Shadows of Reach: A Master Chief Story Read online

  “Blue Three, take point,” John said over TEAMCOM. “Blue Two, you next—and keep that SPNKr handy.”

  “Count on it,” Fred said.

  Kelly set off at a fast run, and by the time Fred had taken the rocket launcher off its magmount, she was fifty meters up the canal. John pulled his assault rifle off its magmount and knelt to wait. The canal bed was oddly humped in the middle, sloping ever-so-gently down toward the outside edges, but the glass here was smooth and unblemished by combat damage.

  “Special Leader,” John asked, “what’s your situation?”

  “Slow,” Van Houte replied. “The pioneers must have put up a hell of a fight here. The riverbed is really bad—and it’s chewed up as far as I can see.”

  “It’s taking a lot of time to avoid the hazards,” Chapov added. “There are impact craters everywhere.”

  “You’re in no hurry,” John said. “Just sell it to those Seraphs. Don’t make it obvious you’re trying to be seen.”

  He started up the canal after Fred. When they’d traveled nearly three kilometers, Kelly’s fist came up, signaling for a stop.

  John assumed she’d spotted one of the lookout towers and was slowing down to engage her own camouflage. Like Linda, they all carried the experimental GEN3 passive packages on their Mjolnir armor, but the new technology still had a few bugs. For one thing, it didn’t work well if you were running. The nanofilament adaptive coating adjusted continuously to the surrounding terrain, so the faster one moved, the greater the blurring effect. At a full sprint, the result could be more eye-catching than no camouflage at all.

  But instead, Kelly tipped her chin back and spun in a slow circle, searching for something in the sky. John did the same and saw nothing but gray clouds.

  “Blue Three,” he said over TEAMCOM. “Report.”

  “I saw shadows on the glass.” Kelly’s helmet rocked forward again. “There must be something in the sky, but I don’t see anything.”

  “Neither do I,” John said. “Blue Four?”

  “Nothing,” Linda said. “And the sun is wrong anyway—unless Blue Three saw the shadows behind her?”

  “Negative,” Kelly said. “They were in front of me. Three dark shapes coming toward me.”

  “Shapes?” Fred asked. “What kind of shapes?”

  “Shapes,” Kelly said. “Upright Ts, getting shorter as they approached. There was a round blob on top of each of the crossbars.”

  John had seen the shadows of enough passing aircraft to recognize the description. But there was usually some sort of sound accompanying a big craft passing overhead, and with Reach’s sun hidden behind a thick mantle of clouds, shadows would be faint—not dark, as Kelly had described.

  “No idea,” John said. “Could have been some kind of surveillance bird dropping out of the clouds to light us up for images.”

  “Did you see any lights overhead?” Fred asked. “Bright enough to cast a shadow?”

  “Negative,” John said.

  “Me neither,” Fred said. “And I didn’t see anything on the glass.”

  “I didn’t imagine them,” Kelly said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Fred said. “I was looking at the sky, so I wouldn’t have seen them on the glass.”

  “Same here.” John scanned the ground between them but saw no movement—only the same ash-colored glass he’d been walking on for the last three kilometers. It might have been a little lighter in the center of the canal, but it certainly didn’t resemble anything Kelly had described. “And there’s nothing like that now.”

  “Some kind of manifestation?” Fred asked. “That’s the best I’ve got.”

  “How about unknown contact,” John replied. “Let’s drop the advance to a fast march. Blue Two, you’re sky watch forward. I’ll watch behind us. Blue Three, keep your eyes open for those lookout towers. Blue Four, keep us posted on that Seraph flight. If we’re misreading the situation, they might be the first clue.”

  He did not call for engaging the experimental camouflage. If there were surveillance craft hiding in the clouds overhead, they would be using nonoptical sensor systems, and the passive camouflage packages were worse than ineffective. The adaptive coating increased the Mjolnir’s thermal output a full 2 percent when it was active, and in certain configurations there could even be a spike in the suit’s magnetic signature.

