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The dropship immediately rose into the hole in the ceiling, far enough in to be shielded from any stray ground fire.
"Move, everyone," the Admiral growled. He pointed at Grace and Locklear. "You two, fire long-range weapons. Everyone else, haul ass. Take them out, people."
The Admiral's plan was sound. He wasn't risking the dropship—their only means of escape—by landing too close to the enemy. They still had the element of surprise; the Covenant would have never anticipated an assault on the heart of their operation.
But how long would this advantage last? How long before that cruiser blasted their dropship to atoms? The Covenant were not their most dangerous enemy. Time was.
Grace paused, muscled the fuel rod gun to a forty-five-degree angle into the air, and launched a round. The alien weapon hissed and spat a glowing sphere of energy. The blast arced over the half-kilometer distance, impacted, and exploded in a green flash. Grunts and Jackals flew through the air.
Locklear fired two Jackhammer rockets, then dropped the spent launcher. The pair of rockets connected with a cluster of Elites who had—until a second ago—been running the show. The twin explosion obscured that end of the room with billow?ing clouds of dust, fire, and smoke.
The Master Chief motioned for his team to spread out and move forward at a jog.
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Ahead there were silhouetted Grunts and Jackals in the dust clouds, screaming and shooting at the air, each other, anything that moved.
"Keep moving," the Master Chief said. "Move while they don't know what's hit them."
Anton paused and knelt next to a set of tracks dug into the tiled floor. "Kelly's been this way," he reported over the COM.
The Master Chief clicked on Red Team's COM frequency. "Kelly? Fred? Joshua? Spartans, acknowledge this signal."
Only static answered him.
A hundred meters from the stunned Covenant work crew, a stray plasma bolt fired from the hazy, rubble-strewn region deto?nated a few meters from the Master Chief. He sent a spray of au?tomatic fire across the area, hoping to force the enemy to keep their heads down.
Grace halted and fired the fuel rod gun again. A second glow?ing burst of radioactive energy flashed overhead and detonated along the far wall.
In the intense light, the Master Chief saw that a dozen Jackals had braced themselves along the wall and overlapped their en?ergy shields to create a phalanx. Behind them five Elites readied plasma rifles.
"Down," he shouted, and dived to one side.
Grace hit the floor and rolled away. Plasma bolts sizzled over their heads, and the Master Chief's shields drained as a shot hit too close. The barrage turned several of the blue tiles around him into a crater of blackened glass.
"Grenades—up and over those shields, Spartans," Admiral Whitcomb bellowed.
The Master Chief and Anton primed plasma grenades and hurled them from their prone positions. They hit the far wall and dropped into the cluster of Elites and Jackals—behind their shields. There was a pair of blue flashes, and the enemy forma?tion blew apart. Jackals scattered and ran.