He clicked the sniper rifle’s safety catch, and lightly rested his finger on the trigger.
‘Mortumee had emerged from hiding by that time and was standing next to Field Master ‘Putumee as the human convoy cleared the pass and turned up-ring. There was a third hill off to his left—and it, too, was topped with a Wraith.
The mortar tank opened fire. For one brief moment ‘Mortumee harbored the hope that the remaining tank would accomplish what the first two had not and decimate the convoy. But the humans were still out of range, and, knowing that the Wraith couldn’t do them any harm, they took the time to put their own tanks into a line abreast.
A single salvo was all it took. All four of the shells landed on target, the mortar tank was destroyed, and the way was clear.
‘Putumee lowered his monocular. His face was expressionless. “So, spy, how will your report read?”
‘Mortumee looked at the other Elite with a pitying expression. “I’m sorry, Commander, but the facts are clear, and the report will practically write itself. Had you deployed your forces differently, down on the plain perhaps, victory would have been ours.”
“An excellent point,” the Field Master replied, his tone mild. “Hindsight is always perfect.”
‘Mortumee was about to reply, about to say something about the value of foresight, when his head exploded.
Lance Corporal Jones steadied his aim for a second shot. The first shot had been perfect. The 14.5mm slug had flown true, entered the base of Blue Boy’s neck, and exited through the top of his head. That blew his helmet off, allowing a mixture of blood and brains to fountain into the air.
‘Putumee snarled and threw himself backward—and thereby escaped the second bullet.
Moments later, the twin reports echoed back and forth between the two hillsides. The Field Master crabbed back to cover and fed position information to the Banshee commander, and snarled into his communications gear: “Sniper! Kill him!”
Satisfied that the sniper would be dealt with, ‘Putumee stood and looked down at ‘Mortumee’s headless body. He bared his fangs. “It looks like I’ll have to write that report myself.”
Jones spat into the dirt, angry that the gold Elite had evaded the second shot. Next time, he promised himself. You’re mine next time, pal. Banshees banked overhead, searching for his position. Jones backed into a deep crevice among the rocks. Fortunately, thanks to the loot gathered aboard the Autumn, he had twenty candy bars to sustain him.
The security system neutralized, the Master Chief made his way back through the alien construct, and headed toward the surface. Time to find this “Silent Cartographer” and complete this phase of the mission.
“Mayday! Mayday! Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Repeat, we are taking fire and losing altitude.” The dropship pilot’s strained voice was harsh and grating—the sound of a man about to lose it.
“Understood,” Cortana replied. “We’re on our way.”
Then, in an aside to the Spartan, the AI said, “I don’t like the sound of that—I’m not certain they’re going to make it.”
The Master Chief agreed, and in his eagerness to get topside, made a potentially fatal error. Having just cleared the room adjacent to what appeared to be the ringworld’s Security Center, he assumed that it was still clear.
Fortunately, the Elite—equipped with another of the Covenant’s camouflage devices—announced his presence with a throaty roar just prior to firing his weapon. Plasma fire still splashed the Chief’s chest, followed by a brief moment of disorientation as he tried to figure out where the attack was coming from. His motion sensor detected movement, and he aimed his weapon as best he could. He fired a sustained burst and was rewarded with an alien scream of pain.
As the Covenant warrior fell, the Master Chief made a mad dash for the ramp that led up toward the surface, reloading as he went. Walking into the once-cleared room too quickly had been stupid—and he was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that Cortana was there, seeing the world via his sensors, made such errors that much more embarrassing. Somehow, for reasons he hadn’t had time to sort out, the human wanted the AI’s approval. Silly? Maybe so, if one thought of Cortana as little more than a fancy computer program, but she was more than that. In the Chief’s mind at least.
He smiled at the irony of the thought. The human-AI interface meant that, in many ways, Cortana was literally in the Chief’s mind, using some of his wetware for processing power and storage.
