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The Chief pivoted and fired his rifle from the hip. The burst struck the second alien in the side. The Jackal slammed to the ground as his finger tightened on his weapon’s trigger as he died. A massive hole blossomed in the rock above the Master Chief’s head.
He slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon, and continued to advance.
“Here’s a little something to remember me by,” one of the Marines growled, and shot each Jackal in the head.
As the team continued up the path, they encountered another Shade, more Grunts, and a pair of Jackals, all of whom seemed to melt away under the combined assault by the Master Chief’s sniper rifle, the Marine’s assault weapons, and a few well-placed grenades.
The rescue force pressed on, toward the lights beyond. Covenant resistance was determined but spotty, and before long the Master Chief could hear the thrumming sound of the alien ship as it hovered more than a hundred meters above them. His skin crackled with static electricity. In the center of a steep dip in the rock lay a large metal disk, the gravity lift that the Covenant used to move troops, supplies, and vehicles to and from the ring world’s surface. Purple light shimmered around the platform where the beam was anchored.
“Come on!” the Master Chief shouted, pointing at the lift. “That’s our way in. Let’s move!”
There was a mad dash through a narrow canyon followed by a pitched battle as the Master Chief and the Helljumpers entered the area directly below the ship.
The depression was ringed with Shades, and all of them opened fire at once. The Chief made use of the sniper rifle to kill the nearest gunner, charged up the intervening slope, and jumped into the now vacant seat. The first order of business was to silence the other guns.
He yanked the control yoke to the left and the gun swiveled to face a second Shade, across the defile. A glowing image of a hollow triangle floated in front of his face. When it lined up with the other gun, it flashed red. He thumbed the firing studs, and lances of purple-white energy lashed the enemy emplacement. The Grunt gunner struggled to leap free of his Shade, fell into the path of the Spartan’s fire, and was speared by a powerful blast. He slumped against the base of his abandoned Shade, a smoking hole burned through his chest.
The Master Chief swiveled the captured gun and took aim on the remaining Shades. He hosed the targets with a hellish wave of destructive energy, then, satisfied that the emplacements were silenced, went to work on the enemy ground troops.
He had just burned a pair of Jackals to the ground when Cortana announced that a Covenant dropship was inbound, and the Master Chief was forced to shift his fire to the alien aircraft and the troops that spilled out onto the ground.
The human walked the blue Shade fire across the aliens, cutting them down, and pounding what remained into mush. He was still at it when a Marine yelled, “Look at that! There’s more of them!” and a dozen figures floated down through the gravity lift. A pair of the newcomers were huge and wore steel-blue armor as well as handheld plate-armor shields.