brought a new feature into view: a tremendous hurricane forming
over a large body of water.
Equations again scrolled across the AI’s semitransparent
body as she continued to evaluate the incoming data. “Captain,” Cortana
said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that
controls the ring’s spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. I can’t say
with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an
oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and Earth-normal gravity.”
Keyes raised an eyebrow. “If it’s artificial, who the hell
built it, and what in God’s name is it?”
Cortana processed the question for a full three seconds.
“I don’t know, sir.”
Regulations be damned,Keyes thought. He took out
his pipe, used an old-fashioned match to light it, and produced a puff
of fragrant smoke. The ring world shimmered on the status monitors.
“Then we’d better find out.”
Sam Marcus rubbed his aching neck with hands
that trembled with fatigue. The rush of adrenaline that had flooded him
when he’d received Tech Chief Shephard’s instructions had worn off. Now
he just felt tired, strung out, and more than a little afraid.
He shook his head to clear it and surveyed the small
observation theater. Each cryostorage bay was equipped with such a
station, a central monitoring facility for the hundreds of cryotubes
the storage bays held. By shipboard standards, the Cryo Two Observation
Theater was large, but the proliferation of life-sign monitors,
diagnostic gauges, and computer terminals—tied directly into the
individual cryotubes stored in the bay below—made the room seem cramped
and uncomfortable.
A chime sounded and Sam’s eyes swept across the status
monitors. There was only one active cryotube in this bay, and its
monitor pinged for his attention. He double-checked the main instrument
panel, then keyed the intercom. “He’s coming around, sir,” he said. He
turned and looked out the observation bay’s window.
Tech Chief Thom Shephard waved up at Sam from the floor of
Cryostorage Unit Two. “Good work, Sam,” he called back. “Almost time to
pop the seal.”
The status monitors continued to feed information to the
observation theater. The subject’s body temperature was approaching
normal—at least, Sam assumed it was normal; he’d never awakened a
Spartan before—and most of the chemicals had already been flushed out
of his system.
“He’s in a REM cycle now, Chief,” Sam called out, “and his
brainwave activity shows he’s dreaming—that means he’s pretty much
thawed. Shouldn’t be long now.”
“Good,” Shephard replied. “Keep an eye on those neuro
readings. We packed him in wearing his combat armor. There may be some
feedback effects to watch out for.”
“Acknowledged.”
A red light winked to life on the security terminal, and a
new series of codes flashed across the screen:
>WAKE-UP SERIES STANDBY. SECURITY LOCK [PRIORITY ALPHA]
ENGAGED.
>x-CORTANA.1.0—CRYOSTOR.23.4.7
“What the hell?” Sam muttered. He keyed the bay intercom
again. “Thom? There’s something weird here . . . some kind of security
lockout from the bridge.”
“Acknowledged.” There was a static-spotted click as
Shephard looped in the bridge channel. “Cryo Two to Bridge.”
“Go ahead, Cryo Two,” a female voice replied, laced with
the telltale warble of synthesized speech.
“We’re ready to pop the seal on our . . . guest, Cortana,”
Shephard explained. “We need—”
“—the security code,” the AI finished. “Transmitting.
Bridge out.”
Almost instantly, a new line of text scrolled across the
security screen:
>UNSEAL THE HUSHED CASKET.
Sam hit the execute command, the security lockout dropped
away, and a countdown timer began marking time until the wake-up
sequence would be completed.
The soldier was coming around. Respiration was up, ditto
his heart rate, as both returned to normal levels.Here he is,
Sam thought, a real honest-to-god Spartan. Not just any Spartan,
but maybe the last Spartan. The shipboard scuttlebutt said that
the rest of them had bought the farm at Reach.
Like his fellow techs, Sam had heard of the program,
though he’d never seen an actual Spartan in person. In order to
deal with increasing civil turmoil the Colonial Military Administration
had secretly launched Project ORION back in 2491. The purpose of the
program was to develop supersoldiers, code-named “Spartans,” who would
receive special training and physical augmentation.
The initial effort was successful, and in 2517 a new group
of Spartans, the II-series, had been selected as the next generation of
supersoldier. The project had been intended to remain secret, but the
Covenant War had changed all that.
It was no secret that the human race was on the verge of
defeat. The Covenant’s ships and space technology were just too
advanced. While human forces could hold their own in a ground
engagement, the Covenant would simply fall back into space and glass
the planet from orbit.
As the situation grew increasingly grim, the Admiralty was
faced with the ugly prospect of fighting a two-front war—one against
the Covenant in space, and another against the collapsing human society
on the ground. The general public and the rank-and-file in the military
needed a morale boost, so the existence of the SPARTAN-II project was
revealed.
There were now successful heroes to rally behind, men and
women who had taken the fight to the enemy and won several decisive
battles. Even the Covenant seemed to fear the Spartans.
Except they were gone now, all but one, sacrificed to
protect the human race from the Covenant and the very real possibility
of extinction. Sam gazed on the soldier in front of him with something
akin to awe. Here, about to rise as if from a grave, was a true hero.
It was a moment to remember, and if he was lucky enough to survive, to
tell his children about.
It didn’t make him any less afraid, however. If the
stories were true, the man gradually regaining consciousness in the bay
below was almost as alien, and certainly as dangerous, as the Covenant.
He was floating in the never-never land
somewhere between cryo and full consciousness when the dream began.
It was a familiar dream, a pleasant dream, and one which
had nothing to do with war. He was on Eridanus II—the colony world he’d
been born on, long since destroyed by the Covenant. He heard laughter
all around.
A female voice called him by name—John. A moment later,
arms held him, and he recognized the familiar scent of soap. The woman
said something nice to him, and he wanted to say something nice in
return, but the words wouldn’t come. He tried to see her, tried
to penetrate the haze that obscured her face, and was rewarded with the
image of a woman with large eyes, a straight nose, and full lips.
The picture wavered, indistinct, like a reflection in a
pond. In an eyeblink, the woman who held him transformed. Now she had
dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and pale skin.
He knew her name: Dr. Halsey.
Dr. Catherine Halsey had selected him for the SPARTAN-II
project. While most believed that the current generation of Spartans
had been culled from the best of the UNSC military, only a handful of
people knew the truth.
Halsey’s program involved the actual abduction of
specially-screened children. The children were flash-cloned—which made
the duplicates prone to neurological disorders—and the clones covertly
returned to the parents, who never suspected that their sons and
daughters were duplicates. In many ways, Dr. Halsey was the only
“mother” that he had ever known.
But Dr. Halsey wasn’t his mother, nor was the pale
semitranslucent image of Cortana that appeared to replace her.
The dream changed. A dark, nebulous shape loomed behind
the Mother/Halsey/Cortana figure. He didn’t know what it was, but it
was a threat—of that he was certain.
His combat instincts kicked in, and adrenaline coursed
through him. He quickly surveyed the area—some kind of playground, with
high wooden poles, distantly familiar—and decided on the best route to
flank the new threat. He spied an assault rifle, a powerful MA5B,
nearby. If he placed himself between the woman and the threat, his
armor could take the brunt of an attack, and he could return fire.
He moved quickly, and the dark shape howled at him—a
fierce and terrifying war cry.
The beast was impossibly fast. It was on him in seconds.
He grabbed the assault rifle and turned to open fire—and
discovered to his horror that he couldn’t lift the weapon. His arms
were small, underdeveloped. His armor was gone, and his body was that
of a six-year-old child.
He was powerless in the face of the threat. He roared back
at the beast in rage and fear—angry not just at the threat, but at his
own sudden powerlessness . . .
The dream started to fade, and light appeared in front of
the Spartan’s eyes. Vapor vented, swirled, and began to dissipate. A
voice came, as if from a great distance. It was male and matter-of-fact.
“Sorry for the quick thaw, Master Chief—but things are a
bit hectic right now. The disorientation should pass quickly.”
A second voice welcomed him back and it took the Spartan a
moment to remember where he’d been prior to entering the cryotube.
There had been a battle, a terrible battle, in which most if not all of
his Spartan brothers and sisters had been killed. Men and women with
whom he had been raised and trained since the age of six, and who,
unlike the dimly remembered woman of his dreams, constituted his real
family.
With the memory, plus subtle changes to the gas mix that
filled his lungs, came strength. He flexed his stiff limbs. The Spartan
heard the tech say something about “freezer burn,” and pushed himself
up and out of the cryotube’s chilly embrace.
“God in heaven,” Sam whispered.
The Spartan was huge, easily seven feet tall. Encased in
pearlescent green battle armor, the man looked like a figure from
mythology—otherworldly and terrifying. Master Chief SPARTAN-117 stepped
from his tube and surveyed the cryo bay. The mirrored visor on his
helmet made him all the more fearsome, a faceless, impassive soldier
built for destruction and death.
Sam was glad that he was up here in the observation
theater, rather than down on the Cryo Two main floor with the Spartan.
He realized that Thom was waiting for diagnostic data. He
checked the displays—neural pathways clear, no fluctuations in
heartbeat or brainwave activity. He opened an intercom channel. “I’m
bringing his health monitors on-line now.”
Sam watched as Thom led the Spartan to the various test
stations in the bay, pitching in where he was required. In short order,
the soldier’s gear had been brought on-line—recharging shield system,
real-time health monitors, targeting and optical systems all read in
the green.
The suit—code-named MJOLNIR armor—was a marvel of
engineering, Sam had to admit. According to the specs he’d received,
the suit’s shell consisted of a multilayered alloy of remarkable
strength, a refractive coating that could disperse a fair amount of
directed energy, a crystalline storage matrix that could support the
same level of artificial intelligence usually reserved for a starship,
and a layer of gel which conformed to the wearer’s skin and functioned
to regulate temperature.
Additional memory packets and signal conduits had been
implanted into the Spartan’s body, and two externally accessible input
slots had been installed near the base of his skull. Taken together,
the combined systems served to double his strength, enhance his already
lightning-fast reflexes, and make it possible for him to navigate
through the intricacies of any high-tech battlefield.
There were substantial life-support systems built into the
MJOLNIR gear. Most soldiers went into cryo naked, since covered skin
generally reacted badly to the cryo process. Sam had once worn a
bandage into the freezer and discovered the affected skin blistered and
raw when he woke up.
The Spartan’s skin must have hurt like hell, he realized.
Through it all, though, the soldier remained silent, simply nodding
when asked questions or quietly complying with requests from Thom. It
was eerie—he moved with mechanistic efficiency from one test to the
next, like a robot.
Cortana’s voice rang from the shipwide com: “Sensors show
inbound Covenant boarding craft. Stand by to repel boarders.”
Sam felt a pang of fear—and sorrow for the Covenant troops
that would have to face this Spartan in combat.
The neural interface which linked the Master
Chief to his MJOLNIR armor was working perfectly, and immediately fed
data to his helmet’s heads-up-display on the inside surface of his
visor.
It felt good to move around, and the Master Chief quietly
flexed his fingers. His skin itched and stung, a side effect of the
cryo gases, but he quickly banished the pain from his awareness. He had
long ago learned how to disassociate himself from physical discomfort.
He’d heard Cortana’s announcement. The Covenant were on
their way. Good. He scanned the room for weapons, but there was no arms
locker present. The lack of weapons wasn’t of great concern to him;
he’d taken weapons away from Covenant soldiers before.
The intercom crackled again: “Bridge to Cryo Two—this is
Captain Keyes. Send the Master Chief to the bridge immediately.”
One of the techs started to object, pointing out that more
tests were required, when Keyes cut in. He said, “On the double,
crewman,” and the rating gave the only reply he could.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The tech chief turned and faced him. “We’ll find weapons
later.”
The Master Chief nodded and was about to move for the door
when an explosion echoed through the cryo bay.
The first blasts slammed into the
observation theater’s door with a noise that made Sam jump. His heart
pounded as he quickly hit the door controls, engaging an emergency
lockout. A heavy metal barrier slammed into place with a crash—then
began to glow red as Covenant energy weapons burned their way through.
“They’re trying to get through the door!” he yelled.
He glanced down into the bay and saw Thom, a stricken look
on his face. Sam could see his own startled reflection in the Spartan’s
mirrored visor.
Sam lunged for the alarm, and had time to call in an
alert. Then, the security door exploded in a shower of fire and molten
steel.
He heard the whine of plasma rifle fire, then felt
something punch him in the chest. His vision blurred, and he groped to
feel the wound. His hands came away sticky with blood. It doesn’t
hurt, he thought. It should hurt, shouldn’t it?
He felt disoriented, confused. He could see a flurry of
movement, as armored figures swarmed into the observation theater. He
ignored them and focused on his wife’s picture—smeared with his own
blood—which had somehow fallen to the deckplates. He fell to his knees
and scrambled for the photograph, his hands shaking.
His field of vision narrowed as he struggled to reach the
discarded photo. It was only inches away now, but the distance felt
like miles. He’d never been so tired. His wife’s name echoed in his
mind.
Sam’s fingers had just brushed the edge of the photograph
when an armored boot pinned his arm to the deck. Long, clawed fingers
plucked the picture from the floor.
Sam cursed weakly and struggled to face his attacker. The
alien—an Elite—cocked his head at the image in puzzlement. He glanced
down, as if noticing Sam for the first time. The human continued to
reach for the picture.
He dimly heard Thom’s voice call out in anguish: “Sam!”
The Elite aimed the plasma rifle at Sam’s head and fired.
The Master Chief bristled. Covenant forces
were in close proximity, and a fellow soldier had just died. He longed
to climb to the observation bay and engage the enemy—but orders were
orders. He needed to get to the bridge.
The cryo tech keyed open a hatchway. “Come on!” he yelled,
“we’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
The Master Chief followed the crewman through the hatch
and down the corridor. A sudden explosion blew the next door to
smithereens, hurled what remained of the technician’s body down the
passageway, and caused the Chief’s shields to flare.
He mentally reviewed the schematics of the Halcyon-class
line of ships and doubled back. He vaulted over a pair of power
conduits, and landed in the dimly lit maintenance hallway beyond. An
emergency beacon strobed and alarms wailed. The rumble of a second
explosion echoed down the corridor.
He pushed ahead, past a dead crewman, and into the next
section of hallway.
The Master Chief saw a hatch, its security panel pulsing
green, and hurried forward. There was a third explosion, but his armor
deflected the force of the blast.
The Spartan forced open the partially melted door, saw an
opening to his left, and heard someone scream. A naval crewman fired
his sidearm at a target the Master Chief couldn’t see—and the deck
shuddered as a missile struck the Autumn’s hull.
The Master Chief ducked under a half-raised door just in
time to see the crewman take an energy bolt through the chest as the
rest of the human counterboarders returned fire. Covenant forces backed
through a hatch and were forced to retreat into an adjoining
compartment.
Chaos reigned as the ship’s crew did the best they could
to push the boarders back toward the air locks or to trap them in
compartments where they could be contained and dispatched later.
Unarmed, and well aware of the fact that Captain Keyes
needed him on the bridge, the Master Chief had little choice but to
follow the signs, and avoid the firefights that raged all around. He
made his way down a darkened access corridor—the Covenant boarders must
have shorted out the illumination circuits in this compartment—and
nearly ran headlong into a Covenant Elite.
The alien’s personal shields sparked and he roared in
surprise and anger. The Spartan crouched and prepared to meet the alien
soldier’s charge—then ducked, as a Marine fire-team unleashed a barrage
of assault-rifle fire at the Elite. Purple gore splashed the bulkhead,
and the alien dropped in a crumpled heap.
The Marines moved forward to secure the area, and the
Chief nodded in thanks to the squad leader. He turned, sprinted down
the passageway, and made it to the bridge without further incident.
He looked out through the main viewport, saw the
strange-looking construct that floated out beyond the cruiser’s hull,
and was momentarily curious about what it was. No doubt the Captain
would fill him in. He strode toward the captain’s station, near the
center of the bridge.
A variety of naval personnel sat hunched at their consoles
as they struggled to control their beleaguered vessel. Some battled the
latest wave of Seraph fighters, others worked on damage control, and
one grim-faced Lieutenant made use of the ship’s environmental systems
to suck the atmosphere out of those compartments which had been
occupied by Covenant forces. Some of the enemy carried their own
atmosphere, but some of them didn’t, and that made them vulnerable.
There were crew in some of those spaces, perhaps some she knew
personally, but there was no way to save them. If she didn’t kill them,
then the enemy would.
The Chief understood the situation well. Better a quick
death in vacuum than at the hands of the Covenant.
He spotted Keyes near the main tactical display. Keyes
studied the screens intently, particularly a large display of the
strange ring.
The Spartan came to attention. “Captain Keyes.”
Captain Keyes turned to face him. “Good to see you, Master
Chief. Things aren’t going well. Cortana did her best—but we never
really had a chance.”
The AI arched a holographic eyebrow. “A dozen Covenant
battleships against a single Halcyon-class cruiser . . . With those
odds we still had three—” She paused, as if distracted, then amended:
“—make that four kills.”
Cortana looked at the Chief. “Sleep well?”
“Yes,” he replied. “No thanks to your driving.”
Cortana smiled. “So, you did miss me.”
Before he could reply, another blast rocked the entire
ship. He grabbed a nearby support pillar and braced himself, as several
crewers crashed to the deck nearby.
Keyes grabbed onto a console for support. “Report!”
Cortana shimmered blue. “It must have been one of their
boarding parties. My guess is an antimatter charge.”
The fire control officer turned in his seat. “Ma’am! Fire
control for the main cannon is off-line!”
Cortana looked at Keyes. The loss of the ship’s primary
weapon, the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, was a crippling blow to their
holding action. “Captain, the cannon was my last defensive option.”
“All right,” Keyes said gruffly, “I’m initiating Cole
Protocol, Article Two. We’re abandoning the Autumn . That means
you too, Cortana.”
“While you do what? Go down with the ship?” she shot back.
“In a manner of speaking,” Keyes replied. “The object we
found—I’m going to try and land the Autumn on it.”
Cortana shook her head. “With all due respect . . . this
war has enough dead heroes.”
The Captain’s eyes locked with hers. “I appreciate your
concern, Cortana—but it’s not up to me. The Protocol is clear. The
destruction or capture of shipboard AI is absolutely unacceptable. That
means you are abandoning ship. Lock in a selection of emergency
landing zones and upload them to my neural lace.”
The AI paused, then nodded. “Aye, aye, sir.”
“Which is where you come in,” Keyes continued as
he
turned to face the Spartan. “Get Cortana off this ship. Keep her safe
from the enemy. If they capture her, they’ll learn everything. Force
deployment, weapons research.” He paused, then added: “Earth.”
The Spartan nodded. “I understand.”
Keyes glanced at Cortana. “Are you ready?”
There was a pause as the AI took one last look around. In
many ways the ship was her physical body and she was reluctant to leave
it. “Yank me.”
Keyes turned to a console, touched a series of controls,
and turned back again.
The holo shivered and Cortana’s image swirled into the
pedestal below and disappeared from view. Keyes waited until the holo
had disappeared, removed a data chip from the pedestal, and offered it
to the Spartan, along with his sidearm. “Good luck, Master Chief.”
SPARTAN-117 accepted the chip and reached back to slot the
device into the neural interface, located at the base of his skull.
There was a positive click, followed by a flood of sensation as the AI
joined him within the confines of the armor’s neural network. At first
it felt as if someone had poured a cup of ice water into his mind,
followed by a momentary jab of pain, and a familiar presence. He’d
worked with Cortana before—just prior to the disaster at Reach.
The AI-human interface was intrusive in a way, yet
comforting too, since he knew what Cortana could do. He would depend on
her during the hours and days ahead—just as she would depend on him. It
was like being part of a team again.
The Master Chief saluted and left the bridge. The sounds
of fighting were even louder now, indicating that, in spite of the
crew’s best efforts, Covenant forces had still managed to fight their
way out of the areas adjacent to the air locks and made it all the way
up to the area around the command deck.
Bodies lay strewn around the corridor, roughly fifty
meters from the bridge. The human defenders had pushed them back, but
the Chief could tell that the last assault had been close. Too close.
The Master Chief paused to kneel next to a dead ensign,
took a moment to close her eyelids, and appropriated the fallen
trooper’s ammo. The pistol the Captain had given him was standard Navy
issue; it fired 12.7 mm semi-armor piercing high-explosive ammo from
twelve-round clips. Not what he would choose to tackle an Elite
with—but good enough for Grunt work.
There was a metallic click as the first clip slid
into the pistol’s handle, followed by the sudden appearance of a blue
circle in his HUD—a targeting reticle—as his armor made electronic
contact with the weapon in his hand.
Then, conscious of the need to get Cortana off the ship,
he made his way down the corridor. He heard the strange high-pitched
squeaks and barks before he actually saw the Covenant Grunts
themselves. Consistent with his status as a veteran, the first alien to
come around the corner wore red-trimmed armor, a methane rig, and a
Marine’s web pistol belt. The alien wore the captured gear Pancho
Villa–style and dragged it across the deck. Two of his comrades brought
up the rear.
Confident that there were more of the vaguely simian
aliens on the way, the Master Chief paused long enough to let more of
them appear, then opened fire. The recoil compensators in his armor
dampened the effect, but he could still feel the handgun kick against
his palm. All three of the Grunts went down from head shots.
Phosphorescent blue ichor spattered the deck.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
The Master Chief stepped over their bodies and moved on.
A lifeboat. That was his real goal—and he would do
whatever it took to find one.
Ashamed by the ignominy of it, but
consistent with his orders, the Elite named Isna ’Nosolee waited until
the Grunts, Jackals, and two members of his own race had charged out
through the human air lock before leaving the assault boat himself.
Though armed with a plasma pistol, plus a half-dozen grenades, he was
there to observe rather than fight, which meant that the Elite would
rely on both his energy shielding and active camouflage to keep him
alive.
His role, and an unaccustomed one at that, was to function
as an “Ossoona,” or Eye of the Prophet. The concept, as outlined to
’Nosolee by his superior, was to insert experienced officers into
situations where intelligence could be gleaned, and to do so early
enough to obtain high-quality information.
Though both intelligent and brave, the Prophets felt that
the Elites had an unfortunate tendency to destroy everything in their
path, leaving very little for their analysts to analyze.
Now, by adding Ossoonas to the combat mix, the Prophets
hoped to learn more about the humans, ranging from data on their
weapons and force deployments to the greatest prize of all: the
coordinates for their home planet, “Earth.”
’Nosolee had three major objectives: to retrieve the enemy
ship’s AI, to capture senior personnel, and to record everything he saw
via the cameras attached to his helmet. The first two goals were bound
to be difficult, but a quick check confirmed that the video gear was
working, and the third objective was assured.
So, even though the assignment was empty of honor,
’Nosolee understood its purpose, and was determined to succeed, if only
as a means to return to the regular infantry where he belonged.
The Elite heard the rhythmic clatter of a human weapon as
a group of their Marines backed around a corner, closely pursued by a
pack comprised of Grunts and Jackals. The Ossoona considered killing
the humans, thought better of it, and flattened himself against a
bulkhead. None of the combatants noticed the point where the metal
appeared to be slightly distorted, and a moment later the spy slipped
away.
It seemed as if the Autumn was
infested with chrome-armored demons spouting plasma fire. The Master
Chief had acquired an MA5B assault rifle along with close to four
hundred rounds of 7.62mm armor piercing ammunition. In this situation,
with plenty of ordnance lying around, he preferred to reload when the
ammo indicator on his weapon dropped to around 10. Failure to do so
could result in disaster if he ran into serious opposition. With that
in mind, the Chief hit the release, allowed a nearly empty magazine to
fall, and shoved a new clip into its place. The weapon’s digital ammo
counter reset, as did its cousin in his HUD.
“We’re closer,” Cortana said from someplace just outside
his head. “Duck through the hatch ahead and go up one level.”
The Master Chief ran into a shimmery, black-clad Elite,
and opened fire. There were Grunts in the area as well, but he knew
that the Elite posed the real danger. He expertly sprayed a
trio
of bursts at the alien.
The Elite roared defiance and fired in return, but the
sheer volume of the specially hardened 7.62mm projectiles caused the
Elite’s shielding to flare, overload, and fail. The bulky alien fell to
his knees, bent forward, and collapsed. Frightened by what had happened
to their leader, the Grunts made barking noises, turned, and began to
scurry away.
Individually, the Grunts were cowards, but the Spartan had
seen what a pack of the creatures could do. He opened fire again. Alien
bodies tumbled and fell.
He continued on through a hatch, heard more firing, and
turned in that direction. Cortana called out: “Covenant! On the landing
above us!”
He ran toward a flight of metal stairs, and charged
straight for the landing.
Boots rang on metal as he slammed a fresh magazine into
the weapon’s receiver and passed a wounded Marine. The Spartan
remembered the soldier from his last action on one of Reach’s orbiting
defense stations. The Marine held a dressing to a plasma burn and
managed to smile. “Glad you could make it, Chief . . . we saved some
party favors just for you.”
The Spartan nodded, paused on the landing, and took aim at
a Jackal. The vaguely birdlike aliens carried energy shields—handheld
units, rather than the full-body protection the Elites favored. The
Jackal shifted to take aim at the wounded Marine, and the Chief saw his
opening. He fired a burst at the Jackal’s unprotected flank and the
alien hit the deckplates, dead.
He continued the climb up the flight of stairs, and came
nearly visor-to-visor with another Elite. The alien roared, charged
forward, and attempted to use his plasma rifle like a club. The Master
Chief evaded the blow—he’d fought Elites hand-to-hand before, and knew
they were dangerously strong—and backed away. He leveled the assault
weapon at the Elite’s belly, and squeezed the trigger.
The Covenant soldier seemed to absorb the bullets like a
sponge, continued to advance, and was just about to swing when a final
round cut through his spinal cord. The alien soldier slammed into the
deck, twitched once, and died.
SPARTAN-117 reached for another magazine. Another Elite
roared, as did another . There was no time to reload, so the
Master Chief turned to take them on. He discarded the assault rifle and
drew his sidearm. There were a pair of dead Marines at the aliens’
feet, roughly twenty-five meters away. Well within range, he
thought, and opened fire.
The lead Elite snarled as the powerful handgun rounds tore
into the shielding around his head. Sensing the Spartan’s threat, the
aliens shifted all of their fire in his direction only to watch as it
dissipated against his shields and armor.
Now, free to direct their fire wherever they chose, the
Marines launched a hastily organized counterattack. A fragmentation
grenade blew one Elite into bloody ribbons, shredded the Jackals who
had the poor judgment to stand next to him, and sent pieces of shrapnel
flying across the stairwell to slam into the bulkhead.
The other Elite was consumed by a hail of bullets. He
seemed to wilt, fold, and fly apart. “That’s what I’m talking about!” a
Marine crowed. He fired a coup de grâce into the alien’s
head.
Satisfied that the area was reasonably secure, the Master
Chief moved on. He passed through a hatch, helped a pair of Marines
take out a group of Grunts, and marched down a corridor drenched with
blood—both human and alien. The deck shook as the Autumn took a
new hit from a ship-to-ship missile. There was a muffled clang, and a
light flared beyond a viewport.
“The lifeboats are launching,” Cortana announced. “We
should hurry!”
“I am hurrying,” the Master Chief replied. “I’ll
get
there as soon as I can.”
Cortana started to reply, reconsidered, and processed the
equivalent of an apologetic shrug. Sometimes, fallible though they
were, humans were right.
Flight Officer Captain Carol Rawley, better
known to the ship’s Marine contingent by her call sign, “Foehammer,”
waited for the Grunt to round the corner. She shot him in the head, and
the little methane-breathing bastard dropped like a rock. The pilot
took a quick peek, verified that the next corridor was clear, and
motioned to those behind her. “Come on! Let’s get while the getting’s
good!”
Three pilots, along with an equal number of ground crew,
followed as Rawley thundered down the hall. She was a tall,
broad-shouldered woman, and she ran with a flat-footed determination.
The plan, if the wild-assed scheme she’d concocted could be dignified
as such, was to make it down to the ship’s launch bay, jump into their
D77-TC “Pelican” dropships, and get off the Autumn before the
cruiser smacked into the construct below. At best, it would be a tricky
takeoff, and a messy landing, but she’d rather die behind the stick of
her bird than trust her fate to some lifeboat jockey. Besides, maybe
some transports would come in handy, if anybody actually made it off
the ship alive.
That was looking like an increasingly big maybe.
“They’re behind us!” somebody yelled. “Run faster!”
Rawley wasn’t a sprinter—she was a pilot, damn it. She
turned to take aim on her pursuers, when a globe of glowing-green
plasma sizzled past her ear.
“Screw this,” she yelled, then ran with renewed energy.
As the battle with the interlopers continued
to rage, a Grunt named Yayap led a small detachment of his own kind
through a half-melted hatch and came upon the scene of a massacre. The
nearest bulkhead was drenched in shimmering blue blood. Spent shell
casings were scattered everywhere and a tangled pile of Grunt bodies
testified to an engagement lost. Yayap keened in brief mourning for his
fallen brethren.
That most of the dead were Grunts like Yayap didn’t
surprise him. The Prophets had long made use of his race as cannon
fodder. He hoped that they had gone to a methane-rich paradise, and was
about to pass by the gruesome heap, when one of the bodies groaned.
The Grunt paused and, accompanied by one of his fellows—a
Grunt named Gagaw—he waded into the gory mess, only to discover that
the noise was associated with a black-armored member of the Elite, one
of the “Prophet-blessed” types who were in charge of this
ill-considered raid. By law and custom, Yayap’s race was required to
revere the Elites as near-divine envoys of the Prophets. Of course, the
implementation of law and custom was somewhat flexible on the
battlefield.
“Leave him,” Gagaw advised. “That’s what he would do
if it were one of us lying wounded.”
“True,” Yayap said thoughtfully, “but it would take all
five of us to carry him back to the assault boat.”
It took Gagaw ten full heartbeats to assimilate the idea
and finally appreciate the genius of it. “We wouldn’t have to fight!”
“Precisely,” Yayap said, as the sounds of battle grew
louder once more, “so let’s slap some dressings on his wounds, grab his
arms and legs, and drag his ass out of here.”
A quick check revealed that the Elite’s wounds weren’t
mortal. A human projectile had punched its way through the warrior’s
visor, sliced along the side of his head, and flattened itself on the
inside surface of the Elite’s helmet. The force of the blow had knocked
him unconscious. Aside from that, and some cuts and bruises sustained
when he fell, the Elite would survive. A pity, Yayap thought.
Satisfied that their ticket off the ship would live long
enough to get them where they wanted to go, the Grunts grabbed the
warrior’s limbs and waddled down the corridor. Their battle was over.
The Autumn ’s contingent of Orbital
Drop Shock Troopers, also known as ODST, or “Helljumpers,” had been
assigned to protect the cruiser’s experimental power plant, which
consisted of a unique network of fusion engines.
The engine room was served by two main access points, each
protected by a Titanium-A hatch. Both were connected by a catwalk and
were still under human control. The fact that Major Antonio Silva’s
Marines had been forced to stack the Covenant bodies like firewood in
order to maintain clear fields of fire testified to how effective the
men and women under his command had been.
There had been human casualties as well, plenty of
them, including Lieutenant Melissa McKay, who waited impatiently while
“Doc” Valdez, the platoon’s medic, bandaged her arm. There was a lot to
do—and clearly McKay wanted to get up and do it.
“Got some bad news for you, Lieutenant,” the medic said.
“The tattoo on your bicep, the one with the skull and the letters
‘ODST,’ took a serious hit. You can get a new one, of course . . . but
scar tissue won’t take the ink in quite the same way.”
McKay knew the patter had a purpose, knew it was Doc’s way
of taking her mind off Dawkins, Al-Thani, and Suzuki. The medic secured
the bandage in place and the officer rolled her sleeve down over the
dressing. “You know what, Valdez? You are truly full of it. And I mean
that as a compliment.”
Doc wiped his forehead with the back of a sleeve. It came
away with Al-Thani’s blood on it. “Thanks, El-Tee. Compliment accepted.”
“All right,” Major Silva boomed as he strode out onto the
center of the catwalk. “Listen up! Play time is over. Captain Keyes is
tired of our company and wants us to leave this tub. There’s a
construct down there, complete with an atmosphere, gravity, and the one
thing Marines love like beer—and that’s dirt beneath our feet.”
The ODST officer paused at that point, allowing his
bright, beady eyes to sweep the faces around him, his mouth straight as
a crease. “Most of the crew—not to mention your fellow jarheads—will be
leaving the ship in lifeboats. They’ll ride to the surface in
air-conditioned comfort, sipping wine, and nibbling on appetizers.
“Not you , however. Oh no, you’re going to leave the
Pillar
of Autumn by a different method. Tell me, boys and girls . . . How
will you leave?”
It was a time-honored ritual, and the ODST Marines roared
the answer in unison. “WE GO FEET FIRST, SIR!”
“Damned right you do,” Silva barked. “Now let’s get to
those drop pods. The Covenant is holding a picnic down on the surface
and every single one of you is invited. You have five minutes to strap
in, hook up, and shove a cork in your ass.”
It was an old joke, one of their favorites, and the
Marines laughed as if they had just heard it for the first time. Then
they formed into squads, and followed their noncoms out into a corridor
that ran down the port side of the ship.
McKay led her platoon down the hall, past the troopers
assigned to guard the intersection, and through what had been a
battlefield. Bodies lay sprawled where they had fallen, plasma burns
marked the bulkheads, and a long line of 7.62mm dimples marked the last
burst that one of the dead soldiers would ever fire.
They pounded around a corner, and into what the Marines
referred to as “Hell’s waiting room.” The troopers streamed down the
center of a long narrow compartment that housed two rows of oval-shaped
individual drop pods. Each pod bore the name of an individual trooper,
and was poised over a tube that extended down through the ship’s belly.
Most combat landings were made via armed assault boats,
but the boats were slow, and subject to antiaircraft fire. That was why
the UNSC had invested the time and money necessary to create a second
way to deliver troops through an atmosphere: the HEV, or Human Entry
Vehicle.
Computer-controlled antiaircraft fire would nail some of
the pods, but they made small targets, and each hit would result in one
death rather than a dozen.
There was just one problem. As the ceramic skins that
covered the HEVs burned away, the air inside the pods became
unbelievably hot, sometimes fatally so, which was why ODST personnel
were referred to as “Helljumpers.” It was an all-volunteer outfit, and
it took a special kind of crazy to join up.
McKay remained on the central walkway until each of her
men had entered his particular pod. She knew that meant she would have
sixty seconds less to make her own preparations, and was quick to enter
her HEV once the last hatch had closed.
Once inside, McKay’s hands were a blur as she secured her
harness, ran the obligatory systems check, removed a series of
safeties, armed her ejection tube, and eyed the tiny screen mounted in
front of her. The Autumn ’s fire control computer had already
calculated the force required to blow the pod free and drop the HEV
into the correct entry path. All she had to do was hang on, pray that
the pod’s ceramic skin would hold long enough for the chute to open,
and try to ignore how fragile the vehicle actually was.
No sooner had the officer braced her boots against the
bulkhead, and looked up at the countdown, than the last digit clicked
from one to zero.
The pod dropped, accelerated out of the ejection tube, and
fell toward the ring-shaped world below. Her stomach lurched and her
heart rate spiked.
Somebody popped a tiny disk into a data player, touched a
button, and pushed the hyped-up strains of the Helljumpers’ anthem out
over the team freq. The regs made it clear that unauthorized use of
UNSC communications facilities was wrong, very wrong, but McKay
knew that at that particular moment it was right, and Silva must
have agreed, because nothing came in over the command freq. The music
pounded in her ears, the HEV shuddered as it hit the outer layer of the
ring-construct’s atmosphere, and the Marines fell feet first through
the ring.
The deck jumped as the Pillar of Autumn
absorbed yet another blow and the battle continued to rage within. The
Master Chief was close now, and prepared to sprint for a lifeboat. That
was when Cortana said, “Behind you!” and the Master Chief felt a plasma
bolt hit him squarely between the shoulder blades.
He rolled with the blow and sprang to his feet. He whirled
to face his attacker and saw that a Grunt had dropped out of an
overhead maintenance way. The diminutive alien stood with his feet
planted on the deck, a plasma pistol over-charging in his claws. The
Master Chief took three steps forward, used the assault rifle to knock
the creature off its feet, and followed it with a three-round burst.
The Grunt’s pistol discharged its stored energy into the ceiling. Drips
of molten metal sizzled on the Master Chief’s shields.
The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien’s breathing
apparatus, released a stream of methane, and caused the body to spin
like a top.
A trio of additional Grunts landed on the Master Chief’s
shoulders and grabbed hold. It was almost laughable, until the Spartan
realized that one of them was trying to remove his helmet. A second
alien carried an ignited plasma grenade—the little bastards meant to
drop the explosive into his armor.
He flexed his shoulders, and shook himself like a dog.
Grunts flew in every direction as the Master Chief used
short controlled bursts to put them down. He turned toward the
lifeboats. “Now!” Cortana urged. “Run!”
The Spartan ran, just as the door started to close. A
nearby Marine fell while running for the escape craft, and the Chief
paused long enough to scoop the soldier up and hurl him into the boat.
Once inside, they joined a small group of crew members
already on board the escape craft. “Now would be a very good time to
leave,” Cortana commented coolly, as something else exploded and the
cruiser shuddered in response.
The Master Chief stood facing the hatch. He waited for it
to close all the way, saw the red light appear, and knew it was sealed.
“Punch it.”
The pilot triggered the launch sequence and the lifeboat
blasted free of the ship, balanced on a column of fire. The boat
skimmed along the surface of the Autumn at dizzying speed.
Plasma
blasts from a Covenant warship slammed into the Autumn ’s hull.
In seconds, the lifeboat dropped away from the cruiser and dove toward
the ring.
The Master Chief killed his external com system, and spoke
directly to Cortana. “So, any idea what this thing is?”
“No,” Cortana admitted. “I managed to slice some data out
of the Covenant battle network. They call it ‘Halo,’ and it has some
kind of religious significance to them, but . . . your guess is as good
as mine.” She paused, and the Spartan sensed the AI’s amusement. “Well,
almost
as good.”
“Halo,” he repeated. “Looks like we’re going to be calling
it ‘home’ for a while.”
The lifeboat was too small to mount a Shaw-Fujikawa
faster-than-light drive so there was nowhere to go but the ring. There
were no shouts of jubilation, no high-fives, only silence as the boat
fell through the blackness of space. They were alive, but that was
subject to change, and that left nothing to celebrate.
One Marine said, “This duty station really sucks.” No one
saw any reason to contradict him.
Rawley and her companions skidded to a halt,
turned back the way they had come, and let loose with everything they
had. Their weaponry included two pistols, one assault rifle, and a
plasma rifle that a pilot had scooped up along the way. Not much of an
arsenal but sufficient to knock three Jackals off their feet and put
the aliens down for good. Rawley caved the last Jackal’s skull in with
her boot.
Eager to get aboard their ships, the group ducked through
the docking bay hatch, closed it behind them, and ran for the Pelicans.
Foehammer spotted her bird, gave thanks for the fact that it was
undamaged, and ran up the ramp. As always, it was fueled, armed, and
ready to fly. Frye, her copilot, dropped into position behind her, with
Crew Chief Cullen bringing up the rear.
Once in the cockpit, Rawley strapped in, ran an
abbreviated preflight checklist, and started the transport’s engines.
They joined with the rest to create a satisfying roar. The outer hatch
cycled open. Loose gear tumbled into space as the bay explosively
decompressed.
Moments later, the cruiser entered the ring world’s
atmosphere, which meant that the transports could depart . . . but they
had to do it soon. Reentry friction was already creating a wall of fire
around the ship.
“Damn!” Frye exclaimed, “Look at that!” and pointed
forward.
Rawley looked, saw a Covenant landing craft coming
straight toward the bay, braving the heat generated by the Autumn
’s reentry velocity. There was a limited window of opportunity to get
off this sinking ship, and the Covenant bastard was right in the way.
She swore and released the safety on the Pelican’s 70mm
chain gun. The weapon shook the entire ship, punched holes through
alien
armor, and hit something vital. The enemy vessel shuddered, lost
control, and spun into the Autumn ’s hull.
“All right,” the wing leader said over the ship-to-ship
frequency, “Let’s go down and meet our hosts. See you on the ground.
Foehammer out.”
She clicked off the transmitter and whispered, “Good luck.”
One by one the dropships left the bay, did a series of
wingovers, and dropped through the overarching ring. Rawley struggled
to maintain control as the atmosphere tore at her ship. The status
panel flashed a heat warning as friction created a massive thermal
buildup along the Pelican’s fuselage. The leading edges of the ship’s
short, stubby wings started to glow.
“Jeez, boss,” Frye said, his teeth rattling from the
constant jouncing of the Pelican, “maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
Foehammer made some adjustments, managed to improve the
ship’s glide angle, and glanced to her right. “If you’ve got a better
idea,” she yelled, “bring it up at the next staff meeting.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Until then,” she added, “shut the hell up and let me
fly
this thing.”
The Pelican hit an air pocket, dropped like a rock, and
caught itself. The transport shook like a thing possessed. Rawley
screamed with anger and battled her controls as her ship plummeted
toward the surface of the ring.
Covenant forces had launched a concerted
attack on the command deck about fifteen minutes earlier but the
defenders had beaten them back. Since that time the fighting had
lessened and there were reports that at least some of the aliens were
using their assault boats to leave the ship.
It wasn’t clear whether that was due to the considerable
number of casualties Covenant forces had suffered, or the realization
that the ship was in danger of falling apart, but it hardly mattered.
The important thing was that the area around the bridge was clear,
which meant that Keyes, plus the command team who remained to help him,
could carry out their duties without fear of being shot in the back. At
least for the moment.
Their next task was to take the Autumn down into
the
atmosphere. No small order considering the fact that, like all vessels
of her tonnage, the cruiser had been constructed in zero-gee conditions
and wasn’t equipped to operate in a planetary atmosphere.
Keyes believed it was possible. With that in mind he
planned to close with the ring world, hand control to the subroutine
that Cortana had left for that purpose, and use the last lifeboat to
make his escape. Maybe the ship would pancake in the way he had
planned—and maybe it wouldn’t. Whatever the case, it was almost sure to
be a landing that would best be experienced from a safe distance.
Keyes turned to look at the data scrolling across the nav
screen and detected motion out of the corner of his eye. He looked, saw
the primary weapons control station shimmer like a mirage in the
desert, and rubbed his eyes. By the time the Naval officer looked for a
second
time, the phenomena had vanished.
Keyes frowned, turned back to the nav screen, and began
the sequence of orders that would put the Autumn in the place
she
was least equipped to go: on solid ground.
Isna ’Nosolee held his breath. The human had
looked straight into his eyes, given no alarm, and turned away. Surely
his activities had been blessed by those who went before and from whom
all knowledge flowed.
The camouflage, combined with his own talent for stealth,
had proven to be extremely effective. Since he had come aboard,
’Nosolee had toured both the ship’s engine room and fire control center
prior to arriving on the bridge. Now, standing in front of a vent, the
Elite contemplated what to do next.
The ship’s AI had either been removed or destroyed, he was
sure of that. At least some senior personnel remained, however—which
meant there was still a chance.
In fact, based on the manner in which the other humans
interacted with him, ’Nosolee felt certain that the man named “Keezz”
held the position of Ship Master. A very valuable prize indeed.
But how to capture the human? He wouldn’t come willingly,
that was obvious, and his companions were armed. The moment ’Nosolee
deactivated his camouflage they would shoot him. Individually, the
humans were weaklings, but they were dangerous in packs. And animals
grew all the more dangerous the nearer they came to extinction.
No, patience was the key, which meant that the Elite would
have to wait. Vapor continued to roll out of the cold air vent, and the
air seemed to shimmer, but no one noticed.
“All right,” Keyes said, “let’s put her down. . . . Stand
by to fire the bow thrusters . . . Fire!”
The bow thrusters ignited and slowed the ship’s rate of
descent. The Pillar of Autumn wobbled for a moment as it battled
the ring’s gravity field, then corrected its angle of entry.
Cortana took over after that, or rather, the part of
herself that she had left behind did. The Autumn’s thrusters
fired in increments so small that they were like single notes in an
ongoing melody. The highly adaptive subroutine tracked variables,
monitored feedback, and made thousands of decisions per second.
The much-abused hull shuddered as it entered the
atmosphere, started to shake, and sent a host of loose items tumbling
to the deck. “That’s as far as we can take her,” Keyes announced.
“Delegate all command and control functions to Cortana’s cousin, and
let’s haul ass off this boat.”
There was a ragged chorus of “Aye, ayes,” as the bridge
crew disengaged from the ship they had worked so hard to save, took one
last look around, and drew their sidearms. The fighting had died down,
but that didn’t mean all of the Covenant forces had left.
’Nosolee watched anxiously as the humans started to leave
the bridge. He waited for the last person to exit, and fell into step
behind. The beginnings of a plan had started to form in his mind. It
was audacious—no, make that outrageous—but the Elite figured that made
the scheme all the more likely to succeed.
The lifeboat reserved for the bridge crew
was close by. Six Marines had been detailed to guard it and three of
them were dead. Their bodies had been dragged off to one side and laid
in a row. A corporal shouted, “Attention on deck!”
Keyes said, “As you were,” and gestured toward the hatch.
“Thanks for waiting, son. I’m sorry about your buddies.”
The corporal nodded stiffly. He must have been off duty
when the attack began—one half of his face needed a shave. “Thank you,
sir. They took a dozen of the bastards with them.”
Keyes nodded. Three lives for twelve. It sounded like a
good trade-off but how good was it really? How many Covenant troops
were there, anyway? And how many would each human have to kill? He
shook the thought off and jerked his thumb toward the opening.
“Everybody into the boat, on the double!”
The survivors streamed onto the boat, and
’Nosolee followed, though it was difficult to avoid touching the human
vermin in such tight quarters. There was a little bit of space toward
the front and a handhold which would be useful once the gravity
generated by the larger ship disappeared. Later, after the lifeboat
landed, the Elite would find an opportunity to separate Keezz from the
rest of the humans and seize him. In the meantime all he had to do was
hang on, avoid detection, and make it to the surface.
The human passengers strapped in. The lifeboat exploded
out of the bay, and it fell toward the ring world below. Jets fired,
the small craft stabilized, and followed a precalculated glide path
toward the surface.
Keyes was seated three slots aft of the
pilot. He frowned, as if looking for something, then waited for the
boat to clear. He leaned toward the Marine in front of him. “Excuse me,
Corporal.”
“Sir?” The Marine looked exhausted, but somehow managed to
snap to a form of attention, despite being belted into an acceleration
chair.
“Hand me your sidearm, son.”
The expression on his face made it plain that the last
thing the soldier wanted to do was part company with one of his
weapons, particularly in close quarters. But the Captain was the
Captain, so he had very little choice. The words, “Yes, sir,” were
still making their way from the noncom’s brain to his mouth when he
felt the M6D pistol being jerked out of his holster.
Would one of the 12.7 mm rounds punch its way through the
lifeboat’s relatively thin hull? Keyes wondered. Cause a blowout and
kill everyone aboard?
He didn’t know, but one thing was certain: The Covenant
son of a bitch standing in this lifeboat was about to die. Keyes raised
the weapon, aimed at the very center of the strange, ghostly shimmer,
and pulled the trigger.
The Elite saw the movement, had nowhere to
run, and was busy reaching for his own pistol when the first bullet
struck.
The M6D bucked, the barrel started to rise, and the third
slug from the top of the clip passed through the slit in ’Nosolee’s
helmet, blew his brains out through the back of his skull, and freed
him from the tyranny of physical reality.
No sooner had the noise of the last shot
died away than the camo generator failed, and an Elite appeared as if
from thin air. The alien’s body floated back toward the rear of the
cabin. Thousands of globules of alien blood escorted bits of brain
tissue on their journey to the lifeboat’s stern.
Lieutenant Hikowa ducked as one of the Elite’s boots
threatened to hit her head. She pushed the corpse away, her face
impassive. The rest of the passengers were too shocked to do or say
anything at all.
The Captain calmly dropped the clip from the gun, ejected
the round in the chamber, and handed the weapon back to the stunned
corporal.
“Thanks,” Keyes said. “That thing works pretty well. Don’t
forget to reload it.”
SECTION II
HALO
CHAPTER TWO
Deployment+00 hours:03 minutes:24 seconds (Major
Silva Mission Clock) / Command HEV, in combat drop to surface of Halo.
Consistent with standard UNSC insertion protocols, Major
Antonio Silva’s HEV accelerated once it was launched so that it was
among the first to enter Halo’s atmosphere. There were a number of
reasons for this, including the strongly held belief that officers
should lead rather than follow, be willing to do anything their troops
were asked to do, and expose themselves to the same level of danger.
There were still other reasons, however, beginning with
the need to collect, sort, and organize the troops the moment their
boots touched ground. Experience demonstrated that whatever the
Helljumpers managed to accomplish during the first so-called golden
hour would have a disproportionate effect on the success or failure of
the entire mission. Especially now, as the Marines dropped onto a
hostile world without any of the Intel briefings, virtual reality sims,
or environment-specific equipment mods they would normally receive
prior to such an insertion. To offset this, the command pod was
equipped with a lot of gear that the regular “eggs” weren’t, including
some high-powered imaging gear, and the Class C military AI required to
operate it.
This particular intelligence had been programmed with a
male persona, the name Wellsley—after the famous Duke of Wellington—and
a personality to match. Though he was a good deal less capable than a
top-level AI like Cortana, all of Wellsley’s capabilities were
focused on things military, which made him extremely useful if somewhat
narrow-minded.
The HEV shook violently and flipped end for end as the
interior temperature rose to 98 degrees. Sweat poured down Silva’s face.
“So,” Wellsley continued, his voice coming in via the
officer’s ear plugs, “based on the telemetry available from space, plus
my analysis, it appears that the structure tagged as HS2604 will meet
your needs.” The AI’s tone changed slightly as a conversational
subroutine kicked in. “Perhaps you would like to call it ‘Gawilghur,’
after the fortress I conquered in India?”
“Thanks,” Silva croaked as the pod inverted a second time,
“but no thanks. First: you didn’t take the fortress, Wellington
did. Second: There weren’t any computers in 1803. Third: none of my
troops would be able to pronounce ‘Gawilghur.’ The designator ‘Alpha
Base’ will do just fine.”
The AI issued a passable rendition of a human sigh. “Very
well, then. As I was saying, ‘Alpha Base’ is located at the top
of this
butte.” The curvilinear screen located just six inches from the end of
the Marine’s nose seemed to shiver and the video morphed into a picture
of a thick, pillarlike formation topped by a mesa with some variegated
flat-roofed structures located at one end.
That was all Silva got to see before the HEV’s skin
started to slough away revealing the alloy crash cage that contained
the officer and his equipment. The air turned cold and ripped at his
clothes. A moment later, the chute unfurled and assumed the shape of an
airfoil. Silva winced as the pod decelerated with a bone-rattling jerk.
His harness bit into his shoulders and chest.
Wellsley sent an electronic signal to the rest of the
Helljumpers. The remains of their HEVs turned in whatever direction was
necessary in order to orient themselves on the command pod and follow
it down through the atmosphere.
All except for Private Marie Postly, who heard a snap
as her main chute tore away. There was a sickening moment of freefall,
then a jolt as the back-up chute deployed. A red light flashed on the
instrument panel in front of her. She started to scream on freq two,
until Silva cut her off. He closed his eyes. It was the death that
every Helljumper feared, but none of them talked about. Somewhere, down
toward Halo’s surface, Postly was about to dig her own grave.
Silva felt his HEV stabilize and took another look at the
butte. It was tall enough to provide anyone who owned it with a good
view of the surrounding countryside, plus the sheer cliffs would force
attackers to either come by air or fight their way up along narrow
paths. As a bonus, the structures located on top would provide his
Marines with defensible shelter. “It looks good. I like it.”
“I thought you would,” Wellsley replied smugly. “There is
one little problem, however.”
“What’s that?” Silva shouted as the last section of the
HEV’s skin peeled away and the slipstream tore at his mask.
“The Covenant owns this particular piece of real estate,”
the AI replied, calmly, “and if we want it, we’ll have to take it.”
Deployment+00 hours:02 minutes:51 seconds
(SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Lifeboat Lima Foxtrot
Alpha 43, in emergency descent to surface of Halo.
The Master Chief watched the ring open up in front of him
as the pilot guided the lifeboat in past a thick silvery edge, and down
“under” the construct’s inner surface, before putting the tiny ship
into a shallow dive calculated to place it on the strange landscape
below. As he looked forward, he saw mountains, hills, and a plain that
curved up and eventually out of focus as the ring swooped upward to
complete itself somewhere over his head. The sight was beautiful,
strange, and disorienting all at the same time.
Then the sightseeing was over as the ground came up to
meet them. The Master Chief couldn’t tell whether the lifeboat took
enemy fire, suffered an engine failure, or nicked an obstacle on final
approach. It really didn’t matter; the result was the same.
The pilot had time to yell, “We’re coming in too fast!” A
moment later, the hull bounced off something solid, and the Spartan was
knocked off his feet.
Pain stabbed through his temples as his helmet slammed
into the bulkhead on his way to the deckplates—followed by clinging
blackness . . .
“Chief . . . Chief . . . Can you hear me?”
Cortana’s voice echoed in his head.
The Spartan opened his eyes and found himself facing the
overhead light panels. They flickered and sparked. “Yes, I can hear
you,” he replied. “There’s no need to shout.”
“Oh, really ?” the AI replied in an arch tone.
“Maybe you’d like to file a complaint with the Covenant. The crash
triggered a lot of radio traffic and it’s my guess that the welcome
wagon is on the way.”
The Master Chief struggled to his feet and was just about
to answer in kind when he saw the bodies. The impact of the crash had
ripped the boat open and mangled the unprotected people within. No one
else had survived.
There was no time to dwell on that, not if he wanted to
stay alive, and keep Cortana from falling into enemy hands.
He hurried to gather as much ammo, grenades, and supplies
as he could carry. He had just finished checking the pins on a quartet
of frag grenades when Cortana piped up in alarm: “Warning—I’ve detected
multiple Covenant dropships on approach. I recommend moving into those
hills. If we’re lucky, the Covenant will believe that everyone aboard
the lifeboat died in the crash.”
“Acknowledged.”
Cortana’s plan made sense. The Spartan surveyed the area
for threats, then hurried toward a canyon and the bridge that crossed
it. The span was devoid of safety railings, and was constructed from a
strange, burnished metal. Beneath the bridge, a towering waterfall
thundered down a massive drop-off.
The rest of the world arched high overhead. Large
outcroppings of weather-smoothed gray rock rose ahead, and a scattering
of what looked like conifers reminded him of the forests he’d trained
in on Reach.
There were differences, however, like the way the ring
tapered up from the horizon, the manner in which its shadow fell upon
the land, and the crisp, clean air that came in through his filters. It
was beautiful, breathtakingly so, but potentially dangerous as well.
“Alert—Covenant dropship inbound.” Cortana’s voice was
calm but insistent.
The prophecy soon proved correct as a large shadow floated
over the far end of the bridge and the ship’s engines screamed a
warning. There was very little doubt that the Spartan had been spotted,
so he made plans to deal with it.
He reached the end of the bridge, saw a likely-looking
boulder off to his left, and hurried to take advantage of it. He
skirted the cliff edge, ignoring the long drop. Careful to watch his
footing, the Master Chief circled the rock and found a crevice where
the boulder touched the cliff. Now, with his back to the wall, he had a
chance to defend himself.
He checked his motion tracker, and realized that a pair of
Covenant Banshees were practically on top of him. The alien aircraft
boasted plasma cannon and fuel rod guns. Though not especially fast,
they were still dangerous, especially against ground troops.
Combined with air support, the Grunts and Elites that
dropped from the fork-shaped alien troop carrier were a serious threat.
He steadied his aim and sighted on the nearest Banshee.
Careful not to fire early, the Spartan waited for the Banshee to come
within range, then squeezed the trigger. The first assault ship came
straight at him, which made it relatively easy to stay on target.
Bullet impacts sparked on the Banshee’s hull as his ammo counter
dwindled.
The ship shuddered as at least some of the armor-piercing
rounds penetrated the fuselage, pulled up out of its dive, and started
to trail smoke.
The Master Chief was in no position to appreciate the
results of his efforts, however, as the second Banshee swooped out of
the sun, pounded the area around him with plasma fire. His shield
display dropped, then pulsed red. An alarm whined in his helmet
speakers.
The Master Chief returned fire. Without pause, he thumbed
the magazine release and slammed a fresh clip into the receiver.
He crouched, searched the sky for targets, and spotted
Banshee number one in the nick of time. He braced himself for another
assault. The Spartan allowed the enemy aircraft to approach, took a
slight lead, and squeezed the trigger again. The Covenant ship ran into
the stream of bullets, exploded into flames, and slammed into the cliff
wall.
The second ship was still up there, flying in lazy
circles, but the Spartan knew better than to stand around and watch it.
A half dozen red dots had appeared on his motion sensors. Each blip
represented a potential assailant and most were located to his rear.
The Master Chief waited for his shields to return to their
full charge, then turned, jumped up onto the boulder, and took a quick
look around. The Covenant dropship had deposited a clutch of Grunts on
the far side of the canyon where they were busy examining the wreckage
of his lifeboat.
But that wasn’t all. To his left, on his side of the
bridge, another group of Grunts was working its way through the
trees, moving in his direction. They were still a ways off,
however—which gave him a few seconds to prepare.
Though not armed with the standard S2 AM Sniper’s Rifle,
his weapon of choice for this sort of situation, the Spartan was
packing the M6D pistol that Keyes had given him. It was equipped with a
2X scope and, in the hands of an expert, it could reach out and touch
someone.
The Master Chief drew the sidearm, turned to the group
gathered around the wreckage, and placed the targeting circle over the
nearest Grunt. In spite of the fact that they were of no immediate
threat, the aliens on the other side of the canyon were in an ideal
position to flank him, which meant he would deal with them first.
Twelve shots rang out, and seven Grunts fell.
Satisfied that his right flank was reasonably secure, he
slammed a fresh clip into the pistol and shifted his attention to the
enemy troops that were emerging from the trees. This group of Grunts
was closer now, much closer, and they opened fire. The Master
Chief chose to target the most distant alien first, thereby ensuring
that he would still get a crack at the others, even if they turned and
tried to escape.
The pistol shots came in quick succession. The Grunts
barked, hooted, and gurgled as the well-aimed bullets hurled their
lifeless carcasses down the reverse slope.
When there were no more targets to fire at, the Master
Chief took a moment to reload the handgun, clicked on the safety, and
returned the weapon to its holster. He jumped off the boulder and
crouched under an outcropping of rock.
He eyed the Banshee above. It was still there, circling
well out of range, waiting to pounce should he emerge from cover. That
meant he could sit there and wait for more ground forces to arrive, or
he could abandon his hiding place and attempt to slip away.
The Spartan had never been one for standing around, so he
readied his assault rifle and slid forward over the rock. Once on open
ground it was a short dash past the scattering of dead Grunts. He
crouched beneath the cover offered by a copse of trees.
He counted to three, then dashed from boulder to boulder.
He leapfrogged uphill, still very much aware of the Banshee at his
back, but reasonably certain he’d given the aircraft the slip.
There were no blips on his threat detector, until he
topped the rise and paused to examine the terrain ahead. A telltale red
dot popped onto his HUD. The Master Chief eased his way forward,
waiting for the moment of contact.
Then he saw movement as hunched bodies dashed from one
scrap of cover to the next. There were four of them, including a
blue-armored Elite. The Elite charged recklessly forward, firing as he
came.
He’d engaged such Elites before—there was some
significance to the aliens’ armor colors—and they always fought like
aggressive rookies. A thin smile touched the Master Chief’s lips. He
ignored the alien’s badly-placed shots, stood, and returned fire. The
Elite’s advance stalled, and the Grunts began to fall back toward a
stand of trees. His threat indicator sounded a warning and a red arrow
pointed to the right. The Master Chief drew and primed an M9 HE-DP
grenade.
He turned just in time to see another Elite—this one in
the scarlet armor of a veteran—charge him. The grenade was already in
hand, and the distance to the target was sufficient, so the soldier let
the M9 fly. The grenade detonated with a loud whump! and tossed
the enemy soldier into the air, while stripping a nearby tree of half
its branches.
The rookie was close now, and roared a battle cry. The
alien hosed the Master Chief with plasma fire. His shields dropped
precipitously.
The Spartan backed away, fired his assault rifle in short
controlled bursts, and finally managed to knock the remaining Elite off
his feet.
With their leader down, the Grunts broke ranks and began
to scamper away. The Master Chief cut their retreat short in a hail of
bullets.
He eased up on the trigger, felt the silence settle in
around him, and knew he had made a mistake. The veteran had damned near
blindsided him. How?
He realized with a start that he was still fighting like
part of a unit. Though he was trained to act independently, he had
spent most of his military career as part of a team. The Elite had
managed to flank him because his was simply accustomed to one of his
fellow Spartans watching out for him.
He was cut off from the chain of command, alone, and most
likely surrounded by the enemy. He nodded, his face grim behind the
mirrored visor. This mission would require a major revision in his
tactics.
