by Eric Nylund
Fincher ran the diagnostic. “It’s working,” he said. “I’m getting a ping from SATCOM.” He licked his
lips. “The trouble must be on their end.” Harland didn’t want to think of what kind of trouble the fleet could be having. He’d seen too many planets glassed from orbit. He didn’t want to die here—not like that.
He turned to the men in the bunker. “They said help is on the way. So relax.” He looked into the sky and
whispered, “They better send a whole regiment down here.” A handful of other Marines returned to the bunker. They had salvaged ammunition, extra rifles, a crate of frag grenades, and a few Jackhammer missiles. Fincher took the Warthog and a few men to see if he could transport the heavier weapons.
They filled Cochran with more biofoam and bandaged him up. He slipped into a coma. They hunkered down inside the bunker and waited. They heard explosions at an extreme distance. Walker finally spoke. “So . . . now what, sir?” Harland didn’t turn toward the man. He covered Cochran with another blanket. “I don’t know. Can you
fight?” “I think so.” He passed Walker a rifle. “Good. Get up there and stand watch.” He got out a cigarette, lit it, took a puff,
and then handed it to Walker. Walker took it, shakily stood, and went outside. “Sir!” he said. “Dropship inbound. One of ours!” Harland grabbed his signal flares. He ran outside and squinted at the horizon. High on the edge of the
darkening sky was a dot, and the unmistakable roar of Pelican engines. He pulled the pin and tossed the smoker onto the ground. A moment later, thick clouds of green smoke roiled into the sky. The dropship turned rapidly and descended toward their location.
Harland shielded his eyes. He searched for the rest of the dropships. There was only one. “Onedropship?” Walker whispered. “That’s all they sent? Christ, that’s not backup—that’s a burial detail.”
The Pelican eased toward the ground, spattering mud in a ten-meter radius, then touched down. The launch ramp fell open and a dozen figures marched out.
For a moment Harland thought they were the same creatures he had seen earlier—armored and bigger than any human he’d ever laid eyes on. He froze—he couldn’t have raised his gun if he had wanted to.
They were human, though. The one in the lead stood over two meters tall and looked like he weighed two hundred kilograms. His armor was a strange reflective green alloy, and underneath matte black. Their motions were so fluid and graceful—fast and precise, too. More like robots than flesh and blood.
The one that first stepped off the ship strode toward him. Though his armor was devoid of insignia, Harland could see the insignia of a Master Chief Petty Officer in his helmet’s HUD.
“Master Chief, sir!” Harland snapped to attention and saluted.
“Corporal,” it said. “At ease. Get your men together and we’ll get to work.”
“Sir?” Harland asked. “I’ve got a lot of wounded here. What work will we be doing, sir?”
The Master Chief’s helmet cocked quizzically to one side. “We’ve come to take Sigma Octanus Four back from the Covenant, Corporal,” he said calmly. “To do that, we’re going to kill every last one of them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
1800 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) / Sigma Octanus IV, grid nineteen by thirty-seven
The Master Chief surveyed what was left of Camp Alpha. There were only fourteen Marine regulars left —balanced against the four hundred men and women who had been slaughtered here.
He said to Kelly, “Post a guard on the dropship, and put three on patrol. Take the rest and secure the LZ.” “Yes, sir.” She turned to face the other Spartans, pointed, made three quick hand gestures, and they dispersed like ghosts.
The Master Chief turned to the Corporal. “Are you in command here, Corporal?” The man looked around. “I guess so . . . yes, sir.” “As of 0900 Standard Military time, NavSpecWep is assuming control of this operation. All Marine
personnel now report through our chain of command. Understand, Corporal?” “Yes, sir.” “Now, Corporal, brief me on what happened here.” Corporal Harland hunkered down and sketched rough maps of the area as he quickly recounted the
brutal series of surprise attacks. “Right here—grid thirteen by twenty-four. That’s where they hit us, sir.
Something’s goin’ on there.” The Master Chief scanned the crude maps, compared them with the area surveys displayed in his HUD, then nodded, satisfied.