The Spartan made his way up the ramp, through a hall, and out into bright sunlight. He paused on a platform, and dropped to the slope below, as Cortana cautioned him to keep an eye peeled for Bravo 22.
Covenant troops were patrolling the beach below—a mix of Jackals and Grunts. The Master Chief drew his sidearm, switched to the 2X magnification, and decided to work from right to left. He nailed the first Jackal, missed the next, and killed a pair of Grunts who were waddling around on top of the mesa opposite his position.
As he moved farther down the slope, he could see Bravo 22’s wreckage, half buried in the side of the mesa. There were no signs of life. Either the crew and passengers had been killed on impact, or some had survived and been executed by the enemy.
The possibility made him particularly angry. He turned to the right, caught the surviving Jackal on the move, and put him down. He switched to his MA5B and made his way down the grassy slope to the sand beyond. It was a short walk to the smoking wreckage and the scattering of bodies. Plasma burns on some of the bodies served to confirm the Spartan’s suspicions.
Though not the most pleasant of tasks, the Chief knew he had to obtain ammo and other supplies wherever he could, and took advantage of the situation in order to stock up.
“Don’t forget to grab a launcher,” Cortana put in. “There’s no telling what might be waiting for us when we go back to looking for the Control Room.”
The Master Chief took the AI’s advice and decided to ride rather than walk. The Warthog that had been tucked under the dropship’s belly had come loose during the final moments of flight, hit the ground, and flipped over on its side. He approached the vehicle, reached upward, got a good purchase, and pulled. Metal creaked as the ’Hog swayed, tilted in the Spartan’s direction, and started to fall. He stepped back, waited for the inevitable bounce, and climbed up behind the wheel. After a quick check to ensure that the LRV was still operable, he was off.
He skidded the Warthog into a slewing turn, then headed back to the mission LZ—the beachhead the Marines had been left to hold.
The Marines had fought off two assaults during his absence, but they still owned the real estate they had originally taken, and remained undeterred.
“Welcome back,” a Corporal said as she took her place behind the three-barreled gun. “It was getting boring without you.” She had a grimy face, the words CUT HERE tattooed around the circumference of her neck, and a short, stocky body.
The Chief eyed the hastily dug weapons pits and foxholes, the large pile of Covenant corpses, and the plasma-scorched sand. “Yeah, I can see that.”
A freckle-faced PFC jumped into the passenger seat, a captured plasma rifle cradled in his arms. The Spartan turned back in the direction he had come from, and raced along the edge of the water. Spray flew up along the left side of the LRV and he wished he could feel the moisture on his face.
A kilometer ahead, a Hunter named Igido Nosa Hurru fumed as he paced back and forth across a docking platform still stained with Covenant blood. Word had come down from an Elite named Zuka ‘Zamamee that a lone human had killed two of his brothers a few hours earlier, and was about to attack his newly reinforced position, as well. This was something the spined warrior hoped would happen so that he, and his bond brother Ogada Nosa Fasu, could have the honor of killing the alien.
So, when Hurru heard the whine of the surface vehicle’s engine, and saw it round the headland, both he and his bond brother were ready. Having received the other Hunter’s characteristic nod, Hurru too
k up a position directly outside the entrance to the complex. If the vehicle was some sort of trick, a ruse to lure both guards away from the door long enough for the human to slip inside, it wasn’t going to work.
Fasu, always one to seize the initiative, and something of an artist with the fuel rod cannon attached to his right arm, waited for the LRV to come within range, led the vehicle to ensure that the relatively slow-moving energy pulse would have an adequate amount of time to reach its destination, and fired a single shot.
The Master Chief saw the yellow-green fuel rod appear in his peripheral vision, and made the decision to turn toward the enemy both to make the ’Hog look smaller and to give the Corporal an opportunity to fire. But he ran out of time. The Spartan had just started to spin the wheel when the energy pulse slammed into the side of the Warthog and flipped the vehicle over.
