“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 70mm 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 chin 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 waypoint 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 beh
ind 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 102mm 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 anti-grav 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 pink 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 biofoam 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.
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