Shadows of Reach: A Master Chief Story

by Troy Denning

  With the Warthog in good hands, John took the opportunity to feed a fresh belt of ammunition into the Vulcan, then made sure his grenades and M7 submachine gun were in good order. Kelly placed a new reload tube onto her SPNKr, then checked her own grenades and shotgun. They would use the anti-aircraft gun and rocket launcher only if necessary to extract themselves—the heavier weapons, and their MA40 assault rifles, had too much penetration power and could end up disabling the very craft they were trying to capture.

  It was less than a minute before Disztl swung the Warthog sharply to the right and said, “There she is.”

  The Phantom was still higher in the air than John had expected, the last of three craft coming in fast, plasma cannons firing blindly down into the battle smoke. As Van Houte had promised, the one at the end did seem to be going for the south side of the armor yard—and it was descending at a steep angle, suggesting it intended to land toward the perimeter of the village. Clearly the Banished pilots had taken notice of the devastation that had met the rest of their drop.

  But the battle was about to change tide. Above and behind the Phantom, the clouds were already aflame with the entry trails of the next wave. And the second drop was even larger than the first, approaching across a front that could end up being ten kilometers.

  If Blue Team and Special Crew didn’t get out of New Mohács right now, they might never leave.

  John opened the militia command channel. “Major Tabori, silence all anti-aircraft attacks.” There weren’t any antiaircraft batteries actually launching, but John couldn’t risk being unable to continue their mission. “Blue Team will handle the last three Phantoms.”

  No response.

  “Acknowledge.”

  The only reply was unintelligible crackle over the combat information band. Another one.

  “Repeat transmission.”

  More crackling. Whoever was up there, their orbit was carrying them into comm range. By the time the battle was lost, they might even be able to understand each other.

  “Lieutenant, swing us around to the edge of the yard,” John said. “When that Phantom lowers its boarding ramp, drive straight inside, then drop into the foot well.”

  Disztl cranked the wheel, picking a route through the yard that kept them concealed among the wrecks of all the other dropships and disabled armor.

  “What if they don’t land?” she asked. “Our intelligence reports say Phantoms have gravity lifts.”

  “They do,” Kelly said. “But how eager would you be to hover over the battlefield, waiting for a missile strike while we pick off the troops you’re lowering one at a time in your gravity lift?”

  “Good point.”

  Disztl dropped the Warthog into a crater sheltered by a wrecked Marauder on one side and a still-smoking Phantom on the other. It had an unobstructed view of their target’s expected landing zone, though the smoke was so thick that if it landed very far away, they would have to track it down by its drive glow.

  “Will this do?”

  Before John could reply, the Phantom answered for him, coming in fifty meters overhead and landing about the same distance away. The stern of the craft was canted at a slight angle to them, but making that turn would be child’s play for Disztl.

  As John waited for the first crack to appear at the top of the boarding ramp, he tried the militia command channel again.

  “Colonel Boldisar? Anyone?” He waited a moment for a reply, then said, “If that breakout column hasn’t left yet, now is—”

  “Soon, Master Chief.” The voice belonged to Rendor Borbély, and John could hear yelling and shrieking in the background. “We had to load some casualties.”

  John could think of only one casualty worth delaying the breakout attempt. “Boldisar?”

  “Among others,” Borbély said. “She may survive.”

  “Damn. I hope so.” The Phantom’s boarding ramp began to swing down. “Get out of here now, Colonel. You’re out of time.”

  Another crackle, this time longer and louder, sounded over the UNSC combat information band. John was beginning to think he had a bad relay somewhere in his helmet.

  He reached down and tapped Disztl on the shoulder. “Now, Lieutenant.”

  Disztl punched the accelerator, and the Warthog climbed out of the crater and raced through the smoke toward the Phantom. The ramp was only halfway down when she swung in behind it, accelerating anyway. It was only three-quarters of the way down, with over a meter between the lip and the ground, when the Warthog reached it. Disztl slammed on the brakes, dropping the front of the vehicle so hard that John was thrown into the Vulcan’s handgrips.

