Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [68]
the narrow band.”
“Yes, sir,” Fincher answered in a wavering voice. He glanced at the near-catatonic Private Walker and shook his head. Harland checked on Cochran. Private Cochran’s eyes fluttered open, cracking the mud caked onto his
face. “We back yet, Corporal?” “Almost,” Harland replied. Cochran’s pulse was steady, although his face had, in the last several minutes, drained of color. The wounded man looked like a corpse.Damn it, Harland thought,he’s going to bleed out .
Harland placed a reassuring hand on Cochran’s shoulder. “Hang in there. We’ll patch you up as soon as we get to camp.”
They had dropships at Bravo. Cochran had a chance, albeit a slim one, if they got him back to the combat surgeons at headquarters—or better yet, to the Navy docs on the orbiting ships. For a moment Harland was dazzled with visions of clean sheets, hot meals—and a meter of armor between him and the Covenant.
“Nothing but static on the link, sir,” Fincher said, breaking through Harland’s reverie.
“Maybe the radio got hit,” Harland muttered. “You know those explosive needles throw a bunch of microshrapnel. We probably got slivers of that stuff inside us, too.”
Fincher examined his muscular forearms. “Great.”
“Move out,” Harland said.
The tires of the Warthog spun, gripped, and the vehicle moved rapidly along the ridge.
The terrain looked familiar. Harland even spotted three sets of Warthog tracks—yes, this was the way the Lieutenant had brought them. Ten minutes and they’d be back on base. No more worries. He relaxed, took out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out. He pulled off the safety strip and tapped the end to ignite it.
Fincher revved the engine and shot up to the top of the ridge—crossed over, and skidded to halt.
If not for the haze, they would have seen everything from this side of the valley—the lush carpet of jungle in the valley, the river meandering through it, and on the far set of hills, a clearing dotted with fixed gun emplacements, razor wire, and pre-fab structures: Firebase Bravo.
Their platoon had partially dug into the hillside to minimize the camp’s footprint and provide a place where they could safely store their munitions and bunk down. A ring of sensors encircled the camp so nothing could sneak up on them. Radar and motion detectors linked to surface-to-air missile batteries. A road ran along the far ridge—three klicks down that was the coastal city, Côte d’Azur.
The sun broke through the haze overhead, and Corporal Harland saw everything had changed.
It wasn’t fog or haze. Smoke rose in columns from the valley . . . and there was no more jungle. Everything had been burned to the ground. The entire valley was blackened into smoldering charcoal. Glowing red craters honeycombed the hillsides.
He fumbled with his binoculars, brought them to his eyes . . . and froze. The hill where the camp had been was gone—it had been flattened. Only a mirror surface remained. The sides of the adjacent hills glistened with a cracked glass coating. The air was thick with tiny Covenant fliers in the distance. On the ground, Grunts and Jackals searched for survivors. A few Marines ran for cover . . . there were hundreds of wounded and dead on the ground, helpless, screaming—some of them trying to crawl away.
“What have you got, sir?” Fincher asked.
The cigarette fell from Harland’s mouth and caught on his shirt—but he didn’t take his eyes off the battlefield to brush it away. “There’s nothing left,” he whispered. A shape moved in the valley—much larger than the other Grunts and Jackals. Its outline was blurry.
Harland tried to focus the binoculars on it but couldn’t. It was the same thing he had seen at grid thirteen by twenty-four. The Grunts gave it a wide berth. The thing lifted its arm—its whole arm looked like one big gun—and a bolt of plasma struck near the riverbank.
Even from this distance, Harland heard the screams of the men