“Contact. All teams stand by: enemy contact, my position.” The Chief knew there were probably more than a hundred of them—motion sensors were off the scale. He wanted to see them for himself, though; his training made that lesson clear: “Machines break. Eyes don’t.”

He snaked the fiber-optic probe up and over the three-meter-high stone ridge. When it was in place, the Chief linked it to his helmet’s heads-up display. On the other side he saw a valley with eroded rock walls and a river meandering through it . . . and camped along the banks as far as he could see were Grunts.

The Chief detached the optics and took a step back from the rock wall. He passed the tactical information along to his team over a secure COM channel.

“Blue-Two,” the Chief said, “I want you up with those Jackhammer launchers. Take out the cannons and soften the rest of them. Blue-Three and Five, you follow me up—we’re on crowd control. Blue-Four: you get the welcome mat ready. Understood?” Four blue lights winked on his heads-up display as his team acknowledged the orders. “On my mark.” The Chief crouched and readied himself. “Mark!”

The Chief switched to infrared to cut through the clouds of dust and propellant exhaust just in time to see the second salvo of Jackhammers strike their targets. Two consecutive blossoms of flash, fire, and thunder decimated the front ranks of the Grunt guards, and most importantly, turned the last of the plasma cannons into smoldering wreckage. The Chief and the others opened fire with their MA5B assault rifles—a full automatic spray of fifteen rounds per second. Armor-piercing bullets tore into the aliens, breaching their environment suits and sparking the methane tanks they carried. Gouts of flame traced wild arcs as the wounded Grunts ran in confusion and pain.

Explosive needles bounced off the Chief’s armor, detonating as they hit the ground. He saw the flash of a plasma bolt—side stepped—and heard the air crackle where he had stood a split second before.

“Roger that,” he said. “Blue-Three and -Five: maintain fire for five seconds, then fall back. Mark!”

“Roll out the carpet,” the Chief told Blue-Four.

His motion detector flashed a warning. There were incoming projectiles high at two o’clock—velocities at over a hundred kilometers per hour. “New contacts. All teams, open fire!” he barked.

The Chief dove and rolled to his feet. Sandstone exploded where he had stood only an instant before. Globules of molten glass sprayed the Spartans.

“Blue-Three, Blue-Five: Theta Maneuver,” the Chief called out

“Did you set up the fougasses with fire or shrapnel?” the Chief asked.

“Good.” The Chief grabbed the detonators. “Cover me.”

The Chief dodged to the right, then to the left; he ducked. Their aim was getting better.

“Blue-Two,” the Chief said. “Get me an uplink.”

“Mission accomplished, Captain de Blanc,” the Chief reported. “Enemy neutralized.”

“We’re just getting warmed up down here, sir."

“There will be other places to fight for,” he said.

The Chief rode the elevator to the bridge to make his report, taking advantage of the momentary respite to read Red Team’s after-action report in his display. As predicted, the Spartans of Red, Blue, and Green Teams—augmenting three divisions of battle-hardened UNSC Marines—had stalled a Covenant ground advance. Casualty figures were still coming in, but—on the ground, at least—the alien forces had been completely stonewalled. A moment later the lift doors parted, and he stepped on the rubberized deck. He snapped a crisp salute to Captain de Blanc. “Sir. Reporting as ordered.”

“Request permission to remain on the bridge, sir,” the Chief said. “I . . . want to see it this time, sir.”

“Understood, sir. Thank you.”

The Chief watched for an hour and didn’t move a muscle. The planet’s lakes, rivers, and oceans vaporized. By tomorrow, the atmosphere would boil away, too. Fields and forests were glassy smooth and glowing red-hot in patches. Where there had once been a paradise, only hell remained.

The Chief continued to watch, his face grim. There had been ten years of this—the vast network of human colonies whittled down to a handful of strongholds by a merciless, implacable enemy. The Chief had killed the enemy on the ground—shot them, stabbed them, and broken them with his own two hands. On the ground, the Spartansalways won. The problem was, the Spartans couldn’t take their fight into space. Every minor victory on the ground turned into a major defeat in orbit. Soon there would be no more colonies, no human settlements—and nowhere left to run.