Oblivion, page 31
“Yes?”
“Move away from the Warthogs,” Linda said. “You are the commander. You should not be so close to such high-priority targets.”
The enemy began to emerge from the gorge and cross the slope toward the Wheatley’s crew. The aliens who tried to race across the bare stone started to slip and slide within the first few steps, and they quickly gave up and returned to the talus-covered road. This made it easier for the LAAG gunners on the Warthogs to cut them down. A dozen Elite bodies simply came apart as the big rounds tore into them.
Then a trio of purple beams shot from the mouth of the gorge, burning three holes through the first LAAG’s feed assembly. Ammunition began to cook off, and before Linda knew it, the gunner and primary weapon were flying from the Warthog in separate directions.
Three beams, so three marksmen. Leaving the SRS99 behind, Linda pulled her MA5C off its magmount, confirmed there was a grenade in the underslung launcher, then raced down the craggy slope to the rim of the gorge and peered over.
The three Elite marksmen were kneeling two hundred meters below, on the far side of the road. Their rifles were of a kind she had not seen before, and they were braced atop stacks of stone, waiting to recharge as the marksmen lined up their shots on the second Warthog. Twenty meters behind them, and half-hidden by the lip of the rim, stood a cluster of Elites in more elaborate armor. Linda was not sure whether they were officers or special warriors, but they were clearly waiting for the first waves of the attack to deplete their quarry’s ammunition.
Even Linda couldn’t kill everyone at once. She fired the grenade down into the midst of the rifle marksmen, then watched as the detonation hurled them forward into their weapon braces. In the next half-second, she put a three-shot burst through the head of each marksman to finish him off, and in the half-second after that, another three-shot burst into each rifle to make certain the weapons could not be used by anyone else.
By then the warriors in the fancy armor had turned in her direction and were firing their plasma rifles up along the gorge wall. Their angle was just as terrible as hers, so no one had a chance of hitting anybody. Still, she needed to keep them guessing. Linda stepped back from the line of fire, reloaded her grenade launcher, grabbed a hand grenade out of her satchel, then fired the 40mm and dropped the M9 into their midst.
Grenades were really not all that deadly in the open—especially against well-armored opponents—but they did attract a target’s attention. After they picked themselves up, the Elites stumbled away from the attack zone and turned to fire up at her. Linda emptied the last of her magazine into the nearest one, then backed away from the gorge to consider her next move.
One more alien warrior down—who knew how many to go? But the second LAAG was still firing, more than three minutes into the battle. The engineers were doing better than she had expected.
Over TEAMCOM, she called, “Blue Four, requesting sitrep any Blue member.”
When the channel remained quiet, she tried one more time, then decided she was still on her own . . . at least for a while. Without a satellite relay, TEAMCOM did not have much range, and the sharp curves and high walls of the meandering gorge would play havoc with its limited signal bounce capabilities. The rest of the team would be coming just as soon as they finished with the Lucky Break. She was sure of that. But it was anyone’s guess as to how long it would take them to the secure the frigate first.
She lobbed another M9 into the gorge just to keep the Elites on their toes, then returned to her old hide and took up the SRS99 again. In theory, her attacks would make the aliens reluctant to continue their advance, since it was now clear that they would be attacked from the rear. They would pause their own assault until someone could flank her and eliminate the threat. That would mean retreating a half kilometer to the cleft she and Roselle had used—the same cleft where Samson and a handful of adolescent Castoffs were waiting to ambush the Covenant with assault rifles and sling-thrown hand grenades.
But aliens weren’t much on human tactical theory. Instead, they just poured out of the gorge en masse, scrambling across the bare stone and the talus-covered road in clusters of two and three that were easy targets for the second Warthog’s LAAG. Linda saw a trio of warriors cut in half as a burst swept across their midsections, and another pair that erupted in a purple spray when the Warthog’s undisciplined gunner lingered too long.
