Did the Covenant have a similar tradition, McKay wondered? Or were they dozing a bit, relieved that the long period of darkness was finally over, their fears eased by the first rays of the sun? The officer would soon find out.
Like all sixty-two members of her Company, the Helljumper was concealed just beyond the border of the roughly U-shaped area that the Covenant actively patrolled. And now, with daylight only minutes away, the time had arrived either to commit herself or to withdraw.
McKay took one last look around. Her arm ached, and her bladder was full, but everything else was A-okay. She keyed the radio and gave the order that both platoons had been waiting for. “Red One to Blue One and Green One . . . Proceed to objective. Over.”
The response came so quickly that McKay missed whatever acknowledgments the two Platoon leaders might have sent. The key was to neutralize the Banshees and the Ghosts so quickly, so decisively, that the ODST troopers would be able to cross the long stretch of open ground and reach the Autumn virtually unopposed. That’s why no fewer than three of the powerful M19 rocket launchers were aimed at each Banshee—and three Marines had been assigned to each of the half dozen target Ghosts.
Two of the four rockets fired at the Covenant aircraft missed their marks, but both Banshees took hits, and immediately exploded. Wreckage rained on the Covenant position.
The Ghost drivers on both sides of the ship were still looking upward, trying to figure out what had occurred, when more than two dozen assault weapons opened up on them.
Four of the rapid attack vehicles were destroyed within the first few seconds of the battle. The fifth, piloted by a mortally wounded Elite, described a number of large overlapping circles before crashing into the cruiser’s hull and finally putting the driver out of his misery. The Elite behind the controls of the sixth and last Ghost panicked, backed away from the wholesale destruction, and toppled over the edge of the precipice.
If the alien screamed on the way down McKay wasn’t able to hear it, especially with the steady crack, crack, crack of multiple S2 Sniper Rifles going off all around her. She keyed her radio to the command freq and ordered her platoon leaders to move up.
The assault force crossed the open area in a run, and headed toward the ship’s sternmost air locks.
Covenant troops stationed within the ship heard the ruckus and hurried outside, and were met by the sight of the still-smoking wrecks of their mechanized support, and an enthusiastic—if somewhat thin—infantry assault.
Most were simply standing there, waiting for someone to tell them what to do, when the snipers’ 14.5mm armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot rounds began to cut them down. The impact was devastating. McKay saw Elites, Jackals, and Grunts alike throw up their arms and collapse as the rolling fusillade took its toll.
Then, as the aliens started to pull back into the relative safety of the ship’s interior, McKay jumped to her feet, knowing that one of her noncoms would do likewise on the far side of the hull, and waved the snipers forward. “Switch to your assault weapons! The last one to the lock has to stay and guard it!”
All the ODST troopers knew there were plenty of things to scrounge inside the hull, and they were eager to do so. The possibility that they might end up guarding a lock rather than pillaging the Autumn’s interior was more than sufficient motivation to make each Marine run as fast as possible.
The purpose of the exercise was to get the last members of the Company across what could have been a Covenant killing ground and to do so as quickly as possible. McKay thought she’d been successful, thought she’d made a clean break, when a momentary shadow passed over her and someone yelled, “Contact! Enemy contact!”
The officer glanced back over her shoulder and spied a Covenant dropship. The ungainly looking craft swept in from the east, and was about to deploy additional forces. Its plasma cannon opened fire and stitched a line of black dots in the dirt, out toward the edge of the drop-off.
A sniper disappeared from the waist down, and still had enough air to scream as his forward motion slowed, and his torso landed on a pile of his own intestines.
McKay skidded to a halt, yelled, “Snipers! About face, fire!” and hoped that the brief parade ground–style orders would be sufficient to communicate what she wanted.
