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Kurt eased the Warthog to a stop half a kilometer outside Camp Currahee. A large shadow crossed the tree line ahead, and a flock of red-tailed parrots took flight.
He jumped out and motioned Mendez to the brush at the side of the road. They hunkered down, and watched as an unmanned drone glided over their Warthog and paused.
The machine wasn't a UNSC design. It might have been Covenant, but they never varied from their big-ugly oblate blue-gray ascetic. The thing was floating whisper silent, and that meant antigravity technology… which likely made it nonhuman.
He remembered Endless Summer's flash transmission with a chill. Possible non-Covenant vectors.
The geometry of the drone shifted: the sphere in the center floated forward along the length of its lateral spars.
Kurt's first instinct was to grab his assault rife and fire. He had a superior flanking position. He reached for his weapon, and then recalled they had no weapons save Chief Mendez's sidearm and knife.
He decided hiding was, for now, the soundest strategy.
The drone circled the Warthog, and then satisfied, it continued down the dirt track.
Kurt waited until the drone disappeared into the jungle and then he motioned for Mendez to follow him through the trees to the edge of Camp Currahee.
Three hundred meters of jungle had been cleared around the horseshoe-shaped camp. From the edge of the clear zone, Kurt saw several of the alien fliers circling the buildings and parade grounds.
"Zigzag patterns," Mendez whispered. "They're looking for something. Or someone."
There was an explosion from the center of camp. Not like the energy blast they had witnessed on the road. This was the dull crack of a fragmentation grenade.
The drones over the camp slowed and turned, and all moved in the same direction—the NCO quarters.
"That's our chance," Kurt said. "Go. Run."
With the drones distracted, they sprinted across the clear zone, slipped past the gate guardhouse, and ran to the Spartans' dormitories. They crawled under the raised building.
Shadows slipped over the adjacent gravel roads and paths as the drones silently glided overhead.
Kurt held up a hand to Mendez, and saw the older man cover his mouth to muffle his panting. As much as he admired the Chief, that sprint had taken something out of him.
They watched until there was a break in the shadows, and they ran for the next building, the NCO quarters.
Kurt spotted the source of the drones' distraction: a heap of wreckage, three bent booms, and a charred sphere lying smoldering in the NCO's inspection yard.
Someone had taken one of the alien fliers out.
Across the yard and under the infirmary appeared the red glare of a laser sight—trained on Kurt. He started to twist to
one side. When a targeting sight was on you, you moved. But this was no threat. It was a signal.
He pointed and then Mendez saw it, too. The laser flashed once more and then it winked off.
Mendez started to move; Kurt checked the airspace, and then pulled the Chief flat against the wall as another drone floated overhead.