Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (23 page)

The Brutes entered the car, and started to force the wide doors shut.

Fred flashed his green status light to Will and Linda. He

couldn't wait. He had to stop those Brutes now, before they rolled up the stalk—out of

reach. He slung his assault rifle and hefted his captured grenade launcher. He fired two

projectiles arced into the elevator.

Fred sprinted for the car and its closing doors.

Detonations flashed inside.

Fred jumped—twisted sideways, scraping through the slight space between the doors.

He landed, rolled to his feet, and saw the open-mawed expressions of the three stunned

Brutes. He leveled his rifle and shot one in the face.

Fred turned as the other blinked and charged him. He blasted it point-blank between the eyes.

The Brute bowled him over, and its fists came down in twin hammer blows that stunned Fred and drained his shields to a quarter charge.

Blood streamed from its snarling face… and then it finally registered the rounds that had penetrated its thick skull. It toppled upon Fred, inert.

The last Brute pulled the body off, and pointed a grenade launcher at Fred's faceplate.

Fred's rifle was missing. He tried to shake off the disorientation from the double knockout blow. His head felt like it was filled with biofoam.

The Brute seemed to grin.

Two soft puffs sounded.

The Brute stiffened and collapsed to the deck, a pair of holes spraying blood from the base of its head.

Shadows crossed the slight opening between the doors.

Will and Linda slipped inside. Will moved straight to the car's manual-override panel. Linda's sniper rifle still smoldered.

"Company's coming fast," she said and then shot each Brute once more. "I hope this car can still move."

Fred regained his senses.

The inside of the car was a mess. The grenades had busted every crate and punched rents into the walls. A dozen conical warheads lay scattered, but intact, on the deck.

Fred took up position by the door and looked out.

Three Wraith tanks crushed a path through the complex, heading their way. In the sky. Banshee fliers circled.

"Here…" Fred dug into his satchel and handed Will the ONI datapad.

Will booted the intrusion software and cut through the elevator's control software. "Hang on," he said. "Maximum acceleration."

The climbing motors engaged and high-frequency screams rattled the car.

"Ah—the clutch," Will noted and pressed a button.

A jolt of upward acceleration hit. Fred, Linda, and Will dropped to all fours, and the car groaned and pinged.

Fred rolled over and looked out the open doors. The ground dropped away; the Wraith tanks looked like toys.

Would they fire on the stalk? Or would they gather forces and follow them with another car?

"Will…" he said.

"I'm on it." Will returned to the override panel. "Interfacing with Stalk Control. Jamming the sequencing tracks. That should slow them down."

Linda eased next to Fred by the open doors. She set a tiny satellite dish down and it opened like a rose bud. "Getting a UNSC network handshake," she reported.

"Raise CENTCOM," Fred told her. "Tell them we need an extreme low-orbit extraction. We'll need a fast ship to get in before those Covenant ships at the top can—"

"Stand by," Linda said. "FLEETCOM contacting
us."
She turned to Fred. "It's Lord Hood on Cairo Station."

Lord Hood's unshakably confident voice came over the COM: "Give me a status update, Blue Team."

"Sir," Fred answered. "Covenant forces at the COE were after the mothballed nukes being shuttled up to the fleet. We've recovered twelve FENRIS warheads. We are en route to low orbit on the stalk. There's an entire company of Brutes on the ground with Wraith tanks and Banshee reinforcements."

Fred craned his head skyward.

Along the arc of Earth distant sparks and lines of fire traced patterns of destruction. Long smoking trails plummeted to the ground, ending in thermal blooms of impacted ships and plasma bombardment. The broken hulls of UNSC ships made a bone-yard of the thermosphere. There were Covenant ships in orbit as well… many more than Fred remembered… dozens.

He increased magnification directly overhead.

"There are two Covenant destroyers at the elevator's terminus near Station Wayward Rest."

"I'll send a prowler for an ELO extraction," Lord Hood said. "Get your team ready" There was an uncharacteristic hesitation, and then he said in a lowered voice, "One more thing has come up: a message from Dr. Catherine Halsey, and new mission."

