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Silva lowered his glasses, turned, and looked to the west. An enormous dust cloud had appeared during the five minutes that had passed since he looked that way. “Whatkind of attack?” the ODST officer demanded curtly.
“That’s rather difficult to say,” Wellsley replied deliberately, “especially without the ships, satellites, and recon drones that I normally rely on for information. However, judging from the amount of dust, plus my knowledge of the Covenant weapons inventory, it looks like an old-fashioned cavalry charge similar to the one that Napoleon threw my way at Waterloo.”
“You weren’t at Waterloo,” Silva reminded the AI as he brought the binoculars up to his eyes. “But, assuming you’re correct, what are they riding?”
“Rapid attack and reconnaissance vehicles which our forces refer to as Ghosts,” Wellsley replied pedantically. “Perhaps a hundred of them . . . judging from the dust.”
Silva swore. The timing couldn’t have been worse. The Covenant had to respond to his presence, he knew that, but he had hoped for a little more time. Now, with fully half his strength committed elsewhere, he was left with roughly two hundred troops. Still, they were ODST troops, the best in the UNSC.
“All right,” Silva said grimly, “if they want to charge, let’s give them the traditional counter. Order the pickets to pull back, tell Companies A and D to form an infantry square, and let’s get all the backup ammo below ground level. I want assault weapons in the pits, launchers halfway up the slope, and snipers up on the pad. No one fires until I give the command.”
Like Silva, Wellsley knew that the Roman legions had used the infantry square to good effect, as had Lord Wellington, and many since. The formation, which consisted of a box with ranks of troops all facing outward, was extremely hard to break.
The AI relayed the instructions to the troops, who, though surprised to be deployed in such an archaic way, knew exactly what to do. By the time the Ghosts arrived and washed around the rise like an incoming tide, the square was set.
Silva studied the rangefinder in his tac display and waited until the enemy was in range. He keyed the all-hands freq and gave the order: “Fire!Fire! ”
Sheets of armor-piercing bullets sleeted through the air. The lead machines staggered as if they had run into a wall, Elites tumbled out of their seats, and a runaway machine skittered to the east.
But there were a lot of the attack vehicles and as the oncoming horde sprayed the Marines with plasma fire, ODST troopers began to fall. Fortunately, the weapons that fired the energy bolts were fixed, which meant that the rise would continue to offer the humans a good deal of protection, so long as the Ghosts weren’t allowed to climb the slopes.
Also operating in the Helljumpers’ favor were the skittish nature of the machines themselves, some poor driving, and a lack of overall coordination. Many of the Elites seemed eager to score a kill: They broke formation and raced ahead of their comrades. Silva saw one attack craft take fire from another Ghost, which crashed into a third machine, which subsequently burst into flame.