He pushed his way up through a meadow thick with
knee-high, spiky grass. He could hear the distant chatter of automatic
weapons fire and knew some Marines were somewhere up ahead.
He sprinted toward the sound of battle. Perhaps he
wouldn’t be on his own for long.
Deployment+00 hours:05 minutes:08 seconds
(Captain Keyes’ Mission Clock) / Lifeboat Kilo Tango Victor 17, in
emergency descent to surface of Halo.
Maybe it was because the Autumn ’s navigator,
Ensign
Lovell, was at the controls, or maybe it was simply a matter of good
luck, but whatever the reason, the rest of the trip down through Halo’s
atmosphere was completely uneventful. So peaceful that it made Keyes
nervous.
“Where would you like me to put her down, sir?” Lovell
inquired, as the lifeboat skimmed a grassy plain.
“Anywhere,” Keyes answered, “so long as there aren’t any
Covenant forces around. Some cover would be nice—since this boat will
act like a magnet if we leave it out in the open.”
Like most of its kind, the lifeboat had never been
intended for extended atmospheric use; it flew like a rock, in fact.
But the suggestion made sense, so the pilot turned toward what he had
arbitrarily designated as the “west,” and the point where the
grasslands met a tumble of low rolling hills.
The lifeboat was low, so low that the
Covenant patrol barely had time to see what it was before the tiny
vessel flashed over their heads and disappeared.
The veteran Elites, both of whom were mounted on small
single-seat hoversleds, Ghosts, stood to watch the lifeboat skim the
plain.
The senior of the pair called the sighting in. They turned
toward the hills and opened their throttles. What had promised to be a
long, boring day suddenly seemed a great deal more interesting. The
Elites glanced at each other, bent over their controls, and raced to
see which of them could reach the lifeboat first—and which of them
would score the first kill of the afternoon.
Deep in the hills ahead, Lovell fired the
lifeboat’s bow thrusters, dropped what flaps the stubby little wings
had, and jazzed the boat’s belly jets. Keyes watched in admiration as
the young pilot dropped the boat into a gully where it would be almost
impossible to spot, except from directly overhead. Lovell had been a
troubled officer, well on his way to a dishonorable discharge, when
Keyes had recruited him. He’d come a long way since then.
“Nice job,” the Captain said as the lifeboat settled onto
its skids. “Okay, boys and girls, let’s strip this ship of everything
that might be useful, and put as much distance between it and ourselves
as we can. Corporal, post your Marines as sentries. Wang, Dowski,
Abiad, open those storage compartments. Let’s see what brand of
champagne the UNSC keeps in its lifeboats. Hikowa, give me a hand with
this body.”
There was a certain amount of commotion as ’Nosolee’s
corpse was carried outside and unceremoniously dumped into a crevice,
the boat was stripped, and the controls were disabled. With emergency
packs on their backs, the bridge crew started up into the hills. They
hadn’t gone far when a sonic boom rolled over the land, the Pillar
of
Autumn roared across the sky, and dropped over the horizon to the
arbitrary “south.”
Keyes held his breath as he waited to see what would
happen. He, like all COs, had neural implants that linked him to the
ship, the ship’s AI, and key personnel. There was a pause, followed by
what felt like a mild earth tremor. A moment later, a terse message
from Cortana’s subroutine scrolled across his vision, courtesy of his
neural lace:
>CSR-1 :: BURST BROADCAST ::
>PILLAR OF AUTUMN IS DOWN. THOSE SYSTEMS WHICH
REMAIN
FUNCTIONAL ARE ON STANDBY. OPERATIONAL READINESS STANDS AT 8.7%.
>CSR-1 OUT.
It wasn’t the sort of message that any commanding officer
would want to receive. In spite of the fact that the Autumn
would
never swim through space again, Keyes took some small comfort from the
fact that his ship still had the equivalent of a pulse, and might still
come in handy.
He forced a smile. “Okay, people, what are we waiting for?
Our cave awaits. The last one to the top digs the latrine.”
The bridge personnel continued their climb.
In spite of efforts to keep the HEVs
together, the Helljumpers came down in a landing zone that stretched
approximately three kilometers in diameter. Some of the landings were
classic two-point affairs in which the more fortunate Marines were able
to jettison their crash cages about fifty meters off the ground, and
land like sim soldiers in a training vid.
Others were a good deal less graceful, as the skeletal
remains of their drop pods smashed against cliffs, dropped into lakes,
and in one unfortunate case rolled into a deep ravine. As the surviving
Helljumpers extricated themselves from their HEVs, a homing beacon
snapped to life, and they were able to orient themselves to the red
square which appeared on their transparent eye-screens. That was where
Major Silva had landed, a temporary HQ had been established, and the
battalion would regroup.
Each pod was stripped of extra weapons, ammo, and other
supplies, which meant that the force which converged on the hot dry
plateau was well equipped. Helljumpers were supposed to be able to
operate without external resupply for two-week periods, and Silva was
pleased that his troops had retained most of their gear, despite the
difficult drop conditions.
In fact, Silva thought as he watched his troops
stream in from every direction, the only thing we lack is a fleet
of
Warthogs and a squad of Scorpions. But those assets would come, oh,
yes they would, shortly after the butte was wrenched from enemy hands.
In the meantime, the Helljumpers would use what ground-pounders always
use: their feet.
First Lieutenant Melissa McKay had landed
safely, as had most of her 130-person company. Three of her people had
been killed in action on the Autumn, and two were missing and
presumed dead. Not too bad, all things considered.
As luck would have it, McKay hit the dirt only half a
klick away from the homing beacon, which meant that by the time a
perimeter had been established she had already humped her gear across
the hardpan, located Major Silva, and reported in. McKay was one of his
favorites. The ODST officer nodded by way of a greeting. “Nice of you
to drop in, Lieutenant . . . I was beginning to wonder if you’d taken
the afternoon off.”
“No, sir,” McKay responded. “I dozed off on the way down
and slept through my wake-up alarm. It won’t happen again.”
Silva managed to keep a straight face. “Glad to hear it.”
He paused, then pointed. “You see that butte? The one with
the structures on top? I want it.”
McKay looked, brought her binoculars up, and looked again.
The butte’s range appeared along the bottom of the image and was soon
chased out of the frame by coordinates that Wellsley inserted to
replace the concepts of longitude and latitude which worked on most
planetary surfaces, but not here.
The sun was “setting” but there was still enough light to
see by. As she surveyed the target area, a Covenant Banshee took off
from the top of the butte, circled out toward the “west,” and came
straight at her. The only thing that was surprising about that was the
fact that it had taken the enemy so long to respond to their landing.
“It looks like a tough nut to crack, sir. Especially from
the ground.”
“It is,” Silva agreed, “which is why we’re going to tackle
it from both the air and the ground. Lord only knows how they
did
it, but a group of Pelican pilots were able to launch their transports
before the Old Man brought the Autumn down, and they’re hidden
about ten klicks north of here. We can use them to support an airborne
operation.”
McKay lowered her binoculars. “And the Autumn ?”
“She’s KIA back thataway,” Silva replied, hooking his
thumb back over a shoulder. “I’d like to go pay my final respects, but
that will have to wait. What we need is a base, something we can
fortify, and use to hold the Covenant at bay. Otherwise they’re going
to hunt our people down one, two, or three at a time.”
“Which is where the butte comes in,” McKay said.
“Exactly,” Silva answered. “So, start walking. I want your
company at the foot of that butte ASAP. If there’s a path to the top I
want you to find it and follow it. Once you get their attention, we’ll
hit them from above.”
There was a loud bang as one of the first
company’s
rocket jockeys fired her M19 SSM man-portable launcher, blew the
incoming Banshee out of the sky, and a put a period to Silva’s
sentence. The battalion cheered as the Banshee bits dribbled smoke and
wobbled out of the sky.
“Sir, yes sir,” McKay answered. “When we get up there, you
can buy me a beer.”
“Fair enough,” Silva agreed, “but we’ll have to brew it
first.”
Even Grunts had to be granted some rest once
in a while, which was why long, cylindrical tanks equipped with air
locks had been shipped to Halo’s surface, where they were pumped full
of methane and used in lieu of barracks.
Having survived the nearly suicidal attack on the Autumn
by rescuing a wounded Elite, and insisting that the warrior be
evacuated rather than left to die, Yayap had extended the duration of
his own life, not to mention those of the Grunts directly under his
command.
Now, by way of celebrating that victory, the alien soldier
was curled in a tiny ball, fast asleep. One leg twitched slightly as
the Grunt dreamed of making his way through the swamps of his home
world, past naturally occurring pillars of fire, to the marshy estuary
where he had grown up.
Then, before he could cross a row of ancient
stepping-stones to the reedy hut on the far side of the family’s
ancestral fish pond, Gagaw shook his arm. “Yayap! Get up quick!
Remember the Elite we brought down from the ship? He’s outside, and he
wants to see you!”
Yayap sprang to his feet. “Me? Did he say why?”
“No,” the other Grunt replied, “but it can’t be good.”
That much was certainly true, Yayap reflected as he waded
through the chaos of equipment that hung in untidy clusters along the
length of the cylinder. He entered the communal lavatory, and hurried
to don his armor, breathing apparatus, and weapons harness.
Which was more dangerous, he wondered, to show up
disheveled, and have the Elite find fault with his appearance, or to
show up later because he had taken the time required to ensure that his
appearance would be acceptable? Dealing with Elites always seemed to
involve such conundrums, which was one of the many reasons that Yayap
had a hearty dislike for their kind.
Finally, having decided to favor speed over appearance,
Yayap entered the air lock, waited for it to cycle him through, and
emerged into the bright sunlight. The first thing he noticed was that
the sentries, who could normally be found leaning against the tank
discussing how awful the rations were, stood at rigid attention.
“Are you the one called Yayap?” The deep voice came from
behind him and caused the Grunt to jump. He turned, came to attention,
and tried to look soldierly. “Yes, Excellency.”
The Elite named Zuka ’Zamamee wore no helmet. He couldn’t,
not with the dressing that was wrapped around his head, but the rest of
his armor was still in place. It was spotlessly clean, as were the
weapons he wore. “Good. The medics told me that you and your file not
only pulled me off the ship—but forced the assault boat to bring me
down to the surface.”
Yayap felt a lump form in his throat and struggled to
swallow it. The pilot had been somewhat reluctant, citing orders to
wait for a full load of troops before breaking contact with the human
ship, but Gagaw had been quite insistent—even going so far as to pull
his plasma pistol and wave it about.
“Yes, Excellency,” Yayap replied, “but I can explain—”
“There’s no need,” ’Zamamee replied. Yayap almost jumped;
the Elite’s voice lacked the customary bark of command. It sounded
almost . . . reassuring.
Yayap was anything but reassured.
“You saw that a superior had been wounded,” the Elite
continued, “and did what you could to ensure that he received timely
medical treatment. That sort of initiative is rare, especially among
the lower classes.”
Yayap stared at the Elite, unable to reply. He felt
disoriented. In his universe, Elites didn’t offer accolades.
“To show my appreciation I’ve had you transferred.”
Yayap liked the normally sleepy unit to which he
was
attached, and had no desire to leave it. “Transferred, Excellency? To
what unit?”
“Why, to my unit,” the Elite replied, as if nothing
could be more natural. “My assistant was killed as we boarded the human
ship. You will take his place.”
Yayap felt his spirits plummet. The Elites who acted as
special operatives of the Prophets were fanatics, chosen for their
limitless willingness to risk their lives—and the lives of those under
their command. “Th-thank you, Excellency,” Yayap stuttered, “but I
don’t deserve such an honor.”
“Nonsense!” the Elite replied. “Your name has already been
added to the rolls. Gather your belongings, say good-bye to your
cohort, and meet me here fifteen units from now. I’m scheduled to
appear in front of the Council of Masters later this evening. You will
accompany me.”
“Yes, Excellency,” Yayap said obediently. “May I inquire
as to the purpose of the meeting?”
“You may,” ’Zamamee replied, allowing a hand to touch the
bandage that circled his head. “The human who inflicted this wound was
a warrior so capable that he represents a danger to the entire battle
group. An individual who, if our records can be believed, is personally
responsible for the deaths of more than a thousand of our soldiers.”
Yayap felt his knees start to give. “By himself,
Excellency?”
“Yes. But never fear, those days are over. Once I receive
authorization, you and I will find this human.”
“Find him?” Yayap exclaimed, protocol forgotten. “Then
what?”
“Then,” ’Zamamee growled, “we will kill him.”
The dawn air was cold, and McKay could see
her breath as she stared upward and wondered what awaited her. Half the
night had been spent marching across the stretch of intervening hardpan
to get into position below the butte, and the other half had been spent
between trying to find a way up to the top, and grabbing a little bit
of sleep.
The second task had been easy, perhaps a little too
easy, because other than a sloppily constructed barricade, the foot of
the four-foot-wide ramp was entirely unguarded. Still, the last thing
the Covenant expected was for a human ship to appear out of Slipspace,
and land infantry on the surface of the construct. Viewed in that
light, a certain lack of preparation was understandable.
In any case, the path started at ground level, spiraled
steadily upward, and hadn’t been used in some time judging from what
she could see. That’s the way it appeared, anyway, although it
was hard to be sure from below, and Silva was understandably reluctant
to send in one of the Pelicans lest it give the plan away.
No, McKay and her troops would have to wind their way up
along the narrow path, engage whatever defenses the Covenant might have
in place, and hope that the Pelicans arrived quickly enough to take the
pressure off.
The Lieutenant eyed the readout on the transparent
boom-mounted eye-screen attached to her helmet, waited for the
countdown to complete itself, and started up the steep incline. Company
Sergeant Tink Carter turned to face the men and women lined up behind
him. “What the hell are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Let’s
get it in gear.”
While B Company marched toward the butte,
and C Company marched off to rendezvous with the Pelicans, the rest of
the battalion used the remaining hours of darkness to prepare for the
following day under Major Silva’s watchful eye. Wireless sensors were
placed two hundred meters out and monitored by Wellsley; three-person
fire teams took up positions a hundred fifty meters out; and a rapid
response team was established to support them.
There wasn’t any natural cover here, so the Helljumpers
moved their gear up onto a low rise, and did what they could to place
fortifications around it. Dirt excavated from the firing pits was used
to build a low barrier around the battalion’s perimeter, connecting
trenches were dug, and a landing pad was established so that Pelicans
could put down within the battalion’s footprint.
Now, standing at the very highest point of the pad, and
gazing off to the west, Silva listened as Wellsley spoke into his ear.
“I have good news and bad news. The good news is that
Lieutenant
McKay has started her climb. The bad news is that the Covenant
is
about to attack from the west.”
Silva lowered his glasses, turned, and looked to the west.
An enormous dust cloud had appeared during the five minutes that had
passed since he looked that way. “What kind of attack?” the ODST
officer demanded curtly.
“That’s rather difficult to say,” Wellsley replied
deliberately, “especially without the ships, satellites, and recon
drones that I normally rely on for information. However, judging from
the amount of dust, plus my knowledge of the Covenant weapons
inventory, it looks like an old-fashioned cavalry charge similar to the
one that Napoleon threw my way at Waterloo.”
“You weren’t at Waterloo,” Silva reminded the AI as he
brought the binoculars up to his eyes. “But, assuming you’re correct,
what are they riding?”
“Rapid attack and reconnaissance vehicles which our forces
refer to as Ghosts,” Wellsley replied pedantically. “Perhaps a hundred
of them . . . judging from the dust.”
Silva swore. The timing couldn’t have been worse. The
Covenant had to respond to his presence, he knew that, but he had hoped
for a little more time. Now, with fully half his strength committed
elsewhere, he was left with roughly two hundred troops. Still, they
were ODST troops, the best in the UNSC.
“All right,” Silva said grimly, “if they want to charge,
let’s give them the traditional counter. Order the pickets to pull
back, tell Companies A and D to form an infantry square, and let’s get
all the backup ammo below ground level. I want assault weapons in the
pits, launchers halfway up the slope, and snipers up on the pad. No one
fires until I give the command.”
Like Silva, Wellsley knew that the Roman legions had used
the infantry square to good effect, as had Lord Wellington, and many
since. The formation, which consisted of a box with ranks of troops all
facing outward, was extremely hard to break.
The AI relayed the instructions to the troops, who, though
surprised to be deployed in such an archaic way, knew exactly what to
do. By the time the Ghosts arrived and washed around the rise like an
incoming tide, the square was set.
Silva studied the rangefinder in his tac display and
waited until the enemy was in range. He keyed the all-hands freq and
gave the order: “Fire!Fire! ”
Sheets of armor-piercing bullets sleeted through the air.
The lead machines staggered as if they had run into a wall, Elites
tumbled out of their seats, and a runaway machine skittered to the east.
But there were a lot of the attack vehicles and as the
oncoming horde sprayed the Marines with plasma fire, ODST troopers
began to fall. Fortunately, the weapons that fired the energy bolts
were fixed, which meant that the rise would continue to offer the
humans a good deal of protection, so long as the Ghosts weren’t allowed
to climb the slopes.
Also operating in the Helljumpers’ favor were the skittish
nature of the machines themselves, some poor driving, and a lack of
overall coordination. Many of the Elites seemed eager to score a kill:
They broke formation and raced ahead of their comrades. Silva saw one
attack craft take fire from another Ghost, which crashed into a third
machine, which subsequently burst into flame.
The majority of the Elites were quite competent, however,
and after some initial confusion, they went to work devising tactics
intended to break the square. A gold-armored Elite led the effort.
First, rather than allowing the riders to circle the humans in whatever
direction they chose, he forced them into a counterclockwise rotation.
Then, having reduced collisions by at least a third, the enemy officer
chose the lowest pit, the one against which the fixed plasma cannons
would be most effective, and drove at it time and time again. Marines
were killed, the outgoing fire slackened, and one corner of the square
became vulnerable.
Silva countered by sending a squad to reinforce the weak
point, ordering his snipers to concentrate their fire on the gold
Elite, and calling on the rocket jockeys to provide rotating fire. If
the humans’ launchers had a weakness, it was the fact that they could
only fire two rockets before being reloaded, which left at least five
seconds between volleys. By alternating fire, and concentrating on the
Ghosts closest to the hill, the Marine defenders were able to leverage
the weapons’ effectiveness.
This strategy proved effective. Wrecked, burned, and
mangled Ghosts formed a metal barricade, further protecting the humans
from plasma fire, and interfering with new attacks.
Silva lifted his binoculars and surveyed the smoke-laced
battle area. He offered a silent thanks to whatever deity watched over
the infantry. Had he led the assault, Silva would have sent in
air support first to pin the Helljumpers down—followed by Ghosts from
the west. His opposite number had been trained differently, had too
much confidence in his mechanized troops, or was just plain
inexperienced.
Whatever the reason, the Banshees were thrown into the mix
late, apparently as an afterthought. Silva’s rocket jockeys knocked two
of the aircraft out of the air on the first pass, nailed another one on
the second pass, and sent the fourth running south with smoke trailing
from its failing engines.
Finally, with the gold Elite dead, and more than half of
their number slaughtered, the remaining Elites withdrew. Some of the
Ghosts remained untouched, but at least a dozen of the surviving ships
carried extra riders, and most were riddled with bullet holes. Two,
their engines destroyed, were towed off the field of battle.
This is why we need the butte,Silva thought as he
surveyed the carnage, to avoid another victory like this one.
Twenty-three Helljumpers were dead, six were critically injured, and
ten had lesser wounds.
Static burped in his ear, and McKay’s voice crackled
across the command freq.“Blue One to Red One, over.”
Silva swung toward the butte, raised his glasses, and saw
smoke drift away from a point about halfway up the pillarlike
formation. “This is Red One—go. Over.”
“I think we have their attention, sir.”
The Major grinned. It looked more like a grimace. “Roger
that, Blue One. We put on a show for them, as well. Hang tight . . .
help is on the way.”
McKay ducked back beneath a rocky overhang as the latest
batch of plasma grenades rained down from above. Some kept on falling,
others found targets, bonded to them, and exploded seconds later.
A trooper screamed as one of the alien bombs landed on top
of his rucksack. A sergeant yelled, “Dump the pack!” but the Marine
panicked, and backpedaled off the path. The grenade exploded and
sprayed the cliff face with what looked like red paint. The infantry
officer winced.
“Roger, Red One. Sooner would be a whole helluva lot
better than later. Over and out.”
Wellsley ordered the Pelicans into the air as Silva stared
out over the plain. He wondered if his plan would work, and if he could
stomach the price.
CHAPTER THREE
D+03:14:26 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Surface.
Up ahead the Master Chief saw a light so bright that it
seemed to compete with the sun. It originated somewhere beyond the
rocks and trees ahead, surged up between the horns of a large U-shaped
construct, and raced into the sky where the planet Threshold served as
a pastel backdrop. Was the pulse some sort of beacon? Part of what held
the ring world together? There was no way for him to know.
Cortana had already warned the Spartan that a group of
Marines had crash-landed in the area, so he wasn’t surprised to hear
the rattle of automatic weapons fire or the characteristic whine as
Covenant energy weapons answered in kind.
He eased his way through the scrub and onto the hillside
above the U-shaped edifice and the blocky structures that surrounded
it. He could see a group of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites dashing back
and forth as they tried to overwhelm a group of Marines.
Rather than charge in, assault weapon blazing, the Master
Chief chose to use his M6D pistol instead. He raised the weapon,
activated the 2X magnification, and took careful aim. A series of
well-placed shots knocked a trio of Grunts off their feet.
Before the Covenant forces could locate where the incoming
fire had originated, the Master Chief opened fire on a blue-armored
Elite. It took a full magazine to put the warrior down, but it beat the
hell out of going toe-to-toe with the alien when there wasn’t any need
to.
The quick, unexpected sniping attack gave the Marines the
opportunity they needed. There was a quick flurry of fire as the
Spartan made his way down the slope, paused to strip some plasma
grenades off a dead Grunt, and was welcomed by a friendly private.
“Good to see you, Chief. Welcome to the party.”
The Spartan’s reply was a curt nod. “Where’s your CO,
Private?”
“Back there,” the Marine said. He turned and called over
his shoulder. “Hey, Sarge!”
The Master Chief recognized the tough-looking Sergeant who
trotted to join them. He’d last seen Sergeant Johnson during a
search-and-destroy run aboard one of Reach’s orbital docking facilities.
“What’s your status here, Sergeant?”
“It’s a mess,” Johnson growled. “We’re scattered all over
this valley.” He paused, and added in a quiet voice, “We called for
evac, but until you showed up, I thought we were done for.”
“Don’t worry,” Cortana said over the Spartan’s
external speakers,“we’ll stay here till evac arrives. I’ve been in
touch with AI Wellsley. The Helljumpers are in the process of taking
over some Covenant real estate—and one of the Pelicans has been
dispatched to pick you up.”
“Glad to hear it,” Johnson replied. “Some of my people
need medical attention.”
“Here comes another Covenant dropship,” the Private put
in. “It’s time to roll out the welcome mat!”
“Okay, Bisenti,” Johnson barked. “Re-form the squad. Let’s
get to work.”
The Master Chief looked up and saw that the Marine was
correct—another Covenant landing craft hovered for a moment, then
dropped close to the ground. The oddly shaped vehicle dipped slightly,
and the mandible structures that formed the bulk of the dropship’s
fuselage hinged open. A clutch of Grunts and an Elite dropped to the
ground.
The Master Chief moved fifty meters to the right, and
raised his pistol once again. In seconds, a team of Marines poured fire
into the Covenant LZ and flushed them out. As the aliens scattered and
dove for cover, the Spartan put them down one by one.
There was a brief respite, and the Master Chief paused to
survey the situation. Cortana pulled up the Marine positions, tagged
them as FIRE TEAM C , and highlighted their locations on
his HUD. Several of them had climbed the large structure that dominated
the area, and the rest patrolled the perimeter.
He had just readied his assault rifle when a Marine voice
called out: “Contact! Enemy dropship sighted! They’re trying to flank
us!”
Seconds later, the Spartan’s motion sensor painted a
contact—a large one—nearby. He stayed close to a large boulder and used
it for cover, then cautiously checked for targets.
The dropship disgorged another contingent of
troops—including a trio of Jackals. Their distinctive, glowing shields
flared as Sergeant Johnson’s men opened fire. Bullets ricocheted as the
birdlike aliens crouched behind their protective devices, like medieval
footmen forming a shield wall.
Behind them, more Grunts and a blue Elite spread out in an
enveloping formation. It was a good tactic, particularly if there were
more dropships inbound. Eventually, the Covenant would wear down the
Marine defenses and overrun the position.
There was just one problem with their plan: He was in a
perfect flanking position. He crouched, then sprinted forward into the
Jackal’s line. His assault rifle barked and bullets tore into the
exposed aliens. They had barely hit the ground as the Spartan spun,
primed a captured plasma grenade, and threw it at the Elite, almost
thirty meters away.
The alien only had time to roar in surprise before the
glowing plasma orb struck him in the center of his helmet. The weapon
fused to the alien’s helmet and began to pulse a sickly blue-white. A
moment later, as the alien attempted to tear off his helmet, the
grenade detonated.
After that it was a relatively simple matter for the
Master Chief to move through the ruins and hunt down the remainder of
the Covenant reaction force.
A welcome voice sounded from his radio receiver.“This
is Echo 419. Does anyone read me? Repeat: any UNSC personnel, respond.”
Cortana was quick to reply on the same frequency.“Roger,
Echo 419, we read you. This is Fire Team Charlie. Is that you,
Foehammer?”
“Roger, Fire Team Charlie,”Foehammer drawled,“it’s
good to hear from you!”
There was a distant rumbling, and the Master Chief turned
to identify the source of the noise. In the distance, he saw
movement—lifeboats, trailing smoke and fire as their friction-heated
hulls tore through the atmosphere.
“They’re coming in fast,” Cortana warned. “If they make it
down, the Covenant will be right on top of them.”
The Chief nodded. “Then we should find them first.”
“Foehammer, we need you to disengage your Warthog. The
Master Chief and I are going to see if we can save some soldiers.”
“Roger.”
The Pelican rounded the spire of the alien structure,
circled the area once, then hovered above the crest of a nearby hill.
Slung beneath the Pelican was a four-wheeled vehicle—an M12 LRV
Warthog. The light reconnaissance vehicle hung beneath the dropship for
a moment, then dropped to the ground as Foehammer released it from her
craft. The Warthog bounced once on its heavy suspension, slid five
meters down the hill, then was still.
“Okay, Fire Team Charlie—one Warthog deployed,”Foehammer
said.“Saddle up and give ’em hell!”
“Roger, Foehammer, stand by to load survivors and evac
them to safety.”
“That’s affirmative . . . Foehammer out.”
As the Marines sprinted for the Pelican, the Master Chief
made his way to the Warthog. The all-terrain vehicle was mounted with a
standard M41 light antiaircraft gun, or LAAG. The weapon fired five
hundred rounds of 12.7X99 mm armor-piercing rounds per minute and was
effective on both ground and airborne targets. The vehicle was capable
of carrying up to three soldiers, and one Marine had already taken his
place behind the gun. His rank and ID scrolled across the Spartan’s
display: PFC .FITZGERALD, M.
“Hey, Chief!” Fitzgerald said. “Sergeant Johnson said you
could use a gunner.”
The Spartan nodded. “That’s right, Private. There’s two
boatloads of Marines on the far side of that ridge, and we’re going
after them.”
Fitzgerald pulled the gun’s charging lever back toward his
chest, and released it with a metallic snap. A shell slipped into the
first of the weapon’s three barrels. “I’m your man, Chief! Let’s roll.”
The Master Chief pulled himself up behind the wheel,
started the engine, and strapped himself into the seat. The engine
roared and the wheels kicked up geysers of dirt. The Warthog
accelerated to the top of a rise, caught some air, and landed with a
spine-jarring thump.
“I put a nav indicator on your HUD,” Cortana said, “just
follow the arrow.”
“Figures,” the Spartan said, a hint of amusement in his
level voice. “You always were a backseat driver.”
True to the aircraft’s nickname, Keyes heard
the Banshee long before he actually caught a glimpse of the attack
aircraft. The alien pilot had them on his sensors—Keyes was sure of
that—and it wouldn’t be long before another team dropped out of the sky
in an attempt to root them out.
The hills, which had seemed so welcoming when the command
party first landed, had been transformed into a hellish landscape where
the humans scuttled from one rocky crevice to the next, always on the
run, and never allowed to rest.
They had faced capture on three different occasions, but
each time Corporal Wilkins and his Marines had managed to blow a hole
in the Covenant’s tightening net and lead the naval personnel to safety.
But for how much longer? Keyes wondered. The
continuous scrambling through the rocks, the lack of sleep, and the
constant danger not only left them exhausted but levied a toll on
morale as well.
Abiad, Lovell, and Hikowa were still in fairly good shape,
as were Wang and Singh, but Ensign Dowski had started to crack. It had
started with a little self-concerned whining, grown into a stream of
nonstop complaints, and now threatened to escalate into something worse.
The humans were gathered in a dry grotto. Jagged rocks
projected over their heads to provide some protection from the Banshee
above. Wang knelt next to the thin, dirt-choked stream that gushed
through the rocky passageway. He splashed water on his face. Singh was
busy filling the command party’s canteens while Dowski sat on a rock
and glowered. “They know where we are,” the junior officer said
accusingly, as if her commanding officer were somehow at fault.
Keyes sighed. “ ‘They know where we are, sir .’ ”
“Okay,” the Ensign replied, “They know where we are, sir.
So why continue to run? They’ll catch us in the end.”
“Maybe,” Keyes agreed as he dabbed ointment onto a burst
blister, “and maybe not. I’ve been in contact with both Cortana and
Wellsley. They’re both busy at the moment, but they’ll send help as
soon as they can. In the meantime, we tie up as many of their resources
as possible, avoid capture, and kill some of the bastards if we can.”
“For what?” Dowski demanded. “So you can make
Admiral? I submit that we’ve done all we could reasonably be expected
to do, that the longer we delay the harsher the Covenant will be. It
makes sense to surrender now .”
“And you are an idiot ,” Lieutenant Hikowa put in,
her eyes blazing with uncharacteristic anger. “First of all, the
Captain rates the honorific ‘sir.’ You will render that honorific or I
will plant my foot in your ass.
“Secondly, use your brain, assuming that you have one. The
Covenant doesn’t take prisoners, everyone knows that, so surrender
equals death.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dowski said defiantly. “Well, why haven’t they
already killed us then? They could strafe us with cannons, fire rockets
into the rocks, or drop bombs on our position, but they haven’t.
Explain that
.”
“Explain this ,” Singh said, inserting the barrel
of
his M6D into the Ensign’s left ear. “I’m starting to think that you
look a lot like a Grunt. Lovell . . . check her face. I’ll bet it peels
right off.”
Keyes closed the fastener on the light-duty deck shoes,
wished he had a pair of combat boots like the Marines wore, and knew
Dowski was partially correct, insubordination aside. It did
seem
as though the aliens were intent on capturing his party rather than
killing them, but why? It didn’t square with their behavior in the past.
Of course, the Covenant had changed tactics on him
before—when he’d beaten the tar out of them at Sigma Octanus, and again
when they’d returned the favor at Reach.
The officer watched the tableau as it unfolded in front of
him. Hikowa stood with her fists on her hips, face contorted with
anger, while Singh screwed his weapon into Dowski’s ear. The rest of
the bridge crew were frozen, uncertain. The Marines weren’t present,
thank God, but it would be naÏve to think they weren’t aware of
the Ensign’s opinions, or of the discord among their superiors. The
enlisted ranks always knew, one way or another. So, what to do?
Dowski wasn’t about to change her mind, that was obvious, and she was
becoming a liability.
The Banshee whined loudly as it passed over the grotto for
the second time. They needed to move and do it soon.
“Okay,” Keyes said, “you win. I should charge you with
cowardice, insubordination, and dereliction of duty, but I’m a little
pressed for time. So I hereby give you permission to surrender. Hikowa,
relieve her of her weapon, ammo, and pack. Singh, truss her up. Nothing
too tight . . . just enough so she can’t follow us.”
A look of horror came over Dowski’s face. “You’re going to
leave me? All by myself? With no supplies?”
“No,” Keyes answered calmly, “you wanted to
surrender, remember? The Covenant will keep you company, and as for
supplies, well, I have no idea what sort of rations they eat, but it
should be interesting if they allow you a last meal. Bon
appétit.”
Dowski started to babble incoherently but Singh grew tired
of it, shoved a battle dressing into the Ensign’s mouth, and used some
all-purpose repair tape to hold it in place. He used some of the same
tape to hog-tie the officer. “That should keep her out of trouble for a
while.”
Rocks clattered as Corporal Wilkins and two of his fellow
Marines made their way down the streambed. The noncom saw Dowski,
nodded as if everything were perfectly normal, and looked to Keyes. “A
Covenant dropship landed a squad of Elites about one klick to the
south, sir. It’s time to move.”
The Naval officer nodded. “Thank you, Corporal. The
command team is ready. Please lead the way.”
Meanwhile, a few hundred meters above, and
half a klick to the north, the Elite named Ado ’Mortumee put his
Banshee into a wide turn, and watched the dropship touch down. There
weren’t many places to land, which meant that once on the ground his
fellow Elites would still have a ways to go.
Rather than drop hundreds of troops onto the rocky
hillsides, and leave them to scramble over the exhausting up-and-down
terrain, the Covenant command structure decided to use its air
superiority to locate the humans and capture them.
And there,’Mortumee mused, is the problem.
Locating the aliens is one thing—capturing them is another. During
the time since they had landed, the humans had proven themselves to be
quite resourceful. Not only had they evaded capture, they had killed
six of their pursuers, who, acting under strict orders to take the
aliens alive, were at a considerable disadvantage. It made more sense
simply to kill the humans. Of course, he was a mere pilot and soldier,
not privy to the machinations of the Prophets or the Ship Masters.
After the human lifeboat had been located, it wasn’t long
before Covenant scouts found Isna ’Nosolee’s body, and ran a check on
his identity. Intelligence was notified, official wheels began to turn,
and the Covenant commanders were confronted with a problem: Why would
an Ossoona risk his life to board a human lifeboat and ride it to the
surface? The answer seemed obvious: Because someone important was on
that boat.
All of which served to explain why none of the humans had
been killed. There was no way to know which alien ’Nosolee had
been after—so all of them had to be preserved. ’Mortumee glanced down
at the instruments arrayed in front of him. A change! A string of seven
heat blobs was winding its way to arbitrary “north,” while one remained
behind. What did that signify?
It wasn’t long before ’Mortumee’s Banshee circled above
the grotto. Dowski wrestled to free herself from the tape, and the
Covenant closed in around her.
Smoke swirled around the top of the butte as
a Pelican pilot made use of his 70 mm chin gun to silence a Covenant
gun
emplacement. Satisfied that the Covenant plasma turret—a powerful
weapon that could be easily deployed and recovered—was silent, he
dropped down to within four feet of the top of the butte.
Fifteen ODST Helljumpers—three more than the Pelican’s
operational maximum—leaped from the Pelican’s troop bay and fanned out.
Cramming extra troops into a Pelican was a risky move, but
Silva wanted to put as many soldiers as possible on the mesa, and
Lieutenant “Cookie” Peterson knew his ship. The Pelican was still in
reasonably good shape, he had the best maintenance crew in the
Navy—what more could a pilot ask for?
Peterson felt the dropship drift upward as the Marines
bailed out, and he fought to keep the ship steady and level. He spotted
movement in the landing zone. The chain gun—linked to his helmet
sensors—followed the movement of Peterson’s head. He spotted a column
of Covenant troopers and fired. The heavy rotary cannon uttered a
throaty roar and pounded the enemy formation into a puddle of
blue-green paste.
As the last of the Helljumpers jumped off, the Crew Chief
yelled “Clear!” over the intercom. Peterson fired the ship’s belly
jets, demanded additional power from the twin turbine engines, and left
the butte behind.
“This is Echo 136,” the pilot said into his mike. “We are
green, clean, and extremely mean. Over.”
“Roger that,” Wellsley replied emotionlessly. “Please
return to way point two-five for another load of troopers. And, if
you’re going to insist on poetry, try some Kipling. You might find some
of it rather instructive. Over and out.”
Peterson grinned, directed a one-fingered salute in the
general direction of battalion HQ, and banked the dropship into a wide
turn.
Resistance had slackened within minutes of
the first landing, which allowed Lieutenant Melissa McKay and the
surviving members of her company to advance upward. A significant
number of the path’s defenders were pulled away in a last-ditch attempt
to hold their position.
McKay discovered that the path was blocked by an ancient
rockfall about thirty meters up, but saw the side door that was located
just downhill of it, and knew what the aliens had been trying to
defend. Here was the back door, the way she could enter the butte’s
interior, and push upward from there.
Plasma fire stuttered out of the entryway, struck the
cliff above her head, and blew rocky divots out of the smooth surface.
McKay motioned for her troops to retreat back around the
pillar’s broad curvature, and waved a hand in the air. “Hey, Top! I
need a launcher!”
The company sergeant was six troopers back so that a
single well-placed grenade couldn’t kill both leaders at once. He
signaled assent, bawled an order, and passed one of the M19s forward.
McKay accepted the weapon from the private behind her,
checked to ensure that it packed a full load of rockets, and inched
around the curve. Plasma fire sizzled out of the door, but the officer
forced herself to remain perfectly still. She triggered the weapon’s 2X
scope, sighted carefully, and squeezed the trigger. The tube jumped as
the 102 mm rocket raced away, sailed through the hole, and detonated
with a loud roar.
There must have been some ammo stored inside, because
there was a blue-white secondary explosion which shook the rock beneath
the ODST officer’s boots. A gout of fire flared from the side of the
cliff.
It was difficult to imagine anyone or anything having
survived such a blast, so McKay passed the launcher to the rear, and
waved her troops forward.
There was a cheer as the Marines ran up the path,
shouldered their way through the smoke, and entered the butte’s ancient
interior. There were bodies, or what had been bodies.
Fortunately, the tunnel was intact.
A couple of troopers collected plasma weapons, tried them
out on the nearest wall, and added them to their personal armament.
Others, McKay included, stared up through a
thirty-meter-wide well toward the circle of daylight above. She saw a
shadow pass overhead as one of the Pelicans dropped even more
Helljumpers onto the mesa. The distant thump! of a frag grenade
detonation made dust and loose soil tumble down on them.
“Hey, Loot,” Private Satha said, “what’s the deal with this
?”
Satha stomped on the floor and it rang in response. That
was when McKay realized that she and her troops were standing on a
large metal grating.
“What’s it for?” the private wondered aloud. “To keep us
out?”
McKay shook her head. “No, it looks old , too old
to
have been put in place by the Covenant.”
“I found a lift!” one of the Marines yelled. “That’s what
it looks like, anyway—come check it out!”
McKay went to investigate. Was this a way to reach the
mesa? Her boot dislodged a shell casing which fell through one of the
grating’s rectangular holes and dropped into the darkness below. It was
a long time before it could be heard clanging off ancient stone.
Silva, Wellsley, and the rest of the Major’s headquarters
organization were on top of the butte waiting for her by the time McKay
rode the antigrav lift to the surface and stepped out into the harsh
sunlight. She blinked as she looked around.
Bodies lay everywhere. Some wore Marine green but the vast
majority were dressed in the rainbow colors that the Covenant used to
identify its various ranks and specialties. A squad of Helljumpers
moved through the carnage, searching for wounded humans, and kicking
corpses to make sure that the enemy soldiers were actually dead. One of
them attempted to rise and received a burst from an assault weapon for
his trouble.
“Welcome to Alpha Base,” Major Silva said as he arrived at
McKay’s side. “You and your company did a damn good job, Lieutenant.
Wellsley will have the rest of the battalion up here within the hour.
It looks like I owe you that beer.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay replied happily. “You sure as hell do.”
The tunnel was huge , plenty large
enough to handle a Scorpion tank, which meant that the Master Chief had
little difficulty steering the Warthog through the initial opening.
He’d almost missed the entry, at the bottom of a large dry
wash. Cortana’s sensors had identified the entrance to the tunnel
system. “It’s not a natural formation,” she’d warned him.
That meant someone built it. Logically, it meant that the
tunnel led somewhere—and it might shave precious time off his
search for the crashed lifeboats.
Once inside, things became a little more difficult as the
Spartan was forced to maneuver the LRV up ramps, through a series of
tight turns, and right to the very edge of a pit.
A quick recon confirmed that the gap was narrow enough to
jump, assuming the ’Hog had a running start. The Master Chief backed
away, warned the gunner to hang on, and put his foot to the floor. The
LRV raced up the ramp, sailed through air, and jounced to a hard
landing on the other side.
“I’m picking up lots of Covenant traffic,” Cortana said.
“It sounds like Major Silva and the Helljumpers have captured an enemy
position. If we can round up the rest of the survivors, and find
Captain Keyes, we’ll have a chance to coordinate some serious
resistance.”
“Good,” the Master Chief answered. “It’s about time
something broke our way.”
The Warthog’s headlights swung across ancient walls as the
Spartan turned the wheel, and the LRV emerged into a large open area,
dotted with mysterious installations. It was dark; the road ended in
front of a deep chasm. It wasn’t long before Covenant troops emerged
like maggots spilling out of a rotting corpse.
Plasma fire splashed across the Warthog’s windscreen. The
Spartan dove from the vehicle, crouched near the driver’s-side front
tire, and drew his pistol. Fitzgerald opened up with the LAAG and swept
the area with fire. Spent shell casings rained all around them.
The Chief peered over the edge of the Warthog. They were
dangerously exposed. The roadway they’d been using was devoid of cover,
elevated roughly three meters above the rest of the massive vaulted
chamber. Worse, it bisected the chamber, which left them exposed on
virtually all sides.
The giant enclosure was dimly lit; visibility was poor and
the muzzle flash from the Warthog’s gun played hell with his night
vision. He blinked his eyes to clear them, then activated his pistol’s
scope.
The metal floor dropped away to either side, and every
surface was engraved with the strange geometric patterns that festooned
Halo’s mysterious architecture. Set well back from their position were
a number of small structures, pillars, and support pylons. The Covenant
were dug in among them.
A Grunt popped out from cover, his plasma pistol glowing
green—he’d overcharged the weapon. The little SOBs liked to dump energy
into the weapon, and discharge it all at once. It drained the weapon
damn quick, but it also inflicted hellish damage on a target. A pulsing
green-white orb of plasma sizzled past the Warthog.
The Master Chief returned fire, then dropped back behind
the ’Hog. “Fitzgerald,” he barked. “Keep fire on them. I’ll move up on
the left and take them out.”
“Got it.” The tribarreled gun thundered, and fire hosed
the Covenant position.
The Spartan was prepared to charge ahead and into the
fight when his motion sensor painted movement from the rear. The LAAG
ceased fire as Fitzgerald yelled in pain and fell from the back of the
Warthog. The Marine’s helmet cracked into the metal floor.
A shard of glassy, translucent material, tapered to a
wicked point, protruded from the Marine’s bicep. The shard glowed a
ghostly purple. “God damn it!” Fitzgerald grunted, as he tried
to
regain his footing. Two seconds later, the purple shard exploded, and
blood sprayed from the wound. Fitzgerald howled in agony.
There was no time to tend to Fitzgerald’s injuries. A pair
of Grunts charged up the slight incline and opened fire. A barrage of
the glassy projectiles arced toward them and ricocheted madly from the
Warthog.
They were too close. The Chief fired at the nearest Grunt,
three shots in succession. A trio of bullet pocks formed a neat cluster
in the alien’s chest. The Grunt’s partner squealed in anger and brought
his gun to bear—an odd, hunchbacked device with a ridge of the glassy
projectiles protruding from it like dorsal fins. The weapon spat
purple-white needles at him.
He sidestepped and slammed the butt of the pistol into the
Grunt’s head. The alien’s skull caved in. He kicked the corpse back
down the incline.
Fitzgerald had crawled to cover behind the Warthog. He was
pale, but didn’t look shocky yet. The Spartan grabbed a first aid kit
and expertly treated the wound. Self-sealing bio-foam filled the wound,
packed it off, and numbed it. The young Marine would need some stitches
and some time to rebuild the torn, savaged muscle of his arm, but he’d
live—if either of them made it out of here alive.
“You okay?” he asked the wounded soldier. Fitzgerald
nodded, wiped sweat from his forehead with a bloody hand, then
struggled back to his feet. Without another word, he manned the LAAG.
It took the better part of fifteen minutes for the Master
Chief and the gunner to sweep the area clear of Covenant forces. The
Spartan patrolled the perimeter. To the left of the Warthog, the
chamber stretched roughly eighty meters, then ended—as did the road
ahead—in a massive chasm.
“Any ideas?” he asked Cortana.
There was a brief pause as the AI examined the data. “The
roadway ahead ends in a gap, but it’s logical to assume that there’s
some kind of bridge mechanism. Find the controls that extend the bridge
and we should be able to get across.”
He nodded. He turned back and crossed the roadway and
headed off to the right of the parked Warthog. As he passed the
vehicle, he called over his shoulder to Fitzgerald. “Wait here. I’m
going to find us a way across.”
The Master Chief marched across the chamber, and checked
the odd structures that dotted the landscape. Some were illuminated by
the dim glow from some kind of light panels, but there was no
indication what powered them, or what the structures contained.
He frowned. There didn’t seem to be any sign of mechanisms
or controls. He was about to head back to the Warthog and backtrack
their course, then stopped. He stared at one of the massive pillars
that stretched to the ceiling far overhead.
There was nothing down here, but perhaps the mechanism he
sought was above them.
He moved as far to the end of the area as he could. Unlike
the opposite side of the chamber, this half was bordered by a high,
grooved metal wall. He followed the edge of the barrier and was
gratified to locate a gap in the wall—a doorway.
Inside, a ramp led up twenty meters, then turned ninety
degrees to the left. The Spartan drew his pistol, activated his helmet
lamp, and crept up the ramp.
His caution was justified. As he reached the top, his
motion sensor showed a contact—right on top of him. He ducked around
the corner just in time to meet the charge of a crimson-armored Elite.
The Elite growled a challenge and swung a vicious blow at the Chief’s
head.
He ducked, and his shields took the brunt of the blow. He
fired at point-blank range, not even bothering to aim. The Elite reared
and returned fire and plasma blasts slashed through the narrow corridor.
In one fluid motion, the Chief drew, primed, and dropped a
frag grenade, practically at the Elite’s feet. The alien warbled in
surprise as the Spartan spun and ducked back around the corner.
He was rewarded by a flash of smoke and fire. A spray of
purple-black blood splashed the metal wall. He rounded the corner,
pistol at the ready, and stepped over the Elite’s smoking corpse.
The Chief continued along the corridor, which opened onto
a narrow ledge. Directly to his right, the thick metal walls stretched
up and out of sight. To his left, the metal sloped away at a steep
angle that led back to the main floor, that gradually gave way to the
yawning abyss as he continued forward. Ahead of him, there was a
pulsing glow, like the strobe of a Pelican’s running lights.
He stopped at the source of the light: A pair of small,
glowing orbs hung suspended above a roughly rectangular frame of blue
matte metal. Floating within the frame were a series of pulsing,
shifting displays—semitransparent, like Cortana’s holographic
appearance, though there was no visible projection device. The
display’s shimmering geometric patterns nagged at him, as if he should
recognize them somehow. Even with his enhanced memory, he couldn’t
place where he’d seen them before. They just seemed . . . familiar.
He reached a finger out to one of the symbols, a
blue-green circle. The Spartan expected his finger to pass through
nothing more than air. He was surprised when his finger met
resistance—and the panel lights began to pulse more quickly.
“What did you do?” Cortana asked, her voice alarmed. “I’m
detecting an energy spike.”
“I . . . don’t know,” the Spartan admitted. He wasn’t sure
why he touched the “button” on the display. He just knew it felt right.
There was a high-pitched whine and, from his vantage
point, he could see the gap in the roadway in the distance. At its
edges, harsh white light sprang into view, forming a path across the
break in the road, like a flashlight beam in smoke.
The light brightened, and there was a tremendous ripping
sound. “I’m showing a lot of photonic activity,” Cortana said. “The
excited photons have displaced the air around the light path.”
“Which means?”
“Which means,” she continued, “that the light has become
coherent. Solid.”
She paused, then added, “How did you know what control to
push?”
“I didn’t. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The ride across the light bridge was
harrowing. He had tested the phenomenon with his foot, and discovered
that it was as solid and unyielding as rock. Then he’d shrugged, told
Fitzgerald to hang on, and sped the Warthog directly at the beam of
illumination. He could hear Fitzgerald alternate between cursing and
praying as they drove over the seemingly bottomless chasm on nothing
more than a beam of light.
Once on the other side, they followed the tunnel out into
the valley beyond, where the Master Chief guided the ’Hog up through a
scattering of rocks and trees, to the top of a grassy rise. A sheer
cliff threatened to block progress to the right, forcing them to stay
to the left, as they headed toward a gap to the south.
The vehicle splashed through a shallow river. They saw the
mouth of a passageway off to the right, decided that it would be best
to investigate, and guided the all-terrain vehicle up through a rocky
pass.
It was only a matter of minutes before the Warthog arrived
on a ledge that looked out over a valley below. The Master Chief could
see a UNSC lifeboat and a scattering of Covenant troops, but no
Marines. Not a good sign.
A vaguely pyramidal structure rose to dominate the very
center of the valley. The Master Chief saw a pulse of light race toward
the sky, and knew that the structure had to be similar to whatever
caused the flash he’d seen earlier.
There was only a moment to take in the situation before
the aliens opened fire and the gunner replied in kind. It was time to
put the ’Hog into motion. The Master Chief drove as the M41 LAAG
whirred and rattled behind him. Marine Fitzgerald shouted, “You like
that? Here, have some more!” and fired another sustained burst. A pair
of Grunts rolled in opposite directions, as a squat, long-armed Jackal
was cut in half, and the heavy-caliber slugs blew divots out of the
ground beyond.
As the LRV swung past the pyramid, Cortana said, “There
are some Marines hiding up on the hill. Let’s give them a hand.”
The Spartan aimed for a gap between two trees and saw a
tall, angular Elite step out from cover. The Elite raised a weapon but
was quickly transformed into a speed bump as the Warthog knocked him
down and the huge tires crushed his body.
The Marines appeared soon after that, holding their
assault weapons in the air, and calling greetings. A sergeant nodded.
“It’s good to see you, Chief. It was starting to get a little bit warm
around here.”
Covenant forces made a run at the hill after that, but the
12.7X99 mm rounds made short work of them, and the slope was soon
littered with their bodies.
The Master Chief heard a burst of static, followed by
Foehammer’s voice.“Echo 419 to Cortana . . . come in.”
“We read you, 419. We have survivors and need immediate
dust-off.”
“Roger, Cortana. On my way. I spotted additional
lifeboats in your area.”
“Acknowledged,”Cortana answered.“We’re on our
way.”
It took the better part of the afternoon to check the
interlocking valleys, locate the rest of the survivors, and deal with
the Covenant forces who attempted to interfere. But finally, having
rounded up a total of sixty-three Marines and naval personnel, the
Spartan watched Echo 419 land for the last time, and jumped aboard.
Foehammer looked back over her shoulder. “You put in a long day, Chief.
Nice job. Our ETA at Alpha Base is thirty minutes.”
“Acknowledged,” the Spartan said. He exhaled, then
softened his clipped tone. He allowed himself to lean back against the
bulkhead and added, “Thanks for the ride.”
Thirty seconds later he was asleep.
Captain Jacob Keyes stood, hands on knees,
panting in front of a vertical cliff face. He and the rest of the
command party had been running off and on for three hours. Even the
Marines were exhausted, as the shadow cast by the Covenant dropship
drifted over them and blocked the sun.
Keyes considered making use of Dowski’s pistol to fire at
the aircraft but couldn’t summon the energy. The voice that boomed
through the externally mounted speakers was all too familiar.“Captain
Keyes? This is Ellen Dowski. This is a box canyon. There’s no place for
you to run. You might as well pack it in.”
The darkness cast by the ship shifted as the aircraft
lowered itself onto the bottom of the canyon. The engines howled and
blew dust in all directions before eventually spooling down. A hatch
opened and Dowski jumped to the ground. She appeared to be unharmed and
wore what could only be described as a self-satisfied smirk. “You see?
It’s just like I told you it would be.”
A half dozen veteran Elites dropped to the ground,
followed by a brace of Grunts. All were heavily armed. Gravel crunched
as they approached the cliff face. One of the aliens spoke, his booming
voice warbling the human speech with detectable discomfort. “You will
drop your weapons. Now. ”
The command crew looked at Keyes. He shrugged, bent over,
and laid the M6D on the ground. The others did likewise.
The Grunts scurried about and collected the weapons. One
of them chortled in his own language, as he collected all three of the
Marines’ assault weapons, and carried them away.
“Which?” the Elite with the translator demanded, and
looked at Dowski.
“That one!” the renegade officer proclaimed, and pointed
at Keyes.
Hikowa started forward. “You little bitch! I’ll—”
No one ever learned what Hikowa would do, because the
Elite shot her dead. Keyes lunged forward and attempted to tackle the
Elite, to no avail. A lightning-fast blow clipped the side of his head,
hard enough that his vision grayed out. He fell to the dirt.
The Elite was methodical. Starting with the Marines, he
shot each captured human in the head. Wang attempted to run but a
plasma bolt hit him between the shoulder blades. Lovell made a grab for
the pistol, and took a blast to the face.
Keyes struggled to his feet again, dizzy and disoriented,
and attempted to rush the Elite. He was clubbed to the ground a second
time. Hikowa’s dead eyes stared vacantly back at him.
Finally, after the last plasma bolt had been fired and
while the odor of burned flesh still hung in the air, only two members
of the command crew were still alive: Keyes and Dowski. The Ensign was
pale. She shook her head and wrung her hands. “I didn’t know, sir,
honest I didn’t. They told me—”
The Elite snapped up a fallen M6D pistol and shot Dowski.
The bullet hit her in the center of her forehead. The pistol’s report
echoed down the canyon. The Ensign’s eyes rolled back in her head, her
knees gave way, and she collapsed in a heap.
The Elite turned the M6D over in his hand. The weapon was
small compared to his pistol—and his finger didn’t fit easily
inside the trigger guard. “Projectiles. Very primitive. Take him away.”
Keyes felt the other Elites grab him by the arms and drag
him up a ramp into the dropship’s murky interior. It seemed that the
Covenant’s rules had changed again. Now they did take
prisoners—just not very many. The ship lifted, and the only human to
survive sincerely wished that he hadn’t.
Alpha Base didn’t offer a whole lot of
amenities, but the Spartan took full advantage of what few there were.
First came a full ten hours of completely uninterrupted sleep, followed
by components selected from two MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, and a
two-minute hot shower.
The water was provided by the ring itself, the heat was
courtesy of a Covenant power plant, and the showerhead had been
fabricated by one of the techs from the Pillar of Autumn. Though
brief, the shower felt good,very good, and the Spartan enjoyed
every second of it.
The Master Chief had dried off, scrounged a fresh set of
utilities, and was just about to run a routine maintenance check on his
armor when a private stuck his head into the Spartan’s quarters, a
prefab memory-plastic cubicle that had replaced the archaic concept of
tents.
“Sorry to bother you, Chief, but Major Silva would like to
see you in the Command Post . . . on the double.”
The Spartan wiped his hands with a rag. “I’ll be right
there.”
The Master Chief was just about to take the armor off
standby when the Marine reappeared. “One more thing . . . The Major
said to leave your armor here.”
The Spartan frowned. He didn’t like to be separated from
his armor, especially in a combat zone. But an order was an order, and
until he determined what had happened to Keyes, Silva was in command.
He nodded. “Thank you, Private.” He checked to ensure that
his gear was squared away, activated the armor’s security system, and
buckled an M6D around his waist.
The Major’s office was located in Alpha Base’s CP, the
centermost of the alien structures at the top of the butte. He made his
way through the halls, and down a bloodstained corridor. A pair of
manacled Grunt POWs were hard at work scrubbing the floor under the
watchful gaze of a Navy guard.
Two Helljumpers stood guard outside of Silva’s door. Both
looked extremely sharp for troopers who had been in combat the day
before. They favored the Spartan with the casually hostile look that
members of the ODST reserved for anyone or anything that wasn’t part of
their elite organization. The larger of the pair eyed the noncom’s
collar insignia. “Yeah, Chief, what can we do for you?”
“Master Chief SPARTAN-117, reporting to Major Silva.”
“SPARTAN-117” was the only official designation he had in
the eyes of the military. It occurred to him that, after Reach fell,
there was no one left who knew his name was John.
“SPARTAN-117?” the smaller of the two Marines inquired.
“What the hell kind of name is that?”
“Look who’s talking,” McKay interrupted, as she approached
the Master Chief from behind. “That’s a pretty strange question coming
from a guy named Yutrzenika.”
Both of the Helljumpers laughed, and McKay waved the
Spartan through the door. “Never mind those two, Chief. They’re jump
happy. My name is McKay. Go on in.”
The Spartan said “Thank you, ma’am,” took three steps
forward, and found himself standing in front of a makeshift desk. Major
Silva looked up from what he was doing and met the Master Chief’s eyes.
The Chief snapped to attention. “Sir! Master Chief SPARTAN-117,
reporting as ordered, sir!”
The chair had been salvaged from a UNSC lifeboat. It made
a gentle hissing noise as Silva leaned backward. He held a stylus which
he used to tap his lips. That was the moment when most officers would
have said, “At ease,” and the fact that he didn’t was a clear
indication that something was wrong. But what?
McKay circled around to Silva’s left, where she leaned on
the wall and watched the scene through hooded eyes. She wore her hair
Helljumper style, short on the sides so that the tattoos on her scalp
could be seen, and flat on top. She had green eyes, a slightly
flattened nose, and full lips. It managed to be both a soldier’s face
and
a woman’s face at the same time.
When Silva spoke, it was as if he could read the Spartan’s
mind. “So, you’re wondering who I am, and what this is all about.
That’s understandable, especially given your elite status, your close
relationship with Captain Keyes, and the fact that we now know he has
been captured. Loyalty is a fine thing, one of the many virtues for
which the military is known, and a quality I admire.”
Silva stood and started to pace back and forth behind his
chair. “However, there is a chain of command, which means that you
report to me. Not to Keyes, not to Cortana, and
not
to yourself.”
The Marine stopped, turned, and looked the Master Chief
square in the eye. “I thought it would be a good idea for you and I to
pull a com check. So, here’s the deal. I’m short a Captain, so
Lieutenant McKay is serving as my Executive Officer. If either one of
us says ‘crap,’ then I expect you to ask ‘what color, how much, and
where do you want it?’ Do you read me?”
The Chief stared for a moment and clenched his jaw.
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Good. Now one more thing. I’m familiar with your record
and I admire it. You are one helluva soldier. That said, you are also a
freak
, the last remaining subject in a terribly flawed experiment, and one
which should never be repeated.”
McKay watched the Master Chief’s face. His hair was worn
short, not as short as hers, but short. He had serious eyes, a firm
mouth, and a strong jaw. His skin hadn’t been exposed to the sun for a
long time and it was white, too white, like something that
lived
in the deep recesses of a cave. From what she had heard he had been a
professional soldier since the age of six, which meant he was an expert
at controlling what showed on his face, but she could see the words hit
like bullets striking a target. Nothing overt, just a slight narrowing
of the eyes, and a tightness around his mouth. She looked at Silva, but
if the Major was aware of the changes, he didn’t seem to care.
“The whole notion of selecting people at birth, screwing
with their minds, and modifying their bodies is wrong. First, because
the candidates have no choice, second, because the subjects of the
program are transformed into human aliens, and third, because the
Spartan program failed.
“Are you familiar with a man named Charles Darwin? No,
probably not, because he never went to war. Darwin was a naturalist who
proposed a theory called ‘natural selection.’ Simply put, he believed
that those species best equipped to survive would do so—while other,
less effective organisms would eventually die out.
“That’s what happened to the Spartans, Chief: They died
out. Or will, once you’re gone. And that’s where the ODST comes in.
It was the Helljumpers who took this butte, son—not a bunch of
augmented freaks dressed in fancy armor.
“When we push the Covenant back, which I sincerely believe
we will, that victory will be the result of work by men and women like
Lieutenant McKay. Human beings who are razor-sharp, metal tough, and
green to the core. Do you read me?”
The Master Chief remembered Linda, James, and all the rest
of the seventy-three boys and girls with whom he learned to fight. All
dead, all labeled as “freaks,” all dismissed as having been part of a
failed experiment. He took a deep breath.
“Sir, no sir!”
There was a long moment of silence as the two men stared
into each other’s eyes. Finally, after a good five seconds had elapsed,
the Major nodded. “I understand. ODSTs are loyal to our dead, as well.
But that doesn’t change the facts. The Spartan program is over .
Human beings will win this war . . . so you might as well get used to
it. In the meantime, we need every warrior we have—especially those who
have more medals than the entire general staff put together.”
Then, as if some sort of switch had been thrown, the ODST
officer’s entire demeanor changed. He said, “At ease,” invited both of
his guests to sit down, and proceeded to brief the Master Chief on his
upcoming mission. The Covenant had Captain Keyes, recon had confirmed
it, and Silva was determined to get him back.
