by Troy Denning
Fifty-five seconds.
The Banshee swarm continued to swirl upward, growing larger and dividing itself into ten-member squadrons. So far, it looked like ten squadrons—a hundred craft in all—but he didn’t see any more rising out of the base. They couldn’t all be preparing to scout the river, but some of them would certainly be headed for it. One of the surveillance Seraphs had flown off with a smoking engine, and the base commander would need to find out why.
“Be ready, Special Crew,” John said. “The Banshee wing is almost ready to leave, strength now one hundred.”
“Confirm one hundred?” Chapov requested.
“Affirmative,” John said. “I’d say you have half a minute to dig in.”
“Not enough time,” Chapov replied. “We’re just starting to cut—”
“We’ll handle it,” Mukai said. “Just get us a Phantom, Master Chief. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“We will?” Chapov paused, then asked, “Where do you want me?”
Finally. The kid was learning.
John checked his HUD. Forty-five seconds. He would have Fred launch both SPNKr rockets at the fifteen-second mark, when John was still more than two hundred meters from the barrier. That way, he would be crossing the perimeter while the enemy was still reeling from the blast, with Fred and Kelly just a couple of seconds behind him. Together they would locate the Phantoms and commandeer one while the base defenders were still trying to figure out what hit them.
The first three squadrons of Banshees departed, the thrust pods beneath their stubby canards spewing white contrails as they swung westward to intercept one of the Seraph squadrons Linda had reported. The Banshees would be badly outmatched, even given the Seraphs’ sluggish in-atmosphere performance, but their superior numbers and maneuverability would even the odds. John would not have cared to bet on the winner—even if he had understood why the two groups were fighting in the first place.
“Two squadrons coming your way, Special,” John reported as the craft streamed over the barrier shield, heading south toward the river. “Probably headed for the surveillance flight.”
No acknowledgment.
“Special?”
“I think they can’t hear you,” Linda said. “They went under the glass.”
“What do you mean?”
“Under the riverbed,” Linda said. “They drove out toward a rocket hole. When I looked back, there was an even bigger hole, and the LHD was disappearing under the glass.”
“Under its own power?”
“It sure wasn’t floating,” Fred said. “Are we still doing this?”
Twenty-five seconds.
“Be patient,” John said. “I have a plan.”
Three more squadrons of Banshees crossed the shield barrier and headed east, one to either side of the irrigation canal—and one squadron flying straight over it.
John threw himself flat at the base of the south wall. “Take cover!”
“We’re doing our best…” Kelly paused as the Banshees screamed overhead, then added, “But it’s rather barren in here.”
John rolled onto his back and looked down the canal, watching the Banshee squadrons continue eastward, passing over the river bend, then beginning to climb and meet a line of Seraphs coming down out of the Ujeger Highlands.
“I think we’re okay,” he said.
“Think again,” Fred said. “Incoming!”
John rolled back toward the wall, coming up on his knees and facing the enemy base once more—where ten red-and-silver Banshees were streaming over the shield barrier and dropping into the irrigation canal, their plasma cannons already flashing.
Fred launched both SPNKr barrels, sending an M19 rocket into the nose of each of the two lead craft, filling the end of the canal with twin fireballs. Kelly threw herself into an evasive roll, tumbling across the glass and firing her MA40 as she went. Canards and cowlings rained down, twisted and trailing flame, and two more Banshees pulled up streaming smoke.
John opened fire, putting triple-taps straight through into the cockpits of two more Banshees and sending them crashing down on the glass.
But that left four intact, and they streaked down the canal toward the Spartans. Banshee plasma cannons were deadly, and there were four craft. Their bolts chewed the glass and filled the air with clouds of flying slivers.
Fred dropped the SPNKr and reached for his assault rifle, while Kelly ejected an empty magazine and grabbed another.
No time.
