Halo: Oblivion E-Book

Troy Denning

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A Master Chief story and original full-length novel set in the Halo universe—based on the New York Times bestselling video game series! 2526. It has been more than a year since humanity first encountered the hostile military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant, and several weeks after the United Nations Space Command's devastating counterattack of Operation: SILENT STORM was deemed an overwhelming success. The UNSC has put its faith in the hands of the Spartans, led by the legendary Master Chief, John-117: enhanced super-soldiers raised and trained from childhood via a clandestine black ops project to be living weapons. But the Covenant—enraged and fearful of their enemy's unexpected strategies and prowess—is not taking its recent defeat lightly, and is now fully determined to eradicate humanity from existence, brutally overrunning the ill-fated planets of the Outer Colonies faster than retreats can be ordered. If the UNSC has any chance of stemming the tide of the war, the Master Chief and Blue Team must drop onto an empty, hellish world in order to capture a disabled Covenant frigate filled with valuable technology. It has all the makings of a trap, but the bait is far too tempting to ignore—and this tantalizing prize is being offered by a disgraced and vengeful Covenant fleetmaster, whose sole opportunity for redemption lies in extinguishing humanity's only hope of survival…

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Don’t Miss these other Thrilling Stories in the worlds of Halo

Title Page

Copyright

Historian’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Available from Titan Books

OBLIVION

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OBLIVION

TROY DENNING

BASED ON THE BESTSELLING XBOX® VIDEO GAMES

TITAN BOOKS

Halo: Oblivion

Print edition ISBN: 9781789093445

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789093452

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: September 2019

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Microsoft, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, and the Xbox logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

On April 15, 2526, more than a year after the loss of the planet Harvest to the Covenant during first contact, humanity struck back with Operation: SILENT STORM. Invading enemy space for the first time, a combined force of Spartans and ODST Space Assault Troopers attacked a supply world on the outer fringes of the hegemony, leveling two alien cities, eliminating an orbital shipyard, and decimating an enemy fleet. Now, just six weeks later, the Covenant is bringing its full might to bear. Human colonies are falling two and three a week, and new invasion routes are opening faster than the Office of Naval Intelligence can identify them. Like all of the Spartans, Blue Team is rushing from one disaster to another, desperately attempting to stem a brutal tide of violence that even the United Nations Space Command’s top brass is beginning to believe cannot be stopped. . . .

OBLIVION

CHAPTER 1

1403 hours, June 5, 2526 (military calendar)

Nasim Bridge, Samalat Gorge

Karpos Mountain Range, Planet Mesra, Qusdar System

The Covenant armor emerged from the cloud-draped jungle on the opposite rim of the gorge, an unending line of sleek forms gliding up the muddy road on cushions of nothingness. Still five kilometers distant, the gun carriages appeared the size of fingertips, with a pair of tiny plasma cannons sitting atop smooth, sagittate hulls so purple they nearly vanished into the surrounding gloom. Interspersed among the gun carriages were more than a hundred armored personnel carriers and the articulated cylinders of three CBVs—combat bridging vehicles—enveloped in the faint shimmer of heavy-duty energy shielding.

A CBV could launch a telescoping span across a kilometer-wide chasm in less than a minute, so blowing the Nasim Bridge was not going to stop the enemy advance. The aliens would still cross the Samalat Gorge in force, and the Fifth Ghost Battalion would have to stop a hundred armored vehicles with little more than hand grenades and shoulder-fired rockets.

Impossible.

The Fifth Ghost Battalion was down to quarter strength, just two-hundred-and-eighty soldiers. They were low on food, medicine, and ammunition, and they had come straight from a two-day battle, marching thirty hours nonstop because they were the Militia of Mesra’s sole remaining battalion and someone had to delay the enemy advance. The UNSC’s 24th Marine Engineering Brigade needed time to demolish a huge xenotime mine in the next valley—not just collapse the underground workings, but pack the passages with enough nukes to render the ore body utterly useless.

The only thing John-117 knew about xenotime was that it yielded ytterbium and erbium, lanthanide elements essential to the manufacture of ultra-efficient lasers and small-scale fusion reactors. Apparently, that made denying it to the Covenant important enough to risk Blue Team in support of a simple delaying action.

But Mesra also had huge deposits of other lanthanide ores—many associated with ancient cave systems that had formed millennia before humans arrived—and it happened to be one of the few worlds that had been spared planetary plasma bombardment when the Covenant attacked. From that, the intelligence analysts of Battle Group X-Ray had inferred that the aliens wanted to capture Mesra’s mining facilities intact, and Admiral Preston Cole had asked the Militia of Mesra to forgo evacuation in support of UNSC denial efforts. To a soldier, the Mesranis had responded by vowing not to leave their home until they had killed every alien who set foot on it.

Even by Spartan standards, the oath was over the top, but the Mesranis were doing their best to make good on their word. During eight days of pitched battle, they had sacrificed brigade after brigade to prevent the Covenant from capturing any mine intact. Now the Militia of Mesra was down to a single understrength battalion protecting the planet’s most remote mine—and John was glad he and Blue Team had arrived in time to help.

Especially when the Mesranis were making their last stand just to buy a little time for the rest of humanity.

John eased back from the cliff edge, down behind the rocky crest that overlooked the gorge. Most of the Mesranis lay on the reverse slope, trying to catch an hour of sleep in hastily dug belly scrapes. The rest of Blue Team—Fred-104, Kelly-087, and Linda-058—were humping equipment in from the makeshift landing zone on a tailings dam, and they were probably ascending the back side of the slope by now.

At least, he hoped they were. This battle was going to start sooner than expected, and they still had a lot of digging to do. He descended the slope a dozen meters so he wouldn’t disturb the sleeping Mesranis, then crab-walked across the mist-swaddled slope toward the Fifth Battalion command post.

