Oblivion, page 10
“That’s possible, I guess.”
“More than possible. It’s the only explanation for jumping the Pelican before entry.” Petrov paused, locking her gaze on John’s faceplate, then said, “Think, John. If the enemy is setting a trap to kill Spartans, why spring it before they know where the Spartans are?”
She had a point. Attacking the Pelican prior to its insertion run suggested the aliens were trying to prevent it from reaching the downed frigate—not that they had a special forces cohort waiting for it on the surface, hoping to ambush the presumed occupants.
“Okay, maybe they’re not trying to ambush Spartans,” John said. He released the bulkhead grab bar and began to float free again. “Maybe they’re after something else.”
“A salvage ship and a few scientists?” Petrov asked. “Because so far, that’s all they’ve allowed to reach the surface.”
“I don’t know,” John admitted. Covenant technology was so superior that risking the capture of an intact frigate to snatch a few human scientists made no sense. But the situation still smelled off to him—he just didn’t trust the coincidences. “And that’s the problem. We have no idea how the Covenant thinks, because we don’t know their capabilities.”
“Isn’t that what we’re here to change, Spartan?”
“Yes, ma’am,” John said. “But if we want to capture the Lucky Break, we have to use sound tactics. That’s the only thing we have going for us.”
Petrov studied him a moment, then asked, “What are you afraid of, John?”
“Mission failure,” John said at once. If she was trying to put him off-balance with the question, it was a mistake. “The Mesranis improvised at Sarpesi Ridge, and the xenotime mine fell to the Covenant. Now Blue Force will insert onto a hostile environment at half strength—”
“Because I lost a Pelican,” Petrov finished. Even packed tight, a Pelican dropship had a maximum capacity of just twenty soldiers. And Blue Force—the name they had selected for the combined unit of Blue Team and First Platoon—had a total strength of thirty-five. “Is that what you’re thinking, Spartan?”
“The slash-g can’t make two runs,” John said. The slash-g was shorthand for the D75-TC/g Pelican, with a ground-support package consisting of two wing-mounted miniguns and a pair of belly-mounted cannon turrets. “Even if we can get by without the air cover.”
Petrov did not bother arguing the point. Dropships rarely survived two runs, because by the time they unloaded, climbed back into orbit, and reloaded, the enemy interceptors were on station and waiting for them.
“I see,” Petrov said. “After a year of prowler school and three years of command, do you think I might have thought of that before I launched the recon mission?”
“Did you?”
Petrov rolled her eyes into the tops of their sockets. “Move Blue Force into the drop bay, Master Chief. Full-pressure dress and safety slings—we may be going in hot.”
“We’re inserting aboard the Night Watch?” John was just starting to realize how committed Petrov was to capturing the Lucky Break—and how far ahead of him she was thinking. She had launched the recon mission for the sole purpose of ascertaining whether a dropship would get jumped. Now that it had, she felt safe in assuming the Covenant was actually trying to keep boarding forces away from the downed frigate, rather than using it to lay an ambush.
“I hope you have a backup extraction plan,” John said. Given the stakes, the only real quarrel he had with Petrov’s gambit was her keeping him in the dark—that, and what was clearly the casual sacrifice of a slash-r Pelican crew. “A lot of things can go wrong down there.”
Petrov looked back to her status display. “Now, Master Chief,” she said. “We may not know how the Covenant thinks, but we do know they’re not stupid. Let’s assume they’re already looking for the Night Watch.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
John relayed the order over the prowler intercom, then went aft to join Blue Force in the drop bay. First Platoon was already in full EVA battle dress—basically torso armor over seven-layer vacuum suits, with enclosed CH252 helmets and airtight gloves and boots. Lieutenant Cacyuk was lining them up by squad, making sure they were securely webbed into their quick-release stability slings, and that their eight-point arresting straps were secured to the recessed D-rings in the deck and overhead. A short, black-haired woman who would barely stand as high as John’s breastbone in a gravity environment, Sesi Cacyuk had a round face with flat, broad cheeks and honey-colored eyes. When she saw John working his way aft, she pushed away from the wide-eyed private she had been coaching in safe sling-rigging and floated over to intercept him.
