Kelly glanced at John. He nodded, giving her the go-ahead.
She approached the two guards, smiling. John knew her smile wasn’t friendly. She was smiling becauseshe was finally getting a chance to put her training to the test.
Kelly waved to the guard and pulled open the door. He asked her to stop and show her identification.
She stepped inside, grabbed his rifle, twisted, and dragged him inside with her.
The other guard stepped back and leveled his rifle. John sprang at him from behind, grabbed his neckand snapped it, then dragged his limp body inside.
The entry room had cinderblock walls and a steel door with a swipe-card lock. A security cameradangled limply over Kelly’s head. The guard she had dragged in lay at her feet. She was already runninga cracking program on the lock, using her data pad.
John retrieved his MA2B and covered her. Fred and Linda entered and slipped out of their coveralls,then donned their helmets.
“Nav marker is moving,” Linda reported. “Mark 270, elevation ten meters, twenty . . . thirty-five andholding. I’d say that’s the top floor.”
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Sam entered, pulled the door shut behind him, and then jammed the lock. “All clear out there.”
The inner door clicked. “Door’s open,” Kelly said.
John, Kelly, and Sam slipped out of their coveralls as Fred and Linda covered them. John activated themotion and thermal displays in his helmet. The target sight glowed as he raised his MA2B.
“Go,” John said.
Kelly pushed open the door. Linda stepped in and to the right. John entered and took the left.
Two guards were seated behind the lobby’s reception desk. Another man, without a uniform, stood infront of the desk, waiting to be helped; two more uniformed men stood by the elevator.
Linda shot the three near the desk. John eliminated the targets by the elevator.
Five rounds—five bodies hit the floor.
Fred entered and policed the bodies, dragging them behind the counter.
Kelly moved to the stairwell, opened the door, and gave the all-clear signal.
The elevator pinged and its doors opened. They all wheeled, rifles leveled . . . but the car was empty.
John exhaled, then motioned them to take the stairs; Kelly took point. Sam brought up the rear. Theysilently went up nine double flights of stairs.
Kelly halted on an upper landing. She pointed to the interior of the building, then pointed up.
John detected faint blurs of heat on the twelfth floor. They’d have to pick a better route, a way in that noone would expect.
John opened the door. There was an empty hallway. No targets.
He went to the elevator doors and pried them open. Then he turned on his black suit’s cooling elementsto mask his thermal signature. The others did the same . . . and faded from his thermal imaging display.
John and Sam climbed up the elevator cable. John glanced down: a thirty-meter plunge into darkness.He might survive that fall. His bones wouldn’t break, but there would be internal damage. And it wouldcertainly compromise their mission. He tightened his grip on the cable and didn’t look down again.
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When they had climbed up the last three floors, they braced themselves in the corners by the closedelevator door. Kelly and Fred snaked up the cable after them. They braced in the far corners to overlaptheir fields of fire. Linda came up last. She climbed as far as she could, hooked her foot on a cross brace,and hung upside down.
John held up three fingers, two, then one, and then he and Sam silently pulled open the elevator doors.
There were five guards standing in the room. They wore light body armor and helmets and carried older-model HMG-38 rifles. Two of them turned.
Kelly, Fred, and Linda opened fire. The walnut paneling behind the guards became pockmarked withbullet holes and was spattered with blood.
The team slid inside the room, moving quickly and quietly. Sam policed the guards’ weapons.
There were two doors. One led to a balcony; the other featured a peephole. Kelly checked the balcony,then whispered over the channel in their helmets: “This overlooks the alley between buildings. Noactivity.”
John checked the nav marker. The blue triangles flashed a position directly behind the other door.
Sam and Fred flanked the door. John couldn’t get any reading on motion or thermal. The walls wereshielded. There were too many unknowns and not enough time.
The situation wasn’t ideal. They knew there were at least three men inside—the ones who had carriedthe crate upstairs. And there might be more guards . . . and to complicate the situation, their target had tobe taken alive.
John kicked the door in.
