by Troy Denning
“That one looks like a cruiser, sir.”
“Any indication we’ve been spotted yet?” asked Tag Meoquanee.
The operator dragged a finger over his tracking pad, bringing up a bar graph of frequencies and message traffic along one side of his display.
“Their comm traffic looks moderate,” he replied. “About what I’d expect for launching an operation. There certainly isn’t a message flurry yet.”
“We’ll stay quiet a little longer,” Lasky said. “If there are three factions, I’d expect three cruisers.”
“Perhaps,” Halsey said. “But John’s situation report indicated there had been some trouble between the factions on the ground. Why assume all three of their fleets are hiding in the same place?”
“Because it’s the only place they could be hiding,” Meoquanee said. “Our EW frigates have been actively scanning since they set up the jamming blanket. If there was anything larger than a Warthog within ten light-minutes of Reach, they would have found it by now.”
“Then I suggest we activate the Infinity’s jammers and move to attack,” Halsey said. “If we fall any further behind schedule—”
“Commander Meoquanee knows what he’s doing,” Lasky said. “There’s a hole in the jamming blanket behind Turul. Any vessel hiding on its far side would be able to transmit away from us.”
“Toward the star,” Halsey said. “That would be a very small transmission window. Especially for a supraluminal signal.”
“But that little window happens to include Libration Point Five,” Meoquanee said. “Right now, at least fifty relay satellites in various standby modes are parked there—and their transmission windows are wide open. At least a quarter of them could probably relay a supraluminal signal.”
“And if that happens, I will leave Blue Team behind,” the captain said. He didn’t need to explain why. A supraluminal signal originating from Reach was likely to draw one of Cortana’s Guardians. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I won’t sacrifice the Infinity.”
“Leaving so abruptly would be rather overcautious, you think?” Halsey knew better than to hope Lasky was bluffing—the man only bluffed his enemies. But he was susceptible to reason. If she reminded him of the stakes, he would have to see how insignificant the risk to the Infinity was in comparison to what she was trying to do. “If we don’t recover those assets, I won’t be able to stop Cortana. If I don’t stop her, the destruction of the Infinity is only a matter of time. You can’t hide from her forever—not in a vessel like this.”
Lasky stared out the viewport. “I understand that. But if it comes to it, I’m willing to take the chance. Even small odds are better than certain destruction.”
Halsey decided it would be wiser to argue the point later. Lasky would have her removed from the command bridge before he allowed her to debate him in front of his subordinates. Besides, he probably believed that if worse came to worst, she could create another set of assets—and it would require far more time than they had available to explain why that wasn’t possible.
A spray of vector arrows appeared beneath each of the Banished vessels on the console. The operator cursed under his breath and leaned forward, dragging a finger across his tracking pad to enlarge the plethora of data lines that appeared in front of each one.
“It’s not missiles,” the operator said. “Too slow.”
There was a moment of silence before Meoquanee asked, “Dropships?”
“That would be an awfully long drop,” Lasky said. “They haven’t even left high orbit.”
“But I think that’s what it is,” the operator said. “I’m reading Phantoms and a couple of Spirits.”
“What the heck are they up to?” Lasky was not one for cursing, but his frustration was evident in his tone. “They’ll be dropping through our fighter envelope. Most of those—”
He broke off and keyed his throat mic. “XO, engage engage engage!” he ordered. “Initiate frigate defense, then commence Infinity jamming operations—and destroy that cruiser and those destroyers ASAP!”
Lasky was wearing a comm bud in his ear, and Quinby Okpara was at her post on the other end of the command aisle, so Halsey did not hear the executive officer acknowledge the order. But in the next instant, she felt her stomach flutter as the Infinity’s artificial gravity went into compensation mode to prevent any damage or injuries from the vessel’s sudden acceleration. Outside the viewport, Reach’s disk began to swell rapidly.
The Banished ships scattered from their formation, one heading for each of the Infinity’s EW frigates. The Longsword satellite-cleaners broke their sweep formation and rushed off to defend the frigates—and Halsey finally saw what Lasky had recognized the moment the dropships appeared.
