Oblivion, page 27
“Yes, ma’am,” Cacyuk said. “If that’s what you think is best for the mission.”
“I do.”
Amalea’s decision might look bad on review, but she could always claim that she was acting on Kelly’s advice. She could get away with that, as long as the mission succeeded. And the mission did come first—even ahead of her career, when necessary.
She looked up at the girl. “Satisfied?”
The girl shrugged. “For now.”
“Good enough,” Amalea said. “But I’m going to take your seat. Kelly will need to brief me on the way to battle.”
The girl stared daggers and looked as though she were going to refuse. Then Kelly growled something Amalea could not make out, and the girl rose and started to climb out of the cockpit.
“Deal,” the kid said. “But don’t even think about trying to double-cross me. Kelly’s on our side.”
CHAPTER 17
* * *
* * *
1308 hours, June 7, 2526 (military calendar)
Near UNSC Phyllis Wheatley Landing Site, Crystal Bush Plateau
Mountains of Despair, Planet Netherop, Ephyra System
John would have preferred to wait for Kelly to catch up before he sent Linda off to rescue the Wheatley’s surviving crew—especially with no support other than a bunch of untrained Castoffs. But if there was a platoon of Elites coming up behind them, waiting was out of the question.
So was activating a long-range comm channel to check Kelly’s status. Without an encrypted satellite net in place, the only secure transmissions were low-power, short-range systems like TEAMCOM. John would just have to be patient and trust that no news was good news. It was tough to accept, but had Kelly been taken out, her suit would have sent a static blast over the emergency channel as it self-destructed.
There was nothing to do but carry on, which was why John and Fred were in the lead runner with Samson and his driver, descending a steep ravine into the deep gorge that divided the plateau. When they reached the road, they would part ways with Linda and the Castoffs, then cross the chasm, sneak across four kilometers of plateau, and somehow capture the Lucky Break.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but at least it was simple.
As the mountain runner picked its way down the ravine bed, John realized that the Wheatley’s crew had defended their vessel more ferociously than he had realized. Every fifty meters or so, a human corpse—the victim of a long-range beam rifle attack—lay sprawled among the boulders. Twice they passed ruined Warthogs. The first looked as though it had simply been traveling too fast for the rugged terrain and flipped forward when both front wheels dropped into a hole. The second had been demolished after a particle beam penetrated its armored hydrogen tank.
Few of the casualties appeared to be trained combat soldiers. They all wore ONI work uniforms of one sort or another, but most of their MOS patches indicated scientific and engineering specialties. Only a few were clad in anything that resembled a weapons belt or ammunition pouch, and just one—an overweight security sergeant who looked as though he hadn’t done calisthenics in a year—wore body armor.
That was the price of rushing an operation—it could devolve into a true shitstorm. Proper assets weren’t marshaled. People were pushed into roles beyond their skill set, and minor challenges erupted into major disasters. It was the reason military strategists placed so much importance on momentum—skilled attackers moved when they were ready, and defenders fought whether they were ready or not.
And the fact was, all humanity was now on the defensive. The Covenant was pressing the attack at a thousand points along the edge of the Outer Colonies, driving the UNSC into battle half-prepared, pushing it into desperate operations like this one, forcing mistakes that wasted resources and took lives.
As far as John knew, the Spartans were the only hope of breaking that cycle. They were humanity’s one weapon that had proven superior to Covenant technology, the one force able to carry the attack to the enemy. The trouble was, the aliens now knew that too—and they had the firepower to do something about it.
The closer John drew to the Lucky Break, the more certain he felt that the downed frigate was all a Covenant setup. That was hardly news—Dr. Halsey had said the ship was nothing but a trap in her initial message, and then proceeded to tell him that Blue Team still needed to capture it. And he didn’t disagree. It was worth the risk.
