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ERIC NYLUND
27
much altitude as the Banshee could manage—about three hun-
dred meters. As he cleared the top, what he saw made him ease
off the throttle.
The valley was ten kilometers across and sloped before him,
thick with Douglas firs that thinned and gave way to trampled
fields and the Big Horn River beyond. Camped in the fields
were thousands upon thousands of Covenant troops. Their mass
covered the entire valley, and thin, smoke-choked sunlight
glinted off a sea of red, yellow, and blue armor. They moved in
tight columns and swarmed along the river's edge—so many that
it looked like someone had kicked over the largest anthill in
existence.
And they were building. Hundreds of flimsy white dome-shaped
tents were being erected, atmosphere pits for the
methane-breathing Grunts. Farther back were the odd polyhedral
huts of the Elite units, guarded by a long line of dozens of
beetlelike Wraith tanks. Guard towers punctuated the valley; they
spiraled up from mobile treaded bases, ten meters tall and
topped with plasma turrets.
The rules had indeed changed. In more than a hundred battles
Fred had never seen the Covenant set up encampments of such
magnitude. All they did was kill.
Floating behind all this activity, almost brushing against the
far hills, the Covenant cruiser sat thirty meters off the ground. It
looked like a great bloated fish with stubby stabilizing fins. Its
gravity lift was in operation, a tube of scintillating energy that
moved matter to and from the ground. Stacks of purple crates
gently floated down from the craft. In the afternoon light he
could see its weapons bristling along its length, casting
spider-like shadows across its hull.
Their Banshees leveled out, and Fred dropped back to tighten
his formation with Kelly and Joshua.
He glanced again at the enemy ship and the guard towers. One
good hit from those weapons could take them out.
Fred saw other Banshee patrols circling the valley. He frowned.
If they passed them, the enemy pilots would almost certainly de-
mand to know their business... and there was no way of knowing
what the established patrol routes were. That meant he'd have to