Each Covenant dropship had side slots, small cubicle-like spaces where their troops rode during transit, and from which they were released when the aircraft arrived over the landing zone. Had the pilot been more experienced he would have positioned the aircraft so that it was nose-on to the enemy and fired his cannon while the troops bailed out—but he wasn’t, or he’d simply made a mistake, as he presented the ship’s starboard side to the humans and opened the doors.
More than half the ODST snipers had switched back to their S2s and had shouldered their weapons up as the drop doors opened. They opened fire before the Covenant troops could leap to the ground. One of their rounds hit a plasma grenade and caused it to explode. A control line must have been severed, because the dropship lurched to port, pitched forward, and nosed into the ground. Twin waves of soil were gouged out of the plateau as the aircraft slid forward, hit a boulder, and exploded into flame.
Secondary explosions cooked off and the twin hulls disintegrated. The sound of the blast bounced off the Autumn’s hull and rolled across the surrounding plain.
The Marines waited a moment to see if any of the aliens would try to crawl, walk, or run away, but none of them did.
McKay heard the muffled thump, thump, thump of automatic weapons fire coming from within the ship behind her, knew the job was only half done, and waved to the half dozen Marines. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
The Helljumpers looked at one another, grinned, and followed McKay into the ship. The El-Tee might look like a wild-eyed maniac, but she knew her stuff, and that was good enough for them.
The soil was still damp from the rain, so when the sun hit the top of the mesa a heavy mist started to form, as if a battalion of spirits had been released from bondage.
Keyes, exhausted by his captivity, not to mention the harrowing escape from the Truth and Reconciliation, had literally collapsed and slept hard for the next three hours.
Now, awakened by both a nightmare and the internal clock that was still attuned to the arbitrarily set ship time, the Naval officer was up and prowling about.
The view from the rampart was nothing less than spectacular, looking out over a flat plain to the gently rolling hills beyond. A bank of ivory-white clouds scudded above the hills. The vista was so beautiful, so pristine, that it was difficult to believe that Halo was a weapon.
He heard the scrape of footsteps, and turned to watch Silva emerge from the staircase that led up to the observation platform. “Good morning, sir,” the Marine said. “I heard you were up and around. May I join you?”
“Of course,” Keyes said, gesturing to a place at the waist-high wall. “Please do. I took a self-guided tour of the landing pads, the Shade emplacements, and the beginnings of the maintenance shop. Good work, Major. You and your Helljumpers are to be congratulated. Thanks to you, we have a place to rest, regroup, and plan.”
“The Covenant did some of the work for us,” Silva replied modestly, “but I agree, sir, my people did a hell of a job. Speaking of which, I thought I should let you know that Lieutenant McKay and two platoons of ODSTs are fighting their way into the Autumn even as we speak. If they retrieve the supplies we need, Alpha Base will be able to hold for quite a while.”
“And if the Covenant attacks before then?”
“Then we are well and truly screwed. We’re running short on ammo, food, and fuel for the Pelicans.”
Keyes nodded. “Well, let’s hope McKay pulls it off. In the meantime there are some other things we need to consider.”
Silva found the easy, almost offhanded manner in which Keyes had reassumed command to be a bit irritating, even though he knew it was the other officer’s obligation to do so. There was a clear-cut chain of
command, and now that Keyes was free, the Naval officer was in charge. There was nothing the Marine could do except look interested—and hope his superior came up with at least some of the right ideas.
“Yes, sir. What’s up?”
So Keyes talked, and Silva listened, as the Captain reviewed what he had learned while in captivity. “The essence of the matter is that while the races which comprise the Covenant seem to possess a high level of technology, most if not all of it may have been looted from the beings they refer to as the ‘Forerunners,’ an ancient civilization which left artifacts on dozens of planets, and presumably was responsible for constructing Halo.
“In the long run, the fact that they are adaptive, rather than innovative, may prove to be their undoing. For the moment, however, before we can take advantage of that weakness, we must first find the means to survive. If Halo is a weapon, and if it has the capacity to destroy all of humanity as they seem to believe, then we must find the means to neutralize it—and perhaps turn it against the Covenant.