But he did object to being moved around like some living chess piece, being sent into battle on the basis of someone else’s plan. That wasn’t the way to win. The attack at Naraka had succeeded because the people executing it—he and Avery Johnson and Marmon Crowther—were the ones who had crafted the strategy. They had taken stock of their resources and designed the assault around what they could feasibly marshal. They were bold, but they hadn’t attempted anything they lacked the assets to achieve.
If the UNSC expected the Spartans to turn this war around, then the top brass—Admiral Cole and Michael Stanforth and even Dr. Halsey—needed to understand all of that. And the next time Blue Team was assigned a mission, John would not be shy about making sure his superiors were duly notified of it.
Provided he survived Netherop in one piece.
Finally, up ahead, the ravine entered a culvert and passed under the ancient roadway that had been cut into the gorge wall. As the runner approached, John saw that another Warthog lay on its side on the bank leading up to the roadbed, a meter-wide hole in the floor where the driver’s seat had once been. Eight bodies, several of them wearing ship’s security armor and clutching sidearms and assault rifles, lay scattered to both sides of the culvert entrance.
John tapped Samson on the shoulder. “Stop here so we can reconnoiter.”
Samson relayed the order to the mountain runner’s driver with a couple of quick tongue clucks. John and Fred jumped out of the runner on opposite sides. The plan was for Linda and the Castoffs to continue through the gorge in pursuit of the Wheatley’s survivors, while John and Fred would cross to the other side of the gorge and carry on with the mission to capture the Lucky Break.
It was hard to guess how many aliens they would find waiting for them aboard the frigate, but John didn’t see how it could be more than a skeleton crew. The fight in the ravine had been fierce. The enemy couldn’t have won it without a fairly large force, and he knew from the Wheatley’s emergency transmission that the Lucky Break had assigned somewhere between one and two hundred crew members to the task.
As John and Fred started up the road banks, John spoke over TEAMCOM. “Blue Four, there are some weapons here at the culvert that might be worth collecting for your irregulars.” Irregular was military jargon for civilian soldiers—in this cast, the Castoffs whom John had recruited to serve as Linda’s support team. “Just make sure they know what’ll happen if they point one in your direction.”
“Ricochets?”
“That too,” John said. “I think Samson and Roselle are on our side for now. But if they see a chance to get off Netherop without us, their loyalties could easily change.”
“That won’t happen,” Linda said. “I will make sure.”
John reached the top of the bank and peered over the edge. Up the canyon, the roadbed was littered with more bodies, and this time many of them were Elites. There were also ten harpoon-like shafts that had been driven into the cliffside, probably by an artillery piece fired from the opposite side of the gorge. Attached to the anchors were the bottom ends of ten thick zip-lines, which ascended across the chasm up to the far rim.
“Well,” Fred said over TEAMCOM, “at least we know how we’re getting across.”
“Maybe,” John replied. “If they didn’t leave any guards behind.”
“Only one way to find out,” Fred said. He assembled the M41 and hoisted it onto his shoulder. “Ready?”
John flicked the safety off his BR55. “Go ahead. I have you covered.”
Fred checked over his shoulder to be certain no curious Castoffs had crept up behind him, then fired a rocket toward the top of one of the zip lines. The detonation destroyed the upper anchor and brought the cable whipping down into the gorge, where the far end sank below the edge of the Forgotten Highway and vanished from sight.
When no Covenant soldiers returned fire, Fred climbed onto the road and stood in the open, aiming at the top of the next zip line. The canyon remained silent.
John rose and fired a burst along the rim. Still no return fire.
“Huh,” Fred said. “I’m confused.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
John stepped over to the closest dead Elite and used a foot to roll the corpse onto its back. The alien’s armor was even heavier than that of most Elites he had fought, and it had a small hole on the bottom of the backplate where the power pack for a personal energy barrier had self-destructed.
On the alien’s hip, there was a carrier for an energy sword, but, of course, the weapon itself had been taken by the warrior’s companions. John wasn’t sure whether retrieving the swords was a rite of honor or just an attempt to keep the technology out of human hands. He only knew that it was extremely rare to find one on a dead Elite.
