CHAPTER TWENTY

1800 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar)

Sigma Octanus IV, grid nineteen by thirty-seven

The Master Chief surveyed what was left of Camp Alpha. There were only fourteen Marine regulars left

—balanced against the four hundred men and women who had been slaughtered here.

He said to Kelly, “Post a guard on the dropship, and put three on patrol. Take the rest and secure the LZ.”

“Yes, sir.” She turned to face the other Spartans, pointed, made three quick hand gestures, and they dispersed like ghosts.

The Master Chief turned to the Corporal. “Are you in command here, Corporal?”

The man looked around. “I guess so . . . yes, sir.”

“As of 0900 Standard Military time, NavSpecWep is assuming control of this operation. All Marine personnel now report through our chain of command. Understand, Corporal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, Corporal, brief me on what happened here.”

Corporal Harland hunkered down and sketched rough maps of the area as he quickly recounted the brutal series of surprise attacks. “Right here—grid thirteen by twenty-four. That’s where they hit us, sir.

Something’s goin’ on there.”

The Master Chief scanned the crude maps, compared them with the area surveys displayed in his HUD, then nodded, satisfied.

“Get your wounded inside the Pelican, Corporal,” he said. “We’ll be dusting off soon. I want you to rotate by thirds on guard duty. The rest of your men should get some sleep. But make no mistake—if the Pelican gets fragged, we’ll be staying on Sigma Octanus Four.”

The Corporal paled, then replied, “Understood, sir.” He stood slowly—the long day of combat and flight had taken its toll. The Marine saluted, then moved to assemble his team.

Inside his sealed helmet, John frowned. These Marines were now under his command . . . and therefore part of his team. They lacked the Spartans’ firepower and training, so they had to be protected—not relied upon. He had to make sure they got out in one piece. Another snag in an already dicey mission.

The Master Chief opened his COM link: “Team leaders meet me at the LZ in three minutes.”

Lights winked on his heads-up display—his Spartans acknowledging the order.

He looked around at the destruction. Thin sunlight reflected dully from the thousands of spent shell casings strewn across the battlefield. Dozens of shattered Warthog chassis bled trails of smoke into the hazy sky. Scores of burned corpses lay in the mud.

They’d have to get a burial detail down here later . . . before the Grunts got to the dead.

The Master Chief would never question his orders, but he felt a momentary stab of bitterness. Whoever set these camps up without proper reconnaissance, whoever had blindly trusted the satellite transmissions in an enemy-held region, had been a fool.

Worse, they had wasted the lives of good soldiers.

Green Team’s leader jogged in from the south. The Master Chief couldn’t see her features through her reflective faceplate, but he could tell without checking his HUD that it was Linda by the way she moved . . . that, and the SRS99C-S2 AM sniper rile with Oracle scope she carried.

She carefully looked around, verified that the area was secure, and slung her rifle. She snapped a crisp salute. “Reporting as ordered, Master Chief.”

Red Team leader—Joshua—ran in from the east. He saluted. “Motion detectors, radar, and automated defenses up and running, sir.”

“Good. Let’s go over this one more time.” The Master Chief overlaid a topographic map on their helmets’ displays. “Mission goal one: we need to gather intelligence on Covenant troop disposition and defenses at Côte d’Azur. Mission goal two: if there are no civilian survivors, we are authorized to remote detonate a HAVOK tactical nuclear mine and remove the enemy forces. In the meantime, we will minimize our contact with the enemy.”

They nodded.

The Master Chief highlighted the four streams that fed into the river delta near Côte d’Azur. “We avoid these routes. Banshees patrol them.” He circled where Firebase Bravo had been. “We’ll avoid this area as well—according to the Marine survivors, that area is hot. Grid thirteen by twenty-four also has activity.

“Red Leader, take your squad in along the coast. Stay in the tree line. Green Leader, follow this ridgeline, but keep under cover, too. I’ll be taking this route.” The Master Chief traced a path through a particularly dense section of jungle.

“It’s 1830 hours now. The city is thirteen kilometers from here—that should take us no more than forty minutes. We’ll probably be forced to slow down to avoid enemy patrols—but we all should be in place no later than 1930 hours.”

He zoomed into a city map of Côte d’Azur. “Entry points to the city sewer system are—” He highlighted the display with NAV points. “—here, here, and here. Red Team will recon the wharf areas. Green takes the residential section. I’ll take Blue Team downtown. Questions?”

“Our communications underground will be limited,” Linda said. “How do we check in while keeping our heads down?”

“According to the Colonial Administration Authority’s file on Côte d’Azur, the sewer systems here have steel pipes running along the top of the plastic conduits. Tap into those and use ground-return transceivers to check in. We’ll have our own private COM line.”

