Harland, Fincher, and Walker hunkered down and returned fire. They killed a dozen of the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, but more kept coming, their barks and growls echoing through the jungle. "Cease fire," the Corporal had ordered. He waited a second, then tossed a grenade when the Grunts got closer.

Their ears still ringing, they ran, dragging Cochran with them, and not looking back.

Somehow they had returned to the Warthog, and gotten the h.e.l.l out of there . . . or, at least, that's what they were trying to do. "Over there," Fincher said, and pointed to a clearing in the trees. "That's got to lead up to the ridge." "Go," Harland said. The Warthog slid sideways then raced up the embankment, caught air, and landed on soft jungle loam.

Fincher dodged a few trees and ran the Warthog up the slope. They emerged on the ridgeline. "Jesus, that was close," Harland said. He ran a muddy hand through his hair, slicking it back. He tapped Fincher on the shoulder. Fincher jumped. "Private, pull over. Try to raise Firebase Bravo on the narrow band."

"Yes, sir," Fincher answered in a wavering voice. He glanced at the near-catatonic Private Walker and shook his head. Harland checked on Cochran. Private Cochran's eyes fluttered open, cracking the mud caked onto his face. "We back yet, Corporal?" "Almost," Harland replied. Cochran's pulse was steady, although his face had, in the last several minutes, drained of color. The wounded man looked like a corpse.d.a.m.n it, Harland thought, Harland thought,he's going to bleed out . .

Harland placed a rea.s.suring hand on Cochran's shoulder. "Hang in there. We'll patch you up as soon as we get to camp."

They had dropships at Bravo. Cochran had a chance, albeit a slim one, if they got him back to the combat surgeons at headquarters-or better yet, to the Navy docs on the orbiting ships. For a moment Harland was dazzled with visions of clean sheets, hot meals-and a meter of armor between him and the Covenant.

"Nothing but static on the link, sir," Fincher said, breaking through Harland's reverie.

"Maybe the radio got hit," Harland muttered. "You know those explosive needles throw a bunch of microshrapnel. We probably got slivers of that stuff inside us, too."

Fincher examined his muscular forearms. "Great."

"Move out," Harland said.

The tires of the Warthog spun, gripped, and the vehicle moved rapidly along the ridge.

The terrain looked familiar. Harland even spotted three sets of Warthog tracks-yes, this was the way the Lieutenant had brought them. Ten minutes and they'd be back on base. No more worries. He relaxed, took out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out. He pulled off the safety strip and tapped the end to ignite it.

Fincher revved the engine and shot up to the top of the ridge-crossed over, and skidded to halt.

If not for the haze, they would have seen everything from this side of the valley-the lush carpet of jungle in the valley, the river meandering through it, and on the far set of hills, a clearing dotted with fixed gun emplacements, razor wire, and pre-fab structures: Firebase Bravo.

Their platoon had partially dug into the hillside to minimize the camp's footprint and provide a place where they could safely store their munitions and bunk down. A ring of sensors encircled the camp so nothing could sneak up on them. Radar and motion detectors linked to surface-to-air missile batteries. A road ran along the far ridge-three klicks down that was the coastal city, Cote d'Azur.

The sun broke through the haze overhead, and Corporal Harland saw everything had changed.

It wasn't fog or haze. Smoke rose in columns from the valley . . . and there was no more jungle. Everything had been burned to the ground. The entire valley was blackened into smoldering charcoal. Glowing red craters honeycombed the hillsides.

He fumbled with his binoculars, brought them to his eyes . . . and froze. The hill where the camp had been was gone-it had been flattened. Only a mirror surface remained. The sides of the adjacent hills glistened with a cracked gla.s.s coating. The air was thick with tiny Covenant fliers in the distance. On the ground, Grunts and Jackals searched for survivors. A few Marines ran for cover . . . there were hundreds of wounded and dead on the ground, helpless, screaming-some of them trying to crawl away.

"What have you got, sir?" Fincher asked.

The cigarette fell from Harland's mouth and caught on his shirt-but he didn't take his eyes off the battlefield to brush it away. "There's nothing left," he whispered. A shape moved in the valley-much larger than the other Grunts and Jackals. Its outline was blurry.

Harland tried to focus the binoculars on it but couldn't. It was the same thing he had seen at grid thirteen by twenty-four. The Grunts gave it a wide berth. The thing lifted its arm-its whole arm looked like one big gun-and a bolt of plasma struck near the riverbank.

Even from this distance, Harland heard the screams of the men who had been hiding there.