The tangled undergrowth in this part of the jungle was blanketed by a buildup of gossamer web so deep and thick it was impossible to see the terrain beneath. The stuff wasn’t strong enough to impede movement, but it did conceal a lot of sunken ground and fallen logs—tripping hazards that could turn a solid tactical plan into a disaster. He would have to keep that in mind.

He reached the command post, an open-topped bunker dug into the reverse slope. An arm-length arachnid crouched atop the dirt wall opposite him, lurking in the gossamer ground web and keeping watch on the soldiers in the pit below. With pincers the size of combat knives and eight dorsal eyes set above eight furry legs, the creature looked more dangerous than it was. As long as no one stuck an unarmored hand or boot into a hatching crèche, the arachnids were supposed to be pretty harmless, and the Mesranis usually tried to leave the things undisturbed.

In the bottom of the bunker, a dozen Mesrani aides were working comm sets and adjusting tactical arrays. Four officers stood at a portable field table with slumped shoulders and uneven balance, studying a bank of video displays linked to remote observation cameras. As combat-control technology went, the system was primitive and cumbersome, but it had the advantage of not requiring a satellite feed or drone link—a major benefit in an environment where the enemy dominated both air and orbit.

John picked an open spot, then jumped down into the bunker. Most everyone glanced in his direction—when a Spartan in four-hundred-and-fifty kilograms of Mjolnir power armor dropped two meters into a two-meter-deep hole, even soldiers asleep on their feet felt him land—then turned their attention back to their tasks. But the commanding major, a slender woman in a full helmet and muddy jungle-pattern uniform, allowed her gaze to linger.

“You are the support I was promised?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Through the major’s transparent eye shield, John could see a narrow nose, high cheeks, and black brows over eyes sunken with exhaustion. She had a wide mouth with thin lips savaged by chewing and dehydration. He raised his hand in salute. “Master Chief John-117, at your service.”

She touched her fingertips to her helmet in a gesture that seemed more greeting than salute. “Your surname is a number, one hundred seventeen?”

“Ma’am, it’ll be simpler if you call me John or Master Chief.” He was not at liberty to explain the designation protocols used in the top-secret SPARTAN-II super-soldier program, so he tried to change the subject by dipping his faceplate toward the long squiggle of unrecognizable characters on the major’s name tape. “I apologize, Major. I don’t know how to pronounce your name.”

“Bah’d de Gaya y Elazia de los Karim.” She lowered her hand, and the corners of her eyes wrinkled in amusement. “It will be simpler if you call me Bah’d.”

John snapped his hand down. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Bah’d.”

“Yes, ma’am.” John winced as soon as he spoke. He and Blue Team had been fighting alongside the Mesranis for six days, but he still found their egalitarian militia so odd that he had trouble remembering to address the officers by their first names. “Apologies, ma’am—I mean, Bah’d.”

“Better.”

Bah’d looked out the back of the bunker and down the ridge toward the xenotime mine, where the chunky silhouettes of three huge figures were pushing through the mossy undergrowth. They were moving slowly, dragging sledges stacked high with crates of ammunition and explosives, as well as six big M68 Gauss cannons scavenged from destroyed Warthog LRVs. Like John, all three Spartans wore power armor, though the MJOLNIR program was still so new that as part of the COBALT field-testing project, each of their suits bore modifications that made them look like different-colored variations on a theme.

“I had hoped there would be more of you,” Bah’d said. “It is going to be close, this battle.”

“Not that close,” John replied. “We’ll stop them.”

“With six Gauss cannons?” Bah’d shook her helmet and did not bother to ask about UNSC air support. Between the low cloud ceiling and the Covenant’s air superiority, a Sparrowhawk would not have lasted two minutes over the battlefield. “I do not think you have fought many armor columns, John. Your Gauss cannons will fire only a few rounds before they are taken out by those Wraiths.”

“Wraith” was the common human nickname for the big gun carriages that dominated the Covenant column. John had counted fifty Wraiths in the column before leaving his observation post. He and Blue Team had destroyed at least twice that number since inserting on Mesra, but he didn’t bother to tell Bah’d. She wouldn’t have believed him.

“We’ll use fire-and-move tactics,” John said. “Two bursts, and we’re gone. Reposition and repeat.”

“On foot?” Bah’d asked. At more than a hundred kilograms apiece, M68s were unwieldy weapons for dismounted combat. “How is that possible?”

“That would take too long to explain.” Again, John was dodging. Few people had the necessary security clearance to be briefed on the SPARTAN program. And, even had Bah’d been one of them, the last thing John wanted to do was recount how he and his fellow Blue Team members had been conscripted at age six and put into a top-secret project to develop bioengineered super-soldiers. “But we can do it. Trust me.”

Bah’d ran her gaze over his power-armored form again, appraising him from his angular helmet down to his lug-soled sabbatons. John was glad that his face remained hidden behind a gold reflective faceplate. The biological augmentations that he had endured as he entered adolescence had increased his height to more than two meters and his mass to almost a hundred-and-thirty kilograms. But he was still only fifteen years old, with a youthful face that tended to undermine the confidence of seasoned commanders like Bah’d.

Finally Bah’d nodded. “Very well, John. I will trust you.” She turned back to her weary officers and motioned him to join them. “It seems I have no choice.”

John stepped to her side and waited while she introduced the commanders leading the remnants of the battalion’s three companies. There were two men and a woman, all identified by first name only, all haggard and sunken-eyed from many straight days of combat and movement. None of Bah’d’s officers looked older than twenty-three or -four, and only one wore the double bars of a captain on his collar tips. The other two were still lieutenants—a sign they had been reassigned in the field to take the place of a fallen superior.