  Thinking Disztl might have lost her courage, he slapped his submachine gun onto a thigh magmount and reached for the Vulcan triggers. Then she punched the accelerator again, releasing the Warthog’s compressed suspension so suddenly that the front end bounced upward, allowing the tires to grab the ramp edge and pull them the rest of the way up.

  The Warthog began to shudder and jerk as it plowed into the packed troop bay, knocking aside Jiralhanae and crushing Sangheili, hurling them into the bulkheads and one another. Kelly’s shotgun began to boom and John’s submachine gun to chatter, and bellows of confusion and rage filled their ears. And still Disztl kept the accelerator pinned to the floor, spinning the tires until they smoked, pushing alien bodies forward, packing them so tight their armor began to split and pop like smashed cans.

  Out of nowhere, a voice sounded over the UNSC combat information band. “Inbound ten squadrons Broadsword ground support mission. Target Banished armor and dropships, New Mohács village. Missiles away. ETA ten seconds. Over.”

  Disztl gasped into her comm unit, then turned toward Kelly with a look on her face that was equal parts confusion and terror. John didn’t blame her. With the missiles on the way, calling off the strike was not an option. He stopped firing and lunged over the roll bar, reaching for the Warthog’s gearshift.

  “Retreat, Lieutenant! Retreat now!”

  Kelly already had one hand on the lever and was sliding the Warthog into reverse, her shotgun tucked between her knees and her left hand reaching for the steering wheel.

  “Pedal to the floor, Lieutenant! Get us out of—”

  John was still stretched over the roll bar when Disztl floored the accelerator and the Warthog leaped out of the troop bay backward, the rear wheels high off the deck, John banging his helmet off the upper hatch jamb.

  They slammed down at the bottom of the ramp and raced backward across the armor yard until Disztl spun the wheel and brought them around a hundred and eighty degrees, then hit the accelerator, with John nearly thrown clear as he reached for the Vulcan.

  Spikes and plasma bolts began to arrive seconds later, burning through his energy shields in a breath, ricocheting off his Mjolnir armor and burning dimples into the titanium shell. He swung the Vulcan around and opened fire on a gang of Jiralhanae clustered in the hatchway.

  They were still falling when a white streak lanced out of the sky and touched the Phantom, and then the dropship was a thousand pieces of twisted alloy spraying from a ball of white fire.

  The spikes and plasma continued to come, now from both sides and in front of the Warthog. John saw a curtain of smoke in every direction, bolts streaking out of the dark fumes on three sides, a wall of flame glowing through the smoke, rising in pillars out where the Banished armor had been trying to push through the fortifications and tank traps into New Mohács.

  Special Crew’s status still showed green in his HUD, so John put them and the excavation equipment out of his mind for the moment and fired blindly into the smoke, doing his best to follow the Banished salvo back to its source but not really seeing his targets, only the nebulous gray forms of the wreckage they were using for cover, or the pearly smoothness of the crater they were firing from.

  “Broadsword run successful—heavy damage Banished armor and dropships. Will circle area for further support requests. Estimated twelve minutes bingo fuel and am
mo. Be advised HEV insertion New Mohács landing zone one hundred Spartan-IVs, followed by additional heavy insertions. Over.”

  John didn’t have time to be impressed, but he was. He’d expected maybe three thousand ODSTs supported by a few teams of Spartan-IVs and some air. But John had classified his support request as mission-critical, and apparently Captain Lasky had taken him at his word. Or maybe he just hated the idea of the Banished on Reach as much as John did.

  He continued to fire, at the same time speaking into TEAMCOM.

  “Special Crew, withdraw to safety. Blue Team, fall back one fifty meters and set LZ perimeter.”

  All status LEDs flashed green.

  “Lieutenant Disztl, fall back and find us some cover.”

  “Yes, sir.” Disztl dropped the Warthog into a crater and banked a power-slide turn off the far wall, then rocketed out in the opposite direction. “A hundred Spartans? In the first wave?”

  She’d heard the same UNSC combat information transmissions as everyone else hooked into TEAMCOM.