All three of the humans were thrown free. The Master Chief scrambled to his feet and looked up-slope in time to see a Hunter drop down from the structure above, absorb the shock with its massive knees, and move forward.
Both the Corporal and the freckle-faced youngster were back on their feet by then, but the noncom, who had never seen a Hunter before, much less gone head-to-head with one, yelled, “Come on, Hosky! Let’s take this bastard out!”
The Spartan yelled, “No! Fall back!” and bent over to retrieve the rocket launcher. Even as he barked the order, he knew there simply wasn’t time. Another Spartan might have been able to dodge out of the way in time, but the Marines didn’t have a prayer.
The distance between the alien and the two Marines had closed by then and they couldn’t disengage. The Corporal threw a fragmentation grenade, saw it explode in front of the oncoming monster, and stared in disbelief as the alien kept on coming. The alien charged right through the flying shrapnel, bellowed some sort of war cry, and lowered a gigantic shoulder.
Private Hosky was still firing when the gigantic shield hit him, shattered half the bones in his body, and threw what was left onto the ground. The private remained conscious, however, which meant he was able to lie there and watch as the Hunter lifted his boot high into the air, and brought it down on his face.
The Master Chief had the launcher up on his shoulder by then and was just about to fire when the Corporal screamed something incoherent, dashed into the line of fire, and blocked his shot. The Chief yelled at her to hit the deck and was moving sideways in an attempt to get a clear line of fire when Fasu blew a hole the size of a dinner plate through the leatherneck’s chest.
The Spartan hit the firing stud, and a rocket whooshed for the Hunter. With surprising agility, the massive alien hunched and sidestepped, and the rocket skimmed past him. It detonated behind the Hunter, and showered them both with debris.
The Hunter charged.
The Master Chief stepped back, knew there wouldn’t be time to reload, and that the next rocket would have to fly straight and true. The surf swirled around his knees as he backed out into the ocean, fought to maintain his footing in the soft sand, and saw the alien fill his sight. Was the target too close? There wasn’t time to check. He pulled the trigger, and a second rocket streaked ahead on a column of smoke and fire.
The Hunter had reached full speed and couldn’t dodge in time. The creature’s massive feet dug into the soft ground as it tried to alter course to avoid the rocket—to no avail. The 102mm shaped charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter’s chest armor, blew through his torso, and severed his spine. There was a mighty splash as the alien creature fell face first into the water. A pool of vibrant orange blood stained the surf around the fallen Hunter.
The Master Chief took a moment to reload the launcher then slogged back up onto the beach. A distant howl of anguish issued from the other alien’s throat. Serves you right, he thought. You only lost one brother. I lost all of mine.
He felt a pang of sorrow for the two dead Marines. He should have anticipated the long-range attack, should have briefed the leathernecks about the possibility of Hunters, should have reacted more quickly. All of which meant that it was his fault that the Marines were dead.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Cortana said gently. “Now be careful—there’s another Hunter up on the platform.”
The words were like a bucket of cold water in the face. “Mental combat,” that’s how his teacher, Chief Mendez, had referred to it, always stressing the importance of a cool head.
Slowly, methodically, the Master Chief worked his way up the slope, killing Covenant soldiers with machine precision. The small groups of Grunts were irrelevant. The real challenge waited above.
Hurru heard the firing, knew he was being flanked, and welcomed it. Rage, sorrow, and self-pity all churned around inside him causing him to fire his fuel rod cannon again and again, as if to obliterate the human by the weight of his barrage.
The human made good use of what cover there was, put his left arm against the cliff face, and inched his way forward. The Hunter saw him and attempted to fire, but the fuel rod cannon hadn’t had time to recharge after the last shot. That left the human free to fire, which he did. Hurru felt warm relief.
He was about to join his bond brother.
The rocket was a hair high, hit Hurru in the head, and blew it off. Orange blood fountained straight up, splashed the alien metal around the Hunter, and splattered his body as it collapsed.
