第52页
He uncurled and rolled to his feet. They only thing he heard was his hammering heart; otherwise he was deaf.
Ash blinked to clear his blurred vision.
Team Saber was down. Mark, Olivia, Holly, and Dante were on their knees. Their SPI armor camouflage buffers had been wiped by the flash-bangs, and only the faintest beige camo patterns were beginning to resolve like bruises. The new photo-reactive coating technology could mimic a wide range of EM radiation, but it was still sensitive to overload.
He pulled Mark to his feet, shook him.
Mark nodded and then got the others up.
Ash motioned them back, reversing the direction they had walked into this trap. They only had a moment before Team Katana moved in for the kill.
This was his fault. He'd been too eager, too easily pushed into action without thinking. Mark had spotted a sniper from Katana,
and Ash had too quickly decided to flank to the left… and walked straight into the real trap, the flash-bangs.
But that was the point of this exercise, wasn't it? Compress three Spartan squads into a square kilometer arena—think fast or die.
Or worse, in this case, think fast or lose.
Ash held up a hand, halting his team. They would not fall straight back. If he were Team Katana he'd have set up another trap for a retreating enemy.
He motioned for them to hook right.
Team Saber moved in a crouch through the brush, slow, careful, eyes wide. Olivia took point, and she vanished into the green shadows.
Ringing started in Ash's ears. That was a good sign. Another half meter closer to those grenades and he'd have lost the eardrum. In situ cloning was an excruciatingly boring procedure, and he'd be happy to avoid the two-week mandatory downtime.
A red status light winked from Olivia. The team froze.
Five meters ahead, a fern bent and sprang back.
Ash rapidly blinked his green status light: the signal to open fire. This was the best target they'd had all morning.
Suppressed gunfire surrounded him. The fern exploded into a shower of confetti.
A single Spartan hidden by the fern turned, their SPI armor flashing silver from the staccato of stun rounds that peppered its surface. Their foot caught on a root and they tumbled.
Ash repeated the go-ahead signal, and his squad made sure the target stayed down with several bursts of well-placed rounds. The ballistic gel underlayer of their armor could take a heck of a pounding before breaking down.
After three seconds, he flashed red, and they ceased fire.
Olivia moved up and slapped a lime-green sticky flag on the still-writhing Spartan's back. The target was now officially "dead."
Ash activated a NAV marker and alerted C and C for pickup of the "corpse."
The ground trembled, just for a moment, but all the Spartans in Team Saber froze, and then scanned the jungle, looking for the source of the disturbance.
Earthquake? Not likely. There was no tectonic activity on Onyx. That left only two possibilities: impact or detonation. Neither was especially welcome.