“This one looks like heavy infantry,” John said. “I think he might even be some sort of assault specialist.”
“Okay. Now I’m really confused.”
Fred returned the M41 to his magmount, then stepped to a zip line. He jerked it several times to test its security, then hoisted himself up and started to pull himself up the line hand over hand.
John covered him as the Castoffs climbed their three surviving runners out of the ravine and began to organize themselves—six to a vehicle—for the chase through the gorge. If the Lucky Break truly was “Spartan-bait,” he couldn’t understand why the enemy commander had abandoned it to go after the Wheatley’s crew. On the other hand, if the Lucky Break truly was disabled, John couldn’t fathom why the Covenant hadn’t made more of an effort to drive the Castoffs away from it and preserve their best hope of getting off Netherop.
New situation, same old problem. Aliens thought like aliens.
Fred reached the top of the zip line and disappeared over the rim of the cliff. John waited impatiently, listening with half an ear as Linda explained the basic operation of M6E sidearms and MA5B assault rifles to the Castoffs. They did not seem entirely clueless about firearms, so it seemed likely they had at least read about them in the “learning machines” their ancestors had left for them.
After a couple of minutes, Fred’s voice came over TEAMCOM. “All clear.”
“On my way,” John said. “And stay out of sight. I’m starting to think the Lucky Break might actually be a lucky break.”
“If you say so,” Fred said. “But wilco. Being sneaky never hurt anyone.”
“And rig some tripwire wands on the anchors.” John began to securely stow his weapons. “That Covenant special forces unit is still coming, and we don’t need them surprising us.”
“You don’t think Kelly took them out?”
For once, Fred’s question wasn’t in jest. He really did think Kelly could take out thirty Elite special forces troops alone. And she probably could have, had the equipment she needed not been lost during the Night Watch’s disastrous insertion.
“Maybe not all of them,” John said. “We have the rocket launcher, remember?”
“Good point,” Fred said. “Maybe everyone should carry rocket launchers.”
“And give up everything else the team carries?” John asked. “Our sniper rifles and shotguns and submachine guns?”
“Why choose?” Fred asked. “We should just get Dr. Halsey to design a mini-launcher, so everybody can carry their own.”
“Sure.” John grabbed the same zip line Fred had used—since it had already been tested—and began to pull himself up. “I’ll put in a request as soon as we get back.”
Four minutes later, he dropped off the line and knelt on the plateau’s dark stone. Fred tied a short length of thermite-carbon cord around the anchor, then affixed a tripwire wand to the anchor shaft and inserted both ends of the cord into the wand. The slightest pressure on the zip line would cause the anchor to flex, which would trigger the motion sensor and detonate the thermite-carbon cord.
Now the one thing John and Fred didn’t have to worry about was an Elite special forces unit popping up behind them. They turned toward the Lucky Break—still four kilometers distant—and poked their heads above the crystal bushes just high enough to get a fix on the frigate’s shimmering purple shape. The two Spartans set their waypoints and started forward on their hands and knees.
A high combat crawl—performed on the elbows and knees—would be safer, but a lot slower. Given the heat shimmer, the amount of foliage on the plateau, and the distance they had to cover, John thought they could travel this way for the first three kilometers. After that, they would drop into a proper high crawl to avoid being spotted by any lookouts aboard the Lucky Break. But given that there were only the two of them, John thought that he and Fred had an excellent chance of reaching the vessel undetected.
After the first kilometer, John began to feel the strain of stooping, and his skinsuit again started to have trouble shedding heat. He ignored the discomfort and continued forward. The soreness would go away as soon as he dropped into a high crawl, as would the excess heat. Right now they needed to make time, and it had taken them almost fifteen minutes to advance the first kilometer.
At the end of the second kilometer, they spread out, putting a hundred meters between them to avoid being eliminated simultaneously by a single salvo from the ship’s point-defense weapons. But the lookouts—if there were any—didn’t seem to notice their approach, so he and Fred continued forward another kilometer.