“Get your wounded inside the Pelican, Corporal,” he said. “We’ll be dusting off soon. I want you to rotate by thirds on guard duty. The rest of your men should get some sleep. But make no mistake—if the Pelican gets fragged, we’ll be staying on Sigma Octanus Four.”
The Corporal paled, then replied, “Understood, sir.” He stood slowly—the long day of combat and flight had taken its toll. The Marine saluted, then moved to assemble his team.
Inside his sealed helmet, John frowned. These Marines were now under his command . . . and therefore part of his team. They lacked the Spartans’ firepower and training, so they had to be protected—not relied upon. He had to make sure they got out in one piece. Another snag in an already dicey mission.
The Master Chief opened his COM link: “Team leaders meet me at the LZ in three minutes.”
Lights winked on his heads-up display—his Spartans acknowledging the order.
He looked around at the destruction. Thin sunlight reflected dully from the thousands of spent shell casings strewn across the battlefield. Dozens of shattered Warthog chassis bled trails of smoke into the hazy sky. Scores of burned corpses lay in the mud.
They’d have to get a burial detail down here later . . . before the Grunts got to the dead.
The Master Chief would never question his orders, but he felt a momentary stab of bitterness. Whoever set these camps up without proper reconnaissance, whoever had blindly trusted the satellite transmissions in an enemy-held region, had been a fool.
Worse, they had wasted the lives of good soldiers.
Green Team’s leader jogged in from the south. The Master Chief couldn’t see her features through her reflective faceplate, but he could tell without checking his HUD that it was Linda by the way she moved . . . that, and the SRS99C-S2 AM sniper rile with Oracle scope she carried.
She carefully looked around, verified that the area was secure, and slung her rifle. She snapped a crisp salute. “Reporting as ordered, Master Chief.”
Red Team leader—Joshua—ran in from the east. He saluted. “Motion detectors, radar, and automated defenses up and running, sir.”
“Good. Let’s go over this one more time.” The Master Chief overlaid a topographic map on their helmets’ displays. “Mission goal one: we need to gather intelligence on Covenant troop disposition and defenses at Côte d’Azur. Mission goal two: if there are no civilian survivors, we are authorized to remote detonate a HAVOK tactical nuclear mine and remove the enemy forces. In the meantime, we will minimize our contact with the enemy.”
They nodded.
The Master Chief highlighted the four streams that fed into the river delta near Côte d’Azur. “We avoid these routes. Banshees patrol them.” He circled where Firebase Bravo had been. “We’ll avoid this area as well—according to the Marine survivors, that area is hot. Grid thirteen by twenty-four also has activity.
“Red Leader, take your squad in along the coast. Stay in the tree line. Green Leader, follow this ridgeline, but keep under cover, too. I’ll be taking this route.” The Master Chief traced a path through a particularly dense section of jungle.
“It’s 1830 hours now. The city is thirteen kilometers from here—that should take us no more than forty minutes. We’ll probably be forced to slow down to avoid enemy patrols—but we all should be in place no later than 1930 hours.”
He zoomed into a city map of Côte d’Azur. “Entry points to the city sewer system are—” He highlighted the display with NAV points. “—here, here, and here. Red Team will recon the
wharf areas. Green takes the residential section. I’ll take Blue Team downtown. Questions?”
“Our communications underground will be limited,” Linda said. “How do we check in while keeping our heads down?”
“According to the Colonial Administration Authority’s file on Côte d’Azur, the sewer systems here have steel pipes running along the top of the plastic conduits. Tap into those and use ground-return transceivers to check in. We’ll have our own private COM line.”
“Roger,” she said.
The Master Chief said, “As soon as we leave, the dropship dusts off and will move here.” He indicated a position far to the south of Alpha camp. “If the Pelican doesn’t make it . . . our fallback rendezvous point is here.” He indicated a point fifty kilometers south. “ONI’s welcoming committee has stashed our emergency SATCOM link and survival gear there.”