Though their ship had been damaged by the
Pillar
of Autumn during her brief rampage through the system, the
Covenant’s Engineers were hard at work making repairs to the Truth
and Reconciliation. Now, hovering only a few hundred units off
Halo’s surface, the ship had become a sort of de facto headquarters for
those assigned to “harvest” the ring world’s technology.
The warship was at the very center of the command
structure’s activities. The corridors were thick with officer Elites,
major Jackals, and veteran Grunts. There was also a scattering of
Engineers, amorphous-looking creatures held aloft by gas bladders, who
had a savantlike ability to dismantle, repair, and reassemble any
complex technology.
But all of them, regardless of how senior they might be,
hurried to get out of the way as Zuka ’Zamamee marched through the
halls, closely followed by a reluctant Yayap. Not because of his rank,
but because of his appearance and the message it sent. The arrogant
tilt of his head, the space-black armor, and the steady click-clack
of his heels all seemed to radiate confidence and authority.
Still, formidable as ’Zamamee was, no one was allowed onto
the command deck without being screened, and no less than six
black-clad Elites were waiting when he and his aide stepped off the
gravity lift. If these Elites were intimidated by their fellow’s
demeanor they gave no sign of it.
“Identification,” one of them said brusquely, and extended
his hand.
’Zamamee dropped his disk into the other warrior’s hand
with the air of someone who was conferring a favor on a lesser being.
The security officer accepted ’Zamamee’s identity disk and
dropped it into a handheld reader. Data appeared and scrolled from
right to left. “Place your hand in the slot.”
The second machine took the form of a rectangular black
box which stood about five units high. Green light sprayed out of a
slot located in the structure’s side.
’Zamamee did as instructed, felt a sudden stab of pain as
the machine sampled his tissue, and knew that a computer was busy
comparing his DNA with that on file. Not because he might be human, but
because politics were rife within the Covenant, and there had been a
few assassinations of late.
“Confirmed,” the Elite said. “It appears as though you are
the same Zuka ’Zamamee that’s scheduled to meet with the Council of
Masters fifteen units from now. The Council is running behind schedule,
however, so you’ll have to wait. Please hand all personal weapons to
me. There’s a waiting room over there—but the Grunt will have to remain
outside. You will be called when the Council is ready.”
Though not burdened by his energy rifle, which he had
given to Yayap to carry, the Elite did have a plasma pistol, which he
surrendered butt first.
’Zamamee made his way into the makeshift holding area and
discovered that a number of other beings had been forced to wait as
well. Most sat hunched over, kept to themselves, and stared at the deck.
Making matters even worse was the fact that, rather than
first come, first served, it seemed as though rank definitely had its
privileges, and the most senior penitents were seen first.
Not that the Elite could complain. Had it not been for
his
rank the Council would never have agreed to see him at all. But
finally, after what seemed like an eternity, ’Zamamee was ushered into
the chamber where the Command Council had convened.
A minor Prophet sat, legs folded, at the center of a table
which curved around a podium at which the Elite was clearly expected to
stand. Whenever a gust of air hit the exalted one he seemed to bob
slightly, suggesting that rather than sit on a chair, he preferred to
let his antigrav belt support him, either as a matter of habit, or as a
stratagem designed to remind others of who and what he was. Something
’Zamamee not only understood, but admired.
The Prophet wore a complex headpiece. It was set with
gemstones and wired for communications. A silver mantle rested on his
shoulders and supported a fancifully woven cluster of gold wires which
extended forward to place a microphone in front of his bony lips.
Richly embroidered red robes cascaded down over his lap and fell to the
deck. Obsidian black eyes tracked the Elite all the way to the podium
while an assistant whispered in his ear.
The other Elite, an aristocrat named Soha ’Rolamee, raised
a hand palm outward. “I greet you ’Zamamee. How is your wound? Healing
nicely, I hope.”
’Rolamee outranked ’Zamamee by two full levels. The junior
officer gloried in the respectful manner with which the other Elite had
greeted him. “Thank you, Excellency. I will heal.”
“Enough,” the Prophet said officiously, “we’re running
late, so let’s get on with it. Zuka ’Zamamee comes before the Council
seeking special dispensation to take leave of the unit he commands, in
order to locate and kill one particular human. A rather strange notion,
since all of them look alike and are equally annoying. However,
according to our records, this particular human is responsible for
hundreds of Covenant casualties.
“The Council notes that Officer ’Zamamee was wounded
during an encounter with this human, and reminds Officer ’Zamamee that
the Covenant has no tolerance for personal vendettas. Please keep that
in mind as you make your case, and be mindful of the time. A measure of
brevity will serve you well.”
’Zamamee lowered his eyes as a signal of respect. “Thank
you, Excellency. Our spies suspect that the individual in question was
raised to be a warrior from a very young age, surgically altered to
enhance his abilities, and furnished with armor which may be superior
to our own.”
“Better than our own?” the Prophet inquired, his tone
making it clear that he considered such a possibility extremely
unlikely. “Mind your words, Officer ’Zamamee. The technology underlying
the armor you wear came straight from the Forerunners. To say that it
is in any way inferior verges on sacrilege.”
“Still, what ’Zamamee says is true,” ’Rolamee put in. “The
files are full of reports which, though contradictory in some cases,
all make mention of one or more humans clad in reactive special armor.
Assuming that the eyewitness accounts are accurate, it appears that
this individual or group of individuals can absorb a great deal of
punishment without suffering personal injury, have exceptional combat
skills, and demonstrate superior leadership capabilities. Wherever he
or they appear, other humans rally and fight with renewed vigor.”
“Exactly,” ’Zamamee said gratefully. “Which is why I
recommend that a special Hunter-Killer team be commissioned to find the
human and retrieve his armor for analysis.”
“Noted,” the Prophet said gravely. “Withdraw while the
Council confers.”
’Zamamee had little choice but to lower his eyes, back
away from the podium, and turn to the door. Once out in the hallway,
the Elite was required to wait for only a few units before his name
again was called, and he was ushered back into the room. ’Zamamee saw
that both the Prophet and the second Elite had disappeared, leaving
’Rolamee to deliver the news.
The other officer stood as if to reduce the width of the
social gap that separated them. “I regret, ’Zamamee, that the Prophet
places little weight on the reports, labeling them ‘combat-induced
hysteria.’ More than that, we all agreed that you are far too valuable
an asset to expend on a single target. Your request has been denied.”
’Zamamee knew that ’Rolamee had invented the “far too
valuable” aspect of his report in order to cushion the blow, but
appreciated the intent behind the words. Though severely disappointed,
he was a soldier, and that meant following orders. He lowered his eyes.
“Yes, Excellency. Thank you, Excellency.”
Yayap saw the Elite emerge, read the slight
droop of his shoulders, and knew his prayers had been answered. The
Council had denied the Elite’s insane request, he would be allowed to
return to his unit, and life would return to normal.
If ’Zamamee had been intimidating on his way to see the
Council, he was a good deal less so on his way out. He walked even
faster, however, forcing Yayap to break into a run. The Grunt weaved
his way through the foot traffic arrayed in front of him and struggled
to keep pace with ’Zamamee.
Yayap squealed in surprise when he slammed into the back
of ’Zamamee’s armored legs; the Elite had come to a sudden halt. The
Grunt noticed with unease that his new master’s hands were clenched. He
followed ’Zamamee’s gaze and spotted a group of four Jackals.
They dragged a uniformed human between them.
Keyes had just been interrogated for the
third time. Some sort of neural shock treatment had been administered
to make him talk, and his nerve endings continued to buzz as the aliens
prodded his back, yelled incomprehensible gibberish into his ears, and
laughed at his discomfort. He tasted his own blood.
The procession came to a sudden stop as an Elite in black
combat armor blocked the way, pointed a long slender finger at the
human, and said “You! Tell me where the I can find the human who wears
the special armor.”
Keyes looked up, struggled to focus his eyes, and faced
the alien. He saw the dressing and guessed the rest. “I don’t have the
foggiest idea,” he said. He managed a weak smile. “But the next time
you run into him, you might consider ducking.”
’Zamamee took a full step forward and backhanded the human
across the face. Keyes staggered, recovered his balance, and wiped a
trace of blood away from the corner of his mouth. He locked eyes with
the alien for the second time. “Go ahead—shoot me.”
Yayap saw the Elite consider doing just that, as his right
hand went to the pistol, touched the butt, and fell away. Then, without
another word, ’Zamamee walked away. The Grunt followed. Somehow, by
means Yayap wasn’t quite sure of, the human had won.
CHAPTER FOUR
D+17:11:04 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Pelican
Echo 419, in flight.
Recon flights conducted the day before had revealed that
the sensors aboard Covenant vessel Truth and Reconciliation
might
have a blind spot down-spin of the alien vessel’s current position,
where a small mountain rose to block the electronic view.
Even more important, Wellsley had concocted an array of
signals designed to trick the Covenant technicians into believing that
any UNSC dropship was actually one of their own. Fifty meters above the
deck, and cloaked in electronic camouflage, the Master Chief and a
Pelican-load of Helljumpers waited to find out if their ruse would work.
Only time would tell if the fake signals were effective.
One thing was for certain: Though conceived for the express purpose of
rescuing Captain Keyes, the mission put together by Silva, Wellsley,
and Cortana bore still another, even more important purpose.
If the rescue team did manage to penetrate a
Covenant vessel, and successfully remove a prisoner, the human presence
on Halo would be transformed from an attempt merely to survive into a
full-fledged resistance movement.
The ship shuddered as it hit a series of air pockets, then
swayed from side to side as the pilot who referred to herself as
Foehammer wove back and forth through an obstacle course of low-lying
hills. The Master Chief took the opportunity to assess the Marines
seated around him. They were Helljumpers, the same people Silva said
would ultimately win the war, relegating “freaks” like himself to the
dustbin of history.
Maybe Silva was right, maybe the Spartan program would
end with him, but that didn’t matter. Not here—not now. The Marines
would help him take out the sentries, cope with weapons emplacements,
and reach the gravity lift located directly below the Truth and
Reconciliation ’s belly, and he was glad to have their help. Even
with the element of surprise, plus support from the ODST troops, things
were likely to be pretty hot by the time they made it to the lift.
That’s when a second dropship would land and discharge a group
of
regular Marines that would join the assault on the ship itself.
There was some concern that the Truth and Reconciliation
might simply lift at that point, but Cortana had been monitoring
Covenant communications, and was convinced that critical repairs were
still being made to the alien cruiser.
Assuming that they were able to reach the gravity lift,
meet up with their reinforcements, and fight their way aboard the ship,
all they had to do was find Keyes, eliminate an unknown number of
hostiles, and show up for the dust-off. A walk in the park.
Foehammer’s voice came over the intercom. “We are five to
dirt . . . repeat five to dirt.”
That was Sergeant Parker’s cue to stand and eye his
troops. His voice came over the team freq and grated on the Spartan’s
ears. “All right, boys and girls . . . lock and load. The Covenant is
throwing a party and you are invited. Remember, the Master Chief goes
in first, so take your cues from him. I don’t know about you, but I like
having a swabbie on point.”
There was general laughter. Parker gave the Spartan a
thumbs-up, and he offered the same gesture in return. It felt good to
have some backup for a change.
He mentally reviewed the plan, which called for him to
insert ahead of the Helljumpers, and clear a path with his S2 AM
sniper’s rifle. Once the outer defenses were cleared, the Marines would
move up. Then, once the element of surprise had been lost, the Master
Chief planned to switch to his MA5B assault rifle for the close-in
work. Like the rest of the troops, the Spartan was carrying a full
combat load of ammo, grenades, and other gear, plus two magazines for
the M19 launchers.
“Thirty seconds to dirt!” Foehammer announced. “Shoot some
of the bastards for me!”
As the Pelican hovered a foot above the surface, Parker
yelled, “Go, go, go!” and the Master Chief sprang down the ramp. He
sidestepped and swept the area. The Helljumpers thundered down the ramp
and onto the ground, right behind him.
It was dark, which meant they had nothing beyond the light
reflected off the moon that hung in the sky and the glow of Covenant
work lights to guide them to their objective. Seconds later, Echo 419
was airborne again. The pilot turned down-spin, fed fuel to her
engines, and disappeared into the night.
The Master Chief heard the aircraft pass over his head,
gathered his bearings, and spotted a footpath off to the right. The
ODST troops spread out to either side as Parker and a three-Marine fire
team turned to cover the group’s six.
He crept along the rocky footpath, which rose to a
two-meter-high embankment. As he neared a cluster of rocks, Cortana
warned the Spartan of enemy activity ahead. A host of red dots appeared
on his motion sensor. Several meters ahead and to the left was a deep
pit—some kind of excavation, judging from the Covenant work lights that
dotted the area with pools of illumination. He briefly wondered what
the aliens were looking for.
He clicked the rifle’s safety off. What they were looking
for didn’t matter. In the end, he’d make sure they never lived to find
it.
The Master Chief found a patch of cover next to a tree,
raised the rifle, and used the scope’s 2X and night optics setting to
find the Covenant gun emplacements located on the far side of the
depression. There were lots of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites in the area,
but it was imperative to neutralize the plasma cannons—known as
Shades—before the Marines moved out into the open. His MJOLNIR armor
and shields could handle a limited amount of the Shades’ plasma fire.
The Helljumpers’ ballistic armor, on the other hand, just couldn’t
handle that kind of firepower.
Once both Shades had been located, the Spartan switched to
the 10X setting, practiced the move from one target to the next, and
tried it yet again.
Once he was sure that he could switch targets quickly
enough, he exhaled quietly, then held his breath. His hand squeezed the
trigger and the rifle kicked against his shoulder. The first shot took
the nearest gunner in the chest. As the Grunt tumbled from the Shade’s
seat, the Master Chief panned the rifle to the right, and put a 14.5 mm
round through the second Grunt’s pointy head.
The rifle’s booming report alerted the Covenant and they
returned fire. He moved forward along the low ridge and took a new
firing position behind the scaly bark of a tree. The rifle barked twice
more, and a pair of Jackals fell. He reloaded with practiced ease, and
continued sniping. Without the Shades to support them, the enemy fell
in ones, twos, and threes.
The Master Chief reloaded again, fired until there were no
more targets of opportunity, and made the switch to his assault rifle.
He jumped down into the open pit and crouched behind a large boulder,
one of several that were strewn around the depression.
“Helljumpers: move up!” he barked into the radio. In
seconds, the ODSTs charged into the pit. As the lead soldiers entered,
a trio of Grunts burst from hiding, shot one of the Marines in the
face, and tried to run. The Helljumper’s body hadn’t even hit the
ground before the Spartan and another ODST hosed the aliens with
bullets.
The gunshots echoed through the twisting canyons, then
faded. The Spartan frowned; there was no way the fracas would go
unnoticed. The element of surprise was gone.
There was no time to waste. The Master Chief led the
Helljumpers through the depression, up a hill on the far side of the
pit, and along the side of a sheer cliff face. He stayed close to this
rock wall on his right, mindful of the sheer drop that awaited any who
strayed too far to the left. He could just make out the glint of
moonlight on a massive ocean, far below him.
His motion sensor pinged two contacts and he waved the
ODSTs to a halt. He crouched behind a clump of brush at the top of the
cliff path, conscious of the massive drop on the other side. A pair of
Jackals rounded the bend ahead, their overcharged plasma pistols
pulsing green, and paid dearly for their enthusiasm.
The Spartan sprang from his cover and slammed the butt of
his rifle into the nearest Jackal’s shield. The energy field flared and
died, and the force of the blow sent the alien tumbling off the path.
The alien screamed and plummeted off the cliff.
The Chief pivoted and fired his rifle from the hip. The
burst struck the second alien in the side. The Jackal slammed to the
ground as his finger tightened on his weapon’s trigger as he died. A
massive hole blossomed in the rock above the Master Chief’s head.
He slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon, and continued
to advance.
“Here’s a little something to remember me by,” one of the
Marines growled, and shot each Jackal in the head.
As the team continued up the path, they encountered
another Shade, more Grunts, and a pair of Jackals, all of whom seemed
to melt away under the combined assault by the Master Chief’s sniper
rifle, the Marine’s assault weapons, and a few well-placed grenades.
The rescue force pressed on, toward the lights beyond.
Covenant resistance was determined but spotty, and before long the
Master Chief could hear the thrumming sound of the alien ship as it
hovered more than a hundred meters above them. His skin crackled with
static electricity. In the center of a steep dip in the rock lay a
large metal disk, the gravity lift that the Covenant used to move
troops, supplies, and vehicles to and from the ring world’s surface.
Purple light shimmered around the platform where the beam was anchored.
“Come on!” the Master Chief shouted, pointing at the lift.
“That’s our way in. Let’s move!”
There was a mad dash through a narrow canyon followed by a
pitched battle as the Master Chief and the Helljumpers entered the area
directly below the ship.
The depression was ringed with Shades, and all of them
opened fire at once. The Chief made use of the sniper rifle to kill the
nearest gunner, charged up the intervening slope, and jumped into the
now vacant seat. The first order of business was to silence the other
guns.
He yanked the control yoke to the left and the gun
swiveled to face a second Shade, across the defile. A glowing image of
a hollow triangle floated in front of his face. When it lined up with
the other gun, it flashed red. He thumbed the firing studs, and lances
of purple-white energy lashed the enemy emplacement. The Grunt gunner
struggled to leap free of his Shade, fell into the path of the
Spartan’s fire, and was speared by a powerful blast. He slumped against
the base of his abandoned Shade, a smoking hole burned through his
chest.
The Master Chief swiveled the captured gun and took aim on
the remaining Shades. He hosed the targets with a hellish wave of
destructive energy, then, satisfied that the emplacements were
silenced, went to work on the enemy ground troops.
He had just burned a pair of Jackals to the ground when
Cortana announced that a Covenant dropship was inbound, and the Master
Chief was forced to shift his fire to the alien aircraft and the troops
that spilled out onto the ground.
The human walked the blue Shade fire across the aliens,
cutting them down, and pounding what remained into mush. He was still
at it when a Marine yelled, “Look at that! There’s more of them!” and a
dozen figures floated down through the gravity lift. A pair of the
newcomers were huge and wore steel-blue armor as well as handheld
plate-armor shields.
The Chief had faced such creatures before, not long before
Reach fell. Covenant Hunters were tough, dangerous foes—practically
walking tanks. They were slow and appeared clumsy, but the cannons
mounted on their arms were equivalent to the heavy weapons a Banshee
carried, and they could leap into motion with startling suddenness.
Their metal shields could withstand a tremendous amount of punishment.
Worse, they would never stop until the enemy lay dead at their feet . .
. or they were dead themselves.
The Helljumpers opened fire, grenades exploded, and the
pair of Hunters roared defiance. One of them lifted his right arm and
fired his weapon, a fuel rod gun. One of the ODSTs screamed and fell,
his flesh melting. The Marine’s rocket fired into the air, slid into
the grav lift beam, and detonated harmlessly.
The Hunters lumbered from the grav lift and strode up the
edge of the pit. Behind them, a swarm of Jackals and Elites formed a
rough phalanx and peppered the human positions with plasma fire.
Sergeant Parker yelled, “Hit ’em, Helljumpers!” and the
ODSTs poured fire onto the massive alien juggernauts. Bullets pinged
from their armor and whined through the rocks.
The Spartan swiveled around, and heard a warning tone as a
Hunter’s weapon discharged. Burning energy smashed into him. The Shade
shook under the force of the incoming fire as the Master Chief clenched
his jaw and forced himself to bring the targeting reticle down onto the
target. His shield bled energy and began to shriek a shrill alarm.
The instant the targeting display pulsed red, he mashed
down the firing studs and unleashed a flood of incandescent blue light.
The Hunter didn’t have time to bring its shield fully into play, and
plasma blasts burned through multiple layers of armor, and exited
through his spine.
The Spartan heard a cry of what sounded like anguish as
the second alien saw his bond brother fall. The Hunter spun and fired
his fuel rod gun at the Master Chief’s captured emplacement. The Shade
took a direct hit, flipped over onto its side, and threw him to the
ground.
The ground vibrated as the enraged alien charged up the
slope, right for the downed Spartan. The Chief rolled to his right and
came up in a low crouch. The alien was close now, within five meters. A
row of razor-sharp spines sprang up along the Hunter’s back. With his
shields depleted, the Chief knew that those spines could cut him in two.
He dropped to one knee and unslung his assault rifle.
Bullets bounced harmlessly from the alien’s armor. At the last second,
he dodged left and slid down the slope. The Hunter didn’t anticipate
the move, and the razor-spines passed over the Spartan’s head, missing
him by mere inches.
The Chief rolled onto his belly—and saw his opportunity. A
patch of orange, leathery skin was visible along the Hunter’s curved
spine. He emptied the MA5B’s magazine into the unprotected target, and
thick orange blood gouted from a cluster of bullet wounds. The Hunter
gave a low, keening wail, then collapsed in a puddle of his own gore.
He rose to one knee, fed a fresh magazine into the assault
rifle, and scanned the area for enemies. “All clear,” he called out.
The remaining ODSTs called in all clears as well. That
opened the way to the lift and Cortana was quick to seize on the
opportunity. She activated the armor’s communication system.“Cortana
to Echo 419. We made it to the gravity lift—and are ready for
reinforcements.”
“Copy that, Cortana . . . Echo 419 inbound. Clear the
drop zone.”
“What’s the matter?” Sergeant Parker demanded of his
troops, several of whom were looking longingly at the fast-approaching
Pelican’s running strobes. “Never seen a UNSC dropship before? Keep
your eyes on the rocks, damn it—that’s where the bastards will come
from.”
The Spartan waited for Echo 419 to unload the fresh
Marines, waved them forward, and joined the surviving Helljumpers on
the lift pad. “Looks like we made it,” a private said, just before an
invisible hand reached down to pluck him off the surface.
Sergeant Parker looked up toward the belly of the ship,
and said, “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” then rose as if suspended from a
rope.
“Once we’re in the ship I can home in on the Captain’s
Command Neural Interface,” Cortana said. “The CNI will lead us to him.
He’ll probably be in or near the ship’s brig.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the Chief answered dryly, and felt
the beam pull him upward. Someone else yelled, “Yeehaw!” and vanished
into the belly of the ship. The Covenant didn’t realize it yet—but the
Marines had landed.
None of the humans understood, much less had
the ability to predict, the ring world’s weather. So, when big drops of
blood-warm rain fell on the mesa, it came as a complete surprise. The
Helljumpers grumbled as the water streamed off their faces, soaked
their uniforms, and started to pool on the surface of the landing pad.
McKay saw things differently, however. She liked the wet
stuff, not just because it felt good on her skin, but because bad
weather would offer the insertion team that much more cover.
“Listen up, people!” Sergeant Lister bellowed. “You know
the drill. Let’s shake, rattle, and roll.”
There weren’t many lights, just enough so that people
could move around without running into one another, but the fact that
Silva had been on such missions himself meant that he could visualize
what his eyes couldn’t see.
The troopers carried a full combat load, which meant that
their packs were festooned with weapons, ammo, grenades, flares,
radios, and med packs—all of which would make noise unless properly
secured. Noise would bring a world of trouble down on their heads
during an op. That’s why Lister passed through the ranks and forced
each Marine to jump up and down. Anything that clicked, squeaked, or
rattled was identified and restowed, taped, or otherwise fastened into
place.
Once all the troops had passed inspection, the Helljumpers
would board the waiting dropships for a short flight to the point where
the Pillar of Autumn had crashed. The Covenant had placed guards
in and around the fallen cruiser, so McKay and her Marines would have
to retake the ship long enough to fill the extensive shopping list that
Silva had given her.
According to Wellsley, Napoleon I once said, “What makes
the general’s task so difficult is the necessity of feeding so many men
and animals.”
Silva didn’t have any animals to feed, but he did have a
flock of Pelicans, and the essence of the problem was the same. With
the exception of the ODST troopers, who carried extra supplies in their
HEVs, the rest of the Navy and Marine personnel had bailed out of the
Autumn
with very little in the way of supplies. Obtaining more of everything,
and doing it before the Covenant launched an all-out attack on Alpha
Base, would be the key to survival. Later, assuming there was a later,
the infantry officer would have to find a way to get his people the
hell off the ring world.
Silva’s thoughts were interrupted as Echo 419 raced in
over the mesa, flared nose up, and settled onto what had been
designated as Pad 3.
The assault on the Truth and Reconciliation had
gone
well so far, which meant that Second Lieutenant Dalu, who had been
assigned to follow along behind the rescue team and scoop up everything
he could, was having a good evening. Each time Echo 419 dropped a load
of troops she brought enemy arms and equipment back in. Plasma rifles,
plasma pistols, needlers, power packs, hand tools, com equipment, and
even food packs. Dalu loved them all.
Silva grinned as the Lieutenant waved a team of Naval
techs in under the Pelican’s belly to take delivery of the Shade he and
his team had lifted right out from under the Covenant’s collective
noses. That was the third gun acquired since the beginning of the
operation, and would soon take its place within the butte’s steadily
growing air defense system.
Sergeant Lister shouted, “Ten-shun!”, did a smart
about-face, and saluted Lieutenant McKay. She returned the salute, and
said, “At ease.”
Silva walked out into the rain and felt it pelt his face.
He turned to look at the ranks of black, brown, and white faces. All he
saw were Marines.
“Most, if not all of you, are familiar with my office
aboard the Pillar of Autumn . In the rush to leave it seems that
I left a full bottle of Scotch in the lower left-hand drawer of my
desk. If one or more of you would be so kind as to retrieve that
bottle, not only would I be extremely grateful, I would show my
gratitude by sharing it with the person or persons who manage to bring
it in.”
There was a roar of approval. Lister shouted them down.
“Silence! Corporal, take that man’s name.” The Corporal to whom the
order was directed had no idea which name he was supposed to take down,
but knew it didn’t matter.
Silva knew the Helljumpers had been briefed, and
understood the true
purpose of the mission, so he brought his
remarks to a close.
“Good luck out there . . . I’ll see you in a couple of
days.” Except that he wouldn’t see them, not all of them. Good
commanding officers had to love their men—and still be willing to order
their deaths if needed. It was the aspect of command he hated the most.
The formation was dismissed. The Marines jogged up into
the back of the waiting Pelicans, and the dropships soon disappeared
into the blackness of the night.
Silva remained on the pad until the sound of the engines
could no longer be heard. Then, conscious of the fact that every war
must be won on the equivalent of paper before it can be won on the
ground, he turned back toward the low-lying structure that housed his
command post. The night was still young—and there was plenty of work
left to do.
The gravity lift deposited the rescue team
three feet above the deck. They hung suspended for a moment, then fell.
Parker gave a series of hand signals, and the ODSTs crept forward into
the lift bay.
The Covenant equivalent of gear crates—tapered rectangular
boxes made from the shimmering, striated purple metal the aliens
favored—were stacked around the high compartment. A pair of Covenant
tanks, “Wraiths,” were lined along the right side of the bay.
The Master Chief moved forward toward one of the high
metal doors that were spaced along the perimeter of the compartment.
Parker gave the all clear signal and the Marines relaxed a
bit. “There’s no Covenant here,” one of them whispered, “so where the
hell are they?”
The door was proximity activated, and as he neared the
portal, it slid open and revealed a surprised Elite. Without pause, the
Spartan tackled the alien and slammed its armored head into the
burnished deckplates. With luck, he’d finished the Elite quietly enough—
Another set of doors flashed open on the other side of the
bay, and Covenant troops boiled into the compartment.
A second Marine turned to the Corporal who’d just spoken.
“ ‘No Covenant,’ ” he snarled, mocking his fellow trooper. “You just
had
to open your mouth, didn’t you?”
Inside the Covenant ship, chaos reigned. The
Master Chief charged ahead, and the rescue team fought their way
through a maze of interlocking corridors, which eventually emerged into
a large shuttle bay. A Covenant dropship passed through a bright blue
force field as all hell broke loose. Fire stuttered down from a
platform above. A Marine took a flurry of needles in the chest and was
torn in half by the ensuing explosion.
A Grunt dropped from above and landed on a Corporal’s
shoulders. The Marine reached up, got a grip on the alien’s methane
rig, and jerked the device off. The Grunt started to wheeze, fell to
the deck, and flopped around like a fish. Someone shot him.
Numerous hatches opened into the bay and additional
Covenant troops poured in from every direction. Parker stood up and
motioned his men forward. “It’s party time!” he bellowed.
He spun and opened fire, and was soon joined by all the
rest. Within a matter of seconds what seemed like a dozen different
firefights had broken out. Wounded and dead—humans and Covenant
alike—littered the deck.
The Master Chief was careful to keep his back to a Marine,
a pillar, or the nearest bulkhead. His MJOLNIR armor, and the
recharging shield it carried, provided the Spartan with an advantage
that none of the Marines possessed, so he focused most of his attention
on the Elites, leaving the Jackals and Grunts for others to handle.
Cortana, meanwhile, was hard at work tapping into the
ship’s electronic nervous system in an attempt to find the best way out
of the trap. “We need a way out of this bay now ,” the Master
Chief told her, “or there won’t be anyone left to complete the mission.”
He ducked behind a crate, emptied his magazine into a
charging Grunt who wielded a plasma grenade, then paused to reload.
A Hunter gave a bloodcurdling roar as it charged into the
fray. The Spartan turned and saw Sergeant Parker fire at the massive
alien. A trio of bullets spat from his assault rifle—the last three
rounds in the weapon. He discarded the empty gun and backpedaled in an
attempt to buy himself some time. His hand dipped for his sidearm.
The Hunter sprang forward and the tips of the beast’s
razor-spines shredded through the Marine’s ballistic armor. He crashed
to the deck.
The Master Chief cursed under his breath, slapped a fresh
clip into place, racked a round into the chamber and took aim on the
Hunter. The alien was coming on fast,
too fast, and the Spartan
knew he wasn’t going to get a kill-shot in time.
The Hunter stepped past Sergeant Parker’s prone form. The
alien’s razor spines sprang into view, and it roared again as the
Spartan sprayed it with gunfire, knowing the gesture was futile, but
unwilling to let the enemy at his teammate’s exposed flank.
Without warning, the Hunter reared up, howled, and crashed
to the ground. The Master Chief was puzzled, and briefly checked his
weapon. Could he have gotten in a lucky shot?
He heard a cough, and saw Sergeant Parker struggling to
his feet, a smoking M6D pistol in his hand. Blood flowed from the
gashes in his side, and he was unsteady on his feet, but he found the
strength to spit on the Hunter’s fallen corpse.
The Chief took a covering position near the wounded
sergeant. He gave him a brisk nod. “Not bad for a Marine. Thanks.”
The sergeant grabbed a fallen assault rifle, slammed a
fresh magazine into place, and grinned. “Any time, swabbie.”
His motion sensor showed more contacts inbound, but they
were keeping their distance. Their failed assault on the bay must have
left them disorganized.Good, he thought.We need all the time
we can get. “Cortana,” he said, “how much longer before you get a
door open?”
“Got it!” Cortana proclaimed exultantly. One of the heavy
doors hissed open. “Everyone should move through the door now. I can’t
guarantee that it won’t lock when it closes.”
“Follow me!” he barked, then led the surviving Marines out
of the shuttle bay and into the comparative safety of a corridor beyond.
The next fifteen minutes were like a slow-motion nightmare
as the rescuers fought their way through a maze of corridors, up a
series of narrow ramps, and onto the launch bay’s upper level. With
Cortana’s guidance, they plunged back into the ship’s oppressive
passageways.
As they proceeded through the bowels of the large warship,
Cortana finally gave them good news: “The Captain’s signal is strong.
He must be close.”
The Chief frowned. This was taking too long. Every passing
second made it that much less likely that any of the rescue party would
be able to get off the Truth and Reconciliation alive, let alone
with Captain Keyes. The ODSTs were good fighters, but they were slowing
him down.
He turned to Sergeant Parker and said, “Hold your men
here. I’ll be back soon—with the Captain.”
She started to protest, then nodded. “Just don’t tell
Silva,” she said.
“I won’t.”
The Master Chief ran from door to door until one of them
opened to reveal a rectangular room lined with cells. It appeared that
the translucent force fields served in place of bars. He dashed inside
and called the Captain’s name, but received no answer. A quick check
confirmed that, with the exception of one dead Marine, the detention
center was empty.
Frustrated, yet reassured by Cortana’s insistence that the
CNI signal remained strong, the Spartan exited the room, entered the
hall, and literally went door to door, searching for the correct hatch.
Once he located it, the Master Chief almost wished he hadn’t.
The portal slid open, a Grunt yelled something the Master
Chief couldn’t understand, and a plasma beam lashed past the human’s
helmet.
The Master Chief opened fire, heard a Marine yell from
within one of the cells, “Good to see you, Chief!” and knew he was in
the right place.
A plasma beam appeared out of nowhere, hit the Spartan in
the chest, and triggered the armor’s audible alarm. He ducked behind a
support column, just in time to see an energy beam slice through the
spot he had just vacated. He scanned the room, looking for his
assailant.
Nothing.
His motion sensor showed faint trace movements, but he
couldn’t spot their source.
His eyes narrowed, and he noticed a slight shimmer in the
air, directly in front of him. He fired a sustained burst through the
middle of it, and was rewarded with a loud howl. The Elite seemed to
materialize out of thin air, made a grab for his own entrails, and
managed to catch them before he died.
He strode to the access controls and, with Cortana’s help,
killed the force fields. Captain Keyes stepped out of his cell, paused
to scoop a Needler off the floor, and met the Chief’s eyes. “Coming
here was reckless,” he said, his voice harsh. The Chief was about to
explain his orders when Keyes’ expression warmed, and the Autumn
’s CO smiled. “Thanks.”
The Spartan nodded. “Any time, sir.”
“Can you find your way out?” Keyes inquired doubtfully.
“The corridors of this ship are like a maze.”
“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” the Master Chief replied.
“All we have to do is follow the bodies.”
Lieutenant “Cookie” Peterson put Echo 136
down a full klick from the Pillar of Autumn , looked out through
the rain-spattered windscreen, and saw Echo 206 settle in approximately
fifty meters away. It had been an uneventful flight, thanks in part to
the weather, and the fact that the assault on the Truth and
Reconciliation had probably served to distract the Covenant from
what was going on elsewhere.
Peterson felt the ship shudder as the ramp hit the ground,
waited for the Crew Chief to call “Clear!”, and fired the Pelican’s
thrusters. The ship was extremely vulnerable while on the ground—and he
was eager to return to the relative safety of Alpha Base. Then,
assuming the Helljumpers got the job done, he and his crew would be
back to transport some of the survivors and their loot.
Back at Alpha Base, McKay watched Echo 136
wobble as a gust of wind hit the Pelican from the side, saw the ship
gather speed, and start to climb out. Echo 206 took off a few moments
later and both ships were gone within a matter of seconds.
Her people knew what they were doing, so rather than make
a pest of herself, McKay decided to wait and watch as the platoon
leaders sorted things out. The officer felt the usual moments of fear,
of self-doubt regarding her ability to accomplish the mission, but took
comfort from something an instructor once told her.
“Take a look around,” the instructor had advised. “Ask
yourself if there’s anyone else who is better qualified to do the job.
Not in the entire galaxy, but right there, at that point in time. If
the answer is ‘yes,’ ask them to accept command, and do everything you
can to support them. If the answer is ‘no,’ which it will be
ninety-nine percent of the time, then take your best shot. That’s all
any of us can do.”
It was good advice, the kind that made a difference, and
while it didn’t erase McKay’s fears, it certainly served to ease them.
Master Sergeant Lister and Second Lieutenant Oros seemed
to materialize out of the darkness. Oros had a small, pixielike face
which belied her innate toughness. If anything happened to McKay, Oros
would take over, and if she bought the farm Lister would step in. The
battalion had been short of officers before the shit hit the
fan,
and what with Lieutenant Dalu off playing Supply Officer, McKay was one
Platoon Leader short of a full load. That’s why Lister had been called
upon to fill the hole.
“Platoons one and two are ready to go,” Oros reported
cheerfully. “Let us at ’em!”
“You just want to raid the ship’s commissary,” McKay said,
referring to the Platoon Leader’s well-known addiction to chocolate.
“No, ma’am,” Oros replied innocently, “the Lieutenant
lives only to serve the needs of humanity, the Marine Corps, and the
Company Commander.”
Even the normally stone-faced Lister had to laugh at that,
and McKay felt her own spirits lift as well. “Okay, Lieutenant Oros,
the human race would be grateful if you would put a couple of your best
people on point and lead this outfit to the ship. I’ll ride your six
with Sergeant Lister and the second platoon walking drag. Are you okay
with that?”
Both Platoon Leaders nodded and melted into the night.
McKay looked for the tail end of the first platoon, slid into line, and
let her mind roam ahead. Somewhere, about one kilometer ahead, the Pillar
of Autumn lay sprawled on the ground. The Covenant owned the ship
for the moment—but McKay was determined to take her back.
It was time to get off the Truth and
Reconciliation . As Covenant troops ran hither and yon, the
recently freed Marines armed themselves with alien weapons, then linked
up with the rest of the rescue team. Keyes and Cortana convened a quick
council of war. “While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I heard
them talking about the ring world,” Keyes said, “and its destructive
capabilities.”
“One moment, sir,” Cortana interrupted, “I’m accessing the
Covenant battle net.” She paused, as her vastly powerful intrusion
protocols sifted through the Covenant systems. Information systems
seemed to be the one field where human technologies held their own
against those of the Covenant.
Seconds later, she finished her sift of the alien data
stream. “If I’m interpreting the data correctly, they believe Halo is
some kind of weapon, one that possesses vast, unimaginable power.”
Keyes nodded thoughtfully. “The aliens who interrogated me
kept saying that ‘whoever controls Halo controls the fate of the
universe.’ ”
“Now I see,” Cortana put in thoughtfully. “I intercepted a
number of messages about a Covenant search team scouting for a control
room. I thought they were looking for the bridge of the ship I damaged
during the battle above the ring—but they must be looking for Halo’s
control room.”
“That’s bad news,” Keyes responded gravely. “If
Halo
is a weapon, and the Covenant gains control of it, they’ll use it
against us. Who knows what power that would give them?
“Chief, Cortana, I have a new mission for you. We
need to beat the Covenant to Halo’s control room.”
“No offense, sir,” the Master Chief replied, “but it might
be best to finish this mission before we tackle another one.”
Keyes offered a tired grin. “Good point, Chief. Marines!
Let’s move!”
“We should head back to the shuttle bay and call for
evac,” Cortana said, “unless you’d like to walk home.”
“No thanks,” Keyes said. “I’m Navy—we prefer to ride.”
The journey out of the detention area and back to the
launch bay was hairy but not quite as bad as the trip in. It wasn’t
long before they all realized that they really could follow the
trail of dead bodies back to the launch bay. Sadly, some of the dead
wore Marine green, which served to remind the Chief of how many humans
the Covenant had murdered since the war had begun more than twenty-five
years before. Somehow, in some way, the Covenant would be made to pay.
The tactical situation was made even more risky by the
Captain’s condition. He didn’t complain, but the Spartan could tell
that Keyes was sore and weak from the Covenant interrogation. It was a
struggle for him to keep up with the others.
The Master Chief signaled for the team to halt. Keyes—out
of breath—favored him with a sour look, but seemed grateful for the
breather.
Two minutes later, the Chief was about to signal the group
to move forward when a trio of Grunts scuttled into view. Needler
rounds bounced from the bulkhead and angled right for him.
His shields took the brunt of it, and he returned fire, as
did the rest of the group. Keyes blew one Grunt apart with a barrage of
the explosive glassy needles. The rest were finished off by a
combination of plasma rifle fire and the Chief’s assault rifle.
“Let’s get moving,” the Spartan advised. He took point and
moved down the corridor, bent low and ready for trouble. He’d barely
gotten twenty meters down the passageway when more Covenant moved
in—two Jackals and an Elite.
The enemy was getting closer, and more determined, the
longer they remained. He finished off the Jackals with his last frag
grenade, then pinned the Elite down with assault rifle fire. Keyes
directed the Marines to fire on the alien’s flank, and he went down.
“We need to go, sir,” the Chief warned Keyes.
“With
respect, we’re moving too slowly.”
Keyes nodded, and as a group they sprinted down the
twisting passages, stealth abandoned. Finally, after numerous twists
and turns, they reached the shuttle bay. The Spartan thought it was
empty at first, until he noticed what appeared to be two light wands,
floating in midair.
Fresh from his encounter with the stealth Elite who had
been stationed in the brig, the Master Chief knew better than to take
chances. He drew his pistol, linked in the scope, and took careful aim.
He squeezed the trigger several times and put half a clip into the area
just to the right of the energy blade. A Covenant warrior faded into
view and toppled off the platform.
A Marine yelled, “Watch it!” and “Cover the Captain!” as
the second blade sliced the air into geometric shapes, and started to
advance as if on its own. The Spartan put three quick bursts into the
second alien, hit his stealth generator, and the Elite was revealed.
Fire poured in from all sides and the warrior went down.
There was a blast of static as Cortana activated the
MJOLNIR’s communication relays.“Cortana to Echo 419 . . . We have
the Captain and need extraction on the double.”
The reply was nearly instantaneous.“Negative, Cortana!
I have a flock of Banshees on my tail . . . and I can’t seem to shake
them. You’ll be better off finding your own ride.”
“Acknowledged, Foehammer. Cortana out.”The radio
clicked as Cortana switched from the suit’s radio to its external
speakers.
“Air support is cut off, Captain. We’ll need to hold here
until Foehammer can move in.”
A Marine heard the interchange and, already traumatized by
the time spent as a Covenant prisoner, began to lose it. “We’re
trapped! We’re all gonna die!”
“Stow the bellyaching, soldier,” Keyes growled. “Cortana,
if you and the Chief can get us into one of those Covenant dropships, I
can fly us out of here.”
“Yes, Captain,” the AI replied. “There’s a Covenant ship
docked below.”
The Master Chief saw the nav indicator appear on his HUD,
followed the arrow through a hatch, down a series of corridors, and out
into the troopship bay.
Unfortunately, the bay was well defended, and another
firefight broke out. The situation was getting worse. The Chief slammed
his last full clip into the MA5B and fired short, controlled bursts.
Grunts and Jackals scattered and returned fire.
The ammo counter dropped rapidly. A pair of Grunts fell
under the Spartan’s hail of fire. Within seconds, the ammo counter readOO
—empty.
He tossed the rifle away and drew his pistol, and
continued firing at the alien forces that had begun to regroup at the
far side of the bay. “If we’re going,” he called out, “we need to go
now.”
The dropship was shaped like a giant U. It rode a grav
field and bobbed slightly as some of the outside air swirled around it.
As they approached it, Keyes said, “Everybody mount up! Let’s get on
board!” and led the Marines through an open hatch.
The Spartan waited until everyone else had boarded and
backed into the aircraft—just in time. He was down to a single round in
his sidearm.
Cortana said, “Give me a minute to interface with the
ship’s controls.”
Keyes shook his head. “No need. I’ll take this bird up
myself.”
“Captain!” one of the Marines called. “Hunters!”
The Master Chief peered out through the nearest viewport
and saw that the private was correct. Another pair of the massive
aliens had arrived on the loading platform and were making for the
ship. Their spines stood straight up, their fuel rod guns were swinging
into position, and they were about to fire.
“Hang on!” Keyes said as he disengaged the ship’s gravity
locks, brought the ship up over the edge of the platform, and pushed
one of two joysticks forward. The twin hulls straddled a column, struck
both Hunters with what appeared to be glancing blows, and withdrew.
Even a glancing blow from a ship that weighs thousands of
kilos proved to be a serious thing indeed. The dropship’s hull crushed
the Hunters’ chest armor and forced it through their body cavities,
killing both of them instantly. One corpse somehow managed to attach
itself to one of the twin bows. It fell as the dropship cleared the
Truth
and Reconciliation’s hull.
The Master Chief leaned back against the metal wall. The
Covenant craft’s troop bay was cramped, uncomfortable, and dimly
lit—but it beat hell out of wandering through one of their cruisers.
He braced himself as Keyes put the alien aircraft into a
tight turn, and accelerated out into the surrounding darkness. He
forced his shoulders to relax, and closed his eyes. The Captain had
been rescued, and the Covenant had been put on notice: The humans were
determined to be more than an annoyance—they were going to be a major
pain in the ass.
Dawn had just started to break when Zuka
’Zamamee and Yayap passed through the newly reinforced perimeter that
surrounded the gravity lift, and were forced to wait while a crew of
hardworking Grunts pulled a load of Covenant dead off the
blood-splattered pad, before they could step onto the sticky surface
and be pulled up into the ship.
Although the Truth and Reconciliation’s commanding
officer believed that all of the surviving humans had left the ship,
there was no way to be certain of that without a
compartment-by-compartment check. The shipboard sensors read clear, but
this raid had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the humans had learned
how to trick Covenant detection gear.
The visitors could feel the tension as teams of grim-faced
Elites, Jackals, and Grunts performed a deck-by-deck search of the ship.
As the pair made their way through the corridors to the
lift that would carry them up to the command deck, ’Zamamee was shocked
by the extent of the damage that he saw. Yes, there were long stretches
of passageway that were completely untouched, but every now and then
they would pass through a gore-streaked section of corridor, where
bullet-pocked bulkheads, plasma-scorched decks, and half-slagged
hatches told of a hard-fought running gun battle.
’Zamamee stared in wonder as a grav cart loaded with
mangled Jackals was towed past, blood dripping onto the deck behind it.
Finally, they made their way to the appropriate lift, and
stepped out onto the command deck. The Elite expected the same level of
security scrutiny as the last time he addressed the Prophet and the
Council of Masters; no doubt he’d be dumped into the holding room for
another interminable wait.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. No sooner
did ’Zamamee clear security than he and Yayap were whisked into the
compartment where the Council of Masters had been convened during his
last visit.
There was no sign of the Prophet, or any of ’Zamamee’s
immediate superiors—but the hardworking Soha ’Rolamee was there, along
with a staff of lesser Elites. There was no mistaking the crisis
atmosphere as reports flowed in, were evaluated, and used to create a
variety of action plans. ’Rolamee saw ’Zamamee and raised his hand by
way of a greeting.
“Welcome. Please sit.”
’Zamamee complied. It didn’t occur to either one of the
Elites to offer the same courtesy to Yayap, who continued to stand. The
diminutive Grunt rocked back and forth, ill at ease.
“So,” ’Rolamee inquired, “how much have you heard about
the latest . . . ‘incursion’?”
“Not much,” ’Zamamee was forced to admit. “The humans
managed to board the ship via the gravity lift. That’s the extent of my
knowledge.”
“That’s correct in so far as it goes,” ’Rolamee agreed.
“There is more. The ship’s security system recorded quite a bit of the
action. Take a look at this .”
The Elite touched a button and moving images popped into
view and hovered in the air nearby. ’Zamamee found himself looking at
two Grunts and a Jackal standing in a corridor. Suddenly, without
warning, the same human he had encountered on thePillar of Autumn
—the large one with the unusual armor—stepped around the corner,
spotted the Covenant troops, and opened fire on them.
The Grunts went down quickly, but the Jackal scored a hit,
and ’Zamamee saw plasma splash the front of the human’s armor.
However, rather than fall as he should have, the
apparition shot the Jackal in the head, stepped over one of the dead
Grunts, and marched toward the camera. The image froze as ’Rolamee
touched another control. ’Zamamee felt an almost unbelievable tightness
in his chest. Would he have the courage to face the human again? He
wasn’t sure—and that frightened him as well.
“So,” ’Rolamee said, “there he is, the very human you
warned us about. A dangerous individual who is largely responsible for
the six-score casualties inflicted during this raid alone, not to
mention the loss of a valuable prisoner, and six Shades which the enemy
managed to steal.”
“And the humans?” ’Zamamee inquired. “How many of them
were our warriors able to kill?”
“The body count is incomplete,” the other Elite replied,
“but the preliminary total is thirty-six.”
’Zamamee was shocked. The numbers should have been
reversed. Would have been reversed had it not been for the alien
in the special armor.
“You will be pleased to learn that your original request
has now been approved,” ’Rolamee continued. “We have preliminary
reports from other strike groups that most of these unusual humans were
killed in the last large engagement. This one is believed to be the
last of his kind. Take whatever resources you need, find the human, and
kill him. Do you have any questions?”
“No, Excellency,” ’Zamamee said as he stood to leave.
“None at all.”
SECTION III
THE SILENT CARTOGRAPHER
CHAPTER FIVE
D+128:15:25 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock) /
On the plain surrounding the Pillar of Autumn.
The rain stopped just before dawn—not gradually but all at
once, as if someone had flipped a switch. The clouds melted away, the
first rays of the sun appeared, and darkness surrendered to light.
Slowly, as if to reveal something precious, the golden
glow slid across the plain to illuminate the Pillar of Autumn ,
which lay like an abandoned scepter, her bow hanging out over the edge
of a steep precipice.
She was huge, so huge that the Covenant had
assigned two Banshees to fly cover over her, and a squad of six Ghosts
patrolled the area immediately around the fallen cruiser’s hull.
However, from the listless manner with which the enemy soldiers went
about their duties, McKay could tell they were unaware of the threat
that had crept up on them during the hours of rain-filled darkness.
Back on Earth, before the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa
Translight Engine, and the subsequent efforts to colonize other star
systems, human soldiers had frequently staged attacks at dawn, when
there was more light to see by, and the enemy sentries were likely to
be tired and sleepy. In order to counter, the more sophisticated armies
soon developed the tradition of an early morning “stand-to,” when every
soldier went to barricades in case the enemy chose that particular
morning to attack.
Did the Covenant have a similar tradition, McKay wondered?
Or were they dozing a bit, relieved that the long period of darkness
was finally over, their fears eased by the first rays of the sun? The
officer would soon find out.
Like all sixty-two members of her Company, the Helljumper
was concealed just beyond the border of the roughly U-shaped area that
the Covenant actively patrolled. And now, with daylight only minutes
away, the time had arrived either to commit herself or to withdraw.
McKay took one last look around. Her arm ached, and her
bladder was full, but everything else was A-okay. She keyed the radio
and gave the order that both platoons had been waiting for. “Red One to
Blue One and Green One . . . Proceed to objective. Over.”
The response came so quickly that McKay missed whatever
acknowledgments the two Platoon leaders might have sent. The key was to
neutralize the Banshees and the Ghosts so quickly, so decisively, that
the ODST troopers would be able to cross the long stretch of open
ground and reach the Autumn virtually unopposed. That’s why no
fewer than three of the powerful M19 rocket launchers were aimed at
each Banshee—and three Marines had been assigned to each of the half
dozen target Ghosts.
Two of the four rockets fired at the Covenant aircraft
missed their marks, but both Banshees took hits, and immediately
exploded. Wreckage rained on the Covenant position.
The Ghost drivers on both sides of the ship were still
looking upward, trying to figure out what had occurred, when more than
two dozen assault weapons opened up on them.
Four of the rapid attack vehicles were destroyed within
the first few seconds of the battle. The fifth, piloted by a mortally
wounded Elite, described a number of large overlapping circles before
crashing into the cruiser’s hull and finally putting the driver out of
his misery. The Elite behind the controls of the sixth and last Ghost
panicked, backed away from the wholesale destruction, and toppled over
the edge of the precipice.
If the alien screamed on the way down McKay wasn’t able to
hear it, especially with the steady crack, crack,
crack of
multiple S2 Sniper Rifles going off all around her. She keyed her radio
to the command freq and ordered her platoon leaders to move up.
The assault force crossed the open area in a run, and
headed toward the ship’s sternmost air locks.
Covenant troops stationed within the ship heard the ruckus
and hurried outside, and were met by the sight of the still-smoking
wrecks of their mechanized support, and an enthusiastic—if somewhat
thin—infantry assault.
Most were simply standing there, waiting for someone to
tell them what to do, when the snipers’ 14.5 mm armor-piercing,
fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot rounds began to cut them down. The
impact was devastating. McKay saw Elites, Jackals, and Grunts alike
throw up their arms and collapse as the rolling fusillade took its toll.
Then, as the aliens started to pull back into the relative
safety of the ship’s interior, McKay jumped to her feet, knowing that
one of her noncoms would do likewise on the far side of the hull, and
waved the snipers forward. “Switch to your assault weapons! The last
one to the lock has to stay and guard it!”
All the ODST troopers knew there were plenty of things to
scrounge inside the hull, and they were eager to do so. The possibility
that they might end up guarding a lock rather than pillaging the Autumn
’s interior was more than sufficient motivation to make each Marine run
as fast as possible.
The purpose of the exercise was to get the last members of
the Company across what could have been a Covenant killing ground and
to do so as quickly as possible. McKay thought she’d been successful,
thought she’d made a clean break, when a momentary shadow passed over
her and someone yelled, “Contact! Enemy contact!”
The officer glanced back over her shoulder and spied a
Covenant dropship. The ungainly looking craft swept in from the east,
and was about to deploy additional forces. Its plasma cannon opened
fire and stitched a line of black dots in the dirt, out toward the edge
of the drop-off.
A sniper disappeared from the waist down, and still had
enough air to scream as his forward motion slowed, and his torso landed
on a pile of his own intestines.
McKay skidded to a halt, yelled, “Snipers! About face,
fire!” and hoped that the brief parade ground–style orders would be
sufficient to communicate what she wanted.
Each Covenant dropship had side slots, small cubicle-like
spaces where their troops rode during transit, and from which they were
released when the aircraft arrived over the landing zone. Had the pilot
been more experienced he would have positioned the aircraft so that it
was nose-on to the enemy and fired his cannon while the troops bailed
out—but he wasn’t, or he’d simply made a mistake, as he presented the
ship’s starboard side to the humans and opened the doors.
More than half the ODST snipers had switched back to their
S2s and had shouldered their weapons up as the drop doors opened. They
opened fire before the Covenant troops could leap to the ground. One of
their rounds hit a plasma grenade and caused it to explode. A control
line must have been severed, because the dropship lurched to port,
pitched forward, and nosed into the ground. Twin waves of soil were
gouged out of the plateau as the aircraft slid forward, hit a boulder,
and exploded into flame.
Secondary explosions cooked off and the twin hulls
disintegrated. The sound of the blast bounced off the Autumn’s
hull and rolled across the surrounding plain.
The Marines waited a moment to see if any of the aliens
would try to crawl, walk, or run away, but none of them did.
McKay heard the muffled thump, thump, thump
of
automatic weapons fire coming from within the ship behind her, knew the
job was only half done, and waved to the half dozen Marines. “What are
you waiting for? Let’s go!”
The Helljumpers looked at one another, grinned, and
followed McKay into the ship. The El-tee might look like a
wild-eyed maniac, but she knew her stuff, and that was good enough for
them.
The soil was still damp from the rain, so
when the sun hit the top of the mesa a heavy mist started to form, as
if a battalion of spirits had been released from bondage.
Keyes, exhausted by his captivity, not to mention the
harrowing escape from the Truth and Reconciliation, had
literally collapsed in the bed the Helljumpers had prepared for him and
slept hard for the next three hours.
Now, awakened by both a nightmare and the internal clock
that was still attuned to the arbitrarily set ship time, the Naval
officer was up and prowling about.
The view from the rampart was nothing less than
spectacular, looking out over a flat plain to the gently rolling hills
beyond. A bank of ivory-white clouds scudded above the hills. The vista
wasso beautiful, so pristine, that it was difficult to
believe that Halo was a weapon.
He heard the scrape of footsteps, and turned to watch
Silva emerge from the staircase that led up to the observation
platform. “Good morning, sir,” the Marine said. “I heard you were up
and around. May I join you?”
“Of course,” Keyes said, gesturing to a place at the
waist-high wall. “Please do. I took a self-guided tour of the landing
pads, the Shade emplacements, and the beginnings of the maintenance
shop. Good work, Major. You and your Helljumpers are to be
congratulated. Thanks to you, we have a place to rest, regroup, and
plan.”
“The Covenant did some of the work for us,” Silva replied
modestly, “but I agree, sir, my people did a hell of a job. Speaking of
which, I thought I should let you know that Lieutenant McKay and two
platoons of ODST troops are fighting their way into the Autumn
even as we speak. If they retrieve the supplies we need, Alpha Base
will be able to hold for quite a while.”
“And if the Covenant attacks before then?”
“Then we are well and truly screwed. We’re running short
on ammo, food, and fuel for the Pelicans.”
Keyes nodded. “Well, let’s hope McKay pulls it off. In the
meantime there are some other things we need to consider.”
Silva found the easy, almost offhanded manner in which
Keyes had reassumed command to be a bit irritating, even though he knew
it was the other officer’s obligation to do so. There was a clear-cut
chain of command, and now that Keyes was free, the Naval officer was in
charge. There was nothing the Marine could do except look
interested—and hope his superior came up with at least some of the
right ideas.
“Yes, sir. What’s up?”
So Keyes talked, and Silva listened, as the Captain
reviewed what he had learned while in captivity. “The essence of the
matter is that while the races which comprise the Covenant seem
to possess a high level of technology, most if not all of it may have
been looted from the beings they refer to as the ‘Forerunners,’ an
ancient race which left ruins on dozens of planets, and presumably was
responsible for constructing Halo.
“In the long run, the fact that they are adaptive, rather
than innovative, may prove to be their undoing. For the moment,
however, before we can take advantage of that weakness, we must first
find the means to survive. If Halo is a weapon, and if it
has the capacity to destroy all of humanity as they seem to believe,
then we must find the means to neutralize it—and perhaps turn it
against the Covenant.
“That’s why I ordered Cortana and the Master Chief to find
the so-called Control Room to which the aliens have alluded, and see if
there’s a way to block the Covenant’s plan.”
Silva placed his forearms on the top of the wall that
fronted the rampart and looked out over the plain. If one knew where to
look, and had a good eye, he could see the blast-scarred ground where
the Ghosts had attacked, the Helljumpers had held, and some of his
Marines lay buried.
“I see what you mean, sir. Permission to speak freely?”
Keyes looked at Silva, then back to the view. “Of course.
You’re second in command here, and obviously you know your way around
ground engagements far better than I do. If you have ideas,
suggestions, or concerns, I want to hear them.”
Silva nodded respectfully. “Thank you, sir. My question
has to do with the Spartan. Like everyone else, I have nothing but
respect for the Chief’s record. However, is he the right person for the
mission you have in mind? Come to think of it, is any one person
right for that kind of operation?
“I know that the Master Chief has an augmented body,”
Silva continued, “not to mention the advantage that the armor gives
him, but take a look around. This base, these defenses, were the work
of normal human beings.
“The Spartan program is a failure, Captain—the fact that
the Chief is the only one left proves that, so let’s put your mission
into the hands of some real honest-to-god Marines and let them earn
their pay.
“Thanks for hearing me out.”
Keyes had been in the Navy for a long time.
He knew Silva was ambitious, not only for himself, but for the ODST
branch of the Marine Corps. He also knew that Silva was brave,
well-intentioned, and in this case, flat-out wrong . But how to
tell him that? He needed Silva’s enthusiastic support if any of them
were going to make it out of this mess alive.
The Captain considered Silva’s words, then nodded. “You
make some valid points. What you and your ‘honest-to-god’ Marines have
accomplished on this butte is nothing short of miraculous.
“However, I can’t agree with your conclusions regarding
the Chief or the Spartan program. First, it’s important to understand
that what makes the Chief so effective isn’t what he is, but
who
he is. His record is not the result of technology—not because of what
they’ve done to him but in spite of what they’ve done to him,
and
the pain he has suffered.
“The truth is that the Chief would have grown up to be a
remarkable individual regardless of what the government did or didn’t
do to him. Do I think children should be snatched away from their
families? Raised by the military? Surgically altered? No, I don’t, not
during normal times.”
He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “Major,
one of my first assignments was to escort the Spartan’s project leader
during the selection process for the II-series candidates. At the time,
I didn’t know the full scope of the operation—and I probably would have
resigned had I known.
“These aren’t normal times. We’re talking about
the
very real possibility of total extinction, Major. How many
people did we lose in the Outer Colonies? How many did the Covenant
kill on Jerico VII? On Reach? How many will be glassed if they locate
Earth?”
It was a rhetorical question. The Marine shook his head.
“I don’t know, sir, but I do know this. More than twenty-five
years ago, when I was a second lieutenant, the people who invented the
Chief thought it would be fun to test their new pet weapon on some
real
meat. They engineered a situation in which four of my Marines would run
into your friend, take offense at something he did, and try to teach
him a lesson.
“Well, guess what? The plan worked perfectly. The plan
sucked my people in, and the freak not only kicked the hell out of
them, he left two of them dead—beaten to death in a goddamned ship’s
gymnasium. I don’t know what you call that, sir, but I call it murder.
Were there repercussions? Hell, no. The windup toy got a pat on the
head and a ticket to the showers. It was all in a day’s bloody work.”
Keyes looked bleak. “For whatever it’s worth I’m truly
sorry about what happened to your men, Major, but here’s the truth:
Maybe it isn’t nice—hell, maybe it isn’t even right —but if I
could get my hands on a million Chiefs I’d take every single one of
them. As for this particular mission, yes, I believe it’s possible that
your people could get the job done, and if that’s all we had, I
wouldn’t hesitate to send them in. But the Chief has a number of
distinct advantages, not the least of which is Cortana, and by taking
this task on he will free your Helljumpers to handle other things. Lord
knows there’s plenty to do. My decision stands.”
