Oblivion, page 35
Five minutes gone. Which meant he had only ten minutes to finish the job and return to the extraction site.
Three times he heard nearby gunfire as the other Spartan-led teams defeated their would-be attackers. Twice he found short passages that had been pushed through the thicket, suggesting he was passing another dogleg ambush like the first one. Equipped with his motion detector, he needed only a few blind shots to confirm there was nobody lurking. The enemy was just laying decoys in an effort to lull him into complacency.
Finally, eight minutes into the advance, the tangle of hook plants began to thin, and John realized he was approaching the mirage basin. There were no more side passages pushed into the thicket. And the Lucky Break sat two hundred meters ahead, shimmering in the heat on a rock-and-sand surface. He could see a line of tracks leading straight toward the ship, but they disappeared into the heat diffraction about thirty meters distant. John worked his magnification up and down the scale, but could not see a single figure—even a blurry one—moving toward the vessel.
But the sky above was not as quiet. It was filled with missile trails and flame plumes, and the fork-hulled shape of a Covenant dropship was swooping in to land.
“Well, that’s great timing,” Fred said over TEAMCOM. “I was afraid this might be getting too easy.”
Nizat ‘Kvarosee tried to feel honored that the gods continued to test his worthiness with obstacles such as the thorn tangle, but in truth he was growing hot and weary of proving himself. He lay in ambush with his last twenty warriors, hidden on the blazing ground three paces back from the edge of the thicket. Their carbines and plasma rifles were tucked tight against their shoulders, ready to cut down the demon Spartans and their servant soldiers the moment they started across the basin toward the Steadfast Strike.
That is, if they started across the basin.
With a Silent Shadow dropship coming in to land, the humans might think better of their pursuit and quietly withdraw. Or they might choose a less obvious plan and try to circle around, or call in an airstrike. Nizat hoped not, but he simply did not know what the gods had planned.
He had been trying to understand, without success, why the Spartans continued to pursue him ever since the cadre rearguard had reported that the demons were loading a band of their servant soldiers into a captured Covenant transport. He did not have the faintest idea, for even at Borodan’s third moon and Zhoist, when they had destroyed so much, the demons had shown themselves to be focused and dangerous foes who attacked with purpose and clarity. But now? They seemed to be acting out of simple vengeance.
Nizat’s greatest fear was that the humans had somehow discovered the Luminal Beacons he had planted, and now they wished to recover the receiver units. But that was a truly baseless worry. Even if the demons had stumbled upon the Beacons and miraculously guessed their function, the receiver units were still aboard the Quiet Faith—assuming that vessel had escaped destruction, of course.
Nizat believed it had. Qoo ‘Weyodosee was a competent captain, but he also would not linger when he saw certain death coming his way. By now, the fool was probably hiding at the edge of the system, waiting to see whether Nizat would survive.
And survive he would . . . so long as the demons did not withdraw. The crew of the Steadfast Strike remained loyal to Nizat, and so would the craven ‘Weyodosee, once Nizat returned to space and demanded it of the errant Sangheili.
“We should go to the sword and kill the humans now,” ‘Lakosee whispered. He did not dare use their armor communications for fear of betraying their location to the arriving troop carrier. “At least then we would only need to fight one enemy at a time.”
“Have faith,” Nizat said. “The gods have sent the Spartans to save us from the Silent Shadow. We must trust in their wisdom.”
“I would rather place my trust in my sword,” ‘Lakosee said.
But he remained motionless at Nizat’s side, and they watched as the Silent Shadow’s troop carrier positioned itself to land halfway between the Steadfast Strike and the thicket of hook plants. The reason Nizat’s frigate did not attack the dropship was obvious. With only a skeleton crew, it could man either its weapons or its flight stations. And the Steadfast Strike would have no hope of escaping if it was not ready to leave the instant Nizat boarded.
