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Time seemed to simultaneously crawl and race—something Kelly had once dubbed "SPARTAN Time." Enhanced senses and augmented physiology meant that in periods of stress Spartans thought and reacted faster than a normal human. Fred's mind raced as he absorbed the tactical situation.
He activated his motion sensors, boosting the range to maxi?mum. His team appeared as blips on his heads-up display. With a sigh of relief he saw that all twenty-six of them were present and pulling into a wedge formation.
"Covenant ground forces could be tracking the Pelican," Fred told them over the COM. "Expect AA fire."
The Spartans immediately broke formation and scattered across the sky.
Fred risked a sidelong glance and spotted the Pelican. It tum?bled, sending shards of armor plating in glittering, ugly arcs, be?fore it impacted into the side of a jagged snowcapped mountain.
The surface of Reach stretched out before them, two thousand meters below. Fred saw a carpet of green forest, ghostly mountains in the distance, and pillars of smoke rising from the west. He spied a sinuous ribbon of water that he recognized: Big Horn River.
The Spartans had trained on Reach for most of their early
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lives. This was the same forest where CPO Mendez had left them when they were children. With only pieces of a map and no food, water, or weapons, they had captured a guarded Pelican and re?turned to HQ. That was the mission where John, now the Master Chief, had earned command of the group, the mission that had forged them into a team.
Fred pushed the memory aside. This was no homecoming.
UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B training facility would be due west. And the generators? He called up the terrain map and overlaid it on his display. Joshua had done his work well: Cortana had delivered decent satellite imagery as well as a topo?graphic survey map. It wasn't as good as a spy-sat flyby, but it was better than Fred had expected on such short notice.
He dropped a NAV marker on the position of the generator complex and uploaded the data on the TACCOM to his team.
He took a deep breath and said: "That's our target. Move toward it but keep your incoming angle flat. Aim for the treetops. Let them slow you down. If you can't, aim for water... and tuck in your arms and legs before impact."
Twenty-six blue acknowledgment lights winked, confirming his order.
"Overpressurize your hydrostatics just before you hit."
That would risk nitrogen embolisms for his Spartans, but they were coming in at terminal velocity, which for a fully loaded Spartan was—he quickly calculated—130 meters per second. They had to overpressurize the cushioning gel or their organs would be crushed against the impervious MJOLNIR armor when they hit.
The acknowledgment lights winked again ... although Fred sensed a slight hesitation.
Five hundred meters to go.
He took one last look at his Spartans. They were scattered across the horizon like bits of confetti.
He brought up his knees and changed his center of mass, try?ing to flatten his angle as he approached the treetops. It worked, but not as well or as quickly as he had hoped.