No one mentioned that survival gear would be useless when the Covenant glassed the planet.
“Stay sharp,” John said. “And come back in one piece. Dismissed.”
They saluted briskly, then sprinted to their tasks.
He switched to Blue Team’s frequency. “Time to saddle up, Blue Team,” he called out. “RV back at the bunker for orders.” Three blue lights winked acknowledgement in his display.
A moment later, the other three Spartans in his squad trotted into position. “Reporting as ordered,” Blue-Two announced.
The Master Chief quickly filled them in on the mission. “Blue-Two.” He nodded to Kelly. “You’re carrying the nuke and medical gear.”
“Affirmative. Who’ll have the detonator, sir?”
“I will,” he replied. “Blue-Three.” He turned to Fred. “You have the explosives. James, you’ll take our extra COM equipment.”
They double-checked their gear: modified MA5B assault rifles, adapted to mount silencers; ten extra clips of ammunition; frag grenades; combat knives; M6D pistols—small but powerful handguns that fired .450 Magnum loads, sufficient to crack through Grunt armor.
In addition to the weapons, there was a single smoke canister—blue smoke to signal for pickup. John would carry that. “Let’s go,” he said.
Blue Team moved out. They quickly entered the jungle, in a simple single-file line with Blue-Four in the lead; James had an instinct for walking point. The line was slightly staggered, with John and Kelly slightly to the left of James. Fred brought up the rear.
They moved cautiously. Every hundred yards, James signaled the group to halt while he methodically surveyed the area for any sign of the enemy. The rest of Blue Team crouched, and disappeared into the thick jungle foliage.
John checked his HUD; they were one-quarter of the way to the city. The team made good time despite the cautious pace. The MJOLNIR assault armor allowed them to push their way through the thick jungle like it was a stroll through the woods.
As the team moved on, the thin mist that permeated the jungle gave way to a hard, pelting rain. The damp ground gradually turned to mud, forcing the team to slow.
Blue-Four stopped dead and raised his fist—the signal to halt and freeze. John stopped in his tracks, his rifle raised and sweeping slowly back and forth, searching for any sign of enemy movement.
Normally, the Spartans relied on their armor’s detection gear to locate enemy troops. But their motion sensors were useless—everything moved in the jungle. They had to rely on their eyes and ears and the instincts of their point man.
“Point to Team Leader: enemy contact.”James’ calm voice crackled across the COM channel.“Enemy troops within one hundred meters of my position, ten degrees left.”
With exaggerated slowness, Blue-Four indicated the danger area by pointing.
“Affirmative,” John replied. “Blue Team: hold position.”
Although the motion trackers were of no use here, thermal proved effective. Through the thick sheets of rain, the Master Chief spotted three cold spots: Grunts in their chilled environmental suits.
“Blue Team: enemy contact confirmed.” He added the enemy position to his HUD. “Estimated enemy strength, Point?”
“Lead, I make ten, say again, ten Covenant troops. Grunts, sir. They’re moving slowly. Double-file formation. They haven’t spotted us. Orders?”
John’s orders said to minimize contact with the enemy where possible—the Spartans were spread too thinly across the battle area to risk a prolonged engagement. But the Grunts were heading right for the Marine bunker . . .
“Let’s take them out, Blue Team,” he said.
The team of Grunts slogged through the mud. The vaguely simian aliens wore shiny red-trimmed armor. Craggy, purple-black hide was visible beneath the environmental suits. Breath masks provided supercooled methane—the aliens’ atmosphere. There were ten of them, moving in two columns and spaced roughly three meters apart.
John noted with satisfaction that they seemed bored—only the point man and the pair on rear guard had their plasma rifles at the ready. The rest chattered at each other in a weird combination of high-pitched squeaks and guttural barks.
Easy, relaxed targets. Perfect.
He gave a series of slow hand signals to the rest of the team; they faded back until they were well away from the Grunts’ field of view.