He took in the entire situation at a glance. He was standing on the threshold of a sumptuous apartment.There was a wet bar boasting shelves of amber-filled bottles. A large, round bed dominated the corner,decorated with shimmering silk sheets. Windows on all sides had sheer white curtains—John’s helmetautomatically compensated for the glare. Red carpet covered the floor. The crate with the cigars andchampagne sat in the center of the room. It was black and armored, sealed tight against the vacuum ofspace.
There were three men standing behind the armored crate, and one man crouched behind them. ColonelRobert Watts—their “package.”
John didn’t have a clear shot. If he missed, he could hit the Colonel.
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The three men, however, didn’t have that problem. They fired.
John dove to his left. He caught three rounds in his side—knocking the breath from his body. One bulletpenetrated his black suit. He felt it ping off his ribs and pain slashed through him like a red-hot razor.
He ignored the wound and rolled to his feet. He had a clear line of fire. He squeezed the trigger once—athree-round burst caught the center guard in the forehead.
Sam and Fred wheeled around the door frame, Sam high, Fred low. Their silenced weapons coughed andthe remaining pair of guards went down.
Watts remained behind the crate. He brandished his pistol. “Stop!” he screamed. “My men are coming.You think I’m alone? You’re all dead. Drop your weapons.”
John crawled to the wet bar and crouched there. He willed the pain inside his stomach to go away. Hesignaled Sam and Fred and held up two fingers, then pointed the fingers over his head.
Sam and Fred fired a burst of rounds over Watts. He ducked.
John vaulted over the bar and leaped onto his quarry. He grabbed the pistol and wrenched it out of hishand, breaking the man’s index finger and thumb. John snaked his arm around Watts’s neck and chokedthe struggling man into near-unconsciousness.
Kelly and Linda entered. Kelly took out a syringe and injected Watts—enough polypseudomorphine tokeep him sedated for the better part of a day.
Fred fell back to cover the elevator. Sam entered and crouched by the windows, watching the streetbelow for any signs of trouble.
Kelly went to John and peeled back his black suit. Her gloves were slick with his blood. “The bullet isstill inside,” she said, and bit her lower lip. “There’s a lot of internal bleeding. Hang on.” She dug a tinybottle from her belt and inserted the nozzle into the bullet hole. “This might sting a little.”
The self-sealing biofoam filled John’s abdominal cavity. It also stung like a hundred ants crawlingthrough his innards. She pulled the bottle out and taped up the hole. “You’re good for a few hours,” shesaid, and then gave him a hand up.
John felt shaky, but he’d make it. The foam would keep him from bleeding to death and stave off theshock . . . for a while, at least.
“Incoming vehicles,” Sam announced. “Six men entering the building. Two taking up position
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outside . . . but just the front.”
“Get our package inside that crate and seal it up,” John ordered.
He left the room, got his duffel, and went to the balcony. He secured a rope and tossed it down twelvestories into the alley. He rappelled down, took a second to scan the alley for threats, then clicked histhroat mike once—the all-clear signal.
Kelly snapped a descent rig on the crate and pushed it off the balcony. It zipped down the line andthudded to a halt at the bottom.
A moment later the rest of the team glided down the rope.
They quickly donned their coveralls. Sam and Fred carried the crate as they entered the adjacentbuilding. They exited on the street a half block down and walked as quickly as they could back to thedocks.
Dozens of uniformed men ran from the dock toward the city. No one challenged them.
They reentered the now-deserted public showers.
“Everyone check your seals,” John said. “Sam, you go ring the doorbell. Meet us on the dropship.”
Sam nodded and sprinted out of the building, both packs of C-12 looped around his shoulder.
John took out the panic button. He triggered the green-mode transmission and tossed it into an emptylocker. If they didn’t make it out, at least the UNSC fleet would know where to find the rebel base.
“Your suit is breached,” Kelly reminded John. “We better get to the ship now, before Sam sets off hisfireworks.”
Linda and Fred checked the seals on the crate then carried it out. Kelly took point and John brought upthe rear.
They boarded the Pelican dropship and John sized up her armaments—dented and charred armor, a pairof old, out-of-date 40mm chain guns. The rocket pods had been removed. Not much of a warhorse.
There was a flash of lightning at the far end of the dock. The thunder roiled through the deck, and thenthrough John’s stomach.
