第60页
Kurt jumped into the driver's side, and turned the engine over. The vehicle coughed to life and purred.
"No BMP damage," Mendez said. "Or the coil would have been fried."
It was almost a disappointment. A nuke, Kurt could understand. Fissile materials were used only by the UNSC or rebels— human forces.
He floored the accelerator and the Warthog fishtailed, and then the tires caught and they bumped down the dirt track.
The day suddenly brightened, and an extra set of shadows crisscrossed the jungle floor.
Kurt slowed the Warthog, and looked up at the sky The canopy obscured his view, so he turned off the track and drove into the jungle, bouncing over exposed roots, and then down the bank of the Twin Forks River.
Here Kurt had a clear line of sight to the sky, and he noted the sun had moved to a new position lower in the sky.
No, it hadn't moved. There were two suns.
This new sun faded and a ring of smoke expanded around its center. This fireball seemed to pause, and then it shattered in a starburst of glittering molten metal.
In high orbit, the Agincourt exploded.
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FOURTEEN
0715 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, NEAR ZONE 67, PLANET ONYX
Ash ran for his life over the rocky ground. He wasn't sure how the thing was tracking him in his SPI suit, but it was.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the three booms and single eye of the drone flash in the sunlight. It accelerated and skimmed over the ground in pursuit of Team Saber.
"Scatter!" he ordered over TEAMCOM.
That drone's beam weapon could melt through their armor in the blink of an eye. Ash wasn't going to take the chance of it wiping out his entire squad with a single shot.
Mark and Dante broke left. Holly went right. Ash didn't see Olivia; she had to be stealthing.
Ash decided to flat-out run straight ahead, hoping to draw its fire.
He risked another glance back: the drone veered left after Holly. She sprinted up a slope.
Ash saw this slope ended in a sheer cliff a hundred meters ahead of her. When she got there, she'd be trapped. Even if she jumped, and survived, then the drone would still have her, firing from above.
He wouldn't let that happen. He ran back.
Holly skidded to a halt at the cliff's edge.
The drone angled above her, and its central spherical eye burned red.
Ash fired his MA5B assault rifle. A translucent gold energy
shield shimmered around the drone, and the rubber rounds bounced off. The central eye continued to heat.
He wasn't giving up that easily.
Those shields weren't like Covenant shields, invisible until they interacted with projectile or energy. Ash had seen these pop into place just before his round had struck.
He had to try something else.
Ash picked up a rock and sidearmed it at the drone. It was nowhere near as fast as a bullet, but it was a great deal heavier.
The stone hit, and spanged off one of its metal booms, scratching it.