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The Spartan forced himself to ignore the artificial comet, locked onto the target, and triggered the rocket. There was an impact and a loudcrump! followed by smoke—but the Wraith continued to fire nonetheless.
Now, with fireballs exploding all around him, the Master Chief had to take a deep breath, hold the tank at the center of his sight, and pull the trigger again. The tube jerked, the second missile ran straight and true, and hit with a loudcraack! The Wraith opened like a red flower, burped pitch-black smoke, and nosed into a snowbank.
“Nice shot,” Cortana said admiringly, “but watch the Ghost.”
It was good advice, because although the attack vehicle had held back up to that point, it came skittering into sight, opened up with its plasma weapons, and threatened to accomplish what the rest of the Covenant soldiers hadn’t.
But the Chief had reloaded by then. The rocket tube was the right weapon for the job, and a single missile was sufficient to send the attack vehicle flipping end-for-end to finally wind up with its belly in the air and flames licking at the engine compartment.
With that problem out of the way the Chief came to his feet, slapped a fresh load into the launcher, and made a beeline for the Banshee. He was halfway across, with nowhere to hide, when a pair of Hunters emerged from a jumble of boulders.
Now, grateful that he still had some rockets, he had no choice but to stop, drop to one knee, and take them on. The first shot was dead on, hit the alien in the chest, and blew the bastard apart. Another rocket flew over the second Hunter’s right shoulder and cut a tree in half. The big alien started to lumber across open ground, picking up speed and charging its arm-mounted cannon.
It was a waste of ammo to pepper the front end of a Hunter with 7.62mm rounds, and slow though he was, the alien could still bring him down with a blast from his arm-mounted fuel rod cannon.
So he put his sight onto a target so big he didn’t need to zoom, and let fly.
The Hunter saw the missile coming, tried to deflect it with his shield, and failed. Seconds later pieces of warm meat showered the area, melted holes in the snow, and continued to steam.
The Chief ran past without a second look, jumped onto the Banshee, and strafed the rest of the Covenant forces on his way down the valley. Judging from the way the nav indicator was oriented, the Spartan needed altitude, a lot of it, so he put the alien attack ship into a steep climb.
Finally, when the red delta flipped over, and started to point down, he knew he was high enough. He did a nose-over and caught his first glimpse of the way point below. The surrounding area was dark, and snow continued to fall, but the platform was nicely lit. He lowered the Banshee onto the pad and had just bailed out of the pilot’s seat when the Sentinels attacked. “This is the last one,” Cortana said. “The Monitor will do anything to stop us.”
The Chief blew three of the pesky machines out of the air, backed through the hatch, and let the door close on the rest.