by Troy Denning
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
By the time the Gray Guards touched down, John and Fred were a hundred meters from the rim. Both were on their knees behind boulders, aiming their MA40s at the apex of the lowest arc the Jiralhanae could use to cross the shaft. The Broadswords were over the north side of the basin, wheeling around to start a return pass that would put them on target as the jumpers tried to cross. Linda’s sniper rifle was already booming as she fired across the shaft, using two rounds per target—the first to overload the shields, the second to punch through the armor and kill the target. She put two warriors down before they had taken ten steps.
But these were all jet-jumpers—they should have been back in the air after only a few steps. And they weren’t.
John thought perhaps they wanted to be closer before launching into their next bound. It was a big shaft—so large that the last time he had been here, he’d been riding in a Covenant dropship that had flown straight down it. If the enemy jumped too early, they might not make it all the way across.
He held his fire, waiting to catch them in the air, where they wouldn’t be able to dodge behind boulders.
Linda opened fire again and killed two more jumpers.
The rest stayed on the ground, sprinting forward, covering the last twenty meters in two seconds. The first Broadsword let loose, filling the air above the shaft with 35mm rounds.
The Gray Guards weren’t there.
They were now leaping into the shaft, using their jump-jets to push them toward the gravity field in the center. So much for that part of the plan.
John dropped his aim and blasted away at the descending jumpers, his rounds deflecting off flashing shields as the Jiralhanae plunged into the darkness below.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1348 hours, October 12, 2559 (military calendar)
CASTLE Base Access Shaft, Csongrád Region
Highland Mountains, Continent Eposz, Planet Reach
John jumped first, leaping into the shaft chest-down so he could watch for enemy plasma fire rising out of the impregnable darkness. The nanobraided titanium cable clipped to the back of his Mjolnir went taut almost instantly, and his forward momentum faded as the winch-resistance kicked in. He dropped ten meters, simultaneously swinging back toward the shaft wall. He hit feet-first and sprang back toward the pirate lift’s gravity field in the center of the shaft, dragging another ten meters of cable off the spool, and dropped another ten meters—before the winch-resistance brought him back toward the wall again.
It was called fast-winching, and it was John’s least-favorite method of tactical descent. Instead of controlling his own rate of drop, a soldier had to rely on a winch operator, which created an opportunity for missed signals. But it sure beat flat-out falling, and it was a good alternative to dangling a rappel line down on an enemy’s head.
John was in the middle rig, with Linda fast-winching twenty meters to his left and Fred twenty meters to his right. Even with Kelly still on the surface protecting Special Crew and the winches proper, that spacing was a lot tighter than he would have liked.
But geometry was an implacable foe. Measuring forty meters across, the shaft had a circumference of just over a hundred and twenty-five meters. If they spaced themselves any farther apart, the two Spartans on the ends would be in each other’s field of fire.
As they continued to descend, the darkness grew more enshrouding, wrapping them in a veil of grays and purples. John’s onboard computer was tracking their progress by counting the number of ten-meter bounds. His HUD showed they had already dropped two hundred meters.
Already?
CASTLE Base was two kilometers down, and John still saw no hint of Keeper operations below. He didn’t know whether that was worrisome—or whether the darkness meant anything at all. Eighteen hundred meters was a long drop. Even if the entire floor of the shaft was lit up as bright as day, from so far above, the glow would be smaller than the point of a needle. John wouldn’t see it with his naked eye, and he wasn’t sure his helmet optics would be able to detect it either.
His onboard computer confirmed it would not.
They dropped through four hundred meters, and the blackness swallowed them completely. John could no longer see the Pilum rocket launcher in his own hands, and when he craned his neck, the daylight spilling down from the collar of the shaft had disappeared.
John activated his dual-mode night-vision system. Earlier, while Chief Mukai was setting up the fast-winches, John and the other Spartans had compared battle vids. At least thirteen Gray Guards had jumped into the shaft twenty minutes earlier, at the end of the firefight, to take it.
