by Troy Denning
“Well, that’s either a weird alien space elevator—or a weird alien particle cannon,” Fred said. “I guess we’ll find out which when we step inside.”
“Those streaks are too big for a particle cannon,” Lieutenant Small Bear said, clearly not accustomed to Fred’s humor. “But I’m still not sure we can survive that kind of acceleration.”
“Only one way to find out,” John said.
“Send Kelly first?” Fred asked.
“Very funny,” Kelly said. “And you’re coming with me.”
The alert lamps on the bulkheads changed from red to amber.
“One minute,” John said. “Can the chatter.”
The crannies and fissures between the graceful buildings broadened into flyways filled with airborne traffic, and the domes and spires began to loom up higher than the prowler. A series of white circles flared in the bottom of the monitor and quickly shrank into dots as the Black Widow fired three Argent V missiles to clear its way to the space elevator. The first missile dropped in behind an oblong flying vehicle with a sleek purple body resting between pair of gray levitation runners, then blossomed into an orange ball that licked at buildings to both sides of the lane. John had no idea whether the vehicle had been military or civilian, and he tried not to think about it. The simple fact was that it had been between the Black Widow and her objective, and that unlucky turn of affairs had sealed its fate.
The next two missiles destroyed targets even farther ahead of the prowler, and the flyway quickly began to empty as confused alien pilots swerved down side lanes or dropped toward the street below. The Black Widow leveled out at about half the height of the buildings and continued toward the space elevator, now using her pair of 50mm nose-cannons to take out any vehicle not quick enough to clear the lane.
The alert lamps began to blink. Thirty seconds.
John pumped a round into his M90. “Safeties off.”
The Black Widow began to decelerate hard. A thousand meters ahead, the flyway opened into a bustling transfer yard with pavement that looked a lot like a vast sheet of gray-green glass. Hundreds of haulage sleds with domed driver’s compartments, oval cargo beds, and antigravity pads bulging out from their sides sat facing away from each other in double rows, creating a broad center aisle between their rear bumpers.
A small army of alien stevedores—mostly Jackals and Grunts—was unloading the sleds’ long cargo beds into the central aisle. From what John could see, it appeared that once the crates were set on the pavement, they floated to the elevator on their own, then disappeared.
The Black Widow launched a massive volley of missiles, and suddenly the monitor showed only flame and smoke. The prowler slowed to a near hover and began to swing her nose back and forth, chugging noticeably as she filled the air with cannon fire.
The alert lamps flashed green as the jump hatch opened; then Fred and Kelly were leading the first rows of Black Daggers out onto the surface of the alien planet. John and Linda followed seconds later, dropping two and a half meters through thick black smoke. Naraka’s gravity was only about three-quarters of Earth-standard, so the descent was slow and easy, and they landed on a smooth surface that seemed oddly clear of wreckage and rubble.
John felt something scraping across the top of his helmet. Thinking he was taking fire, he dropped to a knee and whirled around—and found himself beneath the Black Widow, being carried forward behind a line of similarly kneeling ODSTs. In front of them, the murky shapes of dozens of burning haulage sleds lay rolled on their sides. A few were resting on their tops, their hinged antigravity pads swinging lazily as they slid toward the space elevator.
John glanced down and saw that he was sliding along an emerald-green band of glassy pavement. It appeared level, but it felt like he was on green ice, going down a gentle hill. He slammed the butt of his M90 against it, half expecting to see a web of cracks racing outward from the impact point, and felt . . . nothing. His shotgun just stopped descending and wouldn’t go any farther.
“Weird, huh?” Fred said, speaking over TEAMCOM.
John looked over to see the ghostly silhouette of a still-burning haulage sled drifting past in the opposite direction. Fred stepped out from behind it and took a knee next to John, and together they passed beneath the Black Widow’s now-silent nose-cannons.
“Get on the gray pavement and you stop moving,” Fred continued. “The green bands must be some sort of conveyor zone. They carry you right into the elevator.”
