by Troy Denning
“Now, introductions.” Cole gestured to Ascot. “Captain Halima Ascot, commander of Task Force Yama.”
Ascot’s eyes widened at the statement—a sign that the possibility had still been under discussion when John and Dr. Halsey entered the room. Recovering quickly, she tucked a lock of short blond hair behind an ear, then turned her gray eyes on the others.
“At this point . . . I don’t know much more than you do,” she said. “All I can add is that Task Force Yama will be an all-prowler force consisting of three squadrons of Eclipse- and Razor-class prowlers, each led by a Sahara-class prowler. The Vanishing Point will serve as our logistics-support ship.”
John frowned. Three squadrons was overkill for a capture mission—even if they were prowlers. Stealthy or not, that many vessels would raise the boarding party’s chances of being spotted as it moved into position.
Cole extended a hand toward the marine colonel. “Colonel Marmon Crowther, commander of the 21st Black Daggers Space Assault Battalion.”
“Thank you, Admiral.” A short and slender man of about fifty, Crowther had black hair, olive skin, and eyes the color of blued steel. “The Black Daggers consist of eight hundred elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, trained and equipped for zero-g operations. We have yet to engage the Covenant, but last year alone we stormed and seized eighteen insurrectionist facilities in locations ranging from low planetary orbit to deep transitional space. With advice from those who have fought the aliens before, I’m sure we’ll be able to adapt our tactics to the mission . . . whatever it may be.”
Cole motioned toward the sergeant across from John. “Sergeant Avery Johnson, special tactics sniper. He was training the colonial militia on Harvest when the Covenant arrived, so he’s had plenty of alien-fighting experience.”
Johnson nodded to the officers. “Honored to be here.”
Cole gestured at Dr. Halsey next. “Dr. Catherine Halsey is leading the effort to analyze and reverse-engineer the alien technology. Seized equipment will go to her first, and you should try to fulfill her requests to capture specific items. For the UNSC to win this war, her work must succeed.”
What Cole did not say was that, as the originator and chief scientist of the SPARTAN-II program, Dr. Halsey was somewhere between a commanding officer and a mother to all of the Spartans. She had personally selected John and many of the others, she supervised their general education and kept a careful watch on their military training, she had overseen their biological augmentations, and she was the one who had designed their Mjolnir power armor. Although she had no military rank, most of the Spartans viewed her as their cardinal authority and treated her with a deference and respect that on rare occasion exceeded even what they showed to admirals and generals.
When Halsey chose not to add anything to her introduction, Cole moved on and pointed to John.
“And last, we have Petty Officer First Class John-117. He leads a squad of power-armored NavSpecWar operators known as Spartans. Their existence is classified top-secret, and you should emphasize to your subordinates that any mention of their unit to nonauthorized personnel will result in charges.”
Cole had been careful to omit any reference to ONI or Section Three when he introduced John and Dr. Halsey. It made John wonder what the admiral had neglected to mention about the other people in the compartment. He glanced across the table and found Johnson studying him again, openly watching him in a way that seemed almost a challenge.
John met the sergeant’s gaze and let his lips tighten in a faint smile. He had no idea what Johnson’s game might be—but whatever it was, John did not intend to lose it.
“As of now,” Cole continued, “you’re all attached to Task Force Yama for the duration of Operation: SILENT STORM. Your objective is to intercept the Covenant invasion fleet, then board as many capital ships as you can and detonate small-yield tactical nuclear devices inside their hulls.”
Ascot’s jaw dropped, and Crowther’s eyes bulged. Both looked at Cole as though he were a madman.
“I’m sorry, sir . . .” Crowther said. “Are you suggesting we launch our troops against the enemy like missiles?”
“I hope you’ll be a bit more subtle than that,” Cole said. “But anything you need to do.”
Crowther’s eyes shifted toward Ascot, but her gaze had grown distant, and John guessed she was thinking back to the tactical difficulties with the Netherop mission.
