Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [53]
The displays lost focus. No—Fred saw it wasn't the picture; smoke poured into the cockpit. "Banshees circling over you," Kelly yelled over the COM. "Get out!"
Fred popped the hatch and crawled out.
Overhead, a dozen Banshee fliers turned to strafe his crippled tank.
Fred jumped, rolled to his feet, and ran. A NAV marker appeared on his heads-up display, over a gash in the side of the mountain where the cavern entrance used to be.
A red-hot sledgehammer hit him squarely in the back: a plasma pistol on overload. He reeled forward but didn't lose his balance—and kept running. There was no time to stop. He glanced at his shield bar; it was completely drained, but it slowly began to recharge. He dodged and weaved back and forth. He couldn't take many more hits like that.
"Hurry," Kelly said.
He crossed the remaining hundred meters in seconds and jumped into a crater where there had once been a gatehouse and the secure entrance to ONI's underground base.
Kelly stood, braced just over the lip of the crater, holding a Warthog's chaingun. She aimed over Fred's head and sprayed the enemy with thunderous suppression fire. SPARTAN-043, Will,
ERIC NYLUND 117
stood next to her. Fred was thrilled to see them alive—and even more thrilled to see Will holding a Jackhammer rocket launcher.
"Get below," Kelly said, and motioned with her head to the center of the crater. "We'll cover you." She continued to fire until she had depleted the chaingun's belt of ammunition.
Will took aim and squeezed the trigger. A rocket knifed through the air, and a contrail of white smoke connected with the cockpit of an oncoming Banshee. The alien flier disintegrated in a ball of fire.
Fred turned and saw a shaft that plunged deep into the ground. A steel cable had been rigged to one side, and it angled into the depths.
He grabbed the line, jumped, and zipped into the darkness. He felt a sharp vibration through the line—once, then twice—as the other Spartans followed him.
After three hundred meters of free fall, he glimpsed a faint illumination at the bottom of the shaft, the feeble sickly yellow glow from chemical light sticks. Fred tightened his grip on the cable, and his descent slowed. A meter from the bottom of the shaft, he let go and landed in a crouch. He moved out of the way. The other Spartans landed next to him.
"This way," Will said and moved ahead, through a set of elevator doors that had been forced open.
Fred noticed that Will moved with a severe limp, and remembered the Spartans he had sent here were injured. It was ironic that he had sent them out of the thick of battle, to end up in the middle of another dire situation.
Then again, they weren't dead .. . which was more than he could hope for Beta Team.
They stepped into a corridor with brushed stainless-steel walls that mirrored and smeared the faint light from the chem lights.
Overhead there was a tremendous explosion. Rocks and dirt showered into the shaft, and dust blossomed through the corridor. "Lotus antitank mines," Will said. "A little something to slow our uninvited guests down."
Two other Spartans, Isaac and Vinh, sat along either side of the hallway, behind rock barricades. They gave slight nods to Fred and kept their eyes and weapons on the end of the corridor.
"Where's the rest of the team? And the Marines from Charlie Company?" Fred asked.
"They didn't make it," Will replied, his voice flat. "We were separated on the way here." He shook his head. "No contact since then."
Fred was quiet a moment. He listed those three as MIA on his team roster as well as the other Spartans on Will's team. The list of Spartans he could account for had grown extremely short. Fred felt his stomach twist. "Any word from Beta Team?"
"Negative. No contact, sir."
Fred clenched his teeth and marked Beta Team as MIA as well.
"Gamma Team?" Will asked.
"They're out there," Fred replied. "I heard them on the COM, but I couldn't make out much. I warned them away from this position."
"Good," Will whispered.