Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [134]
What if they were collecting pilots?
Benti ducked down near Clarence’s ear. “We have to destroy it. That thing they just shoved Burgundy into, I think, I dunno, I think they’re trying to somehow hotwire the slipspace engine without bridge control. We have to destroy it.”
Clarence looked at her like she was crazy.
“And even if not, that engine is important to them somehow,” Benti said. “We have to take care of it.”
Clarence looked around, skeptical. Their options were limited, and the smell of Rimmer’s piss was getting to Benti. She checked the engines again. Henry put a hand on her shoulder, steady and strong.
If they damaged the slipspace engine, things could go bad. Very bad.
But . . .
“To heck with it.” She was in charge.
Benti leapt to her feet, grabbed her remaining grenades, pulled a pin, and hurled it at the mucus glob. Clarence lunged at her. Too late. Pulled another pin and lobbed it. Watched it bounce off the glob as she threw the last. Henry surged up beside her, over her, cricket bat at the ready. He stooped and grabbed a handful of Rimmer’s jumpsuit, Clarence’s vest, and jerked them upright.
“Let’s go, now now now!” Benti didn’t wait to see where the final grenade had landed. She grabbed Rimmer’s sleeve, dragged him into a run, running from the howling Flood, from the first detonation booming behind them, running for the hatch they’d come through, shoving Rimmer before her, Henry, Clarence, hauling the hatch shut behind them with a solid clang.
Burgundy had stopped screaming, at last.
>Foucault 1616 hours
“Major Smith is secure on board,” Rebecca announced to Foucault, and part of him wanted to say, “So what?” The screens showed the Covenant ship readjusting its course to intercept them and the Mona Lisa still wallowing there, dead, but with all sorts of life aboard it. About to be extinguished.
Foucault inclined his head slightly, his only acknowledgment of her words. He had no wish to meet Smith at the moment. Or any other moment.
“What should we do with him?”
“Let’s keep him in solitary for a while,” he said. A good long while.
Rebecca seemed as if she might leave it at that, and then ventured, “Doesn’t it help to know the major may have acted on his own? ONI isn’t responsible for this. This was never meant to happen, and the very fact we’re here shows that ONI is acting in good faith. He’ll be court-martialed. Maybe even worse.”
Foucault wondered if she was right, if he should take some comfort from that fact. Someone would pay. At some point in the future.
Then he thought of the two pods and of all the Marines who might be alive and heading for them, the only chance for survival.
“No. No, it doesn’t.” A new kind of hell. A fresh bout of nightmares to keep him up. He wondered in a distant kind of way if it’d all fade in time, or if eventually he’d have to give up his command. “Smith may have acted on his own, as you say. Or he may have been following orders, and Section 3 will now use him as a scapegoat and wash their hands of the matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change a thing.”
A moment, and then Rebecca said, “Telling them about the pods was a pointless gesture. Under the circumstances.”
Pointless? Her tone told him she was giving him a warning. She’d told Foucault about the Section 3 operative she’d sent with Lopez’s squad. The one tasked with cleaning up any messes. Perhaps she envisioned the same terrible dilemmas. Or perhaps not. Anyway, she’d sent an operative and he’d fought back by opening a narrow line of retreat for Lopez. Whatever happened, it was beyond their control now.
“Politics. Survival.” He said the words like curses.
Rebecca watched him. Who knew what she was thinking, this copy of a person?
“The survival of humanity is paramount, Commander.”
Rebecca needed a better speechwriter. Lopez would never forgive him, not for the rest of her life, be it eight minutes or eighty years. Neither would he.
The timer since last