Silva nodded stiffly. “Sir, yes sir. My people will do
everything they can to support both the Chief and Cortana.”
“Yes,” Keyes said, as he gazed up into the gently curving
ring, “I’m sure they will.”
The normally dark room was bright with
artificial light. Zuka ’Zamamee had studied the raid on the Truth
and
Reconciliation, taken note of the manner in which the human AI had
accessed the Covenant battle net, and analyzed the nature of the
electronic intrusions to see what the entity seemed most interested in.
Then, based on that analysis, he had constructed
projections of what the humans would do next. Not all of the
humans, since that lay outside the parameters of his mission, but the
one person in whom he was truly interested. An individual who appeared
to be part of a specialized, elite group similar to his own, and would
almost certainly be sent to follow up on what the humans had learned.
Now, in the room that led directly into the Security
Control Center, ’Zamamee laid a trap. The armored human would come, he
felt sure of that, and once inside the snare, the human would meet his
end. The thought cheered ’Zamamee immensely and he hummed a battle hymn
as he worked.
There was a flash, followed by a loud
bang!
as the fragmentation grenade went off. A Jackal screamed, an assault
weapon stuttered, and a Marine yelled, “Let me know if you want some
more!”
“Good work!” McKay exclaimed. “That’s the last of them.
Close the hatch, lock it, and post a fire team here to make sure they
don’t cut their way out. The Covenant is welcome to the upper decks.
What we need is down here.”
The battle had been raging for hours by then as McKay and
her Marines fought to push the remaining enemy forces out of key
portions of the Autumn and into the sections of the ship that
weren’t mission-critical.
As the Helljumpers sealed the last interdeck ladder not
already secured, they had what they’d been striving for: free and
unfettered access to the ship’s main magazine, cargo holds, and vehicle
bays.
In fact, even as the second platoon pushed the last of the
aliens out of the lower decks, the first platoon, under the leadership
of Lieutenant Oros, had begun the important task of hitching trailers
to the fleet of Warthogs stowed in the Autumn ’s belly and
loading them with food, ammo, and the long list McKay had brought with
her of other supplies. Then, once each ’Hog-trailer combo was ready,
the Marines drove them down makeshift ramps onto the hardpan below.
Once outside, and positioned laager style, the combined
power of the LRV-mounted M41 light antiaircraft guns formed a potent
defense against possible attack by Covenant dropships, Banshees, and
Ghosts. It wouldn’t hold out forever, but it would do the most
important job: It would buy them time .
Adding to the supply column’s already formidable firepower
were four M808B Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, or MBTs, which rumbled down
off the ramps, and threw dirt rooster tails up off their powerful
treads as they growled into position within the screen established by
the Warthogs.
The MBTs’ ceramic-titanium armor provided them with
excellent protection against small arms fire—although the vehicles were
vulnerable should the aliens manage to get in close. That’s why
provision had been made for up to four Marines to ride on top of each
Scorpion’s track pods.
Now, free to withdraw from the grounded cruiser and
supervise final loading, McKay left Lister in charge of keeping the
aliens penned up.
As she exited the ship, McKay caught sight of two
heavily-loaded Pelicans flying off in the general direction of the
butte, each with a ’Hog clutched beneath its belly. And there, arrayed
on the hardpan in front of her, twenty-six Warthog-trailer combinations
sat ready to roll, with still more coming off the ship.
Their only problem was personnel. As a result of the work
only fifty-two effectives remained, which meant that the stripped-down
infantry company would be hard-pressed to crew thirty-four vehicles and
fight, should that become necessary. Both McKay and her noncoms would
all play a role as drivers or gunners during the return trip.
Oros saw the Company Commander emerge from the Autumn’s
hull. The Platoon Leader was caged inside one of the loader-type
exoskeletons taken from the ship. Servos whined in sympathy with her
movements as she crossed the intervening stretch of wheel-churned dirt
to the point where McKay waited with hands on hips. Grime covered her
face and her body armor was charred where a plasma pulse had hit. “You
look good in orange.”
Oros grinned. “Thanks, boss. Did you see the Pelicans?”
“As a matter of fact I did. They looked a bit overloaded.”
“Yeah, the pilots were starting to whine about weight, but
I bribed them with a couple of candy bars. They’ll be back in about
forty-five minutes. When they do we’ll wrestle fuel bladders into the
cargo compartments, fill them from the ship, and top their tanks all at
the same time. Then, just to make sure we get our money’s worth, we’ll
hook a 50mm MLA autocannon under each fuselage and take those out as
well.”
McKay raised both eyebrows. “Autocannons? Where did you
get those?”
“They were part of the Autumn’s armament,” the
other officer answered cheerfully. “I thought it would be fun to spot
the occasional Covenant dropship from the top of the mesa.”
He paused then added, “That’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“A lot of gear didn’t survive the crash. No missile or
rocket pods for the Pelicans, and we’re almost bone dry on 70 mm for
their chain guns. We can’t count on air support for much more than bus
rides.”
“Damn.” She scowled. Without well-armed air support, Alpha
Base was going to be a lot tougher to defend.
“Affirmative,” Oros agreed. “Oh, and I ordered the pilots
to bring fifteen additional bodies on the return trip. Clerks, medics,
anybody who can drive or fire an M41. That would allow me to squeeze
some additional ’Hogs into the column and put at least two people on
each tank.”
McKay raised an eyebrow. “You ‘ordered’ them to bring more
bodies?”
“Well, I kind of let them believe that you whistled
them up.”
McKay shook her head. “You are amazing.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Oros replied shamelessly.“Semper Fi.”
The Pelicans swept over the glittering sea,
passed over a line of gently breaking surf, and flew parallel with the
beach. Foehammer saw a construct up ahead, a headland beyond, and a
whole lot of Covenant troops running around in response to the sudden
and unexpected arrival of two UNSC dropships. Rawley fought the urge to
trigger the Pelican’s 70 mm chain gun. She’d expended the last of her
ammo on the last pass—had watched geysers of sand chase an Elite up the
beach, and was rewarded by the sight of the alien disappearing in a
cloud of his own blood—and it didn’t look like more were coming anytime
soon.
She keyed open a master channel. “The LZ is hot, repeat,
hot,” Foehammer emphasized. “Five to dirt.”
The Master Chief stood next to the open hatch, and waited
for Foehammer’s signal: “Touchdown! Hit it, Marines!”
He was among the first to step off the ramp, his boots
leaving deep impressions in the soft sand.
He paused for a quick look around, then started down-spin
to the point where the aliens waited. No sooner had the last member of
the landing party disembarked than the Pelicans were airborne once
more—and flying up-spin.
Plasma fire stuttered down from the top of a rise as the
Marines advanced up the sandy slope, careful to fire staggered bursts,
so the entire group didn’t wind up reloading at the same time. The
Spartan ran forward, added his fire to the rest, and sent an Elite
sprawling to the ground. The Covenant forces were outnumbered for once
and the human attackers wasted little time cutting them down. The whole
fight lasted only ten minutes.
Time to get moving. He reviewed the mission objectives as
he surveyed the LZ: find and secure a Covenant-held facility, some kind
of map room—which the enemy had already captured.
The Covenant called the site “the Silent
Cartographer”—which could presumably pinpoint the location of Halo’s
control room. Keyes had been very adamant about the urgency of the
mission. “If the Covenant figure out how to turn Halo into a weapon,
we’re cooked.”
Maybe, with Cortana’s help, they had a good chance of
figuring out where the hell the ring’s control systems were housed. All
they had to do is take it away from an entrenched enemy.
The Spartan heard a burst of static followed by
Foehammer’s cheerful voice as her Pelican swooped back into the LZ area.“Echo
419 inbound. Did someone order a Warthog?”
A Marine said, “I didn’t know that you made house calls,
Foehammer.”
The pilot chuckled.“You know our motto: ‘we deliver.’ ”
The Master Chief waited for the dropship to deposit the
LRV on the beach, saw two Marines jump on board, and climbed up behind
the wheel. The soldier riding shotgun nodded. “Ready when you are,
Chief.”
The Spartan put his foot on the accelerator, sand shot out
from under the vehicle’s tires, and the ’Hog left parallel tracks as it
raced along the edge of the beach.
They rounded the headland in minutes, and entered the open
area beyond. There was a scattering of trees, some weathered boulders,
and a swath of green ground cover. “Firing!” the gunner called, and
pulled his trigger. The petty officer saw Covenant troops scurry for
cover, steered right to give the three-barreled weapon a better angle,
and was soon rewarded with a batch of dead Grunts and a badly mangled
Jackal.
The Spartan drove the Warthog uphill, turning to avoid
obstacles, careful to maintain the vehicle’s traction. It wasn’t long
before the humans neared the top of the slope and spotted the massive
structure beyond. The top curved downward, cut dramatically in, and
gave way to a flat area where a Covenant dropship had been docked.
It appeared that the aircraft had just finished loading:
It backed out of a U-shaped slot, swung out toward the ocean, and
quickly disappeared. The noise generated by its engines covered the
sound made by the Warthog and provided the defenders with something to
look at.
The gunner tracked the aircraft but knew better than to
open fire and attract unwanted attention. The area beyond was crawling
with Covenant troops. “Anyone else see what I see?” the second
leatherneck inquired. “How are we supposed to get around that ?”
The Master Chief killed the ’Hog’s engine, motioned for
the Marines to remain where they were, and eased his way up to a point
where a fallen log offered him some cover. He drew his pistol, took
aim, and opened fire. Four Grunts and an Elite fell beneath the quick
barrage of gunfire.
The response was nearly instantaneous as the surviving
troops ran for cover and a series of plasma bolts blew chunks of wood
out of the protective log and set it ablaze.
Confident that he had whittled the opposition down to a
more manageable size, the Chief eased his way back to the LRV and
pulled himself up into the driver’s seat. The Marines waited to see
what he would do next. “Check your weapons,” he advised, as he hit the
ignition switch and the big engine roared to life. “We have some
clean-up to do.”
“Roger that,” the gunner said grimly. “It looks like we
have KP duty again.”
There was no telling what the Covenant troops expected the
humans to do, but judging from the way they ran around screaming, the
possibility of an old-fashioned frontal assault just hadn’t occurred to
them.
The Spartan aimed the vehicle for the front of the
complex, spotted the hallway that extended back toward the face of the
cliff, and drove straight inside. It was a tight fit, and the Warthog
wallowed a bit as the big off-road tires rolled over a couple of dead
Grunts, but the strategy worked. Both Marines opened up on the Covenant
troops and the Chief ran one of them down.
Then, once the outer part of the structure had been
cleared, the Master Chief parked the LRV where the Marines could
provide him with fire support, and ventured inside. A series of ramps
led down through darkened hallways to the antechamber below. It was
full of aliens. The Master Chief tossed a grenade in among them, backed
up out of the way, and sprayed the ramp with bullets. The grenade went
off with a satisfying wham! and body parts flew high into the
air
before thumping to the floor.
Cortana said, “Don’t let them lock the doors!”
Too late. The doors noiselessly flashed shut.
The Spartan polished off the last of the resistance,
checked to confirm that the doors were locked, and was already on his
way back to the surface when the AI accessed the suit’s radio.“Cortana
to Keyes . . .”
“Go ahead, Cortana. Have you found the Control Center?”
“Negative, Captain. The Covenant have impeded our
progress. We can’t proceed unless we can disable the installation’s
security system.”
“Understood,”Keyes replied.“Use any means
necessary to force your way into the facility and find Halo’s Control
Center. Failure is not an option.”
The Master Chief was back in the ’Hog and halfway to the
LZ by the time the Captain signed off.“Good luck, people. Keyes out.”
If the front door is locked—then go around back.
That’s
what the Spartan figured as the LRV rolled back the way it had come,
through the LZ. The Marine seated next to him exchanged insults with a
buddy stationed on the beach.
They had just rounded a bluff when Cortana said, “Look up
to the right. There’s a path that leads toward the interior of the
island.”
The AI had no more than finished her sentence when the
gunner said, “Freaks at two o’clock!” and opened fire.
The Spartan ran the Warthog up a slope, allowed the M41
LAAG to handle the heavy lifting, and positioned the vehicle so the
gunner could put fire on the ravine ahead. “Tell me something,
Cortana,” the Master Chief said, as he lowered himself to the ground.
“How come you’re always advising me to go up gravity lifts, run down
corridors, and sneak through forests while making no mention of all the
enemy troops that seem to inhabit such places?”
“Because I don’t want you to feel unnecessary,” the AI
replied easily. “For example, given the fact that your sensors are
telling both of us that there are at least five Covenant soldiers lying
in wait farther up the ravine, it’s logical to suppose that there are
even more beyond them. Does that make you feel better?”
“No,” the Spartan admitted as he checked to ensure that
both of his weapons were fully loaded.
He charged up the ravine and took cover behind a large
outcropping of rock. Plasma bolts melted the stone near his head, and
he snapped a quick shot in return. The Grunt snarled and dove for
cover, as a pair of his partners opened up on the Spartan’s position.
Behind them, a cobalt-armored Elite urged them forward.
The Master Chief took a deep breath. Time to go to work,
he thought. He sprinted from his cover and his pistol’s reports echoed
through the narrow ravine.
The skirmish took mere minutes. His shield indicator
pulsed a warning yet again, and he paused at the top of the ravine to
allow it time to recharge. His gun swept the area, and noted the
circular structure that dominated a small depression at the top of the
ravine.
His shield had just begun a recharge cycle, feeding off
the armor’s capacious power plant, when the pair of Hunter aliens burst
from cover and lobbed fire at his position.
The first blast struck him square in the chest and sent
him tumbling backward. The second shot was stopped by a thick-trunked
tree. A trickle of blood pooled in the corner of his left eye. He shook
his head to clear his blurred vision and rolled to his left. A third
shot kicked up a plume of soil where he had lain just seconds before.
The Chief tossed a frag grenade, counted to three, then
sprang to his feet and sidestepped to his right, firing all the way.
He’d timed it perfectly. The grenade detonated, and the
flash and smoke briefly confused the aliens. His rounds bounced from
their thick armor plates. In unison, they spun to face him, their
weapons glowing green as they charged for another salvo.
Another grenade detonated in their path and slowed the
Hunters’ advance. They fired through the smoke and the crash of their
weapons thundered through the low ravine.
The Hunters moved forward, eager for the kill—and realized
too late that he’d doubled back and closed in on them. His assault
rifle barked and tore into the gaps in their armor at close range. They
screamed and died.
The Master Chief followed the terrain as it gradually
sloped back down to the west. He dealt with a brace of sentries, then
located his objective: a way into the massive structure that loomed
above. The human saw a dark, shadowy door, slipped through the opening.
He felt the gloom settle around him.
His biochemically altered eyes quickly adjusted to the
darkness, and he moved deeper into the structure, pausing only to feed
a fresh magazine into his assault rifle.
One level below, Zuka ’Zamamee listened.
Someone was on the way, the desperate radio traffic testified to that,
and it seemed safe to assume that it was the very human he had set out
to kill. The fact that the transmissions ceased amid the clatter of
human weaponry attested to the fact that the armored human was here.
But would he enter the trap? He had carefully seeded
references to the map room into the stream of battle updates. If the
humans had tapped into the network using the downed ship’s AI, then
they would have no choice but to send this fearsome soldier to find it.
Yes, the Elite thought, as his highly sensitive
ears
heard the scrape of a booted foot, a muted click as a new
magazine slid home, and the subtle rasp of armor. It won’t be long
now.
’Zamamee looked left and right, assured himself that the
Hunters were in position, and withdrew to his hiding place. Others were
present inside the cargo module as well, including Yayap and a team of
Grunts.
The Master Chief hit the bottom of the ramp,
saw the alien cargo modules that populated the center of the dimly lit
room, and knew that damned near anything could be lurking among them.
Something—instinct, or perhaps only luck—caused his heart to beat a
little faster as he put his back to a wall and slid sideways. Something
wasn’t right.
Light filtered in through an ornate window which enabled
the Spartan to see that there was an alcove to his left. He eased in
that direction, felt a cold weight hit the bottom of his stomach as he
heard movement, and turned toward the sound.
The Hunter rushed out of the darkness, intent on smashing
the Chief with his shield, and finishing him with razor-sharp spines. A
steady stream of 7.62 mm bullets hammered the Hunter’s chest plate and
slowed his rate of advance.
’Zamamee, backed by Yayap and his team of Grunts, chose
that moment to emerge from the relative safety of the cargo module. The
Elite was frightened, but determined to conceal it, and he raised his
weapon. But the Hunter was in his line of fire.
Then, as if the melee weren’t confusing enough, the
second
Hunter charged in, bumped into the Elite, and sent him spinning to the
cold metal floor.
Yayap, who found himself standing out in the
middle of the floor, was about to order a retreat when one of his
subordinates, a Grunt named Linglin, fired a weapon.
It was a stupid thing to do since there was no clear
target to shoot at, but that’s what Grunts were encouraged to do when
in doubt: shoot. Linglin fired, and the plasma bolt flew straight and
true. It hit the second Hunter in the back, and threw the spined
warrior forward, and caused him to collide with his bond brother.
“Uh-oh,” Yayap muttered.
The Master Chief saw his opponent start to
go down, shot him in the back, and brought the assault weapon back up.
The fact that the second Hunter was already down came as something of a
surprise, albeit a pleasant one, and he looked for something else to
shoot.
No doubt stunned by the enormity of his
error, and terrified regarding the potential consequences, Linglin was
still backing away when the bulky, armored human raised his weapon and
fired. Yayap felt Linglin’s blood spray the side of his face as he
tripped over his own feet, fell over backward, and used his hands to
push himself back into the shadows. A hand grabbed hold of his combat
harness, jerked the Grunt into the still yawning cargo module, and held
him in place. “Silence!” ’Zamamee instructed. “This battle is over. We
must live to fight another.”
That sounded very good, maybe the most sensible
thing he’d heard in a hundred units, so Yayap held his breath as the
human walked past the open cargo module. He briefly wondered if there
was some way he could get a transfer back to a normal frontline unit.
To the diminutive alien trooper, such an assignment seemed considerably
less dangerous.
His nerves on edge, fully expecting yet
another
attack, the Spartan circled the room. But there was nothing for him to
deal with except his own twitchiness and the heavy silence which
settled over the room.
“Nice job, Chief,” Cortana said. “Head through the cargo
modules. The security center lies beyond.”
The Master Chief followed Cortana’s directions, entered a
hall, and followed it into a room that featured a small constellation
of lights floating at its very center. “Use the holo panel to shut down
the security system,” Cortana suggested, and, eager to complete the job
before anyone else could attack him, the Spartan hurried to comply. He
was again struck by an odd near-familiarity with the glowing controls.
Cortana used the suit sensors to examine the results.
“Good!” she exclaimed. “That should open the door that leads into the
main shaft. Now all we have to do is find the Silent Cartographer and
the map to the Control Room.”
“Right,” the Master Chief replied. “That, and avoid
capture in unknown territory, possibly held by the enemy, with no air
support or backup.”
“Do you have a plan?” she asked.
“Yes. When we get there, I’m going to kill every single
Covenant soldier I find.”
CHAPTER SIX
D+144:38:19 (Lieutenant McKay Mission Clock) /
The hills between Alpha Base and the Pillar of Autumn.
Three parallel columns of vehicles are pretty hard to
hide, and McKay didn’t even try. The combination of some thirty
Warthogs and four Scorpions raised a cloud of dust that was visible
from more than two kilometers away. No doubt the heat produced by the
machines registered on sensors clear out in space. Banshee recon
flights could have tracked them from the minute they hit the trail, and
there was only one logical place the vehicles could be headed: the
butte called Alpha Base.
It wasn’t too surprising that the Covenant not only
organized a response, but a massive one. Here, after days of
humiliation, was the opportunity to revenge themselves on the beings
who had taken the butte away from them, paid a surprise visit to the
Truth
and Reconciliation, and raided more than a dozen other locations
besides.
Knowing she was in for a fight, McKay organized the
vehicles into three temporary platoons. The first platoon was comprised
of Warthogs under the command of Lieutenant Oros. She had orders to
ignore ground targets and concentrate on defending the column from
airborne attacks.
Sergeant Lister was in charge of the second platoon’s
Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, which, because of their vulnerability to
infantry, were kept at the center of the formation.
The third platoon, under McKay herself, was charged with
ground defense, which meant keeping Ghosts and infantry off the other
two platoons. A third of her vehicles, five Warthogs in all, were
unencumbered by trailers and left free to serve as a quick reaction
force.
By giving each platoon its own individual assignment, the
officer hoped to leverage the Company’s overall effectiveness, ensure
fire discipline, and reduce the possibility of casualties caused by
friendly fire, a real danger in the kind of melee that she expected.
As the Marines headed east toward Alpha Base, the first
challenge lay at the point where the flat terrain ended. Hills rolled
up off the plain to form a maze of canyons, ravines, and gullies which,
if the humans were foolish enough to enter them, would force the
vehicles to proceed single file, which rendered the convoy vulnerable
to air and ground attacks. There was a different route, however, a pass
approximately half a klick wide. All three columns could pass through
it without breaking formation.
The problem, and a rather obvious one, was the fact that a
pair of rather sizable hills stood guard to either side of the pass,
providing the Covenant with the perfect platform from which to fire
down on them.
As if that weren’t bad enough, a third hill lay
just
beyond, creating a second gate through which the humans would have to
pass before gaining the freedom of the plain beyond. It was a daunting
prospect—and McKay felt a rising sense of despair as the company drew
within rifle shot of the opposing hills. She wasn’t especially
religious—but the ancient psalm seemed to form itself in her mind.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”
Screw it, she thought. She ordered the convoy to
lock and load and prepare for a fight. Psalms weren’t going to win the
coming fight. Firepower would.
From his vantage point high on what Covenant
forces had designated as “Second Hill,” the Elite Ado ’Mortumee used a
powerful monocular to eye the human convoy. With the exception of five
vehicles, the rest of the alien LRVs were hooked to heavily laden
trailers, which prevented them from making much speed. Also serving to
slow the convoy down was the presence of four of the humans’ cumbersome
tanks.
Rather than risk passage through the hills, their
commanding officer had opted to use the pass. Understandable, but a
mistake for which the human would pay.
’Mortumee lowered the monocular and turned to look at the
Wraith. Though not normally a fan of the slow-firing, lumpy-looking
tanks, he had to admit that the design was perfect for the work at
hand, and in combination with an identical unit stationed on First
Hill, the monster at his elbow was certain to make short work of the
oncoming convoy.
The counterthreat, if that’s what it was, would come from
the armored behemoths which rolled along at the very center of the
human formation. They looked powerful, but never having seen
one
in action, and having found precious little data on them within the
Intel files, ’Mortumee wasn’t sure what to expect.
“So,” a voice said from behind him, “the Council of
Masters has sent me a spy. Tell me, spy, who are you here to
watch: the humans or me?”
’Mortumee turned to find that Field Master Noga ’Putumee
had approached him from behind, something he did rather quietly for
such a large being. Though known for his bravery, and his leadership in
the field, ’Putumee was also famous for his blunt, confrontational, and
paranoid ways. There was a good deal of truth in the officer’s
half-serious suggestion, however, since ’Mortumee had been sent to
watch both the Field Master and the enemy.
’Mortumee ignored the field commander’s blunt tone, and
clicked his mandibles. “Someone has to count all the human bodies,
write the report celebrating your latest victory, and lay the
groundwork for your next promotion.”
If there was a chink in ’Putumee’s psychological armor it
was in the vicinity of his ego, and ’Mortumee would have sworn that he
saw the other officer’s already massive chest expand slightly in
response to the praise.
“If words were troops you would lead a mighty army indeed.
So, spy, are the Banshees ready?”
“Ready and waiting.”
“Excellent,” ’Putumee replied. The gold-armored Elite
turned his own monocular on the approaching convoy. “Order the attack.”
“As you order, Excellency.”
’Putumee nodded.
McKay heard the incoming Banshees and the
prospect of action banished her butterflies to a less noticeable sector
of her stomach. The sound started as a low drone, quickly transformed
itself into a buzz, then morphed into a bloodcurdling wail as the
officer keyed her mike.
“This is Red One: We have hostile aircraft inbound. First
Platoon is clear to engage. Everyone else will remain on standby. This
is the warm-up, people, so stay sharp. There’s more on the way. Over
and out.”
There were five flights of ten Banshees
each, and the first group came through the pass so low that ’Mortumee
found himself looking down on the wave of aircraft. Sun glinted
off the burnished, reflective metal of the Banshees’ wings.
It was tempting to jump into his own aircraft and join
them, thrilling to the feel of the low altitude flight, as well as the
steady booming of outgoing plasma fire. Such pleasures were
denied the spy if he was to maintain the objectivity required to carry
out his important work.
Eager to have the first crack at the humans, and
determined to leave nothing for subsequent flights to shoot at, the
pilots of the first wave fired the moment they came within range.
First Platoon’s Marines saw the aircraft
appear low on the horizon, watched the blobs of lethal energy blip
their way, and knew better than to engage individual targets. Not yet,
anyway. Instead, consistent with the orders that Lieutenant Oros had
given, the Helljumpers aimed their M41 LAAGs at a point just west of
the pass, and opened fire all at once. The Banshees didn’t have brakes,
and the pilots had just started to turn, when they ran right into the
meat grinder.
’Mortumee understood the problem right away,
as did ’Putumee, who ordered the following waves to break up and attack
the convoy independently.
The orders came too late for eight of the first ten
aircraft, which were ripped into thousands of pieces, and fell like
smoking snow.
A pair of the flyers got through the storm of gunfire. One
of the Banshees managed to hit a Warthog with a burst of superheated
plasma, killing the gunner, and slagging his weapon. The LRV continued
to roll, however—which meant that the trailer and its load of supplies
did as well.
Once through the hail of bullets, the surviving Banshees
turned and lined up for a second pass.
As the second flight of Covenant aircraft arrived from the
east, split up, and launched individual attacks, Field Master ’Putumee
barked an order into his radio. The mortar tanks on First and Second
Hills fired in unison. Blue-white orbs of fire, trailing tendrils of
energy, shot high into the sky, hung suspended for a moment, then began
to fall.
The plasma mortars fell with a deliberate, almost casual
slowness. They arced gracefully into the ground and a deafening
thunderclap shook the ground. Neither round found a target, but these
were ranging shots, and that was to be expected.
McKay heard a Marine say, “What the hell
was that?” over the command freq, then heard Lister tear a strip
off
him.
She couldn’t help but wonder the same thing herself. The
truth was that while the officer knew the vehicles existed, she’d never
seen a Wraith tank in action, and wasn’t sure if that was what she
faced. It didn’t matter much, though, because the weapon in question
was quite clearly lethal, and would cause havoc in the close quarters
of the pass. She keyed her radio.
“Red One to Green One: Those ‘energy bombs’ originated
from those hilltops. Let’s give the bastards a haircut. Over.”
“This is Green One,”Lister acknowledged.“Roger
that, over.”
There was a burst of static as Lister switched to his
platoon’s freq, though McKay could hear every word on the command
channel.
“Green One to Foxtrot One and Two: lay some high
explosive on the hill to the left. Over.”
“Green One to Foxtrot Three and Four: ditto the hill to
the right. Over.”
Banshees wheeled, turned, and poured fire
down on the hapless humans as one of the pilots fired his fuel rod
cannon and scored a direct hit. A trailer full of precious ammo
exploded, wrapped the Warthog in a fiery embrace, and took the LRV with
it. Covenant forces watching from the hilltops felt a sense of
exultation, and more than that, the pleasure of revenge.
’Mortumee was there to document the battle, not celebrate
it, though he watched in fascination as two of the tank turrets
swiveled to his left in order to fire on First Hill, while two turned
in the opposite direction and seemed to point directly at him.
The Elite wondered if he should seek cover, but before the
message to move could reach his feet, he heard a reverberating roar as
the 105 mm shell passed through the intervening air space, followed by
a
loud craack! as the shell landed about fifty units away. A
column
of bloody dirt flew high into the air. Body parts, weapons, and pieces
of equipment continued to rain down as the half-deafened ’Mortumee
recovered his composure and ran for cover.
Field Master ’Putumee laughed out loud and pointed to show
a member of his staff where ’Mortumee had taken shelter behind some
rocks. That was when the second round detonated just below the summit
of the hill and started a small landslide. “This,” the Elite said
happily, “is a real battle. Keep an eye on the spy.”
Stung by the loss of a Warthog, a
trailer-load of ammo, and three Marines, McKay was starting to question
the division of labor she had imposed, and was just about to free her
platoon’s gunners to fire on the Banshees, when her driver said,
“Uh-oh, look at that!”
A series of plasma bolts stitched a line along the ’Hog’s
side, scorched the vehicle’s paint, and kicked up geysers of dirt as
the officer followed the pointing finger. A force of Ghosts skittered
into the pass.
“Red One to all Romeo units . . . follow me!” McKay yelled
into her mike, and tapped the driver’s arm. “Go get ’em, Murphy—let’s
clear that gap.”
No sooner had the officer spoken than the Marine put his
foot into it, the gunner whooped, and the LRV leapt forward.
The rest of the five-vehicle reaction force followed just
as the Wraith on Hill One hurled a third then a fourth plasma ball high
into the sky.
McKay looked up, saw the fireball slow to a near stop at
the point of apogee, and knew it would be a race. Would the bomb land
on top of the reaction force? Or, would the fast-moving ’Hogs slip out
from under it, leaving the plasma charge to explode harmlessly on the
ground?
The gunner saw the threat as well, and yelled, “Go! Go!
Go!” as the driver swerved to avoid a clutch of rocks, did his best to
push the accelerator through the floor. He mumbled, “Damn, damn, damn,”
as he felt something wet and warm puddle on his seat.
The energy bomb fell with increasing velocity. The first
LRV slipped underneath it, quickly followed by the second and third.
Heart in her throat, McKay looked back over her shoulder
as the plasma weapon landed, detonated, and blew a large crater out of
the ground.
Then, like a miracle on wheels, Romeo Five flew through
the smoke, bounced as it hit the edge of the newly created crater, and
lurched up over the rim.
There was no time to celebrate as the Ghosts pulled into
range and the lead vehicle opened fire. McKay raised her assault rifle,
took aim at the nearest blur, and squeezed the trigger.
Master Sergeant Lister faced a harsh
reality. Never mind Banshees that swooped overhead, or the Ghosts up
ahead, it was his job to do something about the mortar fire, and as the
hills loomed ahead, Second Platoon’s Scorpions were coming up on the
point when their main guns would no longer be able to elevate high
enough to engage the primary target. One more salvo, that’s what the
tanks could deliver, before their weapons could no longer be brought to
bear.
“Wake up, people,” Lister said over the platoon frequency,
“the last group on the left was at least fifteen meters too low, and
the last group on the right overshot the hill. Make adjustments, take
the tops off those hills, and do it now. We don’t have time to
screw around.”
Each tank commander adjusted aim, sent their shells on the
way, and prayed for a hit. They all knew that facing the Covenant would
be easier than suffering Lister’s wrath should the shells miss their
marks.
Field Master ’Putumee watched impassively as
the Wraith on First Hill exploded, taking a file of Jackals with it. He
was sorry to lose the mortar tank, but the truth was that with two
dozen Ghosts milling around in the pass below, he was going to have to
cease fire anyway. Either that or risk killing his own troops. The
Elite snapped an order, saw one last fireball sail into the air, and
watched the humans enter the gap.
Lance Corporal “Snaky” Jones was screwed, he
knew that, had known it ever since the front end of his ’Hog took a hit
and flipped end-for-end. He was standing behind the LAAG, firing
forward over the driver’s head, when he was suddenly catapulted into
the air. Jones saw a blur, hit hard, and tumbled head over heels. Once
his body came to a stop the Marine discovered that it was almost
impossible to breathe, which was why he just lay there at first,
staring up into the amazing blue sky as he gasped for air.
It was pretty, very pretty, until a Banshee
screamed
through the picture and a Warthog roared past on the left.
That was when Jones managed to scramble to his feet, and
yelled into his boom mike, only to discover that it was missing. Not
just the mike, but his entire helmet, which had come loose during the
fall. No helmet meant no mike, no radio, and no
possibility of a pickup.
The Lance Corporal swore, ran toward the wrecked Warthog,
and gave thanks for the fact that it hadn’t caught fire. The vehicle
was resting on its side and the S2 was right where he had left
it—clamped butt down behind the driver’s seat.
It was hard to see Sergeant Corly strewn over the rear
fender with half her face blown away, so Jones averted his eyes. His
rucksack, the one that contained extra ammo, a med pack, and the stuff
he had looted from the Pillar of Autumn, was right where he had
left it, secured to the bottom of the gun pedestal.
Jones grabbed the pack, slung it across his back, and
grabbed the sniper rifle. He made sure the rifle was ready to fire,
then clicked on the safety and ran for the nearest hill. Maybe he could
find a cave, wait for the battle to end, and haul ass back to Alpha
Base. Dust puffed away from the Marine’s boots and death hung all
around.
Lieutenant Oros estimated that First Platoon
had reduced the number of attacking aircraft by two thirds—and she had
a plan to deal with the rest. McKay wouldn’t approve—but what was the
CO going to do? Send her to Halo? The Lieutenant grinned, gave the
necessary order, and jumped down to the ground.
She waved to the volunteers from four of the thirteen
Warthogs she had remaining, then scampered toward a group of
likely-looking rocks. All five of the Marines carried M19 SSM Rocket
Launchers slung across their backs, plus assault weapons, and as many
spare rockets as they could carry in the twin satchels that hung from
their hands. They pounded across the hardpan, scurried into the
protection offered by the surrounding boulders, and set up shop.
When everyone was ready, Oros pulled the pins on one flare
after another, tossed them out beyond the circle of rocks, and watched
the orange smoke billow up into the sky.
It wasn’t long before the Banshee pilots spotted the smoke
and, like vultures attracted to fresh carrion, hurried to the scene.
The Marines held their fire, waited until no less than
thirteen of the Covenant aircraft were circling above them, and fired
five rockets, all at once. A second volley followed the first—and a
third followed that. There was a steady drumbeat of explosions as ten
Banshees took direct hits, some from multiple rockets, and ceased to
exist.
Of the aircraft that survived the barrage of rockets, two
bugged out immediately. The last staggered in response to a near miss,
belched smoke from its port engine, and looked like it would go down.
Oros thought it was over at that point, that she and her volunteers
would be free to fade into the hills, and beat feet for home.
But it wasn’t to be. Unlike most of his peers, the pilot
in the damaged Banshee must have had a strong desire to transcend the
physical, because he turned toward the enemy, put the aircraft into a
steep dive, and plunged into the pile of boulders. Oros tried to make
the shot but missed—and barely had time to swear before the mortally
wounded Banshee augered into the rocks and swallowed the ambush team in
a ball of fire.
The fact that Lance Corporal Jones made it
all the way to the base of the hill without getting killed was just
plain luck. The subsequent scramble up through the loose tumble of
rocks was instinctual. The desire to gain elevation is natural to any
soldier, but especially to a sniper, which was what Jones had been
trained to be when he wasn’t busy humping supplies, operating LAAGs, or
taking crap from sergeants.
The fact that Jones was about to go on the offensive,
about to take it to the Covenant, that was a decision. Maybe not
the smartest decision he’d ever made, but one he knew to be right, and
to hell with the consequences.
Jones was only halfway up the side of the hill, but that
was high enough to see the top of the opposite hill, and the
tiny
figures who stood there. Not the Grunts who were running this way and
that, not the Jackals who lined the edge of the summit, but the shiny
armor of the Elites. Those were the targets he wanted, and they seemed
to leap forward as the Marine increased the magnification on his scope,
and let the barrel drift slightly. Which life should he take? The one
on the left with the blue armor? Or the one on the right, the shiny
gold bastard? At that moment in time, in that particular place, Lance
Corporal Jones was God.
He clicked the sniper rifle’s safety catch, and lightly
rested his finger on the trigger.
’Mortumee had emerged from hiding by that
time and was standing next to Field Master ’Putumee as the human convoy
cleared the pass and turned up-ring. There was a third hill off to his
left—and it, too, was topped with a Wraith.
The mortar tank opened fire. For one brief moment
’Mortumee harbored the hope that the remaining tank would accomplish
what the first two had not and decimate the convoy. But the humans were
still out of range, and, knowing that the Wraith couldn’t do them any
harm, they took the time to put their own tanks into a line abreast.
A single salvo was all it took. All four of the shells
landed on target, the mortar tank was destroyed, and the way was clear.
’Putumee lowered his monocular. His face was
expressionless. “So, spy, how will your report read?”
’Mortumee looked at the other Elite with a pitying
expression. “I’m sorry, Excellency, but the facts are clear, and the
report will practically write itself. Had you deployed your forces
differently, down on the plain perhaps, victory would have been ours.”
“An excellent point,” the Field Master replied, his tone
mild. “Hindsight is always perfect.”
’Mortumee was about to reply, about to say something about
the value of foresight, when his head exploded.
Lance Corporal Jones steadied his aim for a
second shot. The first shot had been perfect. The 14.5 mm slug had
flown
true, entered the base of Blue Boy’s neck, and exited through the top
of his head. That blew his helmet off, allowing a mixture of blood and
brains to fountain into the air.
’Putumee snarled and threw himself
backward—and thereby escaped the second bullet.
Moments later, the twin reports echoed back and forth
between the two hillsides. The Field Master crabbed back to cover and
fed position information to the Banshee commander, and snarled into his
communications gear: “Sniper! Kill him!”
Satisfied that the sniper would be dealt with, ’Putumee
stood and looked down at ’Mortumee’s headless body. He bared his fangs.
“It looks like I’ll have to write that report myself.”
Jones spat into the dirt, angry that the
gold Elite had evaded the second shot. Next time, he promised
himself. You’re mine next time, pal. Banshees banked
overhead, searching for his position. Jones backed into a deep crevice
among the rocks. Fortunately, thanks to the loot gathered aboard the Autumn,
he had twenty candy bars to sustain him.
The security system neutralized, the Master
Chief made his way back through the alien construct, and headed toward
the surface. Time to find this “Silent Cartographer” and complete this
phase of the mission.
“Mayday! Mayday! Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Repeat, we
are taking fire and losing altitude.”The dropship pilot’s strained
voice was harsh and grating—the sound of a man about to lose it.
“Understood,” Cortana replied. “We’re on our way.”
Then, in an aside to the Spartan, the AI said, “I don’t
like the sound of that—I’m not certain they’re going to make it.”
The Master Chief agreed, and in his eagerness to get
topside, made a potentially fatal error. Having just cleared the room
adjacent to what appeared to be the ring world’s Security Center, he
assumed that it was still clear.
Fortunately, the Elite—equipped with another of the
Covenant’s camouflage devices—announced his presence with a throaty
roar just prior to firing his weapon. Plasma fire still splashed the
Chief’s chest, followed by a brief moment of disorientation as he tried
to figure out where the attack was coming from. His motion sensor
detected movement, and he aimed his weapon as best he could. He fired a
sustained burst and was rewarded with an alien scream of pain.
As the Covenant warrior fell, the Master Chief made a mad
dash for the ramp that led up toward the surface, reloading as he went.
Walking into the once-cleared room too quickly had been stupid—and he
was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that
Cortana was there, seeing the world via his sensors, made such errors
that much more embarrassing. Somehow, for reasons he hadn’t had time to
sort out, the human wanted the AI’s approval. Silly? Maybe so, if one
thought of Cortana as little more than a fancy computer program, but
she was more than that. In the Chief’s mind at least.
He smiled at the irony of the thought. The human-AI
interface meant that, in many ways, Cortana was literally in the
Chief’s mind, using some of his wetware for processing power and
storage.
The Spartan made his way up the ramp, through a hall, and
out into bright sunlight. He paused on a platform, and dropped to the
slope below, as Cortana cautioned him to keep an eye peeled for Bravo
22.
Covenant troops were patrolling the beach below—a mix of
Jackals and Grunts. The Master Chief drew his sidearm, switched to the
2X magnification, and decided to work from right to left. He nailed the
first Jackal, missed the next, and killed a pair of Grunts who were
waddling around on top of the mesa opposite his position.
As he moved farther down the slope, he could see Bravo
22’s wreckage, half buried in the side of the mesa. There were no signs
of life. Either the crew and passengers had been killed on impact, or
some had survived and been executed by the enemy.
The possibility made him particularly angry. He turned to
the right, caught the surviving Jackal on the move, and put him down.
He switched to his MA5B and made his way down the grassy slope to the
sand beyond. It was a short walk to the smoking wreckage and the
scattering of bodies. Plasma burns on some of the bodies served to
confirm the Spartan’s suspicions.
Though not the most pleasant of tasks, the Chief knew he
had to obtain ammo and other supplies wherever he could, and took
advantage of the situation in order to stock up.
“Don’t forget to grab a launcher,” Cortana put in.
“There’s no telling what might be waiting for us when we go back to
looking for the Control Room.”
The Master Chief took the AI’s advice and decided to ride
rather than walk. The Warthog that had been tucked under the dropship’s
belly had come loose during the final moments of flight, hit the
ground, and flipped over on its side. He approached the vehicle,
reached upward, got a good purchase, and pulled. Metal creaked as the
’Hog swayed, tilted in the Spartan’s direction, and started to fall. He
stepped back, waited for the inevitable bounce, and climbed up behind
the wheel. After a quick check to ensure that the LRV was still
operable, he was off.
He skidded the Warthog into a slewing turn, then headed
back to the mission LZ—the beachhead the Marines had been left to hold.
The Helljumpers had fought off two assaults during his
absence, but they still owned the real estate they had originally
taken, and remained undeterred.
“Welcome back,” a Corporal said as she took her place
behind the three-barreled gun. “It was getting boring without you.” She
had a grimy face, the words CUT HERE tattooed around
the
circumference of her neck, and a short, stocky body.
The Chief eyed the hastily dug weapons pits and foxholes,
the large pile of Covenant corpses, and the plasma-scorched sand.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
A freckle-faced PFC jumped into the passenger seat, a
captured plasma rifle cradled in his arms. The Spartan turned back in
the direction he had come from, and raced along the edge of the water.
Spray flew up along the left side of the LRV and he wished he could
feel the moisture on his face.
A kilometer ahead, a Hunter named Igido Nosa
Hurru fumed as he paced back and forth across a docking platform still
stained with Covenant blood. Word had come down from an Elite named
Zuka ’Zamamee that a lone human had killed two of his brothers a few
hours earlier, and was about to attack his newly reinforced position,
as well. This was something the spined warrior hoped would happen so
that he, and his bond brother Ogada Nosa Fasu, could have the honor of
killing the alien.
So, when Hurru heard the whine of the surface vehicle’s
engine, and saw it round the headland, both he and his bond brother
were ready. Having received the other Hunter’s characteristic nod,
Hurru took up a position directly outside the entrance to the complex.
If
the vehicle was some sort of trick, a ruse to lure both guards away
from the door long enough for the human to slip inside, it wasn’t going
to work.
Fasu, always one to seize the initiative, and something of
an artist with the fuel rod cannon attached to his right arm, waited
for the LRV to come within range, led the vehicle to ensure that the
relatively slow-moving energy pulse would have an adequate amount of
time to reach its destination, and fired a single shot.
The Master Chief saw the yellow-green blob
appear in his peripheral vision, and made the decision to turn toward
the enemy both to make the ’Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal
an opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just
started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side
of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over.
All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master Chief
scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter drop
down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive knees,
and move forward.
Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were
back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter
before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, “Come on, Hosky!
Let’s take this bastard out!”
The Spartan yelled, “No! Fall back!” and bent over to
retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew
there simply wasn’t time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge
out of the way in time, but the Helljumpers didn’t have a prayer.
The distance between the alien and the two Marines had
closed by then and they couldn’t disengage. The Corporal threw a
fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster,
and stared in disbelief as the alien kept on coming. The alien charged
right through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and
lowered a gigantic shoulder.
Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic shield
hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what was left
onto the ground. The private remained conscious, however, which meant
he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot high
into the air, and brought it down on his face.
The Master Chief had the launcher up on his shoulder by
then and was just about to fire when the Corporal screamed something
incoherent, dashed into the line of fire, and blocked his shot. The
Chief yelled at her to hit the deck and was moving sideways in an
attempt to get a clear line of fire when Fasu blew a hole the size of a
dinner plate through the leatherneck’s chest.
The Spartan hit the firing stud, and a rocket whooshed
for the Hunter. With surprising agility, the massive alien hunched
and sidestepped, and the rocket skimmed past him. It detonated behind
the Hunter, and showered them both with debris.
The Hunter charged.
The Master Chief stepped back, knew there wouldn’t be time
to reload, and that the next rocket would have to fly straight and
true. The surf swirled around his knees as he backed out into the
ocean, fought to maintain his footing in the soft sand, and saw the
alien fill his sight. Was the target too close? There wasn’t time to
check. He pulled the trigger, and a second rocket streaked ahead on a
column of smoke and fire.
The Hunter had reached full speed and couldn’t dodge in
time. The creature’s massive feet dug into the soft ground as it tried
to alter course to avoid the rocket—to no avail. The 102 mm shaped
charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter’s chest armor,
blew through his torso, and severed his spine. There was a mighty
splash as the alien creature fell face first into the water. A pool of
vibrant orange blood stained the surf around the fallen Hunter.
The Master Chief took a moment to reload the launcher then
slogged back up onto the beach. A distant howl of anguish issued from
the other alien’s throat. Serves you right, he thought. You
only lost one brother. I lost all of mine.
He felt a pang of sorrow for the two dead Marines. He should
have anticipated the long-range attack, should have briefed the
leathernecks about the possibility of Hunters, should have reacted more
quickly. All of which meant that it was his fault that the
Marines were dead.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Cortana said gently. “Now be
careful—there’s another Hunter up on the platform.”
The words were like a bucket of cold water in the face.
“Mental combat,” that’s how his teacher, Chief Mendez, had referred to
it, always stressing the importance of a cool head.
Slowly, methodically, the Master Chief worked his way up
the slope, killing Covenant soldiers with machine precision. The small
groups of Grunts were irrelevant. The real challenge waited
above.
Hurru heard the firing, knew he was being
flanked, and welcomed it. Rage, sorrow, and self-pity all churned
around inside him causing him to fire his fuel rod cannon again and
again, as if to obliterate the human by the weight of his barrage.
The human made good use of what cover there was, put his
left arm against the cliff face, and inched his way forward. The Hunter
saw him and attempted to fire, but the fuel rod cannon hadn’t had time
to recharge after the last shot. That left the human free to fire,
which he did. Hurru felt warm relief.
He was about to join his bond brother.
The rocket was a hair high, hit Hurru in the
head, and blew it off. Orange blood fountained straight up, splashed
the alien metal around the Hunter, and splattered his body as it
collapsed.
The Spartan paused, switched to his assault weapon, and
waited for the feeling of satisfaction. It never arrived. The Marines
were still dead, would always be dead, and nothing would change
that. Was it fair that he remained alive? No, it wasn’t. All he could
do was accomplish what they would want him to do. Forge ahead, find the
map, and make their deaths count for something.
With that thought in mind, the Master Chief reentered the
complex on foot, made his way through halls still slick with alien
blood from his last visit, turned down the ramp, proceeded to the lower
level, and passed through the door he had worked so hard to open.
The Master Chief moved into the bowels of the structure.
From outside, the spires stood several stories high, which was
misleading. The interior of the structure plunged deep below the
surface.
He wound down a curving ramp. The air was still and
slightly stale, and thick pillars of the first large chamber he moved
through made the room feel like a crypt.
He slipped through heavily shadowed rooms, padded down
spiral ramps, passing through galleries filled with strange forms. The
walls and floors were made of the same burnished, heavily engraved
metal that he’d encountered elsewhere on the ring. He clicked on his
light and noticed new patterns in the metal, like the swirls in
marble—as if the material were some kind of metal-stone hybrid.
The tomblike silence was shattered by the squalling of
several Grunts and Jackals. There was opposition, plenty of it,
as the human was forced to deal with dozens of Grunts, Jackals, and
Elites. “It’s as if they knew we were on the way,” Cortana observed. “I
think someone is tracking our progress, and has a pretty good idea of
where we’re headed.”
“No kidding,” the Master Chief replied dryly as he shot a
Grunt and stepped over the body. “I hope we reach the Cartographer
before I run out of ammo.”
“We’re close,” the AI assured him, “but be careful.
There’s bound to be more Covenant ahead.”
The Master Chief took Cortana’s counsel to heart. He hoped
that he would find a way to bypass whatever the Covenant had in store,
but that wasn’t to be. As the Spartan entered a large room, he saw that
two Hunters had been assigned to patrol the far side of it. He slung
his rifle and readied the rocket launcher. It was the right weapon for
Hunters, no question about that—so long as he didn’t allow either one
of the monsters to get too close. A rocket fired under those conditions
would kill him if it detonated nearby.
One of the spined aliens spotted the intruder and bellowed
a challenge. The Hunter was already in motion when the rocket flashed
across the room, struck him in the right shoulder, and blasted him to
hell.
A second Hunter howled and fired his fuel rod cannon. The
Chief swore as the wash from a slightly off-target plasma bolt set off
the audible alarm, and the indicator in the upper right hand corner of
his HUD morphed to red.
The Spartan turned, hoping to put the second Hunter in his
sight, but the massive alien slid behind a wall.
Unable to fire, he backed off. The Hunter lunged forward,
and the deadly razor-spines raked across his already-weakened shields.
The Chief grunted in pain as the tip of the uppermost
spine spiked through his armor’s shoulder joint. He felt a sickly
tearing as the meat of his arm parted beneath the scalpel-sharp limb.
He spun, and the spine wrenched free.
The Master Chief felt a rising sense of frustration as he
switched to the assault weapon, backed up a ramp, and used his greater
mobility to circle behind the alien. Then he had it, a brief glimpse of
unprotected flesh, and the opportunity he needed. He put a quick burst
into the warrior’s back, spun away, and barely escaped a blast from the
plasma pistols of the Jackals that had dropped into view and opened
fire.
The Master Chief hurled three grenades over a divider. One
of them scored a direct hit, sprayed the walls with chunks of alien
flesh, and finally brought the frantic firefight to an end.
Cortana, whose life had been on the line as
well, and who had been forced to watch as the Spartan fought for both
of them, processed a sense of relief. Somehow, against all odds, her
human host had come through again, but it had been close, very
close, and he was still in something akin to shock, his back pressed
into a corner, his vital signs badly elevated, his eyes jerking from
one shadow to the next.
The AI hesitated as she processed the dilemma. It was
difficult to balance the need to move ahead and complete the mission
with her concern that she might push the Master Chief too hard,
and possibly endanger them both. Cortana’s affection for the human,
plus her own desire to survive, made it difficult for her to arrive at
the kind of clear, rational decision that she expected of herself.
Then, just as Cortana was about to say something,
anything, even if it was wrong, the Chief recovered and took the
initiative. “All right,” he said—whether to himself or to Cortana
wasn’t exactly clear. “It’s time to finish this mission.”
Working carefully, so as not to walk into an ambush, the
Master Chief left the large room, found his way onto a downward
slanting ramp. He backed into a corner and, satisfied that the area was
reasonably secure, disengaged the shoulder plates of the MJOLNIR armor.
The wound was ragged, and blood flowed freely. The Chief
could ignore the pain, but the blood loss would take its toll and
jeopardize the mission. He made sure the motion sensor was still
active, then slung his weapon.
He dug into his equipment pack and drew out his med kit.
The Spartan had been wounded before, and had on several occasions
performed first aid on injured comrades and himself. He quickly cleaned
the wound, sprayed a stinging puff of bio-foam into the wound, then
applied a quick-adhesive dressing.
In minutes, he had suited up, popped a wake-up stim, and
moved on.
“Foehammer to ground team: You’ve got two
Covenant dropships coming fast!”
The Master Chief stood at the edge of a massive chasm and
monitored his allies’ radio chatter. In the distance, he could barely
see the twinkling of the luminescent panels that Halo’s creators had
left behind to illuminate these subterranean warrens. Below him, the
abyss yawned and appeared to be bottomless.
He recognized the next voice as belonging to Gunnery
Sergeant Waller, the Helljumper in charge of their LZ.“Okay, people,”
Waller drawled,“we got company coming. Engage enemy forces on sight.”
“It’ll be easier to hold them off from inside the
structure,” Cortana put in. “Can you get inside?”
“Negative!”Waller replied.“They’re closing in
too fast. We’ll keep ’em busy as long as we can.”
“Give ’em hell, Marine,” the AI said grimly, and
broke the connection. “We’ll all be in a tight spot if we don’t
get out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive.”
“Roger that,” the Master Chief replied, as he pushed his
way down a ramp, through a pair of hatches, and into the gloomy spaces
beyond. He marched over some transparent decking, crossed a footbridge
and killed a pair of Grunts he found there, followed another ramp to
the floor below, tossed a grenade into a group of enemies that
patrolled the area, and hurried through a likely looking opening. There
was a roar of outrage as an Elite fired up at him from the platform
below while some Grunts barked and gibbered.
The Spartan used a grenade to grease the entire group and
hurried down to see what they had been guarding. He recognized the Map
Room the moment he saw the opening, and had just stepped inside when
another Elite opened up on him from across the way. A sustained burst
from his assault weapon was sufficient to drop the alien’s personal
shields, and he put the alien down with a stroke of his rifle butt.
“There!” Cortana said. “That holo panel should activate
the map.”
“Any idea how to activate it?”
“No,” she replied, her tone arch. “You’re the one
with the magic touch.”
The Master Chief took a couple of steps forward and
reached a hand toward the display. He seemed to know instinctively how
to activate the panel—it almost seemed hard-wired, like his
fight-or-flight response.
He banished the random thought and returned to the
mission. He slid his armored hand across the panel and a glowing
wire-frame map appeared and seemed to float in front of him.
“Analyzing,” the AI said. “Halo’s Control Center is”—she highlighted a
section of the map in his HUD—“there. Interesting. It looks like
some sort of shrine.”
She opened a channel.“Cortana to Captain Keyes.”
There was silence for a moment, followed by Foehammer’s
voice.“The Captain has dropped out of contact, Cortana. His ship may
be out of range or may be having equipment problems.”
“Keep trying,”the AI replied.“Let me know when
you reestablish contact. And then tell him that the Master Chief and I
have determined the location of the Control Center.”
Captain Jacob Keyes tried to ignore the
incessant slam-bam beat of the Sergeant’s colonial flip music
that pounded over the intercom as the pilot lowered the dropship into a
swamp. “Everything looks clear—I’m bringing her down.”
The Pelican’s jets whipped the water into a frenzy as the
ramp was lowered and the cargo compartment was flooded with thick,
humid air. It carried the nauseating stench of rotting vegetation, the
foul odor of swamp gas, and the slight metallic tang typical of Halo
itself. Somebody said,“Pe-euu,” but was drowned out by Staff
Sergeant Avery Johnson, who shouted, “Go! Go! Go!” and the Marines
jumped down into the calf-deep water.
Somebody said, “Damn!” as water splashed up their legs.
Johnson said, “Stow it, Marine,” as Keyes cleared the ramp. Freed from
its burden, the dropship fired its jets, powered its way up out of the
glutinous air, and started to climb.
Keyes consulted a small hand comp. “The structure we’re
looking for is supposed to be over there .”
Johnson eyed the pointing finger and nodded. “Okay, you
slackers, you heard the Captain. Bisenti, take point.”
Private Wallace A. Jenkins was toward the rear, which was
almost as bad as point, but not quite. The ebony water topped his
boots, seeped down through his socks, and found his feet. It wasn’t all
that cold—for which the Marine was thankful. Like the rest of the team,
he knew that the ostensible purpose of the mission was to locate and
recover a cache of Covenant weapons. Still an important thing to do,
even in the wake of Lieutenant McKay’s efforts to raid the Pillar of
Autumn, and the fact that Alpha Base had been strengthened as a
result.
It was a crap detail, however—especially slogging through
this dark, mist-clogged swamp.
Something loomed ahead. Bisenti hoped it was
what the Old Man had dragged their sorry butts into this swamp for. He
hissed the word back to the topkick. “I see a building, Sarge.”
There was the sound of water splashing as Johnson came
forward. “Stay close, Jenkins. Mendoza, move it up! Wait here for the
Captain and his squad. And get your asses inside.”
Jenkins saw Keyes materialize out of the mist. “Sir!”
Johnson saw Keyes, nodded, and said, “Okay, let’s move!”
Keyes followed the Marines inside. The entire situation
was different from what he had expected. Unlike the Covenant, who
killed nearly all of the humans they got their hands on, the Marines
continued to take prisoners. One such individual, a rather
disillusioned Elite named ’Qualomee, had been interrogated for hours.
He swore that he’d been part of a group of Covenant soldiers who had
delivered a shipment of arms to the forces guarding this very structure.
But there was no sign of a Covenant security team, or the
weapons ’Qualomee claimed to have delivered, which meant that he had
probably been lying. Something the Captain planned to discuss with the
alien upon his return to Alpha Base. In the meantime, Keyes planned to
push deeper into the complex and see what he could find. The second
squad, under Corporal Lovik, was left to cover their line of retreat,
while the rest of the team continued to press ahead.
Ten minutes had passed when a Marine said, “Whoa! Look at
that. Something scrambled his insides.”
Johnson looked down at a dead Elite. Other Covenant bodies
lay sprawled around the area as well. Alien blood slicked the walls and
floor. Keyes approached from behind. “What do we have, Sergeant?”
“Looks like a Covenant patrol,” the noncom answered.
“Badass Special Ops types—the ones in the black armor. All KIA.”
Keyes eyed the body and looked up at Bisenti. “Real
pretty. Friend of yours?”
The Marine shook his head. “No, we just met.”
It took another five minutes to reach a large metal door.
It was locked and no amount of fooling around with the keypad seemed
likely to open it. “Right,” Keyes said, as he examined the obstacle.
“Let’s get this door open.”
“I’ll try, sir,” the Tech Specialist, Kappus, replied,
“but it looks like those Covenant worked pretty hard to lock it down.”
“Just do it, son.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kappus pulled the spoofer out of his pack, attached the
box to the door, and pressed a series of keys. Outside of the gentle
beeping noises that the black box made as it tapped into the door’s
electronics and ran through thousands of combinations per second, there
was nothing but silence.
The Marines shifted nervously, unwilling to relax. Sweat
dripped down Kappus’ forehead.
They held position for another few minutes, until Kappus
nodded with satisfaction and opened the door. The Marines drifted
inside. The electronics expert raised a hand. “Sarge! Listen!”
All of the Marines listened. They heard a soft, liquid,
sort of slithery sound. It seemed to come from every direction at once.
Jenkins felt jumpy but it was Mendoza who actually put it
into words. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . .”
“You’ve always got a bad feeling,” the Sergeant put in,
and was about to chew Mendoza out when a message came in over the team
freq. It sounded like the second squad was in some sort of trouble, but
Corporal Lovik wasn’t very coherent, so it was difficult to be sure.
In fact, it almost sounded like screaming.
Keyes responded. “Corporal? Do you copy? Over.”
There was no reply.
Johnson turned to Mendoza. “Get your ass back up to second
squad’s position and find out what the hell is going on.”
“But Sarge—”
“I don’t have time for your lip, soldier! I gave you an
order.”
“What is that?” Jenkins asked nervously, his eyes
darting from one shadow to the next.
“Where’s that coming from, Mendoza?” Sergeant Johnson
demanded, the second squad momentarily forgotten.
“There!” Mendoza proclaimed, pointing to a clutch of
shadows as the Marines heard the muffled sound of metal striking metal.
There was a cry of pain as something landed on Private
Riley’s back, drove a needlelike penetrator through his skin, and aimed
it down toward his spine. He dropped his weapon, tried to grab the
thing that rode his shoulders, and thrashed back and forth.
“Hold still! Hold still!” Kappus yelled, grabbing onto one
of the bulbous creatures and trying to pull it off his friend.
Avery Johnson had been in the Corps for most
of his adult life, and had logged more time humping across the surface
of alien planets than any of the other men in the room combined. Along
the way, he’d seen a lot of strange stuff—but nothing like what
skittered across the metal floor and attached itself to one of his men.
He saw a dozen white blobs, each maybe half a meter in
diameter, and equipped with a cluster of writhing tentacles. They
skittered and bobbed in a loose formation, then sprang in his
direction. The tentacles propelled them several meters in a single
leap. He fired a short, almost panicked burst. “Let ’em have it!”
Keyes, pistol in hand, fired at one of the
creatures. It popped like a balloon, with surprising force. The tiny
explosion caused three more to burst into feathery shards, but it
seemed as if dozens more took their place.
Keyes realized that Private Kappus had been correct. The
Covenant had locked the door for a reason, and this was it. But
maybe, just maybe, they could pull back and close the blobs inside
again. “Sergeant, we’re surrounded.”
But Johnson’s attention was elsewhere. “God damn it,
Jenkins, fire your weapon !”
Jenkins, his face tight with fear, clutched
his assault rifle with white-knuckled hands. It seemed like the little
things were boiling from thin air. “There’s too many!”
