The sound distorted, slowed, and stopped. The box was out of power.
One of the Huragok watching gave an ultrasonic cry that shot through Kwassass's skull. The creature charged him, tentacles flailing, and grasped at his box. It wrenched it from Kwassass's grasp.
Other Huragok charged and tried to take the box from their fellow.
Did they understand what the human said? Did they understand the danger?
There were more Huragok around him than he had realized. The shadows rippled with their buoyant bodies, each with six glassy black eyes firmly fixed upon the human voice box.
The Huragok rushed the box back to the Great Cylinder, to the panel where the box had been removed. There were multicolored wires inside that matched those in the box.
Huragok twisted these wires together. Tiny sparks danced. Red symbols flickered upon a display in the box, and the device spoke once more.
True to their nature, Huragok were just as likely to fix something broken as they were likely to take apart something that worked perfectly.
A dozen Huragok pressed closer around the device, all squirming tentacles and glistening eager eyes.
The voice from the box started again—now loud and clear:
"This is the prototype Nova bomb, nine fusion warheads encased in lithium triteride armor. When detonated it compresses its fusionable material to neutron-star density, boosting the thermonuclear yield a hundredfold. I am Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, temporarily in command of the UNSC military base Reach. To the Covenant uglies that might be listening, you have a few seconds to pray to your dammed heathen gods. You all have a nice day in hell."
Kwassass pushed his way through the throng of Huragok. He had to get to the thing. Pull those wires.
There was a flash of the most beautiful light, and more glorious heat than he'd ever—
A battle group of eighteen destroyers, two cruisers, and one carrier collected in high orbit over Joyous Exultation, and
drew in a spherical formation about their flagship, the Incorruptible.
They shimmered blue-white and vanished into Slipspace.
A heartbeat later Vice Admiral Whitcomb's ploy of slipping the UNSC prototype Nova bomb into Covenant supplies had finally paid off: a star ignited between Joyous Exultation and its moon.
Every ship not protected on the dark side of the planet boiled and vaporized in an instant.
The atmosphere of the planet wavered as helical spirals of luminescent particles lit both north and south poles, making curtains of blue and green ripple over the globe. As the thermonuclear pressure wave spread and butted against the thermosphere, it heated the air orange, compressed it, until it touched the ground and scorched a quarter of the world.
The tiny nearby moon Malhiem cracked and shattered into a billion rocky fragments and clouds of dust.
The overpressure force subsided, and three-hundred-kilometer-per-hour winds swept over Joyous Exultation, obliterating cities and whipping tidal waves over its coastlines.
The Covenant Schism—the shattering of its client races for a thousand years, and the genesis of their end—had truly begun.
← ^ →
SECTION VI THE GHOSTS OF ONYX
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT 1700 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX NEAR RESTRICTED REGION ZONE 67
Kurt crouched, motionless in the undergrowth, and waited for the Sentinels to move into position.
There'd been no happy reunion with Blue Team, no time for explanations, not even a handshake; all there'd been time for was running. The Sentinel patrol had been on them the instant they'd recovered the Spartans—an hour of nonstop cat and mouse through the jungle.
The drones were getting very good at hunting them.
A pair of Sentinels paused, hovering four meters above the ground. After bombarding the jungle from a hundred meters with energy blasts… and missing, they had finally descended to their level.
Their lateral spars flexed as if they could smell the trap. The spars about each sphere then drifted farther part and both spheres moved within centimeters of each other.
It reminded Kurt of cell division, only in reverse. They were combining.
What the purpose of this "mating" was, Kurt wasn't sure. He was, however, sure he didn't like it.
The now-double Sentinel crept closer.
Team Saber on the left flank detonated fougasse positioned under the drones. Flames shot up and lit the canopy, smoldering shrapnel obliterating the foliage.
A split second later Blue Team on the right flank let loose an SPNKr missile and a hail of MA5B fire. They were in perfect defilade.