John peered into the smoke ahead, trying to make sense of the jumble of shapes and flickering cones of orange, then gave up and switched to his motion tracker. Immediately he spotted Kelly twenty meters ahead, with four ODSTs arrayed to either side of her in a skirmish line. He couldn’t tell what lay directly in front of her, but judging from where the space elevator dropped down out of the clouds, she was about a hundred meters short of the entrance.
“Any contact?” John asked.
“After the barrage the Widow laid down? We think there are a few wounded Brutes hiding behind some wrecked sleds in front of the elevator plinth, but they haven’t shown much interest in coming out to fight. That’s why I came back to report.”
Before Fred could continue, Small Bear’s voice sounded over the platoon channel. “Third Platoon clear.”
“Platoon clear,” Guayte acknowledged. “Widow out.”
With the smoke so thick that John could barely see the prowler’s wings—much less the blast zone behind its thruster nozzles—he checked his motion tracker again and confirmed that the rest of the platoon was already spreading out in another skirmish line and moving forward.
“Affirmative,” John said. “Widow out. Thanks for the ride.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t thank me, Chief,” Guayte said. “You could be on your own destroying those ten targets.”
John’s gut instantly clenched. “The other bats didn’t make it?”
“That’s what I’m hearing,” Guayte said. “The Widow Maker and Quiet Death got jumped on entry and had to turn back or go down. The Quiet Man broke up on final drop. Comms intercepted some chatter that sounded like the Spartans were picking up the surviving Black Daggers and pressing ahead, but it’s hard to say how many there are and whether they’ll make it to the elevator.”
“Acknowledged. Appreciate the update.”
John digested the failure and casualty rates with dismay. The four members of Gold Team had been divided equally between the Widow Maker and Quiet Death, and they were now completely out of the battle. But at least the Spartans aboard the Quiet Man seemed to be in one piece so far. That was Green Team, and if anyone could find a way to extract, Kurt-051 could.
He started to wish Guayte a safe flight, but the Black Widow was already standing on her tail and climbing for the sky. The thruster wash cleared the smoke long enough to reveal dozens of alien bodies dangling out of shattered pilot bubbles or lying pinned beneath overturned haulage sleds. It was a gruesome sight, and none of them wore armor, carried weapons, or showed any other sign of being in the military. John almost found himself regretting their deaths . . . until he remembered what the Covenant had done to Harvest and Etalan and Biko and probably a dozen other worlds he had not yet heard about. The Covenant had started this bloody war, and John would not allow himself to feel bad about fighting it by their rules.
The conveyor zone carried John and his companions to within a few meters of the skirmish line Kelly had set up. He turned back to Fred and spoke over TEAMCOM.
“You were telling me about some wounded Brutes?”
“We think.” Fred pointed into the smoke. “There are some haulage sleds ahead that have been pulled together to make a breastwork. We’re guessing Brutes, since they’re probably the only ones strong enough to drag that stuff around on its side. We could try to go around. . . .”
“But?”
“But who likes getting shot in the back?” Fred said. “We need to take them out.”
“And quickly,” John sai
d. “If they’re holed up, they’re waiting for something.”
Fred tipped his helmet forward in agreement. “Maybe they’ve got support coming.”
“Or maybe they’re waiting for a lockout barrier to power up,” Linda added.
“Could be anything,” John said.
The one thing nobody mentioned was shutting off power to the elevator. With thousands of tons of cargo in transit to a geostationary orbit tens of thousands of kilometers above the planet’s surface, one did not simply shut off the power to a space elevator—not unless they were ready for a high-velocity impact that would make a nuclear detonation seem like a grenade blast in comparison.
“Whatever they’re waiting for, let’s be gone before it happens.” John stepped off the conveyor zone. “Fred and Kelly, flank ’em. Linda, with me.”
A trio of status lights winked green, and Fred and Kelly disappeared into the smoke. Linda followed John over to an ODST who was hiding behind a burned-out haulage sled. John handed his M90 to the ODST, then pointed Linda to a nearby sled that was still smoking.
“We’ll need two, I think.”
“Two should do,” Linda said.
