Of course, the Covenant had changed tactics on him before – when he’d beaten the tar out of them at Sigma Octanus, and again when they’d returned the favor at Reach.
The officer watched the tableau as it unfolded in front of him. Hikowa stood with her fists on her hips, face contorted with anger, while Singh screwed his weapon into Dowski’s ear. The rest of the bridge crew were frozen, uncertain. The Marines weren’t present, thank God, but it would be naïve to think they weren’t aware of the Ensign’s opinions, or of the discord among their superiors. The enlisted ranks always knew, one way or another. So, what to do? Dowski wasn’t about to change her mind, that was obvious, and she was becoming a liability.
The Banshee whined loudly as it passed over the grotto for the second time. They needed to move and do it soon.
“Okay,” Keyes said, “you win. I should charge you with cowardice, insubordination, and dereliction of duty, but I’m a little pressed for time. So I hereby give you permission to surrender. Hikowa, relieve her of her weapon, ammo, and pack. Singh, truss her up. Nothing too tight... just enough so she can’t follow us.”
A look of horror came over Dowski’s face. “You’re going to leave me? All by myself? With no supplies?”
“No,” Keyes answered calmly, “you wanted to surrender, remember? The Covenant will keep you company, and as for supplies, well, I have no idea what sort of rations they eat, but it should be interesting if they allow you a last meal. Bon appétit.”
Dowski started to babble incoherently but Singh grew tired of it, shoved a battle dressing into the Ensign’s mouth, and used some all-purpose repair tape to hold it in place. He used some of the same tape to hog-tie the officer. “That should keep her out of trouble for a while.”
Rocks clattered as Corporal Wilkins and two of his fellow Marines made their way down the streambed. The noncom saw Dowski, nodded as if everything were perfectly normal, and looked to Keyes. “A Covenant dropship landed a squad of Elites about one klick to the south, sir. It’s time to move.”
The Naval officer nodded. “Thank you, Corporal. The command team is ready. Please lead the way.”
Meanwhile, a few hundred meters above, and half a klick to the north, the Elite named Ado ’Mortumee put his Banshee into a wide turn, and watched the dropship touch down. There weren’t many places to land, which meant that once on the ground his fellow Elites would still have a ways to go.
Rather than drop hundreds of troops onto the rocky hillsides, and leave them to scramble over the exhausting up-and-down terrain, the Covenant command structure decided to use its air superiority to locate the humans and capture them.
And there, ’Mortumee mused, is the problem. Locating the aliens is one thing – capturing them is another. During the time since they had landed, the humans had proven themselves to be quite resourceful. Not only had they evaded capture, they had killed six of their pursuers, who, acting under strict orders to take the aliens alive, were at a considerable disadvantage. It made more sense simply to kill the humans. Of course, he was a mere pilot and soldier, not privy to the machinations of the Prophets or the Ship Masters.
After the human lifeboat had been located, it wasn’t long before Covenant scouts found Isna ’Nosolee’s body, and ran a check on his identity. Intelligence was notified, official wheels began to turn, and the Covenant commanders were confronted with a problem: Why would an Ossoona risk his life to board a human lifeboat and ride it to the surface? The answer seemed obvious: Because someone important was on that boat.
All of which served to explain why none of the humans had been killed. There was no way to know which alien ’Nosolee had been after – so all of them had to be preserved. ’Mortumee glanced down at the instruments arrayed in front of him. A change! A string of seven heat blobs was winding its way to arbitrary “north,” while one remained behind. What did that signify?
It wasn’t long before ’Mortumee’s Banshee circled above the grotto. Dowski wrestled to free herself from the tape, and the Covenant closed in around her.
Smoke swirled around the top of the butte as a Pelican pilot made use of his 70mm chin gun to silence a Covenant gun emplacement. Satisfied that the Covenant plasma turret – a powerful weapon that could be easily deployed and recovered – was silent, he dropped down to within four feet of the top of the butte.
Fifteen ODST Helljumpers – three more than the Pelican’s operational maximum – leaped from the Pelican’s troop bay and fanned out.
Cramming extra troops into a Pelican was a risky move, but Silva wanted to put as many soldiers as possible on the mesa, and Lieutenant “Cookie” Peterson knew his ship. The Pelican was still in reasonably good shape, he had the best maintenance crew in the Navy – what more could a pilot ask for?
Peterson felt the dropship drift upward as the Marines bailed out, and he fought to keep the ship steady and level. He spotted movement in the landing zone. The chin gun – linked to his helmet sensors – followed the movement of Peterson’s head. He spotted a column of Covenant troopers and fired. The heavy rotary cannon uttered a throaty roar and pounded the enemy formation into a puddle of blue-green paste.
As the last of the Helljumpers jumped off, the Crew Chief yelled “Clear!” over the intercom. Peterson fired the ship’s belly jets, demanded additional power from the twin turbine engines, and left the butte behind.
“This is Echo 136,” the pilot said into his mike. “We are green, clean, and extremely mean. Over.”
“Roger that,” Wellsley replied emotionlessly. “Please return to way point two-five for another load of troopers. And, if you’re going to insist on poetry, try some Kipling. You might find some of it rather instructive. Over and out.”
Peterson grinned, directed a one-fingered salute in the general direction of battalion HQ, and banked the dropship into a wide turn.
Resistance had slackened within minutes of the first landing, which allowed Lieutenant Melissa McKay and the surviving members of her company to advance upward. A significant number of the path’s defenders were pulled away in a last-ditch attempt to hold their position.
McKay discovered that the path was blocked by an ancient rockfall about thirty meters up, but saw the side door that was located just downhill of it, and knew what the aliens had been trying to defend. Here was the back door, the way she could enter the butte’s interior, and push upward from there.
Plasma fire stuttered out of the entryway, struck the cliff above her head, and blew rocky divots out of the smooth surface.
McKay motioned for her troops to retreat back around the pillar’s broad curvature, and waved a hand in the air. “Hey, Top! I need a launcher!”
The company sergeant was six troopers back so that a single well-placed grenade couldn’t kill both leaders at once. He signaled assent, bawled an order, and passed one of the M19s forward.
McKay accepted the weapon from the private behind her, checked to ensure that it packed a full load of rockets, and inched around the curve. Plasma fire sizzled out of the door, but the officer forced herself to remain perfectly still. She triggered the weapon’s 2X scope, sighted carefully, and squeezed the trigger. The tube jumped as the 102mm rocket raced away, sailed through the hole, and detonated with a loud roar.
There must have been some ammo stored inside, because there was a blue-white secondary explosion which shook the rock beneath the ODST officer’s boots. A gout of fire flared from the side of the cliff.