Oblivion, page 28
And John was okay with that. As a commander, he had to be.
He turned back toward the gorge. “Better run,” he said. “Whatever that special forces unit has planned, I’d rather deal with it back in the gorge, not out here in the open.”
“And people say you like doing things the hard way.” Fred raised his battle rifle in one hand and extended the other over his shoulder, toward the M41 affixed to its magmount. “Bullets or rockets?”
“Rockets,” John said. “Whatever happens next, let’s be sure they know we came to fight.”
Fred exchanged his BR55 for the rocket launcher, then swapped out the half-used tube set for a new one with two rockets. The two Spartans set off at a near sprint, taking care to stay at least a hundred meters apart and to frequently change their position relative to each other. They were moving across open terrain with every reason to believe an enemy with uncontested air superiority knew exactly where they were. As far as John was concerned, the only reason they wouldn’t get strafed or blasted was that the Covenant planned to take them down some other way.
There was no enemy activity, not in the first kilometer. They covered it in five hot minutes, running zigzag paths with one eye on the sky, ready to dive and roll and come up firing.
And nothing.
The Covenant was letting the Spartans wear themselves out, giving their nerves a chance to work on them, giving Netherop’s heat and dust time to foul their equipment. But the aliens understood Spartans no better than John understood the aliens. Fatigue meant nothing to a Spartan. Fear to a Spartan was just motivation. Spartan equipment could be destroyed if you were quick enough and had a large enough weapon. But the process never broke down—Spartans were built to keep going.
And keep going they would.
At the end of the second kilometer, John was starting to sweat heavily. That was fine with him. The skinsuit would collect it and recycle it, use it to keep him cool and hydrated. He sipped from his hydration tube and continued to run. He kept looking just above the horizon, sweeping the sky for incoming Banshees, and he and Fred were eight hundred meters from the gorge when he finally spotted the Umbras.
There was one cresting a hill, about a kilometer away from the Wheatley, a tiny sliver of shadow so distant and small he would have missed it, had it not been coming fast and raising a long plume of dust. The second Umbra was closer, a purple half-disk the size of an eyeball. It was standing at the base of the Wheatley, its boarding ramps folded open.
John magnified the image and saw a dozen dark-armored forms rippling in the heat. They were spread across the plateau on the far side of the gorge in an evenly spaced line, working their way back toward their transport. Behind them lay the crippled mountain runner that had been destroyed earlier in the Castoffs’ artillery duel with the Lucky Break’s crew. It appeared the aliens were searching for clues, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
Welcome to the club.
Fred’s voice came over TEAMCOM. “Bandits, eleven o’clock!”
John threw himself into a forward roll and spun onto his back, his BR55 ready to fire. When no cannon bolts came stitching across the plateau, he sat up and looked in the direction Fred had indicated.
Ten cruciform shapes—Banshee silhouettes—were circling over the Wheatley and dropping into line for a head-on strafing run. Beneath them, the Elite special forces unit was now running for its Umbra—no doubt alerted to John and Fred’s presence by their air cover. The Banshees were coming fast, but they were still too distant to strafe.
That would change soon.
“Set up for head-on shot?” John asked.
When Fred’s status LED flashed green, John sprang up and ran for the gorge rim, circling around so that he would be directly in front of Fred. The best way to engage a strafing aircraft with a rocket launcher was head-on, because the M41 lacked the range to catch a fast-moving craft from behind. But it took time to shoulder the weapon and align the sights. And alien or human, incoming pilots were usually reluctant to make an easy target of themselves by making a long, straight approach.
The Spartans had developed a technique to remedy that problem.
John grabbed a grenade from his satchel and put his thumb on the priming slider. The enemy squadron crossed the gorge and spread out in a ten-Banshee line, making sure John would not be able to avoid their fire by dodging to one side. He raised his BR55 in one hand and pulled the trigger, more because he knew the muzzle flash would prove a distraction than because of any damage the weapon might do.
Streams of plasma bolts began to fly from the lead Banshee’s nose, blasting up the ground across the plateau. He thumbed the priming slider and hurled the grenade into the air, putting all of his speed and strength into the throw. He doubted he was going to hit anything, but it would give the pilot something else to think about—and if John happened to get lucky, it would make the other pilots think twice when they came in for their next runs.
The grenade was still climbing when John’s HUD flashed green—the onboard computer alerting him that now was his best chance to dive between bolts without taking a hit. He hurled himself forward, drawing his legs up tight and curling himself into a ball, making as small a target as possible. He hit the ground on the brow of his helmet and on his elbows and knees all at once.
He rolled onto his back and saw a chevron-shaped line of Banshees overhead—then Fred’s rocket came streaking toward the middle one. The rest of the squadron split even before the fireball erupted, turning away in two separate directions.
John never saw the results of his grenade launch.
He was already on his feet and zigzagging for the gorge at a full sprint. Fred would be following fifty meters behind, moving perpendicular to John’s vector, as always taking care to avoid offering two targets in a straight line. John looked left, watching as the five Banshees that had split in that direction circled back toward the Wheatley, preparing for another full-squadron run. He knew that Fred, being second in line, would be watching on the right. Blue Team had drilled the procedure a thousand times, because a squad that knew what to do reacted faster, and a squad that reacted faster survived more often.