The Sarge started to bellow a reply, but it was as if a
floodgate had opened somewhere, as a new wave of the obscene, podlike
creatures rolled out of the darkness to overwhelm the humans. Marines
fired in every direction. Many lost their balance as two, three, or
even four of the aliens managed to get a grip on them and pull them
down.
Jenkins began to back away as fear overwhelmed him.
Keyes threw up his hands with the intention
of protecting his face and accidentally caught one of the monsters. He
squeezed and felt the creature explode. The little bastards were
fragile—but there were so damned many of them. Another attacker
latched onto his shoulder. The Captain screamed as a razor-sharp
tentacle plunged through both his uniform and his skin, wriggled under
the surface of his skin, and tapped his spinal cord. There was an
explosion of pain so intense that he blacked out, only to be brought
back to consciousness by chemicals the thing had injected into his
bloodstream.
He tried to yell for help, but couldn’t make a sound. His
heart raced as his extremities grew numb, one by one. His lungs felt
heavy.
As Keyes began to lose touch with the rest of his body,
something foul entered it, pushing his consciousness down and back even
as it claimed most of his cerebral cortex, polluting his brain with a
hunger so base that it would have made him vomit, had he any possession
of his own body.
This hunger was more than a desire for food, for sex, or
for power. This hunger was a vacuum, an endless vortex that consumed
every impulse, every thought, every measure of who and what he was.
He tried to scream, but it wouldn’t let him.
The sight of Captain Keyes struggling with
this new adversary had frozen Private Jenkins in place. When the
Captain’s struggles ceased, however, he snapped into motion. He turned
to flee, and felt one of the little beasts slam into his back. Pain
knifed into him as the creature inserted its tendrils into his body,
then subsided.
His vision clouded, then cleared. He had some sensation
that time had passed, but he had no way to tell how long he’d been out.
Private Jenkins, Wallace A., found himself in a strange half-world.
Due to some fluke, some random toss of the galactic dice,
the mind that invaded his body had been severely weakened
during
the long period of hibernation, and while strong enough to take over
and begin the work necessary to create a combat form, it lacked the
force and clarity required to completely dominate its host the way it
was supposed to.
Jenkins, helpless to do anything about it, was fully aware
of the invading intelligence as it seized control of his musculature,
jerked at his limbs like a child experimenting with a new toy, and
marched him around in circles even as his friends, who no longer had
any consciousness at all, were completely destroyed. He screamed, and
the air left his lungs, but no one turned to look.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Seventh Cycle, 49 units (Covenant Battle Calendar) /
Aboard Cruiser, Truth and Reconciliation, above Halo’s surface.
Zuka ’Zamamee had entered theTruth and Reconciliation
via the ship’s main gravity lift, taken a secondary lift up to the
command deck, suffered through the usual security check, and been shown
into the Council Chambers in record time. All of which seemed quite
appropriate until he entered the room to find that only a single light
was on, and it was focused on the spot where visitors were expected to
stand. There was no sign of Soha ’Rolamee, of the Prophet, or of the
Elite to whom he had never been introduced.
Perhaps the Council had been delayed, there had been a
scheduling error, or some other kind of bureaucratic error. But then,
why had he been admitted? Surely the staff knew whether the Council was
in session or not.
The Elite was about to turn and leave when a second spot
came on and ’Rolamee’s head appeared. Not attached to his body the way
it should have been, but sitting on a gore-drenched pedestal, staring
vacantly into space.
An image of the Prophet appeared and seemed to float in
midair. He gestured toward the head. “Sad, isn’t it? But discipline
must be maintained.”
The Prophet made what ’Zamamee took to be a mystical
gesture. “Halo is old, extremely old, as are its secrets.
Blessings, really, which the Forerunners left for us to find, knowing
that we would put them to good use.
“But nothing comes without risk, and there are dangers
here as well, things which ’Rolamee promised to keep contained, but
failed to do so.
“Now, with the humans blundering about, his failures have
been amplified. Doors have been opened, powers have been released, and
it is now necessary to shift a considerable amount of our strength to
the process of regaining control. Do you understand?”
’Zamamee didn’t understand, not in the least, but had no
intention of admitting that. Instead he said, “Yes, Excellency.”
“Good,” the Prophet said, “and that brings us to you
. Not only were your most recent efforts to trap the marauding human a
total failure, he went on to neutralize part of Halo’s security system,
found his way in to the Silent Cartographer, and will no doubt use it
to cause us even more trouble.
“So,” the Prophet added conversationally, “I thought it
might be instructive for you to come here, take a good look at the
price of failure, and decide whether you can afford the cost. Do you
understand me?”
’Zamamee gulped, then nodded. “Yes, Excellency, I do.”
“Good,” the Prophet said smoothly. “I’m gratified to hear
it. Now, having failed once, and having determined never to do so
again, tell me how you plan to proceed. If I like the answer, if
you can convince me that it will work, then you will leave this room
alive.”
Fortunately ’Zamamee not only had a plan, but an exciting
plan, and he was able to convince the Prophet that it would work.
But later, after the Elite had rejoined Yayap, and the two
of them were leaving the ship, it wasn’t a vision of glory that he saw,
but ’Rolamee’s vacant stare.
The Master Chief paused just inside the
hatch to ensure that he wasn’t being followed, checked to make certain
that his weapons were loaded, and wondered where the hell he was. Based
on instructions from Cortana, Foehammer had dropped her Pelican through
a hole in Halo’s surface, flown the dropship through one of the
enormous capillary-like maintenance tunnels that crisscrossed just
below the ring world’s skin, and dropped the unlikely twosome off on a
cavernous landing platform. From there the Spartan felt his way through
a maze of passageways and rooms, many of which had been defended.
Now, as he walked the length of another corridor, he
wondered what lay beyond the hatch ahead.
The answer was quite unexpected. The door opened to admit
cold air and a sudden flurry of snowflakes. It appeared as if he was
about to step out onto the deck of a footbridge. A barrier blocked some
of the view, but the noncom could see traction beams that served in
place of suspension cables, and the gray cliff face beyond.
“The weather patterns here seem natural, not artificial,”
Cortana observed thoughtfully. “I wonder if the ring’s environmental
systems are malfunctioning—or if the designers wanted this
particular installation to have inclement weather.”
“Maybe this isn’t even inclement weather to them,” he said.
The Chief, who wasn’t sure it made a hell of a lot of
difference, not to him anyway, stuck his nose around the edge
of
the hatch to see what might be waiting for them.
The answer was a Shade, with a Grunt seated at the
controls. A quick glance to the right confirmed the presence of a
second
energy weapon, this one unmanned.
Then, just as he was about to make his move, a Pelican
appeared off to the left, roared over the bridge, and settled into the
valley below. There was a squawk of static, followed by a grim-sounding
male voice.
“This is Fire Team Zulu requesting immediate assistance
from any USNC forces. Does anyone copy? Over.”
The AI recognized the call sign as belonging to one of the
units operating out of Alpha Base and made her reply.“Cortana to
Fire Team Zulu. I read you. Hold position. We’re on the way.”
“Roger that,”the voice replied.“Make it quick.”
So much for the element of surprise, he thought.
The
Spartan stepped out of the hatch, shot the Grunt in the head, and
hurried to take the alien’s place on the Shade. He could hear the
commotion the sudden attack had caused and knew he had only seconds to
bring the barrel around.
He swiveled the weapon into position, saw the sight glow
red, and pulled the trigger. A Grunt and a Jackal were snatched off
their feet as the ravening energy bolts consumed not only them, but a
chunk of the bridge as well. All the rest of the enemy forces seemed to
melt back into the woodwork.
Then, with no clear targets left in sight, he took a
moment to inspect the bridge. It appeared to have been built for use by
pedestrians rather than vehicles, had two levels, and was held aloft by
the traction beams he had observed earlier. Snow swirled down from
above, hissed when it hit the glowing cables, then ceased to exist.
There was movement farther down the bridge deck, which he
rewarded with a steady stream of glowing energy. He used the plasma
like water from a hose, squirting the deadly fire into every nook and
cranny he could find, thereby clearing the way.
Then, satisfied that he had nailed all the obvious
targets, the Spartan jumped to the deck. The bridge was large enough
that it featured a variety of islands, turn-outs, and pass-throughs,
all of which could be used for cover. That cut two ways, of
course—meaning that the Covenant had plenty of places to hide.
Moving from one bit of protection to the next, he fought
his way across the span, dropping down to the lower level to deal with
Covenant forces there, then resurfacing at the far end, where he
spotted an Elite armed with an energy blade. The Elite ducked behind a
wall.
The Chief saw no reason to close with such a dangerous
opponent if it could be avoided, and tossed a plasma grenade over the
wall. He heard the startled reaction as the explosive device latched
onto the Elite’s armor and refused to let go. The alien emerged from
hiding, and vanished in a flash of light.
Thankful to put the bridge behind him, the Chief activated
the hatch, made his way through the mazelike room beyond, and entered a
lift. It dropped for a long time before coming to a relatively smooth
stop and allowing him to exit. A short passageway took him to a hatch
and the battle that raged beyond.
As the door opened the Master Chief looked up, saw the
bridge directly above, and had a good idea where he was. Then, looking
down, he saw a snow-covered valley, punctuated by groups of boulders,
and the occasional stand of trees.
Judging from the fact that most of the Covenant fire was
directed toward the corner of the valley off to his left, the Spartan
assumed that at least part of Fire Team Zulu was trapped there. They
were under fire from at least two Shades and a Ghost, but putting up a
good fight nonetheless.
He knew that the heavy weapons offered the greatest danger
to the Marines. He sprinted from the protection of the tunnel, paused
to shoot the nearest gunner with his pistol, then headed toward the
dead Grunt’s Shade. He could feel the heat radiating off the weapon’s
barrel as he jerked the corpse out of the seat and took his place
behind the controls. There were plenty of targets, a rather busy Ghost
primary among them, so the Chief decided to tackle that first. A couple
of bursts were sufficient to get the pilot’s attention and bring him
into range.
Both the human and the Elite opened fire at the same
moment, their reciprocal fire drawing straight lines back and forth,
but the Shade won out. The attack vehicle shuddered, skittered
sideways, and blew up.
But there was no opportunity to celebrate as a Wraith
mortar tank turned its attention to that corner of the valley, lobbed
cometlike energy bombs high into the air, and started to walk them
toward the Marines.
The Spartan sent a stream of energy bolts toward the tank,
but the range was too great, and the fire couldn’t penetrate the
monster’s armor.
Convinced that he would have to find some other way to
deal with the tank, the Chief decided to bail out, and was twenty
meters away when one of the bombs scored a direct hit on the Shade he
had just occupied.
The Marines saw him coming and took heart from his sudden
appearance on the scene. A Corporal tossed him a weak grin, and
whooped, “The cavalry has arrived!”
“We can sure use your help—that Shade has us pinned,”
another Marine chimed in.
The soldier pointed and the Spartan saw that the Covenant
had dropped a Shade onto the top of a huge rock overlooking the valley.
The elevation allowed the weapon to command half the depression and
even as the Chief looked, the gunner continued to pound the area where
Fire Team Zulu had taken refuge.
The Marines’ Warthog had flipped, spilling supplies out
onto the ground. The Master Chief paused to grab a rocket launcher, but
knew the range was extreme, and that it would pay to get closer.
So he slung the launcher across his back, checked the load
on his assault weapon, and moved into the trees. A party of Grunts made
a run at the Marines, and were pushed back even as the Spartan spotted
a likely looking tree trunk. He moved up, killed the Jackal that lurked
behind the tree cover, then brought the launcher up to his shoulder.
The Shade winked blue light as he peered through the sight, increased
the magnification, and saw the gun leap toward him. Then, careful to
hold the tube steady, he fired.
There was an explosion on top of the rock, and the Shade
toppled off the side of a cliff.
The Marines cheered, but the Master Chief had already
shifted priorities. He ran for the ’Hog.
A mortar bomb exploded behind him and blew the tree cover
he’d just vacated into splinters. A Marine screamed as a meter-long
shard of wood penetrated his abdomen and nailed him to the ground.
The Spartan grabbed hold of the Warthog’s bumper, then
used his armor’s strength enhancements to flip it back onto its tires.
One Marine jumped aboard and manned the LAAG, and another jumped into
the passenger seat.
Snow sprayed out from behind both of the rear tires as the
Spartan put his foot down, felt the ’Hog break loose, and steered into
the skid.
The sudden movement gave their position away to the
Wraith. It belched, and a comet arced their way and slid sideways
across the center of the valley as if to block the humans from reaching
the other end.
The Spartan saw the fireball, raced to pass under it, and
heard the LAAG open up as the range to the Wraith began to close.
But there was an infantry screen to penetrate before they
could dance with the tank, and both the LAAG gunner and the Marine in
the passenger seat were forced to deal with a screen comprised of
Elites, Jackals, and Grunts as the Chief slammed on the brakes, backed
out of a crossfire, and turned to provide them with a better angle.
The M41 roared as it sent hundreds of rounds downrange,
plucked Grunts like flowers, and hurled them back into the bloodied
snow.
The Marine in the passenger seat yelled, “Youw ant
me? You want some of this? Come and get it!” as he emptied a
clip
into an Elite. The eight-foot-tall warrior staggered under the impact
and fell over backward. He wasn’t dead, however, not yet, not until the
front of the Warthog sucked him under and spit chunks out the back.
Then they were through the screen, and more important,
inside the dead area where the Wraith couldn’t fire mortar bombs
without risking dropping them on itself. That was the key, the factor
that made the attack possible. The Chief braked on a patch of ice, and
felt the ’Hog start to slide. “Hit him!” he ordered.
The gunner, who couldn’t possibly miss at that range,
opened fire. There was an earsplitting roar as large-caliber rounds
pounded the side of the tank. Some glanced off, others shattered, but
none of them managed to penetrate the Wraith’s thick armor.
“Watch out!” the Marine in the passenger seat exclaimed.
“The bastard is trying to ram!”
The Spartan, who had just managed to bring the Warthog to
a stop, saw that the private was correct. The tank surged forward, and
was just about to crush the LRV, when the Master Chief slammed the
lighter vehicle into reverse. All four wheels spun as the ’Hog backed
away, guns blazing, suddenly on the defensive.
Then, having opened what he hoped was a sufficient gap,
the Spartan braked. He slammed the shifter forward and swung the wheel
to the right. The vehicles were so close as they passed each other that
the Wraith scraped the ’Hog’s flank, hard enough to tip the left-side
wheels off the snowy ground. They hit with a thump, the LAAG came
off-target, and the gunner brought it to bear again. “Hammer it from
behind!” the Chief yelled. “It might be weaker there!”
The gunner obeyed and was rewarded with a sharp explosion.
A thousand pieces of metal flew up into the air, turned lazy circles,
and drifted downward. Black smoke boiled up out of the wreckage. What
remained of the tank slammed into a boulder, and the battle was over.
The valley belonged to Fire Team Zulu.
Cortana’s intelligence revealed there were other valleys,
all connected by one means or another, and he would have to negotiate
every one of them in order to reach his objective. A drop-off prevented
the Spartan from taking the Warthog any farther.
He bailed out and made his way through the snow. A cold
wind whistled past his visor and snowflakes dusted the surface of his
armor. “Damn,” one of the Marines remarked, “I forgot my mittens.”
“Stow the BS,” a sergeant growled. “Watch those trees . .
. this ain’t no picnic.”
Strangely, the Chief felt very calm. Right then, right
there, he was home.
It was sunny, only a few clouds dotted the
sky, and the strangely uniform hills piled one on top of the other as
if eager to reach the low-lying mountain ridge beyond. It had been dry
in this region, which meant that the vehicles sent wisps of dust into
the air as they climbed up off the plain, and made for the heights
above.
The patrol consisted of two captured Ghosts, or “Gees” as
some of the Marines called them, plus two of the Warthogs that had
survived the long, arduous journey back from the Pillar of Autumn.
Various combinations had been tried, but McKay liked the
two-plus-two configuration best, combining as it did the best features
of both designs. The alien attack craft were faster than the
LRVs, which meant they could cover a lot of ground in a short period of
time, thereby reducing the wear and tear on both the four-wheelers and
the troops who rode them. But the Ghosts couldn’t handle broken ground
the way the Warthogs could and, not having anything like the M41 LAAG,
they were vulnerable to Banshees.
Therefore, if an enemy aircraft appeared, it was standard
procedure for the Gees to scuttle in under the protection offered by
the three-barreled weapons mounted on the ’Hogs. Each Warthog carried a
passenger armed with a rocket launcher as well, which provided the
Marines with even more antiaircraft capability.
Of course the real stick, the one the Covenant had
learned to respect, was a Pelican full of Helljumpers sitting on a pad
back at Alpha Base ready to launch on two minutes’ notice. It could put
as many as fifteen ODST Marines on any point inside the designated
patrol area within ten minutes. No small threat.
The purpose of the patrols was to monitor a circle ten
kilometers in diameter with Alpha Base at its center. Now that the
Marines had taken the butte and fortified it, they had to hold onto the
high keep. And while there had been some air raids, and a couple of
ground-based probes, the Covenant had yet to launch an all-out attack,
something that bothered both Silva and McKay. It was almost as if the
aliens were content to let the humans sit there while they tended to
something else—although neither one of the officers could imagine what
the something else could be.
That didn’t mean a complete cessation of activity; far
from it, since the enemy had taken to watching the humans, making note
of which routes they took, and setting ambushes along the way.
McKay tried to ensure that she never followed the same
path twice in a row, but often the terrain dictated where the vehicles
could go, and that meant that there were certain river crossings, rocky
defiles, and mountain passes where the enemy could safely lie in
wait—assuming they had the patience for it.
As the patrol approached one such spot, a pass between two
of the larger hills, the Marine on the lead Ghost called in.“Red
Three to Red One, over.”
McKay, who had decided to ride shotgun in the first ’Hog,
keyed her mike. “This is One. Go . . . Over.”
“I see a Ghost, Lieutenant. It’s on its side—like it
crashed or something. Over.”
“Stay clear of it,” the officer advised. “It could be some
sort of trap. Hold on, we’ll be there shortly. Over.”
“Affirmative. Red Three, out.”
The Warthog bounced over some rocks, growled as the driver
downshifted, and entered an open area that led up to the pass. “Red One
to team: We’ll leave the vehicles here and proceed on foot. Gunners,
stay on those weapons, and split the sky. The last thing we need is to
get bounced by a Banshee. Ghost Two, keep an eye on the back door.
Over.”
There was a series of double-clicks by way of
acknowledgment as McKay took the Warthog’s rocket launcher, jumped to
the ground, and followed her driver up the path. A scorched rock, and
what might have been a patch of dried blood, served as reminder of the
patrol that had been ambushed there not long ago.
The sun beat down on the officer’s back, the air was hot
and still, and gravel crunched under her boots. The hill could have
been on Earth, up in the Cascade Mountains. McKay wished that it were.
Yayap lay next to a pile of wreckage and
waited to die. Like most of ’Zamamee’s ideas, this one was totally
insane.
After failing to find and kill the armored human, ’Zamamee
had concluded that the elusive alien must be on top of the recently
captured butte. Or, if not on the butte, then coming and going
from the butte, which was the only base the humans had established. The
butte was a strong point that the Council of Masters would very much
like to take back.
The only problem was that ’Zamamee had no way to know when
the human was there, and when he wasn’t, because while taking the butte
would be something of a coup, doing so without killing the human might
or might not be sufficient to keep his head on his shoulders.
So, having given the problem extensive thought, and aware
of the fact that humans did take prisoners, the Elite came up
with the idea of putting a spy on top of the butte, someone who could
send a signal when the target was in residence, thereby triggering a
raid.
But who to send? Not him, since it would be his
role to lead the attack, and not some other Elite, because they were
deemed too valuable for such a dangerous scheme—nor could they be
trusted not to steal the glory of the kill—especially given the
increased demands associated with countering the mysterious “powers” to
which the Prophet had referred.
That suggested a lower ranking member of the Covenant
forces, but someone ’Zamamee could trust. Which was why Yayap had been
equipped with an appropriate cover story, enthusiastically beaten up,
and laid out next to a wrecked Ghost which one of the transports had
dropped in during the hours of darkness.
The final scene had been established just prior to dawn,
which meant that the Grunt had been there for nearly five full units.
Unable to do more than flex his muscles lest he unknowingly give
himself away, with nothing to drink, and subject to his own
considerable fears, Yayap silently cursed the day he “rescued”
’Zamamee. Better to have died in the crash of the human vessel.
Yes, ’Zamamee swore that the humans took prisoners, but
what did he know? Thus far, Yayap had been unimpressed with
’Zamamee’s plans. Yayap had seen Marines shoot more than one downed
warrior during the battle on the Pillar of Autumn, and saw no
reason why they would spare him. And what if they discovered the
signaling device that had been incorporated into his breathing
apparatus?
No, the odds were against him, and the more he thought
about it, the more the Grunt realized that he should have run. Taken
what he could, headed out onto the surface of Halo, sought shelter with
the other deserters who lurked there. The dignity of his eventual
suffocation when his methane bladder finally emptied had considerable
appeal.
It was too late for that now. Yayap heard the crunch of
gravel, smelled the musky, unpleasant meat odor he had come to
associate with humans, and felt a shadow fall over his face. It seemed
best to appear unconscious, so that’s exactly what he did. He fainted.
“It sounds like he’s alive,” McKay observed,
as the Grunt took a breath, and the methane rig wheezed in response.
“Check for booby traps, free that leg, and search him. I don’t see much
blood, but if he’s leaking, plug the holes.”
Yayap didn’t understand a word the human
said, but the tone was even, and no one put a gun to his head. Maybe,
just maybe, he was going to survive.
Five minutes later the Grunt had been hog-tied, thrown
into the back of an LRV, and left to bounce around back there.
McKay recovered two saddlebag-style
containers from the wrecked Ghost, one of which contained some clothes
wrapped around what she took to be rations. She sniffed the tube of
bubbling paste and winced. It smelled like old socks wrapped in rotting
cheese.
She stuffed the alien food back into its pack, and
investigated the second. It held a pair of Covenant memory blocks,
brick-shaped chunks of some superdense material that could store who
knew how many gazillion bytes of information. Probably a kilo’s worth
of BS? Yes, probably, but it wasn’t for her to judge. Wellsley loved
that kind of crap, and would have fun trying to sort it out.
If they were lucky, it would distract him from quoting the
Duke of Wellington for a few precious minutes. That alone was almost
worth recovering the devices.
As the humans got back on their vehicles and
went up over the pass, ’Zamamee watched them from a carefully
camouflaged hiding spot on a neighboring hill. He felt a thrill of
vindication. The first part of his plan was a success. The second
phase—and his inevitable victory—would follow.
Finally, after battling his way through
wintry valleys twisting passageways, and mazelike rooms, the Master
Chief opened still another hatch and peered outside. He saw snow, the
base of a large construct, and a Ghost which patrolled the area beyond.
“The entrance to the Control Center is located at the top
of the pyramid,” Cortana said. “Let’s get up there. We should
commandeer one of those Ghosts, we’re going to need the firepower.”
The Spartan believed her, but as he stepped through the
hatch, and more Ghosts appeared and began shooting at him, none of the
pilots seemed ready to surrender their machines. He destroyed one of
them with a long, controlled burst from his assault rifle, then
scurried up through a jumble of boulders, and perched on one of the
pyramid’s long, sloping skirts.
From his new position he saw a Hunter patrolling the area
above, and wished he had a rocket launcher. He might as well have
wished for a Scorpion tank.
The pyramid’s support structures offered some cover, which
allowed the Master Chief to climb unobserved, and toss a fragmentation
grenade at the monster above. It went off with a loud craack! ,
peppered the alien’s armor with shrapnel, and generally pissed him off.
Alerted now, the Hunter fired his fuel rod cannon, just as
the Chief hurled a plasma grenade and hoped his aim was better this
time. The energy pulse missed, the grenade didn’t, and there was a
flash of light as the Covenant warrior went down.
It was tempting to run for the top, but if there was one
lesson the Spartan had learned over the last few days it was that
Hunters traveled in pairs.
Rather than leave such a potent enemy guarding his six,
the Master Chief climbed up to the first level, ducked around the wall
that separated one side of the pyramid from the next, and took a peek.
Sure enough, there was Hunter number two, gazing down-slope, unaware of
the fact that his bond brother was dead. The human put a burst into the
alien’s unprotected back. The spined warrior fell and slid, face first,
to the bottom of the structure.
The Chief worked his way farther up, zigzagging back and
forth across the front of the massive pyramid while an extremely
determined Banshee pilot tried to bag him from above, and all manner of
Grunts, Jackals, and Elites emerged to try and block his progress.
He took a deep breath, and continued his climb.
At the top of the pyramid, the Spartan
paused and allowed his long-suffering shield system to recharge. He
stepped over the fallen body of a Grunt, and loaded his last clip into
the assault rifle.
A huge door fronted the top level. There was no way to
tell what waited on the other side, but it wasn’t likely to be
friendly—a series of motion sensor traces ghosted at the edge of the
device’s range.
“What’s the plan?” Cortana inquired.
“Simple.” The Spartan took a deep breath, hit the switch,
spun on his heel, and ran.
It was about twenty meters back to the Shade, and the
Chief covered the distance in seconds. Once at the controls he swiveled
the barrel around just in time to see the doors part and a horde of
Covenant soldiers pour out.
The Shade was up to the job. Just as quickly as they
appeared, the aliens died.
Dismounting once again, the Spartan entered a large,
hangarlike space, took the time required to deal with stragglers, and
activated the next set of doors.
“Scanning,” Cortana said. “Covenant forces in the area
have been eliminated. Nicely done. Let’s move on to Halo’s Control
Center.”
He made his way through the doors and out onto an immense
platform. A gleaming reflective bridge, apparently without supports,
extended over a vast emptiness and ended in a circular walkway. In the
center of this walkway was a moving holographic model of the Threshold
system: a giant transparent image of the gas giant overhead, the small
gray moon Basis in orbit around it, and suspended between the two, the
tiny shining ring of Halo itself.
Outside of the walkway, stretching almost to the edges of
the enormous space, was another model of Halo, this one thousands of
feet across, displaying as it rotated a detailed map of the terrain on
its inner surface.
The span lacked any kind of railing, as if to remind those
who passed over it of the dangers attendant to the power they were
about to encounter. Or so it seemed to the Master Chief.
“This is it . . . Halo’s Control Center,” Cortana said as
the Master Chief approached a large panel. It was covered with glyphs,
all of which glowed as if lit from within, and went together to form
what looked like a piece of abstract art.
“That terminal,” the AI said. “Try there.”
The Spartan reached out to touch one of the symbols, then
stopped.
He felt Cortana’s presence dwindle in his mind as she
transmitted herself into the alien computer station. A moment later,
she appeared—giant-sized—over the control panel. Data scrolled across
her body, energy seemed to radiate out of her holographic skin, and her
features were alight with pleasure.
Her “skin” shifted from blue to purple, to red, then
cycled back as she gazed around the room and sighed.
“Are you all right?” the Master Chief inquired. He hadn’t
expected this.
“Never been better!” Cortana affirmed. “You can’t imagine
the wealth of information—so much, so fast. It’s glorious!”
“So,” the Master Chief asked, “what sort of weapon is it?”
The AI looked surprised. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s stay focused,” the Spartan responded. “Halo. How do
we use it against the Covenant?”
The image of Cortana frowned. Suddenly her voice was
filled with disdain. “This ring isn’t a cudgel, you barbarian, it’s
something else. Something much more important. The Covenant were right,
this ring—”
She paused, and her eyes moved back and forth as she
scanned the tidal wave of data she now accessed. A puzzled look flashed
across her face. “Forerunner,” she muttered. “Give me a moment to
access . . .”
A moment later, she began to speak, and her words rushed
out in a flood, as if the constant stream of new information was
sweeping her along.
“Yes, the Forerunners built this place, what they called a
fortress world, in order to—”
The Chief had never heard the AI talk like that before,
didn’t like being referred to as a “barbarian,” and was about to cut
her down to size when she spoke again. Plainly alarmed, her voice had a
hesitant quality. “No, that can’t be . . . Oh, those Covenant fools,
they must have known, there must have been signs.”
The Chief frowned. “Slow down. You’re losing me.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “The Covenant found
something, buried in this ring, something horrible. Now
they’re afraid.”
“Something buried?”
Cortana looked off into the distance as if she could
actually see Keyes. “Captain—we’ve got to stop the Captain. The weapons
cache he’s looking for, it’s not really—we can’t let him get inside.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no time!” Cortana said urgently. Her eyes were
neon pink and they focused on the Spartan like twin lasers. “I have to
remain here. Get out, find Keyes, stop him. Before it’s too late!”
SECTION IV
343 GUILTY SPARK
CHAPTER EIGHT
D+58:36:31 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Pelican
Echo 419, approaching Covenant arms cache.
Echo 419’s engines roared as the Pelican descended through
the darkness and rain into the swamp. The surrounding foliage whipped
back and forth in response to the sudden turbulence, the water beneath
the transport’s metal belly was pressed flat, and the stench of rotting
vegetation flooded the aircraft’s cargo compartment as the ramp
splashed into the evil-looking brew below.
Foehammer was at the controls and it was her voice that
came over the radio. “The last transmission from the Captain’s ship was
from this area. When you locate Captain Keyes, radio in and I’ll
come pick you up.”
The Master Chief stepped down off the ramp and immediately
found himself calf-deep in oily-looking water. “Be sure to bring me a
towel.”
The pilot laughed, fed more fuel to the engines, and the
ship pushed itself up out of the swamp. In the three hours since she
had plucked the Spartan off the top of the pyramid, he’d scarfed a
quick meal and a couple hours of sleep. Now, as Foehammer dropped her
passenger into the muck, she was glad to be an aviator. Ground-pounders
worked too damn hard.
Keyes floated in a vacuum. A gauzy white
haze clouded his vision, though he could occasionally make out images
in lightning-fast bursts—a nightmare tableau of misshapen bodies and
writhing tentacles. A muted gleam of light glinted from some highly
polished, engraved metal. In the distance, he could hear a droning
buzz. It had an odd, musical quality, like Gregorian chant slowed to a
fraction of its normal speed.
He realized with a start that the images were from his own
eyes. The knowledge brought back a flood of memory—of his own body. He
struggled, and realized in mounting horror that he could just barely
feel his own arms. They seemed softer somehow, as if filled with a
spongy, thick liquid.
He couldn’t move. His lungs itched, and the effort of
breathing hurt.
The strange droning chant suddenly sped into an insect
buzz, painfully echoing through his consciousness. There was something
. . . distant, something definitively other about the sound.
Without warning, a new image flashed across his mind, like
images on a video screen.
The sun was setting over the Pacific, and a trio of gulls
wheeled overhead. He smelled salt air, and felt gritty sand between his
toes.
He felt a sickening sensation, a feeling of indescribable
violation, and the comforting image vanished. He tried to remember what
he was seeing, but the memory faded like smoke. All he could feel now
was a sense of loss. Something had been taken from him . . . but what?
The insistent buzz returned, painfully loud now. He could
sense tendrils of awareness—hungry for data—wriggling through his
confused mind like diseased maggots. A host of new images filled him.
. . . the first time he killed another human being, during
the riots on Charybdis IX. He smelled blood, and his hands shook as he
holstered the pistol. He could feel the heat of the weapon’s barrel . .
.
. . . the pride he felt after graduating at the Academy,
then a hitch—as if a bad holorecord was being scrolled back—then a knot
in his gut. Fear that he wouldn’t be able to meet the Academy’s
standards . . .
. . . the sickening smell of lilacs and lilies as he stood
over his father’s coffin . . .
Keyes continued to float, mesmerized by the parade of
memories that began to pile on him, each one appearing faster than the
last. He drifted through the fog. He didn’t notice, or indeed care,
that as soon as the bursts of memory ended, they disappeared entirely.
The strange otherness receded from his awareness,
but not entirely. He could still sense the other probing him,
but
he ignored it. The next burst of memory passed . . . then another . . .
then another . . .
The Chief checked his threat indicator,
found nothing of concern, and allowed the swamp to close in around him.
“Make friends with your environment.” That’s what Chief Mendez had told
him many years ago—and the advice had served him well. By listening
to the constant patter of the rain, feeling the warm humid air
via his vents, and seeing the shapes natural to the swamp, the
Spartan would know what belonged and what didn’t. Knowledge that could
mean the difference between life and death.
Satisfied that he was attuned to the environment around
him, and hopeful of gaining a better vantage point, he climbed a slight
rise. The payoff was immediate.
The Pelican had gone in less than sixty meters from the
spot where Echo 419 had dropped him off—but the surrounding foliage was
so thick Foehammer had been unable to see the crash site from the air.
The Chief moved in to inspect the wreckage. Judging from
appearances, and the fact that there weren’t many bodies lying around,
the ship had crashed during takeoff, rather than on landing. The
impression was confirmed when he discovered that while they were
dressed in fatigues, all of the casualties wore Naval insignia.
That suggested that the dropship had landed successfully,
discharged all of its Marine passengers, and was in the process of
lifting off when a mechanical failure or enemy fire had brought the
aircraft down.
Satisfied that he had a basic understanding of what had
taken place, the Chief was about to leave when he spotted a shotgun
lying next to one of the bodies, decided it might come in handy, and
slipped the sling over his right shoulder.
He followed a trail of bootprints away from the Pelican
and toward the glow of portable work lights—the same kind of lights
he’d seen in the area around the Truth and Reconciliation. The
aliens were certainly industrious, especially when it came to stealing
everything that wasn’t nailed down.
As if to confirm his theory regarding Covenant activity in
the area, it wasn’t long before the Spartan came across a second
wreck, a Covenant dropship this time, bows down in the swamp muck.
Aside from swarms of mothlike insects and the distant chirp of swamp
birds, there were no signs of life.
Cargo containers were scattered all around the crash site,
which raised an interesting question. When the transport nosed in, were
the aliens trying to deliver something, weapons perhaps, or taking
material away? There was no way to be certain.
Whatever the case, there was a strong likelihood that
Keyes had been attracted to the lights, just as he had, followed them
to the crash site, and continued from there.
With that in mind, he swung past a tree that stood on
thick, spiderlike roots, followed a trail up over a rise, and spotted a
lone Jackal. Without hesitation, he snapped the assault rifle to his
shoulder and brought the alien down with a burst.
He crouched, waiting for the inevitable
counterattack—which never came. Curious. Given the lights, the crash
site, and the scattering of cargo modules, he would have expected to
run into more opposition.
A lot more.
So where were they? It didn’t make sense. Just one more
mystery to add to his growing supply.
The rain pattered against the surface of his armor, and
swamp water sloshed around his boots as the Master Chief pushed his way
through some foliage and suddenly came under fire. For one brief moment
it seemed as if his latest question had been answered, that Covenant
forces were still in the area, but the opposition soon proved to
be little more than a couple of hapless Jackals, who, upon hearing the
sound of gunfire, had come to investigate. As usual they came in low,
crouching behind their shields, so it was almost impossible to score a
hit from directly in front of them.
He shifted position, found a better angle, and fired. One
Jackal went down, but the other rolled, and that made it nearly
impossible to hit him. The Spartan held his fire, waited for the alien
to come to a stop, and cut him down.
He worked his way up the side of a steep slope, and Chief
spotted a Shade sited on top of the ridge. It commanded both slopes, or
would have, had someone been at the controls. He paused at the top of
the ridge and considered his options. He could jump on the Shade, hose
the ravine below, and thereby let everyone know that he had arrived, or
slip down the slope, and try to infiltrate the area more quietly.
The Chief settled on the second option, started down the
slope in front of him, and was soon wrapped in mist and moist
vegetation. Not too surprisingly, some red dots appeared on the
Spartan’s threat indicator. Rather than go around the enemy, and expose
his six, the Master Chief decided to seek them out. He slung the MA5B
and drew out the shotgun—better suited for close-up work. He pumped the
slide, flicked off the safety, and moved on.
Broad variegated leaves caressed his shoulders, vines
tugged at the barrel of the shotgun, and the thick half-rotten humus of
the jungle floor gave way under the Chief’s boots as he made his way
forward.
The Grunt perhaps heard a slight rustling, debated whether
to fire, and was still in the process of thinking it over when the butt
of the shotgun descended on his head. There was a solid thump!
as
the alien went down, followed by two more, as more methane breathers
rushed to investigate.
Satisfied with his progress so far, the Spartan paused to
listen. There was the gentle patter of rain on wide, welcoming leaves,
and the constant sound of his own breathing, but nothing more.
Confident that the immediate perimeter was clear, the
Master Chief turned his attention to the Forerunner complex that loomed
off to his right. Unlike the graceful spires of other installations,
this one appeared squat and vaguely arachnid.
He crept down onto the flat area immediately in front of
it. He decided that the entrance reminded him of a capital A, except
that the top was flat, and was bracketed by a pair of powerful
floodlights.
Was this what Keyes had been looking for? Something
caught his eye—a pair of twelve-gauge shotgun shells, and a carelessly
discarded protein bar wrapper, tossed near the entrance.
He must be getting closer.
Once through the door he came across a half dozen Covenant
bodies lying in a pool of commingled blood. Struck once again by the
absence of serious opposition, the Master Chief knelt just beyond the
perimeter established by the blood, and peered at the bodies.
Had the Marines killed them? No, judging from the nature
of their wounds it appeared as if the aliens had been hosed with
plasma
fire. Friendly fire perhaps? Humans armed with Covenant weapons? Maybe,
but neither explanation really seemed to fit.
Perplexed, he stood, took a long, slow look around, and
pushed deeper into the complex. In contrast with the swamp outside,
where the constant drip, drip, drip of the rain
served to provide a constant flow of sound, it was almost completely
silent within the embrace of the thick walls. The sudden sound of
machinery startled him, and he spun and brought the shotgun to bear.
Summoned by some unknown mechanism, a lift surfaced right
in front of him. With nowhere else to go, the Master Chief stepped
aboard.
As the platform carried him downward a group of
overlapping red blobs appeared on his threat indicator, and the Spartan
knew he was about to have company. There was a screech of tortured
metal as the lift came to a stop, but rather than rush him as he
expected them to, the blobs remained stationary.
They had heard the lift many times before, the Chief
reasoned, and figured it was loaded with a group of their friends. That
suggested Covenant, stupid Covenant.
His favorite kind, in fact—apart from the dead kind.
Careful to avoid the sort of noise that might give him
away, he completed a full circuit of the dimly lit room, and discovered
that the blobs were actually Grunts and Jackals, all of whom were
clustered around a hatch.
The Chief suppressed a grin, slung the shotgun, and
unlimbered the assault rifle.
Their punishment for not guarding the lift consisted of a
grenade, followed by forty-nine rounds of automatic fire, and a series
of shorter bursts to finish them off.
The hatch opened onto a large four- or five-story-high
room. The Master Chief found himself on a platform along with a couple
of unsuspecting Jackals. He immediately killed them, heard a reaction
from the floor below, and moved to the right. A quick peek revealed a
group of seven or eight Covenant, milling around as if waiting for
instructions.
The noncom dropped an M9 HE-DP calling card into their
midst, took a step back to avoid getting hit by the resulting
fragments, and heard a loud wham! as the grenade detonated.
There
were screams, followed by wild firing. The Spartan waited for the
volume of fire to drop off and moved forward again. A series of short
controlled bursts was sufficient to silence the last Covenant soldiers.
He jumped down off the platform to check the surrounding
area.
Still looking for clues as to where Keyes might have gone,
the Master Chief conducted a quick sweep of the room. It wasn’t long
before he picked up some plasma grenades, circled a cargo container,
and came across the bodies.
Two Marines, both killed by plasma fire, their weapons
missing.
He cursed under his breath. The fact that both dog tags
had been taken suggested that Keyes and his team had run into the
Covenant just as he had, taken casualties, and pushed on.
Certain he was on the right trail, the Spartan crossed the
troughlike depression that split the room in two, and was forced to
step over and around a scattering of Covenant corpses as he approached
the hatch. Once through the opening he negotiated his way through a
series of rooms, all empty, but painted with Covenant blood.
Finally, just as he was beginning to wonder if he should
turn back, he entered a room and found himself face-to-face with a
fear-crazed Marine. His eyes jerked from side to side, as if seeking
something hidden within the shadows, and his mouth was twisted into a
horrible grimace. There was no sign of the soldier’s assault weapon,
but he had a pistol, which he fired at a shadow in the corner. “Stay
back! Stay back! You’re not turning me into one of those things!”
The Master Chief raised a hand, palm out. “Put the weapon
down, Marine . . . we’re on the same side.”
But the Marine wasn’t having any of that, and pressed his
back against the solidity of the wall. “Get away from me! Don’t touch
me, you freak! I’ll die first!”
The pistol discharged. The Spartan felt the impact as the
12.7 mm slug rocked him back onto his heels, and decided that enough
was
enough.
Before the Marine had time to react, the Chief snatched
the M6D out of his hand. “I’ll take that,” he growled. The Marine
leaped to his feet, but the Chief planted his feet and gently but
firmly shoved the soldier back to the floor.
“Now,” he said, “where is Captain Keyes, and the rest of
your unit?”
The private turned fierce, his features contorted, spittle
flying from his lips. “Find your own hiding place!” he screamed. “The
monsters are everywhere! God, I can still hear them! Just leave me
alone.”
“What monsters?” the Spartan asked gently. “The
Covenant?”
“No! Not the Covenant. Them! ”
That was all the Spartan could get from the crazed Marine.
“The surface is back that way,” the Master Chief said, pointing toward
the door. “I suggest that you reload this weapon, quit wasting ammo,
and head topside. Once you get there hunker down and wait for help.
There’ll be a dust-off later on. Do you read me?”
The Private accepted the weapon, but continued to blather.
A moment later he curled into a fetal ball, whimpered, then fell
silent. The man would never make it out alone.
One thing was clear from the Marine’s ramblings. Assuming
that Keyes and his troops were still alive, they were in a heap of
trouble. That left the Chief with little choice; he had to put
the greatest number of lives first. The young soldier had clearly been
through the wringer—but he’d have to wait for help until the Master
Chief completed his mission.
Slowly, reluctantly, he turned to investigate the rest of
the room. The remains of a badly shattered ramp led up over a small
fire toward the walkway on the level above. He felt heat wash around
him as he stepped over a dead Elite, took comfort from the fact that
the body had been riddled with bullets, and made his way up onto a
circular gallery. From there, the Master Chief proceeded through a
series of doorways and mysteriously empty rooms, until he arrived at
the top of a ramp where a dead Marine and a large pool of blood caused
him to pause.
He had long ago learned to trust his instincts—and they
nagged at him now. Something felt wrong . It was quiet, with
only
a hollow booming sound to disturb the otherwise perfect silence. He was
close to something, he could feel it, but what?
The Chief descended the ramp. He arrived on the level spot
at the bottom, and saw the hatch to his left. Weapon at the ready, he
cautiously approached the metal barrier.
The door sensed his presence, slid open, and dumped a dead
Marine into his arms.
The Spartan felt his pulse quicken, as he bent slightly to
catch the body before it crashed into the ground. He held the MA5B
one-handed and covered the room beyond as best he could, searching for
a target. Nothing.
He stepped forward, then spun on his heel and pointed the
gun back the way he’d come.
Damn it, it felt like eyes bored into the back of his
head. Someone was watching him. He backed into the room, and the door
slid shut.
He lowered the body to the ground, then stepped away. The
toe of his boot hit some empty shell casings which rolled away. That’s
when he realized that there were thousands of empties—so many
that they very nearly carpeted the floor.
He noticed a Marine helmet, and bent to pick it up. A name
had been stenciled across the side. JENKINS.
A vid cam was attached, the kind worn by the typical
combat team so they could critique the mission when they returned to
base, feed data to the ghouls in Intelligence, and on occasions like
this one, provide investigators with information regarding the
circumstances surrounding their deaths.
The Spartan removed the camera’s memory chip, slotted the
device into one of the receptacles on his own helmet, and watched the
playback via a window on his HUD.
The picture was standard quality—which meant pretty awful.
The night-vision setting was active, so everything was a sickly green,
punctuated by white flares as the camera panned across a light source.
The picture bounced and jostled, and intermittent spots of
static marred the image. It was pretty routine stuff at first, starting
with the moment the doomed dropship touched down, followed by the trek
through the swamp, and their arrival in front of the A-shaped structure.
He spooled ahead, and the video became more ominous after
that, starting with the dead Elite, and growing even more uncomfortable
as the team opened the final door and went inside. Not just any
door, but the same door through which the Master Chief had passed only
minutes before, only to have a dead Marine fall into his arms.
He was tempted to kill the video, back his way through the
hatch, and scrub the mission, but he forced himself to continue
watching as one of the Marines said something about a “. . . bad
feeling.” A badly garbled radio transmission came in, odd rustling
noises were heard, a hatch gave way, and hundreds of fleshy balls
rolled, danced, and hopped into the room.
That was when the screaming started, when the Master Chief
heard Keyes say that they were “surrounded,” and saw the picture jerk
as something hit Jenkins from behind, and the video snapped to black.
For the first time since parting company with the AI back
in the Control Room, he wished that Cortana were with him. First,
because she might understand what the hell was going on, but also
because he had come to rely on her company, and suddenly felt very much
alone.
However, even as one aspect of the Spartan’s mind sought
comfort, another part had directed his body to back toward the hatch,
and was waiting to hear the telltale sound as it opened. But the door
didn’t
open, something which the Master Chief knew meant trouble. It caused a
rock to form at the bottom of his gut.
As he stood there, gripped by a growing sense of dread, he
saw a flash of white from the corner of his eye. He turned to face it,
and that was when he saw one, then five, twenty, fifty of the fleshy
blobs dribble into the room, pirouette on their tentacles, and dance
his way. His motion sensor painted a sudden blob of movement—speeding
closer by the second.
The Spartan fired at the ugly-looking creatures. Those
which were closest popped like air-filled balloons, but there were more,
many
more, and they rolled toward him over the floor and walls. The Spartan
opened up in earnest, the obscene-looking predators threw themselves
forward, and the battle was joined.
It was dark outside. Only one mission had
been scheduled for that particular night, and it had returned to the
butte at 02:36 arbitrary. That meant the Navy personnel assigned to the
Control Center didn’t have much to do, and were busy playing a round of
cards when the wall-mounted speakers burped static, and a desperate
voice was heard.“This is Charlie 2-1-7, repeat 217, to any UNSC
forces . . . Does anyone copy? Over.”
Com Tech First Class Mary Murphy glanced at the other two
members of her watch and frowned. “Has either one of you had previous
contact with Charlie 217?”
The techs looked at each other and shook their heads.
“I’ll check with Wellsley,” Cho said, as he turned toward a jury-rigged
monitor.
Murphy nodded and keyed the boom-style mike that extended
in front of her lips. “This is UNSC Combat Base Alpha. Over.”
“Thank God!”the voice said fervently.“We took a
hit after clearing the Autumn, put down in the boonies, and
managed to make some repairs. I’ve got wounded on board—and request
immediate clearance to land.”
Wellsley, who had been busy fighting a simulation of the
battle of Marathon, materialized on Cho’s screen. As usual, the image
that he chose to present was that of a stern-looking man with longish
hair, a prominent nose, and a high-collared coat. “Yes?”
“We have a Pelican, call sign Charlie 217, requesting an
emergency landing. None of us have dealt with him before.”
The AI took a fraction of a second to check the myriad of
data stored within his considerable memory and gave a curt nod. “There
was a unit designated as Charlie 217 on board the Autumn. Not
having heard from 217 since we abandoned ship, and not having received
any information to the contrary, I assumed the ship was lost. Ask the
pilot to provide his name, rank, and serial number.”
Murphy heard and nodded. “Sorry, Charlie, but we need some
information before we can clear you in. Please provide name, rank and
serial number. Over.”
The voice that came back sounded increasingly frustrated.“This
is First Lieutenant Rick Hale, serial number 876-544-321. Give me a
break, I need clearance now.Over. ”
Wellsley nodded. “The data matches . . . but how would
Hale know that Alpha Base even existed?”
“He could have picked up our radio traffic,” Cho offered.
“Maybe,” the AI agreed, “but let’s play it safe. I
recommend you bring the base to full alert, notify the Major, and send
the reaction force to Pad Three. You’ll need the crash team, the
emergency medical team, and some people from Intel all on deck. Hale
should be debriefed before he’s allowed to mix with base
personnel.”
The third tech, a Third Class Petty Officer named Pauley,
slapped the alarm button, and put out the necessary calls.
“Roger that,” Murphy said into her mike. “You are cleared
for Pad Three, repeat, Pad Three, which will be illuminated two minutes
from now. A medical team will meet your ship. Safe all weapons and cut
power the moment you touch down. Over.”
“No problem,” Hale replied gratefully. Then, a few
moments later,“I see your lights. We’re coming in. Over.”
The pilot keyed his mike off and turned to
his copilot. Bathed in the green glow produced by the ship’s instrument
panel, the Elite looked all the more alien. “So,” the human inquired,
“how did I do?”
“Extremely well,” Special Operations Officer Zuka ’Zamamee
said from behind the pilot’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
And with that ’Zamamee dropped what looked like a circle
of green light over Hale’s head, pulled the handles in opposite
directions, and buried the wire in the pilot’s throat. The human’s eyes
bulged, his hands plucked at the garrote, and his feet beat a tattoo
against the control pedals.
The Elite who occupied the copilot’s position had already
taken control of the Pelican and, thanks to hours of practice, could
fly the dropship extremely well.
’Zamamee waited until the kicking had stopped, released
the wire, and smelled something foul. That’s when the Elite realized
that Hale had soiled himself. He gave a grunt of disgust, and returned
to the Pelican’s cargo compartment. It was crammed with heavily armed
Elites, trained for infiltration. They carried camouflage generators,
along with their weapons. Their job was to take as many landing pads as
possible, and hold them until six dropships loaded with Grunts,
Jackals, and more Elites could land on the mesa.
The troops saw the officer appear and looked expectant.
“Proceed,” ’Zamamee said. “You know what to do.
Turn
on the stealth generators, check your weapons, and remember this
moment. Because this battle, this victory, will be woven
into your family’s battle poem, and sung by generations to come.
“The Prophets have blessed this mission, have blessed
you, and want every soldier to know that those who transcend the
physical
will be welcomed into paradise. Good luck.”
A blur of lights appeared out of the darkness, the
dropship shed altitude, and the warriors murmured their final
benedictions.
Like most AIs, Wellsley had a pronounced
tendency to spend more time thinking about what he didn’t have
rather than what he did, and sensors were at the very top of his list.
The sad truth was that while McKay and her company had recovered a
wealth of supplies from the Autumn, there had been insufficient
time to strip the ship of the electronics that would have given the AI
a real-time, all-weather picture of the surrounding air space. That
meant he was totally reliant on the data provided by remote ground
sensors which the patrols had planted here and there around the butte’s
ten-kilometer perimeter.
All of the feeds had been clear during the initial radio
contact with Charlie 217, but now, as the Pelican flared in to land,
the package in Sector Six started to deliver data. It claimed that six
heavy-duty heat signatures had just passed overhead, that whatever
produced them was fairly loud, and that they were inbound at a speed of
approximately 350 kph.
Wellsley reacted with the kind of speed that only a
computer is capable of—but the response was too late to prevent Charlie
217 from putting down. Even as the AI made a series of strongly worded
recommendations to his human superiors, the Pelican’s skids made
contact with Pad 3’s surface, thirty nearly invisible Elites thundered
down the ramp, and the men and women of Alpha Base soon found
themselves fighting for their lives.
One level down, locked into a room with
three other Grunts, Yayap heard the distant moan of an alarm, and
thought he knew why. ’Zamamee had been correct: The human who wore the
strange armor, and was believed to be responsible for more than a
thousand Covenant casualties, did frequent this place. Yayap
knew
that because he had seen the soldier more than six units before,
triggered the transmitter hidden inside his breathing apparatus, and
thereby set the raid in motion.
That was the good news. The bad news was that
’Zamamee’s quarry might very well have left the base during the
intervening period of time. If so, and the mission was categorized as a
failure, the Grunt had little doubt as to who would receive the blame.
But there was nothing Yayap could do but grip the crudely welded bars
with his hands, listen to the distant sounds of battle, and hope for
the best.
At this point, “the best” would likely be a quick,
painless death.
All the members of the crash team, half the
medics, and a third of the reaction team were already dead by the time
McKay had rolled out of her rack, scrambled into her clothes, and
grabbed her personal weapons. She followed the crowd up to the landing
area to find that a pitched battle was underway.
Energy bolts seemed to stutter out of nowhere, plasma
grenades materialized out of thin air, and throats were slit by
invisible knives. The landing party had been contained, but just
barely, and threatened to break out across the neighboring pads.
Silva was there, naked from the waist up, shouting orders
as he fired short bursts from an assault weapon. “Flood Pad Three with
fuel! But keep it inside the containment area. Do it now!”
It was a strange order, and civilians would have balked,
but the soldiers reacted with unquestioning obedience and a Naval
rating ran toward the Pad 3 refueling station. He flipped the safety
out of the way, and grabbed hold of the nozzle.
The air seemed to shimmer in the floodlit area off to the
sailor’s right, and Silva fired a full clip into what looked like empty
air. A commando Elite screamed, seemed to strobe on and off as his camo
generator took a direct hit, and folded at the waist.
Undeterred, and unaware of his close call with death, the
rating turned, gave the handgrip a healthy squeeze, and sent a steady
stream of liquid out onto the surface of Pad 3. A Covenant work crew
had been forced to build a curb around the area during the days
immediately after the butte had been taken. The purpose of the barrier
was to contain fuel spills, and it worked well, as the high-octane fuel
crept in around the Pelican’s skids and wet the area beyond.
“Get back!” Silva shouted, and rolled a fragmentation
grenade in under Charlie 217’s belly. There was an explosion followed
by a loud whump! as the fuel went up and the rating shut off the
hose.
The general effect was to turn those Elites who remained
on the pad into shimmering torches—screaming, dancing torches. The
response was immediate as the Marines opened fire, put the commandos
down, and were then forced to turn their efforts to fire fighting.
Charlie 217 was fully involved by that time, and shuddered as the fuel
in one of her tanks blew.
But there were other Pelicans to protect and while some
had lifted off, others remained on their pads.
Silva turned to McKay. “Show time,” the Major said, as
Wellsley spoke into his ear. “This was little more than a warm-up, no
pun intended. The real assault force is only five minutes out.
Six Covenant dropships, if Wellsley has it right. They can’t land here,
so they’ll put down out on the mesa somewhere. I’ll handle the pads—you
take the mesa.”
McKay nodded, said, “Yes, sir,” and spotted Sergeant
Lister and waved him over. The noncom had a squad of her Marines in
tow. “Round up the rest of my company, tell them to dig in up-spin of
the landing pads, and get ready to handle an attack from the mesa.
Let’s give the bastards a warm reception.”
Lister tossed a glance at the raging fires and grinned at
McKay’s unintentional pun. “Yes, ma’am!” he said and trotted away.
Elsewhere, out along the butte’s irregularly shaped rim,
the commandeered Shade emplacements opened fire. Pulses of bright blue
energy probed the surrounding blackness, found the first ship, and cut
the night into slices.
’Zamamee and a file of five commando Elites
had already cleared the landing pad by the time the humans flooded Pad
3 with fuel. In fact, the Elite officer wasn’t even on the surface of
the Forerunner installation during the ensuing inferno—he and his
commandos were already one level down, moving from room to room,
slaughtering every human they could find. There had been no sign of the
one enemy soldier they wanted most, but it was early yet, and he could
be around the next corner.
Murphy had just taken the safeties off the
50mm MLA autocannons, and delegated control to Wellsley, when she felt
something brush her shoulder. The petty officer started to turn, saw
blood spray, and realized that it belonged to her. An Elite produced a
deep throaty chuckle as both Cho and Pauley met similar fates. The
Control Room was neutralized.
But Wellsley witnessed the murders via the camera mounted
over the main video monitor, killed the lights, and notified Silva.
Within a matter of minutes six three-person fire teams, all equipped
with heat-sensitive night-vision goggles, were busy working their way
down through the mazelike complex. The Covenant’s camo generators
didn’t block heat, they actually generated it, and that put both
sides on an even footing.
In the meantime, thanks to a dead officer’s personal
initiative, Wellsley had a 50mm surprise waiting for the incoming
dropships. Though effective against Banshees, the Shades lacked the
power necessary to knock a dropship out of the sky, something the
Covenant had clearly known in advance.
But, just as an Elite couldn’t withstand fifty rounds of
7.62 mm armor-piercing ammo, the enemy transports proved vulnerable to
the 50 mm high explosive shells that suddenly blasted their way. Not
only that, but the fifties were computer-controlled—which was to say Wellsley
controlled, which meant that nearly every round went exactly where it
was supposed to.
Control had been delegated too late for the AI to nail the
first dropship, but the second was right where he wanted it to be. It
exploded as a dozen rounds of HE went off inside the fuselage.
Ironically, the compartments that held the troops preserved most of
their lives so they could die when the aircraft hit the foot of the
butte.
But there were only two of the guns, one to the west, and
one to the east, which meant that the surviving transports were safely
through the eastern MLA’s field of fire before the AI could fire on
them. Still, the destruction of that single ship had reduced the
assault force by one sixth, which struck Wellsley as an acceptable
result.
Machine-generated death stabbed the top of the mesa as the
Covenant dropships made use of their plasma cannons to strafe the
landing zone. A fire team was caught out in the open and cut to shreds
even as a barrage of shoulder-fired rockets lashed up to meet the
incoming transports. There were hits, some of which inflicted
casualties, but none of the enemy aircraft was destroyed.
Then, hovering like obscene insects, the U-shaped
dropships turned down-ring, and spilled troops out their side slots,
scattering them like evil seeds across the top of the mesa. McKay did
the mental math. Five remaining transports, times roughly thirty troops
each, equaled an assault force of about one hundred and fifty troops.
“Hit ’em!” Lister shouted. “Kill the bastards before they
can land!”
The response was a steady crack! crack! crack! as
the company’s snipers opened fire, and Elites, Grunts, and Jackals
alike tumbled to the ground dead.
But there were plenty left—and McKay steeled herself
against the coming assault.
The lights had gone off for reasons that the
Grunt could only guess at, a factor which added to the fear he felt.
Unable to do anything more, Yayap listened to the muffled sounds of
battle, and wondered which side to root for. He didn’t like being a
prisoner but was starting to wonder if he wouldn’t be better off with
the humans. For a while at least, until—
A blob of light appeared, slid down the opposite wall,
crossed the floor, and found its way into the cell. “Yayap? Are you in
there?”
There were other lights now, and the Grunt saw the air
shimmer in front of him. It was ’Zamamee! Much to Yayap’s amazement,
the Elite had kept his word and actually come looking for him.
Realizing that the breathing apparatus made it difficult for others to
tell his kind apart, the Grunt pushed his face up against the bars.
“Yes, Excellency, I am here.”
“Good,” the Elite said. “Now stand back so we can blow the
door.”
All of the Grunts in the cell retreated to the back of the
room while one of the commandos attached a charge to the door lock,
backed away, and made use of a remote to trigger it. There was a small
flash of light, followed by a subdued bang! as the explosive was
detonated. Hinges squeaked as Yayap pushed the gate out of the way.
“Now,” ’Zamamee said eagerly, “lead us to the human. We’ve
been through most of the complex, but haven’t run into him yet.”
So, Yayap thought to himself, the only reason
you
came looking for me was to find the human. I should have known. “Of
course, Excellency,” the Grunt replied, surprised by his own
smoothness. “The aliens captured some of our Banshees. The human was
assigned to guard them.”
Yayap expected ’Zamamee to challenge the claim, to ask how
he knew, but the Elite took him at his word. “Very well,” ’Zamamee
replied. “Where are the aircraft kept?”
“Up on the mesa,” Yayap answered truthfully, “west of the
landing pads.”
“We will lead the way,” the Elite said importantly, “but
stay close. It would be easy to become lost.”
“Yes, Excellency,” the Grunt replied, “whatever you say.”
Unable to land on or near the pads as
originally planned, Field Master ’Putumee had been forced to drop his
assault team on the area up-spin of the Forerunner complex. That meant
that his troops would have to advance across open ground, with very
little cover, and without benefit of heavy weapons to clear the way.
The wily field officer had a trick up his sleeve, however.
Rather than release the dropships, he ordered them to remain over the
LZ, and strafe the ground ahead of his steadily advancing troops. It
wasn’t what the transports had been designed for, and the pilots didn’t
like it, but so what? ’Putumee, who saw all aviators as little more
than glorified chauffeurs, wasn’t especially interested in how they
felt.
So, the U-shaped dropships drifted down toward the human
fortifications, plasma cannons probing the ground below, while volleys
of rockets lashed upward, exploding harmlessly against their flanks.
The field officer, who advanced along with the second rank
of troops, waved his Jackals forward as the humans were forced to pull
out of their firing pits, and withdraw to their next line of defense.
’Putumee paused next to one of the now empty pits and
looked into it. Something about the excavation bothered him, but what?