“As you can see, the enemy approach is cautious.” Bah’d pointed to the leftmost video display, where a swarm of chest-high, mask-wearing bipeds were pushing through the mist ahead of a slow-moving armored personnel carrier. The UNSC had nicknamed the short bipeds “Grunts,” and they were just one of five different species of Covenant aliens that John had fought so far.

“We assume that the Covenant expect us to hit them several kilometers below the Nasim Bridge,” Bah’d continued, “then force them to fight for every meter of ground. And, had we the strength, that is exactly what we would do.”

As she spoke, a plume of fire erupted at one corner of the screen, hurling pieces of an unlucky Grunt two meters into the air. Immediately the APC’s cannon turret swung around and began to cut through the nearby undergrowth, triggering a half dozen antipersonnel mines and filling the mist with pillars of flame. The Grunts panicked and dived for cover, two of them landing on mines that sent them riding fiery geysers straight back into the air. Then more plasma bolts began to pour in from the left side of the display as several vehicles offscreen opened fire.

“The aliens have reached our first field of antipersonnel mines, five kilometers from the bridge,” Bah’d explained. “There are three more small fields between there and the two-kilometer mark, all laid in the undergrowth alongside the road.”

“To encourage the Covenant to stay on the road,” John surmised. “And then?”

“A kilometer of antivehicle mines,” answered the man with the captain’s bars—Bah’d had introduced him as Aurello. “Planted under the roadbed and on its far side.”

“Why not the near side?” John asked. “Short on mines?”

Aurello’s eyes remained blank for nearly five seconds before he finally seemed to realize he had been asked a question.

“We have plenty of mines, thanks to your 24th Marine Engineering Brigade,” he said, “but not very much time. If we encourage the aliens to travel close to the gorge, there is hope some vehicles may slip over the side.”

“We have learned to seize every advantage we can,” Bah’d added. “The last kilometer before the bridge is heavily mined, and there are supplemental explosives alongside the gorge. With luck, the rim will collapse when their combat bridging vehicles attempt to launch their spans.”

“Luck works best when you’re prepared,” John said. It was something that Franklin Mendez, the Spartans’ senior drill instructor, had been fond of saying back on Reach. “And you definitely seem prepared.”

The corners of Bah’d’s eyes wrinkled again, and she and Aurello exchanged glances. John didn’t understand what they found so funny, but he didn’t take offense. The entire battalion would probably die in the next few hours, so he was glad to brighten their day in any way he could.

John turned to the middle display screen, which showed a relief map of the anticipated battlefield, and asked, “Where do you want us?”

“Perhaps we should tell you what we have planned,” Bah’d replied. “Then we will discuss it.”

“Discuss it?”

John glanced at the chronometer on the heads-up display inside his helmet. In response, the Mjolnir’s onboard computer—linked to his mind via a neural lace implanted at the base of his skull—immediately displayed an ETA for the enemy column. That was how the lace worked, reacting to his thoughts even before they grew conscious. It made John feel like there was a ghost living inside his head. But it was the neural interface that allowed him to manipulate a half ton of power armor as effortlessly as his own body—and to process a raging torrent of tactical data without drowning in irrelevant detail. Without the lace, he would have died a dozen times during the last six weeks alone.

“With all due respect, Bah’d, I’m not sure we have time for discussions. The first Wraiths will reach the Nasim Bridge in”—John checked the ETA on his HUD—“seventy-eight minutes. My team and I have firing lanes to clear and emplacements to dig.”

“Then why do you waste time questioning my wishes?” Bah’d’s tone switched from sharp to gentle: “This is how we do things in the Militia of Mesra—together.”

“Yes, ma’am,” John said. “My apologies, ma’am.”

Bah’d rolled her eyes at his reflexive deference, then turned to her female lieutenant. “Hiyat, will you share our thinking?”

Hiyat was a tall woman with coffee-colored skin and tired amber eyes that nevertheless sparkled with amusement.

“Yes, ma’am.” She shot John a look of contrition—then added, “Of course, ma’am.”

Everyone laughed too hard, and John found himself a bit unsettled by their forced humor in the face of certain death. Altered mental states were a symptom of combat fatigue, especially in exhausted soldiers who were using too many stim-packs in an effort to maintain alertness. Still, John forced a scratchy chuckle through his helmet’s external voicemitter. It never hurt to be a good sport.

Hiyat took a step back, then traced her finger along a jungle road as it left the Nasim Bridge and ran along the near side of the gorge. After a kilometer, it made a sharp hairpin swing around the end of Sarpesi Ridge and proceeded back toward the command post before turning off toward the xenotime mine, three kilometers away. Along its entire length, the road was the only level ground on the map.

“As you see,” Hiyat said, “the Ytterbium Road runs beneath our position for over two kilometers, from the Nasim Bridge until it turns toward the Doukala Xenotime Works. The road is mined with Lotus antitank charges the entire length.”

“So the enemy’s progress will be slow, and they’ll be exposed to attack the whole time.”

John was eyeing the rugged terrain on the back side of Sarpesi Ridge, noting how difficult it would be for the Wraiths to leave the road without plummeting into the sheer-walled valley below. He reached over Hiyat’s head and touched the screen where the road snaked along the notch-shaped walls of a precipitous ravine marked the Kharsis Flume.

“Have you thought about adding supplemental explosives above this flume?”

Hiyat craned her neck, her eyes running along John’s arm as though she had just realized how tall he was. When her gaze reached his fingertip, her eyes drifted back to his faceplate.

“We have already done so,” she said. “And that is why our highest priority will be to eliminate their combat bridging vehicles.”

