Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [146]
The Chief craned his head back and saw the pilot of the lead Banshee slump, slide offthe flier, and plummet to the ground. The trailing Banshee was riderless as well... only a blood-spattered cockpit and cowling.
Linda still had him covered—had taken out both pilots with precise fire. She had to be close.
John scanned the area. There were spires and water-reclamation towers, transport tubes and catwalks that crisscrossed the center of the interior. There was a nexus of walkways near the beam of illumination that ran down the center of the station, a location with enough glare that a sniper might hide in the open undetected.
He risked keying Linda's private COM channel. "Thought you might need a ride, so I—"
An energy mortar blasted over John's shoulder, burning the air like a sun in close orbit and draining his shields to half. It impacted a water tower, and the structure detonated into a cloud of blinding steam.
John punched the Banshee through the cloud, glanced down, and saw a Wraith tank tracking his trajectory. He ducked and weaved but kept moving toward Linda's probable location.
His mission countdown timer read 7:06. There was no time for fancy evasive maneuvers.
Did Linda even want to be found? Maybe she wanted him to get to safety and leave her behind? It's what he would have done. "Position report, Linda," John barked over the COM. "That's
a direct order."
Three seconds ticked off his mission clock and then the six-tone "Oly Oly Oxen Free " song whistled through John's speakers and a NAV marker appeared on his heads-up display.
The triangular marker centered on a rope that ran between two transit tubes and dangled perilously close to the high-intensity light beam. It was a barely discernible thread that ran through a hard shadow cast by a nearby catwalk.
John hit his image enhancers. Through the glare of the light, and in the depths of the shadow, he caught the flicker of reflected optics.
Linda used both the brilliant light and the darkness to hide.
John angled the Banshee to her. He clipped the tether line from his belt to the frame of the Banshee and squeezed his thighs tighter onto the seat.
When he was thirty meters away, he made visual contact. Linda had the rope coiled about a boot and wrapped about one forearm. She held her sniper rifle in one arm, and John could only surmise that she had been firing from such an impossible position.
She uncoiled the rope from her boot, swung, released at the apex of the arc—and fell toward him.
John forced the Banshee's cowling up against straining hydraulics and stretched out his arm, his fingers touched hers— and her hand slapped firmly into his gauntlet.
He swung her around and over his shoulder. Linda landed in front of him, straddling the seat. John spun the Banshee about and accelerated back to the windows. The craft's forward cowling remained wrenched up and
slowed them down—but there was no other way to fit two people on the craft. "Coming in hot," John said over the COM to Fred and Will. "Open the door and get ready for a quick exit, Blue Team."
Fred's acknowledgment light winked on.
"Cortana, breach those air locks. Now!"
A cacophony of voices filled John's COM. There were so many copies of Cortana speaking at the same time he couldn't make out anything coherent.
"Cortana, the air locks."
There was apop of static. "Apologies, Chief," Cortana replied.
"I'vespunoffadedicatedcopyto... to...speakwithyou." John thought she had already made a copy to talk directly with him. What had happened to it? "Override the air lock safeties, Cortana. Open the external and repair bay doors."
"Working, Chief. There's too much system COM traffic. So many of us. Near saturation level. Have to fight to get. . . Stand by..."
An explosion appeared a kilometer away along the far wall. The Lotus antitank mine became a blossom of flame and black smoke that drifted and diffused and left a spiderweb of cracks on the meter-thick translucent section.
But the window