Oblivion, page 34
“Two trips?” Roselle asked. “Why?”
“Vehicle capacity,” John said. “Between the Umbra and your mountain runners, we can carry fifty-two people at the most. But we have sixty-nine, plus some equipment, to transport.”
“So we need to carry an extra seventeen people in the runners?” Roselle shrugged. “It’s no problem.”
Petrov’s jaw fell. “It isn’t?”
“Not at all. We’ll just unload the coal bins.” Roselle took Petrov by the arm and started to pull her up the slope toward her own runner. “Come, you can take my runner. It wasn’t in the battle, so the batteries will be fresher.”
As the two women departed, Linda tipped her helmet, then spoke over TEAMCOM. “Something is wrong,” she said. “Roselle is not that nice.”
“And Petrov is?” Still troubled that he did not understand the reason for the Covenant’s relentless—and costly—pursuit of the Wheatley survivors, John began to survey the small battlefield. “Let them sort it out. Linda, we need an action report. Everybody, listen up.”
All status LEDs flashed green, then Linda continued over TEAMCOM.
“It will be a very simple report. After leaving the gorge, Captain Dkani had his engineers set a landslide trap on the talus slope.” Linda pointed down the slope to a pair of burned-out Warthogs. “He tried to lure the aliens into the kill zone by resting the column where you see the two Warthogs.”
“And that worked?” John asked.
“No. The Covenant sent marksmen in active camouflage to launch a surprise attack, and when I opened fire, Captain Dkani sprang his trap prematurely.” Linda shrugged. “He was not infantry.”
“Was?” John asked.
“I told him to move away from the Warthogs,” Linda said. “He was too slow.”
John nodded. The captain knew the risks; in any battle, officers were high-priority targets. “Then what?”
“Then the Elites charged across the slope,” Linda said. “I joined Samson with two runners full of Castoffs in a rear attack, and we routed them.”
“Wait.” John felt his chest clench. “The Covenant chased their target through thirty kilometers of gorge, then just hit the Wheatley survivors once—and ran?”
“I would say withdrew.” Linda pointed down the slope toward the basin in the distance. “But yes, twenty or thirty of them fled down into the mirage basin.”
“That’s where the Lucky Break went,” Fred said. “The aliens weren’t withdrawing. They were extracting.”
“That can’t be good,” Kelly said. “Especially since we’re still here.”
“Perhaps they are coming back for us?” Linda asked. “Perhaps they were waiting until all four Spartans are together?”
“If so, they’re sure taking their time,” Fred said. “If they wait any longer, I’m going to break out a cot.”
“Affirmative,” John said. “But if they weren’t after us, then what were they after?”
John thought for a moment, trying to imagine what the Wheatley survivors could have been carrying that would be worth the long pursuit the Elites had undertaken to capture it. No ideas came to mind. The only thing that made any sense at all was the same thing Blue Team had decided back near the Wheatley—that the Covenant was pursuing the crew because they wanted a way to disarm the ship’s self-destruct device. It still seemed remotely possible, especially considering Pantea’s reports earlier of the two Covenant task forces firing on each other. Maybe the price of failing a mission in the Covenant was death, and the Lucky Break’s crew had been trying to escape their own kind. Or something . . . it made as much sense as anything, and he wasn’t about to make the mistake of assuming he knew what the aliens were thinking.
John started down the slope toward the ruined Warthogs, then activated his voicemitter, raising the volume to maximum.
“Where’s Captain Dkani?” he called out. “I need to find the captain’s body.”
A young woman looked up from the casualty she was bandaging, then gestured toward the slope.
“You’ll find some of him over there.” She pointed a little farther down the slope, then a little farther across it. “And over there, and there.”
“What about his commpad?” he replied. “Have you seen that?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
The woman returned to her casualty, and John deactivated his voicemitter, pausing to consider what he should do next. Even if the aliens had captured Dkani’s commpad, they would have to crack the encryption code before they had any chance of locating the disarming codes for the Wheatley’s self-destruct devices. And that was assuming Dkani had actually stored the information on the device. Being both ONI and the commander of a scientific unit, he was far more likely to have committed those codes to memory.
The same was true of most of the other senior officers who might have been entrusted with the information. It was possible they would have stored the disarming codes on their own commpads. But how would the aliens know who had stored them and who had them memorized? And would they even be capable of accessing a human commpad?
Probably not, but John couldn’t be sure. He would have to identify every officer who knew the code, then verify that he or she had not been captured by the aliens. Wondering where to begin, he turned to survey the battlefield—and saw Fred and Linda hustling toward him.
“You know it doesn’t matter, right?” Fred asked.
“What doesn’t matter?” John asked.
“What the Covenant was after,” Fred said. “Whatever it was, they got it.”
“And that means we can’t let them keep it,” Linda said. “We have to chase them down.”
CHAPTER 21
* * *
* * *
1548 hours, June 7, 2526 (military calendar)
Last Hope Escarpment
Mountains of Despair, Planet Netherop, Ephyra System
John was back in the gunner’s cockpit atop the Umbra, peering over a rising dust cloud as the transport plunged down the outrun at the bottom of the landslide chute. Petrov and the Castoffs were in the three mountain runners, on their way back to the Wheatley with what remained of the salvage ship’s crew. Blue Team and First Platoon had mounted up to pursue the enemy down the mountain and recover whatever it was that they had captured. The aliens had a twenty-minute head start—but they were hot, tired, and on foot. The Umbra would catch them.