“You can’t let them draw off our fighter envelope,” she said.
“I can’t let them take out the frigates either,” Lasky replied. “This is erupting into a major fight, Doctor. The minute that jamming blanket goes down, automatic satellite alerts are going to start flying. If just one of them triggers a supraluminal relay, the Infinity will have to withdraw.”
As he spoke, half a dozen flights of missiles appeared in the forward viewport and streaked toward the planet, the white circles of their thrust nozzles curling in six different directions as they turned after their individual targets. They didn’t have much chance of actually causing damage, but they would limit the Banished captains’ ability to maneuver—and force them to divide their countermeasures between the missiles behind them and the Anlace frigates and Longswords in front of them.
“I understand your concern,” Halsey said. “But allowing those dropships to reach the ground is far worse. If New Mohács falls, the pioneers will use their Havoks.”
Palmer glared over Lasky’s head at Halsey. “You can’t expect us to believe that, Dr. Halsey. They’re bluffing—or the Master Chief is.”
Impossible. In John’s transmission requesting support, he had outlined for those present the Viery Militia’s original plan to draw the Banished forces into New Mohács and detonate a Havok. He’d gone on to say that he believed the rehab pioneers had, in fact, recovered an ample supply of Havoks, and that their militia would use them to drive the Banished off Reach—unless the UNSC did it first.
“John doesn’t bluff,” Halsey said.
“John does what he needs to do,” Palmer replied. “If he was willing to go AWOL for Cortana—and take Blue Team with him—who knows how far he would go to save an entire rehab colony?”
“I do,” Halsey said. Now Palmer was getting on her nerves. “John understands the importance of his mission.”
“Good for him. But you understand why I can’t take your assurances on faith.”
“There’s no need to, if you trouble yourself to think it through,” Halsey said. “Nobody is bluffing, because the rehab pioneers can’t bluff. They’ve sacrificed everything to return to Reach, and now the Banished have destroyed their transports. Even if they wanted to give up, they couldn’t.”
Palmer’s expression grew thoughtful, and her gaze drifted forward, where Reach had grown so large that its disk filled the entire viewport and the enemy vessels had swollen to the size of teardrops. Csodaszarvas and Turul were hanging in the right corner, with a broad wedge of star-speckled space between them and the planet. Halsey was relieved to see that there were no other Banished vessels present, which meant the Infinity’s jamming blanket was still covering all known Banished ships.
Sensing that she might actually be winning Palmer over, Halsey continued, “If the pioneers think we’ve abandoned them, their best option will literally be to use the Havoks to drive the Banished off the planet, then hope they have enough survivors among them to put the pieces together.”
“And I wouldn’t blame them,” Captain Lasky said. “But that doesn’t change our situation up here. Our first priority is keeping a blanket on the satellite network, and that means defending our frigates. We’ll just have to trust that the Master Chief can keep the pioneers f
rom using a Havok until we can get there.”
“Then we’d better let them know help is on the way,” Halsey said. “Because when those pioneers see a wave of Banished dropships descending ahead of ours, they’re going to lose hope—and if they set off a thirty-megaton nuclear device, even a surface blast will be detectable from Reach’s libration points.”
“How detectable?” Lasky asked.
“There isn’t time to calculate a precise answer,” Halsey replied. “But the gamma-ray burst would be strong enough to awaken any close-emergence slipspace monitoring stations that survived the fall of Reach. And the EMP effects would linger in the planet’s ionosphere long enough to confirm a nuclear detonation.”
Lasky’s face paled. “And that would trigger an automatic Waypoint emergency transmission.”
“No. I’m not buying it,” Palmer said. “If any of those monitoring stations are still functional, they would have activated when the Infinity entered the system. Or the Banished.”
Lasky shook his head. “Why do you think we left slipspace in the heliopause?”