“If we can destroy the CBVs,” Aurello explained, “the Wraiths will be forced to stop when we blow the Kharsis Flume. The Covenant will have no choice but to dismount and attack the Doukala on foot. Your Marine Engineering Brigade should be able to hold them off long enough to finish its work.”

John didn’t ask why it would fall to the engineering brigade to hold off the foot attack. The Samalat Gorge yawned a kilometer wide at the Nasim Bridge. That was more than twice the effective range of the battalion’s man-portable rocket launchers, so the Mesranis would have to engage on this side of the gorge. At such close ranges—less than two hundred meters in most places—the battle would be brisk and bloody. Even if the plan worked perfectly, there wouldn’t be any Ghosts left by the time the Covenant dismounted.

John turned to Bah’d. “What if Blue Team could stop the CBVs on the far side of the gorge?”

“Can you?”

“Our M68 Gauss cannons have an effective range of eight kilometers,” John said. “The gorge is a fraction of that. Our problem will be the enemy’s air superiority.”

“That we can help with,” Hiyat said. She touched her fingers to the screen, then made a pinching motion. The map scale contracted to include the mountainous terrain surrounding both ends of the Nasim Bridge. “Our battalion has placed twelve antiaircraft batteries on these mountains, just below the cloud ceiling. Our missiles will be striking from above the enemy’s ground-attack craft.”

“Nice.” The missile batteries wouldn’t take out all of the Covenant attack craft, of course. But given the mountainous terrain and low clouds, the unusual attack angle would be a real distraction for enemy pilots—and that would be enough advantage for Blue Team to succeed. “Blue Team can take out the CBVs before they cross the gorge.”

“You are certain?” Bah’d asked.

“As certain as I can be in a situation like this.” John was beginning to think the Ghosts might not need to live up to their name. If their provisions for blowing the Nasim Bridge were as thorough as the rest of their preparations, the battalion could probably buy the 24th Engineering Brigade enough time to destroy the Doukala mine and still survive to evacuate. He touched a finger to the screen again. “When the Covenant reaches the far bridgehead, they’ll start by having a platoon of Drones fly underneath the decking to disarm your demolition charges.”

The Drones were another type of alien in the enemy ranks, an insectile species with wings. Most Covenant brigades included a light company of a hundred Drones to serve as scouts.

“We have decoys,” Bah’d said. “And tamper traps. The bridge will blow when we are ready for it.”

“Good,” John said. “Then you should wait until the first Wraiths are almost across. If the column is under way when the bridge blows, the disarray will buy us some extra targeting time.”

The third commander, the lieutenant who had not yet spoken, stepped forward. John couldn’t recall the lieutenant’s name, so the Mjolnir’s onboard computer displayed JAKOME on the HUD.

“I do not understand, John.” Jakome was a square-faced man with sunken eyes and a broad nose. “If we destroy the bridge so early, and you eliminate the combat bridging vehicles before they deploy, how will we attack the rest of the column?”

“We won’t need to,” John said. Clearly, Jakome’s thought process had been slowed by sleep deprivation. “The column will be stranded on the far side of the gorge, and the Doukala mine will be safe.”

“But the aliens will be out of range,” Jakome said.

“And the Doukala mine will be safe,” John repeated. “By the time the enemy can organize another attack, the 24th will have turned the entire mine into radioactive slag.”

“So you hope,” Aurello said. “But if we give the aliens time to think, they will find another way to seize the mine.”

“There is no other way,” John said. “With the bridge out, they would have to launch a large-scale air assault. Even the Covenant can’t mount that kind of operation on short notice—not through heavy cloud cover into jungle mountains.”

“You have no idea what the Covenant can do,” Aurello said. “If the last six weeks have taught the UNSC anything, surely it has taught you that.”

Aurello was more right than he knew. Seven weeks earlier, John and three teams of Spartans had joined the 21st ODST Space Assault Battalion on Operation: SILENT STORM, a top-secret, high-risk raid into Covenant space. Their objective had been to hit the aliens hard and buy time for humanity to develop countermeasures against Covenant technology. The operation had destroyed two enemy cities, an orbital fleet-support ring, and eight capital ships.

Even so, success hadn’t changed much of anything. Less than two weeks later, the Covenant had returned with more fleets than the UNSC could track, and Blue Team found itself deploying to Circinius IV to rescue the surviving cadets of the Corbulo Academy of Military Science. John managed to get three of the students off the planet alive, and even that was doing well in comparison to how the fight was going elsewhere. The invasion became an onslaught. Every day, the alien enemy destroyed another human outpost, and another UNSC convoy vanished without a trace. Worlds fell two and three a week, and new incursion routes opened faster than the Office of Naval Intelligence could identify them. Unable to consolidate battlefield intelligence before it became inactionable, FLEETCOM had stopped trying to coordinate core strategy and granted operational autonomy to each battle group. It was a bad way to run a war, but it was the best humanity could do.

While it lasted.

After a moment, John said, “We may not know all of the enemy’s capabilities, but we do know basic field tactics—and the most basic tactic of all is ‘don’t waste your soldiers.’”

“Which is what will happen if we give the aliens time to regroup.” Aurello glanced at Jakome and Hiyat, who both nodded vigorously, then said, “We must keep the pressure on, and take our vengeance now. Here.”

“Vengeance?” John had to be missing something. The Mesranis were disciplined soldiers, and disciplined soldiers did not launch suicide attacks out of spite. “What does vengeance have to do with anything?”

“The Nasim Bridge is a chokepoint,” Jakome said. “And the Ytterbium Road is a gauntlet. Our rockets will fall on their heads like rain.”

