Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (14 page)

No, it hadn't moved. There were
two
suns.

This new sun faded and a ring of smoke expanded around its center. This fireball seemed to pause, and then it shattered in a starburst of glittering molten metal.

In high orbit, the
Agincourt
exploded.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

0715 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR ZONE 67, PLANET ONYX

Ash ran for his life over the rocky ground. He wasn't sure how the thing was tracking him in his SPI suit, but it was.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the three booms and single eye of the drone flash in the sunlight. It accelerated and skimmed over the ground in pursuit of Team Saber.

"Scatter!" he ordered over TEAMCOM.

That drone's beam weapon could melt through their armor in the blink of an eye. Ash wasn't going to take the chance of it wiping out his entire squad with a single shot.

Mark and Dante broke left. Holly went right. Ash didn't see Olivia; she had to be stealthing.

Ash decided to flat-out run straight ahead, hoping to draw its fire.

He risked another glance back: the drone veered left after Holly. She sprinted up a slope.

Ash saw this slope ended in a sheer cliff a hundred meters ahead of her. When she got there, she'd be trapped. Even if she jumped, and survived, then the drone would still have her, firing from above.

He wouldn't let that happen. He ran back.

Holly skidded to a halt at the cliff's edge.

The drone angled above her, and its central spherical eye burned red.

Ash fired his MA5B assault rifle. A translucent gold energy

shield shimmered around the drone, and the rubber rounds bounced off. The central eye continued to heat.

He wasn't giving up that easily.

Those shields weren't like Covenant shields, invisible until they interacted with projectile or energy. Ash had seen these pop into place just before his round had struck.

He had to try something else.

Ash picked up a rock and sidearmed it at the drone. It was nowhere near as fast as a bullet, but it was a great deal heavier.

The stone hit, and spanged off one of its metal booms, scratching it.

No shields this time.

The drone hesitated, and one boom looked like it twitched. Ash noticed that the three booms were not connected to the center sphere. They all just floated there. What was this thing?

It closed on Holly. She fired at it, but its shields snapped into place once again, deflecting the rounds. She looked over the cliff's edge and took a deep breath.

She was going to jump.

"No way," Ash whispered.

He grabbed a fist-sized chunk of onyx and hurled it with all his strength.

It connected—dead center with the drone's spherical red eye. "Yes!" he cried.

The drone rotated to face Ash.

His elation instantly evaporated as the thing glided toward him, picking up speed.

Ash turned and ran; he jinked right and then left.

The ground exploded. Heat washed over him, and he flew head over heels. He landed flat on his back, slapping at the last moment to break the fall.

Ash rolled, and with only a slight limp, he kept running.

He hoped the other squads were having better luck. Olivia had picked up Katana squad's signal. They'd reported they were

being forced
into
Zone 67. They'd lost their signal shortly thereafter. They'd never gotten word from Gladius squad. Either they were dark or dead.

He looked back: the drone was almost on top of him. Its single eye heated to a cherry-red cinder, preparing another blast of energy.

Ahead there was a crevice in the rock, a sinuous two-meter channel that could have been a deep river a million years ago before this place dried up.

He sprinted for it and dove.

The channel was much deeper than he had imagined. He bounced off the walls and landed ten meters farther at the bottom.

The shadow of the drone flashed overhead and vanished.

Ash slowly got to his feet, and held his breath. Had he lost it? Maybe they had a chance after all to—

The drone reappeared overhead.

He could run down the channel, but with all its twists and turns, he'd be slow. Besides, it didn't even have to hit him with its energy beam. One shot at the walls and he'd be buried alive. Ash was trapped.

So he stood absolutely still… hoping it could only detect motion.

The drone dropped into the channel and stopped halfway down—staring directly at him. The eye glowed dull red, heating to molten golden. If Ash didn't know better he'd say the machine looked angry.

He needed to let the rest of Saber know where he was, at least know what he had discovered. Radio silence was no help now. He clicked on his COM, and turned up the gain

to maximum.

"They only track high-velocity objects," he said over the COM.

The drone hesitated and its booms moved in and out almost

as if it were… what? Attenuating his signal? Trying to hear him?

Ash yelled over his COM, "STOP!"

The three booms locked in place and the drone drifted back a half meter.

It
had
heard him.

"What do you want?" Ash said.

The drone crept closer.

His own voice blasted though his helmet's speaker:
"Fhejelet 'Pnught Juber."

Ash shook his head clear "I don't understand." He held up his hands spread wide and

shrugged—the universal I-don't-know gesture.

"Fhejelet non sequitur, now?"

"I got part of that," Ash said.
"Non sequitur
—that's Latin, right?"

Ash wasn't sure what this thing was, or what it was trying to say, but it definitely wasn't Covenant. The Covenant had language translators, and they didn't sound like this. The Covenant generally used them only to pronounce florid curses just before they vaporized planets.

This close, Ash could see the inert curve of the drone's booms, and could feel the heat from its eye. Tiny golden hieroglyphics shimmered around the sphere, floating a centimeter off its surface. Ash squinted, but couldn't make out the characters.

"Security protocols enabled," the drone spoke over the COM
. "I understood that," Ash replied. "Ring offensive system activated," it said. "Shield in countdown mode. Exchange proper

counterresponse. Reclaimer."

"I don't want to hurt you," Ash tried.

He had no idea what this thing wanted.