The air filed with white-hot tracers and black roiling clouds. Two nearby trees crackled and fell.
Kurt flashed his red status light, and the fire ceased.
Saber had jumped the gun. A half second maybe, but they had definitely shot before the Sentinels were in position.
What had he expected? For all the simulated combats the Gamma Company Spartans had been through, nothing could have prepared them for continuous guerilla action with the Forerunner killing machines.
Kurt squinted. Even with image enhancement and thermals he couldn't make out anything in the air where the Sentinels had been. But he could see the ground… and among the splintered tree trunks, burning leaves, and popping metal, there was neither drone.
He blinked his amber light twice, ordering the teams to fall back. He didn't like this one bit.
A full bank of green status lights winked at him.
Kurt saw motion in the mist: shadows that resolved into six rods arranged in a long hexagonal geometry—two spheres within—pulsing as the energy field enveloping the combined Sentinels shimmered.
They were completely untouched.
Kurt flashed his red three times: the retreat signal.
One sphere glowed and moved back and forth searching. It stopped and fixed upon Kurt.
He jumped.
A flash of light struck. The jungle floor detonated and a three-meter crater fizzled and
cracked into glass.
Kurt rolled into a crouch and instinctively returned fire with his MA5K.
This was part of the plan, too: the part where everything went wrong and he had insisted
on drawing the enemy's fire while the others slipped away. He knew the terrain: Twin Forks River was three hundred meters to the east. It should be a stroll through the park.
The other sphere shone like burnished gold and his rounds bounced off its energy shield… even as the first sphere reheated, building charge for another shot.
Kurt ran, zigzagging into the foliage.
In this doubled configuration the Sentinels could simultaneously fire and defend with an energy shield. That was big trouble.
It seemed all their engagements with the Sentinels were doing was teaching them how to be more effective in combat.
Explosions followed Kurt almost as if his footsteps were setting them off.
The trees parted ahead and the Twin Forks River snaked through the jungle. The water was muddy and churning.
Kurt leapt and splashed into the swift current.
He sank to the bottom. Internal oxygen cut on inside his SPI suit, and Kurt grasped rocks along the river bottom, crawling upstream. Through the murky water he spotted a rock ledge and tucked underneath.
Between him and Sentinels were three meters of moving ice-cold water, a meter of rock, and a layer of photo-reactive circuits in his armor. He should be undetectable to any sensor. At least undetectable enough, he hoped, to fool these things.
He waited.
No explosions. No flashes. No heat.
The combined Sentinel wasn't his biggest worry, though. It was the one on overwatch. The Sentinels patrolled in threes now: two at mid to ground level, and another two to three thousand
meters in the air—watching everything, reporting their tactics, and learning.
As long as that third on
e tracked them, the Spartans would be on the defensive, reacting, instead of initiating action.
Kurt wondered why the Sentinels hadn't called in reinforcements, combined, and let loose with enough firepower to burn the entire jungle.
… Unless they were deliberately playing cat and mouse with them? To learn more about how they fought?
He had to be smarter than them. Take out all three. Take the initiative. Maybe with Blue Team, he could do it.
Kurt waited two more minutes, then pulled himself out of the river. He sprinted for the cover of the jungle.
There were no signs of pursuit.
He remained COM silent and crept back to the prearranged fallback position.
As he approached the region of broken ground bordering Zone 67, he slowed. There was less cover, so he scanned the skies for Sentinel overwatch. All clear.
Ahead the land turned to savanna grass, acacia trees, and large striated boulders. One rock in particular had a hollow underneath where they had arranged to meet. It provided cover without restricting the view of the local airspace. If attacked, they had a clean line back to the jungle.
There would be at least two guards on lookout, and at least one Spartan at the jungle line to watch their line of retreat. Normally he would click his COM twice to alert the sentry, but he didn't even want to take that small risk in the open.
So Kurt waited, guessing the sentry would be either Linda or Olivia. If it was Linda—he scanned the nearby trees—she'd be up there, in a good sniping position.