“They’re sure taking their time,” Fred remarked.
“Probably didn’t like the results on the first pass.” John watched as the four Banshees from Fred’s side joined the five from his side, then fell into single file, circling over the Wheatley—likely while their commander outlined a new attack strategy. “But since they’re giving us the time, maybe a tube switch—”
“On it,” Fred said. “But next time, I’ll need your tubes. I’m down to single loads.”
“Affirmative.”
With no reason to maintain comm silence any longer—the enemy already knew where they were—John activated the emergency channel.
“Blue Leader with Blue Two, requesting any available support at Wheatley landing site,” he said. “We have an enemy squadron, nine Banshees on strafing runs, plus two Umbras on the surface moving to engage. Our location five hundred meters across gorge from Wheatley.”
John was not entirely surprised to hear a chain of sonic booms echoing down from above the clouds. After all, Task Force Pantea had promised to send support as soon as it arrived.
“Pantea Nandao squadron Echo One arriving two minutes,” a female voice said over the emergency channel. “Repeat: minutes two.”
“Acknowledged: minutes two,” John said. “And thanks.”
“Our pleasure, Blue Leader,” Echo One replied. “And sorry about the Banshees. They must have slipped in below the clouds.”
“Appreciate it,” John said. “You’re here now.”
The Banshees pulled out of their circle and started toward the gorge in single file.
Then Amalea Petrov’s voice came over the emergency channel. “Night Watch Actual, Echo One?”
“Go ahead, Actual.”
“Only lead Umbra hostile,” Petrov said. “Repeat: only lead Umbra hostile. Second Umbra captured and friendly. Location fifteen hundred meters from Wheatley, inbound with Blue Three and seventeen marines.”
John could not help smiling inside his helmet. Not only had Kelly survived, she had arranged transport for First Platoon.
“Blue Leader, verify Night Watch Actual?” Echo One requested. It was a standard field precaution. Just two months earlier, the Covenant had used a communications link to attempt a software infiltration of Battle Group X-Ray’s ship AIs during the Second Battle of Harvest, and signals espionage was a favorite trick of the insurrectionists, when they could get their hands on UNSC comm equipment. So the precaution was one that most careful pilots would undertake, given the situation. “Second Umbra friendly?”
“Blue Leader confirms,” John said.
As they crossed the gorge, the Banshees were spreading out into a diamond formation that would saturate the area with cannon fire. Fred might be able to mow another one down with the M41, but the enemy fighters were going to put a plasma strike on every square meter of ground. The good news was that if the two Spartans could avoid being hit more than once, they would probably survive.
“And hurry,” John said. “Please.”
“Mach twelve, baby,” came the reply. “We’ll be gone before you know we’re there.”
And they were. In one breath, the Banshees were starting to spit plasma, chewing up everything between the two Spartans and the gorge rim. Fred launched both rockets, and the enemy formation loosened just a bit as nervous pilots jerked their controls.
Then a dozen holes swirled open in the cloud canopy behind the Covenant squadron, and the Banshees erupted into a diamond-shaped veil of flame and shrapnel. A compression wave banged the air so hard that John felt it in his boot soles, then a cone of friction smoke stretched across the sky. John spun around, looking toward the far end of the curtain, expecting to find a flight of Nandaos waggling their wings as they departed.
Instead, he saw only another set of holes in the clouds.
“Blue Leader, confirming nine kills,” he commed. “Zero Banshee escapes. And thanks for saving our behinds.”
“Our pleasure,” Echo One said. “But that attack run sapped us, and we still have to climb out of this gravity well. We can give you air cover for another twenty minutes, a quarter that if you need us to try for the Umbra.”
“Negative on the Umbra,” John said. He motioned to Fred, and they resumed their run toward the rim of the gorge. “But we really appreciate the air cover. Out.”
“Negative Umbra, air cover for twenty,” Echo One confirmed. “Be advised, there’s something strange going on between the Covenant stealth flotilla and its incoming fleet. They actually exchanged fire, but—”
Petrov’s voice broke in. “Confirm . . . did you just say fire exchange between Covenant elements?”
“Confirm exchange of fire, Covenant fleet firing on Covenant stealth vessels.” Echo One’s tone sounded annoyed. “But that’s not the important part.”
“Continue important part,” Petrov said, as though it were perfectly acceptable for a prowler commander to break into someone else’s transmission. “Hard to believe there’s bigger news than that, but continue.”
“Not bigger,” Echo One snapped. “More important. Situation in orbit deteriorating rapidly. Pantea holding to best of its ability, but outgunned and outnumbered. One way or another, Pantea will be gone inside four hours.”
“Four hours,” Petrov replied. “Acknowledged.”
“Four hours max,” Echo One replied. “Echo One out.”
“Maximum hours four,” John said. “Acknowledged. And thanks again.”
A click sounded as Echo One signed off, but Petrov remained on the channel. “What’s the situation with the Lucky Break, Blue Leader?”