  Everyone acknowledged their orders with green status flashes, and Kelly led the way up the canal again.

  They’d traveled only half a kilometer when Major Van Houte spoke over TEAMCOM. “Blue Leader, we have a problem. We’re stuck.”

  “How stuck?” John asked.

  “We dropped the drilling jumbo’s right side through the riverbed. It’s resting on its chassis.”

  “The whole stretch is thin glass,” Chapov added. “I was trying to squeeze between a crash crater and a pair of rocket holes. Then Chief Mukai dropped the LHD’s rear wheels through a spall line trying to pull me out.”

  In other words, not my fault. The kid would be a decent operative if he weren’t so damn insecure.

  “Acknowledged,” John said. “Take cover where you can keep an eye on the equipment. We’ll extract it when we have our Phantom.”

  “Extracting it isn’t the issue,” Mukai said. “We can dig ourselves out with the plasma drill and the muck bucket. It won’t be fast, but it’s doable.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “We’ve been in the Banished surveillance cone for ten minutes,” Van Houte said. “And no Spartans have come to pull us out.”

  John understood at once. By now the Seraph pilots realized that their surveillance targets had stopped advancing. They might even guess that it was because the excavation machines were stuck. When the machines remained motionless, the pilots would start to wonder why the Spartans weren’t pulling them out—and send someone to investigate.

  “Blue Four, relocate to assist,” John said. “I’ll assume overwatch. Two and Three, continue toward the compound at normal march. I’ll catch up when Blue Four resumes overwatch.”

  Three status LEDs winked green. John engaged his own passive camouflage package and used his gauntlets to smash a recessed observation platform into the canal wall. By the time he had finished and pulled himself into position, Fred and Kelly had traveled another six hundred meters up the canal.

  From his new perspective, he could see their tiny figures—barely distinguishable to the unaided eye—continuing their advance. He could also see that there was a distinctly pale ribbon running up the canal for its entire length. At first he thought it was just the light reflecting off the little hump in the center of the canal bed. But when he polarized his faceplate, the difference remained. Whatever he was looking at, it was more than a reflection.

  And those shadows Kelly had seen earlier—maybe they had been under the glass.

  “Blue Two and Three, take a good look down through the lechatelierite.” As John spoke, he was focusing his own attention southward again—as overwatch, it was his job to keep tabs on the surveillance flight. “See if there’s something different about the center of the canal.”

  “Other than that little rise in the glass?” Fred asked.

  “Affirmative,” John said. “It looks paler from up here.”

  “You’re wondering if those shadows I saw were under the glass?” Kelly asked.

  “It’s worth investigating,” John said. “Cut a hole, if you have to.”

  Their status LEDs flashed green, leaving John to focus on the distant efflux points circling above the far horizon. He counted three of them, two traveling eastward and one westward. But he remembered five earlier—and his onboard computer brought up an image-capture that confirmed it.

  John went to double magnification and swept the enhancement window back and forth across the sky, searching for the missing craft, and found nothing. It was possible that the two missing Seraphs had returned to their base for service, considering how long they’d been operating in
atmosphere and a gravity well.

  But it seemed far likelier they were trying to sneak in for a closer look.

  “Special Crew,” John said. “Incoming Seraphs probable. Blue Four, two of them, likely hugging terrain. Make it look like a trap.”

  Barely registering Linda’s acknowledgment, he deactivated his magnification and began to sweep his gaze over the glass barrens across the river. Finally he saw a pair of round-topped specks zipping over the plain far toward his left, so low he could see the blue glow of their efflux tails reflecting off the lechatelierite.

  “Blue Four, I have them swinging around to approach you from upriver. ETA canal entrance…” John paused, waiting for his onboard computer to measure vectors and distances. “… thirty-two seconds.”

  “Acknowledged,” Linda said. “I have a good spot to set up.”

  “Special Crew—”

  “We’re on it,” Chapov said. “We’ll set up behind the LHD. They’ll never know what hit them.”

