Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [127]
“We’re not outrunning that,” Lopez said calmly. “Singh, kneel and go low, for the legs. MacCraw, keep your cool and aim for Ayad. Make it drop Ayad before it gets to us. Percy, heart. I’ll go for the head. Now . . . fire!”
It lost its Ayad shield first, dropped it. MacCraw made a lucky shot and hit the muscle and bone in its wrist. It stumbled as the bullets hit it, each one more precious than the last. Slamming into its body over and over again. It might be Elite, but it didn’t bleed. A sigh of something green and dandelion-seedlike puffed out from the wounds opening on its skin. Strangely beautiful, those wounds, in the hissing light of the flares. Wounds that should’ve stopped and dropped it, but it kept coming. Kept howling.
Staggered onward on tottering balance, pressing against the storm of bullets as if they were toxic raindrops. Until, finally, Lopez managed to take out its knees.
It crashed down, not seven meters from them.
But it didn’t stop. Didn’t even pause, clawing and crawling its way across the floor, on its belly, a smear of dark green behind it.
No one hesitated. No one waited for another order.
When it was done, the corridor reeked of gunsmoke, the smell acrid in their mouths and the backs of their throats. Lopez’s eyes stung, unable to handle the swamp-gas smell of the dead Elite.
Lopez thought of the bodies in the cupboard. Thought of the Elite stomping on Rabbit’s chest, on the infection form. She walked up to it, this thing, and pressed the muzzle of her rifle into the suggestion of a giant angry goiter clinging to its chest. Let off another quick burst. Realized she’d forgotten something, something important.
Ayad rose up from the darkness beside Singh.
Singh hadn’t the reflexes, hadn’t the training. Enough time for the technician’s face to change. Knowing. Not wanting to know. Then he was smashed into the far wall with one terrifying blow, so hard his skull shattered in the helmet, face flattened to a pulp as he dropped.
Percy, cursing, a burst from his rifle going wide, caught by the backswing. Lopez heard his neck crack. Turned too fast. Sudden pain where Smith had shot her.
And MacCraw, like he’d done it a million times, brought his rifle up and shot what was Ayad right through the head.
The flare light painted everything red and gold, made beautiful what should’ve been ghastly. MacCraw stood there, staring at that tableau like a painter who didn’t know what to make of the paints on his canvas.
Lopez put a hand on MacCraw’s shoulder, her one remaining bead. That shoulder heaved under her touch, and then steadied.
“Where to, Sarge?” MacCraw asked in an empty voice.
Lopez gave him a smile, knowing it was grim and making it brief. “Objective hasn’t changed, kid,” and as she said it, it became true. They were Marines. The job kept getting harder, but they got the job done, and that meant they had to keep getting better. They’d faced the worst and best the Covenant could throw at them, and now the worst the universe could throw at them, and survived treachery by their own kind. And they were still walking. Still breathing. That was a hell of a thing.
A hell of a thing.
>Benti 1544 hours
Rimmer told them Henry had found the cricket bat in the guard’s locker room. Who knew when the guards had the chance to play cricket, or where, but the Elite was a natural with it. A rabid white slug thing had dropped from one of the overhead lights, moving too fast for any of them to shoot, and he’d splatted it against the far wall with one easy swing.
Clarence examined the green goop falling in clumps and nodded his approval. Yet Benti knew Clarence could turn around and kill Henry in an instant.
Benti hadn’t been able to speak to him since Gersten’s death. She’d found it hard to even acknowledge his presence. The fact was, it had cost him nothing to pull the trigger. That was what bothered her the most.
Beneath