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116
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
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,