“What’s the plan, Master Chief?”
“There isn’t one yet. Commander Petrov is just trying to get us to the target before the enemy can stop us. After that, I suspect the plan will be to move fast and hit hard.”
Cacyuk furrowed her brow. “Will that work?”
“Of course, ma’am,” John said. “We’ll make it work.”
“Very well, Master Chief.” Cacyuk looked reassured, if not quite confident. “Let me know what you need from First Platoon.”
“I will,” John said. Cacyuk was ten years older than John and, as a commissioned officer, technically his superior. But nobody had any illusions about who would be leading the mission once they were on the ground. Admiral Cole’s orders had made it clear that First Platoon would be supporting the Spartans, and that meant John was in charge. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
John pulled himself aft toward the jump hatch, where the rest of Blue Team was waiting. A safety sling did not exist that would hold four-hundred-and-fifty kilograms of Mjolnir-armored Spartan when a Razor-class prowler began to evade enemy fire, so Blue Team would simply kneel on the deck, holding on to a set of recessed tie-down bars designed to secure a Warthog LRV. Their force-multiplied grasps were stronger than the nylon arresting straps holding the marines in place; if anyone broke free and started to tumble around the drop bay, it would not be a Spartan.
An alert chime sounded, and a female voice came over the prowler intercom. “All hands, ready for combat insertion. Repeat: ready for combat insertion.”
She clicked off, and a gentle pulse shook the drop bay as a set of hangar doors opened on the deck above. The overhead gave a soft rumble as the prowler’s last Pelican ignited its hybrid fusion drives and departed. John and Petrov had not discussed the matter, but since Blue Force was inserting aboard the Night Watch, he knew the D75-TC/g would be carrying only its three-person crew—a solid hint that Petrov did not expect it to survive insertion. A heartbeat later, John’s center-of-mass rose as the prowler decelerated and dropped out of orbit.
Linda-058 tipped her helmet back, looking up and aft in the presumed direction of the departed Pelican, and spoke over TEAMCOM. “It is too early.” She turned her goggle-eyed faceplate back to John. “She is launching a decoy?”
“That’s my guess,” John said. “It’s how she used the first one.”
“Then we have no close air support.” Linda shook her helmet from side to side. “I hope this commander knows what she is doing.”
“She knows.” John paused. He had told Lieutenant Cacyuk what he knew about Petrov’s intentions, just not how he felt about them. But his own team deserved more. If he was worried, they should know. “She just hasn’t told me. I think the commander is improvising.”
“That’s a relief,” Fred instantly said. “I was worried she might have something in mind.”
“Plans can be overrated,” Kelly said. “Especially when there’s no time to develop one.”
John turned toward her and cocked his helmet. “You’re not worried about striking blind like this?”
“Oh, I’m worried . . . one might even say troubled. But what’s the alternative? Wait for more Covenant ships to arrive?”
“Good point,” John said. As the leader not only of Blue Team but of the entire Spartan force, he had been admonished many times never to unnecessarily risk one of his subordinates. With only thirty-three Spartans in the entire UNSC, they were irreplaceable assets who took a decade to train and cost as much as a destroyer to equip. “But striking blind is the kind of thing that can get a whole team killed.”
“And it’s worth the gamble,” Kelly said. “If ever there was a time to risk everything, it’s now.”
John dipped his helmet to acknowledge the point. Capturing the Lucky Break was the kind of mission that could make the difference between losing the war in a year or holding out to win it in ten. But he needed to be sure everyone was thinking the same thing. If part of the team was in total-commitment mode and part of it was trying to preserve assets . . . well, that could be a disaster. He turned to Fred.
Normally John would have turned up his palms to indicate he was asking for an opinion. But with the Night Watch beginning to buck and shake on its steep insertion, he needed both hands on the tie-down bars to keep himself on the deck. Instead, he flashed a green status LED inside Fred’s helmet.
“What? We’re taking votes now?” Fred asked. “I’m not sure that was the Mesrani Militia’s best idea.”
