Halo_ Ghosts of Onyx - Eric S. Nylund [88]
Kurt squinted. Even with image enhancement and thermals he couldn't make out anything in the air where the Sentinels had been. But he could see the ground… and among the splintered tree trunks, burning leaves, and popping metal, there was neither drone.
He blinked his amber light twice, ordering the teams to fall back. He didn't like this one bit.
A full bank of green status lights winked at him.
Kurt saw motion in the mist: shadows that resolved into six rods arranged in a long hexagonal geometry—two spheres within—pulsing as the energy field enveloping the combined Sentinels shimmered.
They were completely untouched.
Kurt flashed his red three times: the retreat signal.
One sphere glowed and moved back and forth searching. It stopped and fixed upon Kurt.
He jumped.
A flash of light struck. The jungle floor detonated and a three-meter crater fizzled and
cracked into glass.
Kurt rolled into a crouch and instinctively returned fire with his MA5K.
This was part of the plan, too: the part where everything went wrong and he had insisted
on drawing the enemy's fire while the others slipped away. He knew the terrain: Twin Forks River was three hundred meters to the east. It should be a stroll through the park.
The other sphere shone like burnished gold and his rounds bounced off its energy shield… even as the first sphere reheated, building charge for another shot.
Kurt ran, zigzagging into the foliage.
In this doubled configuration the Sentinels could simultaneously fire and defend with an energy shield. That was big trouble.
It seemed all their engagements with the Sentinels were doing was teaching them how to be more effective in combat.
Explosions followed Kurt almost as if his footsteps were setting them off.
The trees parted ahead and the Twin Forks River snaked through the jungle. The water was muddy and churning.
Kurt leapt and splashed into the swift current.
He sank to the bottom. Internal oxygen cut on inside his SPI suit, and Kurt grasped rocks along the river bottom, crawling upstream. Through the murky water he spotted a rock ledge and tucked underneath.
Between him and Sentinels were three meters of moving ice-cold water, a meter of rock, and a layer of photo-reactive circuits in his armor. He should be undetectable to any sensor. At least undetectable enough, he hoped, to fool these things.
He waited.
No explosions. No flashes. No heat.
The combined Sentinel wasn't his biggest worry, though. It was the one on overwatch. The Sentinels patrolled in threes now: two at mid to ground level, and another two to three thousand
meters in the air—watching everything, reporting their tactics, and learning.
As long as that third one tracked them, the Spartans would be on the defensive, reacting, instead of initiating action.
Kurt wondered why the Sentinels hadn't called in reinforcements, combined, and let loose with enough firepower to burn the entire jungle.
… Unless they were deliberately playing cat and mouse with them? To learn more about how they fought?
He had to be smarter than them. Take out all three. Take the initiative. Maybe with Blue Team, he could do it.
Kurt waited two more minutes, then pulled himself out of the river. He sprinted for the cover of the jungle.
There were no signs of pursuit.
He remained COM silent and crept back to the prearranged fallback position.
As he approached the region of broken ground bordering Zone 67, he slowed. There was less cover, so he scanned the skies for Sentinel overwatch. All clear.
Ahead the land turned to savanna grass, acacia trees, and large striated boulders. One rock in particular had a hollow underneath where they had arranged to meet. It provided cover without restricting the view of the local airspace. If attacked, they had a clean line back to the jungle.
There would be at least two guards on lookout, and at least one Spartan at the jungle