The four Spartans that composed Blue Team covered his back, standing absolutely silent and immobile
in their MJOLNIR combat armor. Someone had once commented that they looked like Greek war gods
in the armor . . . but his Spartans were far more effective and ruthless than Homer’s gods had ever been.
This operation had to go off without a hitch. Blue Team’s mission was to draw out the Covenant rear
guard and let Red Team slip through in the confusion. Red Team would then plant a HAVOK tactical
nuke. When the next Covenant ship landed, dropped its shields, and started to unload its troops, they’d
get a thirty-megaton surprise.
The Chief, Blue-Three, and Blue-Five leaped to the top of the ridge.
The three Spartans exhausted their AP clips and then, in unison, switched to shredder rounds. They fired
into the tide of creatures as they surged forward. Line after line of them dropped. Scores more just
trampled their fallen comrades.
Their status lights winked once, acknowledging his order.
The Chief and his team sprinted up the half-kilometer sandstone slope in thirty-two seconds flat. The hill
ended abruptly—a sheer drop of two hundred meters straight into the ocean.
The hill exploded—plumes of pulverized sandstone and fire and smoke hurtled skyward.
The Spartans had buried a spiderweb pattern of Lotus antitank mines earlier that morning.
Sand and bits of metal pinged off of the Chief’s helmet.
The Chief and his team opened fire again, picking off the remaining Grunts that were still alive and
struggling to stand.
The Spartans, without hesitation, fired on the alien fliers. Bullet hits pinged from the fliers’ chitinous
armor—it would take a very lucky shot to take out the antigrav pods on the end of the craft’s stubby
meter-long “wings.”
The fire got the aliens’ attention, however. Lances of fire slashed from the Banshees’ gunports.
Blue-Three and -Five gave him the thumbs-up signal.
They regrouped at the edge of the cliff and clipped onto the steel cables that dangled down the length of
the rock wall.
The fougasses were never meant to take down flying targets; the Spartans had put them there to mop up
the Grunts. In the field, though, you had to improvise. Another tenet of their training: adapt or die.
The Spartans opened fire.
Bolts of superheated plasma from the Banshees punctuated the air.
The Spartans jumped backward off the cliff—guns still blazing. The Chief jumped, too, and hit the
detonators.
The ten fougasses—each a steel barrel filled with napalm and spent AP and shredder casings—had been
buried a few meters from the edge of the cliff, their mouths angled up at thirty degrees. When the
grenades at the bottom of the barrels exploded, it made one hell of a barbecue out of anything that got in
their way.
The Spartans slammed into the side of the cliff—the steel cables they were attached to twanged taut.
A wave of heat and pressure washed over them. A heartbeat later five flaming Banshees hurtled over
their heads, leaving thick trails of black smoke as they arced into the water. They splashed down, then
vanished beneath the emerald waves. The Spartans hung there a moment, waiting and watching with
their assault rifles trained on the water.
No survivors surfaced.
They rappelled down to the beach and rendezvoused with Blue-Two and -Four.
“Excellent news,”the Captain said. He sighed, and added,“But we’re pulling you out, Chief.”
“Well, it’s a different story up here. Move out for pickup ASAP.”
They jogged double-quick up the ten kilometers of the beach, and returned to their dropship—a Pelican,
scuffed and dented from three days’ hard fighting. They boarded and the ship’s engines whined to life.
The Pelican ascended rapidly through the atmosphere, the sky darkened, and soon only stars surrounded
them.
In orbit, there were dozens of frigates, destroyers, and two massive carriers. Every ship had carbon
scoring and holes peppering their hulls. They were all maneuvering to break orbit.
They docked in the port bay of the UNSC destroyerResolute . Despite being surrounded by two meters
of titanium-A battle plate and an array of modern weapons, the Chief preferred to have his feet on the
ground, with real gravity, and real atmosphere to breathe—a place where he was in control, and where
his life wasn’t held in the hands of anonymous pilots. A ship just wasn’t home.
The battlefield was.
The junior bridge officers took a step back from the Chief. They weren’t used to seeing a Spartan in full
MJOLNIR armor up close—most line troops had never even seen a Spartan. The ghostly iridescent
green of the armor plates and the matte black layers underneath made him look part gladiator, part
machine. Or perhaps to the bridge crew, he looked as alien as the Covenant.
The view screens showed stars and Jerico VII’s four silver moons. At extreme range, a small
constellation of stars drifted closer.
The Captain waved the Chief closer as he stared at that cluster of stars—the rest of the battlegroup. “It’s
happening again.”
The Captain hung his head, looking weary. He glanced at the Master Chief with haunted eyes. “Very
well, Chief. After all you’ve been through to save Jericho Seven, we owe you that. We’re only thirty
million kilometers out-system, though, not half as far as I’d like to be.” He turned to the NAV Officer.
“Bearing one two zero. Prepare our exit vector.”
He turned to face the Chief. “We’ll stay to watch . . . but if those bastards so much as twitch in our
direction, we’re jumping the hell out of here.”
Resolute’s engines rumbled and the ship moved off.
Three dozen Covenant ships—big ones, destroyers and cruisers—winked into view in the system. They
were sleek, looking more like sharks than starcraft. Their lateral lines brightened with plasma—then
discharged and rained fire down upon Jericho VII.
“Make ready to jump clear of the system,” the Captain ordered.