Fred’s energy shield flickered and vanished as a flurry of bolts pinned him against the wall. Kelly’s own shield went down as the cannons rolled her across the canal floor into the opposite wall. John emptied his magazine in response, sending two craft corkscrewing toward the canal walls behind him, then glimpsed the red streak of an approaching plasma bolt.
He twisted aside and heard a spray of glass shards clatter off his armor as the bolt impacted the wall next to him. He ejected the empty magazine from his MA40 and went for another one, automatically noting that the status LEDs in his HUD were flashing amber for both Kelly and Fred. Wounded, not dead—not yet.
John inserted the fresh magazine as the last two Banshees were on the deck coming straight at him, the one in front hugging the wall and just fifty meters away. The second was thirty meters behind it and staggered toward the center of the canal, ready to swing in behind the leader and finish the job.
John rolled toward the center of the canal, opening fire on the trailing Banshee as the leader flashed past to his left. He saw the second Banshee’s cannons flash red and a crooked line of his own bullet holes punching through its cowling; then his energy shields flared and his Mjolnir armor knelled. Something punched through his left cuisse, and his quadriceps suddenly knotted into the worst charley horse of his life—a burning, aching, grating spasm that made him taste copper and want to vomit.
Stay focused.
The target Banshee dropped its nose and skidded toward John along the canal floor, its cannons now dark, its canards still spewing contrails, ribbons of under-hull peeling away.
John tried to jump up and nearly passed out as his leg erupted in pain, the ache traveling through his hip clear into his chest. The Banshee was almost on him, rocking on its belly, the nose dropping toward his helmet.
He rolled left, his entire leg burning as the Mjolnir’s injectors pumped biofoam into the open wound. At the last possible moment, he let go of his rifle and delivered a powerful right hook that lifted the Banshee’s front end and sent the craft spinning away across Reach’s glass.
He then sat up and spun around to open fire on the lead craft, putting so many rounds into its left propulsion pod that the canard simply disintegrated. The Banshee flipped over and smashed down on its cowling, then spun across the canal bed until it crashed into the north wall, exploding and vanishing beneath a cascade of broken lechatelierite.
Fred’s status LED now showed steady amber—wounded, but stable. Kelly’s was still flashing.
“Blue Three, status?”
“Itooka boltinmy damn chest.” Kelly’s voice came thin and fast, a sign that her suit’s emergency medical routine was using stimulants to keep her alert. “My HUDreadoutsays the right axillary vein is nicked. But myarmpit’s packed full of biofoam and bleedinghasstopped. So… functional.”
John spun onto his right knee, then got his foot under him and stood. His left leg exploded in pain as he put weight on it, but the onboard computer had already made an input adjustment, and the Mjolnir’s force-multiplying circuits compensated flawlessly. He’d felt worse pain before, more times than he could count.
It still hurt like hell.
He spotted Fred and Kelly two hundred meters away. Kelly was sprawled in the center of the canal, not visibly moving. John went to four-times magnification and saw that her head was raised and her left hand was squeezing a plasma packet into her thoracic bioport. Fred was lying against the wall, half-buried beneath a mountainous heap of broken lechatelierite.
<
br /> “Blue Two?”
“I was out for a while. My HUD says concussion.” Fred paused, then added, “I’m seeing two readouts, so it might be right.”
As Fred spoke, ten more Banshees started to stream over the shield barrier toward them.
“Heads up!” John said. “More Banshees!”
Fred began to push chunks of lechatelierite aside as Linda spoke over TEAMCOM: “On my way.”
“Negative,” John replied. Even if she managed to avoid being spotted, she would never arrive in time to do more than pick up the pieces. “Stay with Special Crew—and stay on mission. Blue Two and Three, I’ll draw them off.”
John began to dodge down the canal away from them. It felt like his Mjolnir was moving his leg, rather than vice versa, and every step was agony. But he was still able to run, and far faster than any normal man could. “Play dead and take them from behind.”
“Permission to execute a better plan?” Kelly asked. Before John could reply, her shotgun began to boom. “Blue Two, I need SPNKr support now.”
