Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [10]
"Understood," Fred said. "Keep me—" "Wait. Incoming transmission to Charlie Company from Reach HighCom." HighCom? Fred thought headquarters on Reach had been overrun. "Verification codes?"
"They check out," Kelly replied.
"Patch it through."
"Charlie Company? Jake? What the hell is the holdup there? Why haven 'tyou gotten my men out yet?"
"This is Senior Petty Officer SPARTAN-104, Red Team leader," Fred replied, "now in charge of Charlie Company. Identify yourself."
"Put Lieutenant Chapman on, Spartan," an irritated voice snapped.
"That's not possible, sir," Fred told him, instinctively realizing that he spoke to an officer and adding the honorific. "Except for four wounded Marines, Charlie Company is gone."
There was a long static-filled pause. "Spartan, listen to me very carefully. This is Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. Do you know who lam, son?"
"Yes, sir," Fred said, wincing as the Admiral identified himself. If the Covenant were eavesdropping on this transmission, the senior officer had just made himself a giant target.
"My staff and I are pinned down in a gully southeast of where HighCom used to be," Whitcomb continued. "Get your team over here and extract us, on the double."
"Negative, sir, I cannot do that. I have direct orders to protect the generator complex powering the orbital guns."
"I'm countermanding those orders," the Admiral barked. "As of two hours ago, I have tactical command of the defense of Reach. Now, I don't care if you 're a Spartan or Jesus Christ walking down the damned Big Horn River—/ am giving you a direct order. Acknowledge, Spartan."
If Admiral Whitcomb was now in charge of the defense, then a lot of the senior brass had been put out of commission when HQ got hit.
Fred saw a tiny amber light flashing on his heads-up display. His biomonitor indicated an elevation in his blood pressure and heart rate. He noticed his hands shook, almost imperceptibly.
He controlled the shaking and keyed the COM. "Acknowledged, sir. Is air support available?"
"Negative. Covenant craft took out our fighter and bomber cover in the first wave."
"Very well, sir. We'll get you out."
"Step on it, Chief." The COM snapped off.
Fred wondered if Admiral Whitcomb was responsible for the hundreds of dead Marines who'd been trying to guard the generators. No doubt he was an excellent ship driver. . . but Fleet officers running ground ops? No wonder the situation was FUBAR.
Had he pressured a young and inexperienced lieutenant to flank a superior enemy? Had he sent in air support with orders to saturate-bomb the area?
Fred didn't trust the Admiral's judgment, but he couldn't ignore a direct order from him, either.
He ran his team roster up onto his heads-up display: twenty-two Spartans, six wounded so badly they could barely walk, and four battle-fatigued Marines who'd been through hell once already. They had to repel a massive Covenant force. They had to extract Admiral Whitcomb, too. And as usual, their survival was at best a tertiary consideration.
He had weapons to defend the installation: grenades, chain-guns, and missiles—
Fred paused. Perhaps this was the wrong way to look at the tactical situation. He was thinking about defending the installation when he should have been thinking about what Spartans were best at—offense.
He keyed the SQUADCOM. "Everyone catch that last transmission?"
Acknowledgment lights winked on.
"Good. Here's the plan: We split into four teams.
"Team Delta—" He highlighted the wounded Spartans and the four Marines on the roster. "—fall back to this location." He uploaded a tactical map of the area and set a NAV marker in a ravine sixteen kilometers north. "Take two Warthogs, but leave them and stealth it if you encounter any resistance. Your mission is to secure the area. This will be the squad's fallback position. Keep the back door open for us."
They immediately acknowledged. The Spartans knew that ravine like the backs of their hands. It wasn't marked on any map, but it was where they'd trained