If it was Olivia, she could be anywhere. She was eerily proficient at camouflage and stealth.
There was the clatter: a single stone three meters to his left.
He turned and, as predicted, Olivia crouched a meter behind him in the shadow of a low tree, perfectly blending into the grass and dappled light in her SPI armor, waving at him to
make sure he saw the slight blur of motion. Kurt had no doubt that she could have been in fluorescent orange fatigues and still managed to look like part of the terrain.
Kurt waved to her and then aimed his single-beam COM at the rendezvous rock. The COM established handshake and then crackled to life.
"One coming in," he said.
"Come ahead," Kelly's voice came back. "Good to hear your voice."
"Yours too. Out."
Kurt remembered the last time he had Kelly on the single beam—when his thruster pack had exploded and he rocketed out of control into deep space.
He'd never realized how much he had missed his old teammates until he had seen them again. Of course, now Blue Team was in jeopardy, but that seemed like old times as well. He couldn't have asked for better soldiers to be in trouble with.
He ran across the field, low and silent, and then jumped into the shaded hollow. Tom, Ash, and Mendez crouched next to Kelly, Linda, and Fred. They whispered to one another and drew plans in the dirt.
Lucy sat quietly next to Dr. Halsey, who glanced at Kurt and then went back to her laptop computer, examining Forerunner glyphs.
The other SPARTAN-IIIs were missing, presumably on watch.
"Glad you made it back in one piece," Chief Mendez said, and gave him an abbreviated salute. "Almost had me worried."
"Thanks, Chief. Set up a single-beam relay outside and hail the others on patrol."
"Yes, sir." Mendez grabbed a tiny antenna dish.
Linda, Kelly, and Fred all turned to Mendez when he said "sir" and then looked at Kurt.
Kurt flicked his index finger up, the wait-a-second gesture, and then he turned to Ash. "Private."
"Sir," Ash said, and stood straighter.
His helmet was off. Sweat glistened on his head and neck. It was a serious breach of combat protocols, but SPI suits had never been designed for extended use, and Team Saber had to have been sweltering in the stuff for days.
Kurt glanced at the helmet and Ash blanched at his mistake, and immediately slipped it on.
Kurt said, "Saber jumped the gun on that ambush."
"Yes, sir." Ash snapped into precise regulation attention. "It was my fault. I felt it was the right time, that the Sentinels were about to move out of optimal firing position. That's no excuse, sir. It won't happen again."
Had Ash sensed something Kurt hadn't? Still, orders had to be followed.
"I'm counting on you to keep your team on task and focused. We clear?" "Absolutely clear, sir," Ash replied. Kurt then moved closer to Blue Team. Fred set a hand on Kurt's shoulder, a rare gesture among Spartans. It spoke volumes in
the language of the Spartan's tightly restrained emotions.
"We thought you were dead," Fred whispered.
Kurt clapped Fred on his shoulder as well. "There's so much to brief you on. The
Sentinels, the SPARTAN-IIIs—everything."
Mendez stepped back into the shadows. "Single-beam linkup established, sir."
"… Which will have to wait a little longer," Kurt told them.
Kurt opened up his TEAMCOM to both Blue and Saber, "We're taking out that Sentinel
pair before the next phase of
this operation," he said. "Ash, take Saber and scout the ravine ahead. Find that tunnel you sacked in a few days ago. Dante will rig it with two satchel charges. We'll lure the Sentinels inside and then, since we can't penetrate their shields, we'll blow the place, and
bury them."
Fred, Linda, and Kelly exchanged looks. Normally Fred gave orders for Blue Team.
Fred gave his team an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
"What about the overwatch?" Fred asked.
"We'll take our best shot at range," Kurt replied. "Hit it with two SPNKr missiles, which
will hopefully weaken its shield enough for Linda to penetrate with a few shots."
"What range?" Linda asked.