John swung around to find Kelly holding her shotgun in her left hand, firing strike rounds into the canal floor—directly above the tunnel.
“Permission granted,” John said, as though he had a choice. He changed magazines and started toward her at a sprint, ignoring his screaming leg. He was still two hundred meters away. “Laying suppression fire overhead.”
John raised his MA40 high and began to fire one-handed over Kelly’s head. Firing toward a team member was done only when the alternative was allowing the enemy to kill them; after the damage Blue Team had already taken, that seemed like a real possibility.
But the ten pilots lining up to attack now had just seen three Spartans take out an entire squadron with nothing more than a rocket launcher and a couple of assault rifles—and that had to be weighing on their minds. When they saw the muzzle flashes from John’s weapon, they might not pull up and veer away—but he would make them flinch, and that might buy Kelly another second to open a hole.
John saw his rounds sparking off the lead Banshee’s nose; then it wobbled and laid cannon fire to Kelly’s right. Now only a hundred and fifty meters away, he dropped his aim, preparing to fire at the Banshee behind it—as a rocket streaked out of the glass heap where Fred had been buried.
The Banshee pulled up, and Fred’s rocket hit the one behind it.
Fred fired again at the next craft in line, then switched the SPNKr for his MA40 and raced for Kelly’s position. At the same time, the Banshee that had escaped his first rocket dropped its nose and barreled toward him.
John emptied his magazine into its port-side cowling and saw it corkscrew over Fred’s head into the wall. Just a hundred meters from Kelly, he ejected the magazine and exchanged it for a fresh one.
“Fire in the hole!” Kelly warned.
She dropped a grenade into the basin she’d created with her shotgun, then stepped back. The next Banshee dropped to the deck, coming in behind her where it would be shielded from John’s attack. The one following it stayed high, diving straight at her. Bolts flew from both craft, one passing over the spot where she’d just been standing, the other raising a wall of flying glass chips that was advancing directly toward her.
Fred took out the high one—a mistake that betrayed the severity of his concussion.
“Blue Three!” John yelled. “Down!”
He aimed for Kelly’s helmet and opened fire on full auto the instant she started to move. By the time he actually had a clear view of his target, there was a void in the Banshee’s cowling the size of his fist. It stopped firing and started to drop—then Kelly’s grenade detonated beneath it, flipping it backward into the air.
John was fifty meters away, close enough to see the hole the blast had created. Another pair of Banshees was lining up for attack runs, this time side by side. It was a formation that left barely two meters between them and maybe a meter and a half between their outer canards and the canal walls.
Fred took a knee halfway to the hole and started to exchange his assault rifle for the SPNKr.
“Blue Two, negative!” John ordered. Fred was in bad shape if he was preparing to fire from a static position in the open. “Into the hole, now!”
Fred looked toward John. “But I have the—”
“That’s an order, Spartan!”
The Banshees launched a devastating salvo, this time adding their fuel rod cannons to the attack. Calibrated for air-to-air combat rather than strafing, most of the rods overflew John’s head. But the first two impacted a dozen meters from Fred and Kelly, raising fountains of chipped glass directly in line with them.
“You too, Kelly!” John shouted. “Go!”
Kelly was already scrambling toward the makeshift bunker, pushing with her feet and pulling with her good arm, so John fired on the Banshee behind Fred. It held its course, the next rod impacting so close to Fred that glass shards blasted his flank—and finally seemed to jar him back to his senses. He launched himself forward, flying five meters across the canal before he disappeared headfirst into the hole.
Kelly pulled herself in behind him, and then it was just John, still fifteen meters from safety and facing two Banshees.
They both veered toward him, one going low and the other high, green rods and red bolts flying from their cannons in unbroken streams.
