Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (22 page)

"Set course and execute transition," Voro told him. "Salia system, outpost world Joyous Exultation."

The UNSC prowler
Dusk
hovered in the shadow zone of the fourth planet's moon.

It was so quiet on the bridge Commander Lash heard his own breathing and heartbeat. Every screen showed the battle raging among the Covenant forces. Music from the last act of
Der Ring des Nihelungen
played in his mind— Gotterdammerung, Ragnarok, Armageddon… the end of the entire goddammed universe. "Confirm all recorders on high-def capture mode," Lash said. Durruno double-checked her station. "Confirmed, sir," she whispered. "Sir," Lieutenant Yang said, "as ordered, capacitors charged, and all secure to enter Slipspace on vector tango." Lash and Lieutenant Commander Waters stared at the viewscreens, watching the Covenant fleet destroy itself. "Whatever the hell is happening out there," Waters remarked, "at least they haven't spotted us." "Sir," Yang asked, "what
do
you think is happening?" "There's only one thing it could be," Lash answered. "A Covenant civil war."

SECTION V

BLUE TEAM

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE
1550 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR] \ SOL SYSTEM, PLANET EARTH \ CARIBBEAN OCEAN, NEAR CUBAN COAST

Blue Team—SPARTANS-104, -058, and -043—sat on the blood tray of the Pelican as it roared over the ocean, skimming a few meters over the water. The aft hatch was lowered, jammed open because a plasma shot had melted the hydraulics. Fred watched the jets chum the water behind them, happy to be
above
the water instead of
under
it.

In the last two weeks Blue Team had been deployed on numerous zero-gee ops to repel the Covenant ships in orbit over the Earth. They had then been dispatched to Mount Erebus in the Antartic where they neutralized a Covenant excavation with a HAVOK tactical nuke. They had then redeployed off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula for a swim. Covenant forces had been searching the seafloor for something. What precisely—a holy relic, a geological sample—no one knew, and it didn't matter. What mat-lered was when they got what they wanted, the Covenant then his-lorically glassed the planet to remove any human "infestation."

Blue Team had stopped both operations.

Fred looked over the ocean and wondered how long they could keep the Covenant at bay in space. His gaze dropped to the corrugated floor of the Pelican. It had lived up to its nickname "blood tray"… stained with splashes of congealed dark red. Good soldiers had died today.

On his heads-up display the TACMAP showed the edge of

Cuba ahead. Fred exhaled and cleared his mind. They were close to their third target: the Centennial Orbital Elevator.

There had been scattered reports that the Covenant had invaded the facility… before all contact with COE Control had been lost.

Fred stood and stretched. Linda and Will rose as well, sensing their brief downtime was over.

Linda opened one of the crates they had obtained from Base Segundo Terra near Mexico City. Within was a new SRS99C sniper rifle. She dissembled it, cleaned each part, applied graphite lubricant, and reassembled the gun with mechanical precision. She then examined the Oracle N-variant scope that had accompanied the rifle, and made microadjustments with a fine set of screwdrivers.

William tore into the box of ammunition and loaded magazines, sorting them by frag and AP types.

Fred opened an "egg carrier" box and divided up fragmentation and concussion grenades into three satchels.

He found an ONI datapad and turned it on. It had new Covenant-English translation matrices and the latest ONI intrusion and counterintrusion software. Updates courtesy of Cor-tana. He tossed it into his bag.

In the cockpit. Sergeant Laura "Smokes" Tanner flew, while her Crew Chief, Corporal Jim Higgins, fiddled with the COM, trying to filter though the reports of the action in space and on the ground. Tanner popped a black bubble and continued to chew the contraband tobacco gum so popular with NCO fliers.

"So then," Tanner said to Higgins,
"In Amber Clad
goes after the damned Covenant battleship as it did an in-atmosphere Slipspace jump! Flattened New Mombassa. I don't know what those split-chinned freaks were after, but they sure didn't stick around after they found it—that's all I heard. CENTCOM channels are dropping off line. That can't be good."