"They never get closer than two kilometers," Kurt said.
It wasn't an impossible shot. But given variable winds, a moving target, and trying to
combine fire with missile strikes… it would be highly improbable. Still, Kurt had to try something to get one step ahead of the enemy
Linda considered a moment, then replied, "I have an eighty-three percent accuracy rating at that range."
"Okay," Kurt told Ash, "go. Tom, Lucy, back Saber up, then grab a pair of SPNKr launchers and rendezvous with SPARTAN-058."
His senior NCOs and Ash stood, nodded, and eased out of the hollow.
Kurt got green status light across his display. He shut down the linked single-beam network.
After the SPARTAN-IIIs had left, Kelly said, "Those kids are going to get us killed. They're acting like they have something to prove. We could have taken those Sentinels earlier if they fol-lowed the firing order."
Kurt bristled at her words. Team Saber were his soldiers and
every one of their flaws was his fault. His anger cooled as quickly as it had come. She was right.
In an even voice he told her, "They're not 'kids.' They're Spartans."
Kelly crossed her arms.
Mendez said, "I think, sir, you might want to tell them what we've accomplished here."
Kurt nodded and then explained much of the SPARTAN-III training program, and the creation of Companies Alpha, Beta, and the newly minted Gamma.
"Some of the bioaugmentations are new," Kurt explained. "The SPARTAN-IIIs' normal aggression response has been"—he searched for the right word—"enhanced in situations of extreme stress. It gives them incredible reserves of endurance and makes them near impervious to shock."
"Is that what's making them twitchy?" Kelly groused.
"No one's twitchy," he replied, then fell silent.
Kurt knew he was wrong. Why couldn't he admit it? Was he defensive because he wanted his Spartans to be everything the older Spartans were? Fred, Kelly, and Linda had decades of field experience. As the SPARTAN-III CO he had to stay objective.
"You're right," Kurt said softly. "They are twitchy. And green. What else could they be? Fresh out of boot and throw
n up against these Sentinels." He looked to Kelly, to Fred, and then to Linda. "I need your help to make sure they stay in line… and, if possible, survive this."
Linda and Fred slowly nodded.
"Sure thing," Kelly said, uncrossing her arms.
Dr. Halsey looked up from her computer. "I'd like to discuss this 'aggression enhancement,'" she said. "In fact, I have many questions about the SPARTAN-III program, like where is the rest of Gamma Company? And Beta? Or Alpha?"
"Your questions will have to wait, Doctor," Kurt replied. "We're running out of time. Lord Hood's reinforcements may
not get here. Every engagement with the Sentinels teaches them more. Soon we won't be able to stop them."
"I must insist," Dr. Halsey said. Her words were as placid as smooth water, but her steely eyes bored through Kurt's helmet.
Fred stepped closer to Kurt. "I agree with Kurt, ma'am. And if I might point out, with all due respect, you are not in any position to demand anything in this tactical situation— especially after you kidnapped Kelly, circumvented the chain of command, and left us in the middle of a critical mission on the Gettysburg."
Kelly looked between them, caught in a conflicting web of loyalties.
Dr. Halsey stood. "I have already explained my actions," she said. "And the discovery of this new Forerunner technology should outweigh any so-called breach of military protocol that may have been committed."
A frosty silence filled the hollow.
Dr. Halsey had no official rank, but had always wielded considerable influence over her
Spartans.
That had to end.
Kurt valued her scientific expertise and intellect, but he couldn't have her issuing
confusing or conflicting orders.
"Since you mention protocol…" Kurt deliberately turned his back to her and faced Blue Team. "1 want to clarify our chain of command. I understand Lord Hood gave you command of this mission," he said to Fred. "But I'm in charge of all USNC personnel on Onyx."
Kurt activated his friend-or-foe electronic tag, on extreme low power—just enough so they'd pick it up. On their displays appeared his green color-coded military ID number as well
as the bars and star insignia of a UNSC lieutenant commander.