“Not so lucky.” John looked back toward the mirage basin and saw no sign of the enemy frigate—not that he had expected to. Without a decent-sized crew to man it, even a Covenant frigate would have headed for cover at the first sign of the Nandao squadron. “It’s out of reach.”
“It self-destructed?”
“Negative,” John said. He and Fred were only fifty meters from the gorge now, and he could see the enemy Umbra on the opposite side, approaching the ravine that the Castoffs—and the Wheatley’s crew—had used to descend to the Forgotten Highway. “It flew off without warning.”
“And you let it?”
This was too much for Fred. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “We weren’t close enough for the grappling hooks.”
Petrov fell silent, then said, “This is no time for your insubordination, One-Oh-Four.”
“There’s no insubordination, ma’am,” John said. “It’s true. We weren’t close enough for grappling hooks.”
The two Spartans reached the rim of the gorge and dropped to their stomachs, taking care to stay far enough from the zip-line anchors to avoid being hit by flying shafts if the booby traps detonated. Across the way, the enemy Umbra was descending the steep ravine, far more easily than had the Wheatley’s Warthogs—or even the Castoffs’ mountain runners. As ungainly as the transport looked, it simply glided over the boulders and uneven ground on its cushion of force, with its nose riding high.
Now that John knew Kelly and First Platoon were coming up behind the enemy unit, he had no worries about being able to eliminate it. He and Fred would simply disarm the booby-trapped zip lines until the first wave of Elites was halfway across, then rearm them. Their Mjolnir armor might take a few whacks from snapping anchors—but that would be nothing compared to what happened to the Elites.
After a moment, Petrov came back on the channel. “I probably deserved that.”
“Confirmed,” John said.
She pretended not to hear him. “But we need to agree on what comes next. Is there any hope we can still capture the Lucky Break?”
“There’s always hope.”
It was a Spartan thing to say, but as John spoke, a fireball appeared in the sky far behind the Wheatley, plummeting toward an impact somewhere beyond the mountains. The flaming sphere was far too big to be a Nandao or Baselard—it was at least destroyer-size, maybe larger. John hoped larger, because then it would have to be a Covenant vessel instead of UNSC.
“But that hope is getting pretty slim,” John added.
“Then it’s time to call for extraction,” Petrov said. “You heard Echo One. The situation in orbit is deteriorating fast.”
“Understood,” John said. “But not yet. We have personnel to retrieve.”
“Who?”
“You’ve met Lena and her two companions?”
“Affirmative.” Petrov did not sound happy about the experience, and based on his own interactions with the Castoffs, John couldn’t really blame her. “Blue Three brought them along when she picked us up in the Umbra.”
“There are eighteen more Castoffs just like her in the gorge with Linda,” John said. “She went after Wheatley’s crew, and they volunteered to support her.”
“Can’t Spartan-058 extract alone?”
John couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Was Petrov really suggesting that Linda abandon a band of castaways—and the crew of a UNSC salvage vessel—to be slaughtered by the Covenant? That was even more ruthless than the orders Commander Yao had given on Alpha Corvi II, and not something John intended to allow—not as long as they were on the surface and he was still in command of the mission.
As he struggled with the suggestion, down in the gorge the alien Umbra climbed out of the ravine and turned its nose down the Forgotten Highway. John could see the gunner’s oblong helmet swiveling as he ran his gaze up each zip line and peered over the transport’s sides at dead Elites.
But the driver seemed more concerned with the route ahead than with the corpses. He simply steered the Umbra close to the road edge, then carefully eased forward, traveling in the same direction the Wheatley’s crew had gone—as well as Linda and the Castoffs.
“What the hell?” Fred asked over TEAMCOM. “I thought they were after us?”
John was about to suggest that maybe the Covenant had decided it would be a lot easier to capture one Spartan than two—then realized the enemy had no way of knowing where Linda was. No aliens had been in the gorge when John and Fred parted ways with her, and it was unlikely that a reconnaissance pilot could have spotted her riding in a mountain runner located half a kilometer down in a shady, winding gorge.
But the aliens were definitely after something, and whatever that was, it was probably smart to deny it to them.
“Take them out,” John said over TEAMCOM.
He put a BR55 burst into the gunner’s head and saw the energy shield go down a fraction of a second before the helmet shattered. The driver instantly overcame his surprise and accelerated hard, the boarding ramps beneath him already starting to come down so the troops inside could evacuate.
They never had a chance. Fred’s first rocket blew through the near-side ramp and filled the transport bays with flame. The second rocket entered through the same hole, and fire shot from seams John didn’t realize the transport had.
The driver leapt free, flames billowing from the cockpit behind him, and John shot him dead before he hit the roadbed. The Umbra veered off the edge of the highway, then plummeted toward the bottom of the gorge, a long tail of smoke trailing behind it.
“John?” Petrov asked over the emergency channel.
Not being privy to TEAMCOM transmissions, she hadn’t heard the exchange between John and Fred, and probably had no idea what had just happened.
Typical officer.
“Are you going to answer me?” she asked.
“Sorry, ma’am,” John said. “I’m just trying to understand. Are you ordering me to abandon a band of castaways and the crew of an ONI salvage vessel?”