It took a moment for Nizat to understand why the Silent Shadow wasn’t firing on the Steadfast Strike. First, they would want to confirm his death, and that would be impossible if they used their fleet to obliterate the frigate from orbit. Second, with the fierce battle raging overhead between the humans and the Fleet of Swift Justice, they might not have assets available for a plasma bombardment. But, most importantly, they would be afraid of destroying the Luminal Beacons and facing the wrath of the Prophets. Until they recovered the sacred artifacts, they would do nothing to risk their demolition.
And therein lay Nizat’s salvation.
“How long must we wait?” ‘Lakosee hissed, this time so loudly that Nizat feared the Spartans had surely heard him. “I refuse to die on my belly like—”
The last part of ‘Lakosee’s sentence was drowned out by the roar of infidel rockets streaking away from the thicket. They hit the Silent Shadow troop carrier barely a second later—four quick, stomach-banging detonations that blew both forks off and sent the craft crashing to the ground in three flame-trailing sections.
‘Lakosee turned to Nizat, his mandibles splayed wide. “Have we been saved?” He started to rise. “By our enemies?”
“By our gods,” Nizat corrected. He put a hand on ‘Lakosee’s shoulder and held him down. “But not yet. Wait.”
This time, ‘Lakosee dropped to his belly without objection.
They watched quietly for a few breaths. Nizat prayed that the warriors of the Silent Shadow were as resilient as he had always believed they were, that they would rise from the ashes to avenge themselves . . . and they surely did.
There were at least eleven of them, rushing out of the flames with their carbines and fuel rod guns booming, shredding the hook plants where the Spartans and their servant soldiers lay hiding. More infidel rockets shrieked from the thicket, and the clatter of their weapons filled the air. The energy shields of the Silent Shadow attackers began to crackle and flash with overload static, and the brave warriors began to stagger as infidel bullets punched through their armor.
“Now!” Nizat yelled, using both his voice and the communications system. “Now we go with the grace of the gods!”
Nizat leaped to his feet and charged, looping wide around the Silent Shadow to avoid becoming entangled in the battle between them and his savior Spartans. Still, four of the dark-armored Sangheili saw his tactic and turned to face him—and were quickly cut down by enemy flanking fire.
Nizat and his band of pious survivors drew even with the still-flaming wreckage of the downed troop carrier, all of them panting and staggering in the heat after only a hundred paces, so hot that he could feel the ground burning beneath his boot soles and his brain sweltering in his skull.
But they were going to make it. All that remained was to duck behind the downed troop carrier, where they would be protected from the infidel weapons, then cross another hundred paces to the Steadfast Strike.
Nizat turned to angle past the wreckage . . . and the last of the Silent Shadow fell, freeing the Spartans to shift in his direction. He saw the orange dashes of contrail bullets streaking past, heard his energy shield crackle as the first rounds hit, but then he was behind the troop carrier, and safe. He stopped and looked back. ‘Lakosee and six others were close behind him, but the rest of his cadre fell, tumbling sideways to the ground as they were knocked from their feet, bouncing and jerking among the rocks as enemy fire continued to riddle their bodies.
Such loyal followers, such pious warriors. Surely they would be remembered when the Worthy were called to join the Forerunners in divine transcendence.
Nizat would see to it personally.
He felt a hand on his elbow, and realized ‘Lakosee was pulling him forward.
“Fleetmaster, come!”
Seventy paces ahead, the boarding ramp of the Steadfast Strike was already halfway down, and Nizat could see the arm of an eager crewman waving them forward.
Then Nizat glimpsed the crescent-winged silhouette of a Gigas fighter-bomber descending out of the low brown clouds beyond the frigate, and an instant later, there was nothing but the crewman’s arm tumbling through the air toward them, silhouetted against the blinding bright ball of an erupting plasma bomb. An eternity later, Nizat’s armor clanged against stone and he began to tumble, having dropped back to the ground after being hurled who knew how far by the pressure wave. Then he bounced across fist-size rocks until he finally ran out of momentum, coming to rest with his back pressed against a boulder, the startled cries and pained wails of ‘Lakosee and the rest of his cadre ringing inside his helmet.
