Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (35 page)

He stepped right, pushed off, and jumped left. The floor exploded. Shrapnel tore through his SPI armor, and he was remotely aware that something had happened to his left leg, but he ignored it.

Ash rolled, turned, and chucked a grenade as three Sentinel pairs streaked over him.

The grenade bounced off their shields, and harmlessly detonated in the air.

At least this part of the plan was working; they were drawing fire.

He detected a dozen more Sentinels in the air, shooting at other targets, bathing the

factory in brilliant gold illumination, razor-sharp shadows, and glowing molten craters.

Ash broadcast on TEAMCOM: "Form up; accelerate approach to target."

On his TACMAP he marked the apex of the generator, and then placed a secondary

marker on the extraction point—a location three hundred meters distant over open ground.

Ash charged forward, running a crazy pattern—right, left, sudden stops, rolls and ducks. Energy beams fell around him. Fire washed over him. Liquid metal spattered his back, but he

didn't flinch. His eyes clouded red, and his vision tunneled on the glowing target ahead.

He had to get there. He
would
get there.

Ash sprinted straight ahead. Every muscle pumped and burned with lactic acid.

Olivia and Holly got to the dome, turned, and their Jackal

gauntlets crackled to life. They stood together, overlapping energy shields.

Behind them loomed the impossibly large pyramid of spheres, all eyes turning toward

them. "Hurry," Holy cried over TEAMCOM. She raised the bottom edge of her shield a half

meter. "Under—quick!"

Ash jumped, dove under their feet and behind the energy shields.

Light surrounded him, and the floor to either side melted and blasted away.

He stood between his teammates and snapped on his own Jackal gauntlet.

Mark joined them.

Ash hesitated, waiting for Dante to get there. He then realized his grim mistake. He wished his friend was here by his side… but he was gone, and Dante would have wanted the team to keep their heads. Fight. And win.

Ash watched the swarm of enemies surrounding them. There were about forty Sentinel pairs. They could have all fired, and blown Team Saber to hell, but instead they looked wary… like they were thinking this through.

Which was the
one
thing he couldn't let happen.

"Get their attention," Ash told Mark.

Mark nodded, and hefted their only SPNKr missile launcher. He angled it at a cluster of

Sentinels at four o'clock.

The missile streaked through the air and hit a pair dead center—mushrooming into thunder and smoke. The Sentinels, behind their shields, were untouched.

The hovering Sentinels ceased circling and seven aligned one behind the other to form a

line pointed at Team Saber.

"Tighten it up, guys," Ash ordered. "Olivia, eye on our six."

The Spartans huddled as close as they could.

"All clear behind," Olivia whispered. "Best exit vector at nine o'clock."

There was no way a few Jackal shields could withstand a combined energy blast that

had leveled an entire granite mesa.

Then again, they wouldn't have to.

The seven Sentinels adjusted their aim and their spheres glowed red, amber, and then

glistening gold.

"Stand by," Ash whispered over TEAMCOM. He crouched lower and gritted his teeth.

The drones contracted and the glare from their spheres intensified.

"Go!" Ash cried.

The Spartans of Team Saber jumped, rolled, and scattered.

The Sentinels fired a culminated beam of energy that struck where Team Saber had

been a moment ago—a direct hit on the glowing dome of the force-field generator.

Ash turned away, but the concussive blast rolled through his body. Shrapnel cut into his back, and skin blistered.

He focused on the second NAV marker on his heads-up display: the one thing that mattered now.

He ran toward it, a tiny platform three hundred meters away—the only way out.

Around him the air paused, and then rushed backward toward the generator with hurricane force. He turned, curiosity overcoming the instinct to flee.

Where the silver dome had been there was a blackened crater of twisted metal. The Sentinels had moved in, projecting their shields over the open wound, but the crater's edges crinkled as atmosphere sucked inside.

More Sentinels rushed toward the breach, trying to hold it.

A silver flash overwhelmed Ash's senses. There was a double explosion and a giant hand swatted him. He tumbled ten meters and slammed to a halt flat on his back.

Dazed, he slowly got up. The Sentinels were gone. The crater they had tried to hold was

now a smoking rift a hundred meters wide.

The pyramid of spheres, the mountain of metal, shuddered.

That force-field generator was only one of three, but without it in place, the formation was

unbalanced. And when a million ball bearings stacked upon one another were not
exactly
balanced…

Ash turned and sprinted.

Ahead, Holly had fallen and struggled to get to her feet. He went to her, grabbed her hand, and lifted her up.

But they both froze as they caught a glimpse of the pyramid.

The outer layers of spheres tumbled and bounced off their fellows, a chain reaction of cascading destruction; rivers of metal balls flowed, then torrents, an avalanche that rolled across the floor in great waves, tons of metal headed for them.

"Guys! Move it!" Mark yelled over TEAMCOM.

Ash blinked and snapped out of his stupor.

He and Holly turned and sprinted toward the extraction point. Mark and Olivia were

already on the platform, waving them to hurry. Ash felt the thunderous force through the floor that grew louder with every step until it

shook his bones.

He and Holly leapt onto the platform.

"Dr. Halsey, go," he screamed over an open COM channel.

Nothing happened.

Team Saber stood shoulder to shoulder and watched the tidal wave of metal smash over

machinery and crush the Sentinels that struggled to escape its kilometer-high surge.

But there was no escaping something Hke this.

"We got the mission done," Ash told his friends over TEAMCOM. "We won."

He still held Holly's hand. He gripped it tighter.