By then, forty-five minutes had passed, and John knew the enemy special forces unit had probably reached the Wheatley. The fact that the plateau had not been blasted clear by a Fury detonation suggested that the Covenant commander had been cagey enough not to force the hatches, but that was little comfort. If the alien unit was not attempting to board the salvage ship, then it was closing in on him and Fred—and the Covenant forces would come running once they managed to cross the gorge.
John paused to look back, hoping to see a wisp of rising smoke, or a distant flash of fire, or some other sign that the enemy had triggered Fred’s traps. But the heat shimmer above the foliage was too thick. All he could see were the brown mountains silhouetted against a similarly colored sky, and at the base of the mountains the gray arch of the Wheatley’s bow, trembling through the haze.
He turned back toward the Lucky Break and dropped onto his elbows, then began the long slow crawl across the last kilometer. Every bone in his body ached to stand and run, to race across that last thousand meters so he could slap a breaching charge onto the Covenant frigate’s hull. But so far, there was no reason to take such a risk. They had made it this far unseen, and—
The ground shook, a long gentle shudder that came rolling through the stone in waves. The sheet plants surrounding them wrapped in on themselves, and the crystal bushes shattered into flutter bugs. Then a purple form rose into the air ahead—a long-nosed, disk-shaped vessel with a notch in its dovetailed stern. It rode a cushion of blue radiance across the plateau, then floated over the edge and out into the mirage basin.
The Lucky Break was leaving.
John rose and stared after the departing frigate, hoping to see it drop like a rock, or erupt in flames, or tip sideways and glide into the ground—anything to indicate it had actually been crippled, that it was simply limping away to avoid being boarded. But the vessel just drifted farther out over the basin and vanished from sight. It might not be capable of climbing into orbit, but it was certainly far from disabled.
Fred’s voice came over TEAMCOM. “Jinxed it.”
“Not me,” John said. “I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but you thought it,” Fred said. “So far, so good, right?”
John sighed. “Close enough,” he admitted. “But how would you know what I was thinking, unless . . .”
“Yeah,” Fred said. “Me too.”
John turned toward Fred, and found him looking right back, across a hundred meters of wasteland. “You know what this means, right?”
“Well, it’s not good,” Fred said. “If that ship wasn’t disabled—”
“It was bait,” John said. “Something we already figured on anyway. Damn. I was hoping to have been wrong about this. Set your self-destruction protocol to tamper-safe.”
“You mean you haven’t?”
Actually, he had. John had barely formulated the order before his onboard computer had activated the protocol. Now if someone tried to open his armor after he was rendered helpless—or killed in action—the onboard computer would initiate a reactor overload. Everything within ten meters would be atomized, and the suit would issue one last static blast over the emergency channel.
So far, the only Spartan who had ever had been forced to use the self-destruction protocol was John’s friend Samuel-034—at Chi Ceti IV, on their very first mission wearing Mjolnir. The memory still tore at John inside, like a wound that continued to ache long after it had closed, and he knew it always would. The assault that had compromised Sam’s armor had been John’s idea, and not a day went by when he didn’t go over the operation in his mind, wishing there had been just a little more time to prepare, that he had had just a little more command experience. But he’d finally come to accept that he could have done nothing to change Sam’s fate, that it had just been the nature of combat and Sam’s own quick reflexes that had put him in the path of a plasma bolt meant for John.
That was not much comfort. If John could not control everything that happened in combat, then he had to admit that sometimes his skills didn’t matter, that sometimes he and his team were just at the mercy of random chance and the upper hand of their enemies in the moment. And the burden that such knowledge lifted in guilt was returned in the awareness of his own mortality—and that of his companions. In the end, there was little that John could do but hope Sam would be the last Spartan who ever needed his armor’s self-destruct protocol. Hope, and stay in control of the things that he could.