Halsey doubted that Palmer knew the Infinity had entered the system in the heliopause—the boundary at the outer edge of the star system, where the outbound stellar wind met the interstellar medium and no longer had enough pressure to push forward—because Halsey hadn’t. She had been vaguely aware that the sublight transit had taken a day longer than expected, but she hadn’t given it much thought beyond that.
“Dr. Halsey is right,” Lasky continued. “Either we make sure those pioneers know we’re coming—and soon—or we pack up the Infinity and hightail it out of here.”
“And leave Blue Team behind?” Palmer asked. She actually sounded unhappy about it. “Are you sure?”
“We’re not leaving Blue Team behind,” Lasky said. “Not if we can avoid it, anyway. Put a hundred and twenty Spartans in the HEV pods. We’ll launch them as soon as we know the enemy line ships can’t break off to come after you.”
“You want to high-drop a hundred and twenty Spartans?” Palmer’s voice was on the verge of shrill. “Into enemy air superiority? In daylight?”
“Commander, do I look like I’m crazy?” Lasky then spoke into his throat mic: “XO, have the Commander Air Group ready all Broadsword squadrons. I want ten squadrons to lead the first wave of drop pods, and the rest to lead the second wave.”
There was a pause while he listened to Okpara’s reply in his earbud.
“Tell the CAG she’d better have our Longswords back by then,” Lasky said. “Listen, Quinby, I wasn’t planning to liberate Reach either. Heck, I didn’t even know it needed liberating. But we’re here now, and the situation demands it. So stop telling me what you can’t do and start figuring out how to get it done.”
Another pause.
“I appreciate that.” Lasky caught Palmer’s eye, but continued to speak into his throat mic. “Commander Palmer will coordinate with General Doi before the first wave drops, but I want ODSTs behind the Spartans in the SOEIVs, and in the first run of Albatrosses and Pelicans.”
Lasky listened for another moment, then said, “Very well. Get to it.”
As soon as he signed off, Palmer asked, “You’re anticipating that I’ll drop with the Spartans in the HEVs?”
“It’s your option. I assumed you would take it.”
Palmer smiled—sort of. “You know me better than I thought, Captain.”
“I do my best, Sarah.” Lasky pursed his lips, then said, “You’ll have air superiority on the first wave, and probably for the second. But once you’re on the ground, you won’t have anything until the hangar crews can refuel and re-arm the surviving Broadswords, and that will take a few hours. So plan accordingly.”
“I always do.”
“I know,” Lasky said. “There’s one more thing.”
Palmer cocked her head and said nothing.
“Take Fireteams Intrepid and Taurus with you. I want the militia’s nukes secured asap—all of them. That’s the price of our help.”
“Understood.” Palmer then said to Halsey: “It seems Blue Team’s mission is more important than I realized. Maybe it’s time to read me in.”
“You don’t want to know,” Halsey said.
Palmer exhaled sharply and looked to Lasky.
“You don’t,” Lasky concurred. “You really don’t. I only suspect what they’re trying to recover, and I wish I didn’t.”
“But if something happens to Blue Team—”
“You can’t let it,” Lasky said. “If I could just send in another team, do you think I’d be committing the Infinity to liberate a glassed planet, especially this one? It has to be Blue Team.”
Palmer swallowed hard and inclined her head. “Understood.”
A chain of orange flashes blossomed against Reach’s alabaster disk as the first missile volley caught their targets and started to erupt. The shields of one of the smaller destroyers went down, and the Infinity was close enough that Halsey could actually see the column of vapor and flotsam venting from its breached hull.
A squadron of UNSC Longswords was quick to take advantage, swooping in to launch their ASGM-10s before the Banished repair crews could bring the shields back up. Half the Longswords were cut open by the destroyer’s pulse lasers, but their missiles struck home, and the enemy vessel’s bulky bow disintegrated into a spray of bodies and metal.
The Banished dropships continued their approach, skipping across the outer layers of Reach’s atmosphere, heading for the terminator line to begin their descent.
“It looks like I’d better get to the drop bay,” Palmer said. She came to attention and locked her gaze on Lasky. “With your permission, sir.”