"Jesus." He dropped the binoculars. "We're bugging out, right now!" he said. "Turn this beast around, Fincher." "But-" "They're gone," Harland whispered. "They're all dead." Walker whimpered and rocked back and forth. "We'll be dead, too, unless you move," Harland said. "We already got lucky once today. Let's not push it." "Yeah." Fincher reversed the Warthog. "Yeah, some luck." He sped back down the hillside and hopped the Warthog off the embankment and back into the streambed. "Follow the river," Harland told him. "It'll take us all the way to HQ." A shadow crossed their path. Harland twisted around and saw a pair of stubby-winged Covenant Banshees swooping down after them.

"Move it!" he screamed at Fincher.

Fincher floored the Warthog and plumes of water sprayed in their wake. They bounced over rocks and fishtailed across the stream. Bolts of plasma hit the water next to them-exploding into steam. Rock shards pinged off the armored side of the vehicle. "Walker!" Harland shouted. "Use those Jackhammers." Walker huddled, doubled over in his seat. Harland fired the chain-gun. Tracers cut through the air. The fliers nimbly dodged them. The heavy machine gun was only accurate at reasonably short ranges-and not even that with Fincher bouncing the Warthog all over the place.

"Walker!" he cried. "We are gonna die if you don't get those missiles into the air!" He would have ordered Fincher to grab the launcher-but he'd have to stop to grab it . . . that, or try to drive with no hands. If the Warthog stopped, they'd be sitting ducks for those fliers.

Harland glanced at the riverbanks. They were too steep for the Warthog. They were stuck in the river with no cover.

"Walker, do something!" Corporal Harland fired the chain-gun again until his arms went numb. It was no good; the Banshees were too far away, too quick.

Another plasma bolt hit-directly in front of the Warthog. Heat washed over Harland. Blisters pinp.r.i.c.ked his back. He screamed but kept shooting. If they hadn't been in water, that plasma would have melted the tires . . . probably would have flash-fried them all.

A burst of heat and a plume of smoke erupted next to Harland.

For a split second he thought the Covenant gunners had found their mark-that he was dead. He screamed incoherently, his thumbs jamming down the chain-gun's trigger b.u.t.tons. The Banshee he was aiming at flashed, and then became a ball of flame and falling shrapnel.

He turned, his breath hitching in his chest. They hadn't been hit.

Cochran knelt next to him. One arm clutched his stomach, and the other arm hefted the Jackhammer launcher on his shoulder. He smiled with bloodstained lips and pivoted to track the other flier. Harland ducked, and another missile whooshed directly over his head. Cochran laughed, coughing up blood and foam. Tears of mirth or pain-Harland couldn't tell-streamed from his eyes. He collapsed backward, and let the smoldering launcher slip from his hand. The second Banshee exploded and spiraled into the jungle. "Two more klicks," Fincher shouted. "Hang on." He cranked the wheel and the Warthog swerved out of the streambed and bounced up the hillside, up and over, and they slid onto a paved road.

Harland leaned over and felt Cochran's neck for a pulse. It was there, weak; but he was still alive. Harland glanced at Walker. He hadn't moved, his eyes squeezed shut. Harland's first impulse was to shoot him right then and there-the G.o.dd.a.m.ned, goldbricking, cowardly b.a.s.t.a.r.d almost cost them all their lives- No. Harland was half amazed he hadn't frozen up, too. HQ was ahead. But Corporal Harland's stomach sank as he saw smoke and flames blazing on the horizon.

They pa.s.sed the first armed checkpoint. The guardhouse and bunkers had been blasted away, and in the mud were thousands of Grunt tracks. Farther back, he saw a circle of sandbags around a house-size chunk of granite. Two Marines waved to them. As they approached in the Warthog, the Marines stood and saluted. Harland jumped off and returned their salute. One of the Marines had a patch over his eye and his head was bandaged. Soot streaked his face. "Jesus, sir," he said. "It's good to see you guys." He approached the Warthog. "You've got a working radio in that thing?" "I-I'm not sure," Corporal Harland said. "Who's in charge here? What happened?"

"Covenant hit us hard, sir. They had tanks, air support-thousands of those little Grunt guys. They gla.s.sed the main barracks. The Command Office. Almost got the munitions bunker." He looked away for a moment and his one eye glazed over. "We pulled it together and fought 'em off, though. That was an hour ago. I think we killed everything. I'm not sure."

"Who's in charge, Private? I have a critically wounded man. He needs evac, and I have to make my report."

The Private shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir. The hospital was the first thing they hit. As far as who's in command . . . I think you're the ranking officer here."