  “Negative,” John said. “Take a position up the river. We’re trying to convince them this is a trap, remember?”

  “On it, Blue Leader,” Mukai said. “Move it, Lieutenant. I see a good spot.”

  John continued to watch as the approaching Seraphs grew from barely visible specks into minuscule twin-tailed disks and tightened their turn, lining up one behind the other for a pass along the river channel. He noted the ETA on his HUD over TEAMCOM.

  “Twelve seconds.”

  When the Seraphs were directly over the channel, John took a second to make a quick all-around scan. The rest of the surveillance flight remained above the southern horizon, three tiny efflux points drifting back and forth in their prior holding pattern. He saw no other craft coming in from any direction, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. An entire wing of Banished Seraphs could be approaching from beyond visual range, or a full squadron of Banshees skimming the glass just a few kilometers away, and without a friendly tactical satellite overhead, John would never know it.

  Blue Team had intentionally inserted without a TacSat array in orbit. A bunch of new satellites broadcasting encrypted data across central Eposz would have been noticed by the rehab pioneers, who would probably have gone searching for answers they could not be permitted to have. Nobody had anticipated any trouble reaching Menachite Mountain, so John had decided to avoid the unnecessary risk and do without the satellite surveillance. Now that circumstances had changed, it was a decision he intended to reverse the next time the orbit of Special Delivery’s mothership Bucephalus brought it back through a comm window.

  He saw the two Seraphs fly past the canal entrance, barely two meters above the riverbanks, showing their bellies as they followed the southward bend of the channel.

  “Passing the irrigation canal now.”

  By the time John finished speaking, the craft were at the bottom of the bend and banking toward the west. The ETA in John’s HUD counted down to 5… 4… then Linda’s S5 sniper rifle boomed four times, and the lead Seraph pulled up and barrel-rolled away, its belly trailing long tails of flame.

  The ETA reached 2… and the rattle of distant small-arms fire rose from the river channel. The second Seraph went into a steep climb and banked away toward the south. John saw no sign it had suffered any damage, so it was hard to say whether it had seen the trapped excavation machines or if the Special Delivery crew had successfully convinced the enemy they were nothing but ambush bait. But another Seraph had been damaged, and that would buy everyone on the ground some reaction time.

  “Well done,” John said. “Blue Four, get those machines free and moving again. Blue Two and Three, move on the base now—but be ready for an overfly. The base commander is going to want to know what’s happening at the river.”

  “On it,” Fred answered. “And that pale stripe you wanted us to investigate?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We punched a hole through the glass. There’s a tunnel running under the canal.”

  “How big?”

  “Big. Maybe two meters in diameter. Looks like there was an underground water pipe before the canal got glassed. It’s still there, except the top half melted away.”

  “Don’t forget the tracks,” Kelly said. “They seem important.”

  “Just getting to that,” Fred said. “There are a lot of boot prints down there too.”

  “Human boot prints?” asked John.

  “Affirmative,” Fred replied. “Pointing in both directions.”

  “How recently?”

  “Some are old, but a few sets look fresh. Someone’s been traveling this thing pretty regularly.”

  “To do what?” John asked. “Hide?”

  “Hiding would make sense,” Kelly said. “But so would sappers.”

  She meant combat engineers who demolished fortifications, laid minefields, bridged rivers, and so on. The reference dated back to Earth’s Middle Ages, when sapeurs breached castle walls by tunneling beneath them. John thought of the shadows Kelly had seen and realized the situation was about to get even more complicated.

  He didn’t like complicated. That got soldiers killed.

  “Do we try to make contact?” Kelly asked. “If they’re pioneers prepping an attack on the base, they might be of use.”

  “At the least, they could tell us what’s going on around here,” Fred said.

  John scanned the sky, keeping an eye on the Seraphs to the south, but also alert for anything new—especially a scouting patrol from the base. It was clear that both Kelly and Fred wanted to contact the rehab pioneers—assuming they were the ones using the tunnel—and so did he. But John wasn’t sure he trusted his team members’ motivation. Or his own.