Probably.
John had to make a conscious effort to look over the dust curtain instead of into it. But when he did, he had a decent view of the searing landscape below, where there was an ever-broadening band of jade-green refraction shimmer at the bottom of the chute. Beyond it stretched the vast blue blur of the mirage basin. At the near edge rested a long, unidentifiable gray smudge. Magnifying the image only blurred the object beyond recognition, but there could be little doubt that it was the Lucky Break, waiting to extract the alien raiding party.
Could it still be boarded and captured?
That was a fantasy. There was no hope of taking the Covenant frigate’s crew by surprise, and even if John did manage to capture the vessel intact, what would he do with it? He had no idea how to fly a Covenant starship. And he could no longer count on the Wheatley to transport it. The lumbering salvage ship had lost all of its point-defense systems on one side, and it would be swarmed by enemy fighter craft the instant it began the surface hop. But before it could even attempt that, the recovery operations and launch preparations would take hours. By the time the Wheatley was ready to lift the captured frigate out of Netherop’s gravity well, the Covenant would have complete orbital superiority. Both ships would be destroyed long before the Wheatley could carry them into slipspace.
John had to face it. Blue Team’s attempt to capture the Lucky Break was a complete bust, and any effort to save the operation now would only push the mission from bad to disaster. Success now meant one thing: denying the Covenant their success. With a little good fortune, he might even figure out exactly what that meant.
Far out over the basin, streaks of color began to flash through the canopy of brown clouds in both directions. The sounds arrived a few seconds later, the shrieks and rolling booms of an air battle erupting into a real snarl. This, he assumed, was Task Force Pantea’s response to the extraction request that Lieutenant Commander Petrov had put out as Blue Team and First Platoon departed. Pantea—or what remained of the task force—was beginning its run. And that meant John’s operation now had an even tighter timetable.
He checked the chronometer on his HUD. Assuming Pantea intended to follow Petrov’s schedule, the extraction vessels—probably four Pelicans—would arrive at the Wheatley in exactly thirty minutes, and the salvage ship’s self-destruct charge would be detonated as soon as everyone was clear.
John didn’t dare risk drawing an airstrike by breaking comm silence now. But he would have to do it soon. Pantea would need at least a little time to divert one of the Pelicans to his location and rig for a special-purpose extraction. He recorded an emergency message outlining what he wanted and where he thought he would need it, then set it to transmit automatically in fifteen minutes.
The flashing in the clouds grew brighter and steadier, and trails of flame spiraled groundward as fighter craft began to plunge to their destruction. John kept watch for incoming surface attacks, swinging the gunner’s stool around every thirty seconds to check the horizon behind them. So far the Umbra’s dust cloud was not drawing the attention of ground-attack craft, but that was bound to change as the air battle drew nearer.
John addressed Lieutenant Cacyuk and her marines over the transport’s intravehicle comm system. “We have enemy fighter craft in the area. If I give the order to evacuate, blow the ramps and move away fast.”
“We know the drill,” Cacyuk said. “We’re not that green.”
“Yes, ma’am.” John understood her subtext. The passengers of most vehicles destroyed by air assault never even saw the attack coming, so most officers chose not to remind them how vulnerable they were. But most vehicles weren’t crewed by Spartans. “Just be ready. I have a good field of view, so we should have a few seconds to clear the Umbra if we need to.”
“Good to know,” Cacyuk said. “Thanks, Master Chief.”
As the Umbra continued to descend, the green band of refraction shimmer appeared to rise above the dust curtain, growing more solid and deeper in color. Soon the heat distortion vanished entirely, and John found himself looking at a virtual barricade of very tall, spiny succulents. They were growing atop the alluvial fan that spilled out of the landslide chute into the mirage basin, and the thorny tangle appeared to be as impenetrable as it was massive, with flat, intertwined stems rimmed in needle-sharp hooks.
Kelly slowed the Umbra as they approached the barricade, veering away from an obvious ambush possibility where the landslide outrun had pushed into the thicket.
“What do you think?” Kelly asked over the Umbra’s comm system. “Plow through, or dismount and advance on foot?”
John magnified the image and ran his gaze along the edge of the thicket. In their Mjolnir armor, he and the other Spartans would be able to bull through without any problem. But for the marines, it would be an entanglement hazard of the first order, akin to a hundred-meter barrier of double-stacked concertina coils.
Of course, the Covenant had also been confronted by the thicket, and John could see four recently cut tunnels where they were attempting to penetrate it. The passages were spaced about five meters apart, two each to either side of where the landslide outrun had pushed into the tangle. He shook his head.
Alien logic.
Had he been trying to rush a company of hot, exhausted troops through such a massive entanglement barrier, he would have conserved energy by cutting only one or two passages.
“Dismount and advance on foot,” John said. “They’re setting up an ambush.”
