第30页
Like most of its kind, the lifeboat had never been intended for extended atmospheric use; it flew like a rock, in fact. But the suggestion made sense, so the pilot turned toward what he had arbitrarily designated as the “west,” and the point where the grasslands met a tumble of low rolling hills.
The lifeboat was low, so low that the Covenant patrol barely had time to see what it was before the tiny vessel flashed over their heads and disappeared.
The veteran Elites, both of whom were mounted on small single-seat hoversleds, Ghosts, stood to watch the lifeboat skim the plain.
The senior of the pair called the sighting in. They turned toward the hills and opened their throttles. What had promised to be a long, boring day suddenly seemed a great deal more interesting. The Elites glanced at each other, bent over their controls, and raced to see which of them could reach the lifeboat first—and which of them would score the first kill of the afternoon.
Deep in the hills ahead, Lovell fired the lifeboat’s bow thrusters, dropped what flaps the stubby little wings had, and jazzed the boat’s belly jets. Keyes watched in admiration as the young pilot dropped the boat into a gully where it would be almost impossible to spot, except from directly overhead. Lovell had been a troubled officer, well on his way to a dishonorable discharge, when Keyes had recruited him. He’d come a long way since then.
“Nice job,” the Captain said as the lifeboat settled onto its skids. “Okay, boys and girls, let’s strip this ship of everything that might be useful, and put as much distance between it and ourselves as we can. Corporal, post your Marines as sentries. Wang, Dowski, Abiad, open those storage compartments. Let’s see what brand of champagne the UNSC keeps in its lifeboats. Hikowa, give me a hand with this body.”
There was a certain amount of commotion as ’Nosolee’s corpse was carried outside and unceremoniously dumped into a crevice, the boat was stripped, and the controls were disabled. With emergency packs on their backs, the bridge crew started up into the hills. They hadn’t gone far when a sonic boom rolled over the land, thePillar of Autumn roared across the sky, and dropped over the horizon to the arbitrary “south.”
Keyes held his breath as he waited to see what would happen. He, like all COs, had neural implants that linked him to the ship, the ship’s AI, and key personnel. There was a pause, followed by what felt like a mild earth tremor. A moment later, a terse message from Cortana’s subroutine scrolled across his vision, courtesy of his neural lace:
>CSR-1 :: BURST BROADCAST ::
>PILLAR OF AUTUMNIS DOWN. THOSE SYSTEMS WHICH REMAIN FUNCTIONAL ARE ON STANDBY. OPERATIONAL READINESS STANDS AT 8.7%.
>CSR-1 OUT.
It wasn’t the sort of message that any commanding officer would want to receive. In spite of the fact that theAutumn would never swim through space again, Keyes took some small comfort from the fact that his ship still had the equivalent of a pulse, and might still come in handy.