“That’s why I ordered Cortana and the Master Chief to find the so-called Control Room to which the aliens have alluded, and see if there’s a way to block the Covenant’s plan.”
Silva placed his forearms on the top of the wall that fronted the rampart and looked out over the plain. If one knew where to look, and had a good eye, he could see the blast-scarred ground where the Ghosts had attacked, the Helljumpers had held, and some of his Marines lay buried.
“I see what you mean, sir. Permission to speak freely?”
Keyes looked at Silva, then back to the view. “Of course. You’re second in command here, and obviously you know your way around ground engagements far better than I do. If you have ideas, suggestions, or concerns, I want to hear them.”
Silva nodded respectfully. “Thank you, sir. My question has to do with the Spartan. Like everyone else, I have nothing but respect for the Chief’s record. However, is he the right person for the mission you have in mind? Come to think of it, is any one person right for that kind of operation?
“I know that the Master Chief has an augmented body,” Silva continued, “not to mention the advantage that the armor gives him, but take a look around. This base, these defenses, were the work of normal human beings.
“The SPARTAN program is a failure, Captain—the fact that the Chief is the only one left proves that, so let’s put your mission into the hands of some real honest-to-god Marines and let them earn their pay.
“Thanks for hearing me out.”
Keyes had been in the Navy for a long time. He knew Silva was ambitious, not only for himself, but for the ODST branch of the Marine Corps. He also knew that Silva was brave, well-intentioned, and in this case, flat-out wrong. But how to tell him that? He needed Silva’s enthusiastic support if any of them were going to make it out of this mess alive.
The Captain considered Silva’s words, then nodded. “You make some valid points. What you and your ‘honest-to-god’ Marines have accomplished on this butte is nothing short of miraculous.
“However, I can’t agree with your conclusions regarding the Chief or the SPARTAN program. First, it’s important to understand that what makes the Chief so effective isn’t what he is, but who he is. His record is not the result of technology—not because of what they’ve done to him but in spite of what they’ve done to him, and the pain he has suffered.
“The truth is that the Chief would have grown up to be a remarkable individual regardless of what the government did or didn’t do to him. Do I think children should be snatched away from their families? Raised by the military? Surgically altered? No, I don’t, not during normal times.”
He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “Major, one of my first assignments was to escort the Spartan’s project leader during the selection process for the candidates. At the time, I didn’t know the full scope of the operation—and I probably would have resigned had I known.
“These aren’t normal times. We’re talking about the very real possibility of total extinction, Major. How many people did we lose in the Outer Colonies? How many did the Covenant kill on Jericho VII? On Reach? How many will be glassed if they locate Earth?”
It was a rhetorical question. The Marine shook his head. “I don’t know, sir, but I do know this. More than twenty-five years ago, when I was a second lieutenant, the people who invented the Chief thought it would be fun to test their new pet weapon on some real meat. They engineered a situation in which four of my Marines would run into your friend, take offense at something he did, and try to teach him a lesson.
“Well, guess what? The plan worked perfectly. The plan sucked my people in, and the freak not only kicked the hell out of them, he left two of them dead—beaten to death in a goddamned ship’s gymnasium. I don’t know what you call that, sir, but I call it murder. Were there repercussions? Hell, no. The windup toy got a pat on the head and a ticket to the showers. It was all in a day’s bloody work.”
Keyes looked bleak. “For whatever it’s worth I’m truly sorry about what happened to your men, Major, but here’s the truth: Maybe it isn’t nice—hell, maybe it isn’t even right—but if I could get my hands on a million Spartans I’d take every single one of them. As for this particular mission, yes, I believe it’s possible that your people could get the job done, and if that’s all we had, I wouldn’t hesitate to send them in. But the Chief has a number of distinct advantages, not the least of which is Cortana, and by taking this task on he will free your Helljumpers to handle other things. Lord knows there’s plenty to do. My decision stands.”