Then he had it. The rectangular hole was too neat, too
even, to have been dug during the last half unit. What other
preparations had the aliens made, the officer wondered?
The answer came in a heartbeat. McKay said, “Fire!” and
the Scorpion’s gunner complied. The tank lurched under the officer’s
feet as the shell left the main gun and the hull started to vibrate as
the machine gun opened up. The explosion, about six hundred meters
downrange, erased an entire file of Grunts. The other MBT, one of two
which Silva had ordered his battalion to bring topside, fired two
seconds later. That round killed an Elite, two Jackals, and a Hunter.
Marines cheered and McKay smiled. Though doubtful that the
Covenant would try to put troops on the mesa, the Major was a careful
man, which was why he ordered the Helljumpers to dig firing pits
up-ring of the installation, and create bunkers for the tanks.
Now, firing with their barrels nearly parallel to the
ground, the MBTs were in the process of turning the area in front of
them into a moonscape as each shell threw half a ton of soil up into
the air, and carved craters out of the plateau.
Unbeknownst to McKay, or any other human, for that matter,
the third shell to roar down range blew Field Master ’Putumee in half.
The assault continued, but more slowly now, as lower-ranked Elites
assumed command, and tried to rally their troops.
Though pursuing his own sub-mission,
’Zamamee had been monitoring the command net, and knew that the assault
had stalled. It was only a matter of time before the dropships would be
ordered to swoop in, pick up those who could crawl, walk, or run to
them, and leave for safer climes.
That meant that he should be pulling out, looking for a
way to slip through the human lines, but the session with the Prophet
continued to haunt him. His best chance, no, his only chance,
was
to find the human and kill him. He would keep his head, all would be
forgiven, and who knew? A lot of Elites had been killed—so there might
be a promotion in the offing.
Thus reassured, he drove ahead.
The commandos were up on the first level by then, just
approaching a door to the outside, when one of three waiting Marines
saw a line of green blobs start to pass the alcove in which he was
hiding, and opened fire.
There was complete pandemonium as the humans ran through
clip after clip of ammunition, Grunts were blown off their feet, Elites
fired in every direction, and soon started to fall.
’Zamamee felt his plasma rifle cycle open as it attempted
to cool itself, and knew he was about to die, when a plasma grenade
sailed in among the humans and locked onto a human soldier’s arm. He
yelled, “No!” but it was already too late, and the explosion
slaughtered the entire fire team.
Yayap, who had appropriated both the grenade and a pistol
from one of the dead commandos, tugged on ’Zamamee’s combat harness.
“This way, Excellency. . . . Follow me!”
The Elite did. The Grunt led the officer out through a
door, down a walkway, and onto the platform where ten Banshees stood in
an orderly row. There were no guards. ’Zamamee looked around. “Where is
he?”
Yayap shrugged. “I have no idea, Excellency.”
’Zamamee felt a mixture of anger, fear, and hopelessness
as a dropship passed over his head and disappeared down-spin. The
entire effort had been a failure.
“So,” he said harshly, “you lied to me. Why?”
“Because you know how to fly one of these things,”
the Grunt answered simply, “and I don’t.”
The Elite’s eyes seemed to glow as if lit from within. “I
should shoot you and leave your body for the humans to throw off the
cliff.”
“You can try ,” Yayap said as he pointed the
plasma
pistol at his superior’s head, “but I wouldn’t advise it.” It took all
the courage the Grunt could muster to point his weapon at an Elite—and
his hand shook in response to the fear he felt. But not much, not
enough so that an energy bolt would miss, and ’Zamamee knew it.
The Elite nodded. Moments later, a heavily loaded Banshee
wobbled off the ground, slipped over the edge of the butte, and
immediately began to lose altitude. A Shade gunner caught a glimpse of
it, and sent three bursts of plasma racing after the assault craft, but
the Banshee was soon out of range.
The battle for Alpha Base was over.
The Spartan fired into what seemed like a
tidal wave of tentacled horrors, backed away, and resolved to keep
moving. He was vulnerable, in particular from behind, but the armor
would help, especially since the monsters liked to jump on people.
What happened next wasn’t clear, but could make Marines
scream, and put them out of action in a relatively short period of
time. Ammo would be a concern, he knew that, so rather than fire
wildly, he forced himself to aim, trying to pop as many of the things
as he could.
They came at him in twos, threes, and fours, flew into
fleshy bits as the bullets ripped them apart and seemed to melt away.
The problem was that there were hundreds of the little bastards, maybe
thousands
, which made it difficult to keep up as they flooded in his direction.
There were strategies, though, things the Chief could do
to help even the odds, and they made all the difference. The first was
to run, firing as he went, stretching their ragged formation thin,
forcing them to skitter from one end of the room to the other. They
were numerous and determined, but not particularly bright.
The second was to watch for breakouts, concentrations of
the creatures where a well-thrown grenade could destroy hundreds of
them all at once.
And the third was to switch back and forth between the
assault weapon and the shotgun, thereby maintaining a constant rate of
fire, only pausing to reload when there was a momentary lull in the
fighting.
These strategies suddenly became even more critical as
something new leaped out of the darkness. A mass of tattered
flesh and swinging limbs lashed at his head. During the first moments
of the attack the Chief wondered if a corpse had somehow fallen on him
from above, but soon learned the truth, as more of the horribly
misshapen creatures appeared and hurled themselves forward. Not just
ran, but vaulted high into the air, as if hoping to crush him
under their weight.
The creatures were roughly humanoid, hunchbacked figures
that looked partially rotted. Their limbs seemed to be stretched to the
breaking point. Clusters of tentacles protruded from ragged holes in
the skin.
They were susceptible to bullets, however, something for
which the Chief was thankful, although it often took fifteen or twenty
rounds to put one down for good. Strangely, even the live ones looked
like they were dead, which on reflection the Master Chief was starting
to believe they were. That would explain why some of the ugly sons of
bitches had a marked resemblance to Covenant Elites, or to what an
Elite would look like if you killed him, buried the body, and dug it up
two weeks later.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, two of the
reanimated Elites barged in through the hatch, and were promptly put
down. That provided the Chief with an opportunity to escape.
There were more of the two-legged freaks right on his
tail, though, along with a jumble of the tumbling, leaping swarms of
spherical creatures, and it was necessary to scrub the entire lot of
them with auto fire before he could disengage and slip through a door.
The Spartan found himself on the upper gallery of a large,
well-lit room. It was packed with the bipedal, misshapen creatures, but
none seemed to be aware of him. He intended to keep it that way, and
slid silently along the right-hand wall to a hatch.
A short journey brought the Chief to a similar space where
what looked like full-fledged battle was underway between Covenant
troops and the new hostiles.
The Spartan briefly considered engaging the targets—there
was certainly no shortage of them. He held his fire instead, and
lingered behind a fallen cargo module. After a hellish battle, the
combatants had annihilated one another, which left him free to cross
the bridge that led to the far end back along the walkway, and exit via
the side door.
Another of the hunchbacked creatures dropped from above
and slammed into him. The Spartan staggered back, dipped, and hurled
the monster back over his shoulder. It crunched into the wall and left
a trail of mottled gray-green, viscous fluid as it slid to the floor.
The Master Chief turned to continue on, when his motion
sensor flickered red—illuminating a contact right behind him. He spun
and was startled to see the crumpled, badly damaged creature struggle
to its feet. Its left arm dangled uselessly and brittle bone protruded
from its pale, gangrenous flesh.
The thing’s right arm was still functional, however. A
twisting column of tentacles burst from the creature’s right wrist and
he could hear the bones inside break as they forced its right hand
roughly aside.
The tentacle flashed out, cracked like a whip and hurled
the Master Chief to the floor. His shields were almost completely
drained from the single blow.
He rolled into a crouch and opened fire. The 7.62mm
armor-piercing rounds nearly cut the monster in half. He kicked the
fallen hostile, put two in its chest. This time, the damn thing
should stay dead, he thought.
He moved farther along the hallway. Two Marines lay where
they had fallen, proving that at least some of the second squad had
managed to get this far, which opened the possibility that more had
escaped as well.
The Master Chief checked, discovered that they still wore
their dog tags, and took them. He crept through the wide galleries and
narrow corridors, past humming machinery and entered a dark, gloomy
vault. His motion tracker flashed crimson warnings—he was in Hostile
Central.
Another of the misshapen bipedal hostiles shambled by, and
he recognized the shape of the creature’s head—the long, angular snout
of an Elite faced him. What held his fire was where the head was
located.
The alien’s skull was canted at a sickening angle, as if
the bones of its neck had been softened or liquefied. It hung limply
down the creature’s back, lifeless—like a limb that needed amputation.
It was as if something had rewritten the Elite, reshaped
it from the inside out. The Spartan felt an unaccustomed emotion: a
trill of fear. An image of helplessness—of screaming at a looming
threat, powerless—flashed through his mind, a snapshot of his
cryo-addled dreams aboard the Pillar of Autumn.
No way is that going to happen to me, he thought.
No
way .
The beast shuffled by, and moved out of sight.
He took a deep breath, exhaled, then burst from his
position and charged for the center of the room. He battered aside the
shambling beasts, and crushed a handful of the small spherical
creatures beneath his boots. His shotgun boomed and thick, green blood
splashed the floor.
He reached his objective: a large lift platform, identical
to the one he’d ridden down into this hellhole. He reached for the
activation panel, and hoped that he’d find the up button.
One of the hostiles leaped high in the air and landed next
to him.
The Chief dropped to one knee, shoved the barrel of the
shotgun into the creature’s belly and fired. The beast flipped end over
end, and fell back into a clot of the smaller, round hostiles.
He dove for the activation panel, and stabbed at the
controls.
The elevator platform dropped like a rock, so far down and
so fast that his ears popped.
Where the hell was Cortana when you needed her?Always
telling him to “go through that door,” “cross that bridge,” or “climb
that pyramid.” Annoying at times, but reassuring as well.
The basement, if that’s what it was, had all the charm of
a crypt. A passageway took him into another large space where he had to
fight his way across the floor to a door and the tunnel-like corridor
beyond. That’s when the Spartan came face-to-face with something he
hadn’t seen before and would have preferred never to see again: one of
the combative, bipedal beasts—this one a horribly mutated human.
Though the creature was distorted by whatever had ravaged his body, the
Chief recognized him nonetheless.
It was Private Manuel Mendoza, the soldier that Sergeant
Johnson loved to yell at, and one of the Marines who had been with
Keyes when he disappeared into this nightmare.
Though twisted by what had been done to him, the Private’s
face still retained a trace of humanity, and it was that which caused
the Master Chief to remove this finger from the shotgun’s trigger, and
try to make contact.
“Mendoza, come on, let’s get the hell out of here. I know
they did something to you but the medics can fix it.”
The reanimated Marine, now possessed of superhuman
strength, struck the Chief with such force that it nearly knocked him
off his feet, and triggered the suit’s alarm. Mendoza—or rather, the
thing
that had once been Mendoza—waved a whiplike tentacle and lashed out
again. The Spartan staggered backward, pulled the trigger, and was
subsequently forced to pull it again as the twelve-gauge buckshot tore
what had been Mendoza apart.
The results were both spectacular and disgusting. As the
corpselike horror came apart, the Chief saw that one of the small,
spherical creatures had taken up residence inside the soldier’s chest
cavity, and seemed to have extended its tentacles into other parts of
what had been Mendoza’s body. A third shotgun blast served to
destroy it as well.
Was that how these things worked? The little round
pod-things infected their hosts, and mutated the victim into some kind
of combat form. He considered the possibility that this was some kind
of new Covenant bio-weapon, and discarded it. The first of these combat
forms he’d seen had once been Elites.
Whatever these damned things were, they were lethal to
humans and Covenant alike.
He quickly fed shells into his shotgun, then moved on. The
Spartan moved as fast as he could—at a dead run. He charged into
another room, scrambled up onto the gallery above, blew an Elite form
right out of his boots, and ducked through a waiting door.
The area on the other side was more of a challenge. The
Chief had the second floor to himself, but an army of the freaks owned
the floor below, and that’s where he needed to go.
Height conferred advantages. Some well-placed grenades,
followed by a jump from the walkway, and sixty seconds of
close-quarters action were sufficient to see him through. Still, it was
a tremendous relief to pass through a completely uncontested space, and
into a compartment where he found a new development to cope with.
In addition to their battering attacks, the creatures had
acquired both human and Covenant weapons from their victims, and these
combat forms were even more dangerous as a result. The combat forms
weren’t the smartest foes he’d ever encountered, but they weren’t
mindless automatons, either—they could operate machines and fire
weapons.
Bullets pinged from the metal walls, plasma fire stuttered
through the air, and a grenade detonated as the Master Chief cleared
the area, discovered a place where some Marines had staged a last stand
on top of a cargo container. He paused to recover their dog tags,
scavenged some ammo, and kept on going.
Something nagged at him, but what was it?
Something he’d forgotten?
It came to him all at once: He had nearly forgotten his
own name.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The droning chant that had lurked at the edge of his
awareness buzzed more loudly, and he felt some kind of pressure—some
sense of anger.
Why was he angry?
No, something else was angry . . . because he’d
remembered his own name?
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
Where was he? How did he get here? He struggled to find
the memory.
He remembered parts of it now. There was a dark, alien
room, hordes of some terrifying enemy, gunfire, then a stabbing pain .
. .
They must have captured him. That was it. This might be
some new trick by the enemy. He’d give them nothing. He struggled to
remember who the enemy was.
He repeated the mantra in his head: Keyes, Jacob. Captain.
Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The buzzing pressure increased. He resisted, though he was
unsure why. Something about the drone frightened him. The sense of
invasion deepened.
Is this a Covenant trick? he wondered. He tried to
scream, “It won’t work. I’ll never lead you to Earth,” but couldn’t
make his mouth work, couldn’t feel his own body.
As the thought of his home planet echoed through Keyes’
consciousness, the tone and tenor of the drone changed, as if pleased.
He—Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK—was startled
when new images played across his mind.
He realized, too late, that something was sifting through
his mind, like a grave robber looting a tomb. He had never felt so
powerless, so afraid . . .
His fear vanished in a flood of emotion as he felt the
warmth of the first woman he’d ever kissed . . .
He tried to scream as the memory was ripped from him and
discarded.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
As each of the fragments of his past played out and was
sucked into the void, he could feel the invader enveloping him like an
ocean of evil. But, like the pieces of flotsam that remain after a ship
has gone down, random pieces of himself remained, a sort of makeshift
raft to which he could momentarily cling.
The image of a smiling woman, a ball spiraling through the
air, a crowded street, a man with half his face blown away, tickets to
a show he couldn’t remember, the gentle sound of wind chimes, and the
smell of newly baked bread.
But the sea was too rough, waves crashed down on the raft,
and broke it apart. Swells lifted Keyes up, others pushed him down, and
the final darkness beckoned. But then, just as the ocean was about to
consume him, Keyes became aware of the one thing the creature that
raped his mind couldn’t consume: the CNI transponder’s carrier wave.
He reached for it like a drowning man, clutched the
lifeline with all his might, and refused to let go. For here, deep
within his watery grave, was a thread that led back to what he had been.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The Master Chief fired the last of his
shotgun rounds into the collapsed hulk of a combat form. It twitched
and lay still.
After winding through the confusion of subterranean
chambers and passageways for what seemed like hours, he’d finally found
a lift to the surface. He carefully tapped the activation panel—worried
for a moment that this lift would also drop him deeper into the
facility—and felt the lift lurch into a rapid ascent.
As the lift climbed, Foehammer’s worried voice crackled
from his comm system.
“This is Echo 419. Chief, is that you? I lost your
signal when you disappeared inside the structure. What’s going on down
there? I’m tracking movement all over the place.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” the Master Chief
replied, his voice grim, “and believe me: you don’t want to know. Be
advised: Captain Keyes is missing, and is most likely KIA. Over.”
“Roger that,”the pilot replied.“I’m sorry to
hear it, over.”
The lift jerked to a halt, the Spartan stepped off, and
found himself surrounded by Marines. Not the shambling combat forms
he’d spent the last eternity fighting, but normal, unchanged human
beings. “Good to see you, Chief,” a Corporal said.
The Chief cut the soldier off. “There’s no time for that,
Marine. Report.”
The young Marine gulped, then started talking. “After we
lost contact we headed for the RV point, and these things, they
ambushed us. Sir: Advise we get the hell out of here, ASAP.”
“That’s command thinking, Corporal,” the Chief replied.
“Let’s go.”
It was a short walk up the ramp and into the rain.
Strangely, and much to his surprise, it felt good to enter the stinking
swamp. Very good indeed.
CHAPTER NINE
D+60:33:54 (Flight Officer Captain Rawley
Mission Clock) / Pelican Echo 419, above Covenant arms cache.
“There’s a large tower a few hundred meters from your
current position. Find a way above the fog and foliage canopy and I can
move in and pick you up,” Rawley said. Her eyes were glued to her
scopes as SPARTAN-117 took the lead and the Marines left the ancient
complex and entered the fetid embrace of the swamp. The rain and some
kind of interference from the structure played hell with the Pelican’s
detection gear, but she was damned if she was going to lose this team
now. She had a reputation to maintain, after all.
“Roger that,”the Chief replied,“we’re on our
way.”
She kept the Pelican circling, her eyes peeled for
trouble. There was no immediate threat. That made her even more
nervous. Ever since they’d made it down to the surface of the ring,
trouble always seemed to strike without warning.
For the hundredth time since lifting off from Alpha Base,
she cursed the lack of ammunition for the Pelicans.
Knowing the dropship was somewhere above the
mist, and eager to get the hell out, the Marines forged ahead. The
Spartan cautioned them to slow down, to keep their eyes peeled, but it
wasn’t long before he found himself back toward the middle of the pack.
The tower Foehammer had mentioned appeared up ahead. The
base of the column was circular, with half-rounded supports that
protruded from the sides, probably for stability. Farther up, extending
out from the column itself, were winglike platforms. Their purpose
wasn’t clear, but the same could be said for the entire structure. The
top of the shaft was lost in the mist.
The Master Chief paused to look around, heard one of the
leathernecks yell “Contact!” quickly followed by the staccato rip of an
assault weapon fired on full automatic. A host of red dots had appeared
on the Spartan’s threat indicator. He saw a dozen of the spherical
infection forms bounce out of the mist and knew that any possibility of
containing the creatures underground had been lost.
The Pelican’s sensors suddenly painted
dozens—correction, hundreds—of new contacts on the ground. Rawley
cursed and wheeled the Pelican around, expecting ground fire.
No fire was directed at the dropship. “What the hell?” she
muttered. First, the contacts appeared out of nowhere, charged into the
open, but didn’t shoot at the air cover? Maybe the Covenant were
getting stupid as well as ugly.
She hit the radio to warn the troops and winced as the
muffled pop of automatic weapons fire burst from her headset. “Heads
up, ground team!” she yelled. “Multiple contacts on the ground—they’re
right on top of you!”
The radio squealed, then static filled her speakers. The
interference worsened. She thumped the radio controls with a gloved
fist. “Damn it!” she yelled.
“Uh, boss,” Frye said. “You better take a look at this.”
She glanced back at her copilot, followed his gaze, and
her own eyes widened. “Okay,” she said, “any idea what the hell that
is?”
The Chief fired short bursts from his
assault weapon, popped dozens of the alien pods, and turned to confront
a combat form. It was armed with a plasma pistol but chose to throw
itself forward rather than fire. The Chief’s automatic weapon was
actually touching the creature when he pulled the trigger. The
ex-Elite’s chest opened like an obscene flower and the infection form
hidden within exploded into fleshy pieces.
He heard a burst of static in his comm system.
Interference whined as the MJOLNIR’s powerful communications gear tried
to scrub the signal, to no avail. It sounded like Foehammer, but he
couldn’t be sure.
It hovered in front of the Pelican’s cockpit
for a moment, and light stabbed Rawley’s eyes. It was made from some
kind of silvery metal, roughly cylindrical but with angular edges.
Winglike, squarish fins shifted and slid like rudders as the device
bobbed in the air. It—whatever it was—shone a bright light into
the cockpit, then turned away and dropped altitude. Below her, she
could see dozens of the things flying in a loose line. In seconds, they
dropped below the tree line and out of sight.
“Frye,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry, “tell Chief
Cullen to work the comm system and punch me a hole in this
interference. I need to talk to the ground team now .”
The tide of hostiles fell back into the
ankle-deep water and regrouped. A dozen exotic-looking cylindrical
machines drifted out of the trees to float over the clearing. The
nearest Marine yelled, “What are they?” and was about to shoot at them
when the Chief raised a cautionary hand. “Hold on, Marine . . . let’s
see what they do.”
What happened next was both unexpected and gratifying.
Each machine produced a beam of energy, speared one of the hostiles,
and burned it down.
Some of the combat forms took exception to this treatment,
and attempted to return fire, but were soon put out of action by the
combined efforts of the Marines and their newfound allies.
Despite the help, the Marines didn’t fare well. There were
just too many of the hostile creatures around. The squad dwindled until
a pair of PFCs remained, then one, then finally the last of the Marines
fell beneath a cluster of the little infectious bastards.
As the newcomers overhead rained crimson laser fire on a
cluster of the combat forms, the Chief slogged through the swamp toward
the tower. High ground—and the possibility of signaling Foehammer for
evac—drew him on.
He climbed a supporting strut and pulled himself onto one
of the odd, leaflike terraces that ringed the tower. He had a good
field of fire, and he fired a burst into a combat form that strayed too
close.
He tried the radio again, but was rewarded with more
static.
The Spartan heard what sounded like someone humming and
turned to discover that another machine had approached him from
behind. Where the other newcomers were cylindrical in design, with
angular, winglike cowlings, this construct was rounded, almost
spherical. It had a single, glowing blue eye, a wraparound housing, and
a cheerfully businesslike manner.
“Greetings! I am the Monitor of installation zero-four.
I am 343 Guilty Spark. Someone has released the Flood. My function is
to prevent it from leaving this installation. I require your
assistance. Come this way.”
The voice sounded artificial. This “343 Guilty Spark” was
some kind of artificial construct, the Spartan realized. From above the
little machine, he could see Foehammer’s Pelican moving into position.
“Hold on,” the Chief replied, trying to sound friendly.
“The Flood? Those things down there are called ‘Flood’?”
“Of course,” 343 Guilty Spark replied, a note of confusion
in its synthesized voice. “What an odd question. We have no time for
this, Reclaimer.”
Reclaimer? The Chief wondered. He was about to ask
what the little machine meant by that, but his words never came. Rings
of pulsating gold light traveled the length of his body, he felt
light-headed, and saw an explosion of white light.
Rawley had just gotten the Pelican into
position for a run on the tower, and could see the distinctive bulk of
the Spartan standing on the structure. She eased the throttle forward,
and the Pelican slid ahead, and nosed toward the structure. She glanced
up just in time to see the Spartan disappear in a column of gold light.
“Chief!” Foehammer said.“I lost your signal!
Where did you go? Chief! Chief!”
The Spartan had vanished, and there was very little the
pilot could do except pick up the Marines, and hope for the best.
Like the rest of the battalion’s officers,
McKay had worked long into the night supervising efforts to restore the
butte’s badly mauled defenses, ensure that the wounded received what
care was available, and restore something like normal operations.
Finally, at about 0300, Silva ordered her below, pointing
out that someone had to be in command at 0830, and it wasn’t going to
be him.
With traces of adrenaline still in her bloodstream, and
images of battle still flickering through her brain, the Company
Commander found it impossible to sleep. Instead she tossed, turned, and
stared at the ceiling until approximately 0430 when she finally drifted
off.
At 0730, with only three hours of sleep,
McKay paused to collect a mug of instant coffee from the improvised
mess hall before climbing a flight of bloodstained stairs to arrive on
top of the mesa. The wreckage of what had been Charlie 217 had been
cleared away during the night, but a large patch of scorched metal
marked the spot where the fuel had been set ablaze.
The officer paused to look at it, wondered what happened
to the human pilot, and continued her tour. The entire surface of Halo
had been declared a combat zone, which meant it was inappropriate for
the enlisted ranks to salute their superiors lest they identify them to
enemy snipers. But there were other ways to signal respect, and as
McKay made her way past the landing pads and out onto the battlefield
beyond, it seemed as if all the Marines wanted to greet her.
“Morning, ma’am.”
“How’s it going, Lieutenant? Hope you got some sleep.”
“Hey, skipper, guess we showed them, huh?”
McKay replied to them all and continued on her way. Just
the fact that she was there, strolling through the plasma-blackened
defenses with a cup of coffee in her hand, served to reassure the
troops.
“Look,” one of them said as she walked past, “there’s the
Loot. Cool as ice, man. Did you see her last night? Standing on that
tank? It was like nothin’ could touch her.” The other Marine didn’t say
anything, just nodded in agreement, and went back to digging a firing
pit.
Somehow, without consciously thinking about it, McKay’s
feet carried her back to the Scorpions and the point from which her
particular battle had been fought. The Covenant knew about the metal
behemoths now, which was why both machines were being dug out and run
up onto solid ground.
The officer wondered what Silva planned to do with them,
and sipped the last of her coffee before wandering onto the plateau
beyond. Covenant POWs, all chained together at the ankles, were busy
digging graves. One section for members of their armed forces, and one
for the humans. It was a sobering sight, as were the rows of
tarp-covered bodies, and all for what?
For Earth, she told herself, and the billions who would go
unburied if the Covenant found them.
There was a lot to do—the morning passed quickly. Major
Silva was back on duty by 1300 hours and sent a runner to find McKay.
As she entered his office she saw that he was sitting behind his
makeshift desk, working at a computer. He looked up and pointed to a
chair salvaged from a lifeboat. “Take a load off, Lieutenant. Nice job
out there. I should take naps more often! How are you feeling?”
McKay dropped into the chair, felt it adjust to fit her
body, and shrugged. “I’m tired, sir, but otherwise fine.”
“Good,” Silva said, bringing his fingers together into a
steeple. “Because there’s plenty of work to do. We’ll have to drive
everyone hard—and that includes ourselves.”
“Sir, yes sir.”
“So,” Silva continued, “I know you’ve been busy, but did
you get a chance to read the report Wellsley put together?”
A crate of small but powerful wireless computers like the
one sitting on the Major’s desk had been recovered from the Autumn
but McKay had yet to turn hers on. “I’m afraid not, sir. Sorry.”
Silva nodded. “Well, based on information acquired during
routine debriefings, our digital friend believes that the raid was both
less and more than we assumed.”
McKay allowed her eyebrows to rise. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that rather than the real estate itself, the
Covies were after something, or more precisely someone they
thought they would find here.”
“Captain Keyes?”
“No,” the other officer replied, “Wellsley doesn’t think
so, and neither do I. A group of their stealth Elites were able to
penetrate the lower levels of the complex. They killed everyone they
came into contact with, or thought they did, but one tech played dead,
and another was knocked unconscious. They were in different rooms but
both told the same story. Once in the room, and having gained control
of it, one of those commando Elites—the bastards in the black combat
suits—would momentarily reveal himself. He spoke passable standard—and
asked both groups the same question. ‘Where is the human with the
special armor?’ ”
“They were after the Spartan,” McKay said thoughtfully.
“Exactly.”
“So, where is the Chief?”
“That,” Silva replied, “is a very good question.
Where indeed? He went looking for Keyes, surfaced in the middle of a
swamp, told Foehammer that the Captain was probably dead, and
disappeared a few minutes later.”
“Think he’s dead?” McKay inquired.
“I don’t know,” Silva replied grimly, “although it
wouldn’t make too much difference if he were. No, I suspect that he and
Cortana are out there playing games.”
With Keyes out of the picture once more, Silva had
reassumed command, and McKay could understand his frustration. The
Master Chief was an asset, or would have been if he were around, but
now, out freelancing somewhere, the Spartan was starting to look like a
liability. Especially given how many of Silva’s troops had died in
order to defend a man who wasn’t even there.
Yes, McKay could understand the Major’s frustration, but
couldn’t sympathize with it. Not after seeing the Chief in that very
room, his skin unnaturally white after too much time spent in his
armor, his eyes filled with—what? Pain? Suffering? A sort of wary
distrust?
The officer wasn’t sure, but whatever it was didn’t have
anything to do with ego, with insubordination, or a desire for personal
glory. Those were truths that McKay could access, not because she was a
seasoned soldier, but because she was a woman, something Silva could
never aspire to be. But it wouldn’t do any good to say that, so she
didn’t.
Her voice was level. “So, where does that leave us?”
“Situation normal: We’re cut off and probably surrounded.”
The chair sighed as Silva leaned back. “Like the old saying goes, ‘a
good defense is a good offense.’ Rather than just sit around and wait
for the Covenant to attack again, let’s take the hurt to them. Nothing
big, not yet anyway, but the kind of pinpricks that still draw blood.”
McKay nodded. “And you want me to come up with some ideas?”
Silva grinned. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay said, coming to her feet. “I’ll have
something by morning.”
Silva watched the Company Commander exit his office,
wasted five seconds wishing he had six more just like her, and went
back to work.
The Master Chief felt himself rush back
together like a puzzle with a million pieces, wondered what had
happened, and where he was. He felt disoriented, nauseated, and angry.
A quick look around was sufficient to ascertain that the
machine named 343 Guilty Spark had somehow transported him from the
swamp into the bowels of a dark, brooding structure. He saw the machine
hovering high above, glowing a thin, ghostly blue.
The Spartan raised his assault weapon, and fired half a
clip into it. The bullets were dead on, but had no effect other than to
elicit a bemused response.
“That was unnecessary, Reclaimer. I suggest that you
conserve your ammunition for the effort ahead.”
No less angry, but with little choice but to accept the
situation, the Chief looked around. “So where am I?”
“The installation was specifically built to study and
contain the Flood,” the machine answered patiently. “Their survival as
a race was dependent on it. I am grateful to see that some of them
survived to reproduce.”
“ ‘Survived’? ‘Reproduce’? What the hell are you talking
about?” the Chief demanded.
“We must collect the Index,” Spark said, leaving the
Spartan’s questions unanswered. “And time is of the essence. Please
follow me.”
The blue light zipped away at that point, forcing the
Chief to follow, or be left behind. He checked both his weapons as he
walked. “Speaking of you, who the hell are you, and what’s your
function?”
“I am 343 Guilty Spark,” the machine said,
pedantically. “I am the Monitor, or more precisely, a self-repairing
artificial intelligence charged with maintaining and operating this
facility. But you are the Reclaimer—so you know that already.”
The Master Chief didn’t know anything of the kind, but it
seemed wise to play along, so he did. “Yes, well, refresh my memory . .
. how long has it been since you were left in charge?”
“Exactly 101,217 local years,” the Monitor replied
cheerfully, “many of which were quite boring. But not anymore! Hee,
hee, hee. ”
The Spartan was taken aback by the sudden giggle from the
small machine. He knew that the AIs humans used could, over time,
develop personalities politely described as “quirky.” 343 Guilty Spark
had been here for tens of thousands of years.
It was quite possible that the little AI was insane.
The Monitor chattered on, nattering about “effecting
repairs to substation nine” and other non sequiturs.
His dialogue was interrupted as a variety of Flood forms
bounced, waddled, and leaped out of the surrounding darkness. Suddenly
the Chief was fighting for his life again, moving back and forth to
stretch the enemy out, blasting anything that moved.
That was when he first identified a new Flood form.
They were large misshapen things that would explode when fired upon,
spewing up to a dozen infection forms in every direction, thereby
multiplying the number of targets that the shooter had to track and
kill.
Finally, like water turned off at a tap, the assault came
to an end, and the Chief had a chance to reload his weapons.
The Monitor hovered nearby, all the while humming to
himself, and occasionally giggling. “There’s no time to dawdle! We have
work to do.”
“What kind of work?” the Chief inquired as he stuffed the
final shell into the shotgun and hurried to follow.
“This is the Library,” the machine explained, hovering so
the human could catch up. “The energy field above us contains the
Index. We must get up there.”
The Spartan was about to ask, “Index? What Index?” when a
combat form lurched out of an alcove and opened fire. The Chief fired
in return, saw the creature fall, and saw it jump back up again. The
next burst took the Flood’s left leg off.
“That should slow you down,” he said as he turned to deal
with a new horde of shambling, leaping hostiles. A steady stream of
brass arced away from the Chief’s assault weapon as he worked the mob
over, felt something strike him from behind, and spun around to
discover that the one-legged combat form had limped back into the fight.
The Spartan blew the creature’s head off this time,
sidestepped to evade a charging carrier form, and shot the bulbous
monster in the back. There was an explosion of green mist mixed with
balloonlike infection forms and pieces of wet flesh. The next ten
seconds were spent popping pods.
After that the Monitor took off again and the noncom had
little choice but to follow. He soon arrived in front of a huge metal
door. Built to contain the Flood perhaps? Maybe, but far from
effective, since the slimy bastards seemed to be leaking out of every
nook and cranny.
The Monitor hovered over the human’s head. “The security
doors are locked automatically. I will go access the override to open
them. I am a genius,” the Monitor said matter-of-factly.“Hee, hee,
hee.”
“A pain in the ass is more like it,” the Master Chief said
to no one in particular as a red blob appeared on his threat indicator,
quickly joined by a half dozen more.
Then, as part of what would become a familiar pattern,
combat forms leaped fifteen meters through the air, only to shrivel as
the 7.62 mm slugs tore them apart. Carrier forms waddled up like old
friends, came apart like wet cardboard, and spewed pods in every
direction. Infection forms danced on delicate legs, dodging this way
and that, each hoping to claim the human as its very own.
But the Chief had other ideas. He killed the last of them
just as the double doors started to part, and followed the monitor
through. “Please follow closely,” 343 Guilty Spark admonished. “This
portal is the first of ten.”
The Chief replied as he followed the AI past a row of huge
blue screens. “More doors. I can hardly wait.”
343 Guilty Spark appeared immune to sarcasm as it babbled
about the first-class research facilities that surrounded them—and
blithely led its human companion into still another ambush. And so it
went, as the Chief worked his way through Flood-infested galleries,
subfloor maintenance tunnels, and more galleries, before
rounding
a corner to confront yet another group of monstrosities.
The Spartan had help this time, as a dozen of the
hunter-killer machines he’d seen in the swamp appeared in the air above
the scene, and attacked the Flood forms congregated below.
“These Sentinels will assist you, Reclaimer,” the Monitor
trilled. Lasers hissed and sizzled as the robots struck their opponents
down, and having done so, moved in to sterilize what remained.
The Spartan watched in fascination as the machines took
care of the heavy lifting. He lent a helping hand when that seemed
appropriate, and started to gag when the air that came through his
filters grew thick with the stench of cooked flesh.
As the Spartan fought his way through the facility, the
Monitor, who floated above it all, offered commentary. “These Sentinels
will supplement your combat systems. But I suggest you upgrade to at
least a Class Twelve Combat Skin. Your current model only scans as a
Class Two—which is unsuited for this kind of work.”
If there’s a battle suit six times as powerful as
MJOLNIR armor, he thought, I’ll be first in line to try it on.
He jumped to avoid an attack from one of the Flood combat
forms, pressed the shotgun muzzle into its back, and blew a foot-wide
hole through the creature.
Finally, after the hardworking Sentinels had reduced the
Flood to little more than a lumpy paste, the Spartan made his way
through the carnage and out onto a circular platform. It was enormous,
easily large enough to handle a Scorpion, and in reasonably good repair.
Machinery hummed, bands of white light pulsated down from
somewhere above, and the lift carried the human upward. Maybe things
would be better up above, maybe the Flood hadn’t reached that level
yet, he thought. He didn’t hold out much hope, however. So far, nothing
else
had gone right on this mission.
Deep within the recesses of Halo, Flood
specimens were confined to facilitate future study, and to prevent them
from escaping. Aware of the extreme danger the Flood posed, and their
capacity to multiply exponentially as well as take over even advanced
life forms, the ancient ones constructed the walls of their prison with
great care, and trained their guards well. With nothing to feed upon,
and nowhere to go, the Flood lay dormant for more than a hundred
thousand years.
Then the intruders came, broke the prison open, and
nourished the Flood with their bodies. With a way to escape, and food
to sustain it, the tendrils of the malevolent growth slithered through
the maze of tunnels and passageways that lay below Halo’s skin, and
gathered wherever there was a potential route to the surface.
One such location was in a chamber located beneath a tall
butte, where little more than a metal grating prevented the Flood from
bursting out of its underground lair and shooting to the surface.
Unbeknownst to the men and women of Alpha Base, they had a new
enemy—and it lived directly below their feet.
The lift jerked to a halt. The Master Chief
made his way through a narrow passageway into the gallery beyond. The
Flood attacked immediately, but with no threat at his back, he was free
to retreat into the corridor from which he had just come, which forced
the mob of monstrosities to come at him through the same narrow
channel. Before long, the bodies of the fallen Flood began to
accumulate.
He paused, waiting for another wave of attackers, then
shoved aside a pile of the dead and moved into the next section of the
complex. They gave under his feet, made gurgling sounds, and vented
foul-smelling gas. The Chief was grateful when his boots were back on
solid ground again.
The Sentinels reappeared shortly thereafter and led the
Spartan past a row of huge blue screens. “So, where were you bastards a
few minutes ago?” the human inquired. But if the robots heard him, they
made no reply as they glided, circled, and bobbed through the hallway
ahead.
“Flood activity has caused a failure in a drone control
system. I must reset the backup units,” 343 Guilty Spark said. “Please
continue on—I will rejoin you when I have completed my task.”
The Monitor had left him on his own before—and each
absence coincided with a fresh wave of Flood attackers. “Hold on,” the
human protested, “let’s discuss this—” but it was too late. 343 Guilty
Spark had already darted through an aperture in the wall and
disappeared down some kind of travel conduit.
Sure enough, no sooner had the Monitor left than a
lumpy-looking carrier form waddled out into the light, spotted its
prey, and hurried to greet it. The Spartan shot the Flood form, but let
the Sentinels clean up the resulting mess, while he conserved his ammo.
A fresh onslaught of Flood came out of the woodwork, and
the Spartan adopted a more cautious strategy: He allowed the sentry
robots to mop them up. At first, the defense machines mowed through a
wave of the podlike infection forms with little difficulty. Then more
of the hostiles appeared, then more, then still more. Soon, the
Chief was forced to fall back. He crushed one of the pods with his
foot, smashed another out of the air with the butt of his assault
rifle, and killed a dozen more with a trio of quick AR bursts.
The Monitor drifted back into the chamber, spun as if
surveying the carnage, and made an odd, metallic clicking that sounded
very much like a cluck of disapproval. “The Sentinels can use their
weapons to manage the Flood for a short time, Reclaimer. Speed is of
the essence.”
“Then let’s go,” the Master Chief growled.
The Monitor made no reply, but scooted ahead. The small
construct led the Spartan deeper into the Library’s gloomy halls. They
passed through a number of large open gates prior to arriving in front
of one that was closed. The Chief paused for a moment, expecting that
343 Guilty Spark might open it for him, but the Monitor had
disappeared. Again.
The hell with it, he thought. The little machine
was
rapidly draining his reserves of patience.
Determined to move ahead with or without the services of
his on-again, off-again guide, the Chief retraced his steps to the
point where a steeply sloping ramp emerged from below, followed it
downward, and soon found himself in a maintenance corridor packed with
Flood.
But the narrow confines of the passageway again made it
that much easier to kill the parasitic life forms, and five minutes
later the human walked up a ramp on the other side of the metal door to
find that the Monitor was there, humming to himself.
“Oh, hello! I’m a genius.”
“Right. And I’m a Vice Admiral.”
The Monitor darted ahead, leading him across a circular
depression to another enormous door. Machinery whirred, and the Chief
was forced to pause as the doors started to part. Then he heard a
clank, followed by a groan, as the movement stopped.
“Please wait here,” Spark said, and promptly vanished.
Just as the Master Chief pulled a fresh clip and rammed it
home, dozens of red dots appeared on his threat indicator. He stood
with his back to the door as what looked like a platoon of Flood forms
prepared to rush him. Rather than simply open up on them, and risk the
possibility that they might roll him under, the Chief threw a grenade
into their midst, and half his opponents went up in a single blast. It
took a few minutes plus a few hundred rounds of ammo to put the rest of
them down, but the Spartan managed to do so.
That was when the machinery restarted, the doors opened,
and the Monitor reappeared, humming to itself. “I am a genius!”
He had moved through the new chamber—a high,
vaulted gallery, dimly lit with pools of gold-yellow light. For the
first time since Spark had dragged him here, he had a moment of
respite. Ever since entering the Library, the Spartan’s head had been
on a swivel. Wave after wave of hostile creatures had attacked him from
all sides.
He popped a stim-pack, downed a nutrient supplement, and
gathered up his weapon. Time to move out.
As he proceeded deeper into the Library, he found a
corpse—a human one. He stooped to examine the body.
It wasn’t pretty. The Marine’s body was so mangled that
even the Flood couldn’t make use of him. He lay at the center of a
large bloodstain wreathed by spent brass.
“Ah,” 343 Guilty Spark said, peering down over the
Spartan’s shoulder. “The other Reclaimer. His combat skin proved
even less suitable than yours.”
The soldier looked up over his shoulder. “What do you
mean?”
“Is this a test, Reclaimer?” the Monitor seemed genuinely
puzzled. “I found him wandering through a structure on the other side
of the ring, and brought him to the same point where you
started.”
The Chief looked down at the body and marveled at the fact
that anyone could make it that far. Even with his physical
augmentation, and the advantages of his armor, the Spartan was reaching
the end of his endurance.
He checked, found the leatherneck’s dog tags, and read the
name. MOBUTO, MARVIN, STAFF
SERGEANT, followed
by a service number.
The Chief put the tags away. “I didn’t know you, Sarge,
but I sure as hell wish I had. You must have been one hard-core son of
a bitch.”
It wasn’t much as eulogies go, but he hoped that, had
Sergeant Marvin Mobuto been there to hear it, he would have approved.
A good trap requires good bait, which was
why McKay had one of the Pelicans pick up Charlie 217’s burned-out
remains and drop them into the ambush site during the hours of
darkness. It took three trips to transport a sufficient amount of
wreckage, followed by hours of backbreaking effort to spread the pieces
around in a realistic way, then position her troops in the rocks above.
Finally, just as the sun speared the area with early
morning light, everything was ready. A phony distress call went out,
and a specially prepared fire was lit deep within the wreckage.
Scattered around the “crash site” were some “volunteers”—the bodies of
comrades killed on the butte had been laid out where they could be seen
from the air.
As half of the first platoon tried to get some sleep, the
rest kept watch. McKay used her glasses to scan the area. The fake
crash site was located between a low, flat-topped rise and a rocky
hillside, covered with a jumble of large boulders. The wreckage,
complete with a trickle of smoke, looked quite realistic.
Wellsley believed that having first dismissed the Marines
and Naval personnel as little more than a nuisance, the enemy had since
been forced to change their minds, and had started to take them more
seriously. That meant monitoring human radio traffic, conducting
regular recon flights, and all the other activities of modern warfare.
Assuming the AI was correct, the aliens would pick up the
distress call, backtrack to the source, and send a team to check the
situation out. That was the plan, at any rate, and McKay didn’t see any
reason why it wouldn’t work.
The sun inched higher in the sky, and down among the rocks
the temperature rose. The Marines took advantage of any bit of shade
that they could find, though McKay was privately pleased that the
customary bitching about the heat was kept to a minimum.
Thirty minutes into the wait McKay heard a sound like the
whine of a mosquito and started to quarter the sky with her binoculars.
It wasn’t long before she spotted a speck coming down-spin. Very
quickly, the speck grew into a Banshee. She keyed her mike.
“Red One to squad three—it’s show time.”
The officer didn’t dare say more lest any Covenant
eavesdroppers grow suspicious. She didn’t have to say much
more,
though. Her Marines knew what to do.
As the enemy aircraft came closer, members of the third
squad, some of whom were made up to look as if they were injured,
hurried out into the open, shaded their eyes as if watching for an
incoming Pelican, pantomimed surprise as they spotted the Banshee,
fired a volley of shots at it, then ran for the safety of the rocks.
The pilot sent a series of plasma bolts racing after them,
circled the crash site twice, and flew off in the direction from which
he had come. McKay watched it go. The hook had been set, the fish was
on the line, and it would be her job to reel it in.
Half a klick away from the phony crash site,
another Marine, or what had been a Marine, emerged from a
subsurface air shaft, and felt the sun hit his horribly ravaged face.
Well, not his face, because ever since the infection form had
inserted its penetrator into his spine, Private Wallace A. Jenkins had
been sharing his physical form with something he thought of as “the
other.” A strange being that didn’t have any thoughts, none that the
human could access, at any rate, and seemed unaware of the fact that
its host still retained some cognitive and possibly motor functions.
That awareness was entirely unique to him insofar as the
leatherneck could tell, because in spite of the fact that some of the
bodies in the group had once belonged to his squad mates, repeated
attempts to communicate with them had failed.
Now, as the untidy collection of infection forms, carrier
forms, and combat forms emerged to bounce, waddle, and walk across
Halo’s surface, Jenkins knew that wherever the column was headed it was
for one purpose: to find and subsume sentient life. He could dimly
sense the other’s yawning, icy hunger.
His goal, however, was considerably different.
After
it had been converted into a combat form, his body was still capable of
handling a weapon. Some of the other forms had them—and that’s what
Jenkins wanted more than anything. An M6D would be perfect, but an
energy weapon could do the job, as would any grenade. Not for use on
the Covenant, or the Flood, but on himself . Or what had been
him. That’s why he’d been careful to conceal the full extent of his
awareness from the other. So he had a chance of destroying the body in
which he had been imprisoned and escape the horror of each waking
moment.
The Flood came to a hill and, following one of the carrier
forms, soon started to climb. The other, with Jenkins in tow, tagged
along behind.
McKay knew the trap was going to work when
one of the U-shaped dropships appeared, circled the phony crash site,
and settled in for a landing. Once free of the ship the Elites,
Jackals, and Grunts would be easy meat for the Marines hidden in the
rocks and the snipers stationed on top of the flat-topped hill.
But war is full of surprises, and when the Covenant ship
took off again, McKay found herself looking at everything she had
expected to see plus a couple of Hunters. The mean-looking
bastards would be hard to kill and could rip the platoon to shreds.
The officer swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in
her throat, keyed her mike, and whispered some instructions. “Red One
to all snipers and rocket jockeys. Put everything you have on the
Hunters. Do it now. Over.”
It was hard to say who killed the Hunters, given the
sudden barrage of bullets and rockets that came their way, but McKay
didn’t care, so long as the walking tanks were dead . . . which
they definitely were. That was the good news.
The bad news was that the dropship returned, hosed the
boulders with plasma fire, and forced the Helljumpers to duck or lose
their heads.
Encouraged by the air support, the Covenant ground troops
rushed to enter the jumble of rocks, eager to find some cover, and kill
the treacherous humans. They were forced to pay a price, however, as
the snipers on the hill picked off five of the alien soldiers before
the dropship moved in to exact its revenge.
The Marines were forced to dive deep as the enemy aircraft
marched a double line of plasma bolts across the top of the tiny mesa,
killing two of the snipers and wounding a third.
Things soon started to get ugly on the rock-strewn
hillside as both humans and Covenant hunted one another between the
huge, weather-smoothed boulders. Energy bolts flew and assault weapons
chattered, as both sides took part in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.
This was not what McKay had envisioned, and she was looking for
a
way to disengage, when a wave of new hostiles entered the fight.
A torrent of the bizarre creatures attacked both
groups from the other side of the hill. McKay had a glimpse of
corpse-flesh, twisted and mangled bodies, and swarms of tiny little
spheres that bounced, leaped, and climbed over the rocks.
The first problem was that while the Covenant forces
seemed familiar with the creatures, the Helljumpers weren’t, and three
members of the second squad had already gone down under the combined
weight of multiple forms, and one member of the third had been
slaughtered by a grotesque biped, before McKay understood the extent of
the danger.
Even as the officer fought her way uphill through the maze
of boulders the radio calls continued to boom through her earpiece.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
“Get it off me!”
The radio traffic tripled and the command freq turned into
such a confusion of screams, requests for orders, and pleas for
extraction, that the Marines might as well have spoken in tongues.
McKay cursed. No way. No way were these things
going
to break them. No way. She rounded a boulder, saw a Grunt running
downhill with two of the spherical creatures clinging to its back. The
Grunt squealed and spun and she got her first close look at the
creatures. A sustained burst from the assault weapon brought all three
of them down.
As the Marine worked her way farther uphill, she soon
discovered that the new enemy took other forms as well. McKay
killed a two-legged form, saw a private put half a clip into a
lumpy-looking monster, and watched in disgust as the dying creature
spewed even more grotesqueries out into the world.
That was the moment when the third form emerged from
between a couple of boulders, saw the human, and launched itself into
the air.
Jenkins had the same view that the others
did, spotted the Lieutenant, and hoped she was a good shot. This was
better than suicide—this was . . .
But it wasn’t meant to be.
McKay tracked the incoming body,
sidestepped, and used the butt of her weapon to clip the side of the
creature’s head. It landed in a heap, flailed around, and was just
about to jump up when the Lieutenant pounced on it. “Give me a hand!”
she shouted. “I want this one alive!”
It took four Marines to subdue the creature, get
restraints on both its wrists and ankles, and finally bring it under
control. Even at that, one of the Helljumpers suffered a black eye,
another wound up with a broken arm, and a third bled from a ragged bite
wound on his arm.
The ensuing battle lasted for a full fifteen minutes, an
eternity in combat, with both humans and Covenant forces taking time
out from their battle with one another to concentrate on the new enemy.
The moment the last bulbous form was popped, however, they were back at
it again, tracking one another through the maze in a contest of life
and death, no quarter asked and none given.
McKay radioed for assistance, and with help from the
Reaction Force, plus two Pelicans and four captured Banshees, she was
able to drive the Covenant dropship away and kill those ground troops
who weren’t willing to surrender.
Then, on McKay’s orders, the Helljumpers combed the area
for reasonably intact specimens of the new enemy which could be
taken back to Alpha Base for analysis.
Finally, after the bodies were recovered, Jenkins was the
only specimen that was still alive. In spite of the way that he jerked,
bucked, and tried to bite his captors they threw him onto the Pelican,
roped him to the D-rings recessed into the deck, and delivered a few
kicks for good measure.
With fully half of her Marines making the
return trip in body bags, McKay sat through the seemingly endless
journey to Alpha Base. Tears cut tracks down through the grime on the
Helljumper’s face to wet the deck between her boots. The Covenant had
been bad enough—but now there was an even worse enemy to fight. Now,
for the first time since the landing on Halo, McKay felt nothing but
despair.
The Spartan left Sergeant Mobuto’s body
behind and approached one of the large metal doors, pleased to see that
it was open. He crouched and passed through. 343 Guilty Spark
disappeared on one of his mysterious errands a few moments later, and,
like clockwork, the Flood came out to play.
He was ready for them. The Flood swept into the
room—dozens of the bulbous infection forms scuttling along the walls
and floor, with another half dozen of the combat forms in tow.
They paused, as if in confusion. One of the combat forms
looked up—and the Spartan dropped from the pillar he’d shimmied up. His
metal boots pulped the creature’s face. Assault rifle fire raked the
leading edge of the cluster of infection forms. The pods detonated in a
chain-reaction string.
That got their attention, he thought. The Chief
turned and ran. He jumped up onto a raised platform as he fought,
disengaged, and fought again. Finally, as the last body fell, both the
Monitor and the Sentinels reappeared.
The Spartan looked at them in disgust as he reloaded his
weapons, scrounged ammo off the Flood combat forms, and followed 343
Guilty Spark out onto a lift that was identical to the last one he’d
been on.
The platform carried the human up to a still higher level,
where he got off, paused to let the Sentinels soften up the Flood
welcome wagon that waited out in the hall, then emerged to lend a hand.
There was a loud boom! as one of the combat forms leaped from
an
archway and landed right on top of a Sentinel. Its whip-tendril flailed
at the hovering robot’s back and was rewarded with a series of sparks
and a gout of flame. A moment later, the Sentinel exploded, and the
Flood and the wrecked drone crashed into the floor in a ball of flesh,
bone, and metal. The resulting shower of shrapnel cut three Flood forms
down and wounded a score of others.
The Spartan took another out with a burst from his assault
weapon and the other robots moved in to fry the remains.
Once that contingent of freaks had been dealt with, the
Chief followed the Monitor down a hall lined with blue screens, through
an area that was infested with Flood, and out onto a lift that looked
different from the last one he’d been on. Geometric patterns split the
floor into puzzlelike shapes, a series of raised panels stood guard
around a column of translucent blue light, and the whole thing seemed
to glow.
The Master Chief stepped on board, felt a slight jerk as
ancient machinery reacted to his presence, and saw the walls start to
rise. He was headed down this time—and hoped that his journey was near
an end. Without hesitation, he slammed fresh ammo into his weapon; it
seemed as if he emerged into a huge cluster of Flood every time he
traveled on a lift.
The lift made hollow, rumbling sounds, fell a long way,
and stopped with a reverberating thud.
343 Guilty Spark hovered over his shoulder as the Spartan
stepped off the lift and approached a pedestal. “You may now retrieve
the Index,” the Monitor said. The artifact glowed lime green; it was
shaped like the letter T. It slowly rose from the top of the
cylindrical tube in which it had been kept for so many millennia. A
series of metal blocks that encircled the device rotated and spun,
releasing their protective grip on the Index.
The Spartan took hold of the device, and pulled it up and
out of its tubular sheath. He held it up to examine the glowing
artifact—and was startled when a gray beam lanced from Spark. The Index
was yanked from his hand and disappeared inside a storage chamber in
the Monitor’s body.
“What the hell are you doing?” the Spartan demanded.
“As you know, Reclaimer,” Spark said, as if addressing an
errant child, “protocol requires that I take possession of the
Index for transport.”
343 Guilty Spark swooped and dived, then floated in place.
“Your biological form renders you vulnerable to infection. The Index
must not fall into the hands of the Flood before we reach the Control
Room and activate the installation.
“The Flood is spreading! We must hurry.”
The Master Chief was about to reply when he saw the bands
of pulsating light flowing down around his body, knew he was about to
be teleported, and again felt light-headed.
It wanted something, Keyes realized.
The memories that replayed like an endless library of video clips were
being sifted for something. The buzzing presence in his mind sought . .
.what?
He grasped at the thought, and pushed back against the
wall of resistance the other that burrowed through his consciousness
had erected. He brushed up against it and it almost slipped away . . .
Then he had it—escape. Whatever this thing was, it wanted
off
the ring. It hungered, and there was a perfect feeding ground to be
found.
The other plunged a barbed-wire tendril into his mind and
ripped forth an image of a lunar Earthrise, which blurred into images
of cattle in a slaughterhouse. He felt the other’s tendrils eagerly
grasp at the image of Earth. Where? It thundered. Tell.
The pressure increased and battered through Keyes’
resistance, and in desperation he summoned up a new memory. The alien
presence seemed startled at the image of Keyes and a childhood friend
kicking a soccer ball on a vibrant green field.
The pressure eased as the hungry other examined the memory.
Keyes felt a stab of regret. He knew what he had to do now.
He dragged all he remembered of Earth—its location, his
ability to find it, its defenses—and shoved them down, as deep as he
could.
Keyes felt the gaping sense of loss as the memory of the
soccer field was ripped away and discarded forever. He quickly summoned
up another—the taste of a favorite meal. He began to feed his memories
to the invading presence in his mind, one scrap at a time.
Of all the battles he’d ever fought, this one was the
toughest—and the most important.
The Chief rematerialized back on the walkway
which seemed to float over the black abyss below—the Control Room. He
saw the replica of Halo which arched above, the globe that floated at
the center of the walkway, and the control panel where he had last seen
Cortana. Was she still there?
343 Guilty Spark hovered above his head. “Is something
wrong?”
“No, nothing.”
“Splendid. Shall we?”
The Spartan made his way forward. The control board was
long and curved at either end. An endless light show played across the
surface of the panel as various aspects of the ring world’s extremely
complicated electronic and mechanical machinery fed a constant flow of
data to the display, all of which appeared as a mosaic of constantly
morphing glyphs and symbols.
Here, if one knew how to read it, were the equivalents of
the ring world’s pulse, respirations, and brain waves. Reports that
provided information on the rate of spin, the atmosphere, the weather,
the highly complex biosphere, the machinery that kept all of it
running, plus the activities of the creatures around whom the world had
been formed: the Flood. It was awesome to look at—and even more awesome
to consider.
343 Guilty Spark hovered above the control panel and
looked down on the human who stood in front of him. There was something
supercilious about the tone of the construct’s voice. “My role in this
particular endeavor has come to an end. Protocol does not allow units
from my classification to perform a task as important as the
reunification of the Index with the Core.”
The Monitor zipped around to hover at the Master Chief’s
side. “That final step is reserved for you , Reclaimer.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” the Chief asked. Spark
kept silent.
The Spartan shrugged, accepted the Index, and gazed at the
panel in front of him. One likely-looking slot pulsed the same glowing
green that shone from the Index. He slid it home. The T-shaped device
fit perfectly.
The control panel shivered as if stabbed, the displays
flared as if in response to an overload, and an electronic groan was
heard. 343 Guilty Spark tilted slightly as if to look at the control
board.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Spark chirped.
There was a sudden shimmer of light as Cortana’s
holographic figure appeared and continued to grow until she towered
over the control panel. Her eyes were bright pink, data scrolled across
her body, and the Chief knew she was pissed. “Oh, really?” she said.
She gestured, and the Monitor fell out of the air and hit the deck with
a clank.
The Spartan looked up at her. “Cortana—”
The AI stood with hands on hips. “I spent hours cooped in
here watching you toady about helping that . . . thing get set
to
slit our throats.”
The Chief turned toward the Monitor and back. “Hold on
now. He’s a friend.”
Cortana brought a hand up to her mouth in mock surprise.
“Oh, I didn’t realize. He’s your pal, is he? Your chum?
Do you have any idea what that bastard almost made you do?”
“Yes,” the Spartan said patiently. “Activate Halo’s
defenses and destroy the Flood. Which is why we brought the Index to
the Control Center.”
Cortana’s image plucked the Index out of its slot and held
it out in front of her. “You mean this ?”
Now reanimated, 343 Guilty Spark hovered just off the
floor. He was furious. “A construct in the core? That is absolutely
unacceptable!”
Cortana’s eyes glowed as she bent forward. “Piss off.”
The Monitor darted higher. “What impertinence! I shall
purge you at once.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Cortana inquired as she
waved the Index, then added the data contained within it to her memory.
“How dare you!” Spark exclaimed. “I’ll—”
“Do what?” Cortana demanded. “I have the Index. You
can float and sputter.”
The Master Chief held both hands up. One held the assault
rifle. “Enough! The Flood is spreading. If we activate Halo’s defenses
we can wipe them out.”
Cortana looked down on the human with an expression of
pity. “You have no idea how this ring works, do you? Why the
Forerunners built it?”
She leaned forward, her face grim. “Halo doesn’t kill
Flood—it kills their food . Human, Covenant, whatever. You’re
all
equally edible. The only way to stop the Flood is to starve them to
death. And that’s exactly what Halo is designed to do. Wipe the galaxy
clean of all sentient life. You don’t believe me?” the AI
finished. “Ask him!” and she pointed to 343 Guilty Spark.
The ramifications of what Cortana said hit home, and he
gripped his MA5B tightly. He rounded on the Monitor. “Is it true?”
Spark bobbed slightly. “Of course,” the construct said
directly. Then, sounding more like his officious self again, “This
installation has a maximum effective radius of twenty-five thousand
light years, but once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite
devoid of life, or at least any life with sufficient biomass to sustain
the Flood.
“But you already knew this,” the AI continued contritely.
The little device sounded genuinely puzzled. “I mean, how couldn’t
you?”
Cortana glowered at the Chief. “Left out that little
detail, did he?”
“We followed outbreak containment procedure to the
letter,” the Monitor said defensively. “You were with me each step of
the way as we managed the process.”
“Chief,” Cortana interrupted, “I’m picking up movement—”
“Why would you hesitate to do what you’ve already done?”
343 Guilty Spark demanded.
“We need to go,” Cortana insisted. “Right now!”
“Last time you asked me: if it were my choice, would I do
it?” the Monitor continued, as a flock of Sentinels arrayed themselves
behind him. “Having had considerable time to ponder your query, my
answer has not changed. There is no choice. We must activate the ring.”
“Get. Us. Out. Of. Here,” Cortana said, her eyes tracking
the Sentinels.
“If you are unwilling to help—I will simply find another,”
Spark said conversationally. “Still, I must have the Index. Give your
construct to me or I will be forced to take it from you.”
The Spartan looked up at Spark and the machines arrayed in
the air behind him. The assault weapon came up ready to fire. “That’s
not going to happen.”
“So be it,” the Monitor said wearily. Then, in a comment
directed to the Sentinels, he added: “Save his head. Dispose of the
rest.”
SECTION V
TWO BETRAYALS
CHAPTER TEN
D+68:03:27 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / Halo
Control Room.