“Not a vote,” John said. “I just want to know your thinking.”
“I don’t think Commander Crazy cares about my thinking.” Fred glanced toward the overhead, then shrugged. “But she’s not wrong. If we don’t move fast, we might not be able to move at all.”
John turned to Linda next, but before he could flash the status LED, she said, “If I had different thoughts, I would tell them to you.”
“Understood. Just so we’re clear,” John said. “And the Commander Crazy stuff? Let’s keep that between us.”
A trio of status LEDs winked green, then John’s arms jerked hard to starboard as the Night Watch made a sharp course correction. A chorus of grunts and a few cries of surprise rose from the marines hanging in their webs behind him. He had barely drifted back to center when the deck rose up beneath him so hard his Mjolnir’s knee cops rang like bells.
“Evasive action,” Kelly said, over her external voicemitter. “That’s never a good sign.”
“Would have been better off in drop pods,” Fred said. “At least we’d have been smaller targets.”
“Our fault.” Cacyuk’s emitter-filtered voice came from behind Kelly. John glanced over his shoulder and saw that the lieutenant was at the far end of the first row of marines, hanging in her safety sling with only her eyes and cheeks showing through the faceplate of her pressure mask. “First Platoon’s not pod-rated. We’re regular assault.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” John said. Cacyuk’s explanation was a reminder of both the mission’s improvised nature and the relative inexperience of her unit. Instead of the elite ODST units that Spartans usually worked with, First Platoon was just a bunch of regular soldiers—well trained in the basics, but probably inexperienced and certainly unfamiliar with special tactics. “It’s hard to make a pinpoint drop through a high-energy atmosphere like Netherop’s. Hit just one vortex, and we’d spend the entire mission trying to find each other.”
John’s arms strained as the Night Watch slipped sideways, then he went weightless again as she dived hard. He wanted to comm the flight deck and ask about their situation, but there were few moves more boneheaded than distracting a flight crew while it was in the middle of saving a ship.
John slammed down on his flank and found himself struggling to hold the recessed tie-downs he was using as anchors. The sound of retching and vomiting arose behind him, and as his own inner ears began to protest, he realized the prowler had entered a violent gyre. It was going to be fun trying to shoot straight if they found themselves disembarked into a hot LZ.
The thunk and ping of impacting fuel rod rounds and plasma bolts began to echo through the hull of the Night Watch. She answered the attacks with four chugging autocannons, and the interior of the drop bay began to sound like the inside of a thunderstorm. John slid across the deck and rolled onto the opposite flank as the prowler reversed her roll, and more retching sounded behind him.
The thunking and pinging grew even steadier and louder as the enemy closed. The chugging of the prowler’s autocannons dwindled from constant to rhythmic as one of the turrets went down. Petrov’s voice sounded in John’s helmet speakers, coming over the ship’s intercom channel:
“Prepare for running dump. Two minutes to LZ.”
Two minutes was about twenty-five hundred kilometers at full insertion speed. But the Night Watch could not just open the jump hatch and expect Blue Force to leap out and survive. The prowler would have to decelerate hard—and that meant it would need to reverse orientation so it could use its fusion drives. There was no need to tell Blue Team what to do. They were already swinging around, bracing their feet against the jump hatch and tightening their grasp on the tie-down bars. Now they were facing Lieutenant Cacyuk and her platoon, who were hanging in their safety slings like bugs in a spiderweb, their eyes showing round and bright behind their pressure-mask faceplates.
They were probably scared because they’d never inserted under fighter attack. John knew they’d do fine once they got their boots on the ground. Marines always did.
“If you’ve lifted your mask to vomit, check your pressure seal,” John said. As long as their chins were back in their chin-cups, the seals would automatically be good. But checking the seals gave them something to think about other than getting shot down. “We might be jumping into smoke or fumes, and you don’t want that inside your mask.”
To a soldier, the marines covered their outlet valves and began to exhale into their masks.