"Great," Harland muttered.

"We've got five guys back there." The Private jerked his head toward the columns of smoke and wavering heat in the distance. "They're in fire-fighting suits to keep from burning up. They're recovering weapons and ammo."

"Understood," Harland said. "Fincher, try the radio again. See if you can link up to SATCOM. Call in for an evac."

"Roger that," Fincher said.

The wounded Private asked Harland, "Can we get help from Firebase Bravo, sir?"

"No," Harland said. "They got hit, too. There's Covenant all over the place."

The Private slumped, bracing himself with his rifle.

Fincher handed Harland the radio headset. "Sir, SATCOM is good. I've got theLeviathan on the horn." on the horn."

"This is Corporal Harland." He spoke into the microphone. "The Covenant has. .h.i.t Firebase Bravo and Alpha HQ . . . and wiped them out. We've repelled the enemy from Alpha site, but our casualties have been nearly one hundred percent. We have wounded here. We need immediate evac. Say again: we need evac on the double."

"Roger, Corporal. Your situation is understood. Evac is not possible at this time. We've got problems of our own up here-"There was a burst of static. The voice came back online."Help is on the way." The channel went dead. Harland looked to Fincher. "Check the transceiver." The channel went dead. Harland looked to Fincher. "Check the transceiver."

Fincher ran the diagnostic. "It's working," he said. "I'm getting a ping from SATCOM." He licked his lips. "The trouble must be on their end." Harland didn't want to think of what kind of trouble the fleet could be having. He'd seen too many planets gla.s.sed from orbit. He didn't want to die here-not like that.

He turned to the men in the bunker. "They said help is on the way. So relax." He looked into the sky and whispered, "They better send a whole regiment down here." A handful of other Marines returned to the bunker. They had salvaged ammunition, extra rifles, a crate of frag grenades, and a few Jackhammer missiles. Fincher took the Warthog and a few men to see if he could transport the heavier weapons.

They filled Cochran with more biofoam and bandaged him up. He slipped into a coma. They hunkered down inside the bunker and waited. They heard explosions at an extreme distance. Walker finally spoke. "So . . . now what, sir?" Harland didn't turn toward the man. He covered Cochran with another blanket. "I don't know. Can you fight?" "I think so." He pa.s.sed Walker a rifle. "Good. Get up there and stand watch." He got out a cigarette, lit it, took a puff, and then handed it to Walker. Walker took it, shakily stood, and went outside. "Sir!" he said. "Dropship inbound. One of ours!" Harland grabbed his signal flares. He ran outside and squinted at the horizon. High on the edge of the darkening sky was a dot, and the unmistakable roar of Pelican engines. He pulled the pin and tossed the smoker onto the ground. A moment later, thick clouds of green smoke roiled into the sky. The dropship turned rapidly and descended toward their location.

Harland shielded his eyes. He searched for the rest of the dropships. There was only one. "Onedropship?" Walker whispered. "That's all they sent? Christ, that's not backup-that's a burial detail."

The Pelican eased toward the ground, spattering mud in a ten-meter radius, then touched down. The launch ramp fell open and a dozen figures marched out.

For a moment Harland thought they were the same creatures he had seen earlier-armored and bigger than any human he'd ever laid eyes on. He froze-he couldn't have raised his gun if he had wanted to.

They were human, though. The one in the lead stood over two meters tall and looked like he weighed two hundred kilograms. His armor was a strange reflective green alloy, and underneath matte black. Their motions were so fluid and graceful-fast and precise, too. More like robots than flesh and blood.

The one that first stepped off the ship strode toward him. Though his armor was devoid of insignia, Harland could see the insignia of a Master Chief Petty Officer in his helmet's HUD.

"Master Chief, sir!" Harland snapped to attention and saluted.

"Corporal," it said. "At ease. Get your men together and we'll get to work."

"Sir?" Harland asked. "I've got a lot of wounded here. What work will we be doing, sir?"

The Master Chief's helmet c.o.c.ked quizzically to one side. "We've come to take Sigma Octa.n.u.s Four back from the Covenant, Corporal," he said calmly. "To do that, we're going to kill every last one of them."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

1800 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) / Sigma Octa.n.u.s 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 a.s.suming 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 Octa.n.u.s 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 a.s.semble 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 sh.e.l.l casings strewn across the battlefield. Dozens of shattered Warthog cha.s.sis 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 Cote 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 Cote 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 Cote 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 Cote 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 gla.s.sed 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 a.s.sault 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.