Halo_ Ghosts of Onyx - Eric S. Nylund [47]
"Saber is here?" Mendez asked.
"Negative, Chief," Tom said. "We never hooked up with Saber, Katana, or Gladius after Zone 67 went active. There were no additional transmissions after the one."
Kurt watched Mendez's reaction. The man looked rock solid, and there was no trace of the worry he had seen earlier. He knew he could count on him, Tom, and Lucy no matter what.
"We may be on our own for a long time," Kurt told them.
"We have to make the most of our position at Camp Currahee. Tom, get to the armory, collect grenades, det cord, whatever else looks good. Forget the ammunition, though, they're all stun rounds. Don't overload."
Tom nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Chief," Kurt said, "get to the command center. Fire up the generators to boost power and get on the auxiliary COM. It might be strong enough to punch through this radio interference. Send a general distress. Bounce it between the antenna arrays. It might confuse these things long enough to get through. Try and raise any survivors from the Agincourt."
They both knew the odds of escape pods being out of the range of that blast. Still, they had to try.
"Leave a note," Kurt continued, "in case the other Spartans come here. Tell them to gather supplies and meet us at El Morro Point."
"Aye aye," Mendez replied.
Kurt checked his watch, a self-winding antique mechanical. "Mark time as 1045. Lucy and I will pick up ammunition and then arrange for a distraction in one hour. Then make for the jungle, and we'll meet up at El Morro Point."
"Yes, sir," Tom and Mendez said.
They then crawled to opposite sides of the infirmary, waited for the drone shadows to vanish, and then they rolled out.
"Lucy?"
She belly-crawled over to him.
"Follow." He moved to the building's edge. Lucy in her SPI armor became his shadow. Kurt pointed to the small whitewashed house across the quad: the Camp Commandant's residence where Kurt had lived for the last twenty years.
They waited three long minutes for the overhead shadows of patrolling drones to vanish.
He and Lucy entered the house and closed the door.
Kurt had never locked it, but now, some part of his mind made him reflexively turn the tiny bolt on the door.
The house was small, three rooms comprised of an outer office, a toilet area, and bunk. There were framed pictures on his office wall, a Greek urn with ancient wrestlers in an alcove, and neat stacks of paperwork on his desk—the recent deployment orders for Gamma Company.
He wished whatever was happening had started last week— when there had been three hundred Spartans on Onyx. The tactical situation would be much different.
Lucy lowered the bamboo blinds, and then hesitated by the pictures on the wall.
Kurt joined her. For the last five years the SPARTAN-II program had been publicly promoted by Section Two to boost morale. There were shots of Spartans in their MJOLNIR armor helping wounded marines onto a Pelican, Spartans surrounded by fallen Covenant Elites, Spartans standing tall. Heroes all. The SPARTAN-IIIs had studied their legendary predecessors, their battles, and their tactics—learning from the best.
He glanced at Lucy, her expression inscrutable within her mirrored helmet, and then he looked back to the pictures. There wasn't a single photo of a SPARTAN-III on the wall, however, and not one public mention of their sacrifices. And there never would be, either.
Kurt wished it was different, and that he'd taken the small steps to improve his Spartans sooner. The emphasis on their team training, the SPI-armor system upgrades, the new mutations—it hardly seemed enough.
"This way," he told her, and turned to the steel door set near the bathroom. He palmed the biometric and let the facial and retinal scanners play over his face. The door silently opened and they entered.
Fluorescent lights flickered on, revealing a room lined with
ammunition