“Roger,” she said.

The Master Chief said, “As soon as we leave, the dropship dusts off and will move here.” He indicated a position far to the south of Alpha camp. “If the Pelican doesn’t make it . . . our fallback rendezvous point is here.” He indicated a point fifty kilometers south. “ONI’s welcoming committee has stashed our emergency SATCOM link and survival gear there.”

No one mentioned that survival gear would be useless when the Covenant glassed the planet.

“Stay sharp,” John said. “And come back in one piece. Dismissed.”

They saluted briskly, then sprinted to their tasks.

He switched to Blue Team’s frequency. “Time to saddle up, Blue Team,” he called out. “RV back at the bunker for orders.” Three blue lights winked acknowledgement in his display.

A moment later, the other three Spartans in his squad trotted into position. “Reporting as ordered,” Blue-Two announced.

The Master Chief quickly filled them in on the mission. “Blue-Two.” He nodded to Kelly. “You’re carrying the nuke and medical gear.”

“Affirmative. Who’ll have the detonator, sir?”

“I will,” he replied. “Blue-Three.” He turned to Fred. “You have the explosives. James, you’ll take our extra COM equipment.”

They double-checked their gear: modified MA5B assault rifles, adapted to mount silencers; ten extra clips of ammunition; frag grenades; combat knives; M6D pistols—small but powerful handguns that fired .450 Magnum loads, sufficient to crack through Grunt armor.

In addition to the weapons, there was a single smoke canister—blue smoke to signal for pickup. John would carry that. “Let’s go,” he said.

Blue Team moved out. They quickly entered the jungle, in a simple single-file line with Blue-Four in the lead; James had an instinct for walking point. The line was slightly staggered, with John and Kelly slightly to the left of James. Fred brought up the rear.

They moved cautiously. Every hundred yards, James signaled the group to halt while he methodically surveyed the area for any sign of the enemy. The rest of Blue Team crouched, and disappeared into the thick jungle foliage.

John checked his HUD; they were one-quarter of the way to the city. The team made good time despite the cautious pace. The MJOLNIR assault armor allowed them to push their way through the thick jungle like it was a stroll through the woods.

As the team moved on, the thin mist that permeated the jungle gave way to a hard, pelting rain. The damp ground gradually turned to mud, forcing the team to slow.

Blue-Four stopped dead and raised his fist—the signal to halt and freeze. John stopped in his tracks, his rifle raised and sweeping slowly back and forth, searching for any sign of enemy movement.

Normally, the Spartans relied on their armor’s detection gear to locate enemy troops. But their motion sensors were useless—everything moved in the jungle. They had to rely on their eyes and ears and the instincts of their point man.

“Point to Team Leader: enemy contact.” James’ calm voice crackled across the COM channel. “Enemy troops within one hundred meters of my position, ten degrees left.”

With exaggerated slowness, Blue-Four indicated the danger area by pointing.

“Affirmative,” John replied. “Blue Team: hold position.”

Although the motion trackers were of no use here, thermal proved effective. Through the thick sheets of rain, the Master Chief spotted three cold spots: Grunts in their chilled environmental suits.

“Blue Team: enemy contact confirmed.” He added the enemy position to his HUD. “Estimated enemy strength, Point?”

“Lead, I make ten, say again, ten Covenant troops. Grunts, sir. They’re moving slowly. Double-file formation. They haven’t spotted us. Orders?”

John’s orders said to minimize contact with the enemy where possible—the Spartans were spread too thinly across the battle area to risk a prolonged engagement. But the Grunts were heading right for the Marine bunker . . .

“Let’s take them out, Blue Team,” he said.

The team of Grunts slogged through the mud. The vaguely simian aliens wore shiny red-trimmed armor.

Craggy, purple-black hide was visible beneath the environmental suits. Breath masks provided supercooled methane—the aliens’ atmosphere. There were ten of them, moving in two columns and spaced roughly three meters apart.

John noted with satisfaction that they seemed bored—only the point man and the pair on rear guard had their plasma rifles at the ready. The rest chattered at each other in a weird combination of high-pitched squeaks and guttural barks.

Easy, relaxed targets. Perfect.

He gave a series of slow hand signals to the rest of the team; they faded back until they were well away from the Grunts’ field of view.

The Master Chief opened the squadwide COM channel. “They’re seventy meters from this depression

—” He keyed a NAV point into the team’s topographic display. “They’re heading for the western hill and will probably follow the terrain to the top. We’ll fall back now, and take concealed positions along the eastern hill.

“Blue-Four, you’re our scout—stay near the bottom and let us know when the rear guard passes you.