John found himself smiling broadly, the way he often did when he finally saw how to beat the opposition. “I think it’s a fine idea, sir. The aliens will never see it coming.”
“With good reason,” Crowther said. He turned to Cole. “Admiral, it’s difficult enough to sneak a single assault team onto a lone enemy ship. But using a whole battalion to board dozens of vessels in the middle of their fleet? I’m not sure it can be done.”
“I didn’t say you had to use the whole battalion,” Cole said. “Any way you can get the job done will be fine.”
Crowther refused to back down. “Sir, if I may speak freely—”
“You have been.” Cole’s glance slid toward John, then he continued, “You might want to include John in your planning sessions. From what I hear, Spartans are pretty good at doing what can’t be done.”
Crowther’s expression clouded over, but he dropped his gaze and nodded. “If those are my orders.”
“Your orders are to knock the hell out of the Covenant fleet any way you can.” Cole paused, and his tone grew conciliatory. “Marmon, if the UNSC can’t bloody the Covenant’s nose here, the war is already lost. I need you to find a solution.”
Halsey leaned toward Cole. “Then put John-117 in command. At least he believes in the mission.”
Cole looked less surprised by the suggestion than John felt, and the admiral quickly shook his head. “We discussed this, Dr. Halsey. John’s not ready to lead an operation of this scale.”
Halsey turned to Crowther. “How many engagements have you and the Black Daggers fought against the Covenant?”
“That’s not the point, Doctor,” Cole said. “John’s expertise is in small unit tactics. Commanding a battalion is seventy percent logistics.”
“I’m sure Colonel Crowther will be happy to assist—”
“Dr. Halsey, the Black Daggers don’t know me,” John said. “They’ll have more faith in their colonel.”
Halsey shot him a scowl, but he pretended not to notice. She might be a brilliant scientist, but she was no soldier. She despised the chain of command, didn’t understand how loyalty held a good unit together, and couldn’t see that Crowther was only trying to make sure he wouldn’t be sending his soldiers to die on a mission that had no chance of success. In the colonel’s position, John would have done the same thing.
He turned to Crowther. “I look forward to serving under you, Colonel. Feel free to call on me if you have questions about Spartan capabilities or our experiences fighting the aliens.”
Crowther’s frown did not quite vanish. “I’ve been fully briefed on both, Petty Officer. I’m sure you and your Spartans will prove a vital asset to the operation.”
It was not quite a promise to consult, but at least Crowther seemed to have some awareness of Spartan capabilities. Realizing he would only alienate the colonel by pressing for planning involvement now, John settled back in his chair—and noticed Johnson watching him again. This time, the sergeant nodded and looked away.
Cole allowed a silence to settle over the compartment, then braced his hands on the table and leaned forward.
“This is a desperate mission,” he said. “There’s no denying it. But the UNSC needs time to develop effective countermeasures against Covenant technology, and it’s your job to buy that time. You need to make the alien commanders afraid of us. You need to convince them that humans are crazy, that anytime a Covenant fleet outruns its support or fails to consolidate its advances, we will find a way to make it pay.”
“I get it, sir. Unconventional warfare,” said Crowther.
“Think
of unconventional as your jump-off point,” Cole said. He drew himself upright again. “But I think we understand each other. Any questions about your objective?”
John shook his head, as did everyone else seated at the table.
“Good,” Cole said. “Just so you know . . . currently, the Covenant’s primary invasion fleet is glassing Etalan.”
“Why?” Johnson asked. “If that’s Etalan in the Igdras system, I was there on a recon once. It’s ten million nomads living in a hundred thousand camps. The place is so poor they share underwear.”
“That’s the world, Sergeant. And I don’t have an answer for you. Our analysts are still trying to figure out why the Covenant burns some planets and seems to ignore others.” Cole paused, then added, “What we do know is that Biko is only a short slip away.”
“And that’s where you think we should hit them,” Ascot surmised. An agricultural world with insurrectionist leanings, Biko was orbited by three resource-rich moons and a handful of shipyards. “If the aliens bypass Biko, they’re leaving us a potential operations base—in the middle of their invasion route.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Cole said. “The Covenant is unpredictable, but not stupid. They can’t skip Biko.”
