Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [31]
Fred sat cross-legged on the deck, twirling a razor-edged combat knife in glittering arcs. He always came in second in all the contests. John thought he could have come in first, but he just didn’t like the attention. He was neither too short nor too tall. He wasn’t overly muscled or slim. His black hair was shot with streaks of silver—a feature he hadn’t had before the augmentation. If anyone in the group could blend into a crowd, it would be him.
Linda was the quietest member of the group. She was pale, had close-cropped red hair, and green eyes. She was a crack shot, an artist with a sniper rifle.
Kelly circled the table once, and then selected a pair of grease-stained blue coveralls. Her name had been sloppily embroidered on the chest. “These our new trainee uniforms?”
“ONI provided them,” John said. “They’re supposed to match what the crew of theLaden wears.”
Kelly held the coveralls up and frowned. “They don’t give a girl much to work with.”
“Try this on for size.” Linda held a black body suit up to Kelly’s long slender frame.
They had used these black suits before. They were form-fitting, lightweight polymer body armor. They could deflect a small-caliber round and had refrigeration/heating units that would mask infrared signatures. The integrated helmet had encryption and communications gear, a heads-up display, and thermal and motion detectors. Sealed tight, the unit had a fifteen-minute reserve of oxygen to let the wearer survive in vacuum.
The suits were uncomfortable, and they were tricky to repair in the field. And they always needed repairs.
“They’re too tight,” Kelly said. “It’ll limit my range of motion.”
“We wear them for this op,” John told her. “There are too many places between here and there with nothing to breathe but vacuum. As for the rest of your equipment, take what you want—but stay light. Without recon data on this place, we’re going to be moving fast . . . or we’ll be dead.”
The team started selecting their weapons first.
“Three-ninety caliber?” Fred asked.
“Yes,” John replied. “Everyone take guns that use .390-caliber ammunition so we can share clips if we have to. Except Linda.”
Linda gravitated to a matte-black long-barreled rifle—the SRS99C-S2 AM. The sniper rifle system had modular sections: scopes, stocks, barrels, even the firing mechanism could be swapped. She quickly stripped the rifle down and reconfigured it. She assembled a flash-and-sound suppression barrel, and then to compensate for the lower muzzle velocity, she increased the ammunition caliber to .450. She ditched all the sights and scopes and settled for an integrated link to her helmet’s heads-up display. She pocketed five extended ammunition clips.
John also chose an MA2B, a cut-down version of the standard MA5B assault rifle. It was tough and reliable, with electronic targeting and an ammo supply indicator. It also had a recoil-reduction system, and could deliver an impressive fifteen rounds per second.
He picked up a knife: twenty-centimeter blade, one serrated edge, nonreflective titanium carbide, and balanced for throwing.
John grabbed the panic button—a tiny single-shot emergency beacon. It had two settings. The red setting alerted thePioneer that it had hit the fan, and to come in guns blazing. The green setting merely marked the location of the base for later assault by the UNSC.
He took a double handful of ammo clips—then paused. He set them down and pocketed five. If they got into a firefight where he’d need that much firepower, their mission was over anyway.
Everyone took similar equipment, with a few variations. Kelly selected a small computer pad with IR links. She also had their field medical kit.
Fred packed a standard-issue lockbreaker.
Linda selected three nav marker transmitters, each the size of a tick. The trackers could be adhered to an
object and would broadcast that object’s location to the Spartans’ heads-up displays. Sam hefted two medium-size