  “Affirmative.” John was continuing to aim at plasma bolts coming out of the smoke, and Kelly was doing the same with her MA40. “Reach belongs to you again. The Banished can leave or die.”

  “Damn straight,” Disztl said. “Thanks for—”

  A volley of spikes hit them from the left side, punching through the Warthog’s skin with a dull, cracked-bell clanging. John spun the Vulcan toward the crushed-dome shape of a downed Phantom and loosed hellfire into the smoke, probably not hitting anything, but at least suppressing the Banished attacks.

  He didn’t realize they were decelerating at first, just noticed that the wreckage wasn’t drifting past quite as fast as before. Thinking one of the spikes had damaged the Warthog’s engine, John continued to lay fire on the downed Phantom.

  “How bad, Lieutenant?” he asked. “Can you get us going again?”

  It was Kelly who answered. “It’s not the Warthog, John.”

  John glanced at the driver’s seat and saw Disztl slumped against the steering wheel, her arms hanging limp. Blood was running down the side of her helmet, spilling out through a large split over her ear.

  “Oh… hell no.”

  The cracked-bell clanging resumed, and John saw the shield-level indicator in his HUD fall as he started to take hits. He stretched an arm toward Kelly.

  “SPNKr.”

  She slapped the rocket launcher into his hand. He put it on his shoulder, arming and HUD-linking it as he moved, and fired the first rocket into the smoke. It struck the downed Phantom roughly in the center of its silhouette, spreading an angry crimson blush across its shadowy hull.

  A trio of Sangheili forms leaped up to flee, their legs and backs flickering with flames. John fired the second rocket at the ground two steps in front of them, and the blast sent them flying back through the smoke in flaming parts.

  By then, Kelly had settled Disztl’s body in the passenger’s seat and taken control of the wheel. She flashed a yellow status LED to warn John they were about to move, then hit the accelerator and began to look for a firing position. With her training and Spartan reflexes, she was almost as good a driver as Disztl. Almost.

  John stayed behind the Vulcan, firing at shapes in the smoke and cutting them down in a cold fury. He had seen too many soldiers fall to feel broken or drained by Disztl’s loss, and he knew she had died for something she held dear. It still seemed like such a damned waste. The Banished should never have set foot on Reach—and Reach should never have been glassed in the first place. He had met, and even fought beside, too many noble aliens to believe they were all responsible for this entire mess. But those who were here—those he was happy to deal with.

  The first wave of HEV drop pods were already plunging out of the clouds when Kelly slipped the Warthog in behind an overturned Marauder. John was too busy picking off Jiralhanae and Sangheili to spare more than a quick glance skyward, but the cloud ceiling was low enough that the UNSC had emerged from it with their drag panels deployed, in a tight group and on course for an on-target landing.

  After a few seconds of firing, he glimpsed a squad of slender shapes moving through the smoke to his left, dashing or crawling from one piece of wreckage to another. That was what happened when you attacked from one spot too long—someone tried to flank and kill you. He had Kelly drive around to the other side of the blasted-out Wraith the squad seemed to be heading toward.

  There were six of them, all Kig-Yar, still moving into position as the Warthog rounded the corner. These were Skirmishers, an aggressive subspecies of Kig-Yar that had once belonged to the Covenant. Unlike Jackals, who were consummate opportunists on the battlefield, Skirmishers were far less cautious than the rest of their kind. John opened fire, cutting four of them in half before they had even raised their weapons. Then he felt a pair of heavy thumps as Kelly promptly ran over the other two.

  Expecting her to keep going, John started to swivel the Vulcan around to finish off the two they had just run down—then Kelly threw the Warthog into reverse and thumped over both bodies again. She continued backward until both Skirmishers lay visible, one helmet crushed flat and a tire-sized depression running across the torso of the other.

  “I must say,” Kelly said, “that was satisfying.”

  John understood completely. “Yeah.”

  The roar of the Vulcan must have covered the thunder of the drop pods’ braking jets, because suddenly there were Spartans in GEN3 Mjolnir everywhere. They raced past the Warthog on both sides, covering one another and firing at alien shapes as they advanced into the smoke.