Lasky nodded, but didn’t dismiss her. “We won’t be in direct communication because of the jamming envelope,” he said. “We’ll have to pass messages via the Broadsword pilots.”
“I’ll be sure to monitor their channels.”
“And I’ll tell the CAG to pass your messages along as soon as she receives them,” Lasky replied. “Good luck, Commander. The Reavians couldn’t be in better hands.”
“Thank you, sir. We won’t let them down.”
As Palmer departed, the Infinity turned toward the distant silhouette of the Banished cruiser, Reach sliding across the forward viewport. The last of the Infinity’s escort complement—five Strident-class frigates—swept out in front of the supercarrier. They quickly moved into screening position, forming a ring that would keep the enemy cruiser trapped inside the Infinity’s kill-cone.
Then the Banished cruiser’s weapons turrets came to life, flinging balls of plasma at two of the UNSC vessels approaching from behind her port side. Even Halsey could see that the enemy cruiser was trying to open up some maneuvering room away from the planet—a doomed effort. The two vessels took the initial strikes on their shields and returned fire with their MAC systems; then the entire ring of frigates simply rotated, bringing two fresh ships into position on the cruiser’s port side.
A steady stream of missile volleys began to pour from the Infinity’s launchers, harrying the Banished cruiser and giving the enemy point-defense weapons something to worry about while the supercarrier brought its forward magnetic accelerator cannons to bear. But the Banished captain was no fool. He rolled his cruiser in the same direction and continued to erupt plasma fire into the two vessels he had hit earlier.
They held their positions and launched another pair of MAC rounds to prevent the Banished cruiser from escaping by dropping parallel to Reach. Their shields went down, and the enemy plasma began to sink into their bow armor, launching white sprays of molten titanium into space.
The bridge lights flickered as the Infinity fired its first MAC, launching a three-thousand-ton slug toward the Banished cruiser at a quarter the speed of light. Halsey didn’t even see the round strike. In one instant the cruiser was still there, a dark mass of nanolaminate hull being pushed along by the blue ovals of its repulsor engine drives, and the next it was a bal
l of white glitter, expanding across the entire viewport.
Then the white ball began to disperse and slide across the viewport as the Infinity began the pursuit of its next kill.
Lasky turned to Halsey. “Your plan is going to work, right?” he asked. “I’m not risking the Infinity on a long shot, am I, Dr. Halsey?”
“Whether it’s a long shot or not is irrelevant, Captain Lasky. It’s our only shot.”
Halsey watched in silence as the distant teardrop of a Banished heavy destroyer slid inexorably toward the center of the viewport. Then, finally, the bridge lights flickered again, and the destroyer blossomed into a blinding spray of flotsam.
“But if you find it reassuring,” she added, “we have a far better chance than those Banished destroyers do right now.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
0540 hours, October 12, 2559 (military calendar)
Glass Barrens outside New Mohács
Arany Basin, Continent Eposz, Planet Reach
How many times John and Blue Team had lain belly-down on some battlefield listening to the rain drum on their Mjolnir armor, he did not know. Probably a thousand times on a hundred different worlds, united through training and comms even when they were hundreds of meters apart. It was in those moments, before battle came, that he felt most connected to his team, sometimes to the point it seemed he knew their states of mind as well as his own: Fred utterly focused and aware, but chafing at the wait… Kelly ticking off the minutes by reciting the chorus of that old song about a killer queen over and over… Linda so calm she was barely there.
Thirty years of war had molded four childhood friends into far more than brothers- and sisters-at-arms. They were extensions of one another, certain enough of their teammates that at times it felt like they were all limbs on the same body. So, lying there on the wet glass waiting, John knew that the rest of Blue Team was as angry as he was about what had befallen Reach—that they all held the rehab pioneers in the same high regard, and while everyone recognized that recovering Halsey’s assets had to come first, they were all quietly relieved that their mission had become so entwined with the campaign to drive the Banished off Reach.