The vast platform that extended out over the Control
Room’s black abyss felt small and confining as the Master Chief was
attacked from every direction at once. Ruby red energy beams sizzled,
and the smell of ozone filled the air as the airborne Sentinels
circled, searching for a chink in his armor. All they needed was one
good hit, a chance to put him down, and they would be able not only to
take his head, but the Index as well.
Cortana’s intrusion skills had become much less
conventional since the landing on Halo. He had been surprised when
she’d used his suit comm as a de facto modem to broadcast her way into
the Control Room computers. He was also unprepared for her sudden
return. After so much time in the ring’s massive systems, she felt
somehow larger. He pondered her unusual behavior—her shortness, the
flare of temper.
There was no time to consider Cortana’s “mental state.”
There was still a mission to achieve: protect Cortana, and keep Spark
the hell away from the Index. For his part the Spartan wove back and
forth, conscious of the fact that the walkway had no rails, and how
easy it would be to fall off the edge. That made hitting his targets a
great deal more difficult. Still, he had seen the Flood bring Sentinels
down, and figured that if the combat forms could do it, so could he. He
decided to tackle the lowest machines first.
He was careful to get a good lead on each target. The
assault rifle stuttered, and the nearest target exploded. He switched
to the shotgun and fired methodically. He pumped a new round into the
chamber, and fired again. Thanks to the broad pattern provided by each
shell, the pump gun soon proved itself to be an extremely effective
weapon against the Sentinels.
One of the machines exploded, another hit the deck with a
loud clang, and a third trailed smoke as it spiraled into the darkness
below.
The battle became somewhat easier after that, as there was
less and less incoming fire, and he was able to knock three more robots
out of the air in quick succession.
He started to move, reloading as he went. One especially
persistent machine took advantage of the interlude to score three hits
on his back, which triggered the audible alarm, and pushed his shield
to the very edge.
With only four shells in his weapon, the Chief turned,
blew the robot out of the air, and spun to nail another. Then, weapon
raised, he turned in a circle, searching for more targets. There
weren’t any.
“So,” he said as he lowered the shotgun and pushed more
shells into the receiver, “don’t tell me—let me guess. You have a plan.”
“Yes,” Cortana replied unabashedly, “I do. We can’t let
the Monitor activate Halo. We have to stop him—we have to destroy Halo.”
The Spartan nodded and flexed his stiff shoulders. “And
how do we do that?”
“According to my analysis of the available data I believe
the best course of action is somewhat risky.”
Naturally, the Chief thought.
“An explosion of sufficient size,” Cortana explained,
“will help destabilize the ring—and will cut through a number of
primary systems. We need to trigger a detonation on a large scale,
however. A starship’s fusion reactors going critical would do the job.
“I’m going to find out where the Pillar of Autumn
went down. If the ship’s fusion reactors are still relatively intact,
we can use them to destroy Halo.”
“Is that all?” the Spartan inquired dryly. “Sounds
like a walk in the park. By the way, it’s nice to have you back.”
“It’s nice to be back,” Cortana said, and he knew
she meant it. Although there were any number of “natural” bio-sentients
that she thought of as friends, the bond the AI shared with the Spartan
was unique. So long as they shared the same armor they would share the
same fate. If he died then she died. Relationships don’t
get any more interdependent than that, something that struck Cortana as
both wonderful and frightening.
His boots made a hollow sound as he approached the
gigantic blast doors and hit the switch. They parted to reveal a battle
in progress between a group of Sentinels and Covenant ground troops.
Red lasers split the air into jagged shapes as robots burned a Jackal
down. The contest was far from one-sided, however, as one of the
machines exploded and showered the Covenant with bits of hot metal.
The room was a long rectangular affair with a strangely
corrugated floor. Standing at one end of the space, and well out of
harm’s way, the Spartan was content to watch and let the two groups
whittle each other down. However, when the last robot crashed, leaving
two Elites still on their feet, the Master Chief knew he’d have to take
them on.
The Covenant spotted the human, knew he’d have to come to
them, and stood waiting. The Chief took advantage of what little bit of
cover there was and made his way down the length of the room. With only
half a clip of ammo left in his assault rifle, he had little choice but
to tackle them with the shotgun—far from ideal at this range.
He fired a couple of rounds just to get their attention,
waited for the Elites to charge, and lobbed a plasma grenade into the
gap between them. The explosion killed one soldier and wounded the
other. A single blast from the shotgun was sufficient to finish the
job. Striding though the carnage, he exchanged the assault weapon for a
plasma rifle.
From there it was a short journey through an empty room
and out onto the top level of the pyramid. It was dark, and a fresh
layer of snow had fallen since the time when the noncom had battled his
way up to the Control Room from the valley below.
There were guards, but all of them had their backs to the
hatch, and didn’t bother to turn until the doors were halfway open.
That was when they saw the human, did a series of double takes, and
started to respond. But the Chief was ready and used the energy weapon
to hose them down. The Elites jerked and fell, quickly followed by
several Jackals and Grunts.
Then, just as suddenly as the violence had started, it was
over. Snow swirled around the sole figure who remained standing, began
the long, painstaking job of covering each body with a shroud of white,
and fostered an illusion of peace.
Cortana took advantage of the momentary pause to update
the Spartan regarding her plan. “We need to buy some time in case the
Monitor or his Sentinels find a way to activate Halo’s final weapon
without the Index.
“The machines in these canyons are Halo’s primary firing
mechanisms. They consist of three phase pulse generators that amplify
Halo’s signal and allow it to fire deep into space. If we damage or
destroy the generators, the Monitor will need to repair them before
Halo can be used. That should buy us some time. I’m marking the
location of the nearest pulse generator with a nav point. We need to
move and neutralize the device.”
“Roger that,” the Chief said, as he made his way down the
first ramp to the platform below. Once again the element of surprise
worked in his favor. He killed two Elites, caught a couple of Jackals
as they tried to run, and nailed a Grunt as it appeared from below.
The wind whistled around the side of the pyramid. The
Spartan left a trail of large bootprints as he made his way down to the
point where the ramp met the next level walkway, crossed to the other
side of the structure, and ran into a pair of Elites as they hit the
top of the up ramp and rounded the corner.
There wasn’t enough time to do anything but fire, and keep
on firing, in an attempt to overwhelm the Covenant armor. It wouldn’t
have worked had the aliens been farther away, but the fact that the
plasma pulses were pounding them in close made all the difference. The
first Elite made a horrible gurgling sound as he fell and the second
got a shot off but lost half of his face. He brought his hands up to
the hole, made a gruesome discovery, and was just about to scream when
an energy bolt took his life.
Then, as the Spartan prepared to descend into the valley
below, Cortana said, “Wait, we should commandeer one of those Banshees.
We’ll need it to reach the pulse generator in time.” Like many of the
AI’s suggestions, this was easier said than done, but the Chief was in
favor of speed, and filed the possibility away.
Now, as he came down off the pyramid, he saw lots of
Covenant, but no Flood, and felt a strange sense of relief. The
Covenant were tough, but he understood them, and that lessened his
apprehension.
The alien plasma rifle lacked the precision offered by an
M6D pistol or a sniper’s rifle, but the Chief did the best he could to
pick off some of the Covenant below. Still, he had only nailed three of
the aliens when his efforts attracted the attention of a Wraith tank,
along with more troops. There was nothing he could do except
retreat back uphill.
The Wraith, which continued to hurl plasma bombs up-slope,
actually helped by preventing other Covenant forces from charging after
him. That advantage wouldn’t last long, though, which meant that he had
to find some additional fire power, and find it fast.
Even though there was no sign of the Flood at the moment,
some of their half-frozen bodies lay scattered about, suggesting that
there had been a significant battle within the last couple of hours. He
knew the Flood carried weapons acquired from dead victims, so the Chief
ran from corpse to corpse, looking for what he required. For a while it
seemed hopeless as he uncovered a series of M6Ds, energy pistols,
combat knives, and other gear—anything and everything except what he
needed most.
Then, just when he had nearly given up hope, he saw a few
inches of olive drab tubing protruding from under a dead combat form.
He rolled the ex-Elite over, and felt a rising sense of excitement. Was
the launcher loaded? If so, he was in luck.
A quick check revealed that the weapon was loaded,
and as if to prove that luck comes in threes, the Spartan found two
reloads only a few meters away.
Armed with the launcher, he was ready to go to work. The
Wraith represented the most significant threat, so he decided to deal
with that first. It took time to make his way back across the face of
the pyramid to a point where he could get a clear shot, but he did. The
monster was dangerously close as he put a pair of rockets into the
mortar tank, and watched it explode.
He ejected the spent rocket tubes, slammed a reload home,
and shifted his aim. Two more rockets lanced ahead, and detonated in
clusters of Covenant soldiers. He fell back and slung the rocket
launcher; he had a limited supply of rockets, and once they were gone,
he had no choice but to go down onto the valley floor and finish the
job the hard way.
He crept up on the pair of Elites who stood guard near a
Banshee. They went down from deadly, spine-cracking blows and he
stepped past their fallen corpses. He examined the Banshee’s controls
while Cortana pulled up files the tech boys in Intel had prepared based
on examinations of captured craft.
He boarded the single-seat aircraft, and activated its
power plant. He wondered why the aliens hadn’t used the ship against
him, was thankful that they hadn’t, and eyed the instrument panel. The
Master Chief had never flown one of the attack ships before, but was
qualified to fly most of the UNSC’s atmospheric and spacegoing ships
so, between his own experience and the tech files Cortana provided, he
found the controls relatively easy to understand. The takeoff was a bit
wobbly, but it wasn’t long before the flight began to smooth out, and
the Banshee started to climb.
It was dark, and snow continued to fall, which meant that
visibility was poor. He kept a close eye on both the nav point Cortana
had projected onto his HUD and the instrument panel. The design was
different, but an alien turn and bank indicator still looked like what
it was, and helped the human maintain his orientation.
The attack ship made good speed, and the valleys were
quite close together, so it wasn’t long before the Spartan spotted the
well-lit platform which jutted out from the face of the cliff, as well
as the enemy fire which lashed up to greet him. The word was out, it
seemed—and the Covenant didn’t want any visitors.
Rather than put down under fire, he decided to carry out a
couple of strafing runs first. He swooped low and used the Banshee’s
plasma and fuel rod cannons to sweep the platform clear of sentries
before decelerating for what he hoped would be an unopposed landing.
The Banshee crunched into the platform, bounced once, then
ground to a halt. The Chief dismounted, passed through a hatch, and
entered the tunnel beyond.
“We need to interrupt the pulse generator’s energy
stream,” Cortana informed him. “I have adjusted your shield system so
that it will deliver an EMP burst and disrupt the generator . . . but
you’ll have to walk into the beam to trigger it.”
The Master Chief paused just shy of the next hatch. “I’ll
have to do what?”
“You’ll have to walk into the beam to trigger it,”
the AI repeated matter-of-factly. “The EMP blast should neutralize the
generator.”
“Should?” the Chief demanded. “Whose side are you
on?”
“Yours,” Cortana replied firmly. “We’re in this
together—remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” the Spartan growled. “But
you’re
not the one with the bruises.”
The AI chose to remain silent as the Chief passed through
a hatch, paused to see if anyone would attempt to cancel his ticket,
and followed the nav indicator to the chamber located at the center of
the room.
Once he was there the pulse generator was impossible to
miss. It was so intensely white that his visor automatically darkened
in order to protect his eyes. Not only that, but the Chief could feel
the air crackle around him as he approached the delta-shaped guide
structures, and prepared to step in between them. “I have to walk into
that thing?” the Chief inquired doubtfully. “Isn’t there some easier
way to commit suicide?”
“You’ll be fine,” Cortana replied soothingly. “I’m almost
sure of it.”
The Spartan took note of the “almost,” clenched his teeth,
and pushed himself into the blindingly intense light. The response was
nearly instantaneous. There was something akin to an explosion, the
light started to pulsate, and the floor shook in response. The Chief
hurried to disengage, felt a bit of suction, but managed to pull free.
As he did so he noticed that his shields had been drained. His skin
felt sunburned.
“The pulse generator’s central core is off-line,” Cortana
said. “Well done.”
Another squadron of Sentinels arrived. They swooped into
the cramped pulse-generator chamber like vultures, fanned out, and
seared the area with ruby-red energy beams. Not only did the Monitor
take exception to the damage—he was after the Index too.
But the Chief knew how to deal with the mechanical
killers, and proceeded to dodge their lasers as he destroyed one after
another. Finally, the air thick with the stench of ozone, he was free
to withdraw. He went back through the same tunnel to the platform where
the Banshee waited.
“The second pulse generator is located in an adjacent
canyon,” Cortana announced easily. “Move out and I’ll mark the nav
point when we get closer.”
The Master Chief sent the Banshee into a wide bank, and
toward the next objective.
Minus the refrigeration required to preserve
them, the bodies laid out on the metal tables had already started to
decay, and the stench forced Silva to breathe through his mouth as he
entered the makeshift morgue and waited for McKay to begin her
presentation.
Six heavily armed Helljumpers were lined up along one wall
ready to respond if one or more of the Flood suddenly came back to
life. It seemed unlikely given the level of damage each corpse had
sustained, but the creatures had proven themselves to be extremely
resilient, and had an alarming tendency to reanimate.
McKay, who was still trying to deal with the fact that
more than fifteen Marines under her command had lost their lives in a
single battle, looked pale. Silva understood, even sympathized, but
couldn’t allow that to show. There was simply no time for grief,
self-doubt, or guilt. The Company Commander would have to do what he
did, which was to suck it up and keep on going. He nodded coolly.
“Lieutenant?”
McKay swallowed in an attempt to counter the nausea she
felt. “Sir, yes sir. Obviously there’s still a great deal that we don’t
know, but based on our observations during the fight, and information
obtained from Covenant POWs, here’s the best intelligence we have. It
seems that the Covenant came here searching for ‘holy relics’—we think
that means useful technology—and ran into a life form they refer to as
‘the Flood.’ ” She gestured at the fallen creatures on the slab. “Those
are
Flood.”
“Charming,” Silva muttered.
“As best we can figure out,” McKay said, “the Flood is a
parasitic life form which attacks sentient beings, erases their minds,
and takes control of their bodies. Wellsley believes that Halo was
constructed to house them, to keep them under control, but we have no
direct evidence to support that. Perhaps Cortana or the Chief can
confirm our findings when we’re able to make contact with them again.
“The Flood manifests in various forms starting with these
things,” McKay said, using her combat knife to prod a flaccid infection
form. “As you can see, it has tentacles in place of legs, plus a couple
of extremely sharp penetrators, which they use to invade the victim’s
central nervous system and take control of it. Eventually they work
their way inside the host body and take up residence there.”
Silva tried to imagine what that might feel like and felt
a shiver run down his spine. Outwardly he was unchanged. “Please
continue.”
McKay said, “Yes, sir,” and moved to the next table. “This
is what the Covenant call a ‘combat form.’ As you can see from what
remains of its face, this one was human. We think she was a Navy
weapons tech, based on the tattoos still visible on her skin. If you
peek through the hole in her chest you can see the remains of the
infection form that deflated itself enough to fit in around her heart
and lungs.”
Silva didn’t want to look, but felt he had to, and
moved close enough to see the wrinkled scalp, to which a few isolated
clumps of filthy hair still clung. His eyes catalogued a parade of
horrors: the sickly looking skin; the alarmingly blue eyes which still
bulged, as if in response to some unimaginable pain; the twisted,
toothless mouth; the slightly puckered 7.62 mm bullet hole through the
right cheekbone; the lumpy, penetrator-filled neck; the bony chest, now
split down the middle so that the woman’s flat breasts hung down to
either side; the grossly distorted torso, punctured by three
overlapping bullet wounds; the thin, sinewy arms; and the strangely
graceful fingers, one of which still bore a silver ring.
The Major didn’t say anything, but his face must have
telegraphed what he felt, because McKay nodded. “It’s pretty awful,
isn’t it, sir? I’ve seen death before, sir—” she swallowed and shook
her head, “—but nothing like this.
“For what it’s worth Covenant victims don’t look any
better. This individual was armed with a pistol, her own probably, but
the Flood seem to pick up and use any weapon they can lay their hands
on. Not only that, but they pack a very nasty punch, which can be
lethal.
“Most combat forms appear to be derived from humans and
Elites,” McKay continued, as she moved to the last table. “We suspect
that Grunts and Jackals are deemed too small for first-class combat
material, and are therefore used as a sort of nucleus around which
carrier forms can grow. It’s hard to tell by looking at the puddle of
crap on the table in front of you, but at one time this thing contained
four
of the infection forms you saw earlier, and when it popped the
resulting explosion had enough force to knock Sergeant Lister on his
can.”
That, or the mental picture that it conveyed, was
sufficient to elicit nervous grins from the Helljumpers who lined the
back wall. Apparently they liked the idea of something that could put
Lister on his ass.
Silva frowned. “Does Wellsley have scans of this stuff?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. Nice job. Have the bodies burned, send these
troops up for some fresh air, and report to my office in an hour.”
McKay nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Zuka ’Zamamee lay belly down on the
hard-packed dirt and used his monocular to scan the Pillar of Autumn.
It wasn’t heavily guarded; the Covenant was stretched too thin for
that, but the Council had reinforced the security force subsequent to
the human raid, and evidence of that was visible in the Banshees,
Ghosts, and Wraiths that patrolled the area around the downed ship.
Yayap, who lay next to the Elite, had no such device and was forced to
rely on his own vision.
“This plan is insane,” ’Zamamee said out of the side of
his mouth. “I should have killed you a long time ago.”
“Yes, Excellency,” the Grunt agreed patiently, knowing
that the talk was just that. The truth was that the officer was
afraid
to return to the Truth and Reconciliation, and now had very
little choice but to accept Yayap’s plan, especially in light of the
fact that he had been unable to come up with one of his own.
“Give it to me one more time,” the Elite demanded, “so
I’ll know that you won’t make any mistakes.”
Yayap eyed the readout on his wrist. He had two, maybe two
and a half units of methane left, before his tanks were empty and he
would suffocate, a problem which didn’t seem to trouble the Elite at
all. It was tempting to pull his pistol, shoot ’Zamamee in the head,
and implement the strategy on his own. But there were advantages to
being in company with the warrior—plus a giddy sense of power that went
with having threatened the warrior and survived. With that in mind
Yayap managed to suppress both his panic and a rising sense of
resentment.
“Of course, Excellency. As you know, simple plans are
often best, which is why there is a good chance this one will work. On
the possibility that the Council of Masters is actively looking for
Zuka ’Zamamee, you will choose one of the commandos who died on the
human encampment, and assume that individual’s identity.
“Then, with me at your side, we will report to the officer
in charge of guarding the alien ship, explain that we were taken
prisoner in the aftermath of the raid, but were subsequently able to
escape.”
“But what then?” the Elite inquired warily. “What if he
submits my DNA for a match?”
“Why would he do that?” the Grunt countered patiently.
“He’s shorthanded, and here, as if presented by the great ones
themselves, is a commando Elite. Would you run the risk of
having
such a find reassigned? No, I think not. Under circumstances such as
these you would seize the opportunity to add such a highly capable
warrior to your command, and give thanks for the blessing.”
It sounded good, especially the “highly capable warrior”
part, so ’Zamamee agreed. “Fine. What about later?”
“Later, if there is a later,” Yayap said wearily,
“we will have to come up with another plan. In the meantime this
initiative will assure us of food, water, and methane.”
“All right,” ’Zamamee said, “let’s jump on the Banshee and
make our appearance.”
“Are you sure that’s the best idea?” the Grunt inquired
tactfully. “If we arrive on a Banshee, the commanding officer might
wonder why we were so slow to check in.”
The Elite eyed what looked like a long, hard walk, sighed,
and acquiesced. “Agreed.” A hint of his former arrogance resurfaced.
“But you will carry my gear.”
“Of course,” Yayap said, scrambling to his feet. “Was
there ever any doubt?”
The inmate had attempted suicide twice,
which was why the interior of his cell was bare, and under
round-the-clock surveillance. The creature that had once been Private
Wallace A. Jenkins sat on the floor with both wrists chained to an
eyebolt located just over his head.
The Flood mind, which the human continued to think of as
“the other,” had been quiet for a while, but was present nonetheless,
and glowered in what amounted to a cognitive corner, angry but weak.
Hinges squealed as the metal door swung open. Jenkins turned to look,
and saw a male noncom enter the room followed by a female officer.
The private felt an almost overwhelming sense of shame—and
did what he could to turn away. Earlier, before the guards secured his
wrists to the wall, Jenkins had used pantomime to request a mirror. A
well-meaning Corporal brought one in, held it up in front of the
soldier’s devastated face, and was frightened when he tried to scream.
The initial suicide attempt followed thirty minutes later.
McKay took a look at the prisoner’s dry, parched lips and
guessed that he might be thirsty. She called for some water, accepted a
canteen, and started across the cell. “With respect, ma’am, I don’t
think you should do that,” the Sergeant said cautiously. “These suckers
are incredibly violent.”
“Jenkins is a Private in the UNSC Marine Corps,” McKay
replied sternly, “and will be referred to as such. And your concern has
been noted.”
Then, like a teacher dealing with a recalcitrant child,
she held the canteen out where Jenkins could see it. “Look!” she said,
sloshing the water back and forth. “Behave yourself and I’ll give you a
drink.”
Jenkins tried to warn her, tried to say “No,” but heard
himself gabble instead. Thus encouraged, McKay unscrewed the canteen’s
lid, took three steps forward, and was just about to lean over when the
combat form attacked. Jenkins felt his left arm break as the chain
brought it up short—and fought to counter the other’s attempt to grab
the officer in a scissor lock.
McKay stepped back just in time to evade the flailing legs.
There was a clacking sound as the guard pumped a shell
into the shotgun’s receiver and prepared to fire. McKay shouted, “No!”
and held up her hand. The noncom obeyed but kept his weapon aimed at
the combat form’s head.
“Okay,” McKay said, looking into the creature’s eyes,
“have it your way. But, like it or not, we’re going to have a talk.”
Silva had entered the cell by then and stood behind the
Lieutenant. The Sergeant saw the Major nod, and backed into a corner
with his weapon still held at the ready.
“My name is Silva,” the Major began, “and you already know
Lieutenant McKay here. First, let me say that both of us are extremely
sorry about what happened to you, we understand how you feel, and will
make sure that you receive the best medical care that the UNSC has to
offer. But first we have to fight our way off this ring. I think I know
how we can do that—but it will take some time. We need to hold this
butte until we’re ready to make our move. That’s where you come
in. You know where we are now—and you know how the Flood move around.
If you had my job, if you had to defend this base against the Flood,
where would you focus your efforts?”
The other used his right hand to grab his left, jerked
hard, and exposed a shard of broken bone. Then, as if hoping to use
that as a knife, the combat form lunged forward. The chains brought the
creature up short. Jenkins felt indescribable pain, began to lose
consciousness, but fought his way back.
Silva looked at McKay and shrugged. “Well, it was worth a
try, but it looks like he’s too far gone.”
Jenkins half expected the other to lunge forward again,
but having shared in the human’s pain, the alien consciousness chose
that moment to retreat. The human surged into the gap, made hooting
sounds, and used his good hand to point at Silva’s right boot.
The officer looked down at his boot, frowned, and was
about to say something when McKay touched his arm. “He isn’t pointing
at your boot, sir, he’s pointing down. At the area under the
butte.”
Silva felt something cold trickle into his veins. “Is that
right, son? The Flood could be directly below us?”
Jenkins nodded emphatically, rolled his eyes, and made
inarticulate gagging sounds.
The Major nodded and came to his feet. “Thank you,
Private. We’ll check the basement and be back to speak with you some
more.”
Jenkins didn’t want to talk, he wanted to die, but
nobody cared. The guards left, the door clanged shut, and the Marine
was left with nothing but a broken arm and the alien inside his head.
Somehow, without actually dying, he had been sentenced to hell.
As if to confirm that conclusion the other surged to the
fore, yanked at the chains, and beat its feet on the floor. Food had
been present, food had left, and it remained hungry.
The Master Chief spotted the next way point,
put the hijacked Banshee down on a platform, and entered the complex
via an unguarded hatch. He heard the battle before he actually saw it,
made his way through the intervening tunnel, and peered through the
next door. As had occurred before, the Covenant was busy taking it to
the Flood and vice versa, so he gave both groups some time to whittle
each other down, left the security of the tunnel, and proceeded to tidy
up.
Then, eager to replenish his supplies, the Spartan made
his ghoulish rounds, and soon was able to equip himself with an assault
weapon, a shotgun, and some plasma grenades. Even though he didn’t like
to think about where it came from, it felt good to dump the Covenant
ordnance he’d been saddled with, and lay his hands on some true-blue
UNSC issue for a change.
Pulse generator one had been dealt with, and he was eager
to disable number two, then move on to his final objective. He stepped
into the beam, saw the flash of light, felt the floor shake, and was in
the process of pulling away when the Flood attacked from every
direction.
There was no time to think and no time to fight. The only
thing he could do was run. He turned and sprinted for the corridor he’d
used to enter the chamber and took two powerful blows from a combat
form. He bulled his way between two carrier forms and leaped out of the
way as they detonated like grenades. New infection forms spewed from
their deflating corpses.
There was barely enough time to turn, hose the closest
forms with 7.62 mm, and toss a grenade at the group beyond. It went off
with a loud wham!, broke glass, and put three of the
monstrosities down.
He was out of ammo by then, knew he lacked the time
necessary to reload, and made the switch to the shotgun instead. The
gun blew huge holes through the oncoming mob. He charged through one of
them, and ran like hell.
Then, with some pad to work with, the human turned to gun
down the pursuers. The entire battle consumed no more than two minutes
but it left the Chief shaken. Could Cortana detect the slight tremor in
his hands as he reloaded both weapons? Hell, she had unrestricted
access to all of his vital signs, so she knew more about what was going
on with his body than he did. Still, if the AI was conscious of the way
he felt, there was no sign of it in her words. “Pulse generator
deactivated—good work.”
The Chief nodded wordlessly and made his way back through
the tunnel to the point where the Banshee waited. “The Pillar of
Autumn is located twelve hundred kilometers up-spin,” Cortana
continued. “Energy readings show her fusion reactors are still powered
up! The systems on thePillar of Autumn have fail-safes even I
can’t override without authorization from the Captain. We’ll have to
find him, or his neural implants, to start the fusion core detonation.
“One target remaining. Let’s take care of the
final
pulse generator.”
A nav indicator appeared on the noncom’s HUD as he lifted
off, took fire from a neighboring installation, and put the attack ship
into a steep dive. The ground came up fast, he pulled out, and guided
the alien assault craft through a pass and into the canyon beyond. The
nav indicator pointed toward the light that spilled out of a tunnel.
The Banshee began to take ground fire, and the Spartan knew his
piloting skills were about to be severely tested.
A rocket flashed by as he pushed the Banshee down onto the
deck, fired the aircraft’s weapons, and cut power. Flying into the
tunnel was bad enough—but flying into it at high speed verged on
suicidal.
Once inside the passageway the challenge was to stay off
the walls and make the tight right- and left-hand turns without killing
himself. A few seconds later the Spartan saw double blast doors and
flared in for a jarring landing.
He hopped down, made his way over to the control panel,
hit the switch, and heard a rumbling sound as the doors started to
part. Then there was a bang! as something exploded and the
enormous panels came to a sudden stop. The resulting gap was too small
for the Banshee, but sufficient for two carrier forms to scuttle
through. The beasts scrambled toward him on short, stubby legs. The
humpbacked bladders that formed their upper torsos pulsed and wriggled
as the infection forms within struggled for release.
The Chief blew both monsters away with twin shotgun
blasts, and mopped up the rest of the infection forms with another
shot. He paused and reloaded; there were bound to be more of the
creatures on the far side of the doors.
Resigned to a fight, he stepped through the crack and
paused. There was no sound beyond the gentle roar of machinery, the
drip,
drip, drip of water off to his right, and the rasp of his own
breathing. The threat indicator was clear, and there were no enemies in
sight, but that didn’t mean much. Not where the Flood were concerned.
They had a habit of coming out of nowhere.
The cave, if that was the proper word for the huge
cavernlike space, featured plenty of places to hide. Enormous pipes
emerged from the walls and dived downward, mysterious installations
stood like islands on the platform around him, and there was no way to
know what might lurk in the dark corners. Lights, mounted high above,
provided what little illumination there was.
The human stood on a broad platform that ran the full
length of the open area. A deep chasm separated his platform from what
appeared to be an identical structure on the other side of the canyon.
One of two bridges that had once spanned the gorge was down, leaving
only one over which he could pass—a made-to-order choke point for
anyone who wanted to establish an ambush.
There wasn’t a hell of a lot of choice, so he marched down
to the point where the remaining span was anchored, and started across.
He hadn’t gone more than thirty paces before fifty or sixty infection
forms emerged from hiding and danced out to block the way.
The Spartan held his position, waited for the Flood forms
to come a little closer, and tossed a fragmentation grenade into the
center of the group.
The cavern ate some of the sound, but the explosive device
still managed to produce a bang, and the resulting shrapnel laid
waste to all but a handful of the creatures.
There were two survivors, though, both optimists, who
continued to bounce forward in spite of the way in which the rest of
the group had been annihilated. A single shotgun blast was sufficient
to kill both of them.
He slipped some additional shells into the gun’s magazine
tube, took a deep breath, and moved forward again. He made it about
halfway to the other side before a mixed force of combat forms, carrier
forms, and infection forms started to gather at the far end of the
span. Another grenade inflicted casualties, but they charged him after
that, and the Master Chief was forced to retreat, firing the assault
weapon as he did so.
It was nip and tuck for a few seconds as combat forms
launched themselves fifteen meters through the air, carriers charged
straight in, and the omnipresent infection forms swarmed through the
gaps. Retreating, the Spartan had already reloaded three times before
his back hit the wall, and the last combat form collapsed at his feet,
started to rise, and took a blast in the head.
Once again it was time to reload both weapons, step out
onto the gore-splattered bridge deck, and attempt another crossing.
This one was successful, with only light opposition on the other side,
and an opportunity to replenish his ammo.
The next set of blast doors opened flawlessly, allowing
the Spartan to enter a relatively short section of tunnel that led back
to the surface. Determined to use stealth if at all possible, he
slipped out of the passageway, scrambled up over the snow embankment to
his right, and ran into a group of four Flood. A grenade took care of
two—and the assault weapon finished the rest.
A Banshee swooped in, burned a long line of dashes into
the snow, and continued up the valley. The Chief was surprised to get
off so lightly, but given the darkness and all of the confusion, it was
possible that the pilot had mistaken him for a combat form. A worthy
target, to be sure, but not something to turn around for. Particularly
not when the valley was full of combat forms.
He was careful to hug the face of the cliff and stay
within the cover provided by the boulders and trees that lined the edge
of the valley. The incessant thud of automatic weapons and the whine of
plasma weapons testified to the intensity of a conflict raging off to
his left.
Then, just as he was starting to believe that he could
slide by without firing a shot, he came up over a slight rise to see
that the Covenant and Flood were engaged in hand-to-hand combat within
the depression below. A grenade followed with bursts of fire from the
MA5B decimated both groups.
Snow crunched as the human made his way down through the
bloodstained snow, past the spot where a trio of greedy infection forms
squabbled over a wounded Elite, and up another rise to a stand of trees
where a combat form and a carrier tried to jump him. Both of the Flood
staggered as bursts of 7.62 mm slugs cut them down, and they flopped
onto the snow.
Having broken through the perimeter of the battle, the
Master Chief was able to follow the nav indicator into a second valley
where he came upon a group of dead Marines, loaded up on ammo, and
tried to decide whether to stay with the scatter gun or trade it in for
a sniper’s rifle or a rocket launcher. It would have been nice to have
all three, but that many weapons would be unwieldy, not to mention
damned heavy. In the end he went with the rifle and shotgun and hoped
it was the right decision.
The Spartan checked the Marines for dog tags, discovered
that they had already been taken by someone else, and took the time
required to drag the bodies into a nearby cave in the hope that the
infection forms wouldn’t find them. That seemed like a good place to
stash the extra weapons—so that’s what he did.
Then, having followed the second valley to the point where
it opened onto a third valley, he came across a now-familiar
scene. The Covenant were battling the Flood with everything they had,
including Shades, a brace of Ghosts, and two extremely active Wraiths,
but the Flood had plenty of bodies to throw back at them and didn’t
hesitate to do so.
What the Chief wanted was the Banshee that was parked at
the head of the valley, but in order to get at the aircraft it would be
necessary to cut both groups down to size. He stayed right, slipped
along the cliff face, made use of a thin screen of trees and boulders
to hide his movements from those out toward the center of the valley.
Finally, having passed behind a house-sized rock and found a vantage
point that allowed him to look out on the area where the vast majority
of the Covenant were congregated, the Spartan unlimbered the S2 AM,
selected the 10X setting for the scope, and began his bloody work.
In this particular situation he selected the softest
targets first, starting with the Grunts on the Shades, followed by the
outlying Jackals, all in hope that he could inflict a lot of casualties
before the Elites took notice and sent the tank to get him.
The problem was that the little world inside the scope was
all-consuming—a fact that caused him to let down his guard. The first
hint he had that a Flood form had come up behind him was when it
whacked the Spartan in the head.
The blow would have killed anyone else, but the armor
saved him, and the Chief rolled in the direction of the blow. The
long-barreled S2 wasn’t well suited for close-in combat but that’s what
he had in his hands. There was no time to aim as the Flood form
charged, only time to fire, and that’s what he did.
The slug caught the ex-Elite in the chest. The combat form
didn’t even flinch as the bullet passed through its spongy center of
mass. A tiny spurt of gray-green ichor trailed from the entry wound, as
the creature swung a vicious blow at the Master Chief.
He ducked the attack and dropped the rifle. He dived,
tucked into a roll and came up with his sidearm in his hand. He emptied
the clip into the beast. One round blew its left arm off, and the final
round made a foot-wide exit wound in the Flood’s back.
He kicked in the creature’s chest, crushing the infection
form within. He collected the S2, and frowned. He studied the fallen
Flood for a moment, and saw that the creature’s insides were rapidly
liquefying. The velocity of the S2’s projectile had passed through the
nonvital mass of the creature’s chest and just kept going.
Another nasty surprise, courtesy of the Flood.
After a quick look around to make sure that there weren’t
any more surprises lurking in the vicinity, with his heart still
beating like a trip-hammer, the Chief went back to his grisly work.
Three more Covenant warriors fell before a barrage of fireballs arced
high into the air to land all around his position. One came so close
that just the bleed off it was enough to push his shielding into the
red and trigger the alarm.
He pulled back, switched to the assault weapon long enough
to ice a couple of overly ambitious Grunts, and switched back to the S2
as he rounded the opposite side of the big boulder. He selected a spot
where he could go to work on both the Covenant and the Flood,
and
settled in.
He wanted to nail the Elites now and, thanks to the
powerful 14.5mm armor-piercing rounds, he could drop most of them with
a single shot. Combat forms were a different story, so he switched to
the pistol. It was less accurate, but did the job. It wasn’t long
before more than a dozen bodies were laid out in the snow. But then the
word was out. Soon the mortar tank moved into position to bombard his
new position, and it was necessary to pull back.
The Wraith was a problem, a serious problem, which
meant there was only one thing the Spartan could do: hike back to the
weapons cache and trade the rifle for the launcher. It was a major pain
in the ass, but he didn’t have much choice, so he pulled out.
It took a full half hour to make the round trip between
the valley and the weapons cache, so he expected things to have calmed
down a bit by the time he returned. That wasn’t the case, however,
which suggested that the Flood had thrown even more forms into the
battle.
The Chief followed his own footprints back to the hiding
place next to the big boulder, put the launcher on his shoulder, and
hit the zoom. The Wraith, which was busy hurling bombs down valley,
seemed to leap forward. As if somehow aware of his presence, the tank
spun on its axis, and launched a bomb toward the rock.
The Spartan forced himself to ignore the artificial comet,
locked onto the target, and triggered the rocket. There was an impact
and a loud crump! followed by smoke—but the Wraith continued to
fire nonetheless.
Now, with fireballs exploding all around him, the Master
Chief had to take a deep breath, hold the tank at the center of his
sight, and pull the trigger again. The tube jerked, the second missile
ran straight and true, and hit with a loud craack! The Wraith
opened like a red flower, burped pitch-black smoke, and nosed into a
snowbank.
“Nice shot,” Cortana said admiringly, “but watch the
Ghost.”
It was good advice, because although the attack vehicle
had held back up to that point, it came skittering into sight, opened
up with its plasma weapons, and threatened to accomplish what the rest
of the Covenant soldiers hadn’t.
But the Chief had reloaded by then. The rocket tube was
the right weapon for the job, and a single missile was sufficient to
send the attack vehicle flipping end-for-end to finally wind up with
its belly in the air and flames licking at the engine compartment.
With that problem out of the way the Chief came to his
feet, slapped a fresh load into the launcher, and made a beeline for
the Banshee. He was halfway across, with nowhere to hide, when a pair
of Hunters emerged from a jumble of boulders.
Now, grateful that he still had some rockets, he had no
choice but to stop, drop to one knee, and take them on. The first shot
was dead on, hit the alien in the chest, and blew the bastard apart.
Another rocket flew over the second Hunter’s right shoulder and cut a
tree in half. The big alien started to lumber across open ground,
picking up speed and charging its arm-mounted cannon.
It was a waste of ammo to pepper the front end of a Hunter
with 7.62 mm rounds, and slow though he was, the alien could still
bring
him down with a blast from his arm-mounted fuel rod cannon.
So he put his sight onto a target so big he didn’t need to
zoom, and let fly.
The Hunter saw the missile coming, tried to deflect it
with his shield, and failed. Seconds later pieces of warm meat showered
the area, melted holes in the snow, and continued to steam.
The Chief ran past without a second look, jumped onto the
Banshee, and strafed the rest of the Covenant forces on his way down
the valley. Judging from the way the nav indicator was oriented, the
Spartan needed altitude, a lot of it, so he put the alien attack ship
into a steep climb.
Finally, when the red delta flipped over, and started to
point down, he knew he was high enough. He did a nose-over and caught
his first glimpse of the way point below. The surrounding area was
dark, and snow continued to fall, but the platform was nicely lit. He
lowered the Banshee onto the pad and had just bailed out of the pilot’s
seat when the Sentinels attacked. “This is the last one,” Cortana said.
“The Monitor will do anything to stop us.”
The Chief blew three of the pesky machines out of the air,
backed through the hatch, and let the door close on the rest.
“We’re close,” the AI commented. “The generator is up
ahead.”
The Chief nodded, stepped out into a room, and felt a
laser burn across the front of his armor. It seemed that the Monitor
had posted Sentinels inside the complex, as well. Not only
that,
but these machines had benefit of intermittent force fields, which were
resistant to automatic weapons fire.
Still, he had a couple of 102mm surprises in store for the
electromechanical enforcers, which he fired into the center of the
hovering pack. Three Sentinels were blown out of the air. A fourth did
loops as it tried to rid itself of a plasma grenade, failed, and took
another machine with it. The fifth and sixth succumbed to a hail of
bullets as their shields recharged, while the seventh slammed into a
wall, crashed to the floor, and was busy trying to lift off again when
the Chief stomped it to death.
The way was clear at that point and the Spartan was quick
to take advantage of it. A few quick strides were sufficient to carry
him into the central chamber where he was free to approach the final
pulse generator.
“Final target neutralized,” Cortana said as the noncom
stepped back a few moments later. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Let’s find a ride and get to the Captain,” the Chief
agreed, as he prepared to leave.
“No, that’ll take too long.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“There’s a teleportation grid that runs around Halo.
That’s how the Monitor moves about so quickly,” the AI explained. “I
learned how to tap into the grid when I was in the Control Center.”
“So,” the Chief asked, somewhat annoyed, “why didn’t you
just teleport us to the pulse generators?”
“I can’t. Unfortunately, each jump requires a rather
consequential expenditure of energy, and I don’t have access to Halo’s
power systems to reroute the energy we need.” She paused, then
reluctantly continued. “There may be another way, however.”
The Spartan frowned and shook his head. “Something tells
me I’m not going to like this.”
“I’m pretty sure I can pull the energy we need from your
suit without permanently damaging your shield system or the
armor’s power cells,” Cortana continued. “Needless to say, I think we
should only try this once.”
“Agreed. Tap into the Covenant network and see if you can
find him. If we’ve only got one shot at this, we should make it a good
one.”
There was a pause as Cortana worked her magic with the
intrusion and scan software. A moment later, she exclaimed, “I’ve got a
good lock on Captain Keyes’ CNI transponder signal. He’s alive! And the
implants are intact! There’s some interference from the cruiser’s
damaged reactor. I’ll bring us in as close as I can.”
“Do it,” the Master Chief growled. “Let’s get this over
with.”
No sooner had the Spartan spoken than bands of golden
light started to ripple down over his armor, the now-familiar feeling
of nausea returned, and the Master Chief seemed to vanish through the
floor. Once he was gone only a few motes of amber light remained to
mark his passing. Then, after a few seconds, they too disappeared.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
D+73:34:16 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) / On
board the Truth and Reconciliation.
He wasn’t here, wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere
insofar as the Chief could tell from within the strange never-never
land of Halo’s teleportation net. He couldn’t see or hear anything,
save a sense of dizzying velocity. The Spartan felt his body stitched
back together, one molecule at a time. He saw snatches of what looked
like the interior of a Covenant ship as bands of golden light strobed
up and disappeared over his head.
Something was wrong and he was just starting to figure out
what it was—the inside of the ship seemed to be upside down—when he
flipped head over heels and crashed to the deck.
He’d materialized with his feet planted firmly on the
corridor’s ceiling.
“Oh!” Cortana exclaimed. “I see, the coordinate data needs
to be—”
The Chief came to his feet, slapped the general area where
his implants were, and shook his head. The AI sounded contrite. “Right.
Sorry.”
“Never mind that,” the Spartan said. “Give me a sit-rep.”
She patched back into the Covenant computing systems, a
much easier task now that they were aboard one of the enemy’s warships.
“The Covenant network is absolute chaos,” she replied.
“From what I’ve been able to piece together, the leadership ordered all
ships to abandon Halo when they found the Flood, but they were too
late. The Flood overwhelmed this cruiser and captured it.”
“I assume,” he said, “that’s bad .”
“The Covenant think so. They’re terrified that the Flood
will repair the ship and use it to escape from Halo. They sent a strike
team to neutralize the Flood and prepare the ship for immediate
departure.”
The Chief peered down the corridor. The bulkheads were
violet. Or was that lavender? Strange patterns marbled the material,
like the oily sheen of a beetle’s carapace. Whatever it was, he didn’t
care for it, especially on a military vessel, but who knew? Maybe the
Covenant thought olive drab was for wimps.
He started forward, but quickly came up short as a voice
that verged on a groan came in over his implants.“Chief . . . Don’t
be a fool . . . Leave me.”
It was Keyes’ voice.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number
01928-19912-JK. He clung to the tether of his CNI carrier wave, and
“heard” familiar voices. An iron-hard, rasping male voice. A tart, warm
female voice.
He knew them.
Was this another memory?
He was struggling to dredge up new pieces of his past to
delay the numbing advance of the alien presence in his mind. It was
harder to maintain a grasp on who he was, as the various pieces of his
life—the things that made him who he was—were stripped away, one at a
time.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
The voices. They were talking about him. The Master Chief,
the AI Cortana.
He felt a sense of mounting panic. They shouldn’t be
here.
The other grew stronger, and pressed forward, eager to
learn more about these creatures that were so important to the
struggling prisoner who clung so stubbornly to identity.
Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK.
Chief, Cortana, you shouldn’t have come. Don’t be a
fool. Leave me. Get out of here. Run.
The presence descended, and he could feel its anticipation
of victory. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Captain?” Cortana inquired desperately. “Captain!
I’ve
lost him.”
Neither one of them said anything further. The pain in
Keyes’ voice had been clear. All they could do was drive deeper into
the ship and hope to find him.
The Chief passed through a hatch, noticed that the right
bulkhead was splattered with Covenant blood, and figured a battle had
been fought there. That meant he could expect to run into the Flood at
any moment. As he continued down the passageway his throat felt
unusually dry, his heart beat a little bit faster, and his stomach
muscles were tight.
His suspicions were soon confirmed as he heard the sounds
of battle, took a right, and saw that a firefight was underway at the
far end of the corridor. He let the combatants go at it for a bit
before moving in to cut the survivors down.
From there he took a left, followed by a right, and came
to a hatch. It opened to reveal a black hole with jagged edges. Farther
back, beyond the drop-off, another firefight was underway.
“Analyzing data,” Cortana said. “This hole was caused by
some sort of explosion . . . All I detect down there are pools of
coolant. We should continue our search somewhere else.”
The AI’s advice made sense, so the Spartan turned to
retrace his steps. Then, as he took the first left, all hell broke
loose. Cortana said, “Warning! Threat level increasing!” and then, as
if to prove her point, a mob of Flood came straight at him.
He fired, retreated, and fired again. Carrier forms
exploded in a welter of shattered flesh, severed tentacles, and green
slime. Combat forms rushed forward as if eager to die, danced under the
impact of the 7.62 mm rounds, and flew apart. Infection forms skittered
across the decks, leaped into the air, and shattered into flaps of
flying flesh.
But there were too many, far too many for one person to
handle, and even as the Chief heard Cortana say something about the
black hole he accidentally backed into it, fell about twenty meters,
and plunged feetfirst into a pond of green liquid. Not in the ship, but
somewhere under it, on the surface below. The coolant was so
cold
that he could feel it through his armor. It was thick, too—which made
it more difficult to move.
The Master Chief felt his boots hit bottom, knew the
weight of his armor would hold him in place, and marched up onto what
had become a beach of sorts. The cavern was dark, lit mostly by the
luminescent glow produced by the coolant itself, although streaks of
plasma fire slashed back and forth up ahead, punctuated by the steady
thud,
thud, thud of an automatic weapon.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cortana said, “and find another
way back aboard the ship.”
He moved up toward the edge of the conflict and let the
combatants hammer each other for a bit before lobbing a grenade into
the mix, waiting for the body parts to fall, and strafing what was left.
Then, having moved forward, he was forced to fight his way
through a series of narrow, body-strewn passageways as what seemed like
an inexhaustible supply of Flood forms came at him from every possible
direction.
Eventually, having made his way through grottoes of
coolant, and past piles of corpses, Cortana said, “We should head this
way—toward the ship’s gravity lift,” and the Spartan saw a nav pointer
appear on his HUD. He followed the red arrow around a bend to a ledge
above a coolant-filled basin. Even as he watched, a dozen carrier forms
marched up out of the green lagoon to attack a group of hard-pressed
Covenant soldiers.
The Spartan knew there was no way in hell that he’d be
able to force his way through that mess, turned, and made his
way
back down the trail. A sniper rifle, just one of hundreds of weapons
scattered around the area, was half obscured by a headless combat form.
The petty officer removed the rifle, checked to ensure that it was
loaded, and returned to the overlook. Then, careful to make each shot
count, he opened fire.
The Elites, Jackals, and Grunts went down fairly easily.
But the Flood forms, especially the carriers, were practically
impossible to kill with this particular weapon. With few exceptions the
heavy round seemed to pass right through the lumpy-looking bastards
without causing any harm whatsoever.
When all of the 14.5 mm ammo was gone, the Chief went back
for the shotgun, jumped into the green liquid, and waded up onto the
shoreline. He heard an obscene sucking noise, saw an infection form
trying to enter an Elite’s chest cavity, and blew both of them away.
After that there was more clean-up to do as some combat
forms took a run at the human and a flock of infection forms tried to
roll him under. Repeated doses of shotgun fire turned out to be just
what the doctor ordered—the area was soon littered with severed
tentacles and scraps of wet flesh.
A pitch-black passageway led him back to another pool
where he arrived just in time to see the Flood overrun a Shade and the
Elite who was seated at the controls. The Spartan began firing, already
backpedaling, when the Flood spotted him and hopped, waddled, and
jumped forward. He fired, reloaded, and fired again. Always retreating,
always on the defensive, always hoping for a respite.
This wasn’t his kind of fight. Spartans were designed as
offensive weapons, but ever since they’d landed on the ring, he’d been
on the run. He had to find a way to take the offensive, and soon.
There was no break in the endless wall of Flood attackers.
He fired until his weapons were empty, pried energy weapons out of dead
fingers, and fired those until they were dry.
Finally, more by virtue of stubbornness than anything
else, and having reacquired human weapons from dead combat forms, the
Master Chief found himself standing all alone, rifle raised, with no
one to shoot at. He felt a powerful sense of elation—he wa salive.
It was a moment he couldn’t take time to enjoy.
Eager to reboard the cruiser and find Captain Keyes, he
made his way back along the path he had been forced to surrender to the
Flood, passed the Shade, rounded a bend, and saw a couple dozen
infection forms materialize out of the darkness ahead. A plasma grenade
strobed the night, pulverized their bodies, and produced a satisfying
boom!
It was still echoing off the canyon walls as the human eased his way
through a narrow passage and emerged at one end of a hotly contested
pool. About fifty meters away the Covenant and Flood surged back and
forth, traded fire with each other, and appeared to be on the verge of
hand-to-tentacle combat. Two well-thrown grenades cut the number of
hostiles in half. The MA5B took care of the rest.
“There’s the gravity lift!” Cortana said. “It’s still
operational. That’s our way back in.”
It sounded simple, but as the Master Chief looked up at
the hill on which the lift was sited, well-aimed plasma fire lashed
down to scorch the rock at his right elbow. It glowed as the human was
forced to pull back, wait for a lull, and dash forward again. Looking
ahead, he spotted the point where a group of hard-pressed Covenant were
trying to bar a group of Flood from making their way up a path toward
the top of the hill and the foot of the gravity lift. It was a last
stand, and the Covenant knew it. They fought harder than he’d ever seen
the aliens fight. He felt a moment of kinship with the Covenant
soldiers.
He stood and threw two grenades into the middle of the
melee, waited for the twin explosions and went in shooting. An Elite
sent plasma stuttering into the night sky as he fell over backward, a
combat form swung a Jackal’s arm like a club, and a pair of infection
forms rode a Grunt down into the pool of coolant. It was a madness, a
scene straight from hell, and the human had little choice but to kill
everything that moved.
As the last bodies crumpled to the ground, the Spartan was
free to follow the steadily rising path upward, turn to the right, and
enter the lift’s footprint. He felt static electricity crackle around
his armor, and heard plasma shriek through the air as a distant
Covenant took exception to his plans. Then the Chief was gone, pulled
upward, into the belly of the beast.
Keyes? Keyes, Jacob. Yes, that was it.
Wasn’t it?
He couldn’t remember—there was nothing left now but
navigation protocols, defense plans. And a duty to keep them safe.
A droning buzz filled his mind. He vaguely remembered
hearing it before, but didn’t know what it was.
It pressed in, hungry.
Metal rang under her boots as McKay jumped
down off the last platform onto the huge metal grating. It shivered in
response. The trip down from the mesa had taken more than fifteen
minutes. First, she had taken the still-functional lift down to the
point where she and her troops had forced their way into the butte,
back when the Covenant still occupied it, then transferred to the
circular staircase, which, like the rifling on the inside of a gun
barrel, wound its way down to the bottom of the shaft and the barrier
under her feet.
“Good to see you, ma’am,” a Private said, as he
materialized at her elbow. “Sergeant Lister would like to speak with
you.”
McKay nodded, said “Thanks,” and made her way over to the
far side of the grating where the so-called Entry Team were gathered
into a tight little group next to an assemblage of equipment that had
been lowered from above. A portable work light glowed at the very
center of the assemblage and threw huge shadows up onto the walls
around them. Bodies parted as McKay approached, and Lister, who was
down on his hands and knees, jumped to his feet. “Ten-hut!”
Everyone came to attention. McKay noticed the way that the
long hours and constant stress had pared what little bit of extra flesh
there was off the noncom’s face, leaving it gaunt and haggard. “As you
were. How does it look? Any contact?”
“No, ma’am,” Lister responded, “not yet. But take a look at
this
.”
A Navy tech directed a handheld spotlight down through the
grating and the officer knelt to get a better look. The stairs, which
had ended on the far side of the platform, appeared to pick up again
just below the grating and circled into the darkness below.
“Look at the metal,” Lister prompted, “and look at what’s
piled up on the stairs below.”
McKay looked, saw that the thick metal crosspieces had
been twisted out of shape, and saw a large pile of weapons below. No
human ordnance as far as she could tell, just Covenant, which was to
say plasma weapons. With no cutting torches to call upon, not yet
anyway, it looked as though the Flood had depleted at least a hundred
energy pistols and rifles in a futile attempt to cut their way through
the grating. Given some more time, say another day or two, they might
have succeeded.
“You’ve got to give the bastards credit,” McKay said
grimly. “They never give up. Well, neither do we. Let’s cut this sucker
open, go down, and lock the back door.”
Lister said, “Ma’am, yes ma’am,” but there were none of
the usual gung-ho responses from the others who stood around him. It
was dark down there—and nightmares lay in wait.
Once inside the Pillar of Autumn,
’Zamamee and Yayap found conditions to be both better and worse than
they had expected. Consistent with the Grunt’s predictions, the officer
in charge—an overworked Elite named ’Ontomee—had been extremely glad to
see them, and wasted little time placing ’Zamamee in charge of twenty
Jackals, with Yayap as senior NCO.
That, plus the fact that the security detachment had a
reasonable amount of supplies, including methane, meant that basic
physical needs had been met. That was the good news.
The bad news was that ’Zamamee, now known as Huki ’Umamee,
lived in constant fear that an Elite who knew either him or the
recently deceased commando he had decided to impersonate would come
along and reveal his true identity, or that the Prophets would
somehow pluck the information out of thin air, as they were rumored to
be able to do. These fears caused the officer to lay low, stay out of
sight, and delegate most of his leadership responsibilities to Yayap.
This would have been annoying but acceptable where a
contingent of Grunts was concerned, but was made a great deal more
difficult by the fact that the Jackals saw themselves as being superior
to the “gas suckers,” and were anything but pleased when they found
themselves reporting to Yayap.
Then, as if to add to the Grunt’s woes, the Flood had
located the Pillar of Autumn, and while they were unable to
infiltrate the vessel via any of the maintenance ways that ran back and
forth just below the ring world’s surface, they had become adept at
entering the vessel through rents in its severely damaged hull, the air
locks where lifeboats had once been docked, and on one memorable
occasion via one of the Covenant’s own patrols, which had been
ambushed, turned into combat forms, and sent back into the ship. The
ruse had been detected, but only after some of the “contaminated”
soldiers were inside the vessel. A few of them were still at large,
somewhere within the human vessel.
As the Grunt and his group of surly Jackals stood guard in
the Autumn ’s shuttle bay, a dropship loaded with supplies
circled over the downed ship, asked for and received the necessary
clearances, and swooped in for a landing.
Yayap eyed his recalcitrant troops, saw that three of them
had drifted away from their preassigned positions, and used his radio
to herd them back. “Jak, Bok, and Yeg, we have a shuttle coming in.
Focus on the dropship—not the area outside.”
The Jackals were too smart to say anything over the radio,
but the Grunt knew they were grumbling among themselves as they
returned to their various stations and the ship settled onto the
blast-scarred deck.
“Watch the personnel slots,” Yayap cautioned his troops,
referring to the small compartments that lined the outside surfaces of
the shuttle’s twin hulls. “They could be packed with Flood.”
In spite of the resentment he felt, Bok touched a switch
and opened all of the slots for inspection, a new security procedure
instituted three days before. The compartments were empty. The Jackals
sniggered, and there was nothing Yayap could do but suffer through the
indignity of it.
With that formality out of the way, a crew of Grunts moved
in to unload supplies from the cargo compartments that lined the inside
surface of the dropship’s hulls, and towed the heavily loaded antigrav
pallets out onto the deck. Then, with the unloading process complete,
the shuttle rose on its grav field, turned toward the hatch, and passed
out into bright sunlight.
The cargo crew checked the label on each cargo container
to see where it was supposed to go, gabbled at one another, and were
about to tow the pallets away when Yayap intervened.
“Stop! I want you to open those cargo mods one at a time.
Make sure they contain what they’re supposed to.”
If the previous order had been unpopular, this one met
with out-and-out rebellion, as Bok decided to take Yayap on. “You’re no
Elite! We’re under orders to deliver this stuff now. If we’re
late, they’ll take our heads.” He paused and clicked his beak
meaningfully. “And our kin will take yours , gas-sucker.”
The Jackals, all of whom were enjoying the interchange to
the maximum, looked at each other and grinned.
’Zamamee should have been there, should have been giving
the orders, and Yayap cursed the officer from the bottom of his heart.
“No,” he replied stubbornly. “Nothing leaves here until it has been
checked. That’s the new process. The Elites were the ones who came up
with it, not me. So open them up and we’ll get you and your crew out of
here.”
The other alien grumbled, but knew the rule-happy Elites
would back Yayap, and turned to his crew. “All right, you heard Field
Master Gas-sucker. Let’s get this over with.”
Yayap sighed, ordered his Jackals to form a giant U with
the open end toward the cargo containers, and took his own place in the
line.
What ensued was boring to say the least, as each cargo
module was opened, closed, and towed out of the way. Finally, with only
three containers left to go, Bok undogged a hatch, pulled the door
open, and disappeared under an avalanche of infection forms. One of the
attacking pods grabbed onto the Jackal’s head, wrapped its tentacles
around the creature’s skull, drove a penetrator down through his
throat, and had already tapped into the soldier’s spine by the time
Yayap yelled, “Fire!” and the rest of the Jackals opened up.
Nothing could live where the twenty plasma beams
converged—and most of the infection forms were dead within two or three
heartbeats. But Yayap thought he detected motion behind the mist
created by the exploding pus pods and lobbed a plasma grenade into the
cargo module. There was a flash of green-yellow light as the device
went off, followed by a resonant boom! as it detonated.
The cargo container shook like a thing possessed, and
chunks of raw meat flew out to spray the deck with gore. It was clear
that three, or maybe even four combat forms had been hiding in the
cargo compartment, hoping to enter the ship.
Now, as the last of the infection forms popped, a
momentary silence settled over the shuttle bay. Bok’s corpse smoldered
on the deck.
“That was close,” the Jackal named Jak said. “Those stupid
gassers damned near got us killed. Good thing our file leader kept ’em
in line.” The soldiers to either side of the former critic nodded
solemnly.
Yayap, who was close enough to hear the comment, wasn’t
sure whether to be angry or pleased. Somehow, for better or for worse,
he’d been elevated to the position of honorary Jackal.
A full company of heavily armed Marines
waited as torches cut through the metal grating, sparks fell into the
stygian blackness below, and each man or woman considered what awaited
them. Would they survive? Or leave their bones in the bottom of the
hole? There was no way to know.
Meanwhile, thirty meters away, two officers stood by
themselves. McKay had borne far more than her fair share of the burden
ever since the drop. Silva was aware of that and regretted it. Part of
the problem stemmed from the fact that she was his XO, an extremely
demanding position that could burn even the most capable officer out.
But the truth was McKay was a better leader than her peers, as
evidenced by the fact that the Helljumpers would follow her anywhere,
even into a pit that might be filled with life-devouring monstrosities.
But everyone had their limits, even an officer like McKay,
and the Major knew she was close to reaching them. He could see it in
the grim contours of her once rounded face, the empty staring eyes, and
the set of her mouth. The problem wasn’t one of strength—she was the
toughest, most hard-core Marine he knew—but one of hope.
Now, as he prepared to send her below, Silva knew she
needed something real to fight for, something more than
patriotism, something that would allow her to get at least some of the
Marines to safety.
That, plus the possibility that something could happen to
him, lay behind the briefing that ensued.
“So,” Silva began, “go down, get the lay of the land, and
see if you can slam the door on those bastards. Forty-eight hours of
Flood-free operation would be ideal, but twenty-four would be
sufficient, because we’ll be out of here by then.”
McKay had been looking over Silva’s shoulder, but the last
sentence brought her eyes back to his. Silva saw the movement and knew
he had connected. “ ‘Out of here,’ sir? Where would we go?”
“Home,” Silva said confidently, “to brass bands,
medals, and promotions all around. Then, with the credibility earned
here, we’ll have the opportunity to create an army of
Helljumpers, and push the Covenant back into whatever hole they evolved
from.”
“And the Flood?” McKay asked, her eyes searching his face.
“What about them?”
“They’re going to die,” Silva replied. “The AIs managed to
link up a few hours ago. It turns out that the Chief is alive, Cortana
is with him, and they’re trying to rescue Keyes. Once they have him
they’re going to rig the Autumn to blow. The explosion will
destroy Halo and everything on it. I’m not a fan of the Spartan
program, you know that, but I’ve got to give the bastard credit. He’s
one helluva soldier.”
“It sounds good,” McKay said cautiously. “But how do we
get off before the ring blows?”
“Ah,” Silva replied. “That’s where my idea comes
in.
While you’re down cleaning out the sewers, I’ll be up top, making the
preparations necessary to take the Truth and Reconciliation away
from the Covenant. She’s spaceworthy now, and Cortana can fly her, or,
if all else fails, we’ll let Wellsley take a crack at it. It would be a
stretch—but he might be able to pull it off.