While John watched, a gaping hole materialized in the airlock door amid a cloud of smoke and shattered
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metal. Black space loomed beyond. With an earsplitting roar, the atmosphere held in the docks abruptlytransformed into a hurricane. People, crates, and debris were blasted out of the ragged tear.
John pulled himself inside the dropship and prepared to seal the main hatch.
He watched as emergency doors descended over the breached airlock. There was a second explosion,and the drop door paused, then fell and clattered to the deck, crushing a light transport vessel underneath.
Behind them, large bay doors closed, sealing the docks off from the city. Dozens of workers still on thedocks ran for their lives, but didn’t make it.
Sam sprinted across the deck, perfectly safe inside his sealed black suit. He cycled through the Pelican’semergency airlock.
“Back door’s open,” he said with a grin.
Kelly fired up the engines. The Pelican lifted, maneuvered through the dock, and then out through theblasted hole and into open space. She pushed the throttle to maximum burn.
Behind them, the insurgent base looked like any other rock in the asteroid belt . . . but this rock wasventing atmosphere and starting to rotate erratically.
After five minutes at full power, Kelly eased the engines back. “We’ll hit the extraction point in twohours,” she said.
“Check on our prisoner,” John said.
Sam popped open the crate. “The seals held. Watts is still alive and has a steady pulse,” he said.
“Good,” John grunted. He winced as the throbbing pain in his side increased.
“Something bothering you?” Kelly asked. “How’s that biofoam holding up?”
“It’s fine,” he said without even looking at the hole in his side. “I’ll make it.”
He knew he should feel elated—but instead he just felt tired. Something didn’t sit right about theoperation. He wondered about all the dead dockworkers and civilians back there. None of them weredesignated targets. And yet, weren’t they all rebels on that asteroid?
On the other hand, it was like the Chief said—he had followed his orders, completed his mission, andgotten his people out alive. What more did he want?
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John stuffed his doubts deep in the back of his mind.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, and squeezed Kelly’s shoulder. John smiled. “What could be wrong? Wewon.”
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
0600 Hours, November 2, 2525 (Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSCMilitary Complex, planet Reach
John wondered who had died. The Spartans had been called to muster in their dress uniforms only oncebefore: funeral detail.
The Purple Heart awarded to him after his last mission glistened on his chest. He made sure it waspolished to a high sheen. It stood out against the black wool of his dress jacket. Occasionally John wouldlook at it, and make sure it was still there.
He sat in the third row of the amphitheater and faced the center platform. The other Spartans sat quietlyon the concentric rings of risers. Spotlights flicked on the empty stage.
He had been in Reach’s secure briefing chamber before. This is where Dr. Halsey had told them theywere going to be soldiers. This is where his life had changed and he had been given a purpose.
Chief Mendez entered the room and marched to the center platform. He wore his black dress uniform aswell. His chest was covered with Silver and Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, the Red Legion of Honoraward, and a rainbow of campaign ribbons. He had recently shaved his head.
The Spartans rose and stood at attention.
Dr. Halsey entered. She looked older to John, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth morepronounced, streaks of gray in her dark hair. But her blue eyes were as sharp as ever. She wore grayslacks, a black shirt, and her glasses hung about her neck on a gold chain.
“Admiral on deck,” Mendez announced.
They all snapped straighter.
A man ten years Dr. Halsey’s senior strode to the stage. His short silver hair looked like a steel helmet.His gait had a strange lope to it—what crewmen called “space walk”—from spending too much time inmicrogravity. He wore a simple, unadorned black dress UNSC uniform. No medals or campaignribbons. The insignia on the forearm of his jacket, however, was unmistakable: the single gold star of aRear Admiral.
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“At ease, Spartans,” he said. “I’m Admiral Stanforth.”
The Spartans took their seats in unison.
Dust swirled onstage and collected into a robed figure. Its face was obscured within the shadows of itshood. John could discern no hands at the end of its sleeves.
“This is Beowulf,” Admiral Stanforth said as he gestured to the ghostly creature. Stanforth’s voice wascalm, but distaste was evident on his face. “He is our AI attaché with the Office of Naval Intelligence.”
