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No. That kind of thinking was dangerous. The shield was useful, but under combined fire it droppedvery quickly. He was tough . . . not invincible.
He emerged at the beginning to the obstacle course. The first part was a run over ten acres of jaggedgravel. Sometimes raw recruits had to take off their boots before they crossed. Other than the pain—itwas the easiest part of the course.
The Master Chief started toward the gravel yard.
“Wait,” Cortana said. “I’m picking up far infrared signals on your thermal sensors. An encryptedsequence . . . decoding . . . yes, there. It’s an activation signal for a Lotus mine. They’ve mined the field,Master Chief.”
The Master Chief froze. He’d used Lotus mines before and knew the damage they could inflict. Theshaped charges ripped though the armor plate of a tank like it was no thicker than an orange peel.
This would slow him down considerably.
Not crossing the obstacle course was no option. He had his orders. He wouldn’t cheat and go around. Hehad to prove that he and Cortana were up for this test.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Cortana replied. “Find the position of one mine, and I can estimate therough position of the others based on the standard randomization procedure used by UNSC engineers.”
“Understood.”
The Master Chief grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, counted to three, and lobbed it into the middle ofthe field. It bounced and exploded—sending a shock wave through the ground—tripping two of theLotus mines. Twin plumes of gravel and dust shot into the air. The detonation shook his teeth.
He wondered if the armor’s shields could have survived that. He didn’t want to find out while he wasstill inside the thing. He boosted the field strength on the bottom of his boots to full.
Cortana overlaid a grid on his heads-up display. Lines flickered as she ran through the possiblepermutations.
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“Got a match!” she said. Two dozen red circles appeared on his display. “That’s ninety-three percentaccurate. The best I can do.”
“There are never any guarantees,” the Master Chief replied.
He stepped onto the gravel, taking short, deliberate steps. With the shields activated on the bottoms ofhis boots, it felt like he was skating on greased ice.
He kept his head down, picking his way between red dots on his display.
If Cortana was wrong, he probably wouldn’t even know it.
The Master Chief saw the gravel had ended. He looked up. He had made it.
“Thank you, Cortana. Well done.”
“You’re welcome . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Picking up scrambled radio frequencies on the D band.Encrypted orders from this facility to Fairchild Airfield. They’re using personal codewords, too—so Ican’t tell what they’re up to. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.”
“Keep your ears open.”
“I always do.”
He ran to the next section of the obstacle course: the razor field. Here, recruits had to crawl in the mudunder razor wire as their instructors fired live rounds over them. A lot of soldiers discovered whetherthey had the guts to deal with bullets zinging a centimeter over their heads.