Still the aliens charged. Ten clusters, and in each one, a single Elite carried a long-range carbine, which he shouldered and began to fire as the clusters drew to within five hundred meters of the Warthog.
Linda held her fire. She was a special asset, and her job here was to leverage her attacks by identifying and eliminating the elements crucial to the enemy’s strategy.
So far, she had no idea what that strategy was.
Linda’s motion detector would alert her if anyone approached to within twenty-five meters, but that would still allow a top-notch scout enough room to creep over the rim and launch a flank attack while she was distracted. She made a five-second scan to check and saw . . . nothing.
Whatever the Covenant was up to, it didn’t make sense.
She returned her attention to the battle. Now that the aliens were within carbine range of the second Warthog, they had dropped to their bellies and were continuing to crawl forward. Every couple of seconds, a rifleman would pause to return fire. They were close enough that the carbines’ radioactive rounds were starting to dimple the Warthog’s body. Worse, they were distracting the LAAG gunner—and he still had plenty of ammuntion left. The battle was only five minutes old.
Linda opened fire on the rifleman farthest from her, targeting not his head but the carbine itself. The weapon blew apart in his hands, taking one appendage with it. She did not bother to finish him. He was no longer a threat, and there were plenty of aliens who were.
She moved on to the next rifleman and fired again. This time the carbine broke in two, the butt slamming into the Elite’s helmet so hard it sent him sliding down the slope headfirst. She risked two more attacks, taking out another carbine and a warrior when he lifted his helmet at the last instant, then crawled back from the edge to change the SRS99’s four-round magazine—and to check for any hostiles creeping into position behind her.
Still no sign of any countersniper efforts.
A chain of crackling detonations indicated a change in alien tactics. She moved a few meters upslope and crept onto an outcropping she had identified earlier as an alternate firing position.
The Elites had resumed their charge, this time behind a barrage of plasma grenades. They were still out of range and blasting only bare moutainside. But sheets of flame and smoke were erupting ever closer to the Wheatley survivors, and the LAAG gunner seemed uncertain of how to respond. Sometimes he fired into the flames, and sometimes streamed rounds to either side. No matter what, the Covenant used the concealment to good effect, rushing forward in half a dozen different areas at once.
But the Elites in the elaborate armor remained near the back of the charge, still using those in front to screen their approach, and that was not normal. Elite commanders usually took the lead, inspiring their followers through their own ferocity. Whatever the enemy was planning, the guys in the elaborate armor were the key.
Linda identified eight targets, two groups of three and one group of two, who seemed to be hanging back. Seeing no clear way to determine who was the most important, she put a round through the middle figure of the rearmost trio.
The warrior pitched forward at an angle, tripping the companion on his downhill side, and the pair began a swift slide down a bare face of rock. The Elite on the uphill side stopped and turned to extend a hand toward the one who had stumbled over the casualty. The uphill alien was unusually large, with a stocky frame and a generator pack on his backplate, so Linda assumed he was probably just a bodyguard for one of the others.
Linda quickly moved to the next trio. Taking a cue from the bodyguard’s automatic reach in the first group, she shot the Elite on the second group’s downhill side. As his chest erupted in a purple spray, his companions’ only reaction was to break into an evasive dodge and continue their charge.
So, not too important.
She moved to the last group on her list of targets, the pair running together, close behind the main body of warriors. She blew a hole through both of their torsos in a pair of quick shots, then backed away from the outcropping’s edge to avoid being targeted while reloading. It was probably an unnecessary precaution, given the Covenant’s unwavering focus on their charge, but . . . better safe than dead.
Linda had barely slipped the fresh magazine into the receiver when the second Warthog’s LAAG finally stopped firing. Seven minutes into the battle—he had lasted a lot longer than she expected. She rolled into the third firing position she had selected—a small hollow at the base of the outcropping she had just been atop—then crept forward until she had a clear view down onto the slope.