  Nobody was shooting at the Warthog any longer, so John and Kelly remained behind the Wraith. John took a moment to do a health check on his team and found all lights green, except for Disztl’s, then opened the militia command channel.

  “Colonel Borbély,” he said. “Blue Leader.”

  “Rendor is dead,” answered a female voice. “This is Captain Eötvös. Go ahead.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Captain.” John was starting to wonder just what the breakout column had run into—and whether any of its senior officers had survived. “What about Colonel Boldisar?”

  “Badly wounded,” Eötvös said. “I’m in command for now.”

  “Understood,” John said. “I wanted to advise you that the UNSC drop is under way.”

  “Yes, we had noticed,” Eötvös said. “Blue Team and the UNSC have our thanks. Truly.” She didn’t sound like Blue Team had their thanks, but she probably had about a hundred other things on her mind right now—all of them unfamiliar and enormously stressful. “Is there anything else, Blue Leader?”

  “Only the breakout column,” John said. “The situation has changed. It’s no longer—”

  “Necessary.” Eötvös chuckled. “We are not that inexperienced. It has already been recalled.”

  “Good,” John said. “I’ll tell our officers to coordinate with you at HQ.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” Eötvös said. “I hope you’ll be with them.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” As John spoke, a squad of Spartans showed up on his motion tracker, approaching from behind the Warthog. “I still have my own mission to wrap up.”

  He quickly signed off and turned to see Sarah Palmer leading two teams of her Spartan-IVs toward the Warthog. She was wearing her standard GEN3 kit, and there was no mistaking her for someone else. The red emblems stamped into her torso and forearm shells gave it away—as did the paired M6H Magnums she wore on her thigh mounts.

  Over TEAMCOM, which—in theory, at least—Palmer wouldn’t be able to hear, Fred said, “Uh-oh. Looks like she’s on the warpath. Should I prep a getaway vehicle?”

  “Fred…” John said, slightly exasperated.

  After John had taken Blue Team AWOL to search for Cortana, he and Palmer were hardly on good terms—especially given that she was the one who had sent Fireteam Osiris to attempt their capture. But she actually seemed to bear a certain respect for John, and she was the strai
ghtest of straight arrows. She wasn’t going to interfere with a legitimate mission—assuming, of course, that the mission Dr. Halsey had sent Blue Team on was legitimate.

  “She probably just wants a sitrep,” John finished.

  “Sure,” Fred said. “That’s why she brought two teams of S-IVs to back her up.”

  John didn’t have a chance to reply, because by then Palmer was standing at the back of the Warthog looking up at him.

  “Commander Palmer.” John did not salute. They were on an active battlefield, and he didn’t want her to think he was trying to get her killed. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You can thank Halsey and Lasky,” Palmer replied. She shot a quick glance at Kelly and Disztl’s limp body, then looked back to him. “How’s your team, Master Chief?”

  “A hundred percent,” John said. Not quite true, but he wasn’t going to give her any reason to question Blue Team’s fitness to continue. “Lieutenant Disztl was on loan from the militia. A fine soldier.”

  Palmer dropped her chin. “Aren’t they all?” She nodded sincerely, then looked around the armor yard, taking in the dense-packed wreckage, and finally looked back to John. “Whatever Halsey has you doing down here, it must be big. Lasky sent everything.”

  “Right now we’re liberating Reach,” he said. If Lasky and Halsey hadn’t briefed Palmer on Blue Team’s mission, it would be a security violation for him to do it. “It means a lot to me. And to the entire UNSC.”

  “Enough to risk a Guardian showing up?” Palmer asked. “While most of Infinity’s fighting force is off-ship mopping up pirates?”

  “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” John said. He didn’t blame her for being concerned about the risk—if a Guardian arrived now, Infinity’s survival probability rating would plummet to single digits. The situation would become virtually intractable. What Palmer couldn’t possibly have known, however, was that given the objective of Blue Team’s mission, such a risk was entirely worth it. Even so, John was curious about the number of Spartans he saw. Standard infantry and armor made perfect sense in order to engage the Banished forces, but risking this many S-IVs on the ground meant there were other factors in play. “Why did he send so many Spartans?”