CHAPTER NINE

0605 Hours, September 12, 2525 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Destroyer Pioneer , en route to Eridanus System.

John and the other Spartans stood at ease.

The briefing room aboard the UNSC Destroyer Pioneer made him uncomfortable. The holographic projectors at the fore end of the triangular room showed the field of stars visible off the bow of the ship.

John wasn’t used to seeing so much space; he kept expecting the room to decompress explosively.

The stars flickered and faded and the overhead lights warmed. Chief Petty Officer Mendez and Dr.

Halsey entered the room.

The Spartans snapped to attention.

“At ease,” Mendez said. He clasped his hands behind his back and clenched his jaw muscles. The Chief looked almost . . . nervous.

That made John nervous, too.

Dr. Halsey walked to the podium. The overhead light reflected off her glasses. “Good morning, Spartans. I have good news for you. The word has come down. Command has decided to test your unique abilities. You have a new mission: an insurgent base in the Eridanus System.”

A star map appeared on the wall and zoomed in to show a warm orange sun ringed with twelve planets.

“In 2513, an armed insurrection in this system was suppressed by the UNSC force—Operation: TREBUCHET.”

An intersystem tactical map appeared, and tiny icons representing destroyers and carriers winked on.

They engaged a force of a hundred smaller ships. Pinpoints of fire appeared against the dark.

“The insurrection was put down,” Dr. Halsey continued. “However, elements of the rebel forces escaped and regrouped in the local asteroid belt.”

The map tilted and moved into the circle of debris around the star.

“Billions of rocks,” Dr. Halsey said, “where they hid from our forces . . . and continue to hide to this day. For some time ONI believed that the rebels were disorganized, and were lacking in leadership. That appears to have changed.

“We believe that one of these asteroids has been hollowed out, and that a formidable base has been constructed within. UNSC explorations into the belt have met either with no contact or with an ambush by superior forces.”

She paused, pushed up her glasses, and added, “The Office of Naval Intelligence has also confirmed that FLEETCOM has discovered a security breach within their organization—a rebel sympathizer leaking information to these forces.”

John and the other Spartans shifted uneasily. A leak? It was possible. Déjà had shown them many historical battles that had been won and lost because of traitors or informants. But it never occurred to him that it could happen in the UNSC.

A flat picture flashed over the star map: a middle-aged man with thinning hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and watery gray eyes.

“This is their leader,” Dr. Halsey said. “Colonel Robert Watts. The original photo was taken after Operation: TREBUCHET and has been computer aged.

“Your mission is to infiltrate the rebel base, capture Watts, and return him—alive and unharmed—to UNSC-controlled space. This will deprive the rebels of their new leadership. And it will provide ONI a chance to interrogate Watts and root out traitors within FLEETCOM.”

Dr. Halsey stepped aside. “Chief Mendez?”

Mendez exhaled and unclasped his hands. He strode to the podium and cleared his throat. “This operation will be different from your previous missions. You will be engaging the enemy using live rounds and lethal force. They will be returning the favor. If there is any doubt, any confusion—and make no mistake: in combat, there will be confusion—take no chances. Kill first, ask questions later.

“Support on this mission will be limited to the resources and firepower of this destroyer,” Mendez continued. “This is to minimize the chance of a leak in the command structure.”

Mendez walked to the star map. The face of Colonel Watts snapped off and blueprints for a Parabola-class freighter appeared.

“Although we don’t know the location of the rebel base, we believe they receive periodic shipments from Eridanus Two. The independent freighter Laden is due to leave space dock in six hours for a routine recertification of her engines. She is being loaded with enough food and water to supply a small city.

Additionally, her captain has been identified as a rebel officer thought to have been killed during Operation: TREBUCHET.

“You will slip aboard this freighter and hopefully hitch a ride to the rebel base. Once there, infiltrate the installation, grab Watts, and get off of that rock any way you can.”

Chief Mendez gazed at them all. “Questions?”

“Sir,” John said. “What are our extraction options?”

“You have two options: a panic button that will relay a distress signal to a preestablished listening ship.

Also, the Pioneer will stay on-station . . . briefly. Our window here is thirteen hours.” He tapped the star map on the edge of the asteroid belt and it glowed with a blue Nav marker. “I’ll leave the extraction choice up to you. But let me point out that this asteroid belt has a circumference of more than a billion kilometers . . . making it impossible to canvass with ONI surveillance craft. If things get hot, you will be on your own.

“Any other questions?”

The Spartans sat, silent and immobile.

“No? Well, listen up, Recruits,” Mendez added. “This time I’ve told you all the twists that I know of. Be prepared for anything.” His gaze fixed on John. “Squad Leader, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Petty Officer Third Class.”

“Sir!” John snapped to attention.

“Assemble your team and equipment. Be ready to muster at 0300. We’ll drop you off at the Eridanus Two docks. You’re on your own from there.”

“Yes, sir!” John said.

Mendez saluted. He and Dr. Halsey then left the room.

John turned to face his teammates. The other Spartans stood at attention. Thirty-three—too many for this operation. He needed a small team: five or six maximum.

