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Explosions followed Kurt almost as if his footsteps were setting them off.
The trees parted ahead and the Twin Forks River snaked through the jungle. The water was muddy and churning.
Kurt leapt and splashed into the swift current.
He sank to the bottom. Internal oxygen cut on inside his SPI suit, and Kurt grasped rocks along the river bottom, crawling upstream. Through the murky water he spotted a rock ledge and tucked underneath.
Between him and Sentinels were three meters of moving ice-cold water, a meter of rock, and a layer of photo-reactive circuits in his armor. He should be undetectable to any sensor. At least undetectable enough, he hoped, to fool these things.
He waited.
No explosions. No flashes. No heat.
The combined Sentinel wasn't his biggest worry, though. It was the one on overwatch. The Sentinels patrolled in threes now: two at mid to ground level, and another two to three thousand
meters in the air—watching everything, reporting their tactics, and learning.
As long as that third one tracked them, the Spartans would be on the defensive, reacting, instead of initiating action.
Kurt wondered why the Sentinels hadn't called in reinforcements, combined, and let loose with enough firepower to burn the entire jungle.
… Unless they were deliberately playing cat and mouse with them? To learn more about how they fought?
He had to be smarter than them. Take out all three. Take the initiative. Maybe with Blue Team, he could do it.
Kurt waited two more minutes, then pulled himself out of the river. He sprinted for the cover of the jungle.
There were no signs of pursuit.
He remained COM silent and crept back to the prearranged fallback position.
As he approached the region of broken ground bordering Zone 67, he slowed. There was less cover, so he scanned the skies for Sentinel overwatch. All clear.
Ahead the land turned to savanna grass, acacia trees, and large striated boulders. One rock in particular had a hollow underneath where they had arranged to meet. It provided cover without restricting the view of the local airspace. If attacked, they had a clean line back to the jungle.
There would be at least two guards on lookout, and at least one Spartan at the jungle line to watch their line of retreat. Normally he would click his COM twice to alert the sentry, but he didn't even want to take that small risk in the open.
So Kurt waited, guessing the sentry would be either Linda or Olivia. If it was Linda—he scanned the nearby trees—she'd be up there, in a good sniping position.
If it was Olivia, she could be anywhere. She was eerily proficient at camouflage and stealth.
There was the clatter: a single stone three meters to his left.
He turned and, as predicted, Olivia crouched a meter behind him in the shadow of a low tree, perfectly blending into the grass and dappled light in her SPI armor, waving at him to make sure he saw the slight blur of motion. Kurt had no doubt that she could have been in fluorescent orange fatigues and still managed to look like part of the terrain.