“Like . . . rain.” John repeated. He knew from his combat psychology training back on Reach that too much combat stress could sometimes result in mindless, murderous rages. But such episodes were heat-of-the-moment events that erupted without warning—not carefully prepared actions like the commanders were suggesting now. He turned to Bah’d. “What kind of combat stimulants are you using?”

“Stimulants?” Bah’d narrowed her eyes. “Be careful what you imply, John.”

“Major, I never imply.” John was puzzled by Bah’d’s testy reaction. Stim-packs were standard issue for UNSC special operations troops—who often had to fight for days at a time without sleep—but they were easy to overuse in the heat of a long battle. “Your commanders are focus-locked on a pointless goal. That’s a classic sign of stim-pack overload.”

Bah’d’s voice turned icy. “The Mesrani do not use stim-packs, John.”

“You don’t?” John glanced at the company commanders, not sure he believed her. After more than three days of combat and hard marching with no sleep, it seemed impossible they could still be even this functional without help. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure, John.” Bah’d’s resentment certainly sounded sincere. “We would never debase ourselves with such poison.”

John saw the eyes of her subordinates harden with indignation. But if they didn’t use stim-packs, there was even more reason to worry. The human brain needed sleep to flush out the toxins that accumulated during periods of wakeful activity, and John knew that going even twenty-four hours without rest could lead to concentration and memory problems. After forty-eight hours, the brain started to shut down for microsleeps, which lasted anywhere from half a second to half a minute—all followed by short periods of confusion and disorientation that could prove disastrous in a combat situation. By seventy-two hours, the brain’s toxin load grew so acute that severe lapses in concentration, motivation, and memory were inevitable—and hallucinatory episodes were common.

The only way to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation was to temporarily increase the signal-carrying capacity of the brain’s synapses. That was how stim-packs worked—and why they were sometimes necessary in combat. If there were natural methods for accomplishing the same thing, John had never heard of them.

After a moment, he said, “My apologies—I didn’t mean to offend anyone. The UNSC has a more, uh, pragmatic view of battlefield enhancements.”

“Which is but one of the reasons the Children of Mesra were forced to seek a world of their own.” Bah’d turned to her subordinate commanders. “And why we will have vengeance on the aliens who have come to take it from us.”

“Just not here.” John’s tone was firm, but technically he was making a request. Bah’d and the others not only outranked him, they were part of a different army that didn’t even report to the same chain of command. “We need to keep our eye on the objective. The enemy is a far superior force, and it doesn’t make sense to give them a free shot at the Doukala mine.”

Bah’d remained silent for so long that John thought she had fallen into an open-eyed sleep; then she finally said, “We share the same objective, John—deny Mesra’s xenotime to the Covenant. But the Mesranis have another objective too—kill the aliens who invaded our world.”

“You’ll kill a lot more of them by fighting smart,” John said. “Your battalion could evacuate with the 24th, get some rest, and take on the Covenant on a hundred other worlds.”

“If everything goes right . . . and the enemy remains trapped on the far side of the gorge.”

Bah’d looked back to the leftmost display screen, which showed the enemy armor column as it continued to advance toward the Nasim Bridge. The Covenant commander had adjusted his marching order to deal with the minefields, and now the column was being led by single-seat RAVs—rapid assault vehicles that looked like motorcycles with front wings and no wheels. Squads of Drone scouts were flying alongside the column, passing safely over the mined undergrowth on small flickering wings that seemed barely large enough to keep their multisegmented bodies aloft. John’s HUD showed sixty-seven minutes before the enemy column reached the far bridgehead.

Without turning from the screen, Bah’d asked, “Tell me, John-117, how many battles have you seen?”

“More than a few.” The number was classified, of course, but John needed Bah’d to understand that when he made a recommendation, he was speaking with the voice of experience. “Way more than a few, actually. I can’t even tell you the number.”

“So, more than my five.” Bah’d continued to watch the display screen. “And in how many of your battles did everything go as planned?”

“Not a one,” John admitted. “Usually we were happy if the first three minutes went as planned.”

Bah’d nodded. “That has been my experience too.” She turned to face her subordinates. “So here is what I suggest.”

The exhausted commanders drew themselves up straight, the way soldiers everywhere did when receiving orders, and John realized the discussion phase of their meeting was at an end.

“I would like John and his team to open fire on the first combat bridging vehicle as soon as their Gauss cannons have a good chance of destroying it. That will force the aliens to rush forward in order to seize the Nasim Bridge.”

Hiyat raised her brow, and Aurello and Jakome just looked confused. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, because John realized what was coming next . . . and he didn’t like it.

“You’re going to set an ambush on the far side of the gorge?” he asked. “And blow the bridge before the enemy crosses?”

“Exactly,” Bah’d said. “That is the last place the Covenant will expect us. They will be trapped in the minefield, with no advance possible and with our rockets pounding their turrets.”

Aurello and Jakome broke into broad grins, and Hiyat began to nod enthusiastically. Even John had to admit that her solution gave everyone what they wanted. The Mesranis would keep the pressure on and kill a lot of alien invaders, and the Covenant would have almost no chance of capturing the Doukala mine. The only part John didn’t like was the part where two-hundred-and-eighty good soldiers died in a suicide attack—even if they had named themselves the Ghost Battalion.

“It will work,” John said. “But you’re putting yourselves in the trap with the enemy, and there’s no need for it—not if you destroy the bridge from this side of the gorge.”

“You worry for us, John?” Bah’d’s eyes wrinkled at the corners again. “How kind.”

