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"Fhejelet non sequitur, now?"
"I got part of that," Ash said. "Non sequitur—that's Latin, right?"
Ash wasn't sure what this thing was, or what it was trying to say, but it definitely wasn't Covenant. The Covenant had language translators, and they didn't sound like this. The Covenant generally used them only to pronounce florid curses just before they vaporized planets.
This close, Ash could see the inert curve of the drone's booms, and could feel the heat from its eye. Tiny golden hieroglyphics shimmered around the sphere, floating a centimeter off its surface. Ash squinted, but couldn't make out the characters.
"Security protocols enabled," the drone spoke over the COM.
"I understood that," Ash replied.
"Ring offensive system activated," it said. "Shield in countdown mode. Exchange proper counterresponse. Reclaimer."
"I don't want to hurt you," Ash tried.
He had no idea what this thing wanted.
"Non sequitur," it said. "Reclassification of targets as non-Reclaimers. Aboriginal subspecies. Collect for further analysis— else neutralize as possible infection vector."
Ash understood with perfect clarity "neutralize."
The drone advanced, spreading its booms apart like an open maw.
He was out of ideas.
A rock hit the drone, a granite chunk a half meter across. It glanced off the drone's ventral boom.
The impact made the drone dip, but it recovered, and its booms shifted, geometry rearranged so it now stared up at the edge of the channel.
Team Saber stood there, looking down—all of them hefting large rocks.
Two stones collided into the drone's spars, and one shattered directly on its eye. It dipped to the ground with a crash, and the spherical eye heated to blazing white-hot. The dirt around it fused to glass and bubbled.
A boulder barely fitting within the channel bounced off the walls—and flattened the drone. The eye, crushed to an oblate shape, crackled and cooled to dull red and then black. The thing's three metal spars radiated out from under the rock like a flattened spider.
Ash exhaled, let his adrenaline subside, and he climbed out of the chasm.
Mark and Dante helped him up.
They'd saved each other a hundred times before, but those were always drills. Even under live-fire conditions, it had never been like this. For real. Ash wanted to tell them that they were like brothers and sisters to him.
All he could manage without his voice breaking was: "Thanks, guys."
Holly replied, "Well, thanks for being bait."
"Good call using rocks," Olivia whispered.
Ash nodded. "We've got to get under cover," he said, "back to the jungle."
"No, back to camp," Mark said. "Grab some real ammunition." Dante added, "Explosives, too."
Ash saw motion in his peripheral vision. Three more drones flew over the mesas, moving back and forth… searching.
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FIFTEEN
0745 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX, NEAR CAMP CURRAHEE