Fred looked to Linda and Will.

Linda made a short lateral cut with her hand, the "stay cool" gesture.

They couldn't worry about the larger strategic picture. They had to stay focused on their part. Secure the orbital elevator, and win this war one battle at a time.

Fred spied the Cuban coast ahead: surf and white sands.

The Pelican screamed over jungle tangle. Fifty kilometers in the distance a line stretched from ground to clouds: the UNSC Centennial Orbital Elevator, or as the locals called it:
Tallo Negro del Maiz,
the "stalk of black corn."

It was two hundred years old, antiquated but one of the few surviving OEs capable of heavy lifting on Earth. In the last two weeks, nuclear devices slated for conversion to peaceful purposes had been transported to Cuba. Recent actions had depleted the UNSC nuclear stockpile, and these older, low-yield bombs were all they had left.

Sergeant Tanner continued, "So then the Covenant fleet really starts to tear into the orbital defenses. It's getting ugly up there. Major skirmishes with the Second, Seventh, and Sixteenth Fleets."

"… Just as long as the plasma doesn't start dropping," Hig-gins replied.

Tanner stopped chewing her gum. "Multiple silhouettes ahead. Banshee fliers. Whoa—" She craned her head, looking up.

Fred moved to the cockpit and followed her gaze. Up the orbital elevator, past a whisper haze of clouds, a pair of dots— each a kilometer-and-a-half-long Covenant ship—orbited.

"What the hell are they doing up there?" Tanner whispered.

Covenant orbital support complicated this mission. Ground forces might have aerial support, heavy armor, or artillery

But Covenant didn't need the stalk to transport an invasion force. They'd just land their ships or use grav beams. Why were

they here? Blue Team would have to move in closer before he could discern their motives.

Fred studied the radar images. "There's a hole in the Banshee patrol pattern." He tapped the far edge of the screen. "Put us down here. We'll go in by foot."

"Your call," Tanner said dubiously. She pushed the throttle and the Pelican accelerated, dropping so it now decapitated palm trees.

"Make ready for hot drop, Spartans." She spun the Pelican around and sank into the jungle. "Call if you need a lift. Blue Team. Good hunting."

Fred, Linda, and Will grabbed their gear and jumped out the back, six meters to the sandy ground.

The Pelican roared away.

Fred pointed northeast and they moved silently though the tropical brush, and entered the shadow of
Tallo Negro del Maiz.

A half kilometer from the elevator complex, the jungle had been cleared and replaced by concrete, asphalt, and warehouses. Towering freight container cranes stood instead of coconut trees.

Fred heard the dull pounding steps of a Covenant Scarab attack platform. He spotted the lumbering behemoth as it crashed through a warehouse, tearing steel walls like tissue paper.

"Trouble," he muttered over TEAMCOM.

"Opportunity," Will countered.

Linda kept her comments to herself and methodically wrapped the barrel of her new sniper rifle with brown and green rags. She lay in the scrub, powered on her Oracle scope, and sighted down its length.

"UNSC personnel down," she reported. "Thermals cold. All dead. Making out six—no, a dozen Covenant moving in groups of four… carrying cargo pods. Not Elites. Brutes."

Fred paused, remembering the gorillalike creatures from their op on
Unyielding Hierophant.
A single Brute had wrestled

John in his MJOLNIR armor… and almost won. Not as bad as facing Covenant Hunters, but Hunters only came two at a time.

"Where are they going?" Fred asked.

She shifted her sight. "Elevator. They've got an ascent car half full."

"Switch to neutron detector," Fred suggested.

Linda twisted a dial on the Oracle scope. "Cargo pods are hot," she confirmed.

"Nukes?" Will said. "Covenant don't use nukes. They have an edict about using 'heretic' weapons."