Ascot pulled a datapad from her thigh pocket and tapped a few keys, then looked up. “We’ll be there waiting.”
Cole smiled. “I thought you might. Battle Group X-Ray will draw their attention by launching a high-intensity harassment campaign. It’ll be the real thing, and when we can deal damage, we will. But our main objective will be to keep them thinking about us until Yama can slip in close for the gut stab.”
“And afterward?”
“Disappear,” Cole said. “And do it again.”
“On our own initiative?” Crowther asked. He seemed a little surprised by the admiral’s instructions. “No coordination?”
“Correct,” Cole said. “If you succeed at Biko, our roles will be reversed—the aliens will be hunting Yama, and X-Ray will be gnawing at their heels. I don’t want any indirect intelligence out there that might give you away, so go dark. No message couriers, point-to-point comms only, no friendly contact. Commandeer your provisions when you can. If you need to make a depot stop, show up unannounced, grab what you need, and take off fast.”
“Understood,” Ascot said. “When do we stop?”
“When you have to.” Cole ran his glance around the table, pausing to make eye contact with each person present, then said, “You’ve all been on infiltration missions before, so you know the drill. Captain Ascot controls space operations. She’s in charge until a jump-off. Once an assault force goes EV, Colonel Crowther controls everything but the prowlers themselves.”
Crowther and Ascot nodded their understanding.
Cole turned to John. “John-117 will take orders from Colonel Crowther, but the Spartans report to him.”
“Very good, sir,” John said.
“Sergeant Johnson will serve as a training resource for the Black Daggers,” Cole said. “But his superiors want him attached to the Spartans. His qualifications and experience are more suited to their style of operation.”
Johnson tipped his head toward John. “Looking forward to working with you, Petty Officer.”
“Same here, Staff Sergeant.” It did not escape John’s notice that Cole had been careful to avoid identifying Johnson’s superiors—a sure sign of the sergeant’s ONI background. “I’m eager to compare notes.”
Johnson flashed a smile. “Should be interesting.”
“Dr. Halsey has no direct authority over the mission, but like I said earlier, try to make her happy.” Cole paused, then added, “And keep her safe. If she dies, so do the UNSC’s hopes.”
Ascot turned to Halsey. “Consider yourself confined to the Vanishing Point.”
Halsey scowled. “That’s not practical. I may need—”
“Whatever it is, we’ll bring it to you,” Ascot said. “The Vanishing Point is the only vessel in Task Force Yama that will actually be avoiding the enemy.”
“Put a control anklet on her if you need to.” As Cole spoke, he kept his eyes on Halsey. “I’m serious about this, Doctor. If you even think about disobeying, Captain Ascot will ship you straight back to Reach. Clear?”
Halsey nodded reluctantly. “The anklet won’t be necessary,” she said. “I know my value to the UNSC better than you do.”
Cole studied her for a moment. “I hope so.” He shifted his gaze to the rest of the table. “Any questions on the chain of command?”
When there were none, Cole straightened his posture. “Then, good hunting.”
John and his squad of Spartans spent the first part of the ten-day slip in the Vanishing Point’s mission preparation hold, training against the 21st ODST Space Assault Battalion. Both sides were armed with TLRs—tactical lockup rounds that signaled a target’s armor to lock in position when struck. The initial exercises were simple zero-g combat scenarios with equal numbers on both sides, and at first John suspected Crowther just wanted to prove that his ODSTs were as good as Spartans. But as session after session ended with Black Daggers floating around in strike-locked armor, the colonel began to test the Spartans under more difficult circumstances.
