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“Which?” the Elite with the translator demanded, and looked at Dowski.
“That one!” the renegade officer proclaimed, and pointed at Keyes.
Hikowa started forward. “You little bitch! I’ll—”
No one ever learned what Hikowa would do, because the Elite shot her dead. Keyes lunged forward and attempted to tackle the Elite, to no avail. A lightning-fast blow clipped the side of his head, hard enough that his vision grayed out. He fell to the dirt.
The Elite was methodical. Starting with the Marines, he shot each captured human in the head. Wang attempted to run but a plasma bolt hit him between the shoulder blades. Lovell made a grab for the pistol, and took a blast to the face.
Keyes struggled to his feet again, dizzy and disoriented, and attempted to rush the Elite. He was clubbed to the ground a second time. Hikowa’s dead eyes stared vacantly back at him.
Finally, after the last plasma bolt had been fired and while the odor of burned flesh still hung in the air, only two members of the command crew were still alive: Keyes and Dowski. The Ensign was pale. She shook her head and wrung her hands. “I didn’t know, sir, honest I didn’t. They told me—”
The Elite snapped up a fallen M6D pistol and shot Dowski. The bullet hit her in the center of her forehead. The pistol’s report echoed down the canyon. The Ensign’s eyes rolled back in her head, her knees gave way, and she collapsed in a heap.
The Elite turned the M6D over in his hand. The weapon was small compared tohis pistol—and his finger didn’t fit easily inside the trigger guard. “Projectiles. Very primitive. Take him away.”
Keyes felt the other Elites grab him by the arms and drag him up a ramp into the dropship’s murky interior. It seemed that the Covenant’s rules had changed again. Now theydid take prisoners—just not very many. The ship lifted, and the only human to survive sincerely wished that he hadn’t.
Alpha Base didn’t offer a whole lot of amenities, but the Spartan took full advantage of what few there were. First came a full ten hours of completely uninterrupted sleep, followed by components selected from two MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, and a two-minute hot shower.
The water was provided by the ring itself, the heat was courtesy of a Covenant power plant, and the showerhead had been fabricated by one of the techs from thePillar of Autumn . Though brief, the shower felt good,very good, and the Spartan enjoyed every second of it.
The Master Chief had dried off, scrounged a fresh set of utilities, and was just about to run a routine maintenance check on his armor when a private stuck his head into the Spartan’s quarters, a prefab memory-plastic cubicle that had replaced the archaic concept of tents.
“Sorry to bother you, Chief, but Major Silva would like to see you in the Command Post . . . on the double.”
The Spartan wiped his hands with a rag. “I’ll be right there.”
The Master Chief was just about to take the armor off standby when the Marine reappeared. “One more thing . . . The Major said to leave your armor here.”