“Imagine! Arriving back on Earth in a Covenant cruiser,
packed with Covie technology, and loaded with data on Halo! The
response will be incredible! The human race needs a victory right now,
and we’ll give them a big one.”
It was then, as McKay looked into the other officer’s
half-lit face, that she realized the extent to which raw ambition
motivated her superior’s actions, and knew that even if his wildest
dreams were to come true, she wouldn’t want any part of the glory that
Silva sought. Just getting some Marines home alive—that would be
reward enough for her.
An old soldier’s adage flashed across her mind: “Never
share a foxhole with a hero.” Glory and promotion were fine, but right
now, she’d settle for surviva , plain and simple.
First there was a loud clang, followed by
the birth of six blue-white suns, which illuminated the inside surface
of the shaft as they fell to the filth-encrusted floor below.
Then the invaders dropped, not one at a time down the
stairs as the infection forms might have assumed, but half a dozen all
at once, dangling on ropes. They landed within seconds of each other,
knelt with weapons at the ready, and faced outward. Each Helljumper
wore a helmet equipped with two lights and a camera. With simple back
and forth movements of their heads, the soldiers created overlapping
scans of the walls which were transmitted up to the grating above, and
from there to the mesa.
McKay stood on the grating, eyed the raw footage on a
portable monitor, and saw that four large arches penetrated the
perimeter of the shaft and would need to be sealed in order to prevent
access to the circular stairway. There was no sign of the Flood.
“Okay,” the officer said, “we have four holes to seal. I
want those plugs at the bottom of the shaft thirty from now. I’m going
down.”
Even as McKay spoke, and dropped into the hole which had
been cut into the center of the grate, Wellsley was calculating the
exact dimensions of each arch so that Navy techs could fabricate metal
“plugs” that could be lowered to the bottom of the shaft, manhandled
into position, and welded into place. Within a matter of minutes
computer-generated outlines were lasered onto metal plates, torches
were lit, and the cutting began.
McKay felt her boots touch solid ground, and took her
first look around. Now, finally able to see the surroundings with her
own eyes, the Company Commander realized that a bas relief mural
circled the lower part of the shaft. She wanted to go look at it, to
run her fingers across the grime-caked images recorded there, but knew
she couldn’t, not without compromising the defensive ring and placing
herself in jeopardy.
“Contact!” one of the Marines said urgently. “I saw
something move.”
“Hold your fire,” McKay said cautiously, her voice echoing
off the walls. “Conserve ammo until we have clear targets.”
As soon as she’d given the “hold fire” order, the Flood
gushed out into the shaft. McKay screamed: “Now! Pull!” and seven
well-anchored winches jerked the entire team into the air and out of
reach. The Marines fired as they ascended. One Helljumper screamed
curses at the combat form who was leading the charge.
The loudmouthed Marine dropped his clip, loaded a fresh
one into his rifle, and shouldered the weapon to resume fire. The
combat form he’d been shooting leaped fifteen meters into the air,
wrapped his legs around the Marine’s waist, and caved in the side of
the soldier’s head with a rock.
Then, with the fallen Marine’s assault weapon slung over
his shoulder, the creature climbed the rope like an oversized monkey,
and raced for the platform above.
Lister, who still stood on the grating above, aimed his
pistol straight down, put three rounds through the top of the combat
form’s skull, saw the form fall backward into the milling mass below,
and watched it disappear under the tide of alien flesh.
“Let’s move, people!” the noncom said. “Raise the
bait, and drop the bombs.”
Energy bolts stuttered upward as the winches whirred, the
Helljumpers rose, and twenty grenades fell through the grating and into
the mob below. Not fragmentation grenades, which would have
thrown shrapnel up at the Helljumpers, but plasma grenades, which
burned as the Flood congregated around them, then went off in quick
succession. They vaporized most of the gibbering monsters and left the
rest vulnerable to a round of gunfire and a second dose of grenades.
Ten minutes later word came down that the plugs were
ready, and a larger combat team was sent down, followed by four teams
of techs. The arches were blocked without incident, the shaft was
sealed, and the grating was repaired. Not forever, but for the next day
or so, and that was all that mattered.
The Master Chief arrived at the top of the
gravity lift and fought his way through a maze of passageways and
compartments, occupied by Flood and Covenant alike. He rounded a corner
and saw an open hatch ahead. “It looks like a shuttle bay,” Cortana
commented. “We should be able to reach the Control Room from the third
level.”
The CNI link that Cortana followed served to deliver a new
message from the Captain. The voice was weak, and sounded slurred.“I
gave you an order, soldier, now pull out!”
“He’s delirious,” Cortana said, “in pain. We have to find
him!”
. . . pull out! I gave you an order,
soldier!
The thought echoed in what was left of Keyes’ ravaged
mind. The invading presence descended. It could tell this one was
nearly expended—no more energy left to fight.
It pushed in on the memories that the creature so
jealously guarded, and recoiled at the sudden resistance, a defiance of
terrible strength.
Keyes clutched at the last of his vital memories,
and—inside his mind, where there was no one but he and the creature
that attempted to absorb him—screamed NO!
Death, held in abeyance for so long, refused to rush in.
Slowly, like the final drops of water from a recently closed faucet,
his life force was absorbed.
With the memory of the voice to spur him on,
the Master Chief made his way out onto a gallery over the shuttle bay,
found that a pitched battle was in progress, and lobbed two grenades
into the center of the conflict. They had the desired effect, but also
signaled the human’s presence, and the Flood came like iron filings
drawn to a magnet.
The Flood onslaught was intense, and the Spartan was
forced to retreat into the passageway whence he had come in order to
concentrate the targets, buy some time, and reload his weapons.
The pitched firefight ended, and he sprinted for the far
side of the gallery and passed through an open hatch. He fought his way
up to the next level of the gallery, where the Flood appeared to be
holding a convention at the far end of the walkway.
The Chief was fresh out of grenades by then, which meant
he had to clear the path the hard way. A carrier form exploded, and
sent a cluster of combat forms crashing to the ground.
The burst carrier spewed voracious infection forms in
every direction, and collapsed as one of the fallen combat forms hopped
forward, dragging a broken leg behind him, hands clutching a grenade as
if it were a bouquet of flowers.
The Spartan backed away, fired a series of ten-round
bursts, and gave thanks when the grenade exploded.
The carrier had given him an idea—when they blew, they
went up in a big way. A second of the creatures scuttled into view, and
made its ungainly way forward, accompanied by a wave of infection forms
and two more combat forms. He used his pistol scope to survey the
combat forms and was gratified that they fit the bill: Each carried
plasma grenades.
He stepped into view, and the combat forms instantly
vaulted high in the air. As soon as their feet left the deck, the Chief
dropped and fired—directly at the carrier.
The Spartan’s aim was perfect—as soon as they passed over
the carrier, it burst, and ignited the plasma grenades the combat forms
carried. They all went up in a blue-white flash of destructive energy.
“The Control Room should be this way,” Cortana said
as he charged ahead, eager to keep them moving in the right direction.
He moved fast, advancing across the blood-slicked floor,
and followed Cortana’s new nav coordinates toward the still-distant
hatch. He passed through the opening, followed the corridor to an
intersection, took a right, a left, and was passing through a door when
a horrible groan was heard over the link.
“The Captain!” Cortana said. “His vitals are fading!
Please Chief, hurry.”
The Spartan charged into a passageway packed with both
Covenant and Flood, and sprayed the tangle of bodies with bullets.
He kept running at top speed, sprinting past enemies and
ignoring their hasty snap-shots. Time was of the essence; Keyes was
fading fast.
He made it to the CNI’s carrier wave source: the cruiser’s
Control Room. The lighting was subdued, with hints of blue, and
reflections off the metal surfaces. Thick, sturdy columns framed the
ramp which led up to an elevated platform, where something strange
stood.
He thought it was a carrier at first glance, but soon
realized that the creature was far too large for that. It boasted
spines that connected it to the ceiling overhead, like thick,
gray-green spiderwebs.
There were no signs of opposition, not yet anyway, which
left him free to make his way up the ramp with his rifle at the ready.
As he moved closer the Chief realized that the new Flood form was huge
. If it was aware of the human presence, the creature gave no sign of
it, and continued to study a large holo panel as if committing the
information displayed there to memory.
“No human life signs detected,” Cortana observed
cautiously. She paused, and added: “The Captain’s life signs just
stopped.”
Damn. “What about the CNI?” he asked.
“Still transmitting.”
Then the Chief noticed a bulge in the monster’s side, and
realized that he was looking at an impression of the Naval officer’s
grotesquely distorted face. The AI said, “The Captain! He’s one of
them
!”
The Spartan realized then that he already knew that, had
known it ever since he had seen Jenkins’ video, but was unwilling to
accept it.
“We can’t let the Flood get off this ring!” Cortana said
desperately. “You know what he’d expect . . . What he’d want us to do.”
Yes, the Chief thought. I know my duty.
They needed to blow the Autumn’s engines to
destroy
Halo and the Flood. To do that, they needed the Captain’s neural
implants.
The Master Chief drew his arm back, formed his hand into a
stiff-fingered armored shovel, and made use of his enormous strength to
plunge the crude instrument into the Flood form’s bloated body.
There was momentary resistance as he punched his way
through the creature’s skin and penetrated the Captain’s skull to enter
the half-dissolved brain that lay within. Then, with his hand buried in
the form’s seemingly nerveless body, he felt for and found Keyes’
implants.
The Chief’s hand made a popping sound as it pulled out of
the wound. He shook the spongy gore onto the deck and slipped the chips
into empty slots in his armor.
“It’s done,” Cortana said somberly. “I have the code. We
should go. We need to get back to the Pillar of Autumn. Let’s go
back to the shuttle bay and find a ride.”
As if summoned by the lethargic beast that stood in front
of the ship’s controls, a host of Flood poured into the room, all of
whom were clearly determined to kill the heavily armored invader. A
flying wedge comprised of carrier and combat forms stormed the
platform, pushed the human back, and soaked up his bullets as if eager
to receive them.
Finally, more by chance than design, the Spartan backed
off the command deck and plummeted to the deck below. That bought a
moment of respite. There wasn’t much time, though, just enough to
hustle up out of the channel that ran parallel to the platform above,
reload both of his weapons, and put his back into a corner.
The horde really came for him then, honking,
gibbering, and gurgling, climbing up over the bodies that were mounded
in front of them, careless of casualties, willing to pay whatever price
he required.
The storm of gunfire put out by the MJOLNIR-clad soldier
was too powerful, too well aimed, and the Flood started
to
wilt, stumble, and fall, many giving up their lives only inches from
the Spartan’s blood-drenched boots, clawing at his ankles. He gave
thanks as the last combat form collapsed, relished the silence that
settled over the room, and took a moment to reload both of his weapons.
“Are you okay?” Cortana asked hesitantly, both grateful
and amazed by the fact that the Chief was still on his feet.
He thought of Captain Keyes.
“No,” the Spartan replied. “Let’s get the hell out of here
and finish these bastards off.”
He was numb from creeping exhaustion, hunger, and combat.
The planned escape route back to the shuttle bay was littered with
Flood and Covenant alike. The Spartan moved almost as if he was on
autopilot—he simply killed and killed and killed.
The bay was filled with Covenant forces. A
dropship had deployed fresh troops into the bay and bugged out. A pair
of amped-up Elites patrolled near the Banshee at the base of the bay.
All the possibilities raced through his weary mind. What
if that particular machine was in for repairs? What if an Elite took
over the Shade and gunned him down? What if some bright light decided
to close the outer doors?
But none of those fears were realized as the aircraft came
to life, turned toward the planet that hung outside the bay doors, and
raced into the night. Energy beams followed, and tried to bring the
Banshee down, but ultimately fell short. They were free once more.
SECTION VI
THE MAW
CHAPTER TWELVE
D+76:18:56 (SPARTAN-117 Mission Clock) /
Commandeered Banshee, on approach to the Pillar of Autumn.
The Banshee screamed through a narrow valley and out over
an arid wasteland. The assault ship’s shadow raced ahead as if eager to
reach the Pillar of Autumn first. The Master Chief felt the
slipstream fold in behind the aircraft’s nose and tug at his armor. It
felt good to be out of twisting corridors and cramped compartments if
only for a short while.
The first sign of the ship’s presence on the ring world’s
surface was the hundred-meter-deep trench the Autumn’s hull had
carved into Halo’s skin. It started where the cruiser had first touched
down, vanished where the vessel had bounced into the air, and
reappeared a half klick farther on. From there the depression ran
straight as an arrow to the point where the starship had finally come
to rest with its blunt bow protruding out over the edge of a massive
cliff. There were other aircraft in the area as well, all of which
belonged to the Covenant, and they had no reason to suspect the
incoming Banshee. Not yet, at any rate.
The Spartan, who was eager to make his approach look
normal, chose one of the many empty lifeboat bays that lined the
starship’s starboard side, and bored in. Unfortunately the engine cut
out at the last moment, the Banshee hit the Autumn ’s hull, and
although the Spartan was able to bail out, the alien fighter fell to
the rocks below. Not the low visibility arrival he had hoped
for.
Still, given Cortana’s plans for the vessel, his presence wouldn’t
remain secret for long anyway.
“We need to get to the bridge,” Cortana said. “From there
we can use the Captain’s neural implants to initiate an overload of the
ship’s fusion engines. The explosion should damage enough systems below
it to destroy the ring.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” the Chief commented as he made
his way toward the tiny air lock. “I don’t know who’s better at blowing
things up—you or me.”
The moment he stepped outside he saw a cluster of red dots
appear on his motion detector and knew some nasties were lurking off to
his left. The only question was, which hostiles did he face—the
Covenant or the Flood? Given a choice, he’d take the Covenant. Maybe,
just maybe, the Flood hadn’t located the ship yet.
The passageway ended to the right, which meant he had
little choice but to turn left. But, rather than run into the Covenant
or the Flood, the Spartan came under attack from a flock of Sentinels.
“Uh-oh,” Cortana said as the noncom opened fire, “it looks
like the Monitor knows where we are.”
I wonder if he knows what we’re up to, the Chief
mused.
A robot exploded, another hit the deck with a loud clang,
and the Master Chief shifted fire to a third. “Yeah, he’s after my
head, but it’s you that he really wants.”
The AI made no reply as the third machine exploded—and the
Chief made his way down the hall using the lifeboat bays for cover. Two
additional Sentinels appeared, were blown out of the air, and turned
into scrap.
Soon after that they arrived at the end of the corridor,
took a right, and spotted an open maintenance hatch. Not ideal, since
he didn’t relish the thought of having to negotiate such tight
quarters, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice. So he ducked
inside, found himself in a maze, and blundered about for a while before
spotting a hatch set flush into the deck in front of him. That’s when a
group of infection forms swarmed up out of the hole, and the Chief’s
question was answered. It appeared that the Flood had located the
Autumn
—and already taken up residence there.
He swore under his breath, backed away, and hosed the
Flood with bullets. He eased forward and looked down through the floor
hatch. He saw a carrier form, and knew there were bound to be more. He
dropped a plasma grenade down through the hole, backed away, and took a
certain amount of pleasure in the ensuing explosion.
The maintenance tunnels didn’t seem to be taking him where
he needed to go, so he dropped through the hole, crushed a handful of
infection forms, and shot two more. The blood-splattered corridor was
messy but well lit. He pried open a wall-mounted locker, and was
pleased to find four frag grenades and spare ammo. He quickly stowed
them, and moved on.
Two Sentinels nosed around a corner, opened fire with
their lasers, and got what they deserved. “They might have been looking
for us,” Cortana observed, “but it’s my guess that they were assigned
to Flood control.”
The theory made sense, but didn’t really help much as the
Master Chief was forced to fight the Sentinels, the Flood, and
the Covenant, while he made his way through a series of passageways and
into the ship’s heavily damaged mess, where a large contingent of
Elites and Grunts were waiting to have him for lunch.
There were a lot of them, too many to handle with the
assault weapon alone, so he served up a couple of grenades. One of the
Elites was blown to pieces by the overlapping explosions, another lost
a leg, and a Grunt was thrown halfway across the room.
They’d come full circle—he’d blasted Covenant troops apart
before the crash landing, and here he was again. The enemy just
didn’t learn, he thought.
There was a survivor, however, a tough Elite who threw a
plasma grenade of his own, and missed by a matter of centimeters. The
Master Chief ran and was clear of the blast zone by the time the device
went off. The Elite charged, took the better part of a full clip, and
finally slammed into the deck, dead.
It was a short distance to the burned-out bridge, where a
Covenant security team was on duty. Word had been passed: They knew the
human was on his way, and opened fire the moment they saw him.
Once again the Spartan made use of a grenade to even the
odds—then crushed the head of an Elite with his fist. The alien’s head
was turned to pulp and its body collapsed like a puppet with no
strings. The armor gave him enough strength to flip a Warthog over.
Then, just when he thought the battle was done, a Grunt shot him in the
back. The audible went off as his armor sought to recharge itself. A
second shot, delivered with sufficient speed, would kill him.
Time seemed to slow as the Master Chief turned toward his
right.
The Grunt, who had been hiding inside an equipment
cabinet, froze as the armored alien not only survived what should have
been a fatal shot, but turned to face him. They were only an arm’s
length away from each other, which meant that the Master Chief could
reach out, rip the breather off his assailant’s face, and close the
door on him.
There was a loud click followed by wild hammering
as
the Chief made his way forward to the spot where Captain Keyes had
issued his orders. Cortana appeared over the control panel in front of
him. Everywhere the AI looked she saw burned-out equipment,
bloodstained decks, and smashed viewports.
She shook her head sadly. “I leave home for a few days,
and look what happens.”
Cortana brought a hand up to her semitransparent forehead.
“This won’t take long— There, that should give us enough time to make
it to the lifeboat, and put some distance between ourselves and Halo before
detonation.”
The next voice the Chief heard belonged to 343 Guilty
Spark. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”
Cortana groaned. “Oh, hell.”
The Chief brought his weapon up but saw no sign of the
Monitor or his Sentinels. That didn’t prevent the construct from
babbling in his ears, though—the AI had tapped into his comm system.
“Ridiculous! That you would imbue your warship’s AI with such a wealth
of knowledge. Wouldn’t you worry that it might be captured? Or
destroyed?”
Cortana frowned. “He’s in my data arrays—a local tap.”
Though nowhere near the bridge, the Monitor was on
board, and flitted from one control panel to the next, sucking
information out of Cortana’s nonsentient subprocessors with the ease of
someone vacuuming a set of drapes. “You can’t imagine how exciting this
is! To have a record of all our lost time. Oh, how I will enjoy every
moment of categorization. To think that you would destroy this
installation, as well as this record . . . I am shocked. Almost
too shocked for words.”
“He stopped the self-destruct sequence,” Cortana warned.
“Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer?” Spark
demanded. “You cannot win! Give us the construct—and I will endeavor to
make your death relatively painless and—”
The rest of 343 Guilty Spark’s words were chopped off as
if someone had thrown a switch. “At least I still have control over the
comm channels,” Cortana said.
“Where is he?” the Chief asked.
“I’m detecting taps throughout the ship,” Cortana replied.
“Sentinels most likely. As for the Monitor—he’s in Engineering.
He must be trying to take the core off-line. Even if I could get the
countdown restarted . . . I don’t know what to do.”
The Spartan stared at the hologram in surprise. This was a
first—and it made her seem more human somehow. “How much firepower
would you need to crack one of the engine shields?”
“Not much,” Cortana replied, “a well-placed grenade
perhaps. But why?”
He produced a grenade, tossed the device into the air, and
caught it again.
The AI’s eyes widened and she nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”
The Spartan turned and started to leave.
“Chief!” Cortana said. “Sentinels!”
In unison, the machines attacked.
Major Silva stood at what amounted to parade
rest, feet spread, hands clasped behind his back, as he looked out over
the landing pads while the men and women under his command made final
preparations for the assault on the Covenant ship Truth and
Reconciliation.
Fifteen Banshees, all scrounged from different sites
across Halo’s embattled surface, sat waiting for the order to launch.
Pelicans, three of the four that the humans had left,
squatted ramps down as heavily loaded Marines filed aboard. Each of the
surviving 236 leathernecks was armed with weapons appropriate to the
mission at hand. No long-range stuff, like rocket launchers or sniper
rifles, just assault weapons, shotguns, and grenades, all of which were
lethal within enclosed spaces, and would be effective against both the
Covenant and the Flood.
Naval personnel, and there were seventy-six of them, were
armed with Covenant plasma rifles and pistols, which, thanks to their
light weight, and the fact that there was no need to tote additional
ammo, left the swabbies free to carry tools, food, and medical
supplies. They had orders to avoid combat, if possible—and concentrate
on running the ship. Some, a group of sixteen individuals, had skills
considered to be so critical that each one had been given two Marine
bodyguards.
Assuming that Cortana and the Master Chief were able to
complete their mission, they would take one of the Autumn’s
remaining lifeboats and rendezvous with the Truth and Reconciliation
out in space. Annoying though she sometimes was, the officer knew
Cortana would be able to pilot the alien vessel, and get them home.
Failing that, Silva hoped that Wellsley, with help from
the Naval personnel, would be able to take the cruiser through
Slipspace and back to Earth. An event he had already planned for, right
down to what he would wear, and a short but moving speech for the media.
As if summoned by his thoughts, Wellsley chose that moment
to intrude on the officer’s reverie. The AI, who rode in an armored
matrix slung from Silva’s shoulder, was characteristically
unapologetic. “Lieutenant McKay called in, Major. Force One is in
place.”
Silva nodded, remembered that Wellsley couldn’t actually
see him, and said, “Good. Now, if they can lay low for the next couple
of hours, we’ll be in good shape.”
“I have every confidence in the Lieutenant,” the AI
replied plainly.
The implication was obvious. While Wellsley had faith in
McKay, the AI had concerns where the Lieutenant’s superior was
concerned. Silva sighed. Had the artificial intelligence been human,
the officer would have put him in his place long ago. But Wellsley
wasn’t
human, couldn’t be manipulated in the same fashion that flesh-and-blood
subordinates could, and like the human on whom he had modeled himself,
tended to speak his mind. “All right,” the Major said reluctantly,
“what’s the problem?”
“The ‘problem,’ ” Wellsley began, “is the Flood. If the
plan is successful, and we manage to take the Truth and
Reconciliation, there will almost certainly be Flood forms on
board. In fact, based
on what Cortana and I have been able to piece together, that’s the only
reason the vessel remains where it is. All of the necessary repairs
have been made, and Covenant forces are trying to sterilize the ship’s
interior prior to lifting off.”
“Which answers your question,” Silva said, struggling to
contain his impatience. “By the time we take over, most of the Flood
will be dead. Once underway, I will dispatch hunter-killer teams to
find the survivors. With the exception of a few specimens which I will
place under heavy guard, the rest will be ejected into space. There,
are you satisfied?”
“No,”Wellsley replied firmly. “Were a carrier form
to escape onto Earth’s surface, the entire planet could fall. This
threat is as dangerous as, if not more so than, the Covenant. Cortana
and I agree—no Flood form can be allowed to leave this system.”
Silva took a quick look around to make sure no one was
close enough to hear him and let the anger enter his voice. “Both you
and Cortana have a tendency to forget one very important fact—I’m
in
command here and you are not. And I defy you to find anywhere
in
my orders that identifies a threat to Earth bigger than the
goddamned Covenant!
“Your role is to provide advice. Mine is to make
decisions. It’s my belief that we could find better ways to combat the
Flood if our scientists had live specimens with which to work. More
than that, our people need to see this new enemy, know
how
dangerous they are, and believe that they can be conquered.”
Wellsley considered taking the debate one step further, by
pointing out that Silva’s ambitions might well have clouded his
judgment, but knew it would be a waste of time. “That’s your final
decision?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then God help you,” the AI replied gravely, “because if
your plan fails, no one else will have the power to do so.”
The compartment, a space untouched by the
fighting, had once served as a ready room for the ship’s Longsword,
Pelican, and shuttle pilots. Now, with no modifications other than the
installation of some crude sleeping accommodations, a back table with
some food on it, and crates of supplies, the room functioned as an
unofficial HQ for Covenant forces stationed aboard the Pillar of
Autumn.
The command staff, or what was left of it, sat slumped in
the uncomfortably alien chairs, many too tired to move, and stared up
at their leader. His name was ’Ontomee, and he was confused,
frustrated, and secretly frightened. The situation aboard the Autumn
had deteriorated dramatically. In spite of all the efforts to stop
them, Flood forms continued to trickle into the ship.
The disgusting filth had even managed to seize control of
the ship’s engineering spaces before a new enemy, one which was
inimical to Covenant and Flood form alike, sent an army of flying
robots into the ship and took control of the Engine Room.
Now, as if to prove that ’Ontomee was truly cursed, still
another
threat had arrived on the scene, and he was reluctant to share the news
with the already exhausted Elites arrayed in front of him.
“So,” ’Ontomee began lamely, “it seems that a human
crashed a Banshee into the side of the ship, and is now on board.”
A veteran named ’Kasamee frowned. “ ‘A human’? As
in, a single human? With respect, Excellency, one human more or
less will hardly make a difference.”
’Ontomee swallowed. “Yes, well, normally I would agree
with you, except that this human is somewhat unusual. First,
because he wears special armor, second, because it appears that he’s on
some sort of mission, and third, because he singlehandedly killed every
member of Security Team Three, which had responsibility for the command
and control deck.”
Unnoticed by those in front of him, the seemingly
lethargic officer known as Huki ’Umamee started to look interested. He
sat up straighter, and began to pay close attention. Having chosen a
seat in the last row, ’Zamamee found it difficult to hear. The
discussion continued.
“One human accomplished all that?” ’Kasamee
demanded
incredulously. “That hardly seems possible.”
“Yes,” ’Ontomee agreed, “but he did. Not only that, but
having accomplished whatever he entered the control area to do, he
left, and is somewhere else on board this ship.” The Elite scanned the
faces in front of him. “Who has the skill and courage required to find
the alien and kill him?”
The response came with gratifying speed. “I do,”
’Zamamee said, now on his feet.
’Ontomee peered into the harsh human lights. “Who is that?”
“ ’Umamee,” the Elite lied.
“Ah, yes,” ’Ontomee replied gratefully. “A commando . . .
Just the sort of person we need to rid ourselves of this two-legged
vermin. The mission is yours. Keep me informed.
“Now, turning our attention to these new airborne
mechanisms . . .”
Later, as the meeting ended, ’Kasamee went looking for the
volunteer, fully intending to compliment the younger officer on his
initiative. But, like the human the Elite was supposed to find, the
Elite officer had disappeared.
Having fought his way clear of the bridge,
the Master Chief made his way through a series of passageways, ran into
more Flood and gunned them down. Cortana figured that they could access
the Engine Room via the cryo chamber, and that was where the Chief was
headed. The problem was that he kept running into jammed hatches,
locked doors, and other obstacles that kept him from taking a direct
route.
After he moved through a large, dark room strewn with
weapons, the Chief heard the sounds of combat coming from the area
beyond a closed hatch. He paused, heard the noises die away, and
slipped out into the corridor. Bodies lay all about as he slid along a
bulkhead, saw some spikes sticking up over a cargo module, and felt his
blood run cold. A Hunter! Or more accurately two Hunters, since
they traveled in pairs.
Lacking a rocket launcher, the Chief turned to the only
heavy-duty fire power that he had: grenades.
He threw two grenades in quick succession, saw the spined
behemoth go down, and heard a roar of outrage as the second Hunter
charged.
The Spartan fired just to slow the alien down, backed
through the hatch, and gave thanks as the door closed. That gave him
two or three seconds that he needed to plant his feet, pull another
grenade, and prepare to throw it.
The hatch opened, the fragmentation grenade flew straight
and true, and the explosion knocked the beast off its feet. The deck
shook as the body hit. The Hunter attempted to rise but fell under a
hail of armor-piercing bullets.
The Master Chief gave the corpse a wide berth as he left
the room, and passed back into the hall. As he made his way through the
ship’s corridors, he saw blood-splattered bulkheads, bodies sprawled in
every imaginable posture of death, blown hatches, sparks flying out of
junction boxes, and a series of small fires, which thanks to a lack of
combustible materials seemed to be fairly well contained.
He heard the sound of automatic weapons’ fire somewhere
ahead, and passed through another hatch. Inside, a fire burned at the
point where two large pipes traversed a maintenance bay. He was close
to the cryo chamber, or thought he was, but needed to find a way in.
Hesitant to jump through the flames unless it was
absolutely necessary, he took a right turn instead. The sounds of
combat grew louder as the hatch opened onto a large room where a full
array of Flood forms were battling a clutch of Sentinels. He paused,
shouldered his weapon, and fired. Sentinels crashed, carrier forms
exploded, and everyone fired at one another in a mad melee of
crisscrossing energy beams, 7.62 mm projectiles, and exploding needles.
Once the robots had been put out of action, and most of
the Flood had been neutralized, the Chief was able to cross the middle
of the room, climb a ladder, and gain the catwalk above. From that
vantage point he could look across into the Maintenance Control Room,
where a couple of Sentinels were hard at work trying to zap a group of
Flood, none of whom were willing to be toasted without putting up a
fight. The combatants were too busy to worry about stray humans,
however, and the noncom took advantage of that to work his way down the
walkway and into the Control Room.
And that, as he soon learned, was a big mistake.
It wasn’t too bad at first, or didn’t seem to be, as he
destroyed both of the Sentinels, and went to work on the Flood. But
every time he put one form down, it seemed as if two more arrived to
take its place, soon forcing him onto the defensive.
He retreated into the antechamber adjacent to the Control
Room. The human had little choice but to place his back against a
locked hatch. The larger forms came in twos and threes—while the
infection forms came in swarms. Some of the assaults seemed to be
random, but many appeared to be coordinated as one, or two, or three
combat forms would hurl themselves forward, die under the assault
weapon’s thundering fire, and fall just as the Spartan ran out of ammo,
and more carrier forms waddled into the fray.
He slung his AR, drew the shotgun—briefly hoping there
would be a lull during which to reload—and opened fire on the bloated
monstrosities before the force exerted by their exploding bodies could
do him harm.
Then, with newly spawned infection forms flying in every
direction it was clean-up time followed by a desperate effort to reload
both weapons before the next wave of creatures attempted to
roll
over him.
He dropped into a pattern of fire and movement. He made
his way through the ship, closer to the engineering spaces, pausing
only to pour fire into knots of targets of opportunity. Then, he
quickly disengaged, reloaded, and ran farther into the ship.
The noise generated by his own weapons hammered at the
Master Chief’s ears, the thick gagging odor of Flood blood clogged his
throat, and his mind eventually grew numb from all the killing.
After dispatching a Covenant combat team, he crouched
behind a support strut and fed rounds into the shotgun. Without
warning, a combat form leaped on his back and smashed a large wrench
into his helmet. His shield dropped away from the force of the blow,
which allowed an infection form to land on his visor.
Even as he staggered under the impact, and pawed at the
form’s slick body, a penetrator punched its way through his neck seal,
located his bare skin, and sliced it open.
The Spartan gave a cry of pain, felt the tentacle slide
down toward his spine, and knew it was over.
Though unable to pick up a weapon and kill
the infection form directly, Cortana had other resources, and rushed to
use them. Careful not to drain too much power, the AI diverted some
energy away from the MJOLNIR armor, and made use of it to create an
electrical discharge. The infection form started to vibrate as the
electricity coursed through it. The Chief jerked as the Flood form’s
penetrator delivered a shock to his nervous system, and the pod popped,
misting the Spartan’s visor with green blood spray.
The Chief could see well enough to fight, however, and did
so, killing the wrench-wielding combat form with a burst of bullets.
“Sorry about that,” Cortana said, as the Spartan cleared
the area around him, “but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“You did fine,” he replied, pausing to reload. “That was
close.”
Another two or three minutes passed before the Flood gave
up and he could take the moment necessary to remove his helmet, jerk
the penetrator out from under his skin, and slap a self-adhering
antiseptic battle dressing over the wound. It hurt like hell: The
Spartan winced as he lowered the helmet back over his head, and sealed
his suit.
Then, pausing only to kill a couple of stray infection
forms, and still looking for a way to gain entry to the cryo chamber,
the Chief made his way through a number of passageways, into a maze of
maintenance tunnels, and out into a corridor where he spotted a red
arrow on the deck along with the word ENGINEERING .
Finally, a break.
No longer concerned with finding a way into cryo, the
noncom passed through a hatch and entered the first passageway he’d
seen that was well lit, free of bloodstains, and not littered with
corpses. A series of turns brought him to a hatch.
“Engine Room located,” Cortana announced. “We’re here.”
The Spartan heard humming, and knew that 343 Guilty Spark
was somewhere in the vicinity. He had already started to back through
the hatch when Cortana said, “Alert! The Monitor has disabled all
command access. We can’t restart the countdown. The only remaining
option will be to detonate the ship’s fusion reactors. That
should do enough damage to destroy Halo.
“Don’t worry . . . I have access to all of the reactor
schematics and procedures. I’ll walk you through it. First we need to
pull back the exhaust coupling. That will expose a shaft that leads to
the primary fusion drive core.”
“Oh, good,” the Spartan replied. “I was afraid it might be
complicated.”
The Chief reopened the hatch, stepped out into the Engine
Room, and an infection form flew straight at his faceplate.
The attack on the Truth and Reconciliation
came with mind-numbing speed as a wing of fifteen Banshees came
screaming out of the sun, attacked the nearly identical number of
Covenant aircraft assigned to fly cover over the cruiser, and knocked
half of them out of the sky during the first sixty seconds of combat.
Then, even as individual dogfights continued, Lieutenant
“Cookie” Peterson and his fellow Pelican pilots delivered Silva,
Wellsley, and forty-five heavily armed Marines into the enemy cruiser’s
shuttle bay, where the first leathernecks off the ramps smothered the
Covenant security team in a hail of bullets, secured all the hatches,
and sent a team of fifteen Helljumpers racing for the ship’s Control
Room.
Conscious of the fact that occupying the
Control Room wouldn’t mean much unless they owned engineering as well,
the humans launched a nearly simultaneous ground attack. Thanks to the
previous effort, in which the Master Chief and a group of Marines had
entered the ship looking for Captain Keyes, McKay had the benefit of
everything learned during that mission, including a detailed
description of the gravity lift, video of the interior corridors, and
operational data which Cortana had siphoned out of the ship’s systems.
Not too surprisingly, security around the gravity lift had
been tripled since the previous incursion, which meant that even though
McKay and her force of Helljumpers had been able to creep within meters
of the hill on which the gravity field was focused, they still had six
Hunters, twelve Elites, and a mixed bag of Grunts and Jackals to cope
with before they could board the vessel above.
Having anticipated that problem, McKay had equipped her
fifteen-person team with eight rocket launchers, all of which were
aimed squarely at the Hunters.
The Covenant-flown Banshees had just come under attack,
and the spined monsters were staring up into a nearly cloudless sky,
when McKay gave the word: “Now!”
All eight launchers fired one, then two rockets,
putting a total of sixteen of the shaped charges on the aliens, so that
the Hunters never had a chance to fight as a series of red-orange
explosions blew them apart.
Even as gobbets of raw meat continued to rain out of the
sky, the launchers were reloaded, and another flight of rockets was
sent on its way.
Three or four of the Elites had been killed during the
initial attack, which meant that some of the survivors were targeted by
as many as two missiles, and simply ceased to exist as the powerful
102 mm rounds detonated.
Those who survived the volley, and there weren’t many,
fell quickly as the rest of the team hurled grenades into the enemy
positions, and hosed them with automatic fire. Total elapsed time: 36
seconds.
A full minute was consumed racing up the hill and greasing
the guard at the top, which meant that 1:36 had passed by the time the
murderous humans appeared inside the Truth and Reconciliation,
slaughtered the Grunts on guard duty, and deactivated the lift.
Jenkins was chained between a pair of burly Marines. McKay
waved the trio forward. “Let’s go, Marines. We’re supposed to take the
Engine Room—so let’s get to work.”
Jenkins, or what remained of Jenkins, could smell the
Flood. They were there, hiding in the ship, and he struggled to tell
McKay that. But the only thing that came out was a series of grunts and
hoots. The humans had taken the ship, but they had taken something else
as well, something that could kill every single one of them.
’Zamamee ushered Yayap into the heavily
guarded Covenant Communications Center—and gave the Grunt a moment to
look around. The space had once housed all of the communications gear
associated with the Pillar of Autumn’s auxiliary fighters,
shuttles, and transports. Human gear had been ripped out to make room
for Covenant equipment, but everything else was pretty much in the same
configuration. A team of six com techs were on duty, all with their
backs to the center of the room, banks of equipment arrayed in front of
them. A constant murmur of conversation could be heard via the overhead
speakers, some of which was punctuated by the sounds of combat, as
orders went out and reports came back in.
“This is where you will sit,” the Elite explained,
pointing toward a vacant chair. “All you have to do is listen to the
incoming traffic, make note of the reports that pertain to the human,
and pass the information along to me by radio.
“He has an objective, we can be sure of that, and once we
know where he’s going, I’ll be there to greet him. I know you would
prefer to be in on the kill, but you’re the only individual I can trust
to handle my communications, so I hope you’ll understand.”
Yayap, who didn’t want to be anywhere near the kill, tried
to look downcast. “I’ll do my part, Excellency, and take pleasure in
the team’s success.”
“That’s the spirit!” ’Zamamee said encouragingly. “I knew
I could count on you. Now sit down at the console, put on that headset,
and get ready to take some notes. We know he left what the humans refer
to as ‘the bridge,’ fought a battle near the Maintenance Control Room,
and was last spotted heading toward the Engine Room. We don’t have any
personnel in that compartment at the moment, but that doesn’t matter,
because the real challenge is to figure out where he’s headed next.
You feed the information to me, I’ll take my combat team to the right
place, and the human will enter the trap. The rest will be easy.”
Yayap remembered previous encounters with the human, felt
a chill run down his spine, and took his seat. Something told him that
when it came to a final confrontation between the Elite and the human,
it might be many things, but it wouldn’t be easy.
The Engine Room hatch opened, an infection
form went for the Master Chief’s face, and he fired a quarter of a clip
into it. A lot more bullets than the target required, but the memory of
how the penetrator had slipped in under the surface of his skin was
still fresh in his mind, and he wasn’t about to allow any of the pods
near his face again, especially with a hole in his neck seal. A red nav
indicator pointed the way toward a ramp at the far end of the enormous
room.
He pounded his way up onto a raised platform, ran past
banks of controls, and ducked through the hatch that led up to Level
Two. He followed a passageway out into an open area, and then up the
ramp to Level Three. Near the top, a pair of combat forms fell to his
well-placed fire. He policed the fallen creatures’ ammo and grenades
and kept going.
“Not acceptable, Reclaimer,” 343 Guilty Spark intoned. “You
must
surrender the construct.”
The Chief ignored the Monitor, made his way up to Level
Three, and encountered a reception party comprised of Flood. He opened
fire, took two combat forms and a carrier down off the top, and backed
away in order to reload.
Then, with a fresh clip in place, he opened fire, cut the
nearest form off at the knees, tossed a grenade into the crowd behind
him. The frag detonated, and blew them to hell.
Quick bursts of automatic fire were sufficient to finish
the survivors and allow the Master Chief to reach the far end of the
passageway. A group of forms were waiting there to greet him, but
quickly gave way to a determined assault as he made his way up the
blood-slicked steel, and through the hatch at the top of the ramp.
He moved onto the Level Three catwalk and immediately
started to take fire. There was total chaos as the Sentinels fired on
the Flood, the Flood shot back, and everyone seemed to want a piece of
him. It was important to concentrate, however, to focus on his mission,
so the Spartan made a mad dash for the nearest control panel. He hit
the control labeled OPEN , heard a beeper go off,
followed by the sound of Cortana’s voice.
“Good! Step one complete! We have a straight shot into the
fusion reactor. We need a catalytic explosion to destabilize the
magnetic containment field surrounding the fusion cell.”
“Oh,” the petty officer said as he jumped down onto a
thick slab of duracrete, and felt it start to move. “I thought I was
supposed to throw a grenade into a hole.”
“That’s what I said.”
The Chief grinned as a brightly lit rectangular slot
appeared, and he tossed a grenade in through the opening.
The ensuing explosion threw bits of charred metal around
the smoke-filled compartment.
One down, and three to go, the Spartan told
himself
as the Sentinels fired, and the laser beams hit his chest.
Thanks to the lightning-fast and extremely
well coordinated nature of the attack, the humans controlled more than
80 percent of theTruth and Reconciliation, and were
preparing to lift off. Those compartments not under human control could
be dealt with later on. There hadn’t been any contact with Cortana for
a while—and Silva intended to play it safe. If Halo was about to blow,
he wanted to be far away when the event took place.
The cruiser’s Control Room was a scene of frantic activity
as Wellsley wrestled with the ship’s nonsentient nav comp, Naval
personnel struggled to familiarize themselves with all manner of alien
control systems, and Silva gloated over his latest coup. The attack had
been so fast, so successful, that his Helljumpers had captured a being
who referred to himself as a “Prophet,” and claimed to be an important
member of the Covenant’s ruling class. Now, safely locked away, the
alien was slated to become yet another element in Silva’s triumphant
return to Earth. The officer smiled as the ship’s gravity locks were
released, the hull swayed slightly in response, and the final preflight
check began.
Many decks below, McKay felt someone touch
her arm. “Lieutenant? Do you have a moment?”
Though not in the same chain of command, Lieutenant
Commander Gail Purdy outranked the Helljumper, which was why McKay
responded by saying, “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
Purdy was an Engineering officer, and one of those sixteen
individuals who rated bodyguards, both of whom had their backs to the
officer and were facing out. She was middle-aged and stout, with
ginger-colored hair. Her eyes were serious and locked with McKay’s.
“Step over here. I’d like to show you something.”
McKay followed the other officer over to a large tube that
served to bridge the one-meter gap between one blocky-looking
installation and the next. Jenkins, who had no choice but to go
wherever his Marine guards went, was forced to follow.
“See that?” the Naval officer inquired, pointing at the
tube.
“Yes, ma’am,” McKay answered, mystified as to what such a
structure could possibly have to do with her.
“That’s an access point for the fiber-optic pathway that
links the Control Room to the engines,” the Engineer explained. “If
someone were to sever that connection, the power plants would run wild.
There may be a bypass somewhere—but we haven’t found it. Given the fact
that twenty percent of the ship remains under Covenant control I
suggest that you post a guard on this piece of equipment until all of
the Covenant are under lock and key.”
Purdy’s suggestion had the force of an order, and McKay
said, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll take care of it.”
The Naval officer nodded as the deck tilted and forced
both women to grab onto the fiber channel. Two people were thrown to
the deck. Purdy grinned. “Pretty sloppy, huh? Captain Keyes would have
a fit!”
Silva wasn’t worried about the finer points
of ship handling as the final loads of UNSC personnel were deposited in
the shuttle bay, the Pelicans were secured, the outer doors were
closed, and the Truth and Reconciliation struggled to break the
grip that Halo had on her hull.
No, Silva was satisfied merely to get clear of the
surface, to feel the deck vibrate as the cruiser’s engines struggled to
push countless tons of deadweight up through the ring world’s gravity
well, to the point where the ship would break free.
Spurred into action by the vibration, or
perhaps just tired of waiting, the Flood chose that moment to attack
the Engine Room. A vent popped open, an avalanche of infection forms
poured out and came under immediate fire.
Jenkins went berserk, and jerked on his chains, gibbering
incoherently as the Marine guards struggled to bring him under control.
The battle lasted for less than a minute before all of the
Flood forms were killed, the vent was sealed, and the cover welded into
place. But the attack served to illustrate the concerns that McKay
already had. The Flood were like an extremely deadly virus—and it was
naive to believe that they could be controlled by anything short
of extermination. The Marine used her status as XO to get through to
Silva, gave a report on the attack, and finished by saying, “It’s clear
that the ship is still infected, sir. I suggest that we put down and
sterilize every square centimeter prior to lifting again.”
“Negative, Lieutenant,” Silva replied grimly. “I
have reason to believe that Halo is going to blow, and soon. Besides, I
want
some specimens, so see what you can do to capture some of the ugly
bastards.”
“The Lieutenant is correct,” Wellsley put in
dispassionately. “The risk is too great. I urge you to
reconsider.”
“My decision is final,” Silva growled. “Now, return to
your duties, and that’s an order .”
McKay broke the connection. The military incorporated many
virtues, in her mind at least, one of the most important of which was
duty. Duty not just to the Corps, but to the billions of people on
Earth, to whom she was ultimately responsible. Now, faced with the
conflict between military discipline, the glue that held everything
together, and duty, the purpose of it all, what was she supposed to do?
The answer, strangely enough, came from Jenkins, who,
having been privy to her end of the conversation, jerked at his chain.
The action took one of the guards by surprise. He fell as Jenkins
lunged in the direction of the fiber-optic connection, and was still
trying to regain his feet when the combat form ran out of slack, and
came up short. Seconds later the Marines had Jenkins back under control.
Having failed to do what he knew was right, and with his
chains stretched tight, Jenkins looked imploringly into McKay’s eyes.
McKay realized that the decision lay in her hands, and
that although it was horrible almost beyond comprehension, it was
simple as well. So simple that even the grotesquely ravaged Jenkins
knew where his duty lay.
Slowly, deliberately, the Marine crossed the deck to the
point where the guard stood, told him to take a break, took one last
look around, and triggered a grenade. Jenkins, still unable to speak,
managed to mouth the words “thank you.”
Silva was too many decks removed to feel the explosion, or
to hear the muffled thump, but was able to witness the results
firsthand. Someone yelled, “The controls are gone!” The deck tilted as
the Truth and Reconciliation did a nose-over, and Wellsley made
one last comment.
“You taught her well, Major. Of that you can be
proud.”
Then the bow struck, a series of explosions rippled the
length of the hull, and the ship, as well as all of those aboard her,
ceased to exist.
“You’re sure?” ’Zamamee demanded, his voice
slightly distorted by both the radio and an increasing amount of static.
Yayap wasn’t sure of anything, other than the fact that
the reports flowing in around him were increasingly negative, as
Covenant forces came under heavy fire from both the Flood and
the
Sentinels. Something had caused a rock to form down in the Grunt’s
abdomen—and made him feel slightly nauseated.
But it would never do to say that, not to someone like
’Zamamee, so he lied instead. “Yes, Excellency. Based on the reports,
and looking at the schematics here in the Communications Center, it
looks like the human will have little choice but to exit via hatch
E-117, make his way to lift V-1269, and go up to a Class Seven service
corridor that runs along the ship’s spine.”
“Good work, Yayap,” the Elite said. “We’re on our way.”
For reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of, and in spite of
his many failings, the Grunt felt a strange sense of affection for the
Elite. “Be careful, Excellency. The human is extremely dangerous.”
“Don’t worry,” ’Zamamee replied, “I have a surprise for
our adversary. A little something that will even the odds. I’ll call
you the moment he’s dead.”
Yayap said, “Yes, Excellency,” heard a click, and knew it
was the last time he would hear the officer’s voice. Not because he
believed that ’Zamamee was going to die—but because he believed all
of them were about die.
That’s why the diminutive alien announced that he was
going on a break, left the Communications Center, and never came back.
Shortly thereafter he loaded a day’s worth of food plus a
tank of methane onto a Ghost, steered the vehicle out away from the
Pillar
of Autumn, and immediately found what he was searching for: a
sense of peace. For the first time in many, many days Yayap was happy.
As the final grenade went off, the Master
Chief felt the shaft he was standing on shake in sympathy and Cortana
yelled into his ears. “That did it! The engines will go critical. We
have fifteen minutes to get off the ship! We should move outside and
get to the third deck elevator. It will take us to a Class Seven
service corridor that runs the length of the ship. Hurry!”
The Chief jumped up onto the Level Three platform, blasted
a combat form, and turned toward the hatch off to his right. It opened,
he passed through, and ran the length of the passageway. A second door
opened onto the area directly in front of the large service elevator.
The Chief heard machinery whir, figured he had triggered a
sensor, and waited for the lift to arrive. For the first time in hours
there was no immediate threat, no imminent danger, and the Spartan
allowed himself to relax fractionally. It was a mistake.
“Chief!” Cortana said. “Get back!”
Thanks to the warning, he was already backing through the
hatch when the lift appeared from below, and the Elite, seated in the
plasma turret, opened fire.
Special Ops Officer Zuka ’Zamamee fired the
Shade. The energy cannon took up most of the platform, leaving barely
enough room for the Grunts who had helped the Elite wrestle the weapon
aboard. The bolt flared blue, hit the hatch as it started to close, and
slagged half the door.
He felt elation as the waves of energy slashed through the
air toward his target. Soon, victory would be complete, and his honor
could be restored. Then he’d deal with the tiresome Grunt, Yayap.
It was going to be a glorious day.
“Damn!” the Chief exclaimed. “Where did that
come from?”
“It looks like someone has been tracking you,” Cortana
said grimly. “Now, get ready—I’ll take control of the elevator and
cause it to drop. You roll a couple of grenades into the shaft.”
’Zamamee saw the energy bolt hit the hatch,
experienced a sense of exhilaration as the human hurried to escape, and
felt the platform jerk to a halt.
The Elite had just fired again, just blown what remained
of the human’s cover away, when he heard a clank and the lift started
to descend.
“No!”he shouted, sure that one of the Grunts was
responsible for the sudden movement, and desperate lest the human
escape his clutches. But it was too late, and there was nothing the
smaller aliens could do, as the elevator continued to fall.
Then, even as his target vanished from sight, and ’Zamamee
railed at his subordinates, a couple of grenades tumbled down from
above, rattled around the floor, and exploded.
The force of the blast lifted the Elite up and out of his
seat, gave him one last look at his opponent, and let him fall. He hit
with a thud, felt something snap, and waited for his first glimpse of
paradise.
Cortana brought the lift back up. The Master
Chief had little choice but to step onto the gore-splattered platform
and let it carry him toward the service corridor above. Cortana took
advantage of the moment to work on the escape plan.
“Cortana to Echo 419, come in Echo 419.”
“Roger, Cortana,” Foehammer said from somewhere
above,“I read you five-by-five.”
The Master Chief felt a series of explosions shake the
elevator, knew the ship was starting to come apart, and looked forward
to the moment when he would be free of it.
“The Pillar of Autumn’s engines are going critical,
Foehammer,” Cortana continued. “Request immediate extraction. Be ready
to pick us up at external access junction four-C as soon as you get my
signal.”
“Affirmative. Echo 419 to Cortana—things are getting
noisy down there . . . Is everything okay?”
The elevator shook again as the AI said, “Negative,
negative! We have a wildcat destabilization of the ship’s fusion core.
The engines must have sustained more damage than we thought.”
Then, as the platform jerked to a halt, and a piece of
debris fell from somewhere up above, the AI spoke to the Spartan. “We
have six minutes before the fusion drives detonate. We need to evacuate
now! The explosion will generate a temperature of almost a
hundred million
degrees. Don’t be here when it blows!”
That sounded like excellent advice. The Master Chief ran
through a hatch into a bay full of Warthogs, each stowed in its own
individual slot. He chose one that was located near the entry, jumped
into the driver’s seat, and was relieved when the vehicle started up.
The countdown timer which Cortana had projected onto the
inside surface of his HUD was not only running, but running fast,
or so it seemed to the Chief as he drove out of the bay, hooked a
left to avoid a burning ’Hog, and plowed through a mob of Covenant and
Flood. An Elite went down, was sucked under the big off-road tires, and
caused the vehicle to buck as it passed over him. The slope ahead was
thick with roly-poly infection forms. They popped like firecrackers as
the human accelerated uphill and plasma bolts raced to catch him from
behind. Then, cautious lest he make a mistake and lose valuable time,
he took his foot off the accelerator and paused at the top of the ramp.
A large passageway stretched before him, with walkways to
either side, a pedestrian bridge in the distance, and a narrow service
tunnel directly ahead. A couple of Flood forms were positioned on top
of the entrance and fired down at him as he pushed the Warthog forward,
and nosed into the opening ahead.
The ramp sloped down, the Spartan braked, and he was soon
glad that he had as something went boom! and hurled pieces of
jagged metal across the passageway in front of him. The Chief took his
foot off the brake, converted a carrier form into paste, and sent the
LRV up the opposite slope.
He emerged from the subsurface tunnel, and with a barrier
ahead, he swung left, ran the length of a vertical wall. He saw a
narrow ramp, accelerated up-slope, and jumped a pair of gaps that he
never would have tackled had he been aware of them. He hit a level
stretch, braked reflexively, and was thankful when the Warthog
nose-dived off the end of the causeway and plunged into another service
tunnel.
Now, with a group of Flood ahead, he pushed through them,
crushed the monsters under his tires.
“Nice job on that last section,” Cortana said admiringly.
“How did you know about the dive off the end?”
“I didn’t,” the Master Chief said as the LRV lurched up
out of the tunnel and nosed into another.
“Oh.”
This passage was empty, which allowed the Spartan to pick
up speed as he guided the Warthog up into a larger tunnel. The ’Hog
caught some air, and he put the pedal to the metal in an effort to pick
up some time.
The large passageway was smooth and clear, but took them
out into a hell of flying metal, homicidal Flood, and laser-happy
Sentinels, all of whom tried to cancel his ticket while he paused,
spotted an elevated ramp off to the left, and steered for it even as
crisscrossing energy beams sizzled across the surface of his armor and
explored the interior of the vehicle.
The Spartan fought to control the ’Hog as one tire rode up
onto the metal curb and threatened to pull the entire vehicle off into
the chaos below. It was difficult, with fire sleeting in from every
possible direction, but the Chief made the necessary correction, came
down off the ramp, hooked a left, and found himself in a huge tunnel
with central support pillars that marched off into the distance.
Careful to weave back and forth between the pillars in
order to improve his time, he rolled through a fight between the Flood
and a group of Covenant, took fire from a flock of Sentinels, and
gunned the LRV out into another open area with a barrier ahead. A quick
glance confirmed that another elevated ramp ran down the left side of
the enormous passageway, so he steered for that.
Explosions sent gouts of flame and smoke up through the
grating ahead of him, and threatened to heave the Warthog off the track.
Once off the ramp, things became a little easier as the
Spartan entered a large tunnel, sped the length of it, braked into an
open area, and pushed the vehicle down into a smaller service tunnel.
Infection forms made loud popping sounds as the tires ate them alive.
The engine growled, and the Chief nearly lost it as he came out of the
tunnel too fast, realized there was another subsurface passageway
ahead, and did a nose-over that caused the front wheels not only to hit
hard but nearly flipped the ’Hog end-for-end. Only some last-minute
braking and a measure of good luck brought the LRV down right side up
and allowed the Master Chief to climb up out of the passageway and into
a maze of pillars.
He swore as he was forced to wind his way between the
obstacles while precious seconds came off the countdown clock and every
alien, freak, and robot with a weapon took potshots at him while he did
so. Then came a welcome stretch of straight-level pavement, a quick dip
through a service tunnel, and a ramp into a sizable tunnel as Cortana
called for evac.
“Cortana to Echo 419! Requesting extraction now! On the
double!”
“Affirmative, Cortana,” the pilot replied, as the
Master Chief accelerated out onto a causeway.
“Wait! Stop!” Cortana insisted. “This is where Foehammer
is coming to pick us up. Hold position here.”
The Spartan braked, heard a snatch of garbled radio
traffic, and saw a UNSC dropship approach from the left. Smoke trailed
behind the Pelican and the reason was plain to see. A Banshee had
slotted itself in behind the transport and was trying to hit one of the
ship’s engines. There was a flash as the starboard power plant took a
hit and burst into flames.
The Chief could imagine Foehammer at the controls,
fighting to save her ship, eyeing the causeway ahead.
“Pull up! Pull up!” the Spartan shouted, hoping she could
pancake in, but it was too late. The Pelican lost altitude, passed
under the causeway, and soon disappeared from sight. The explosion came
three seconds later.
Cortana said, “Echo 419!” and, receiving no response,
said, “She’s gone.”
The Master Chief remembered the cheerful voice on the
radio, the countless times the pilot had saved somebody’s tail, and
felt a deep sense of regret.
There was a short pause while the AI tapped into what
remained of the ship’s systems. “There’s a Longsword docked in launch
bay seven. If we move now we can make it!”
Rubber screeched as the Chief put his foot to the floor,
steered the Warthog through a hatch, down a ramp, and into a tunnel.
Huge pillars marked the center of the passageway and a series of
concave gratings caused the LRV to wallow before it lurched up onto
smooth pavement again. Explosions sent debris flying from both sides of
the tunnel and made it difficult to hear Cortana as she said something
about “full speed” and some sort of a gap.
He hit the accelerator, but the rest was more a matter of
luck rather than skill. The Master Chief pushed the ’Hog up a ramp,
felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as the LRV flew through the
air, dropped two or three levels, hit hard, slewed sideways, and came
to a stop.
The Chief wrestled with the wheel, brought the front end
around, and glanced at the timer. It read: 01:10:20. He stamped on the
accelerator. The Warthog shot ahead, raced through a narrow tunnel,
then slowed as he spotted the array of horizontally striped barrels
that blocked the road ahead. Not only that—but the entire area was
swarming with Covenant and Flood. The Master Chief jumped out, hit the
ground running, and gunned an Elite who had the misfortune to get in
the way.
The fighter was straight ahead, ramp down, waiting for him
to come aboard. Plasma bolts stuttered past his head, explosions hurled
debris in every direction, and then he was there, boots pounding on
metal as he entered the ship.
The ramp came up just as a mob of Flood arrived, the
Longsword shook in sympathy as another explosion rocked the Pillar
of
Autumn, and the Spartan staggered as he made his way forward.
Precious seconds were consumed as he dropped into the pilot’s seat,
brought the engines on-line, and took the controls.
“Here we go.”
The Chief made use of the ship’s belly jets to push the
Longsword up off the deck. He turned the fighter counterclockwise, and
hit the throttles. Gee forces pushed him back into his seat as the
spacecraft exploded out of its bay and blasted up through the
atmosphere.
Yayap, who had made it to the edge of the
foothills by then, heard a series of dull thuds and turned in time to
see a line of red-orange flowers bloom along the length of the Autumn’s
much abused hull.
As the cruiser’s fusion drives went
critical, a compact sun blossomed on the surface of Halo. Its
thermonuclear sphere carved a five-kilometer crater into the superdense
ring material and sent powerful pressure waves rippling throughout the
structure. Both up- and down-spin of the explosion, the fireball
flattened and sterilized the surface terrain. Within moments, the
yellow-white core had consumed all of the available fuel, collapsed
upon itself, and winked out.
Still spinning, but unable to withstand the forces exerted
on this new weak point, the ring structure slowly tore itself apart.
Huge chunks of debris tumbled end over end out into space, as a
five-hundred-kilometer-long section of the ring world’s hull sliced
through an even longer curve of brilliantly engineered metal, earth,
and water, and produced a cascade of eerily silent explosions.
There was an insistent beeping sound as the
words ENGINE TEMP CRITICAL flashed on the control panel,
and Cortana said, “Shut them down. We’ll need them later.”
The Master Chief reached up to flick some switches, got up
out of his seat, and arrived in front of the viewport in time to see
the last intact piece of Halo’s hull sheared in half by the dreadful
slow-motion ballet of flying metal.
For some reason he thought of Lieutenant Melissa McKay,
her calm green eyes, and the fact that he had never gotten to know her.
“Did anyone else make it?”
“Scanning,” the AI replied. She paused, and he could see
scan data scroll across the main terminal. A moment later, she spoke
again, her voice unusually quiet. “Just dust and echoes. We’re all
that’s left.”
The Spartan winced. McKay, Foehammer, Keyes, and all the
rest of them. Dead. Just like the children he’d been raised with—just
like a part of himself.
When Cortana spoke it was as if the AI felt that she had
to justify what had transpired. “We did what we had to do—for
Earth. An entire Covenant armada obliterated. And the Flood —we
had no choice. Halo, it’s finished.”
“No,” the Chief replied, settling in behind the
Longsword’s controls. “The Covenant are still out there, and Earth is
at risk. We’re just getting started.”
The Master Chief saw the yellow-green
blob appear in his peripheral vision, and decided to turn toward the
enemy both to make the ’Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal an
opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just
started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side
of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over.
All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master
Chief scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter
drop down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive
knees, and move forward.
Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were
back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter
before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, “Come on, Hosky!
Let’s take this bastard out!”
The Spartan yelled, “No! Fall back!” and bent over to
retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew
there simply wasn’t time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge
in time, but the Helljumpers didn’t have a prayer.
The distance between the alien and the two Marines had
closed by then and they couldn’t disengage. The Corporal threw a
fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster,
and stared in disbelief as it kept on coming. The alien charged right
through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and lowered
a gigantic shoulder.
Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic
shield hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what
was left onto the ground. The private remained conscious however, which
meant he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot
high into the air, and brought it down on his face.
Halo: The Floodis a work of
fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey®Book
Published by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2003 by Microsoft Corporation
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States
by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.
Halo, Xbox, the Xbox and Microsoft Logos
are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation
in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license. ©
2001 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the
Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
e-ISBN 0-345-46357-9
v 1.1 (additional proofing and correction by Sithicus)