Filter
Top Products
112
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
There was a roar of static. "Whitcomb ... too many. Got—
you read?"
"Gamma," Fred shouted. "The fallback is hot. Repeat hot!
Acknowledge."
There was only static.
"I hope they heard," he told Kelly.
"Red-21 can take care of his team. Don't worry." She crept
forward and waved him to follow. "Take a look at this."
Fred glanced over his shoulder. No Hunter, and nothing on his
motion detector. He followed Kelly, and parted a wall of black-
berry brambles. Parked in a clearing were Covenant vehicles,
lined in three rows of four: mortar tanks. The tanks had two wide
lateral fins, beneath which were armored antigrav pods. They
were extremely stable and fired the Covenant's most powerful
ground weapon: the energy mortar. Fred had seen them in ac-
tion; they fired an encapsulated blob of plasma that obliterated
everything within twenty meters of impact. Titanium battle
plate, concrete, or flesh—it all vaporized.
Marines called these tanks "Wraiths" because you usually got
one look at them before they made you one.
There were a handful of Grunts milling about the tanks, as
well as dozens of the floating Covenant Engineers. The Engi-
neers swarmed over and under the machinery. Most interesting
to Fred, the vehicles' hatches were open.
"I can't think of a better disguise," Kelly whispered, "than five
tons of Covenant armor." She started forward.
Fred set his hand on her arm, holding her back. "Wait. Think it
through. There are two possibilities. First, if the Covenant have
found the fallback position, we go in guns blazing and carve a
path for Delta Team to get out."
She nodded. "The other possibility?"
"They don't know that Delta Team is holed up under the
mountain. Then—" Fred hesitated. "Then we have to draw them
away."
Kelly considered this, then said, "I was afraid you were going
to say that." She gave the dirt a tiny kick. "But you're right."
A blip appeared on their motion trackers, directly on their six.
The contact was large and moving steadily toward them. The