Kurt held out his hands.
"Should be a fair fight then," Mendez remarked. He tried the radio again. "Come in, Saber."
His voice filtered through the speaker, crackling with pops and static.
Kurt shook his head. "Something's jamming the transmission. Our Spartans aren't going to fight with stun rounds and flash-bang grenades. They'll head to the armory at Camp Currahee."
"Tom and Lucy should already be there," Mendez said. He moved to the zip line that stretched from the tree house top to the jungle floor. He grabbed the line, wrapped slide casing on, and then jumped over the edge.
For a man pushing sixty, the Chief moved like a soldier thirty years younger. It wasn't the first time Kurt had wondered what kind of Spartan he would have made.
Kurt followed down the zip line, free-falling for a moment, then squeezing the line to brake; he landed hard.
They ran for the Warthog parked on the dirt track at the base of the tree house.
Kurt jumped into the driver's side, and turned the engine over. The vehicle coughed to life and purred.
"No BMP damage," Mendez said. "Or the coil would have been fried."
It was almost a disappointment. A nuke, Kurt could understand. Fissile materials were used only by the UNSC or rebels— human forces.
He floored the accelerator and the Warthog fishtailed, and then the tires caught and they bumped down the dirt track.
The day suddenly brightened, and an extra set of shadows crisscrossed the jungle floor.
Kurt slowed the Warthog, and looked up at the sky The canopy obscured his view, so he turned off the track and drove into the jungle, bouncing over exposed roots, and then down the bank of the Twin Forks River.
Here Kurt had a clear line of sight to the sky, and he noted the sun had moved to a new position lower in the sky.
No, it hadn't moved. There were two suns.
This new sun faded and a ring of smoke expanded around its center. This fireball seemed to pause, and then it shattered in a starburst of glittering molten metal.
In high orbit, the Agincourt exploded.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
0715 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR ZONE 67, PLANET ONYX
Ash ran for his life over the rocky ground. He wasn't sure how the thing was tracking him in his SPI suit, but it was.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the three booms and single eye of the drone flash in the sunlight. It accelerated and skimmed over the ground in pursuit of Team Saber.
"Scatter!" he ordered over TEAMCOM.
That drone's beam weapon could melt through their armor in the blink of an eye. Ash wasn't going to take the chance of it wiping out his entire squad with a single shot.
Mark and Dante broke left. Holly went right. Ash didn't see Olivia; she had to be stealthing.
Ash decided to flat-out run straight ahead, hoping to draw its fire.
He risked another glance back: the drone veered left after Holly. She sprinted up a slope.
Ash saw this slope ended in a sheer cliff a hundred meters ahead of her. When she got there, she'd be trapped. Even if she jumped, and survived, then the drone would still have her, firing from above.
He wouldn't let that happen. He ran back.
Holly skidded to a halt at the cliff's edge.
The drone angled above her, and its central spherical eye burned red.
Ash fired his MA5B assault rifle. A translucent gold energy
shield shimmered around the drone, and the rubber rounds bounced off. The central eye continued to heat.
He wasn't giving up that easily.
Those shields weren't like Covenant shields, invisible until they interacted with projectile or energy. Ash had seen these pop into place just before his round had struck.
He had to try something else.
Ash picked up a rock and sidearmed it at the drone. It was nowhere near as fast as a bullet, but it was a great deal heavier.
The stone hit, and spanged off one of its metal booms, scratching it.
No shields this time.
The drone hesitated, and one boom looked like it twitched. Ash noticed that the three booms were not connected to the center sphere. They all just floated there. What was this thing?
It closed on Holly. She fired at it, but its shields snapped into place once again, deflecting the rounds. She looked over the cliff's edge and took a deep breath.
She was going to jump.
"No way," Ash whispered.
He grabbed a fist-sized chunk of onyx and hurled it with all his strength.
It connected—dead center with the drone's spherical red eye. "Yes!" he cried.
