Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [72]
She carefully looked around, verified that the area was secure, and slung her rifle. She snapped a crisp salute. “Reporting as ordered, Master Chief.”
Red Team leader—Joshua—ran in from the east. He saluted. “Motion detectors, radar, and automated defenses up and running, sir.”
“Good. Let’s go over this one more time.” The Master Chief overlaid a topographic map on their helmets’ displays. “Mission goal one: we need to gather intelligence on Covenant troop disposition and defenses at Côte d’Azur. Mission goal two: if there are no civilian survivors, we are authorized to remote detonate a HAVOK tactical nuclear mine and remove the enemy forces. In the meantime, we will minimize our contact with the enemy.”
They nodded.
The Master Chief highlighted the four streams that fed into the river delta near Côte d’Azur. “We avoid these routes. Banshees patrol them.” He circled where Firebase Bravo had been. “We’ll avoid this area as well—according to the Marine survivors, that area is hot. Grid thirteen by twenty-four also has activity.
“Red Leader, take your squad in along the coast. Stay in the tree line. Green Leader, follow this ridgeline, but keep under cover, too. I’ll be taking this route.” The Master Chief traced a path through a particularly dense section of jungle.
“It’s 1830 hours now. The city is thirteen kilometers from here—that should take us no more than forty minutes. We’ll probably be forced to slow down to avoid enemy patrols—but we all should be in place no later than 1930 hours.”
He zoomed into a city map of Côte d’Azur. “Entry points to the city sewer system are—” He highlighted the display with NAV points. “—here, here, and here. Red Team will recon the wharf areas. Green takes the residential section. I’ll take Blue Team downtown. Questions?”
“Our communications underground will be limited,” Linda said. “How do we check in while keeping our heads down?”
“According to the Colonial Administration Authority’s file on Côte d’Azur, the sewer systems here have steel pipes running along the top of the plastic conduits. Tap into those and use ground-return transceivers to check in. We’ll have our own private COM line.”
“Roger,” she said.
The Master Chief said, “As soon as we leave, the dropship dusts off and will move here.” He indicated a position far to the south of Alpha camp. “If the Pelican doesn’t make it . . . our fallback rendezvous point is here.” He indicated a point fifty kilometers south. “ONI’s welcoming committee has stashed our emergency SATCOM link and survival gear there.”
No one mentioned that survival gear would be useless when the Covenant glassed the planet.
“Stay sharp,” John said. “And come back in one piece. Dismissed.”
They saluted briskly, then sprinted to their tasks.
He switched to Blue Team’s frequency. “Time to saddle up, Blue Team,” he called out. “RV back at the bunker for orders.” Three blue lights winked acknowledgement in his display.
A moment later, the other three Spartans in his squad trotted into position. “Reporting as ordered,” Blue-Two announced.
The Master Chief quickly filled them in on the mission. “Blue-Two.” He nodded to Kelly. “You’re carrying the nuke and medical gear.”
“Affirmative. Who’ll have the detonator, sir?”
“I will,” he replied. “Blue-Three.” He turned to Fred. “You have the explosives. James, you’ll take our extra COM equipment.”
They double-checked their gear: modified MA5B assault rifles, adapted to mount silencers; ten extra clips of ammunition; frag grenades; combat knives; M6D pistols—small but powerful handguns that fired .450 Magnum loads, sufficient to crack through Grunt armor.
In addition to the weapons, there was a single smoke canister—blue smoke to signal for pickup. John would carry that. “Let’s go,” he said.
Blue Team moved out. They quickly entered the jungle, in a simple