Wary of demon snipers and infidel attack craft—though a small voice in the back of his mind asked what it mattered if they killed him now—Nizat rolled to his belly and flattened himself against the ground, struggling to orient himself to the battlefield.
For a few moments, he could see nothing but dazzling flashes of light in every direction, and he feared he had been blinded. But then he began to make out tiny cruciform shapes chasing flashes of orange and red across the horizon, wheeling against the brown clouds and skimming low across the ground, and he realized he was witnessing a fierce air battle.
He spotted the smoldering wreckage of the demon-downed Silent Shadow troop carrier a little to his right. Beyond it lay a flaming wall of foliage that had once been the hook-plant thicket. Something was still pouring plasma bolts into it, so he turned and followed the stream . . . back to the crescent-winged Gigas fighter-bomber he had glimpsed earlier, hovering now over a glassy crater where the Steadfast Strike had rested.
The sky above the Gigas was filled with looping, swirling contrails, the air so full of missiles and cannon fire and disintegrating fighter craft that the brown clouds seemed to be raining flame and shrapnel. And in front of the Gigas, striding across the rocky plain toward him, was a trio of Sangheili warriors in brightly colored armor. Two wore red trimmed in yellow. They flanked the third, a Helios Ultra in ivory armor trimmed in orange, the color so deep and rich it seemed almost to be gold.
Honor guards from High Charity itself.
Determined not to die on his knees, Nizat struggled to his feet and reached for his energy sword—only to discover that it had been knocked free during the destruction of the Steadfast Strike. He pulled his plasma pistol instead . . . and found himself holding a twisted wreck of a weapon that would have taken his hand off the moment he squeezed the activator.
The honor guards reached him, the two underlings stepping to Nizat’s flanks, and the Ultra stopping a pace in front of him. They did not even bother to palm their energy swords, a gesture of contempt so insulting that Nizat would have attacked them with his bare hands, had he not been so weak and reeling from blast sickness that he would have tripped over his own feet.
The Ultra glared down at Nizat for a moment, then said simply, “You know why we have come. Return the sacred Beacons, and your death shall be swift.”
“I understand.” To his dismay, Nizat found himself trembling as he answered. He had expected to die more bravely. “First, do me the honor of answering one question.”
“I will do you no such honor,” the Ultra replied. “Return the Beacons and seek your forgiveness from the gods, or make us search for them—and suffer the consequences.”
“It is not that simple. The receivers were aboard two vessels in the Flotilla of Unsung Piety.” Nizat was lying, of course. Both receivers had been aboard his flagship, the Quiet Faith. “If the receiver is destroyed, the Beacons are worthless.”
The Ultra nodded. “This I know.”
“Then you will also know that my answer means nothing until I am told the fate of my ships.”
The Ultra was quiet for five breaths, then said, “Only the Silent Truth and the Quiet Faith have escaped . . . for now.”
“Then I cannot do as you ask.” Nizat dropped his head, trying to hide his relief. The coward Qoo ‘Weyodosee was unlikely to go hunting ONI with only two vessels . . . but as long as the Quiet Faith survived, there was hope that Nizat’s plan might live on without him. “The receivers were aboard the Still Devotion and Worthy Silence.”
“You are certain?”
“Do as you have been commanded.” Nizat extended his hands, offering them for the first amputations. “It will not change the truth.”
The Ultra’s posture sagged almost imperceptibly, but instead of reaching for his energy sword, he looked to his escorts.
“Remove the armor.”
Nizat’s mandibles fell open. “I am to die unarmored?”
“I fear it is worse for you than that, Fleetmaster.” The Ultra made a show of glancing around the basin, then gave a soft clack of his mandibles. “Far worse.”
“You intend to maroon me here?”
“You and all those you command, yes.” The Ultra nodded to his escorts, who stepped forward and began to strip Nizat of his armor. “A pity you were unable to return the Beacons. At least then you would have died with your helmet on.”
John had barely registered Fred’s wisecrack—I was afraid this might be getting too easy—before the Covenant dropship moved into position and began to descend between their thicket and the Lucky Break.