The drone rotated to face Ash.
His elation instantly evaporated as the thing glided toward him, picking up speed.
Ash turned and ran; he jinked right and then left.
The ground exploded. Heat washed over him, and he flew head over heels. He landed flat on his back, slapping at the last moment to break the fall.
Ash rolled, and with only a slight limp, he kept running.
He hoped the other squads were having better luck. Olivia had picked up Katana squad's signal. They'd reported they were
being forced into Zone 67. They'd lost their signal shortly thereafter. They'd never gotten word from Gladius squad. Either they were dark or dead.
He looked back: the drone was almost on top of him. Its single eye heated to a cherry-red cinder, preparing another blast of energy.
Ahead there was a crevice in the rock, a sinuous two-meter channel that could have been a deep river a million years ago before this place dried up.
He sprinted for it and dove.
The channel was much deeper than he had imagined. He bounced off the walls and landed ten meters farther at the bottom.
The shadow of the drone flashed overhead and vanished.
Ash slowly got to his feet, and held his breath. Had he lost it? Maybe they had a chance after all to—
The drone reappeared overhead.
He could run down the channel, but with all its twists and turns, he'd be slow. Besides, it didn't even have to hit him with its energy beam. One shot at the walls and he'd be buried alive. Ash was trapped.
So he stood absolutely still… hoping it could only detect motion.
The drone dropped into the channel and stopped halfway down—staring directly at him. The eye glowed dull red, heating to molten golden. If Ash didn't know better he'd say the machine looked angry.
He needed to let the rest of Saber know where he was, at least know what he had discovered. Radio silence was no help now. He clicked on his COM, and turned up the gain
to maximum.
"They only track high-velocity objects," he said over the COM.
The drone hesitated and its booms moved in and out almost
as if it were… what? Attenuating his signal? Trying to hear him?
Ash yelled over his COM, "STOP!"
The three booms locked in place and the drone drifted back a half meter.
It had heard him.
"What do you want?" Ash said.
The drone crept closer.
His own voice blasted though his helmet's speaker: "Fhejelet 'Pnught Juber."
Ash shook his head clear "I don't understand." He held up his hands spread wide and
shrugged—the universal I-don't-know gesture.
"Fhejelet non sequitur, now?"
"I got part of that," Ash said. "Non sequitur—that's Latin, right?"
Ash wasn't sure what this thing was, or what it was trying to say, but it definitely wasn't Covenant. The Covenant had language translators, and they didn't sound like this. The Covenant generally used them only to pronounce florid curses just before they vaporized planets.
This close, Ash could see the inert curve of the drone's booms, and could feel the heat from its eye. Tiny golden hieroglyphics shimmered around the sphere, floating a centimeter off its surface. Ash
squinted, but couldn't make out the characters.
"Security protocols enabled," the drone spoke over the COM. "I understood that," Ash replied. "Ring offensive system activated," it said. "Shield in countdown mode. Exchange proper
counterresponse. Reclaimer."
"I don't want to hurt you," Ash tried.
He had no idea what this thing wanted.
"Non sequitur," it said. "Reclassification of targets as non-Reclaimers. Aboriginal
subspecies. Collect for further analysis— else neutralize as possible infection vector."
Ash understood with perfect clarity "neutralize."
The drone advanced, spreading its booms apart like an open maw.
He was out of ideas.
A rock hit the drone, a granite chunk a half meter across. It glanced off the drone's
ventral boom. The impact made the drone dip, but it recovered, and its booms shifted, geometry
rearranged so it now stared up at the edge of the channel.
Team Saber stood there, looking down—all of them hefting large rocks.
Two stones collided into the drone's spars, and one shattered directly on its eye. It dipped to the ground with a crash, and the spherical eye heated to blazing white-hot. The dirt around it fused to glass and bubbled.