Silva nodded stiffly. “Sir, yes sir. My people will do everything they can to support both the Chief and Cortana.”
“Yes,” Keyes said, as he gazed up into the gently curving ring, “I’m sure they will.”
The normally dark room was bright with artificial light. Zuka ‘Zamamee had studied the raid on the Truth and Reconciliation, taken note of the manner in which the human AI had accessed the Covenant battlenet, and analyzed the nature of the electronic intrusions to see what the entity seemed most interested in.
Then, based on that analysis, he had constructed projections of what the humans would do next. Not all of the humans, since that lay outside the parameters of his mission, but the one person in whom he was truly interested. An individual who appeared to be part of a specialized, elite group similar to his own, and would almost certainly be sent to follow up on what the humans had learned.
Now, in the room that led directly into the Security Control Center, ‘Zamamee laid a trap. The armored human would come, he felt sure of that, and once inside the snare, the human would meet his end. The thought cheered ‘Zamamee immensely and he hummed a battle hymn as he worked.
There was a flash, followed by a loud bang! as the fragmentation grenade went off. A Jackal screamed, an assault weapon stuttered, and a Marine yelled, “Let me know if you want some more!”
“Good work!” McKay exclaimed. “That’s the last of them. Close the hatch, lock it, and post a fireteam here to make sure they don’t cut their way out. The Covenant is welcome to the upper decks. What we need is down here.”
The battle had been raging for hours by then as McKay and her Marines fought to push the remaining enemy forces out of key portions of the Autumn and into the sections of the ship that weren’t mission-critical.
As the Helljumpers sealed the last interdeck ladder not already secured, they had what they’d been striving for: free and unfettered access to the ship’s main magazine, cargo holds, and vehicle bays.
In fact, even as the second platoon pushed the last of the aliens out of the lower decks, the first platoon, under the leadership of Lieutenant Oros, had begun the important task of hitching trailers to the fleet of Warthogs stowed in the Autumn’s belly and loading them with food, ammo, and the long list McKay had brought with her of other supplies. Then, once each ’Hog-trailer combo was ready, the Marines drove them down makeshift ramps onto the hardpan below.
Once outside, and positioned laager style, the combined power of the LRV-mounted M41 light antiaircraft guns formed a potent defense against possible attack by Covenant dropships, Banshees, and Ghosts. It wouldn’t hold out forever, but it would do the most important job: It would buy them time.
Adding to the supply column’s already formidable firepower were four M808B Scorpion Main Battle Tanks, or MBTs, which rumbled down off the ramps, and threw dirt rooster tails up off their powerful treads as they growled into position within the screen established by the Warthogs.
The MBTs’ ceramic-titanium armor provided them with excellent protection against small arms fire—although the vehicles were vulnerable should the aliens manage to get in close. That’s why provision had been made for up to four Marines to ride on top of each Scorpion’s track pods.
Now, free to withdraw from the grounded cruiser and supervise final loading, McKay left Lister in charge of keeping the aliens penned up.
As she exited the ship, McKay caught sight of two heavily loaded Pelicans flying off in the general direction of the butte, each with a ’Hog clutched beneath its belly. And there, arrayed on the hardpan in front of her, twenty-six Warthog-trailer combinations sat ready to roll, with still more coming off the ship.
Their only problem was personnel. As a result of the work only fifty-two effectives remained, which meant that the stripped-down infantry company would be hard-pressed to crew thirty-four vehicles and fight, should that become necessary. Both McKay and her noncoms would all play a role as drivers or gunners during the return trip.
Oros saw the Company Commander emerge from the Autumn’s hull. The Platoon Leader was caged inside one of the Cyclops exoskeletons taken from the ship. Servos whined in sympathy with her movements as she crossed the intervening stretch of wheel-churned dirt to the point where McKay waited with hands on hips. Grime covered her face and her body armor was charred where a plasma pulse had hit. “You look good in orange.”
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