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Kelly maneuvered aggressively—jinking up and down, performing quarter rolls to veer around mesas, dropping into ravines and pulling up at the last instant to avoid a crash headlong into a wall.

"Great," Kurt whispered to Kelly. He forced himself to release the edge of her seat.

Dead ahead the slope of a mountain angled gently up over two thousand meters.

"Nothing airborne on sensors," Will announced. "Clear sailing ahead."

"Status on the warheads?" Kurt asked over the COM.

Ash clicked on the channel. "All FENRIS warhead detonators now secure and slaved to

our secure COM signal, sir. As ordered, two warheads cut down, armed, and ready for transport. Working on the rest."

"Hang on!" Kelly cried.

The nose of the ship jerked up. A rock the size of a Warthog tumbled down the mountain slope—clipping the undercarriage of the ship.

The dropship spun, but Kelly expertly rolled, righted, and got them back on course.

"Close," she muttered.

"Rescan for surface motion," Kurt ordered Will.

Will swept the camera angle port and starboard.

Kurt saw they weren't on a single mountain; it was a range-all equivalent elevation, extending in a gentle arc as far as he could see.

"Motion detected," Will said. "Just appeared, sir. Ahead. Got a target lock."

A silhouette resolved on the viewscreen, outlined by the glare of the setting sun.

Kelly came hard to port.

As their relative angle changed, Kurt saw motion: earth and rocks shot up and then cascaded down the slope.

Will slid his hand over his controls and polarized the monitor, cutting the glare. The motion came from a collection of thirty interlaced Sentinels, their booms and center spheres assembled into an oblong shape, and through its center traveled a continuous stream of stone.

To Kurt it looked like a mechanical worm regurgitating over the mountainside. Dr. Halsey clambered into the cockpit. "No energy spikes detected," Will said. "They're not ready to fire." Kurt swallowed. "Steady on this heading," he told Kelly. He watched the giant machine recede behind them. It had to have seen them. Thirty sets

of eyes wouldn't have missed something as large as a Covenant dropship. Why hadn't it attacked?

Dr. Halsey tapped a control and one of the viewscreens jumped back to the combined Sentinels. She studied this a moment, and then declared, "Tinkertoys."

"I don't understand the reference," Kurt said.

"An ancient child's toy," she said, "sticks and flat round connectors. These may be the Forerunners' counterpart. They reconfigure to accomplish various tasks, having all the required basic components: antigravity units, force-field generators, energy projector weaponry It is the equivalent, I suspect, of the simple machines that comprise our technology: the wheel, the ramp, lever, pulley, and screw."

Her casual analysis of a technology centuries more advanced than theirs irritated Kurt.

"I'd say in this configuration," Dr. Halsey continued, "it is not designed for combat, and will not attack… unless, of course, they were provoked. Their programming, while sophisticated, appears dedicated; that is, each Sentinel combination special-izes lor a single

task. And right now, that task is moving dirt."

"Doesn't mean there aren't more combat pairs around," Kelly said. "Orders, sir?"

Kurt detected the slightest edge of nervousness in Kelly's voice. He felt it, too, in the pit

of his gut. If those thirty Sentinels back there had wanted to, they could have blasted this ship into shrapnel.

There were only two options; go forward or retreat.

Kurt felt like his luck had run dry, but he also felt like they were close to finding something.

He longed for the days of simple missions when there were only two things to worry about: maneuvering and where your team's lines of fire were.

Yet, when you broke it down to its components, forgot the consequences of success or failure, wasn't this mission the same as any other?

Move and fire. Find a target to capture or neutralize. Minimize casualties while inflicting maximum