"Non sequitur," it said. "Reclassification of targets as non-Reclaimers. Aboriginal

subspecies. Collect for further analysis— else neutralize as possible infection vector."

Ash understood with perfect clarity "neutralize."

The drone advanced, spreading its booms apart like an open maw.

He was out of ideas.

A rock hit the drone, a granite chunk a half meter across. It glanced off the drone's

ventral boom. The impact made the drone dip, but it recovered, and its booms shifted, geometry

rearranged so it now stared up at the edge of the channel.

Team Saber stood there, looking down—all of them hefting large rocks.

Two stones collided into the drone's spars, and one shattered directly on its eye. It dipped to the ground with a crash, and the spherical eye heated to blazing white-hot. The dirt around it fused to glass and bubbled.

A boulder barely fitting within the channel bounced off the walls—and flattened the drone. The eye, crushed to an oblate shape, crackled and cooled to dull red and then black. The thing's three metal spars radiated out from under the rock like a flattened spider.

Ash exhaled, let his adrenaline subside, and he climbed out of the chasm.

Mark and Dante helped him up.

They'd saved each other a hundred times before, but those were always drills. Even

under live-fire conditions, it had never been like this. For real. Ash wanted to tell them that they were like brothers and sisters to him.

All he could manage without his voice breaking was: "Thanks, guys."

Holly replied, "Well, thanks for being bait."

"Good call using rocks," Olivia whispered.

Ash nodded. "We've got to get under cover," he said, "back to the jungle."

"No, back to camp," Mark said. "Grab some real ammunition." Dante added, "Explosives, too."

Ash saw motion in his peripheral vision. Three more drones flew over the mesas, moving back and forth… searching.

CHAPTER

FIFTEE
N

0745 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX, NEAR CAMP CURRAHEE

Kurt eased the Warthog to a stop half a kilometer outside Camp Currahee. A large shadow crossed the tree line ahead, and a flock of red-tailed parrots took flight.

He jumped out and motioned Mendez to the brush at the side of the road. They hunkered down, and watched as an unmanned drone glided over their Warthog and paused.

The machine wasn't a UNSC design. It might have been Covenant, but they never varied from their big-ugly oblate blue-gray ascetic. The thing was floating whisper silent, and that meant antigravity technology… which likely made it nonhuman.

He remembered Endless Summer's flash transmission with a chill.
Possible non-Covenant vectors.

The geometry of the drone shifted: the sphere in the center floated forward along the length of its lateral spars.

Kurt's first instinct was to grab his assault rife and fire. He had a superior flanking position. He reached for his weapon, and then recalled they had no weapons save Chief Mendez's sidearm and knife.

He decided hiding was, for now, the soundest strategy.

The drone circled the Warthog, and then satisfied, it continued down the dirt track.

Kurt waited until the drone disappeared into the jungle and then he motioned for Mendez to follow him through the trees to the edge of Camp Currahee.

Three hundred meters of jungle had been cleared around the horseshoe-shaped camp. From the edge of the clear zone, Kurt saw several of the alien fliers circling the buildings and parade grounds.

"Zigzag patterns," Mendez whispered. "They're looking for something. Or someone."

There was an explosion from the center of camp. Not like the energy blast they had witnessed on the road. This was the dull crack of a fragmentation grenade.

The drones over the camp slowed and turned, and all moved in the same direction—the NCO quarters.

"That's our chance," Kurt said. "Go. Run."

With the drones distracted, they sprinted across the clear zone, slipped past the gate guardhouse, and ran to the Spartans' dormitories. They crawled under the raised building.

Shadows slipped over the adjacent gravel roads and paths as the drones silently glided overhead.

Kurt held up a hand to Mendez, and saw the older man cover his mouth to muffle his panting. As much as he admired the Chief, that sprint had taken something out of him.

They watched until there was a break in the shadows, and they ran for the next building, the NCO quarters.

Kurt spotted the source of the drones' distraction: a heap of wreckage, three bent booms, and a charred sphere lying smoldering in the NCO's inspection yard.

Someone had taken one of the alien fliers out.

Across the yard and under the infirmary appeared the red glare of a laser sight—trained on Kurt. He started to twist to

one side. When a targeting sight was on you, you moved. But this was no threat. It was a signal.

He pointed and then Mendez saw it, too. The laser flashed once more and then it winked off.

Mendez started to move; Kurt checked the airspace, and then pulled the Chief flat against the wall as another drone floated overhead.

It passed. They ran to the infirmary and dove under.

Waiting for them in the shadows were perfectly camouflaged smudges of mottled gray: Tom and Lucy in their SPI armor.

Mendez said in a low voice, "You two are the best dammed things I've almost seen all week."

Kurt felt the same way, but he didn't have the luxury to say so. He was in command, and that required a certain distance, no matter how much he cared for these two.

Lucy nodded and took up position along the edge of the building, on guard.

"Report," Kurt said.

"We count twenty-two drones within the camp perimeter," Tom said.

"Any other camp personnel here?" Kurt asked.

"No, sir," Tom replied. "All missing… or dead." He took a deep breath. "We've neutralized two drones with grenades. They have shields and deflect assault and sniper rounds. Slower projectiles are not deflected. We've learned that from a weak transmission from Team Saber."

"Saber is here?" Mendez asked.

"Negative, Chief," Tom said. "We never hooked up with Saber, Katana, or Gladius after Zone 67 went active. There were no additional transmissions after the one."