Bah’d turned back to the display screens, where geysers of flame and dirt were engulfing the single-seat RAVs as they led the alien column into a minefield, and fell silent. Her stooped shoulders and tucked chin suggested she had slipped into another microsleep. In a UNSC unit, that kind of acute sleep-deprivation would have been reason enough to challenge her judgment, perhaps even temporarily relieve her of command. But John had no authority over anyone in the Mesrani Militia—least of all Bah’d—and he had already come close to alienating her with his stim-pack query. So, he could not risk losing her cooperation—not if he wanted to protect the Doukala mine.

Bah’d’s head jerked as she returned to wakefulness.

“I’m not being kind, Bah’d.” John was careful to speak softly, knowing that the Mjolnir’s voicemitter would add an extra measure of assertiveness to his words. “The Fifth is a good battalion, and it doesn’t need to die today.”

“Perhaps not.” Bah’d’s voice dropped to a whisper, and she turned back to John with steel in her eyes. “But the aliens do.”

CHAPTER 2

1500 hours, June 5, 2526 (military calendar)

Sarpesi Ridge, Samalat Gorge

Karpos Mountain Range, Planet Mesra, Qusdar System

The enemy Wraiths advanced through the depleted minefield two abreast, their purple hulls floating on cushions of intangible force as they brushed past the smoking hulks of demolished rapid assault vehicles. They kept their plasma cannons trained on the jungle-covered slope above the road, though that was only because the weapons lacked the range to return fire across the kilometer- wide Samalat Gorge to Sarpesi Ridge. With only a kilometer to the bridgehead, the vehicle commanders would be plenty worried about long-range flank attacks, and they would be ready with half a dozen responses.

John-117 just wished he knew which tactics they would choose: run-and-gun or stand-and-return? Area suppression or radar- assisted counterfire? Independent targeting or coordinated fire? Each tactic created different hazards and opportunities and required unique preparations, and that was one of the most difficult things about fighting the Covenant—they didn’t think like humans, so it was hard to anticipate their choices.

John was still looking for hints when a head-size lizard-thing dropped out of the jungle canopy and spread a pair of leathery wings . . . then fanned its tail and landed at the tip of his Gauss cannon. He did not have a proper mount for the weapon, so he and the rest of Blue Team were lying in their belly scrapes, using the dirt piled in front of them as makeshift barrel supports—and now the creature was blocking his view, both naturally and through the aiming reticle in his heads-up display.

But he did not dare shoo it away. Covenant spotters would be searching Sarpesi Ridge for emplacements and firing lanes, and a startled reptile taking flight would draw their eyes straight to his position.

“Blue Leader’s line of sight temporarily blocked.” John spoke over TEAMCOM, a secure channel available only to his three fellow Spartans on Blue Team. The enemy signals-intelligence unit would probably detect the transmission, but by now Fifth Battalion’s own electronic warfare squad was blasting a hundred thousand decoy transmissions per second. The chance that John’s message would be decrypted, or even traced to its source, was almost nil. “Keep me posted.”

“The first combat bridging vehicle has already entered Blue Four’s LOS.” Blue Four was Linda-058, who had been placed at the far end of the firing line because she was the best sniper in the entire SPARTAN-II program. “It’s shielded by four Wraiths.”

They had expected this. That was why Blue Team had taken positions an extra half-kilometer away, high atop Sarpesi Ridge where they would be able to fire over the large Wraiths and hit the CBVs from above. Still, the tactic made John nervous. The targeting software in their Mjolnir would calculate trajectory and adjust the minute- of-angle in their HUD sights to reflect Mesra’s dense atmosphere and above-normal gravity. But even with an onboard computer doing the math, down-angle shots at long range were tricky, and if their first shots missed, there would be no time to recalculate.

After a moment, John asked, “Can we still get the angle?”

“Affirmative,” Linda said.

“Good,” John said. The lizard-thing was still perched on the end of his Gauss cannon, its neck frills half-flared as it stared up the camouflaged barrel toward him. His helmet and armor were swaddled in the same gossamer filament that covered the jungle floor, but the faceplate remained exposed. He suspected the creature was mesmerized by its own reflection. “Everyone else check off as the target enters your LOS.”

“Blue Two, target acquired,” said Fred-104, John’s dry-witted second- in-command. “Last chance for the Mesranis to wise up and fall back.”

“Not going to happen,” John said.

Despite his protests, Bah’d had slipped most of the battalion across the gorge while the Covenant armor was still kilometers away. The Mesranis had done a good job of hiding their redeployment by concealing their movement behind the bridge’s side barriers and waiting for land mine detonations, which left the enemy column temporarily blinded by smoke. But Fifth Battalion was going to be trapped on the far side of the gorge whether or not Blue Team destroyed the CBVs, and the knowledge that so many Mesranis were going to perish in a pointless battle troubled all four of the Spartans.

“You are sure?” Linda asked.

“I’m sure,” John said. “Their commanders are afraid this plan will backfire if they don’t keep the pressure on.”

“And you bought that?” asked Kelly-087, who was rarely slow to speak her mind. “They’re just crazy to kill aliens.”

“That too,” John said. “Especially the crazy part.”

He had gone along with Bah’d’s plan because it protected the xenotime mine while assuring the cooperation of her subordinates, and that had been the safe play. He could have insisted on his own plan, arguing that Bah’d and her commanders were too sleep-deprived to make sound tactical decisions. And maybe he should have. But that would have meant risking Fifth Battalion’s cooperation and endangering the mission, and the mission came first.

The mission always came first.

“Blue Three, target acquired,” Kelly announced.

“Acknowledged.”

Still perched on the end of John’s Gauss cannon, the lizard-thing hissed at its own reflection and continued to block his line of sight. John was about the same distance from Kelly as she was from Fred, and it had taken less than ten seconds for the target to enter Kelly’s LOS after it had been acquired by Fred. It would not be long before Blue Team was ready to open fire.