The second Warthog was in flames, and now the Elites were charging the Wheatley’s survivors at a full sprint. The aliens were still two hundred meters away, but the crew’s assault rifles began to rattle off panicked, magazine-emptying bursts that managed to drop only three enemies.
The time for tactical leverage was gone. Linda traded the SRS99 for her MA5C and leaped out onto the smooth shale. Her boots immediately slipped out from beneath her, but she spun onto her butt, picked up her feet, and began to descend the steep slope in a half-controlled slide. All she really needed to worry about was catching on something and launching herself into a tumble, and in her Mjolnir, even that would not be disastrous.
Leaning back and controlling her descent with her elbows, she watched the battle with growing concern. The aliens had only closed to within a hundred meters, and already the Wheatley’s assault weapon fire was dropping off due to ammunition depletion.
Linda was five meters from the road when her motion tracker showed a bunch of FRIEND designators approaching fast. She turned to find a pair of Castoff mountain runners scurrying across the talus, with Samson standing behind the microwave weapon in the lead vehicle. There were six adolescent Castoffs kneeling in the passenger compartment behind him, armed with assault rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns—all pale with fear, but brows furrowed in determination. Roselle was not among them.
Linda checked the next vehicle—and did not see Roselle in that one either. She was glad. Whatever Samson thought he was doing was a bad idea, and the Castoffs were going to need someone left alive to lead them. She reached behind her and scratched her fingers against the stone until she began to slow, then planted her heels and launched herself on an interception trajectory.
“Incoming!” she yelled. “Make a hole!”
The Castoffs swung their heads around, then dived for the corners of the passenger compartment as Linda began the downward leg of her arc. She tucked and spun into a forward flip, then landed on the deck in a lunge position, trying to absorb the impact in the bend of her forward leg.
Linda had no trouble keeping her balance, but the runner tipped onto its downhill legs and started to go over—until she hurled herself against the uphill side and rocked it back down.
Samson looked back over his shoulder, his brow arched and his mouth hanging. “Next time, just ask. We’ll stop.”
Linda ignored the complaint. “What are you doing here?”
“The aliens did not come to the ambush,” Samson said. “So we’re bringing the ambush to the aliens.”
“That is not how ambushes work.”
“You want us to go back?” Samson looked back toward the gorge. “I don’t think it will work. The aliens don’t seem to like your plan.”
“No. They seem to have a different plan. Whatever it is.” Linda tried again to raise John on TEAMCOM, but there was still too much signal interference. She sighed and said, “We will keep going.”
“I agree.” Samson turned to the driver, a broad-cheeked woman with a long mane of dusty red hair, and said, “Keep going.”
The driver had not shown the slightest sign of slowing down.
Linda stood. “What would you have done if I said to turn around?”
Samson flashed a broken-toothed grin. “Keep going,” he said. “We talked about it, and we decided we are going to help you save your friends. There will be no excuse for you to go back on your word.”
“We won’t.”
“So you say.” Samson looked forward again. “But you are UNSC.”
Linda shook her head in exasperation. “Just do as I order,” she said, pointing skyward, “and I’ll try to get you up there alive.”
Samson nodded. “I will hold you to that. And there is something you should know.” He jerked his chin behind them. “We saw your friends rounding a bend in a tall floating thing. It’s five hundred breaths behind us.”
“You’re sure it was my friends?” Linda asked. Five hundred breaths converted to a little over half an hour—not soon enough to swing the battle—and “tall floating thing” sounded like a Covenant troop carrier. “I have been trying to contact them and gotten nothing.”
“I am sure,” Samson said. “They were too far back to signal, but the driver’s helmet didn’t look long like one of the aliens’. It was more like yours and John’s, except that it had a big round face.”
“Okay,” Linda said. He was definitely referring to Kelly’s helmet. “It’s good to know somebody will be here to pick up the pieces.”