Fred, Linda, and Will looked at one another.

"Dr. Halsey's message," Lord Hood explained, "was piggybacked on a carrier signal sent by Cortana through Slipspace. The message was subsequently detected by Pluto Slipstream Space Monitoring Station
Democritus.
It will make more sense if you heard and read the material. Set to encryption scheme thirty-seven."

Fred called up his encryption codes. Thirty-seven corresponded to code word SHEEPINWOLFSCLOTHING.

He input the code. "Ready to receive, sir," Fred told him.

Cortana's message played.

The Spartans listened to her automated distress on the new Halo threat and the Flood. John had been with her There were no specific details other than the single mention of him on the Forerunner ship. Lord Hood had to be sending them as backup.

But then Dr. Halsey's text message appeared, explaining the discovery of new Forerunner technologies, and the possibility of capturing and using them to neutralize both Covenant and Flood threats.

Fred reread the message; there was no mention of Kelly. His eyes lingered on the last line: "SEND SPARTANS."

He now understood why Dr. Halsey had left them, although not her reckless disregard of mission protocol. She had followed some clues found in the ruins of Reach, or perhaps within the alien blue crystal. It was a high-risk venture that had luckily paid off. If she had discovered a cache of technology, it could turn the tide of this war.

Fred held up his hands, palms up, and gave a slight shrug to his teammates, soliciting their opinions.

Linda nodded. Will gave the thumbs-up sign.

"We understand, sir," Fred replied, "and we're ready for redeployment. This Onyx system, though—" He rechecked the stellar coordinate embedded in the message. "It's weeks away with the fastest UNSC corvette."

"We'll just have to do our best," Lord Hood said. "The
Pony Express
stands ready and waiting for your team. They'll jump the instant you board. I'll send reinforcements if we can spare them."

Fred leaned out the elevator doors. Outside blue skies had turned to black and untwinkling stars now surrounded them. He squinted. In medium orbit were sleek Covenant destroyers… so much faster than any human ship.

"Sir," he said. "I think I've found us a better way there. But I'm going to need the detonation codes for these FENRIS warheads."

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOU
R

1420 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ SOL SYSTEM, PLANET EARTH \ MEDIUM ORBIT NEAR UNSC CENTENNIAL ORBITAL ELEVATOR (COE)

Fred, Linda, and Will clung to the base of the turret, trying to make themselves as small as possible. It was not as imposing a weapon as its larger kin mounted upon Covenant battleships. With an energy coil about one-third the size of a Warthog it was barely capable of concealing three Spartans.

A great plan… as long as the weapon wasn't fired.

Two Covenant destroyers floated in the dark, their smooth hulls looking more like some deep-sea creature than spacecraft. A dozen Seraph fighter ships and a handful of shuttles

angled toward their base ships.

Fred gave a quick nod to the others.

It was working. At least, as well as any plan could that involved three humans against a

hundred Brutes and the combined might of two battle-ready warships.

The UNSC corvette
Chalons
had come, but not for a daring exfiltration. It had been a bit of misdirection, giving the Covenant ships something to focus on as the Spartans transferred outside the elevator car.

When two Covenant dropships came to collect the warheads, Fred, Linda, and Will had

stealthed under one of the vessels and—if their luck now held—they would be ferried away.

The "luck" part of this mission couldn't be taken for

granted… because above them sat a dozen—now armed— FENRIS nuclear warheads.

"A little slice of Armageddon," Will had called it.

Their dropship smoothly accelerated toward one of the destroyers, and an open shuttle

bay yawned before them. He spotted the other shuttle as they moved to the sister vessel. Then the hull of the

destroyer flashed before them and cut off the view. Artificial gravity tugged at them.

They'd made it inside.

The three Spartans slipped from the underside of the ship and rolled out of the shadows.

Fred and Linda took cover around either fork of the hull. Will leapt to the top of the vessel.