She secured her M99 to her Mjolnir, then stepped over to the still-smoking sled and started to push it toward the conveyor zone. John’s sled was already adjacent, so he simply squatted next to it and waited for Linda to move hers into position.
He switched to the platoon channel, then said, “Lieutenant Small Bear, Linda and I are going to force the enemy’s hand. I’d suggest having the platoon fall in behind us and be ready to move fast.”
“You heard him,” Small Bear said. “Move it!”
Linda’s sled scraped into place next to John’s. The smoke ahead was still so thick that they could see barely five meters clearly, and make out shapes at no more than ten. The enemy barricade lay somewhere beyond, but when John looked skyward, he could still see the blue column of the elevator looming. It remained filled with the dark streaks of rising cargo.
John looked over at Linda. “Three . . . two . . .”
She shoved her sled forward, and he lifted, putting all of his strength and the Mjolnir armor’s into the effort. The sled came off the glassy pavement and partially flipped, then crashed down on the far side of the conveyor belt. It was more or less even with Linda’s, but resting at an angle that left a small gap between the two vehicles.
Close enough. John grabbed his M90 back from the ODST and stepped onto the conveyor zone.
“Let’s go,” he said over the platoon channel. “And we need someone with a SPNKR up here.”
Small Bear barked, “Chavez!”
A few seconds later, an ODST appeared with a rocket launcher and an extra set of barrels. In his black assault armor, he looked like all of the other ODSTs, except he was about a head taller and half an arm’s-length wider. John briefly thought about handling the SPNKR himself—then recalled what Johnson had said about trusting his people to do their jobs. He pointed Chavez toward the gap between the two vehicles.
“The enemy has improvised a breastwork ahead of us,” he said. “Both barrels, the instant you see it.”
“Will do, Master Chief.”
Chavez kneeled on pavement and laid the extra barrels next to him, then carefully pushed his weapon into the gap.
John checked his motion tracker and saw that Lieutenant Small Bear and the rest of Third Platoon were lined up behind him in two well-spaced columns, weapons ready. Fred and Kelly reappeared on the tracker, about ten meters ahead and a similar distance off to the side.
“See anything yet?” John asked Chavez.
Yellow flame suddenly filled John’s vision as both rockets streaked away.
Instead of immediately pulling out of the gap, Chavez reached for his extra set of barrels—then flew over backward, the SPNKR flying from his hands as he went down with a cluster of white-hot spikes protruding from his chest armor. John stuck his M90 into the break and fired blindly, then pulled his arm back just as another cluster of spikes arrived and ricocheted off the chassis of the adjacent vehicle. He pumped another round into the shotgun’s chamber and heard a series of thuds and bangs from his ten o’clock a few meters away—Fred and Kelly’s location, according to his motion tracker—then Kelly’s voice sounded over the platoon channel.
“Clear.”
John glanced down at Chavez, and his heart sank. It had been a small mistake—and one John had gotten away with himself a few times—but the Brutes had been ready, and now Chavez lay on the glassy pavement, convulsing and kicking.
“Medic!” John yelled.
To make certain there would be no more mistakes, John stuck the shotgun back into the gap.
“Hey!” Fred called. “We got ’em!”
“Just checking.”
Leaving Chavez for the medic, John stepped through the barricade he and Linda had erected, then saw Fred and Kelly peering over the Brutes’ makeshift breastwork. A trio of haulage sleds had been tipped on their sides and dragged into place. The middle vehicle had an enormous hole in the cargo bed where Chavez’s rockets had detonated, and through the opening John could see the upper body of a Brute who had been blown apart at the middle. Three more Brutes lay draped over the adjacent sleds, smoke still rising from the grenade craters in their backs.
“Sorry I doubted you,” John said. “Now grab as much ammunition as you can and get over here. We’ve got a ride to catch.”