“Sam, Kelly, Linda, and Fred, meet me in the weapons locker in ten minutes.” The other Spartans sighed and their gazed dropped to the deck. “The rest of you fall out. You’ll have the more difficult part of this mission: You’ll have to wait here.”

The weapons locker of the Pioneer had been stocked with a bewildering array of combat equipment. On a table were guns, knives, communication gear, body armor explosives, medical packs, survival gear, portable computers, even a thruster pack for maneuvering in space.

More important than the equipment, however, John assessed his team.

Sam had recovered from the augmentation faster than any of the other Spartans. He paced impatiently around the crates of grenades. He was the strongest of them all. He stood taller than John by a head. He had grown out his sandy hair to three centimeters. Chief Mendez had warned him that he was going to look like a civilian soon.

Kelly, in contrast, had taken the longest to recover. She stood in the corner with her arms crossed over her chest. John had thought she wasn’t going to make it. She was still gaunt and her hair had yet to grow back. Her face, however, still had its rough, angular beauty. She scared John a little, too. She was fast before . . . now no one could touch her if she didn’t allow it.

Fred sat cross-legged on the deck, twirling a razor-edged combat knife in glittering arcs. He always came in second in all the contests. John thought he could have come in first, but he just didn’t like the attention. He was neither too short nor too tall. He wasn’t overly muscled or slim. His black hair was shot with streaks of silver—a feature he hadn’t had before the augmentation. If anyone in the group could blend into a crowd, it would be him.

Linda was the quietest member of the group. She was pale, had close-cropped red hair, and green eyes.

She was a crack shot, an artist with a sniper rifle.

Kelly circled the table once, and then selected a pair of grease-stained blue coveralls. Her name had been sloppily embroidered on the chest. “These our new trainee uniforms?”

“ONI provided them,” John said. “They’re supposed to match what the crew of the Laden wears.”

Kelly held the coveralls up and frowned. “They don’t give a girl much to work with.”

“Try this on for size.” Linda held a black body suit up to Kelly’s long slender frame.

They had used these black suits before. They were form-fitting, lightweight polymer body armor. They could deflect a small-caliber round and had refrigeration/heating units that would mask infrared signatures. The integrated helmet had encryption and communications gear, a heads-up display, and thermal and motion detectors. Sealed tight, the unit had a fifteen-minute reserve of oxygen to let the wearer survive in vacuum.

The suits were uncomfortable, and they were tricky to repair in the field. And they always needed repairs.

“They’re too tight,” Kelly said. “It’ll limit my range of motion.”

“We wear them for this op,” John told her. “There are too many places between here and there with nothing to breathe but vacuum. As for the rest of your equipment, take what you want—but stay light.

Without recon data on this place, we’re going to be moving fast . . . or we’ll be dead.”

The team started selecting their weapons first.

“Three-ninety caliber?” Fred asked.

“Yes,” John replied. “Everyone take guns that use .390-caliber ammunition so we can share clips if we have to. Except Linda.”

Linda gravitated to a matte-black long-barreled rifle—the SRS99C-S2 AM. The sniper rifle system had modular sections: scopes, stocks, barrels, even the firing mechanism could be swapped. She quickly stripped the rifle down and reconfigured it. She assembled a flash-and-sound suppression barrel, and then to compensate for the lower muzzle velocity, she increased the ammunition caliber to .450. She ditched all the sights and scopes and settled for an integrated link to her helmet’s heads-up display. She pocketed five extended ammunition clips.

John also chose an MA2B, a cut-down version of the standard MA5B assault rifle. It was tough and reliable, with electronic targeting and an ammo supply indicator. It also had a recoil-reduction system, and could deliver an impressive fifteen rounds per second.

He picked up a knife: twenty-centimeter blade, one serrated edge, nonreflective titanium carbide, and balanced for throwing.

John grabbed the panic button—a tiny single-shot emergency beacon. It had two settings. The red setting alerted the Pioneer that it had hit the fan, and to come in guns blazing. The green setting merely marked the location of the base for later assault by the UNSC.

He took a double handful of ammo clips—then paused. He set them down and pocketed five. If they got into a firefight where he’d need that much firepower, their mission was over anyway.

Everyone took similar equipment, with a few variations. Kelly selected a small computer pad with IR

links. She also had their field medical kit.

Fred packed a standard-issue lockbreaker.

Linda selected three nav marker transmitters, each the size of a tick. The trackers could be adhered to an object and would broadcast that object’s location to the Spartans’ heads-up displays.

Sam hefted two medium-size backpacks—“damage packs.” They were filled with C-12, enough high explosives to blow through three meters of battleship armor plate.

“You have enough of that stuff?” Kelly asked him wryly.

“You think I should take more?” Sam replied, and smiled. “Nothing like a little fireworks to celebrate the end of a mission.”

“Everyone ready?” John asked.

Sam’s smile disappeared and he slapped an extended clip into his MA2B. “Ready!”

Kelly gave him John a thumbs-up.

Fred and Linda nodded.

“Then let’s go to work.”