Shadows of Reach: A Master Chief Story Read online

Tabori started to point, but Boldisar pushed her arm down before John could determine what the major had intended to indicate.

  “Why are you so interested in how we access the Gönc Drifts?” Boldisar asked.

  “I should think that is obvious, ma’am,” Kelly said. “Your survivors will need a ready route of retreat.”

  Boldisar’s face grew stormy. “Retreat?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” John said. “I count nineteen Banished bases in your reclamation zone alone. At five hundred warriors per base, that’s over nine thousand Banished. Minimum.”

  “And the figure is closer to a thousand per,” Tabori said. “We’re estimating twenty thousand.”

  “And that’s just in the zone,” Borbély added. “There’s another group that’s been reconnoitering sites all over Eposz. It’s harder to estimate their strength, but it has to be in the thousands.”

  John had to force himself not to look at Kelly. For the second time. “What are they looking for?”

  Borbély shrugged. “All I can tell you is they seem really interested in mountains. Especially the unusual ones.”

  “Unusual how?” John asked.

  “The highest, the biggest, the sheerest,” Borbély said. “Standing alone, odd shapes—you know, special.”

  “Why, Master Chief?” Boldisar glanced from him to Kelly, then asked, “Is there something we should know about Reach’s mountains?”

  “No, ma’am,” John said. “Not that I’m aware of. But if you understood what the Banished are doing here on Reach, it might help you get rid of them.”

  “Us.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “It might help us get rid of them,” Boldisar said. “Isn’t that what you meant to say?”

  “Nobody likes seeing the Banished on Reach,” John said. Especially Blue Team, he added to himself. “But launching a suicide attack is no way to rid yourselves of them.”

  “And that’s what you think this is?” Tabori asked. “A suicide attack?”

  John looked to Kelly and nodded.

  Kelly repeated the gesture right back, then asked Tabori, “Don’t you? You’re outnumbered at least four to one. The Banished will be fighting from defensive positions, with air superiority. They are better equipped and better trained. You won’t even reach their shield barriers, much less breach them.”

  “But we’ll have the element of surprise,” Boldisar said.

  “No, you won’t,” John said.

  “We’ll attack at night,” she said. “We’ll take them in their sleep.”

  “They won’t be asleep,” John said. “By the time you crawl out of your tunnels and form up, they’ll be awake and dropping mortar rounds on your heads. By the time you start your advance, they’ll be spraying your line with ballistic spikes. By the time you close to fifty meters, your survivors will realize there aren’t enough of them left to take down the lookout towers, so the advance will stall while they try to figure out what to do next. Then the Banshees will start strafing, and they’ll retreat in disorder. It will be a massacre.”

  “Maybe ten percent of your original force will make it back underglass, and half of them will be wounded.” Kelly studied the commanders. “Didn’t any of you serve in the military?”

  “There aren’t a lot of Reavian soldiers left here after 2552,” Erdei said. “The ones who survived the Covenant invasion were generally in the UNSC on assignment somewhere else, and most of them have remained in service.”

  Tabori raised a finger. “I was a logistics specialist in the 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion.”

  “You were on Gao?” Kelly asked.

  Tabori nodded. “Stationed at the Vitality Center. But I was at Wendosa.”

  “Forget Wendosa,” Kelly said. “This will be a thousand times worse. Most of you will die, and those who don’t will wish they had.”

  “We’ll concentrate our attacks,” Boldisar said. “We’ll take the three bases we’re under now—and make them attack us.”

  “Then you’ll die later,” John said.

  Boldisar frowned. “So what do you suggest we do, Master Chief?”

  “Evacuate to the Gönc Drifts. Wait for the enemy to leave.”

  “Run and hide?” asked Erdei. “That’s your strategy, Mr. Spartan?”

  “Only if you want to live,” John said. “The Banished aren’t here to stay. Whatever they’re looking for, they’ll leave as soon as they’ve found it. We can arrange a supply drop to help you survive until then.”