He was right. Fred had seen Elites, their weapons depleted of charge, die rather than touch fully loaded UNSC assault rifles at their feet.

But Brutes weren't Elites.

"Estimate ten minutes before that ascent car is loaded to capacity," Linda said.

Fred had to think fast, or failing that, just act. No, he resisted that impulse. Better to figure this out, at least tactically, before he had his team rush in.

"We could take a dozen Brutes," Will said. "Linda could snipe them. We could move in and engage one at a time."

"Too slow," Fred told him. "And they'd send for reinforcements. The ascent car could be on its way up the stalk before we could get to it."

Linda moved her aim from side to side. "Got a parking lot. Warthogs, trucks, APCs… a gasoline tanker truck."

Fred and Will exchanged a glance.

"It's an old-school rebel," Fred murmured, "but I like it. Linda, make a hole. Will, you introduce that tanker to the Scarab. I'll secure the ascent car. You two meet me after the bang." He took a deep breath, recalling how tough these monsters were. "They use auto-grenade launchers," he told them, "and they're too strong and tough to engage in close quarters. Try for the head shot—at range."

"Roger that," Will said.

Linda's green status light winked on in reply. She was entering her sniper icy-cold state of Zen no-thought.

Fred nodded to Will and they ran in opposite directions along the edge of the brush. Fred stopped when he was a kilometer from Linda's position, and then he sent his green status

signal.

A moment later. Will's status burned green.

Fred rechecked his assault rifle, his extra magazines, and then tensed preparing to run.

A patrol of three Brutes moved along the edge of the facility. They were smart, keeping

to the shadows, glancing back and forth, sniffing.

There were three distant coughs—three splashes of blood— and three Brutes, each missing their right eye and a fair portion of their ugly face, crumpled.

There was no warning light from Linda, so she had no additional targets in sight. She'd

soon reposition higher to get a better view.

This was Fred's opening.

He sprinted to the base, and ducked around the corner of a warehouse—nearly bumping

into a Brute running toward his position.

It towered over him, covered in thick slabs of muscle and dull blue rhinolike hide.

Fred fired without thinking, a full-auto burst, dead center of mass.

The Brute rushed him, unfazed.

Fred stepped into the beast's charge, striking at its thick neck with the butt of his rifle. It

connected.

The Brute reeled back and roared.

Fred unloaded the remaining rounds in his magazine into the Brute's open mouth.

The Brute snarled a mouthful of shattered, smoldering teeth and took two steps toward

Fred… and fell.

Fred reflexively reloaded his MA5B, and slowed his breathing. He grabbed the Brute's blade-tipped RPG.

His motion tracker should have picked the Brute up. Maybe his recent saltwater dunking and ice encrustation had caused a problem in the MJOLNIR system.

Fred rebooted his tracker; it flickered, and then showed
five
enemy contacts moving fast in his direction.

This could get more complicated.

He heard the rumble of a diesel engine, turned, and saw the blur of an eighteen-wheel tanker crashing through the gate and guardhouse.

Will was about to make things very hot,

Fred ran, hugging the walls of the warehouse. He turned the next corner and watched a fireball envelop the fifty-five-meter-tall Scarab walker—the tanker truck crushed under one "foot."

The Scarab ignited, its board rector breached, spewing white-blue plasma down the streets, turning asphalt to flame, and melting steel-clad buildings.

Will's status light flickered green.

Fred moved toward the orbital elevator dead ahead.

Nestled in the center of the tower support, nanowire cables stretched to anchor points from a hundred meters to kilometers distant, and lines of elevator cars waited in a queue.

The cars were usually loaded by crane and rail with fiberglass cargo pods. Today however, three Brutes wrestled crates into the car, secured them with ropes, and protected them with Sty-rofoam wedges.

Fred shook his head—as if those nukes would go off if jostled. You could set a bomb off in there and their hardened cases would barely be scratched. Without the detonator codes, those older nukes were no more dangerous than paperweights.