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Blue Team had stopped both operations.
Fred looked over the ocean and wondered how long they could keep the Covenant at bay in space. His gaze dropped to the corrugated floor of the Pelican. It had lived up to its nickname "blood tray"… stained with splashes of congealed dark red. Good soldiers had died today.
On his heads-up display the TACMAP showed the edge of
Cuba ahead. Fred exhaled and cleared his mind. They were close to their third target: the Centennial Orbital Elevator.
There had been scattered reports that the Covenant had invaded the facility… before all contact with COE Control had been lost.
Fred stood and stretched. Linda and Will rose as well, sensing their brief downtime was over.
Linda opened one of the crates they had obtained from Base Segundo Terra near Mexico City. Within was a new SRS99C sniper rifle. She dissembled it, cleaned each part, applied graphite lubricant, and reassembled the gun with mechanical precision. She then examined the Oracle N-variant scope that had accompanied the rifle, and made microadjustments with a fine set of screwdrivers.
William tore into the box of ammunition and loaded magazines, sorting them by frag and AP types.
Fred opened an "egg carrier" box and divided up fragmentation and concussion grenades into three satchels.
He found an ONI datapad and turned it on. It had new Covenant-English translation matrices and the latest ONI intrusion and counterintrusion software. Updates courtesy of Cor-tana. He tossed it into his bag.
In the cockpit. Sergeant Laura "Smokes" Tanner flew, while her Crew Chief, Corporal Jim Higgins, fiddled with the COM, trying to filter though the reports of the action in space and on the ground. Tanner popped a black bubble and continued to chew the contraband tobacco gum so popular with NCO fliers.
"So then," Tanner said to Higgins, "In Amber Clad goes after the damned Covenant battleship as it did an in-atmosphere Slipspace jump! Flattened New Mombassa. I don't know what those split-chinned freaks were after, but they sure didn't stick around after they found it—that's all I heard. CENTCOM channels are dropping off line. That can't be good."
Fred looked to Linda and Will.
Linda made a short lateral cut with her hand, the "stay cool" gesture.
They couldn't worry about the larger strategic picture. They had to stay focused on their part. Secure the orbital elevator, and win this war one battle at a time.
Fred spied the Cuban coast ahead: surf and white sands.
The Pelican screamed over jungle tangle. Fifty kilometers in the distance a line stretched from ground to clouds: the UNSC Centennial Orbital Elevator, or as the locals called it: Tallo Negro del Maiz, the "stalk of black corn."
It was two hundred years old, antiquated but one of the few surviving OEs capable of heavy lifting on Earth. In the last two weeks, nuclear devices slated for conversion to peaceful purposes had been transported to Cuba. Recent actions had depleted the UNSC nuclear stockpile, and these older, low-yield bombs were all they had left.