Fred didn't understand any of the symbols, yet something seemed familiar about them. Some of the controls were similar to the Banshee, but nothing was an exact match. He relaxed as best he could given the situation, and his hands drifted over the controls. He tapped a symbol that could have been Aztec iconog- raphy, a tangle of spaghetti, or a crisscross of bird tracks.
His tank coughed and rumbled and rose a meter off the ground.
Fred frowned. He'd been damned lucky to get it right the first time. That was more than luck—-just as it was more than luck that he knew that the controls under his left hand moved the tank, the ones under his right aligned the mortar on target, and the one in the center armed and fired the main battery. But Fred wasn't going to examine how he knew this. He'd just use this cu- rious development to his advantage.
"Ready here," he told Kelly. "Let's take out the motor pool."
"Affirmative," she said, trying to conceal the faint trace of anticipation in her voice.
In unison the Spartans turned and fired at the far corner of the formation of tanks. Two blue-white blobs of liquid sun spat from the Wraiths and detonated. There was a dazzling light, an expan- sion of superheated white fire—and then there was glass-smooth ground and the smoldering skeletons of seven Wraith tanks.
More luck. If the tanks had been active, with hatches secured, they might have survived the first volley.
Kelly's tank surged ahead and bulldozed aside the surviving tanks near them.
Fred turned, accelerated to full power, and smashed through a line of retreating Grunts, a series of small, satisfying thuds reverberating through the cockpit.
The two Wraith tanks shattered through a line of trees, splin- tering their trunks. Beyond lay the main Covenant camp. A thou- sand Grunts and Jackals ran toward them, weapons and personal shields ready, but none of them fired.
They charged past the two tanks.
"They think we're on their side," Fred said. "They're going to see what attacked them. Let's not show them otherwise until we have to."
Kelly's acknowledgment light winked on, and she pushed a path through the onrushing Grunts—who quickly parted before her.
Half a kilometer ahead was a stand of hexagonal gold and silver structures: the shielded tents of the Elites. There were half a dozen stationary plasma turrets, "Shades," guarding them, and beyond them lay the mountain under which were ONI Section Three's secret research caverns. The Covenant were there as well.
Without thinking, Fred tapped a control; the display magni- fied. A hundred Covenant Engineers maneuvered heavy equip- ment: laser drills and conveyor belts and giant insectlike machines that looked as if they could dig through the entire mountain.
"They found the caverns," Fred told Kelly. "Looks like they're going to dig them out."
But again ... why? Why not just blast them from orbit? The Covenant had never taken prisoners—except the occasional strag- gler to execute for sport. They didn't go to this much trouble.
Unless it wasn't Delta Team they were after.
Fred keyed his COM. "Delta, if you're listening, we're com- ing in from south-southeast in a pair of captured Wraith tanks.
You'll know which ones from the fireworks. Keep your heads down and don't shoot us."
He keyed over to Kelly's personal COM. "Blaze a trail, Red-Two! Kill everything and get to that entrance ASAP!"
"I'm on it," she whispered, her voice thick with concentration.
A blue acknowledgment light flickered on . . . but it wasn't Kelly's. It was tagged as SPARTAN-039, Isaac. That was part of Will's team.
So they were holed up at the fallback position. Relief flooded into him to know his team was here and still alive.
But he couldn't hope—not yet. He had three hundred meters to cross, every millimeter of which was covered with a solid wall of Covenant Grunts, Jackals, and Elites—a path straight through hell.
Kelly rotated her tank about and fired at the remaining Wraiths and the cluster of Grunts trying to put out the fires near those she'd already destroyed. For a split second the ground was the surface of a sun; it flared, faded, and then was nothing but ash.
Fred fired his mortar—as fast as the tank's power supply would cycle. He lobbed three silver-white projectiles at the con- centration of Elites and plasma turrets. They had shields that protected them for a microsecond before they overloaded and collapsed. They flared like the "strike-anywhere" matches the ODSTs used to light their contraband cigarettes.
Kelly shot arcing projectiles into the hundreds of Grunts and Jackals running in every direction. Bodies charred midstride and turned to vapor. It was as if a dozen lightning bolts had struck in the center of the camp.
Grunts ran and ducked and shot at one another. The few Jackals tried to marshal the diminutive soldiers, but the Grunts, enraged or terrified, fired on them as well.
Fred caught motion in the corner of his eye—a shadow buzzed over his tank, and a blast rocked it from side to side.
That had to be Banshees. It made sense that they'd already have Elites in the air, on patrol. He cursed himself for not spotting them before. It was only a matter of time now. Without infantry support, sooner or later the Covenant ground and air forces would regroup and destroy them.
"Move!" he shouted over the COM. "Break off contact and get to the caves!"
Kelly gunned her tank and pushed through the wreckage.
Fred let her get ahead and paused to target the excavation equipment. He fired once.
Three rapid impacts thudded on top of his tank—exploded and shook his teeth. He fired three more times at the excavation equipment and gunned the Wraith tank. It shuddered and lurched forward.
He gritted his teeth and smiled. On the display, the smoke cleared enough for him to see that the laser drill, conveyor belts, and the insectlike diggers had been reduced to piles of half-melted junk.
The displays lost focus. No—Fred saw it wasn't the picture; smoke poured into the cockpit.
"Banshees circling over you," Kelly yelled over the COM.
"Get out!"
Fred popped the hatch and crawled out.
Overhead, a dozen Banshee fliers turned to strafe his crip- pled tank.
Fred jumped, rolled to his feet, and ran. A NAV marker ap- peared on his heads-up display, over a gash in the side of the mountain where the cavern entrance used to be.
A red-hot sledgehammer hit him squarely in the back: a plasma pistol on overload. He reeled forward but didn't lose his balance—and kept running. There was no time to stop. He glanced at his shield bar; it was completely drained, but it slowly began to recharge. He dodged and weaved back and forth. He couldn't take many more hits like that.
"Hurry," Kelly said.
He crossed the remaining hundred meters in seconds and jumped into a crater where there had once been a gatehouse and the secure entrance to ONI's underground base.
Kelly stood, braced just over the lip of the crater, holding a Warthog's chaingun. She aimed over Fred's head and sprayed the enemy with thunderous suppression fire. SPARTAN-043, Will, stood next to her. Fred was thrilled to see them alive—and even more thrilled to see Will holding a Jackhammer rocket launcher.
"Get below," Kelly said, and motioned with her head to the center of the crater. "We'll cover you." She continued to fire until she had depleted the chaingun's belt of ammunition.
Will took aim and squeezed the trigger. A rocket knifed through the air, and a contrail of white smoke connected with the cockpit of an oncoming Banshee. The alien flier disintegrated in a ball of fire.
Fred turned and saw a shaft that plunged deep into the ground.
A steel cable had been rigged to one side, and it angled into the depths.
He grabbed the line, jumped, and zipped into the darkness. He felt a sharp vibration through the line—once, then twice—as the other Spartans followed him.