Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [2]
Five stepped backward off the ridge, landed, spun, and ran.
Two dull thumps reverberated though the ground. The squeals and barks of the incoming Grunts, however, drowned out the noise of the exploding grenades. The Chief and his team sprinted up the half-kilometer sandstone slope in thirty-two seconds flat. The hill
ended abruptly—a sheer drop of two hundred meters straight into the ocean. Blue-Four’s voice crackled over the COM channel:“Welcome mat is laid out, Chief. Ready when you are.”
The Grunts looked like a living carpet of steel-blue skin, claws, and chrome weapons. Some ran on all fours up the slope. They barked and howled, baying for the Spartans’ blood. “Roll out the carpet,” the Chief told Blue-Four. The hill exploded—plumes of pulverized sandstone and fire and smoke hurtled skyward. The Spartans had buried a spiderweb pattern of Lotus antitank mines earlier that morning.
Sand and bits of metal pinged off of the Chief’s helmet. The Chief and his team opened fire again, picking off the remaining Grunts that were still alive and struggling to stand.
His motion detector flashed a warning. There were incoming projectiles high at two o’clock—velocities at over a hundred kilometers per hour. Five Covenant Banshee fliers appeared over the ridge.
“New contacts. All teams, open fire!” he barked. The Spartans, without hesitation, fired on the alien fliers. Bullet hits pinged from the fliers’ chitinous armor—it would take a very lucky shot to take out the antigrav pods on the end of the craft’s stubby meter-long “wings.”
The fire got the aliens’ attention, however. Lances of fire slashed from the Banshees’ gunports.
The Chief dove and rolled to his feet. Sandstone exploded where he had stood only an instant before. Globules of molten glass sprayed the Spartans. The Banshees screamed over their heads—then banked sharply for another pass. “Blue-Three, Blue-Five: Theta Maneuver,” the Chief called out. Blue-Three and -Five gave him the thumbs-up signal. They regrouped at the edge of the cliff and clipped onto the steel cables that dangled down the length of
the rock wall. “Did you set up the fougasses with fire or shrapnel?” the Chief asked. “Both,” Blue-Three replied. “Good.” The Chief grabbed the detonators. “Cover me.” The fougasses were never meant to take down flying targets; the Spartans had put them there to mop up
the Grunts. In the field, though, you had to improvise. Another tenet of their training: adapt or die. The Banshees formed into a “flying V” and swooped toward them, almost brushing the ground. The Spartans opened fire. Bolts of superheated plasma from the Banshees punctuated the air. The Chief dodged to the right, then to the left; he ducked. Their aim was getting better.
The Banshees were one hundred meters away, then fifty meters. Their plasma weapons might recycle
fast enough to get another shot . . . and at this range, the Chief wouldn’t be dodging. The Spartans jumped backward off the cliff—guns still blazing. The Chief jumped, too, and hit the detonators.
The ten fougasses—each a steel barrel filled with napalm and spent AP and shredder casings—had been buried a few meters from the edge of the cliff, their mouths angled up at thirty degrees. When the grenades at the bottom of the barrels exploded, it made one hell of a barbecue out of anything that got in their way.
The Spartans slammed into the side of the cliff—the steel cables they were attached to twanged taut. A wave of heat and pressure washed over them. A heartbeat later five flaming Banshees hurtled over their heads, leaving thick trails of black smoke as they arced into the water. They splashed down, then
vanished beneath the emerald waves. The Spartans hung there a moment, waiting and watching with their assault rifles trained on the water. No survivors surfaced. They rappelled down to the beach and rendezvoused with Blue-Two and -Four. “Red Team reports mission