John watched until Fred and Kelly returned to the conveyor zone and began to gather extra SPNKR barrels, then turned back to Chavez. The ODST had been dragged into cover by Small Bear and one of her troopers, and the platoon medic was using a plunger to feed something—probably biofoam—into the medical port on Chavez’s assault armor. A four-to-one casualty ratio was nothing to complain about, but it had been John who ordered Chavez to step into that gap, and he could not help feeling sick about it.
He thought of Johnson’s words again, and pushed through.
The platoon was carried out of the smoke into an abandoned sorting tunnel, where dozens of pad-tipped poles and odd-looking flashlight guns lay strewn to both sides of the conveyor zone. Fifty meters ahead, the elevator plinth could now be seen clearly. It was a vast gray platform rimmed by a series of vertical pylons roughly fifteen meters tall, each of which were anchored onto the surface, clearly part of a much larger machine buried below. At first blush, the pylons seemed to be channels for the elevator’s energy, generating the blue beam from their tips, as well as from some hidden space underneath the platform. Meanwhile, the conveyor was still pushing battle debris into the blue column of the alien space elevator. Once inside, the debris—bodies and chunks of wreckage—would spread evenly across the beam and begin to rise, slowly at first, but steadily gathering velocity. By the time they vanished from sight a hundred meters above, they were traveling too fast for the eye to follow. He briefly wondered how the aliens at the top of the elevator would react.
After a moment, John turned back to Small Bear and nodded toward Chavez. “Will he make it?”
“If we could get him to a Class I combat hospital, maybe. But out here?” She shook her head. “It’s the end of the line for him. Mehran is giving him the shot.”
The “shot” was a powerful narcotic ODST medics used to relieve the pain and anxiety of a dying trooper—especially when circumstances dictated they had to be abandoned in the field. From Small Bear’s remark, John gathered that the medic was giving Chavez a lethal dose. He desperately wanted to say that he would carry the dying trooper, but the mission was just starting, and distracting himself with a casualty would only get more people killed.
And he wasn’t about to elevate someone else’s risk by ordering them to carry a dying man into battle. Small Bear had made a sound decision, and he would not make anything better by second-guessing her.
“Chavez was a good trooper, and he deserves a big send-off.” Small Bear retrieved the Fury tactical nuke from her magmount. “What do you say, Master C
hief?”
John turned toward the space elevator and then back to Small Bear. “Lock in forty minutes and leave it here.”
CHAPTER 26
* * *
* * *
Ninth Age of Reclamation
36th Cycle, 176 Units (Covenant Battle Calendar)
Fleet of Inexorable Obedience, Assault Carrier Pious Rampage
High Equatorial Orbit, Planet Zhoist, Buta System
Tel ‘Szatulai found his hand resting on the hilt of his energy sword . . . again. It was an unconscious action that had arisen with the summons to attend Fleetmaster ‘Kvarosee, and the nearer he drew to the Pious Rampage’s High Battle Sanctum, the more powerful it became.
And that was a problem. He had been summoned from the Sacred Whisper in the middle of a combat vigil, and now he was allowing his resentment to subvert his focus.
With a battle coming.
‘Szatulai reached the sanctum and paused at the threshold. The two Sangheili sentries snapped their carbines to present arms, clearing the entrance and indicating he was free to enter. ‘Szatulai ignored them and remained where he was, thinking only of controlling his breath and effusing his anger on each exhalation. The Spartans would come to him in their own time; he would not bring them any sooner by crouching in his observation blister, staring out at the emptiness to where he thought they should be.
After a time, a sentry dared to speak. “You are free to enter, Blademaster. They are expecting you.”
They. Of course, it would have been the San’Shyuum who sent for him, who believed that the Covenant should be able to command their enemies as they did their acolytes.
Without responding to the sentry, ‘Szatulai entered the sanctum. He was immediately confronted by a two-story tactical holograph of the Zhoist planetary system, complete with its moon, its libration-point outposts, and the complex of orbital fleet-support stations known as the Ring of Mighty Abundance. The Fleet of Inexorable Obedience was shown in its shielding circle. Even the positions of the outpost squadrons and fighter patrols were posted. What was lacking, of course, was any hint of where the enemy stealth craft might be.