Take them out first—they seem alert.

“Blue-Two, you have overwatch at the top of the hill.

“Blue-Three, back me up. Silenced weapons only—no explosives, unless things go bad.”

He paused, then gave the order: “Move out.”

The Spartans crept back along their path and spread out along the hill.

John—in the center of the line—readied his assault rifle. The team was virtually invisible in the thick foliage, and covered by the barrelwide tree trunks of the local flora.

One minute ticked by. Then two . . . three . . .

Blue-Four’s acknowledgment signal blinked twice in John’s HUD. Enemy detected. He relaxed his grip on the weapon, waiting—

—There. Twenty meters distant, the Grunt point man moved to the edge of the western hill, just downhill from John’s position. The alien paused, his plasma rifle sweeping the area—then moved slowly up the rise.

A moment later, the rest of the formation came into view, ten meters behind the point man.

Blue-Four’s indicator winked again. Now.

The Master Chief opened fire, a short, three-round burst. The weapon’s muffled cough was inaudible over the sound of jungle rainfall. The trio of armor-piercing rounds slashed through the alien’s throat protection, rupturing the environment suit. The Grunt clutched at his neck, emitted a brief, high-pitched gurgle—then fell to the mud, dead.

A moment later, the Grunt lines came to a clumsy halt, confused.

John spotted two strobe flashes, and the pair of Covenant rear guards dropped to the ground.

“Blue-Two to Lead: rear-guard eliminated.”

“Hit them!” John barked.

The four Spartans opened fire in short bursts. In less than a second, four more of the Grunt patrol were down, dead from head shots.

The remaining trio of Grunts unslung their plasma rifles, swinging them wildly back and forth, looking for targets and chattering loudly in their strange, barking language. John sighted on the alien closest to him and squeezed the trigger.

The alien splashed into the mud, methane bubbling from his shattered breath mask.

Another pair of sustained bursts and the last of the Grunts were down.

* * *

Kelly policed the Grunts’ weapons and handed a plasma rifle to each of the team; the Spartans had standing orders to seize Covenant weapons and technology whenever possible.

Blue Team fanned out and continued on their way. When they heard Banshees overhead, they hunkered down in the mud, and the fliers passed.

Ten more kilometers of rough terrain and then the jungle stopped and fields of rice paddies stretched out before them all the way to Côte d’Azur.

Crossing these would be more difficult than the jungle. They donned camouflage cloaks that masked their thermal signatures and crawled through the muck on their stomachs.

The Master Chief saw three larger ships hovering over the city. If they were troop transports, they could carry thousands of Covenant soldiers. If they were warships, any direct ground assault against the city would be futile. Either way it was bad news.

He made sure his vid and audio mission recorders got a good clear image of the vessels.

When they emerged from the mud, they were near the beach on the edge of the city. The Master Chief checked his map readings and made his way to the sewage outlet.

The two-meter diameter pipe was sealed with a steel grate. He and Fred easily bent the bars aside and entered.

They sloshed through hip-deep muck. The Master Chief didn’t like the cramped quarters. Their mobility was restricted by the narrow pipes; worse, they were bunched up and therefore easier to kill with grenades or massed fire. Motion sensors picked up hundreds of targets. The constant downpour from storm drains above made the sensors useless.

He followed his electronic map through the maze of pipes. Light filtered in from above—beams of illumination connected to the manhole-cover vent holes. Every so often something moved and blocked that light.

The Spartans moved quickly and quietly through the sludge and halted when they reached their final waypoint—directly under the center of Côte d’Azur’s “downtown.”

With a tiny jerk of his head, the Master Chief informed Blue Team to spread out and keep their eyes peeled. He snaked a fiber-optic probe up through the drain grate at street level and plugged it into his helmet.

The yellow light from the sodium vapor lamps washed everything topside in an eerie glow. There were Grunts positioned on the street corners, and the shadow of a Banshee flier circling overhead.

The electric cars parked on the street had been overturned, and the waste receptacles had been knocked over or set on fire. Every street-level window was broken. The Master Chief saw no human civilians, alive or otherwise.

Blue Team moved up and over a block. The Master Chief checked topside again.

There was more activity here: a pack of black-armored Grunts meandered down the streets. Two vulture-headed Jackals sat on the corner, squabbling over a hunk of meat.

Something else caught his attention, though. There were other aliens on the sidewalk—or rather, above the sidewalk. They were roughly man-size creatures—unlike any he had ever encountered. The creatures were vaguely sluglike, with pale, purple-pink skin. Unlike other Covenant forces, they were not bipeds.

Instead they had several tentacular appendages sprouting from their thick trunks.