Kelly stopped the Umbra and dropped the ramps. First Platoon raced out and established a fifty-meter perimeter, while John took Blue Team and Lieutenant Cacyuk forward to inspect the passages the aliens had cut. However carefully they moved, they kept brushing against the stems.
After a dozen paces, Fred said, “Whoa.” He spoke over SQUADCOM, so that both Blue Team and First Platoon would hear. “I think these plants are reaching for us.”
John stopped and moved a forearm closer to one of the stems. It might have fluttered a little, but there was a strong, hot wind coming out of the basin, and it was making the whole thicket tremble.
“You’re imagining things,” John replied over SQUADCOM.
“No, he’s right,” Cacyuk said. “Look.”
John turned to see the sleeve and pant leg on one side of her battle uniform hooked in a dozen places.
“It’ll take forever to cut through this stuff.” She drew her combat knife and hacked the stems away. “It’s like concertina wire that reaches and grabs you.”
“Good,” John said. “It’ll slow the Covenant down.”
They reached the first two passages and quickly peered down each. Both were about two meters high and a little over a meter wide—just large enough for a single-file line. The light inside the tunnels was dappled and shadowy, dim enough to help conceal someone hiding a meter or two off the trail. And, of course, each passage made a turn about three meters in, which concealed the rest of its length from view.
Given the situation, there were only two things the enemy could do here—and both called for the same response from Blue Team and First Platoon. He summoned the marines forward and explained what he wanted.
And that was the moment when his recorded message transmitted over the emergency band: “Blue Leader, any Pantea extraction craft. Request SPIE line extraction twenty personnel this location fifteen minutes. Over.”
The response came immediately. “Pantea Extraction Coordination, Blue Leader. SPIE line extraction fifteen minutes your location confirmed. Don’t be late. Hot line likely.”
“Acknowledged,” John said. The aliens would probably detect the transmission, but with the air battle already raging over the basin, they would be far too busy with decoy messages to track it down and do anything about it. “Hot line likely. Out.”
“Hot line?” a young marine whispered over SQUADCOM. “What’s a hot line?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said a husky-voiced woman. “We’ll never make it back in time anyway.”
“Enough bellyaching, Sawyer,” Cacyuk said. “Did you join the Marines to take joyrides or kill aliens?”
“Who’s bellyaching?” Sawyer replied. “I’d rather die than hot line any day.”
“If those are really the choices,” the young marine said, “I’d kinda like to try the hot line. Whatever it is.”
“You’ll love it,” Fred said. “Trust me.”
“Is that an order?” the young marine asked.
“Can the chatter,” John said. “First we kill, then we hot line. Got it?”
John almost added all of us, but didn’t. He was not going to improve anyone’s morale by lying to them.
SQUADCOM fell silent. They entered the thicket moving fast, with each member of Blue Team leading the way down a different passage. Fifteen meters behind each Spartan followed a marine fire team, spacing themselves at four-meter intervals. Since the passages ran along serpentine courses, that spacing generally kept the entire line in the Spartans’ motion tracker range. Occasionally the rearmost designator would fall temporarily offscreen. When that happened, the marine would be asked for a status check, just to be sure he or she hadn’t been taken from behind by an Elite in active camouflage.
John watched for tripwires and areas of disturbed ground that might suggest buried explosives, but he didn’t expect to find many. Given the long run down the gorge and the hand-to-hand charge against the Wheatley survivors, he doubted the Covenant could be carrying much in the way of mines or remotely detonated explosives. But it was wise never to assume. For all he knew, Covenant land mines were invisible, thumb-size stickers.
Three minutes into the thicket, John’s motion detector showed a line of five UNKNOWN designators fidgeting a few meters to the right side of the trail. One designator was about three meters behind the middle trio, serving as a rear stop, and another was three meters ahead, serving as the front stop.
The five ambushers were so well camouflaged that as John passed by, he could not see any of them with nonenhanced vision—though he was careful not to take an obvious look. He simply continued forward until he saw the first marine draw even with the rear stop. Then John shouldered his BR55, spun toward the alien in the front-stop position, and spoke over SQUADCOM.
“Column One, to your right.”
He fired a long burst into the thicket, running it from ground level up to waist height. A form rose from the shadows, shedding armor-deflected rounds and succulent-stem camouflage, and managed to loose off a couple of wild plasma bolts before John’s second burst put him down.
Automatic-weapons fire was sounding from the trail behind him as Sawyer attacked the rear stop. Behind her, Lieutenant Cacyuk was leading the other two marines into the thicket, one hand using the barrel of her assault rifle to bat aside the hooked plant stems and her other hand chopping at them with her combat knife—charging forward to flank the main body of ambushers, who had just realized their peril and were starting to rise from their hides to redeploy.
John rushed them, his armor shedding hooked succulent stems as he plowed through the thicket. All three Elites turned to face him—and were cut down when Cacyuk and her fireteam opened up from their rear.
It was over just that fast, six seconds from start to finish. John paused long enough to finish off the aliens that weren’t quite dead yet and check their armor styles. Finding nothing to suggest that these were anything more than ship’s crew armed with antiboarding weapons, he led the marines back to the main trail and continued the advance.