“Rocket launchers!” he called over SQUADCOM. “Everyone who’s ready!”
A fan of smoke trails shot from the thicket, and barely a breath later, four rockets hit the dropship—four quick, stomach-banging detonations. The craft lost both carrier forks and crashed to the ground in three flaming sections.
Good.
Now he needed a plan. John checked time until extraction—6:29 appeared on his HUD—and realized simplicity was best. Kill all the aliens, then get the hell out of here.
John belly-crawled to the edge of the thicket and pushed his head out, searching for the Elites he had been chasing. A force of twenty or thirty aliens did not simply vanish. It had to have circled back, hiding inside the brake, waiting for a chance to make a run for the frigate.
John’s contemplations came to an abrupt end as a volley of plasma bolts and cannon rounds came streaming out of the dropship’s smoking wreckage, shredding the thicket around him. It seemed impossible that anyone had survived the crash, yet there they were, eleven Elites in dark-red armor, emerging from the flames with their weapons blazing.
Rockets and M301-launched grenades began to scream back at the enemy even before John gave the order. He opened fire with his BR55 and saw their energy shields begin to crackle beneath the withering fire from Blue Team and First Platoon. The Elites had to be from that same special unit he had seen several times before—the one that had come hunting Spartans on Seoba and above Naraka. The very unit that had poured out of the Umbra he and Fred had destroyed back in the gorge.
Alarm bells went off in John’s head, as deep-rooted fears of a trap being sprung came to the fore. Maybe the point of this whole bizarre, complicated Covenant operation here on Netherop had been to lure Blue Team into this thicket, to trap them here in the bottom of a landslide chute, where they would be unsupported and easy to capture.
Then his motion tracker went wild. Twenty hostile contacts appeared out of nowhere, just fifteen meters to his right. John did not turn to look. The worst thing to do when you were stupid enough to let yourself get drawn into a crossfire was to panic and lose focus.
But he did check his HUD for time to extraction: 4:14.
The Spartans could make it through the thicket easily, but First Platoon . . . those marines had to leave now.
John made his decision.
“Hostile contacts right flank.” He finished the Elite he’d been attacking—kept firing until he saw the alien fall—then hunkered down and changed magazines. “First Platoon disengage and withdraw to extraction point.”
“Affirm—”
“Go!” This was no time to confirm orders, no time to do anything but act. “Blue Leader and Blue Two will engage the flank attack! Blue Three and Four, maintain fire!”
Three status LEDs flashed green. John pulled the BR55’s charging handle and turned to meet the flank attack.
Except it wasn’t an attack at all—just twenty exhausted Elites running for cover behind the downed dropship. He opened fire on full automatic and heard Fred doing the same, and between them they dropped twelve targets before their magazines clicked empty.
The survivors disappeared behind the wreckage.
John checked his HUD. Exactly two minutes until extraction. The skies over the Lucky Break had become a flaming web of missiles and cannon bolts, and there was something big and ugly coming their way—something with crescent-shaped wings and cannon mounts the size of Nandao fighters. If the Spartans didn’t leave now, they were either going to be dead or be living on Netherop for a long, long time.
“Blue Team, withdraw.” Whatever the aliens had taken from the Wheatley crew, it was theirs now. Sacrificing a team of Spartans would do nothing to solve the mystery. “And ammo up. We may be shooting our way into orbit.”
A line of LEDs flashed green. John turned and began to power through the tangle of hooked thorns, following the waypoint on his HUD, ripping a new passage straight through—
The air went white. The sky went white. Everything went white. The thicket vanished in a flash and the pressure wave hit him from behind, blowing him forward and sending his battle rifle flying.
John tucked into a flip, brought his feet around and stuck the landing, then sprinted over the alluvial fan’s still-molten gravel. Far ahead of him, he saw a tiny, delta-winged shadow swooping down over the landslide chute. It was a Pelican, heading for a line of seven marines. Just seven survivors. Damn, that was bad.