A boulder barely fitting within the channel bounced off the walls—and flattened the drone. The eye, crushed to an oblate shape, crackled and cooled to dull red and then black. The thing's three metal spars radiated out from under the rock like a flattened spider.
Ash exhaled, let his adrenaline subside, and he climbed out of the chasm.
Mark and Dante helped him up.
They'd saved each other a hundred times before, but those were always drills. Even
under live-fire conditions, it had never been like this. For real. Ash wanted to tell them that they were like brothers and sisters to him.
All he could manage without his voice breaking was: "Thanks, guys."
Holly replied, "Well, thanks for being bait."
"Good call using rocks," Olivia whispered.
Ash nodded. "We've got to get under cover," he said, "back to the jungle."
"No, back to camp," Mark said. "Grab some real ammunition." Dante added, "Explosives, too."
Ash saw motion in his peripheral vision. Three more drones flew over the mesas, moving back and forth… searching.
← ^ →
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
0745 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX, NEAR CAMP CURRAHEE
Kurt eased the Warthog to a stop half a kilometer outside Camp Currahee. A large shadow crossed the tree line ahead, and a flock of red-tailed parrots took flight.
He jumped out and motioned Mendez to the brush at the side of the road. They hunkered down, and watched as an unmanned drone glided over their Warthog and paused.
The machine wasn't a UNSC design. It might have been Covenant, but they never varied from their big-ugly oblate blue-gray ascetic. The thing was floating whisper silent, and that meant antigravity technology… which likely made it nonhuman.
He remembered Endless Summer's flash transmission with a chill. Possible non-Covenant vectors.
The geometry of the drone shifted: the sphere in the center floated forward along the length of its lateral spars.
Kurt's first instinct was to grab his assault rife and fire. He had a superior flanking position. He reached for his weapon, and then recalled they had no weapons save Chief Mendez's sidearm and knife.
He decided hiding was, for now, the soundest strategy.
The drone circled the Warthog, and then satisfied, it continued down the dirt track.
Kurt waited until the drone disappeared into the jungle and then he motioned for Mendez to follow him through the trees to the edge of Camp Currahee.
Three hundred meters of jungle had been cleared around the horseshoe-shaped camp. From the edge of the clear zone, Kurt saw several of the alien fliers circling the buildings and parade grounds.
"Zigzag patterns," Mendez whispered. "They're looking for something. Or someone."
There was an explosion from the center of camp. Not like the energy blast they had witnessed on the road. This was the dull crack of a fragmentation grenade.
The drones over the camp slowed and turned, and all moved in the same direction—the NCO quarters.
"That's our chance," Kurt said. "Go. Run."
With the drones distracted, they sprinted across the clear zone, slipped past the gate guardhouse, and ran to the Spartans' dormitories. They crawled under the raised building.
Shadows slipped over the adjacent gravel roads and paths as the drones silently glided overhead.
Kurt held up a hand to Mendez, and saw the older man cover his mouth to muffle his panting. As much as he admired the Chief, that sprint had taken something out of him.
They watched until there was a break in the shadows, and they ran for the next building, the NCO quarters.
Kurt spotted the source of the drones' distraction: a heap of wreckage, three bent booms, and a charred sphere lying smoldering in the NCO's inspection yard.
Someone had taken one of the alien fliers out.
Across the yard and under the infirmary appeared the red glare of a laser sight—trained on Kurt. He started to twist to
one side. When a targeting sight was on you, you moved. But this was no threat. It was a signal.
He pointed and then Mendez saw it, too. The laser flashed once more and then it winked off.
Mendez started to move; Kurt checked the airspace, and then pulled the Chief flat against the wall as another drone floated overhead.
It passed. They ran to the infirmary and dove under.
Waiting for them in the shadows were perfectly camouflaged smudges of mottled gray: Tom and Lucy in their SPI armor.
Mendez said in a low voice, "You two are the best dammed things I've almost seen all week."