They floated a half meter above the ground, as if the odd, pink bladders on their backs kept them aloft.

One alien used a slender tentacle to open the hood of a car. It began to disassemble the car’s electric engine, moving with startling speed.

Within twenty seconds all the parts had been neatly arranged in rows on the pavement. The creature paused, then reassembled the parts with blinding quickness, disassembled and rebuilt it several times into different arrangements. Finally, the creature simply reassembled the car and floated on its way.

The Master Chief made sure his mission recorder had gotten that. This was a Covenant race never documented before.

He rotated the fiber-optic cable to point down the opposite end of the street. There was more activity another block away.

He retracted the probe and moved Blue Team a block farther south. He signaled the team to hold position, then climbed up a short series of metal handholds until he was just below a manhole cover.

He cautiously sent the probe topside again, up through the manhole-cover vent.

There was a Jackal’s hoof directly adjacent to the probe, blocking half of his field of vision. He turned the probe with excruciating slowness, and saw fifty more Jackals milling back and forth. They were concentrated around the building across the street. The building resembled pictures that Déjà had shown him years ago—it looked like an Athenian temple, with white marble steps and Ionic columns. At the top of the steps were a pair of stationary guns. More bad news.

He pulled the probe back and consulted the map. The building was marked as the Côte d’Azur Museum of Natural History.

The Covenant had serious firepower here—the stationary guns had commanding fields of fire, making a frontal assault suicidal. Why would they protect a human structure? he wondered. Was it their headquarters?

The Master Chief signaled for Blue-Two. He pointed to the accessway that led under the building. He held up two fingers, pointed toward her eyes, and then down the passage, and then slowly balled his hand into a fist.

Kelly proceeded very slowly down that passage to scout it out.

The Master Chief checked the time. Red and Green Teams were due to report. He had James attach the ground-return transceiver to the pipes overhead.

“Green Team, come in.”

“Roger: Green Team Leader here, sir,” Linda whispered over the channel. “We’ve scouted the residential section.” There was a pause. “No survivors . . . just like Draco Three. We’re too late.”

He understood. They’d seen it before. The Covenant didn’t take prisoners. On Draco III, they had watched via satellite linkup as human survivors were herded together and ripped apart by ravenous Grunts and Jackals. By the time the Spartans had gotten there, there was no one left to rescue.

But the victims had been avenged.

“Green Team: stand by and prepare to fall back to the RV and secure the area,” he said.

“Standing by,” Linda said.

He switched to the Red Team COM channel: “Red Team, report.”

Joshua’s voice crackled over the link: “Red Leader, sir. We’ve got something for ONI. We’ve spotted some new type of Covenant race. Little guys that float. They seem to be some sort of explorer or scientist type. They take things apart, then move on, like they’re looking for something. They do not, repeat not, appear hostile. Advise that you do not engage. They raise a pretty loud alarm, Blue Lead.”

“You in trouble?”

“Dodged trouble, sir,” he said. “But there is one snag.”

“Snag.” The word was charged with meaning for the Spartans. Getting caught in an ambush or a minefield, a teammate wounded, or aerial bombardments—those were all things they had trained for.

Snags were things they didn’t know how to handle. Complications that no one had planned for.

“Go ahead,” the Master Chief whispered.

“We have survivors. Twenty civilians hid in a cargo ship here. There are several wounded.”

The Master Chief mulled this over. It wasn’t his choice to weigh the relative worth of a handful of civilian lives versus the possibility of taking out ten thousand Covenant troops with their nuke. His orders were specific on this point. They could not set up the nuke if there was civilian population at risk.

“New mission objective, Red Team Leader,” the Master Chief said. “Get those civilians to the recovery point and evac them back to fleet.” He switched COM channels again, broadcasting to all the teams.

“Green Team Leader, you still online?”

A pause, then Linda spoke: “Roger.”

“Move to the docks and coordinate with Red Team—they have survivors we need to evac. Green Team leader has strategic control of this mission.”

“Understood,” she said. “We’re on our way.”

“Affirmative, sir,” Joshua said. “We’ll get it done.”

“Blue Team out.” The Master Chief disconnected.

It was going to be rough for Green and Red Teams. Those civilians would slow them down—and if they had to protect them from Covenant patrols, they’d all get noticed.

Blue-Two returned. She opened the COM link and reported in. “There’s access to the building—a ladder and a steel plate welded shut. We can burn through it.”

The Master Chief opened up the team COM channel. “We’re going to assume that Red and Green Teams will remove the civilians from Côte d’Azur. We will proceed as planned.”

He paused, then turned to Blue-Two. “Break out the nuke and arm it.”