The shadow of the wave covered them and plunged them into darkness
. There was a flash of light. Nausea hit Ash in the gut like a lead glove wrapped around a brick. The blinding light faded. They were back on the ledge. Holly disentangled her hand from his and looked away. Mark steadied himself against

the wall. Olivia stepped off the platform and hung her head between her legs.

Dr. Halsey sat and stared at a tornado of Covenant symbols that rose from her laptop, her eyes darting back and forth trying to watch them all at the same time. She herded a collection of silver triangles together.

"My apologies for the delay," she said without glancing up. "There are complications. Please, step off the platform. Tom and Lucy are next."

The SPARTAN-II Blue Team was already back crouched along the shadow line by the ledge overlooking the factory.

The air was full of Sentinels flying in formations. The pyramid was gone, and on the floor a million spheres bounced and surged forward, flattening machinery and sparking conduits.

The fountain of fire that Blue Team had targeted oscillated wildly out of control, spaying molten alloy on the walls, ceiling, everywhere but the receiving vessel it was supposed to hit.

Over the COM Tom's voice crackled: "Ready for translocation. Dr. Halsey." Gunfire sounded in the background.

Dr. Halsey exhaled a hiss of frustration and slashed her hand through the icons, and

then started the process of gathering them again.

"What's the holdup?" the Lieutenant Commander asked.

"Someone else is accessing this system," she replied. "This accounts for Team Saber's

delay… and now Tom and Lucy's."

"Someone else?" he said. "You mean the Covenant?"

"Entirely probable," she replied.

Fred turned around and whispered, "That means they can I rack and follow us."

Over the COM Tom yelled, "Doctor, if you're going to do anything you have to do it—"

Rings of gold strobed on the platform and then vanished; Tom and Lucy stood there,

hands raised in an instinctive effort to ward off danger. Wisps of plasma curled and dissipated around them.

"—Now," Tom finished. He exhaled a long sigh and then reported to the Lieutenant Commander, "Mission accomplished, sir."

In the distance small explosions popped, sounding like a string of firecrackers. The flying Sentinel formations scattered— some crashing into one another, others accelerating straight into the walls.

Dr. Halsey consulted her watch. "We have fifty-three minutes before the core-room entrance closes, Kurt."

The Lieutenant Commander nodded. "Everyone on the platform," he ordered. "Doctor, move us to Team Katana's location."

Unease already settling into his stomach, Ash crowded onto the four-meter pad with his teammates.

Funny, but he hadn't thought of the older Spartans as part of the team until now. Or was he part of
their
team? He then noticed the blood oozing from his armor joints, mirrored red by the camouflaging panels. Baptized in battle. They'd lost Dante, too. High prices to pay.

Chief Mendez watched the self-destructing factory. "That's
a lot
of Sentinels," he murmured. "Wonder why they only deployed a fraction of them?"

"Setting time delay for three seconds," Dr. Halsey said, shut her laptop, and then joined them.

Mendez's remark bothered Ash more than he could explain, and the unease in his gut intensified. There were hundreds oi' thousands of Sentinels here. Why just have them sit around? They had to serve
some
purpose…

Rings of light enveloped the squad.

Ash hoped he never found out why. He just wanted to rescue Katana, get the technology Dr. Halsey had promised, and get out of here before the Covenant caught up with them.

He had a feeling, though, it wasn't going to be that easy.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

2105 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, ORBIT NEAR THE MOON OF ONYX \ ABOARD UNSC PROWLER
DUSK

Commander Richard Lash supervised the release of the mines.

He and Lieutenant Commander Cho monitored the launch bay of the
Dusk.
The closet-sized chamber behind the tiny observation window had been chilled near absolute zero. The nukes inside had been cycled through three thermal cooldowns and were now the same temperature as interstellar space.

The tiny HORNET warheads had been transferred aboard from the
Brasidas,
a destroyer with extensive damage. Thankfully Cho had detected the minuscule leak from their reactor and moved off before it irradiated the
Dusk's
hull. That would have lit them up against the background intrasolar radiation and fatally compromised their stealth ability.

"Let her fly," Lash ordered.

"Releasing," Cho whispered. He grasped the manual override claw, and with supreme concentration, he dropped the warhead.

The bay door irised open and the black egg-shaped HORNET mine dropped from its carrier and, centimeter by centimeter, drifted into space.

"That was the last, sir." Cho wiped the beads of sweat that had collected on his wrinkled forehead.

Cho was technically past the mandatory retirement age in the UNSC prowler corps. This was a fact that had been carefully ignored by Captain Iglesias. The UNSC was running out of qualified recruits, and Cho would have been impossible to replace.

Lash gave him an approving nod, which was as much praise as the old engineer was ever comfortable with.

"Thank you, sir."

Lash entered the tube to the bridge and pushed off, propelling himself in the null gee, somersaulting and then using his legs to brake. He took a moment to compose himself before he opened the hatch. In the last fifteen minutes the
Dusk
had seeded the space on the dark side of the moon of Onyx with fourteen nuclear mines—thirty-megaton yield with vacuum-enhanced loads.

Delicate work to stay stealthed and get them all deployed on Admiral Patterson's timetable, but they'd done it.

All it had cost was the fraying of Lash's already shot nerves. He smoothed his uniform, brushed his thinning hair, took a deep breath, and then spun open the hatch.

"Report," he said to Lieutenant Commander Waters.

Waters looked up with bloodshot eyes from his display. "The Admiral has been informed mission accomplished, sir. He's moving the fleet to new coordinates, a high orbit on the bright side of the moon."

Lash examined the system NAV map. Patterson was going to use the entire planetoid as cover. He'd need it. The enemy forces still outnumbered them sixteen ships to their four. By any sane measure it would be suicide to attack that Covenant battle group.