The thought had barely formed before the Mjolnir’s onboard computer initiated a six-second countdown on his HUD display. At three seconds, John activated his voicemitter.

“Move it, bud.”

The creature spread its wings as though to take flight—then opened its beak and charged up the two-meter cannon barrel. With the targeting relay no longer obscured, the aiming reticle turned red, and John knew he had something in the M68’s sights. He just didn’t know what because the lizard-thing now blocked even more of his view. He raised his bracing hand to bat it aside—and saw a yellow gob shooting from its gullet.

John turned his head, taking the hit on the side of his helmet, and ribbons of mucus sprayed across the left half of his faceplate. The creature clunked against his helmet and began to peck and scratch; then he had it in his grasp.

He crushed it one-handed—not out of malice, but because he couldn’t risk it taking flight and drawing attention to his location—then dropped its body beside him and took a swipe at his faceplate. No luck. With the left side of his faceplate smeared yellow, he had to turn his helmet to get a clear view of the enemy column. His aiming reticle was set on a Wraith, which was floating along beside the bulbous operators’ cabin at the front of the combat bridging vehicle. Behind the first Wraith followed three more, in close formation and doing their best to screen the articulated cylinders that contained the CBV’s bridging equipment.

Nice try.

John increased his faceplate image magnification. The beaklike snouts of four Jackals—a tall, vaguely avian species that the Spartans had tangled with before—grew visible inside the operators’ cabin. He raised the nose of his Gauss cannon, resting the aiming reticle at the forward edge of the bubble-shaped observation canopy.

“Blue Leader, target acquired,” John said. “Initiate.”

Three status lights winked green inside John’s HUD; then Linda said, “Blue Four engaging.”

The CBV’s energy shield shimmered violently as Linda’s first burst hit home. Kelly added her fire to Linda’s, and the shielding dissolved in a spray of overload sparks.

By then the Wraiths were slowing to a halt and swinging their noses toward Sarpesi Ridge. Their only weapons capable of returning fire across the kilometer-wide Samalat Gorge were their plasma mortars, and those were mounted on fixed bases that required the vehicle to face its target.

Linda and Kelly each hit the CBV with a second burst, riddling the operators’ cabin with star-shaped holes and coating the remnants of the shattered canopy in Jackal blood.

A volley of white mortar shells arced away from the four Wraiths closest to the CBV. Too slow. Kelly and Linda were running for their next position before the rounds reached their zenith. John and Fred opened fire, each targeting the operators’ cabin. Flames and smoke started to billow out through the shattered canopy, so they ran their second bursts down the cargo cylinder.

The bridging vehicle veered sharply toward the gorge, but John had no intention of hanging around to see what happened. Scooping up the Gauss cannon in both arms, he launched himself from his scrape like a sprinter out of the blocks. There was no anti- infantry attack quite as horrifying as a plasma strike, which unleashed such a searing blast that anything inside the impact zone was flash- incinerated, while anything nearby by was merely knocked down and immolated. John had seen direct hits reduce concrete bunkers to swirling clouds of white-hot dust and near-misses leave men standing on smoking pegs of charred bone.

He angled across the slope toward his next position. With the lizard mucus obscuring half his faceplate, he had a choice: watch how the Covenant was responding to his attack, or turn his faceplate away from the enemy and focus on where he was running.

He chose running.

He had taken barely five steps when the jungle went white with plasma flash. A concussion wave hit him from behind, and the temperature spiked inside his Mjolnir. He kept his feet and continued to run, bouncing off the rubbery stalk of a giant sponge tree he barely glimpsed. He spun and kept going, knees pumping high to avoid tripping over deadfalls, eyes locked on the HUD waypoint directing him to his next scrape.

All three status lights in his HUD showed yellow. The rest of the team was still on the move, racing for their next positions. Had anyone been pinned down or KIA, their light would have shown red.

John switched to the Fifth Battalion comm channel. “First bridging vehicle down; disabled but destruction uncertain.”

“I can confirm destruction.” Bah’d sounded troubled. “It went into the gorge—pushing two Wraiths ahead of it.”

“And that’s not a good thing?”

“Of course it is.”

He waited for Bah’d to elaborate. The jungle flashed brighter as the alien fire intensified. Sponge trees and giant club mosses began to topple under the relentless concussion waves, and Linda’s and Kelly’s status lights changed to green. John outran the artillery blanket and began to breathe easier—then hit an outcropping obscured by the lizard mucus and nearly dropped the Gauss cannon. Still Bah’d did not speak.

“Major, it’s not too late to fall back,” John said. The waypoint arrow finally sank to the bottom of his HUD, and he looked down to see the two-meter hollow he had scraped into the slope earlier. “If you’re having second thoughts, you still have time—”

“Stop that, John. We are not having second thoughts.”

“Then why do you sound worried?” John asked. He dropped to his knees and propped the cannon barrel on the dirt pile he had left to serve as a weapon support. “What’s the problem?”

“The same as always,” Bah’d said. “The Covenant is not doing what we expected.”

John had already cleared a firing lane to the road, so even looking out only half his faceplate, he could see that at least five Wraiths had interrupted their advance to launch an artillery strike. That was expected. With Samalat Gorge between the column and the Spartans, there was no simply no way the Wraiths could advance and fire simultaneously. When he still didn’t see the cause of Bah’d’s concern, he again tried to wipe the lizard mucus from his faceplate.

He only succeeded in smearing it around some more. He gave up and magnified the image he could actually see—and thought he understood the reason for Bah’d’s alarm.

Instead of continuing forward as expected to secure the bridgehead—where Fifth Battalion was waiting in ambush—the single-seat assault vehicles had stopped with the Wraiths and were tucking in behind the big gun carriages. And the Grunt foot soldiers in turn were tucking in behind the RAVs, crouching on their knees and covering their heads as though expecting shrapnel to start raining from the sky at any moment.

