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Their Banshees leveled out, and Fred dropped back to tighten his formation with Kelly and Joshua.
He glanced again at the enemy ship and the guard towers. One good hit from those weapons could take them out.
Fred saw other Banshee patrols circling the valley. He frowned. If they passed them, the enemy pilots would almost certainly de?mand to know their business... and there was no way of knowing what the established patrol routes were. That meant he'd have to
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take an alternate flight path: straight down the middle, and straight over the Covenant horde.
They'd only need one run to do this. They'd probably only get one run.
He activated a COM frequency. "Go."
Kelly hit the acceleration and glided toward the cruiser. Fred fell in behind her. He armed the fuel rod gun built into the Banshee.
They were six kilometers from the cruiser when Kelly achieved the maximum speed of her flier. Grunts and Jackals in the fields below craned their necks as the Spartans flashed over them.
They had to go faster. Fred felt every Covenant eye watching them. He dived, trading his altitude for acceleration, and Joshua and Kelly did the same.
Communication symbols flashed across his Banshee's wind?shield display. The UNSC software built into their armor worked only with some of the spoken Covenant languages—not their written words. Odd, curling characters scrolled across the Ban?shee's displays.
Fred hit one of the response symbols.
There was a pause, the display cleared, and dozens more sym?bols flashed, twice as fast.
Fred clicked the display off.
Three kilometers to go, and his heart beat so hard he heard it thunder in his ears.
Kelly pulled slightly ahead of them. She was now thirty me?ters off the ground, gaining as much speed as she could, driving straight for the cruiser's gravity lift.
The nearest guard tower tracked her; its plasma cannon flared and fired.
Kelly's flier climbed and banked to evade the energy fire. The bolt of superheated ionized gas brushed against her starboard fuselage. Energy spray melted the Banshee's front faring, and her ship slowed.
A dozen plasma turrets turned to track them.
Fred banked and opened fire. Energy bursts from the Ban?shee's primary weapon strafed the guard tower. Joshua did the same, and a river of fire streaked toward the towers.
Fred hit the firing stud for the Banshee's heavy weapon, and a
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sphere of energy arced into the base of the tower. It began a grad?ual tilt, then collapsed.
Kelly hadn't fired. Fred glanced her way and saw that she now stood in a low crouch atop her racing Banshee. She had one foot under the duct tape that had secured the nuke and now held the bomb in her hand, cocking it back to throw.
A shard of jagged crystal, a round from a Covenant needier, pinged off Fred's port shield. He snapped a look below.
Covenant Grunts and Jackals boiled in agitation—a hundred badly aimed shots arced up after him; glistening clouds of crys?talline needles and firefly plasma bolts swarmed through the air and chipped away at his Banshee's fuselage.