Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [107]
The Master Chief started toward the gravel yard.
“Wait,” Cortana said. “I’m picking up far infrared signals on your thermal sensors. An encrypted sequence . . . decoding . . . yes, there. It’s an activation signal for a Lotus mine. They’ve mined the field, Master Chief.”
The Master Chief froze. He’d used Lotus mines before and knew the damage they could inflict. The shaped charges ripped though the armor plate of a tank like it was no thicker than an orange peel.
This would slow him down considerably.
Not crossing the obstacle course was no option. He had his orders. He wouldn’t cheat and go around. He had to prove that he and Cortana were up for this test.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Cortana replied. “Find the position of one mine, and I can estimate the rough position of the others based on the standard randomization procedure used by UNSC engineers.”
“Understood.”
The Master Chief grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, counted to three, and lobbed it into the middle of the field. It bounced and exploded—sending a shock wave through the ground—tripping two of the Lotus mines. Twin plumes of gravel and dust shot into the air. The detonation shook his teeth.
He wondered if the armor’s shields could have survived that. He didn’t want to find out while he was still inside the thing. He boosted the field strength on the bottom of his boots to full.
Cortana overlaid a grid on his heads-up display. Lines flickered as she ran through the possible permutations.
“Got a match!” she said. Two dozen red circles appeared on his display. “That’s ninety-three percent accurate. The best I can do.”
“There are never any guarantees,” the Master Chief replied. He stepped onto the gravel, taking short, deliberate steps. With the shields activated on the bottoms of his boots, it felt like he was skating on greased ice.
He kept his head down, picking his way between red dots on his display. If Cortana was wrong, he probably wouldn’t even know it. The Master Chief saw the gravel had ended. He looked up. He had made it. “Thank you, Cortana. Well done.” “You’re welcome . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Picking up scrambled radio frequencies on the D band.
Encrypted orders from this facility to Fairchild Airfield. They’re using personal codewords, too—so I can’t tell what they’re up to. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.” “Keep your ears open.”
“I always do.” He ran to the next section of the obstacle course: the razor field. Here, recruits had to crawl in the mud under razor wire as their instructors fired live rounds over them. A lot of soldiers discovered whether they had the guts to deal with bullets zinging a centimeter over their heads.
Along either side of the course there was something new: three 30mm chain-guns mounted on tripods. “Weapons emplacements are targeting us, Chief!” Cortana announced. The Master Chief wasn’t about to wait and see if those chain-guns had a minimum-depth setting. He had
no intention of crawling across the field and letting the chain-guns’ rapid rate of fire chip away at his shields.
The chain-guns clicked and started to turn. He sprinted to the nearest tripod-mounted gun. He opened fire with his assault fire, shot the lines that powered the servos—then spun the chain-gun around to face the others.
He crouched behind the blast shield and unloaded on the adjacent gun. Chain-guns were notoriously hard to aim; they were best known for their ability to fill the air with gunfire. Cortana adjusted his targeting reticle to sync up with the chain-gun. With her help, he hit the adjacent weapon emplacements. John guided a stream of fire into the guns’ ammo packs. Moments later, in a cloud of fire and smoke, the guns fell silent . . . then toppled.
The Master Chief ducked, primed a grenade, and hurled it at the closest of the remaining automated weapons. The grenade sailed through the air—then detonated just above the autogun.
“Chain-gun destroyed,” Cortana reported. Two more grenades and the automated guns were out of commission.