The Spartan paused, switched to his assault weapon, and waited for the feeling of satisfaction. It never arrived. The Marines were still dead, would always be dead, and nothing would change that. Was it fair that he remained alive? No, it wasn’t. All he could do was accomplish what they would want him to do. Forge ahead, find the map, and make their deaths count for something.
With that thought in mind, the Master Chief reentered the complex on foot, made his way through halls still slick with alien blood from his last visit, turned down the ramp, proceeded to the lower level, and passed through the door he had worked so hard to open.
The Master Chief moved into the bowels of the structure. From outside, the spires stood several stories high, which was misleading. The interior of the structure plunged deep below the surface.
He wound down a curving ramp. The air was still and slightly stale, and thick pillars of the first large chamber he moved through made the room feel like a crypt.
He slipped through heavily shadowed rooms, padded down spiral ramps, passing through galleries filled with strange forms. The walls and floors were made of the same burnished, heavily engraved metal that he’d encountered elsewhere on the ring. He clicked on his light and noticed new patterns in the metal, like the swirls in marble—as if the material were some kind of metal-stone hybrid.
The tomblike silence was shattered by the squalling of several Grunts and Jackals. There was opposition, plenty of it, as the human was forced to deal with dozens of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. “It’s as if they knew we were on the way,” Cortana observed. “I think someone is tracking our progress, and has a pretty good idea of where we’re headed.”
“No kidding,” the Master Chief replied dryly as he shot a Grunt and stepped over the body. “I hope we reach the Cartographer before I run out of ammo.”
“We’re close,” the AI assured him, “but be careful. There’s bound to be more Covenant ahead.”
The Master Chief took Cortana’s counsel to heart. He hoped that he would find a way to bypass whatever the Covenant had in store, but that wasn’t to be. As the Spartan entered a large room, he saw that two Hunters had been assigned to patrol the far side of it. He slung his rifle and readied the rocket launcher. It was the right weapon for Hunters, no question about that—so long as he didn’t allow either one of the monsters to get too close. A rocket fired under those conditions would kill him if it detonated nearby.
One of the spined aliens spotted the intruder and bellowed a challenge. The Hunter was already in motion when the rocket flashed across the room, struck him in the right shoulder, and blasted him to hell.
; A second Hunter howled and fired his fuel rod cannon. The Chief swore as the wash from a slightly off-target plasma bolt set off the audible alarm, and the indicator in the upper right hand corner of his HUD morphed to red.
The Spartan turned, hoping to put the second Hunter in his sight, but the massive alien slid behind a wall.
Unable to fire, he backed off. The Hunter lunged forward, and the deadly arm-shield raked across his own already weakened shields.
The Chief grunted in pain as the edge of the shield slammed through his armor’s shoulder joint. He felt a sickly tearing as the meat of his arm parted beneath the scalpel-sharp limb.
He spun, and the spine wrenched free.
The Master Chief felt a rising sense of frustration as he switched to the assault weapon, backed up a ramp, and used his greater mobility to circle behind the alien. Then he had it, a brief glimpse of unprotected flesh, and the opportunity he needed. He put a quick burst into the warrior’s back, spun away, and barely escaped a blast from the plasma pistols of the Jackals that had dropped into view and opened fire.
The Master Chief hurled three grenades over a divider. One of them scored a direct hit, sprayed the walls with chunks of alien flesh, and finally brought the frantic firefight to an end.
Cortana, whose life had been on the line as well, and who had been forced to watch as the Spartan fought for both of them, processed a sense of relief. Somehow, against all odds, her human host had come through again, but it had been close, very close, and he was still in something akin to shock, his back pressed into a corner, his vital signs badly elevated, his eyes jerking from one shadow to the next.
The AI hesitated as she processed the dilemma. It was difficult to balance the need to move ahead and complete the mission with her concern that she might push the Master Chief too hard, and possibly endanger them both. Cortana’s affection for the human, plus her own desire to survive, made it difficult for her to arrive at the kind of clear, rational decision that she expected of herself.
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