In all likelihood, the Keepers already at the bottom had adjusted the pirate lift’s gravity field to catch and gently lower the Gray Guards to the bottom. Now those same Jiralhanae would be down there with an unknown number of Keepers, all ready to pounce.
John had no intention of making it easy on them by activating his helmet lamp. Blue Team would be fighting strictly NVS, and maybe that would give them the tactical advantage they needed to win.
Maybe.
Those Gray Guards were definitely trouble. Ferocious, disciplined, willing to make tactical sacrifices. Not the qualities John liked to see in his Jiralhanae foes. That was the reason he was carrying a Pilum instead of his MA40, and why Fred had his SPNKr and Linda had her SRS99-S5. The three Spartans needed weapons capable of punching through energy-shielded power armor in one or two strikes.
They passed six hundred meters in depth, then eight hundred. The pirate lift’s gravity field was just visible in John’s NVS, a column of purple radiance so faint it almost seemed imaginary. The walls of the shaft were purple as well, but brighter and more substantial, shifting to red as the team descended deeper into the planet’s bowels and the stone grew warmer.
At a thousand meters, there was still no hint of the enemy below, and John began to readjust his thinking. In theory, there were work crews and equipment down there emitting a lot of waste heat. At the least, his thermal optics should have been picking up a pinpoint of infrared radiance. A gravity field didn’t always radiate in visible wavelengths, but the emitter pad from which it issued usually did so brightly.
“Be alert,” John said over TEAMCOM. “We should be seeing something by now, and we’re not.”
“A sniper ambush?” Linda asked.
“That’s one possibility,” John said. When he returned to the wall and sprang off again, he began to vary the angle of his launch, doing what he could to make himself a difficult target. “We should be in range of their shock and beam rifles by now.”
“What’s the other possibility?” Fred asked.
“That they’re already in CASTLE Base.”
“No,” Fred said. “I mean the other other possibility.”
“I was saving that for last,” John said. They were passing twelve hundred meters, still with no activity below, so he and Fred were likely coming to the same conclusion—the one they had discussed during the Pelican ride into the Highland Mountains. “Because if you’re thinking what I suspect you are, you could be right.”
“Yup. If I was wrong, we’d be seeing a purple glow by now,” Fred said. “Those pirate lifts are powerful.”
“Might I inquire what Blue Two could be right about?” Kelly asked. She was still on the surface, about ten meters back from the shaft edge, operating John’s winch. But there was a comm repeater on the rim, so everyone on the team had full communication. “That’s not something I’d want to miss.”
“The Keepers,” John said. “It’s beginning to look like we can stop making the prudent assumption. Whatever they’re after, I don’t think it’s in CASTLE Base.”
“Then why did they follow us across Arany Basin?” Major Van Houte asked. He was on Fred’s winch. “And why would they care if we reach it?”
“Wish I knew,” John replied. “But if we’re not seeing any light at CASTLE Base level, then the Keepers must be interested in something bel
ow CASTLE Base.”
“There is no must be,” Linda said. “It is so. My rangefinder has found the shaft floor. Two thousand meters. From here.”
That put the shaft bottom far lower than anticipated—a full eight hundred meters below the entrance to CASTLE Base. No way the Keepers had accidentally overexcavated by that much.
“They’re going to the installation,” Fred said. “Goddamn. They’ve been going to the installation the whole time.”
The very same Forerunner installation that the Covenant had seized seven years ago—the one they had removed the top of Menachite Mountain to reach. The one where Dr. Halsey had captured the slipspace crystal the aliens had been trying to recover.
“Yeah,” John said. “Any guesses what they’re after? You and Blue Three know that place a lot better than I do.”
“Do I look like I’m Dr. Halsey?” Fred replied. “Let’s just assume it’s bad.”
“Bad enough to change our mission?” Without bothering to wait for an answer, Linda said, “The assets are still our only priorities. Whatever the Keepers are doing, it is status incidental.”
