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After three hundred meters of free fall, he glimpsed a faint il?lumination at the bottom of the shaft, the feeble sickly yellow glow from chemical light sticks. Fred tightened his grip on the cable, and his descent slowed. A meter from the bottom of the shaft, he let go and landed in a crouch. He moved out of the way. The other Spartans landed next to him.
"This way," Will said and moved ahead, through a set of eleva?tor doors that had been forced open.
Fred noticed that Will moved with a severe limp, and remem?bered the Spartans he had sent here were injured. It was ironic that he had sent them out of the thick of battle, to end up in the middle of another dire situation.
Then again, they weren't dead .. . which was more than he could hope for Beta Team.
They stepped into a corridor with brushed stainless-steel walls that mirrored and smeared the faint light from the chem lights.
Overhead there was a tremendous explosion. Rocks and dirt showered into the shaft, and dust blossomed through the corridor.
"Lotus antitank mines," Will said. "A little something to slow our uninvited guests down."
Two other Spartans, Isaac and Vinh, sat along either side of the hallway, behind rock barricades. They gave slight nods to Fred and kept their eyes and weapons on the end of the corridor.
118 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
"Where's the rest of the team? And the Marines from Charlie Company?" Fred asked.
"They didn't make it," Will replied, his voice flat. "We were separated on the way here." He shook his head. "No contact since then."
Fred was quiet a moment. He listed those three as MIA on his team roster as well as the other Spartans on Will's team. The list of Spartans he could account for had grown extremely short. Fred felt his stomach twist. "Any word from Beta Team?"
"Negative. No contact, sir."
Fred clenched his teeth and marked Beta Team as MIA as well.
"Gamma Team?" Will asked.
"They're out there," Fred replied. "I heard them on the COM, but I couldn't make out much. I warned them away from this position."
"Good," Will whispered.
The hallway dead-ended in a vault door.
"The retinal and palm scanners are broken," Will explained. "There's voice access, which we've tried, but there's no re?sponse. This door must be a meter thick, so without cutting tools or a hundred kilos of explosive we're stuck on this side."
"You spoke to the people on the other side?" Kelly asked.
"The channel is open," Will said. "But there's been no reply. Everyone on the other side probably bugged out."
"Or maybe you're just not saying anything they want to hear," Kelly said. She whistled a six-note singsong tune.
Will nodded. "I didn't think of that."
The tune had been the Spartan's secret code from when they were young and training on Reach. It was their all-clear-it's-safe-to-come-out signal. No one but the Spartans and a few very select outsiders knew of it... a few outsiders who might be still here.
Kelly keyed the mic and whistled the tune. She released the key and waited.