  This was Reach, their home. It had been taken from them by the Covenant, and now the rehab pioneers were fighting to take it back. Everyone on Blue Team was going to sympathize with that and want to support them against the Banished. But helping the pioneers meant putting Blue Team’s mission at risk, which meant jeopardizing humanity’s fate, thanks to the machinations of Cortana. That wasn’t something John was prepared to do—no matter how much he wanted to see Reach restored to what it once was.

  “Negative on making contact,” he finally said. “We stick to the original plan.”

  Three LEDs flashed green, and the mission continued. John watched in silence as the Seraph that Linda had damaged circled east. With the trail from its smoking engine it looked like an arrow, pointing straight toward the former site of the Szarvas Regeneration and Salvage Facility. No doubt some of the underground yards had survived the plasma bombardment, and now one of the Banished factions was using it as an operations base.

  The second Seraph was on its way to rejoin the surveillance flight. So it looked like the formation was going to keep its distance, which suggested that neither of the pilots had gotten a good look at the stuck excavation machines. They were back to the status quo. But eventually, Blue Team needed to lose that tail.

  “The spy birds are standing off again,” John reported over TEAMCOM. “Status excavation machines?”

  “The jumbo is free.” Linda’s voice sounded strained. “I’m working on the LHD now.”

  “Good,” John said. “When you’re finished, give me a GO flash and return to overwatch.”

  “Affirmative.” Linda’s status LED flashed green. “Moving into position now.”

  “And I thought Kelly was fast,” John said. “Special Leader?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The next time you move out of the surveillance window, dig in and wait for us to capture transport.” John hopped down from his watch platform. “I doubt those spy birds will be back for a second look anytime soon.”

  “I think not,” Van Houte said. “Good hunting.”

  John disengaged his passive camouflage, then sprinted down the canal after Fred and Kelly. Barely visible, they were at least a kilometer ahead, with another kilometer to go before they reached the compound.

  He glanced down. The
lechatelierite underfoot was too ash-clouded to see down into the tunnel. But in the distance, he could easily identify the ribbon of pale glass that marked its location. It ran down the center of the canal, all the way to the red-glowing shield barrier the Banished had erected around the farmstead.

  John increased magnification to 200 percent, and saw a swarm of cruciform specks rising from behind the shield barrier, swirling counterclockwise and forming squadrons.

  At least five squadrons, maybe more.

  “We have a Banshee formation assembling over the base,” John said over TEAMCOM. “Strength fifty, minimum.”

  “They’re going after that surveillance flight that’s been after us,” Fred said. “Just as planned—excellent.”

  “They’re early,” Kelly said. “That wasn’t supposed to happen until after we breached the shield barrier.”

  “This is better,” Fred said. “Now they won’t even know it’s us attacking. They’ll think it came from the bunch behind the surveillance flight.”

  “Then you will love this,” Linda said. “We have Seraph squadrons inbound from three directions.”

  “You see?” Fred asked. “They never saw us coming.”

  “I hope you’re right about that,” Van Houte said. “We’re just preparing to dig in. How long before you arrive with a Phantom?”

  “The north tower’s already in view,” Fred said. “And nobody is looking our way. We’ll be in SPNKr range in ten seconds.”

  John’s HUD showed thirteen hundred meters to the shield barrier. He was still eight or nine hundred meters behind Fred and Kelly.

  “Blue Two and Three, close to two hundred meters,” John ordered. “Engage camouflage and hold for my command. I’m sixty seconds behind you.”

  Fred’s and Kelly’s status LEDs winked green. John checked his weapons as he ran, then looked for the two of them along the base of the canal’s south wall, where they would have a good view of their target and be shielded from other lookouts. Once the rockets destroyed the north tower, the barrier shield would fall between it and the south tower, giving John a straight shot into the heart of the base. He had his onboard computer start a countdown.