The Master Chief opened the squadwide COM channel. “They’re seventy meters from this depression —” He keyed a NAV point into the team’s topographic display. “They’re heading for the western hill and will probably follow the terrain to the top. We’ll fall back now, and take concealed positions along the eastern hill.
“Blue-Four, you’re our scout—stay near the bottom and let us know when the rear guard passes you. Take them out first—they seem alert.
“Blue-Two, you have overwatch at the top of the hill.
“Blue-Three, back me up. Silenced weapons only—no explosives, unless things go bad.” He paused, then gave the order: “Move out.” The Spartans crept back along their path and spread out along the hill. John—in the center of the line—readied his assault rifle. The team was virtually invisible in the thick
foliage, and covered by the barrelwide tree trunks of the local flora. One minute ticked by. Then two . . . three . . . Blue-Four’s acknowledgment signal blinked twice in John’s HUD.Enemy detected. He relaxed his grip
on the weapon, waiting— —There. Twenty meters distant, the Grunt point man moved to the edge of the western hill, just
downhill from John’s position. The alien paused, his plasma rifle sweeping the area—then moved slowly up the rise. A moment later, the rest of the formation came into view, ten meters behind the point man. Blue-Four’s indicator winked again.Now. The Master Chief opened fire, a short, three-round burst. The weapon’s muffled cough was inaudible
over the sound of jungle rainfall. The trio of armor-piercing rounds slashed through the alien’s throat protection, rupturing the environment suit. The Grunt clutched at his neck, emitted a brief, high-pitched gurgle—then fell to the mud, dead.
A moment later, the Grunt lines came to a clumsy halt, confused. John spotted two strobe flashes, and the pair of Covenant rear guards dropped to the ground.
“Blue-Two to Lead: rear-guard eliminated.”
“Hit them!” John barked.
The four Spartans opened fire in short bursts. In less than a second, four more of the Grunt patrol were down, dead from head shots.
The remaining trio of Grunts unslung their plasma rifles, swinging them wildly back and forth, looking for targets and chattering loudly in their strange, barking language. John sighted on the alien closest to him and squeezed the trigger.
The alien splashed into the mud, methane bubbling from his shattered breath mask.
Another pair of sustained bursts and the last of the Grunts were down.
* * *
Kelly policed the Grunts’ weapons and handed a plasma rifle to each of the team; the Spartans had standing orders to seize Covenant weapons and technology whenever possible.
Blue Team fanned out a
nd continued on their way. When they heard Banshees overhead, they hunkered down in the mud, and the fliers passed.
Ten more kilometers of rough terrain and then the jungle stopped and fields of rice paddies stretched out before them all the way to Côte d’Azur.
Crossing these would be more difficult than the jungle. They donned camouflage cloaks that masked their thermal signatures and crawled through the muck on their stomachs.
The Master Chief saw three larger ships hovering over the city. If they were troop transports, they could carry thousands of Covenant soldiers. If they were warships, any direct ground assault against the city would be futile. Either way it was bad news.
He made sure his vid and audio mission recorders got a good clear image of the vessels.
When they emerged from the mud, they were near the beach on the edge of the city. The Master Chief checked his map readings and made his way to the sewage outlet.
The two-meter diameter pipe was sealed with a steel grate. He and Fred easily bent the bars aside and entered.
They sloshed through hip-deep muck. The Master Chief didn’t like the cramped quarters. Their mobility was restricted by the narrow pipes; worse, they were bunched up and therefore easier to kill with grenades or massed fire. Motion sensors picked up hundreds of targets. The constant downpour from storm drains above made the sensors useless.
He followed his electronic map through the maze of pipes. Light filtered in from above—beams of illumination connected to the manhole-cover vent holes. Every so often something moved and blocked that light.
The Spartans moved quickly and quietly through the sludge and halted when they reached their final waypoint—directly under the center of Côte d’Azur’s “downtown.”
With a tiny jerk of his head, the Master Chief informed Blue Team to spread out and keep their eyes peeled. He snaked a fiber-optic probe up through the drain grate at street level and plugged it into his helmet.