Once, Crowther had the hold filled with floating obstacles, then ordered a four-Spartan team to recover a nonexistent ball while engaging an entire platoon of Black Daggers. Another time, he had all twelve Spartans defend a hatch against an assault that did not end until the hold was so packed with strike-locked ODSTs that no one could maneuver. By the third such test—a hostage-rescue scenario in which the “hostage” turned out to be a hostile impostor—John realized Crowther was just doing everything he could to understand Spartan capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Black Daggers were certainly earning John’s respect. The Spartans began to suffer strike-locks at a mere five-to-one disadvantage, which was about half the normal ratio of the ODST companies they had faced while training back on Reach. When the disadvantage reached twelve to one, the Spartans could no longer be certain of prevailing—and that shouldn’t have happened until the odds were twice that bad.
Then Avery Johnson began to lead the opposing units, and suddenly the Spartans’ quick reaction time and ingrained training became liabilities. A team of Black Daggers would attempt to slip past a position, and when a Spartan moved to block them, an even larger force would appear on his flank. Or an assault would fail, and when the Spartans tried to pursue the retreating unit, they would find themselves under fire from all sides. Once, a sniper began to plink away relentlessly from the same position. Linda took him out with a countershot—and was immediately strike-locked herself by a storm of incoming fire.
John saw what Johnson was doing, of course—spending soldiers like coins to lure Spartans into exposing themselves. It was a tactic most special-ops commanders would never employ in live combat, if only because elite soldiers were so costly to train. But it was certainly one the aliens would use. John had seen them do it several times—most recently during the capture attempt at Netherop. The difference was that Avery Johnson understood UNSC special forces tactics as well as John did, and he was using that knowledge to trick the Spartans into mistake after mistake. John had to respect the man’s ingenuity.
But it still felt like Sergeant Johnson was cheating.
By the fourth morning, John was growing frustrated with his inability to counter Johnson’s tricks. The most effective tactic seemed to be sitting back and hiding until the sergeant ordered a mass advance, but even that only worked until the Spartans ran out of ammunition.
Besides, Spartans weren’t garrison troops. They were supposed to be the ones attacking, and that was exactly what John was going to do.
Today, rather than relying on standard tactics that Sergeant Johnson would anticipate anyway, he intended to launch an immediate charge and disrupt the Black Daggers’ plan before it could be executed.
Unfortunately, Colonel Crowther had other ideas. After break
fast, he ordered all assault personnel to report to the drop hangar and form by company. The hangar was inactive and draped in gloom, and in their black helmets and space assault armor, the ODSTs on the far side of the formation vanished into the murk—an effect that made the eight-hundred-member battalion look like an endless host of phantoms.
The Spartans were temporarily attached to the 21st rather than part of it, so they stood adjacent to Alpha Company at a right angle. Their Mjolnir remained tinted in the refractive coating applied before the capture attempt at Netherop, so they too resembled phantoms—twelve larger, bulkier versions of the Black Daggers. With them stood Avery Johnson, still looking very human in his customary field cap and green combat utilities.
Crowther and his female aide emerged from the gloom, both in black combat utilities. The aide called the formation to attention, and Crowther began.
“Your company commanders have briefed you on our mission, so you know our assignment is to board alien capital ships and destroy them using tactical nuclear devices. I’ll be honest. When we were given this mission, I didn’t believe it could be done.
“But over the last four days, the Black Daggers have convinced me I was mistaken. In exercises against the Spartans, you’ve demonstrated your ability to adapt to a ferocious and skilled adversary, and I’m confident you’ll prove just as resourceful when we start killing aliens. In your work with Sergeant Johnson, you’ve learned a new tactical style I hope we never have to implement.”
A chill ran down John’s spine. He had assumed that Johnson’s cold-blooded tactics were for exercise purposes only, but Crowther sounded like he was prepared to employ similar maneuvers in actual combat—and John wanted no part of that. It had been hard enough to leave Sam behind when there had been no choice; if he started sending his fellow Spartans to their deaths on purpose, he would lose all confidence in his own judgment.
Crowther clasped his hands behind his back. “Today we start integration exercises. One Spartan will be attached to twelve of the 21st’s platoons.” He flashed a wry smile, then continued, “They’ll be the ones carrying the nukes.”
