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The Elite who occupied the copilot’s position had already taken control of the Pelican and, thanks to hours of practice, could fly the dropship extremely well.
’Zamamee waited until the kicking had stopped, released the wire, and smelled something foul. That’s when the Elite realized that Hale had soiled himself. He gave a grunt of disgust, and returned to the Pelican’s cargo compartment. It was crammed with heavily armed Elites, trained for infiltration. They carried camouflage generators, along with their weapons. Their job was to take as many landing pads as possible, and hold them until six dropships loaded with Grunts, Jackals, and more Elites could land on the mesa.
The troops saw the officer appear and looked expectant.
“Proceed,” ’Zamamee said. “Youknow what to do. Turn on the stealth generators, check your weapons, and remember this moment. Becausethis battle,this victory, will be woven into your family’s battle poem, and sung by generations to come.
“The Prophets have blessed this mission, have blessedyou , and want every soldier to know that those who transcend the physical will be welcomed into paradise. Good luck.”
A blur of lights appeared out of the darkness, the dropship shed altitude, and the warriors murmured their final benedictions.
Like most AIs, Wellsley had a pronounced tendency to spend more time thinking about what hedidn’t have rather than what he did, and sensors were at the very top of his list. The sad truth was that while McKay and her company had recovered a wealth of supplies from theAutumn , there had been insufficient time to strip the ship of the electronics that would have given the AI a real-time, all-weather picture of the surrounding air space. That meant he was totally reliant on the data provided by remote ground sensors which the patrols had planted here and there around the butte’s ten-kilometer perimeter.
All of the feeds had been clear during the initial radio contact with Charlie 217, but now, as the Pelican flared in to land, the package in Sector Six started to deliver data. It claimed that six heavy-duty heat signatures had just passed overhead, that whatever produced them was fairly loud, and that they were inbound at a speed of approximately 350 kph.
Wellsley reacted with the kind of speed that only a computer is capable of—but the response was too late to prevent Charlie 217 from putting down. Even as the AI made a series of strongly worded recommendations to his human superiors, the Pelican’s skids made contact with Pad 3’s surface, thirty nearly invisible Elites thundered down the ramp, and the men and women of Alpha Base soon found themselves fighting for their lives.
One level down, locked into a room with three other Grunts, Yayap heard the distant moan of an alarm, and thought he knew why. ’Zamamee had been correct: The human who wore the strange armor, and was believed to be responsible for more than a thousand Covenant casualties,did frequent this place. Yayap knew that because he hadseen the soldier more than six units before, triggered the transmitter hidden inside his breathing apparatus, and thereby set the raid in motion.