Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [105]
“Sir.” Burgundy could hear Lopez striving and failing to keep frustration out of her voice. “Sir, I’m down five already, as far as I know. We can keep going, shut down the nav and flush out every Covie on this stinking boat, but begging your pardon, it’s a big-ass boat. We need some ODST motion sensors happening. Get a Pelican out here on, I don’t know, thrusters alone, something!”
Burgundy was thinking it. Lopez was thinking it. She bet even the commander was thinking it. Orders from officers who weren’t on the ground weren’t worth shit.
“Negative, Sergeant. You have your orders, and I trust you’ll see them through in your usual . . . spectacular . . . fashion,” he said with a trace of amusement.
“Yes, sir.” Said without grace. “Sir, permission to speak freely?”
“Denied.”
“You’re fading now. You’re breaking up,” Rebecca said. “You have your orders.” Said remotely, with finality, her attention already elsewhere.
A beat. And then, “They gone, Burgundy?”
“Yes, Sarge.”
Lopez said something really obscene.
“You got that right,” Burgundy muttered.
“You cozy?”
“Yeah.”
“Alone?”
Nothing had moved on the feed for some time now, the last flashlight flickering on the ground. “I can’t see anything.”
“Okay. Sit tight. Keep monitoring, let me know when the Red Horse is talking again. We’ll come back and mess up your bird and you’ll hate us for it.”
“And then there’ll be ice cream.”
“Damn straight. Over and out.”
Outside, the last flashlight went dark.
>Lopez 1402 hours
Twelve rosary beads now. Lopez had a burning anger in her guts that had nothing to do with the Covenant. Already blood in the dark. She had her orders. Her lousy orders. She had twelve Marines left, a big-ass ship to clean out, and no support of any kind.
I’ll give you “spectacular.”
They stood around her, around Rabbit’s remains, around the dead Covenant, silent and waiting.
“You heard,” she said, looking into each of their faces in turn. Shadowed, murky faces in the flashlight beams, but still those of her Marines. “Change of plan, boys and girls. We got Covies on board, so the good commander has invoked the Cole Protocol. We need to kill the nav system and the backup nav system, that’s our primary goal. Ascertaining what the hell is going on here is now a secondary objective. Orlav, you got that rough schematic? See the engine room?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t sound too enthusiastic.
“All right, Benti, you take Clarence, Orlav, Gersten, and Tsardikos. You’re going after the backup down in the engine room. You take care of it, then you get your asses back here. You see any Covies along the way, you kill Covies. I don’t care if they’re happy to see you or not. None of them get off this ship, got it?” Thought Benti, with Clarence, would be more effective heading things up on that team than Orlav. Orlav did good recon, but she couldn’t improvise.
“Yes, sir!” Benti said, already out the door and slinking down the corridor, the others following her.
“I mean it, Private!” she called out after them, not looking at the thing hidden in Rabbit’s body. “You shoot anything you see. Don’t let anything get close. Nothing, you hear me?”
“Saaaarge, you know me,” Benti said. “I don’t let anybody get close.” Her voice didn’t say that at all.
“No gear,” Percy said, nudging the Covenant Elite with his boot, ripples spreading in the bloodied water. “Not a one of these bastards has any gear at all.”
“All the better for us.”
“How’d Covenant get on board this ship, Sarge?” McCraw asked. “How? Just landed here with no weapons and no gear?”
“Maybe they’re prisoners,” Rakesh said.
Lopez snorted. “Right. Because we take so many Covenant prisoners.” Then she stopped, a bead catching in her mind. “Where the hell is Ayad?” she asked.
They had no good answer.
>Benti 1431 hours
Things went wrong almost from the start for Benti and her team. It sure looked easy at first, though, which had Benti humming an old pop song