Kurt felt the same way, but he didn't have the luxury to say so. He was in command, and that required a certain distance, no matter how much he cared for these two.
Lucy nodded and took up position along the edge of the building, on guard.
"Report," Kurt said.
"We count twenty-two drones within the camp perimeter," Tom said.
"Any other camp personnel here?" Kurt asked.
"No, sir," Tom replied. "All missing… or dead." He took a deep breath. "We've neutralized two drones with grenades. They have shields and deflect assault and sniper rounds. Slower projectiles are not deflected. We've learned that from a weak transmission from Team Saber."
"Saber is here?" Mendez asked.
"Negative, Chief," Tom said. "We never hooked up with Saber, Katana, or Gladius after Zone 67 went active. There were no additional transmissions after the one."
Kurt watched Mendez's reaction. The man looked rock solid, and there was no trace of the worry he had seen earlier. He knew he could count on him, Tom, and Lucy no matter what.
"We may be on our own for a long time," Kurt told them.
"We have to make the most of our position at Camp Currahee. Tom, get to the armory, collect grenades, det cord, whatever else looks good. Forget the ammunition, though, they're all stun rounds. Don't overload."
Tom nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Chief," Kurt said, "get to the command center. Fire up the generators to boost power and get on the auxiliary COM. It might be strong enough to punch through this radio interference. Send a general distress. Bounce it between the antenna arrays. It might confuse these things long enough to get through. Try and raise any survivors from the Agincourt."
They both knew the odds of escape pods being out of the range of that blast. Still, they had to try.
"Leave a note," Kurt continued, "in case the other Spartans come here. Tell them to gather supplies and meet us at El Morro Point."
"Aye aye," Mendez replied.
Kurt checked his watch, a self-winding a
ntique mechanical. "Mark time as 1045. Lucy and I will pick up ammunition and then arrange for a distraction in one hour. Then make for the jungle, and we'll meet up at El Morro Point."
"Yes, sir," Tom and Mendez said.
They then crawled to opposite sides of the infirmary, waited for the drone shadows to vanish, and then they rolled out.
"Lucy?"
She belly-crawled over to him.
"Follow." He moved to the building's edge. Lucy in her SPI armor became his shadow. Kurt pointed to the small whitewashed house across the quad: the Camp Commandant's residence where Kurt had lived for the last twenty years.
They waited three long minutes for the overhead shadows of patrolling drones to vanish.
He and Lucy entered the house and closed the door.
Kurt had never locked it, but now, some part of his mind made him reflexively turn the tiny bolt on the door.
The house was small, three rooms comprised of an outer office, a toilet area, and bunk. There were framed pictures on his office wall, a Greek urn with ancient wrestlers in an alcove, and neat stacks of paperwork on his desk—the recent deployment orders for Gamma Company.
He wished whatever was happening had started last week— when there had been three hundred Spartans on Onyx. The tactical situation would be much different.
Lucy lowered the bamboo blinds, and then hesitated by the pictures on the wall.
Kurt joined her. For the last five years the SPARTAN-II program had been publicly promoted by Section Two to boost morale. There were shots of Spartans in their MJOLNIR armor helping wounded marines onto a Pelican, Spartans surrounded by fallen Covenant Elites, Spartans standing tall. Heroes all. The SPARTAN-IIIs had studied their legendary predecessors, their battles, and their tactics—learning from the best.
He glanced at Lucy, her expression inscrutable within her mirrored helmet, and then he looked back to the pictures. There wasn't a single photo of a SPARTAN-III on the wall, however, and not one public mention of their sacrifices. And there never would be, either.
Kurt wished it was different, and that he'd taken the small steps to improve his Spartans sooner. The emphasis on their team training, the SPI-armor system upgrades, the new mutations—it hardly seemed enough.
"This way," he told her, and turned to the steel door set near the bathroom. He palmed the biometric and let the facial and retinal scanners play over his face. The door silently opened and they entered.