  “Supply… drop?” Erdei craned his thick neck toward Boldisar. “You—you said they were here to liberate us.”

  “They are. They just want us out of harm’s way.” She gave John a hard stare. “Isn’t that right, Master Chief?”

  “No, ma’am, it’s not,” John said. “Seriously, you should go to the Gönc Drifts and wait it out.”

  Before Boldisar could reply, Borbély asked, “For how long?”

  “However long it takes the Banished to find what they’re looking for and leave,” John said. “I thought I made that clear.”

  “Not entirely,” Borbély said. “If you’re so confident the Banished will leave, then you must also know what they’re looking for.”

  “Not with certainty,” John admitted. “But we have our suspicions.”

  “Which are?” Borbély asked.

  “Classified,” John said. “But everything I know points to the Drifts as your best option.”

  Erdei turned to Borbély. “How long do we have?” he asked. “The Tin Man is dodging us, and we can’t hold out another two months.”

  Borbély sighed. “Not even another month,” he said. “We don’t have the reserves.”

  “You did hear him say we can arrange a supply drop?” Kelly said. “It will be a lot of paste rations, but it should keep everyone from starving to death.”

  “It’s more than just food,” Boldisar said. “We’re trying to rebuild a world here. The microbes and humus have been burned out of the soil, and now it’s just dirt.”

  “Microbes?” John asked. “You’re going to war with the Banished over… microbes?”

  “And humus,” Borbély said. “The microbes need organic matter to survive. If we don’t reclaim our land and start working it in the next few weeks, everything will start dying again. And all of the work we’ve put in over the last two years? We’ll have to write it all off.”

  “A few hundred farms are too big to write off?” Kelly asked. “Truly?”

  “Didn’t anyone brief you?” Boldisar asked. “The farms are just the first stage—the breadbasket that will support everything else.”

  “It’s the mines that are the thing,” Erdei said. “Reach has the richest titanium, gallium, and osmium reserves in the Colonies. That didn’t go away just because it got glassed.”

  “We want our world back,” Boldisar said. “And we need an economic base to support it. That isn’t going to happen if we don’t remove the Banished soon.”

  Borbély stepped to within a meter of John and looked up into his faceplate. “So we need a straight answer, Master Chief. How soon will the Banished find what they’re looking for here—and leave?”

  Kelly’s voice came over TEAMCOM. “We have to be honest with them, Leader. They’re gambling their future on what we tell them.”

  “Affirmative,” John replied over TEAMCOM.

  The trouble was, he didn’t have an answer the pioneers could rely on. If Blue Team and Special Crew were successful in their bid to slip away, they might recover the assets from CASTLE Base and extract without the Banished ever realizing their mission had become unviable. He switched back to his external voicemitter. “It could be as soon as a few days, but—”

  “Could be?” Erdei shook his head in disgust. “He’s dodging again.”

  “Agreed.” Boldisar turned to the other commanders. “Look… if we delay the attack, we’re done on Reach. Dead, probably.”

  “We’re not dead if we leave,” Tabori said. “Maybe
it’s time we think about cutting our losses. We could use the last of our funds to hire an evacuation ship.”

  “No, we couldn’t,” said Borbély. “There’s not a commercial transport line in the Colonies that would enter orbit as long as the Banished are here.” He looked to John. “The Banished destroyed our ship, so we’d have to rely on the UNSC.”

  And that would be a mistake, John thought. Even if Captain Lasky were willing to engage the Banished and ultimately risk drawing Cortana’s attention, the Infinity was a warship under the AI’s sustained pursuit. The rehab pioneers would have a better survival chance hiding out in the Gönc Drifts—especially if one of Cortana’s Guardians ever caught up to the supercarrier.

  “I doubt the UNSC is an evacuation option right now,” John said.

  “You doubt?” Tabori asked. “Or you know?”