John emptied his magazine at the lower one, pouring his rounds directly down the cannon muzzle until a blanket of fire mushroomed beneath it and sent the craft tumbling away. The second Banshee pulled up to avoid the collision—and John found himself suddenly facing three more craft, racing down the canal and stacked atop each other in staircase formation. Their cannons began to flash, and a curtain of flying glass advanced down the canal toward him.
“Heads up!”
John flung his MA40 forward and watched it spin across the glass into the pit. He didn’t trust his wounded leg to launch him the last ten meters to safety, so he sprinted forward until his faceplate darkened against flashes of striking plasma bolts and the glass vanished beneath him and he dropped into the tunnel, his energy shield still sizzling from shrapnel impact.
His sabatons had barely touched sand before a pair of rifle butts hit him violently behind the knees, filling him with pain and dropping him to the ground. His faceplate returned to normal, and he saw Fred kneeling in the sand a few meters in front of him.
A gun muzzle clanked against the back of his helmet as a gruff human voice announced: “Hands still. One move, and we’ll see how that helmet of yours stands up to a Desert Eagle.”
“A Desert Eagle?” Fred asked. “Shouldn’t that hand-cannon be in a museum somewhere?”
“It was,” the voice said. A hammer cocked behind John’s helmet. “But it still fires. Wanna see?”
“Why don’t we just trust you on that?” John asked.
They were in the bottom of a tunnel two meters in diameter, directly beneath the hole Kelly had blasted to save them. The bottom half was an old water pipe, its bed filled with wet sand churned up by the passage of hundreds of boots. The top half resembled the vault of a lechatelierite cave, complete with glassy curtains and stalactites.
Kelly sat in the sand three meters away, leaning against the wall with a fist-sized puncture on the right side of her breastplate. Fred was kneeling in the middle of the tunnel in front of her, his fingers laced behind his helmet, wobbling ever so slightly.
They were surrounded by a dozen weary-looking humans, all armed with various models of MA5 assault rifles and wearing odd pieces of UNSC battle armor—likely salvaged from the subterranean remnants of a nearby armory. John’s motion tracker showed another fifteen people packed into the tunnel behind him, no doubt equipped in a similar fashion and just as haggard-looking.
Reach’s rehab pioneers, in the flesh.
The gruff-voiced man tapped John’s helmet with the pistol barrel. “Hey. You’ve got some explaining to do, fella.”
“You first.”
This
resulted in another barrel tap. “Try again, Tin Man. You bunch just blew an operation we’ve been setting up for weeks, so nobody’s in the mood for no smart-mouthed cyborgs.”
“Cyborgs?” Fred huffed. His voice came over TEAMCOM, soft enough that it would be audible to only John and Kelly inside their helmets. “How long do we have to put up with this? My head hurts, my knees are sore, and we need to get out of here before those Banshees land.”
“Understood,” John replied on TEAMCOM. “But let’s give them a chance. The last thing we need is to make enemies of the Reach militia.”
“How do you know they’re militia?” Fred asked.
Clearly his concussion wasn’t getting any better.
The barrel tapped John’s helmet again. “Hello? I’m not asking a third time.”
“Good,” John said. “Because I can’t answer. You don’t have clearance.”
“Clearance, huh.” John watched in his motion tracker as the man stepped back, no doubt leveling his hand cannon at the back of John’s helmet. “Okay, smart guy. If that’s the way you want it.”
“It isn’t,” John said. This fellow was on his last chance. “And you don’t either. Really.”
“Sure I do.”
John spoke over TEAMCOM. “On my mark.” He gathered himself to spring. “I’ll take—”
“Hold on,” Fred said. He seemed to be staring down the tunnel over John’s shoulder, though it was hard to be sure behind the tinted faceplate. “Something’s happening.”
Any other time, John would have accepted Fred’s recommendation without a second thought. But… concussion.
“You’re sure?”
“It’s okay,” Kelly said, still over TEAMCOM. “Something has changed. Everyone is looking back down the tunnel.”
“But where’s his weapon pointed?” John asked.
