Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [82]
terminated at the source.”
“Damn.” Captain Keyes considered staying and trying to reacquire that signal—but only for a moment. He decide to take what they had and run with it. “Ensign Lovell, get us the hell out of here.” “Sir!” Lieutenant Hall said. “Look.” The Covenant destroyer was changing course . . . along with the rest of the surviving Covenant vessels.
They were scattering, and accelerating out of the system. “They’re running,” Lieutenant Hikowa said, her normal iron calm replaced by astonishment. Within minutes, the Covenant ships accelerated and vanished into Slipstream space. Captain Keyes looked aft and counted only seven UNSC ships intact, with the balance of the fleet
destroyed or disabled.
He sat in his command chair. “Ensign Lovell, take us back the way we came. Make ready to take on wounded. Repressurize all uncompromised decks.” “Jesus,” Lieutenant Hall said. “I think we actually . . . won that one.” “Yes, Lieutenant. We won,” Keyes replied. But Captain Keyes wondered exactly what they had won. The Covenant had come to this system for a
reason—and he had a sinking feeling that they may have gotten what they had come for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
2010 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar) / Sigma Octanus IV, Côte d’Azur
It was time to arm the nuke.
The small device held the power to destroy Côte d’Azur—wipe the Covenant infection clean off the planet.
John carefully removed the bonding strips on the HAVOK tactical nuclear device and attached it to the wall of the sewer. The adhesive on the black half sphere stuck and hardened to the concrete. He slipped the detonator key into a thin slot on the unit’s face. There were no external indicators on the device; instead, a tiny screen winked on his heads-up display indicating the nuke was armed.
HAVOK ARMED, flashed across his HUD. AWAITING DETONATION SIGNAL.
The device—a clean thirty-megaton explosive—could only be detonated by a remote signal . . . a problem here in the sewers. Even the powerful communications package on a starship would be unable to penetrate the steel and concrete overhead.
John quickly rigged a ground-return transceiver, placing it on the pipes overhead. He’d have to set up another unit outside to relay the signal underground . . . a hot line that would trigger a nuclear firestorm.
Technically, his mission parameters had been fulfilled. Green and Red Teams would have the civilians evacuated soon. They had scouted the region and discovered a new Covenant species—the strange floating creature that disassembled and reassembled human machinery, like a scientist or engineer stripping down a device to learn its secrets.
He could leave and destroy the Covenant occupation force. Heshould leave—there was an army of Jackals and Grunts—including at least a platoon of the black-armored veterans—on the streets above. There were three medium Covenant dropships hovering in the air as well. The advance Marine strike forces had been slaughtered, leaving the Spartans no backup. His responsibility now was to make sure his team got out intact.
But John’s orders had an unusual amount of flexibility . . . and that made him uncomfortable. He had been told to reconnoiter the region and gather intelligence on the Covenant. He was positive there was more to be learned here.
Certainly they were up to something in Côte d’Azur’s museum. The Covenant had never before been interested in human history—or indeed, in humans or their artifacts of any kind. He had seen a disarmed Jackal fight hand to hand rather than pick up a nearby human assault rifle. And the only thing the Covenant had ever used human buildings for was target practice.
So finding out the reason they seized and were protecting the museum definitely qualified as intelligence
gathering in his book. Was it worth exposing