Ten Jackals and a score of Grunts stood in the open bay between the twin hulls of the dropship—a space usually encased by a gravimetric field, now dropped to allow them to

unload their stolen cargo.

Blue Team opened fire.

Three Jackals dropped, but the remaining vulture-head aliens snapped on their shield

gauntlets and fell back.

The Grunts scattered, and Will concentrated his fire on them, dropping six, igniting one's methane task, which exploded into a fireball and wiped out another dozen.

Fred and Linda combined fire on the leader Jackal in red armor. Its shield shimmered, failed, and armor-piercing rounds penetrated his body, making it shudder and dance.

Two Jackals screeched and primed and chucked plasma grenades at Fred.

Linda tracked them, fired once, twice, shooting both projectiles midtoss.

The grenades exploded into a spray of half-heated ionized gas, which made the Jackals' and Spartans' energy shields shimmer and drain.

Meanwhile, a pair of Jackals opened fire at Will; he dodged the shots, but was forced back.

A plasma bolt singed the hull near Fred, but he ignored it and focused on the pair targeting Will. He flicked his MA5B assault rifle to full auto and shot. Linda combined her fire and they dropped the Jackals.

The last four Jackals charged Fred and Linda—plasma pistols firing.

Linda made a fist and pumped it once.

Fred nodded and he faded back behind the hull, leaving a primed grenade on the

ground.

He reloaded, waited two heartbeats, and then twin blasts shuddered through the hull.

Fred moved up and shot the wounded Jackals struggling to rise off the deck.

He looked for another target.

None but the Spartans stood. The cavernous shuttle bay of the Covenant destroyer was

empty save mangled and bloodied corpses of Jackals and Grunts. Fred pointed at Linda and then to the nukes on the ship. They had to get those things

defused. She nodded and moved toward the FENRIS warheads.

Fred strode to a set of pressure doors and the nearby control panel.

Three Spartans couldn't take a Covenant ship; not under normal circumstances, but Blue

Team had three advantages. First they had the element of surprise. What Covenant captain would dream three

humans might board and capture their ship?

Next, Blue Team had been on an enemy warship before; they knew the basic layout.

And last, and most important, the Covenant were slow to change. While their technology was centuries ahead of the most advanced the USNC could muster, it had become more dogma than science. They didn't innovate; they imitated.

Certainly they knew about the capture of the
Ascendant Justice
by John. If that had happened to a UNSC ship, there would have been new security protocols enacted on every ship in the fleet to prevent it from ever happening again.

Fred was betting their lives that the Covenant didn't think like that.

He retrieved the ONI datapad, newly updated with Covenant translation software, and set it upon the control panel. Purple lights flickered on the panel near the pad as the pad's

network-infiltration programs booted… and it slipped into the Covenant ship's system.

He was in. Just like having Cortana around… without the chatter.

Fred searched intership messages and found an alert: the team unloading the nukes was

overdo to report. A Brute team had been sent to see what was wrong.

Will and Linda took cover inside the dropship's cockpit. Fred wished he could join them. They powered up the ship. It lifted, turned, and backed into the far corner to protect the nukes from the next phase of his plan.

Fred returned to the datapad. He had little time before the entire ship was alerted to the invading army of three.

He scrolled through ship systems and found the icon he needed: an arrow encircling twin dots. Pressurized molecular oxygen. John had shown them that one. Fred overrode the ship's self-seal bulkheads—jammed them open. Every pressure door he secured—ajar. The ONI hackware churned as it stripped away security protocols. He primed the ship's life pods

and froze their air-lock hydraulics.

He flashed his red, amber, and green status lights to give Will and Linda a countdown.

As the green winked off, Fred gripped a handle on the wall and clutched the datapad.

As the amber light dimmed he slaved the controls for the

energy shield on the shuttle bay, the emergency life-pod releases, and the air-lock

overrides.

On red… he punched the master release.

A drum roll of thumps pounded the destroyer's hull.

The shuttle bay's energy shield vanished.

A hurricane pulled at Fred, blew out cargo pods, bodies, tools, small repair ships, and the