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The Chief and the others opened fire with their MA5B assault rifles—a full automatic spray of fifteenrounds per second. Armor-piercing bullets tore into the aliens, breaching their environment suits andsparking the methane tanks they carried. Gouts of flame traced wild arcs as the wounded Grunts ran inconfusion and pain.
Finally the Grunts realized what was happening—and where this attack was coming from. Theyregrouped and chargeden masse . An earthquake vibration coursed through the ground and shook the
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porous stone beneath the Chief’s boots.
The three Spartans exhausted their AP clips and then, in unison, switched to shredder rounds. They firedinto the tide of creatures as they surged forward. Line after line of them dropped. Scores more justtrampled their fallen comrades.
Explosive needles bounced off the Chief’s armor, detonating as they hit the ground. He saw the flash ofa plasma bolt—side stepped—and heard the air crackle where he had stood a split second before.
“Inbound Covenant air support,”Blue-Four reported over the COM link. “ETA is two minutes, Chief.”
“Roger that,” he said. “Blue-Three and -Five: maintain fire for five seconds, then fall back. Mark!”
Their status lights winked once, acknowledging his order.
The Grunts were three meters from the wall. The Chief tossed two grenades. He, Blue-Three, and Blue-Five stepped backward off the ridge, landed, spun, and ran.
Two dull thumps reverberated though the ground. The squeals and barks of the incoming Grunts,however, drowned out the noise of the exploding grenades.
The Chief and his team sprinted up the half-kilometer sandstone slope in thirty-two seconds flat. The hillended abruptly—a sheer drop of two hundred meters straight into the ocean.
Blue-Four’s voice crackled over the COM channel: “Welcome mat is laid out, Chief. Ready when youare.”
The Grunts looked like a living carpet of steel-blue skin, claws, and chrome weapons. Some ran on allfours up the slope. They barked and howled, baying for the Spartans’ blood.
“Roll out the carpet,” the Chief told Blue-Four.
The hill exploded—plumes of pulverized sandstone and fire and smoke hurtled skyward.
The Spartans had buried a spiderweb pattern of Lotus antitank mines earlier that morning.
Sand and bits of metal pinged off of the Chief’s helmet.
The Chief and his team opened fire again, picking off the remaining Grunts that were still alive andstruggling to stand.
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His motion detector flashed a warning. There were incoming projectiles high at two o’clock—velocitiesat over a hundred kilometers per hour.
Five Covenant Banshee fliers appeared over the ridge.
“New contacts. All teams, open fire!” he barked.
The Spartans, without hesitation, fired on the alien fliers. Bullet hits pinged from the fliers’ chitinousarmor—it would take a very lucky shot to take out the antigrav pods on the end of the craft’s stubbymeter-long “wings.”