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After the human lifeboat had been located, it wasn’t long before Covenant scouts found Isna ’Nosolee’s body, and ran a check on his identity. Intelligence was notified, official wheels began to turn, and the Covenant commanders were confronted with a problem: Why would an Ossoona risk his life to board a human lifeboat and ride it to the surface? The answer seemed obvious: Because someone important was on that boat.
All of which served to explain why none of the humans had been killed. There was no way to knowwhich alien ’Nosolee had been after—so all of them had to be preserved. ’Mortumee glanced down at the instruments arrayed in front of him. A change! A string of seven heat blobs was winding its way to arbitrary “north,” while one remained behind. What did that signify?
It wasn’t long before ’Mortumee’s Banshee circled above the grotto. Dowski wrestled to free herself from the tape, and the Covenant closed in around her.
Smoke swirled around the top of the butte as a Pelican pilot made use of his 70mm chin gun to silence a Covenant gun emplacement. Satisfied that the Covenant plasma turret—a powerful weapon that could be easily deployed and recovered—was silent, he dropped down to within four feet of the top of the butte.
Fifteen ODST Helljumpers—three more than the Pelican’s operational maximum—leaped from the Pelican’s troop bay and fanned out.
Cramming extra troops into a Pelican was a risky move, but Silva wanted to put as many soldiers as possible on the mesa, and Lieutenant “Cookie” Peterson knew his ship. The Pelican was still in reasonably good shape, he had the best maintenance crew in the Navy—what more could a pilot ask for?
Peterson felt the dropship drift upward as the Marines bailed out, and he fought to keep the ship steady and level. He spotted movement in the landing zone. The chin gun—linked to his helmet sensors—followed the movement of Peterson’s head. He spotted a column of Covenant troopers and fired. The heavy rotary cannon uttered a throaty roar and pounded the enemy formation into a puddle of blue-green paste.
As the last of the Helljumpers jumped off, the Crew Chief yelled “Clear!” over the intercom. Peterson fired the ship’s belly jets, demanded additional power from the twin turbine engines, and left the butte behind.
“This is Echo 136,” the pilot said into his mike. “We are green, clean, and extremely mean. Over.”
“Roger that,” Wellsley replied emotionlessly. “Please return to way point two-five for another load of troopers. And, if you’re going to insist on poetry, try some Kipling. You might find some of it rather instructive. Over and out.”
Peterson grinned, directed a one-fingered salute in the general direction of battalion HQ, and banked the dropship into a wide turn.
Resistance had slackened within minutes of the first landing, which allowed Lieutenant Melissa McKay and the surviving members of her company to advance upward. A significant number of the path’s defenders were pulled away in a last-ditch attempt to hold their position.