“Am I seeing what I think I am?” John asked. Blue Team was about five hundred meters down-gorge from Fifth Battalion’s position overlooking the Nasim Bridge, observing from deep cover, so he didn’t have the kind of situational overview that Bah’d would. “I have Wraiths standing up for an artillery duel.”

“Not a duel,” Bah’d said. “The entire column has stopped. They are preparing to barrage.”

“To barrage?” John echoed. Artillery barrages were more effective at disrupting infantry units than actually destroying them, so they were typically employed to break up an enemy assault or support a friendly one. But with Samalat Gorge in the way, the only infantry assault possible would be airborne—and that was still unlikely, given the short notice and low cloud ceiling. “That seems like a stretch.”

“We can see dozens of combat support vehicles coming forward,” Bah’d said. Combat support vehicles were armored transports capable of carrying anything from personnel to ammunition and explosives to medical supplies—including the liquefied carrier gas used to recharge plasma weapons. “What do you think they are hauling?”

“Good point,” John said. “Alert your antiaircraft batteries. Have them give priority to transport craft.”

“I have done that already.” Bah’d hesitated, then said, “But what are we missing, John? You said yourself the Covenant wouldn’t launch an airborne assault in these conditions.”

“Maybe I was wrong,” John said, though he realized as he spoke that he couldn’t be. Were the aliens capable of launching a full-scale airborne assault, they would bypass Sarpesi Ridge entirely and drop directly on the Doukala Xenotime Works. “But let’s be ready for anything.”

The artillery blanket continued to intensify and creep across the jungle slope toward John, flooding the right side of his faceplate with blinding strobe light. The plasma rounds were the least of his concerns. The Mjolnir armor he and his Spartans wore would protect them from anything short of a direct hit. Besides, once the Covenant had flattened the jungle, Blue Team wouldn’t have to wait for the bridging vehicles to enter a predetermined firing zone. The four Spartans would be able to look down the entire length of the gorge and attack as soon as the remaining two CBVs came into range.

John switched to TEAMCOM. “Anyone see the next target?”

The status lights inside his HUD all blinked red.

“Then hold all fire,” John said. “They must be trying to get us to give our positions away.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Fred’s tone was dry, as it always was when he cracked wise. “I thought they might be trying to kill us.”

“Keep making those dreadful jokes, and they won’t need to,” Kelly replied. “Your sense of humor could drive a lady to violence.”

“Let’s can the chatter,” John said. Normally he didn’t mind a little humor—it helped the team relax, and a relaxed team was an efficient team. But for the next few minutes, he needed the channel kept clear for injury reports and combat coordination. “Nobody really wants to die laughing.”

“Ha-ha,” Linda said, then: “Incoming!”

Then a terrible thunder was upon them, shaking the jungle and bursting through the canopy in globules of white-hot plasma. Chunks of scorched fungi caps showered the slope, and streamers of burning moss snaked through the air. Most soldiers were trained to cover their heads and stay flat under artillery bombardment, but Spartans weren’t most soldiers.

John kept his head up, cocking it to one side so he could watch for strike patterns through the clear half of his faceplate. Soil and flame jetted skyward in solid curtains, sponge trees and club mosses erupted into pillars of fire, concussion waves pounded his armor like forge hammers, and still the booming grew more ferocious. The ground quaked and the undergrowth vanished in winks of blinding heat-flash, the air growing so thick with smoke and mud it was hard to see the vase-shaped brilliance of fresh impacts. His onboard computer would keep monitoring his visuals, using millisecond-long spikes of light intensity to plot plasma strikes and infer the enemy barrage plan.

Linda’s status light changed from green to yellow; then her voice, almost lost to the roar of the barrage, came over TEAMCOM: “Moving!”

John knew her computer had projected a hit on her position and was now guiding her to a safer location. Still, his gut clenched. Plasma rounds incinerated everything within a twenty-meter radius of the strike, with an even larger secondary damage ring. The concussion wave alone increased the mortality risk of a maneuvering infantry soldier tenfold. Linda would be okay in her Mjolnir armor unless she happened to run directly under an incoming strike—but in a barrage this heavy, the chances of that happening were high. Close to fifty percent, according to his onboard computer.

John kept one eye on his HUD, waiting for Linda’s status light to return to green. But he was also careful to keep his faceplate turned into the bombardment so his onboard computer could continue monitoring the strike patterns. Sooner or later the plasma mortars would start running low on carrier gas, which meant the crews would need to resupply from the combat support vehicles. When that happened, the intensity of the barrage would diminish, and Blue Team would have a chance to locate its next target.

John glanced back toward the enemy column, but the smoke and debris remained too thick to see whether the combat support vehicles were moving into position behind the Wraiths . . . behind the Wraiths, where he had seen the Grunts and rapid assault vehicles taking cover earlier. Was the enemy really going to resupply over its own infantry and RAVs?

John switched back to the Fifth Battalion channel. “Bah’d, are those RAVs still taking cover behind the Wraiths?”

“They are,” she said. Even with his helmet speakers set directly next to his ears, the major’s voice was barely audible over the constant booming of the barrage. “The Covenant must have worse field intelligence than we do. They seem to believe we have some ability to offer counterbattery fire.”

John had no idea what the aliens believed—and it was probably a mistake to guess. “What about those combat support vehicles?” he asked. “Where are they?”

“Pulling onto the far edge of the road, behind the RAVs.” Bah’d fell silent. John began to fear the enemy was jamming their comms; then she finally asked, “How are they going to reload the Wraiths from behind the RAVs?”