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Now, as he came down off the pyramid, he saw lots of Covenant, but no Flood, and felt a strange sense of relief. The Covenant were tough, but he understood them, and that lessened his apprehension.
The alien plasma rifle lacked the precision offered by an M6D pistol or a sniper’s rifle, but the Chief did the best he could to pick off some of the Covenant below. Still, he had only nailed three of the aliens when his efforts attracted the attention of a Wraith tank, along withmore troops. There was nothing he could do except retreat back uphill.
The Wraith, which continued to hurl plasma bombs up-slope, actually helped by preventing other Covenant forces from charging after him. That advantage wouldn’t last long, though, which meant that he had to find some additional fire power, and find it fast.
Even though there was no sign of the Flood at the moment, some of their half-frozen bodies lay scattered about, suggesting that there had been a significant battle within the last couple of hours. He knew the Flood carried weapons acquired from dead victims, so the Chief ran from corpse to corpse, looking for what he required. For a while it seemed hopeless as he uncovered a series of M6Ds, energy pistols, combat knives, and other gear—anything and everything except what he needed most.
Then, just when he had nearly given up hope, he saw a few inches of olive drab tubing protruding from under a dead combat form. He rolled the ex-Elite over, and felt a rising sense of excitement. Was the launcher loaded? If so, he was in luck.
A quick check revealed that the weaponwas loaded, and as if to prove that luck comes in threes, the Spartan found two reloads only a few meters away.
Armed with the launcher, he was ready to go to work. The Wraith represented the most significant threat, so he decided to deal with that first. It took time to make his way back across the face of the pyramid to a point where he could get a clear shot, but he did. The monster was dangerously close as he put a pair of rockets into the mortar tank, and watched it explode.
He ejected the spent rocket tubes, slammed a reload home, and shifted his aim. Two more rockets lanced ahead, and detonated in clusters of Covenant soldiers. He fell back and slung the rocket launcher; he had a limited supply of rockets, and once they were gone, he had no choice but to go down onto the valley floor and finish the job the hard way.
He crept up on the pair of Elites who stood guard near a Banshee. They went down from deadly, spine-cracking blows and he stepped past their fallen corpses. He examined the Banshee’s controls while Cortana pulled up files the tech boys in Intel had prepared based on examinations of captured craft.
He boarded the single-seat aircraft, and activated its power plant. He wondered why the aliens hadn’t used the ship against him, was thankful that they hadn’t, and eyed the instrument panel. The Master Chief had never flown one of the attack ships before, but was qualified to fly most of the UNSC’s atmospheric and spacegoing ships so, between his own experience and the tech files Cortana provided, he found the controls relatively easy to understand. The takeoff was a bit wobbly, but it wasn’t long before the flight began to smooth out, and the Banshee started to climb.