  “I could make an inquiry—in…”

  John activated his HUD chronometer to check the time until twilight, when the Bucephalus would be passing directly overhead and open to point-to-point transmissions—then realized that, after a day of meandering underglass travel, his onboard computer was unable to determine his exact coordinates to calculate the answer.

  “At dusk,” he finished. “But I would have to be on the surface.”

  Boldisar checked the commpad on her wrist. “Dusk was thirty minutes ago.”

  “At dawn, then,” John said. “But we wouldn’t receive a reply until dusk tomorrow.”

  “We could be under attack by then,” Erdei said. “And those Banished bastards will definitely be deep into our underglass network at that point.”

  “It’s the best we can do,” John said. “And, honestly, I don’t think the answer would be worth waiting for.”

  “Because you already told us what the answer will be?” Tabori asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m certain the task force commander would come to the same conclusion I have.” It was a bit of a stretch to call a single supercarrier a task force—even if it packed the power of one—but the last thing John wanted to reveal right now was just how desperate and shorthanded the UNSC really was since Cortana had unleashed the Guardians. “You’d be better off hiding in the Drifts.”

  “The Drifts are not an option.” Colonel Boldisar pointed a long finger at John’s chest. “I won’t ask our members to starve in the dark for who knows how long just because you refuse to do what you were sent here to do. You can put that idea out of your mind right now, Spartan.”

  Tabori’s face sank, and Borbély actually retreated a step. They, at least, understood the situation—and recognized what would become of them if the rehab pioneers pressed ahead with Boldisar’s plan.

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, you don’t know what my orders are because I haven’t told you,” John said. “But I promise you, they do not involve taking part in your suicide attack.”

  “What if it didn’t need to be a suicide attack?” Erdei asked.

  “If you lot attack,” Kelly said, “it’s going to be suicide.”

  “But what if it wasn’t?” Erdei insisted. “What if we could get them to attack us at a disadvantage?”

  Boldisar gave him a look. “Go on.”

  Erdei crooked a finger and started walking, leading the group halfway around the platform to the southwest side of the holomap. He gestured toward a massive Banished base on what looked like the site of a collective village.

  “What if we took something they had to take back?” he said. “Like the armory at New Mohács?”

  Over TEAMCOM, Kelly said, “Permission to remove helmet? This foolery is making me feel sick.”

  “Permission denied,” John said. “We can offer advice, but we can’t make them take it. Let’s stay focused on the objective.”

  “Affirmative.” Kelly switched to her voicemitter, then said, “That is a big base. Once you’ve captured it, you would need to bring in reinforcements from the Drifts. How would you get them there?”

  Instead of answering, Erdei asked, “So you think we can capture it, then?”

  “Would you attack from underneath?”

  “The hardest part would be punching through the last thirty meters of ground without giving ourselves away,” Erdei said. “But this is New Mohács, built on the site of old Mohács. It’s all packed dirt under there, and once we broke into the old sewer system, we could pop up all over the base.”

  “Then you could capture it. It’s holding it that would be your problem.” Kelly looked toward the western edge of the holomap. “How would you get your reinforcements down from the Drifts without being interdicted?”

  Tabori looked toward the middle of the holograph’s left edge, where several tubeways snaked downward, ending at caverns, lakes, and something that looked like an old quarry. None of these tubeways seemed to connect to the pioneers’ underglass tunnel network, at least not from what John could see. But Tabori extended a finger—and Boldisar stepped in front of her.

  “Again, all these questions about reaching the Drifts,” Boldisar said. “I am beginning to think you Spartans are more interested in them than us.”

  “Even attacking from underneath, you’d lose a lot of fighters,” John said. “You would find yourselves fighting building to building, and that would cost lives.”

  “You should count on losing a third of your force, at the minimum,” Kelly said. “And the survivors would be exhausted and in shock. You would need to reinforce them before the counterattack came, because you would still be outnumbered—and those shield barriers belong to the Banished. If they can’t turn them off from a distance, they would know how best to take them out.”

  “So how would you bring your reinforcements in from the Drifts?” John asked. “There’s no use taking the armory if the enemy is only going to overrun you when they counterattack.”

