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The weapons locker of thePioneer had been stocked with a bewildering array of combat equipment. Ona table were guns, knives, communication gear, body armor explosives, medical packs, survival gear,portable computers, even a thruster pack for maneuvering in space.
More important than the equipment, however, John assessed his team.
Sam had recovered from the augmentation faster than any of the other Spartans. He paced impatientlyaround the crates of grenades. He was the strongest of them all. He stood taller than John by a head. Hehad grown out his sandy hair to three centimeters. Chief Mendez had warned him that he was going tolook like a civilian soon.
Kelly, in contrast, had taken the longest to recover. She stood in the corner with her arms crossed overher chest. John had thought she wasn’t going to make it. She was still gaunt and her hair had yet to growback. Her face, however, still had its rough, angular beauty. She scared John a little, too. She was fastbefore . . . now no one could touch her if she didn’t allow it.
Fred sat cross-legged on the deck, twirling a razor-edged combat knife in glittering arcs. He alwayscame in second in all the contests. John thought he could have come in first, but he just didn’t like theattention. He was neither too short nor too tall. He wasn’t overly muscled or slim. His black hair wasshot with streaks of silver—a feature he hadn’t had before the augmentation. If anyone in the groupcould blend into a crowd, it would be him.
Linda was the quietest member of the group. She was pale, had close-cropped red hair, and green eyes.She was a crack shot, an artist with a sniper rifle.
Kelly circled the table once, and then selected a pair of grease-stained blue coveralls. Her name had beensloppily embroidered on the chest. “These our new trainee uniforms?”
“ONI provided them,” John said. “They’re supposed to match what the crew of theLaden wears.”
Kelly held the coveralls up and frowned. “They don’t give a girl much to work with.”
“Try this on for size.” Linda held a black body suit up to Kelly’s long slender frame.
They had used these black suits before. They were form-fitting, lightweight polymer body armor. Theycould deflect a small-caliber round and had refrigeration/heating units that would mask infraredsignatures. The integrated helmet had encryption and communications gear, a heads-up display, andthermal and motion detectors. Sealed tight, the unit had a fifteen-minute reserve of oxygen to let thewearer survive in vacuum.
The suits were uncomfortable, and they were tricky to repair in the field. And they always needed
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repairs.
“They’re too tight,” Kelly said. “It’ll limit my range of motion.”
“We wear them for this op,” John told her. “There are too many places between here and there withnothing to breathe but vacuum. As for the rest of your equipment, take what you want—but stay light.Without recon data on this place, we’re going to be moving fast . . . or we’ll be dead.”