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“We got a deal?” The two approaching Elites picked up their pace, as the others steadied their aim.

Jonah relaxed his posture, let his knees flex and his back and shoulders slouch.

The two Elites were almost within reach. Jonah bent into a deep crouch—his muscles contracted, taunt—before tumbling back, head over heels, coming up a good ten yards from the nearest Elite. Hunched in a low squat, Jonah held a disruptor in one hand, his charge detonator in the other.

While Roland had been responsible for demolitions on most missions, with Jonah preferring to focus on direct combat, both members of a Headhunter squad were required to carry the proper charges and triggering mechanisms necessary for fieldwork to ensure redundancy should any unforeseen complications arise. And though Jonah would’ve preferred another way out, he was fully aware that his luck had run dry, and as he and his fellow ’Hunters had been fond of saying since their earliest training days on Onyx: “When in doubt, blow shit up.”

Jonah’s mind flashed to Roland one more time, and he silently thanked his partner for one last assist—“Clear.” Roland’s final breath had also been a parting shot at the Covenant bastard who’d run him through.

These special division Spec-Op Elites may have been watching the whole show, but Roland was cloaked when he set his charges, so unless the Sangheili had the equivalent of VISR in those shiny new helmets, they didn’t know thing one about the explosives placed on the reactors all around them.

“Clear” meant the primer on the charges had been initiated.

“Clear” meant with a push of a button this entire section of the valley would light up as bright and hot as the surface of a star, nothing but scorched earth and charred bones in its wake.

“Clear,” and Jonah had a plan, even if it meant kissing his own ass good-bye.

He raised the disruptor. “Know what this is?”

“Take him!” the lead Elite called.

But Jonah had allowed the two closest Elites to get within arm’s length in order to block the line of fire of their three squadmates with ranged weaponry. If the they got close enough to cut him he’d still have time to blow the fuse and take them all to hell right along with him.

Jonah activated the disruptor and tossed it in a low arc toward the four farthest Elites while dodging a swipe from one of the energy swords, but he was too slow to avoid the second’s grasp.

The Elite yanked him to his feet, ripping his shoulder from its socket. Jonah screamed in pain.

The energy field from the disruptor expanded as it hit the ground at the feet of the farthest group of aliens, shutting down power to their weapons and armor.

The Elite holding Jonah shook him like a rag doll. “You dare defy us, filth? You will suffer for your sins.” He raised his sword, using the very edge of the blade to cut a gash across Jonah’s faceplate, digging into the flesh beneath. Jonah’s left eye sizzled and popped as the blade passed through. For the second time in recent memory, the Spartan screamed, but he still held tightly to the detonator, thumb pressed firmly on the tiny unit’s ignition switch.

The second sword-wielding Elite stepped up and grabbed him by the neck.

In Jonah’s mind a thousand witty remarks echoed, an infinite chorus of banter to die to, but instead of uttering a word, Jonah simply glanced at the beasts above him, these “elite” commandoes whose body count quite possibly surpassed his own, and thought to himself, Six of you, one of me. Fair trade, as he released his thumb from the detonator.

After that everything went white.

BLUNT INSTRUMENTS

* * *

FRED VAN LENTE

ONE

_____________

Fireteam Spartan: Black’s objective was not difficult to locate. All one had to do was look for the enormous pinkish-purple plume of energy spearing out of the horizon on the colony world Verge. They bled silently through ten square kilometers of heavily fortified enemy anti-aircraft positions toward the perpetually shining beam until at last they reached