She stepped into the front of the runner and saw the nearest clusters of aliens about three hundred meters ahead. The most distant clusters were already approaching the switchback and stepping off the road, pouring plasma bolts down the slope toward the Wheatley’s crew, who lay sheltered in their hastily dug belly scrapes. There wasn’t a lot of return fire coming from the humans.
“How far can you sling those grenades I gave you?”
“Not far,” Samson said. “Maybe half this distance.”
“Okay, when we close to a third of this distance, launch everything you have,” Linda said. “Don’t wait for my order.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Firing from a moving vehicle was going to be difficult, but Linda found the Elite in the ornate armor who’d stumbled over her earlier kill, then set the targeting reticle in the center of his back.
The reticle kept bouncing, and not in a predictable pattern. The runner’s spiderlike legs kept slipping in the talus, and its sporadic gait made a poor firing platform.
She fired a three-round burst and saw a spray of stone chips rise two paces ahead of her target.
The Elite reacted instantly, diving headlong down the slope and starting an uncontrolled slide toward the smoking wreckage of a Warthog. Linda could never hit him now, so she shifted fire to the huge warrior who had been running alongside him. When a fountain of stone chips shot up beside him, he and several other aliens began to return fire over their shoulders. But they were shooting on the run with plasma weapons that lacked enough range and did not pose much of a threat . . . yet.
She fired again, emptying her magazine and watching her rounds skip off his torso as his heavy energy shield deflected her attack. Too bad. If not for the extra protection, she might have taken him down.
As she changed her magazine and lined up her next shot, a half dozen grenades dropped into the midst of the Covenant advance and detonated—hurling her target to the ground and taking his shields down. She managed to hold her attack until he came to a rest, then put three rounds through his flank, just under the rib cage.
Somehow, even mortally wounded, he managed to push himself up and turn toward her. Linda put another long burst into him, and he finally dropped and stopped moving.
The other Elites in the cadre were in full melee mode now, rushing the belly scrapes with little fear of being shot by their ammo-depleted quarry. Linda did a quick count and thought there might be twenty to thirty aliens still fighting. Taking them down would be a challenge, since they seemed determined to battle to the death. But she would be attacking from behind, so she could dispatch ten before the others realized what was happening. She just hoped the cadre didn’t have any more warriors lurking around in active camouflage.
Or utilizing those heavy energy shields.
No more thinking. She was starting to sound like Dkani. Linda grabbed an M7 from a Castoff and checked to be sure it was fully loaded, then braced a foot on the edge of the runner.
“Take your runners around the switchback,” she ordered Samson. “And shoot over the aliens’ heads. Not into the fight. Over their heads.”
“What good will that do?”
“You won’t kill me, to start,” Linda said. “And if you want John to keep his word . . .”
“Okay, then,” Samson said.
Linda was already jumping. She landed just beneath the edge of the road, where the talus was still thick, so she didn’t tumble to the ground. She started downslope, using the MA5C to fire three-round bursts into the aliens’ backs, putting down four Elites in six tries. It felt too easy—like the Covenant didn’t even care they were being mowed down from behind.
She killed another one, and then she was in the middle of the Wheatley survivors, where the aliens were firing down into the belly scrapes and slashing around with energy swords. Linda went to work with the M7, jamming the barrel down on an Elite clavicle, then against a neck, then firing six-round bursts, dropping three more warriors before a squad of five looked up from the carnage they were dealing.
Finally, they seemed to realize they were the ones in trouble.
The squad was arranged in a semicircle around three belly scrapes, where two pudgy men wearing engineering badges were trying to pull a slender Elite in ornate armor off a gray-haired woman. The Elite was kneeling astride her, trying to free his arms to attack, while his four companions stood around him facing outward, using their plasma rifles to cut down anyone attempting to fire into the melee. When they saw Linda coming in their direction, the four aliens stepped around and closed ranks, putting themselves between her and their companion, and swung their plasma rifles around.
