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Lance Corporal Jones steadied his aim for a second shot. The first shot had been perfect. The 14.5mm slug had flown true, entered the base of Blue Boy’s neck, and exited through the top of his head. That blew his helmet off, allowing a mixture of blood and brains to fountain into the air.
’Putumee snarled and threw himself backward—and thereby escaped the second bullet.
Moments later, the twin reports echoed back and forth between the two hillsides. The Field Master crabbed back to cover and fed position information to the Banshee commander, and snarled into his communications gear: “Sniper! Kill him!”
Satisfied that the sniper would be dealt with, ’Putumee stood and looked down at ’Mortumee’s headless body. He bared his fangs. “It looks like I’ll have to write that report myself.”
Jones spat into the dirt, angry that the gold Elite had evaded the second shot.Next time, he promised himself.You’re minenext time, pal . Banshees banked overhead, searching for his position. Jones backed into a deep crevice among the rocks. Fortunately, thanks to the loot gathered aboard theAutumn , he had twenty candy bars to sustain him.
The security system neutralized, the Master Chief made his way back through the alien construct, and headed toward the surface. Time to find this “Silent Cartographer” and complete this phase of the mission.
“Mayday! Mayday! Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Repeat, we are taking fire and losing altitude.”The dropship pilot’s strained voice was harsh and grating—the sound of a man about to lose it.
“Understood,” Cortana replied. “We’re on our way.”
Then, in an aside to the Spartan, the AI said, “I don’t like the sound of that—I’m not certain they’re going to make it.”
The Master Chief agreed, and in his eagerness to get topside, made a potentially fatal error. Having just cleared the room adjacent to what appeared to be the ring world’s Security Center, he assumed that it wasstill clear.
Fortunately, the Elite—equipped with another of the Covenant’s camouflage devices—announced his presence with a throaty roar just prior to firing his weapon. Plasma fire still splashed the Chief’s chest, followed by a brief moment of disorientation as he tried to figure out where the attack was coming from. His motion sensor detected movement, and he aimed his weapon as best he could. He fired a sustained burst and was rewarded with an alien scream of pain.
As the Covenant warrior fell, the Master Chief made a mad dash for the ramp that led up toward the surface, reloading as he went. Walking into the once-cleared room too quickly had been stupid—and he was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that Cortana was there, seeing the world via his sensors, made such errors that much more embarrassing. Somehow, for reasons he hadn’t had time to sort out, the human wanted the AI’s approval. Silly? Maybe so, if one thought of Cortana as little more than a fancy computer program, but she was more than that. In the Chief’s mind at least.