  Boldisar and the other commanders’ only reply was to stare at John with raised brows and slack jaws.

  It was Tabori who finally recovered enough to answer John’s question. “We don’t have reinforcements,” she said. “I thought you understood. There is no one in the Drifts but children.”

  “No one?” John asked.

  “Except for a few hundred trainers,” Tabori said. “And most of them were too old to fight when Reach was first glassed.”

  “Then you cannot even consider this attack,” Kelly said. “After the first battle, you might still have three thousand half-trained soldiers without mechanized armor—”

  “We’d have mechanized armor after the attack,” Erdei said. “We’re taking an armory. Full of Wraiths and Marauders.”

  “A Banished armory,” John said. “It’s filled with alien vehicles you’ve never trained with, and some you’ve never even seen. You’d suffer two or three percent casualties learning to use them. Best case, you’d end up a poorly trained, well-equipped force. That’s not much better than half-trained and poorly equipped.”

  “And you would be outnumbered six or seven to one,” Kelly added. “At those odds, your defensive advantage wouldn’t much matter.”

  “So we shouldn’t even try?” Boldisar asked. “We should go hide in the Drifts just so you can find out how we travel back and forth into the mountains?”

  “She didn’t say that,” John said.

  “She didn’t need to,” Borbély retorted.

  “It couldn’t be any more obvious if you painted it on your helmets,” Erdei added. He glanced toward Boldisar. “I don’t think they’re here to liberate Reach.”

  “It’s beginning to look that way,” Boldisar said.

  “I told you—from the start—that isn’t our mission,” John said.

  Boldisar’s tone grew sharp. “You didn’t tell me much of anything, Spartan. You let me assume you were an advance unit.”

  John hadn’t let her assume anything, but he hadn’t led the Spartans for three decades without learning a few things about political infighting. She was trying to shift the blame onto him to protect her own position. And if she w
as willing to make that kind of gamble against someone as publicly revered as the Master Chief, her position couldn’t be as strong as she tried to make it appear.

  That left John with two options. He could try to undermine her, and hope that whoever emerged as the new militia leader would be more willing to help Blue Team reach the Highland Mountains undetected. Or he could do the unexpected and try to make an ally of her—and it was usually the unexpected tactic that worked best.

  Politics was a lot like combat that way.

  Maybe the Diplomatic Corps was worth a shot someday.

  “It wasn’t my intent to mislead you, Founding Director,” John said. “I’m sorry if I did.”

  Boldisar’s jaw dropped, further elongating her narrow face. “You… uh, very well… apology accepted.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” John said. “But no matter our reason for being on Reach, we are not your enemy. Spartan-087’s advice is sound. You wouldn’t be able to hold the armory when you’re outnumbered so badly—especially not against an enemy with mechanized armor. You wouldn’t even inflict many casualties before you died.”

  “What if we weren’t outnumbered six to one?” Erdei asked. “What if it was more like three to one?”

  “Then you might have a chance, if the Banished can’t deactivate their shield barrier remotely.” John paused, trying to guess how Erdei hoped to reduce the enemy’s strength by half. “But if you have no reinforcements, I don’t see where you would find the strength to launch a convincing diversion.”

  “I think Istvan is hoping we wouldn’t need to,” said Boldisar. “We’ve been stirring up trouble between the Red Armors and the Moon Helmets for weeks.”

  John had not yet seen any of the Banished up close, but he assumed that the nicknames reflected the appearance of the two factions he’d seen fighting from the mouth of Tárnoc Gorge.

  “You’re responsible for that?” he asked. “All the internal fighting?”

  Boldisar offered a coy smile. “Let’s just say we’ve been quietly encouraging their natural tendencies.”

  “What we’ve been doing is trying to get them angry and suspicious enough to wipe each other out,” Erdei said. “That would only leave us with the Keepers of the One Freedom, and we could probably put up with them until they left of their own accord.”