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The shadow of the drone flashed overhead and vanished.

Ash slowly got to his feet, and held his breath. Had he lost it? Maybe they had a chance after all to—

The drone reappeared overhead.

He could run down the channel, but with all its twists and turns, he'd be slow. Besides, it didn't even have to hit him with its energy beam. One shot at the walls and he'd be buried alive. Ash was trapped.

So he stood absolutely still… hoping it could only detect motion.

The drone dropped into the channel and stopped halfway down—staring directly at him. The eye glowed dull red, heating to molten golden. If Ash didn't know better he'd say the machine looked angry.

He needed to let the rest of Saber know where he was, at least know what he had discovered. Radio silence was no help now. He clicked on his COM, and turned up the gain

to maximum.

"They only track high-velocity objects," he said over the COM.

The drone hesitated and its booms moved in and out almost

as if it were… what? Attenuating his signal? Trying to hear him?

Ash yelled over his COM, "STOP!"

The three booms locked in place and the drone drifted back a half meter.

It had heard him.

"What do you want?" Ash said.

The drone crept closer.

His own voice blasted though his helmet's speaker: "Fhejelet 'Pnught Juber."

Ash shook his head clear "I don't understand." He held up his hands spread wide and

shrugged—the universal I-don't-know gesture.

"Fhejelet non sequitur, now?"

"I got part of that," Ash said. "Non sequitur—that's Latin, right?"

Ash wasn't sure what this thing was, or what it was trying to say, but it definitely wasn't Covenant. The Covenant had language translators, and they didn't sound like this. The Covenant generally used them only to pronounce florid curses just before they vaporized planets.

This close, Ash could see the inert curve of the drone's booms, and could feel the heat from its eye. Tiny golden hieroglyphics shimmered around the sphere, floating a centimeter off its surface. Ash squinted, but couldn't make out the characters.

"Security protocols enabled," the drone spoke over the COM. "I understood that," Ash replied. "Ring offensive system activated," it said. "Shield in countdown mode. Exchange proper

counterresponse. Reclaimer."

"I don't want to hurt you," Ash tried.

He had no idea what this thing wanted.

"Non sequitur," it said. "Reclassification of targets as non-Reclaimers. Aboriginal

subspecies. Collect for further analysis— else neutralize as possible infection vector."

Ash understood with perfect clarity "neutralize."

The drone advanced, spreading its booms apart like an open maw.

He was out of ideas.

A rock hit the drone, a granite chunk a half meter across. It glanced off the drone's

ventral boom. The impact made the drone dip, but it recovered, and its booms shifted, geometry

rearranged so it now stared up at the edge of the channel.

Team Saber stood there, looking down—all of them hefting large rocks.

Two stones collided into the drone's spars, and one shattered directly on its eye. It dipped to the ground with a crash, and the spherical eye heated to blazing white-hot. The dirt around it fused to glass and bubbled.

A boulder barely fitting within the channel bounced off the walls—and flattened the drone. The eye, crushed to an oblate shape, crackled and cooled to dull red and then black. The thing's three metal spars radiated out from under the rock like a flattened spider.

Ash exhaled, let his adrenaline subside, and he climbed out of the chasm.

Mark and Dante helped him up.

They'd saved each other a hundred times before, but those were always drills. Even

under live-fire conditions, it had never been like this. For real. Ash wanted to tell them that they were like brothers and sisters to him.

All he could manage without his voice breaking was: "Thanks, guys."

Holly replied, "Well, thanks for being bait."

"Good call using rocks," Olivia whispered.

Ash nodded. "We've got to get under cover," he said, "back