Linda was noting the situation mattered only to the extent that it impacted the mission. Action could be taken to prevent the Keepers from interfering, or to collect intelligence, but any other involvement with them was to be avoided.
“Acknowledged,” John said.
Fifteen hundred meters down.
About five hundred meters below and directly opposite him, John’s NVS showed a tiny arch of blackness in the shaft’s curving maroon wall.
The entrance to CASTLE Base.
“We’ll gather any intelligence we come across,” John continued. “But right now, only one thing matters about the Keepers.”
“We still need their pirate lift?” Fred asked.
“Right,” John said. “We carry on as before, no matter what they’re up to.”
“There’s just one problem with that,” Chief Mukai said. She was on the surface with Kelly and Van Houte, operating Linda’s winch. “Blue Four’s rangefinder marked the shaft floor at another two thousand meters, when you were already at eight hundred.”
“I’m not seeing the problem,” John said.
“The shaft is twenty-eight hundred meters deep,” Mukai continued. “The winch spools only have twenty-five hundred meters of cable. So, you’re—”
“Three hundred meters short,” John finished.
Between their Mjolnir’s energy shields and hydrostatic gel layer, the Spartans could probably survive a three-hundred-meter fall. But the gel would overpressurize to protect them from the impact, and after they hit, they would be immobilized for a few seconds until it depressurized. With their shields down, they would be, almost literally, sitting ducks.
“Problem acknowledged,” John said. “We’ll find a way.”
He was still fast-winching down the shaft, bounding off the wall at different angles, when his NVS infrared showed a trio of bulky red figures lurking in the dark arch of the CASTLE Base tunnel.
“Blue Three, slow winch,” John said over TEAMCOM. “Engage enemy.”
Fred and Linda were already firing, Nornfang booming to his left, the SPNKr flashing on his right. John did a pendulum-traverse, trying to run across the wall sideways to avoid firing through the gravity field and having his Pilum missile deflected.
By the time he was clear, Linda had downed one of the figures. Then his NVS went white as Fred’s rocket detonated inside the tunnel mouth. Unable to designate his target, John held his fire and started across the wall in the other direction, his rate of descent now considerably slowed as Kelly increased the winch resistance.
As the blast flash drained from his faceplate, John saw a plasma incendiary arc out of the tunnel mouth toward him—then deflect upward as it crossed the gravity field.
The incendiary splashed against the wall above—he couldn’t see exactly where, because he was rigged to look down the shaft—but it must have been close. His shields flickered blue, and white cinders of plasma rained past all around.
Then John was following the cinders, his stomach floating as he plunged into the darkness.
“Blue Leader?” Even over TEAMCOM, Kelly’s alarm was obvious. “John?”
He was too busy trying to save himself to answer. Some of the plasma incendiary must have hit his cable and burned through the nanobraided titanium. Now he was running down the wall, trying to keep his feet under him so he didn’t lose attitude control and go into a tumble.
After three steps—or maybe it was eight, who could tell at this point?—John finally felt his left boot land flat enough to generate some power. Still falling, he launched himself toward the gravity field.
His half-healed thigh felt like it had taken a Vulcan round, but the myosin mesh holding his quadriceps together did its job. He angled down through fifteen meters of darkness and slid into the pale gravity field in good position, belly down and body flat. His eyes bulged and his organs sank as he decelerated, but the pressure eased a heartbeat later.
Then John was half floating, watching the shaft walls drift upward as he continued to descend, now far more slowly. He could hear Fred and Linda not-quite-yelling on TEAMCOM, but the gravity field interfered with the comm waves, and the conversation was too broken up to follow—or join.
Besides, John was descending past the entrance to CASTLE Base. He could see the remains of the Jiralhanae ambush team splattered around the tunnel mouth, strewn across the floor and hanging from the walls and ceiling. But there was a large figure in power armor rising out of the rubble in back, moving forward to engage.