Then the entire Night Watch shuddered beneath the launch of her Archer missiles. The Covenant strikes fell silent as her pursuers either broke off or were destroyed. A couple of moments later, after the debris had been given a chance to clear, the rumble of firing fusion drives shook the bay.
The prowler lurched as if she had backed into a stone wall, and John felt his legs taking four thousand kilograms of weight under the vessel’s nine-g deceleration. The marines bulged toward him in their safety slings, their eyes bugging and their skin pouching toward their faceplates, their gear pulling little cones into their pressure suits.
Petrov’s voice came over the intercom again. “One minute to LZ.” Translation: about 750 kilometers. “We have another Banshee squadron coming in, but the Wheatley is putting up her Baselards to cover your drop.”
The marines’ faces were too g-stretched to show fear, but with the rumble of the fusion drives filling the jump bay and word that their prowler would soon be under attack again, John knew they would be anxious. Terrified, maybe. He opened a Blue Force comm channel and began to speak to them over their helmet speakers.
“Ten seconds before drop, the pilot will double our deceleration. You’ll feel like your heart is pulling out of your chest. Some of you may black out. But the Banshees will overshoot us and be dozens of kilometers away when we exit the vessel.”
John paused, making sure they were all listening to him instead of all of the enemy fire starting to reverberate through the hull again.
“Three seconds before the jump hatch opens, the pilot will cut the fusion drives and spin us around. The prowler will be moving forward at approximately fifty kilometers per hour, and the drop bay will be facing away from the direction of travel. You’ll take your primary weapon in one hand and hold your free hand over your safety-sling quick-release.”
Most of First Platoon probably knew this last part as well as John did—“running disembarks” were a standard skill in every marine’s basic training. But he doubted many of them had ever done it in full combat conditions, under enemy attack, after a stomach-churning insertion run. He hoped a few words of reminder might help them focus.
“When the jump hatch opens, a drag ramp will extend from the rear of the drop bay. You marines in the first row will quick-release out of your safety slings and follow the Spartans down the drag ramp. You’ll jump off the bottom edge at a full sprint, then keep running until your feet touch the ground and your momentum knocks—”
A tremendous bang sounded somewhere forward, and John saw dozens of bulging eyeballs strain to look toward the sound.
“Pay attention! There’s nothing you can do about anything up there.” All eyes returned to John. “Each row of marines will quick-release as soon as the row ahead—”
Another bang, this one louder and sharper. Followed instantly by three booms, each deeper than the last. The tie-down bars vibrated in John’s hands. The fusion drives rumbled louder, and the prowler decelerated even harder, doubling and then tripling the force against John’s legs. Arresting straps began to pop, marines screaming freely into their masks.
John wondered what their chances were of making the LZ. His onboard computer did not even try to develop an estimate, instead putting a simple countdown on his HUD: 27 SECONDS, 99 KILOMETERS TO LZ.
A male voice came over the prowler’s intercom channel, straining against the g-force: “Brace . . . bra . . . ce . . . br . . . a . . . ce!”
“How in the . . . hell do . . . we . . . brace . . . ev . . . en . . . moooore?” Fred asked.
The countdown on John’s HUD read 24 SECONDS, 94 KILOMETERS TO LZ.
The fusion drives fell silent, leaving only the sound of chugging autocannons and pinging plasma strikes to fill the bay. The marines sagged back into their safety slings, and the weight on John’s legs returned to almost normal and shifted toward his side as the Night Watch reversed orientation.
He and the other Spartans tried to swing their legs around so they were facing the jump hatch again, but the prowler responded slowly. She seemed to be sliding sideways through the air, bucking and shuddering beneath each cannon round, occasionally dipping into a bank. She was losing altitude so fast that John’s knees left the deck and he was stuck hanging in the air, facing port.
The LZ countdown reached 14 seconds, 73 kilometers.
One second later, a deafening clang echoed through the compartment. The starboard bulkhead folded inward, spraying rivets and shards of titanium ship armor across the bay like shrapnel, puncturing pressure suits and slashing safety slings. Half a dozen marines slammed into the overhead shrieking and spurting blood, secured by only their upper arresting straps.