John brought his Pilum up to fire, but he was still floating, and the motion spun him away from his target. By the time he swung his left arm around to counter the spin, he had already descended past the tunnel floor and could no longer see the threat. He’d have to do this the hard way.
Carefully, John pointed his left hand and fired the grappleshot on his forearm. The grappling hook disappeared into the tunnel mouth, arcing over the bottom edge. As he continued to sink, the line began to feed back toward him. He feared the grapple wasn’t going to catch—then his arm jerked upward, pulling him upright and out of the gravity field.
John swung through the darkness and slammed into the shaft wall, a HOSTILE symbol already appearing on his motion tracker. It was almost atop his own position, blinking blue to indicate it was directly above him.
John could have guessed that. He raised the Pilum one-handed and laid the launching tube alongside the wall. A massive Jiralhanae hand reached over the lip of the tunnel floor, following the grappleshot line downward. John fired the first missile, his faceplate going white as the propellant burned the darkness from the shaft.
No detonation. A moment later, as the white drained from his night vision again, he saw the Jiralhanae’s other hand snaking over the lip holding a flat-faced spike revolver, swinging the square barrel toward John’s grappler line. More or less. It was hard to aim at what you weren’t looking at.
John held his own fire. Sooner or later, the Jiralhanae would have to slip up and look at what he was trying to kill.
A trio of finger-length spikes shot from the revolver’s muzzle, missing to either side of the line, bouncing off the wall and vanishing into eight hundred meters of darkness. Whatever they hit at the bottom, there wouldn’t be much of it left.
Kelly’s voice sounded over TEAMCOM. “Blue Leader, what the blazing hell?” Clearly his Pilum missile had exited the top of the shaft. “Status?”
John flashed green, but said nothing and kept his eye on the shooter’s pistol barrel, ready to move if the muzzle dropped any farther toward him.
Instead, a Jiralhanae helmet pushed into view, first its decorative brow vanes showing cool blue in the light-gathering mode of John’s NVS, then the ridge along the crown gleaming green. The NVS switched to infrared as the brow panel glowed dull yellow; then—finally—came the eyes, burning a bright, angry red.
John fir
ed the second Pilum directly into the right one.
The shockwave snapped his own head back, and he felt the heat of the blast through the titanium shell of his helmet. His faceplate went white, again, and then he was falling, again—dropping feet-first along the shaft wall, Kelly’s alarmed voice sounding in his ears.
“Blue Leader, status?” she demanded. “And I want more than a flash this time.”
John flashed amber, but said nothing. He was too busy fighting to recover attitude control. Something heavy clunked against his helmet and nearly sent him cartwheeling. He carefully extended his arm—and the Pilum—and brought himself back under control. The blast flash had faded from his faceplate, and he saw that he was caught inside a shower of rocks and helmet pieces, all of it glowing bright red in his NVS.
Fred and Linda were now a couple of hundred meters below, still fast-winching down the opposite side of the gravity field, firing SPNKr rockets and M232 armor-piercing rounds into the darkness at the bottom of the shaft. John assessed their target and saw a pinpoint of bright purple light ringed by thread-thin streaks of blue and white—the gravity lift, surrounded by its defenders, Keepers of the One Freedom launching plasma incendiaries and firing electrolasers.
“That’s it,” Kelly announced. “I’m coming down.”
“Acknowledged,” John said. How far it was to the bottom of the shaft now, he had no idea—but it didn’t seem nearly far enough. “And make it fast.”
Thanks to his cadet jump-training days, John knew terminal velocity for an object with the mass of a Spartan in Mjolnir armor on Reach was about a hundred and fifty meters per second. Which meant he had about five seconds before taking out a bunch of Keepers the hard way.
No time to screw around stabilizing his free-fall position. He brought his empty Pilum to port-arms and pulled his legs up toward his chest, falling even faster now, Fred and Linda flashing past on the other side of the gravity field, dangling from their winch lines like spiders on threads.
