Oblivion, p.1
Oblivion, page 1
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HISTORIAN’S NOTE
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On April 15, 2526, more than a year after the loss of the planet Harvest to the Covenant during first contact, humanity struck back with Operation: SILENT STORM. Invading enemy space for the first time, a combined force of Spartans and ODST Space Assault Troopers attacked a supply world on the outer fringes of the hegemony, leveling two alien cities, eliminating an orbital shipyard, and decimating an enemy fleet. Now, just six weeks later, the Covenant is bringing its full might to bear. Human colonies are falling two and three a week, and new invasion routes are opening faster than the Office of Naval Intelligence can identify them. Like all of the Spartans, Blue Team is rushing from one disaster to another, desperately attempting to stem a brutal tide of violence that even the United Nations Space Command’s top brass is beginning to believe cannot be stopped. . . .
CHAPTER 1
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1403 hours, June 5, 2526 (military calendar)
Nasim Bridge, Samalat Gorge
Karpos Mountain Range, Planet Mesra, Qusdar System
The Covenant armor emerged from the cloud-draped jungle on the opposite rim of the gorge, an unending line of sleek forms gliding up the muddy road on cushions of nothingness. Still five kilometers distant, the gun carriages appeared the size of fingertips, with a pair of tiny plasma cannons sitting atop smooth, sagittate hulls so purple they nearly vanished into the surrounding gloom. Interspersed among the gun carriages were more than a hundred armored personnel carriers and the articulated cylinders of three CBVs—combat bridging vehicles—enveloped in the faint shimmer of heavy-duty energy shielding.
A CBV could launch a telescoping span across a kilometer-wide chasm in less than a minute, so blowing the Nasim Bridge was not going to stop the enemy advance. The aliens would still cross the Samalat Gorge in force, and the Fifth Ghost Battalion would have to stop a hundred armored vehicles with little more than hand grenades and shoulder-fired rockets.
Impossible.
The Fifth Ghost Battalion was down to quarter strength, just two-hundred-and-eighty soldiers. They were low on food, medicine, and ammunition, and they had come straight from a two-day battle, marching thirty hours nonstop because they were the Militia of Mesra’s sole remaining battalion and someone had to delay the enemy advance. The UNSC’s 24th Marine Engineering Brigade needed time to demolish a huge xenotime mine in the next valley—not just collapse the underground workings, but pack the passages with enough nukes to render the ore body utterly useless.
The only thing John-117 knew about xenotime was that it yielded ytterbium and erbium, lanthanide elements essential to the manufacture of ultra-efficient lasers and small-scale fusion reactors. Apparently, that made denying it to the Covenant important enough to risk Blue Team in support of a simple delaying action.
But Mesra also had huge deposits of other lanthanide ores—many associated with ancient cave systems that had formed millennia before humans arrived—and it happened to be one of the few worlds that had been spared planetary plasma bombardment when the Covenant attacked. From that, the intelligence analysts of Battle Group X-Ray had inferred that the aliens wanted to capture Mesra’s mining facilities intact, and Admiral Preston Cole had asked the Militia of Mesra to forgo evacuation in support of UNSC denial efforts. To a soldier, the Mesranis had responded by vowing not to leave their home until they had killed every alien who set foot on it.
Even by Spartan standards, the oath was over the top, but the Mesranis were doing their best to make good on their word. During eight days of pitched battle, they had sacrificed brigade after brigade to prevent the Covenant from capturing any mine intact. Now the Militia of Mesra was down to a single understrength battalion protecting the planet’s most remote mine—and John was glad he and Blue Team had arrived in time to help.
Especially when the Mesranis were making their last stand just to buy a little time for the rest of humanity.
John eased back from the cliff edge, down behind the rocky crest that overlooked the gorge. Most of the Mesranis lay on the reverse slope, trying to catch an hour of sleep in hastily dug belly scrapes. The rest of Blue Team—Fred-104, Kelly-087, and Linda-058—were humping equipment in from the makeshift landing zone on a tailings dam, and they were probably ascending the back side of the slope by now.
At least, he hoped they were. This battle was going to start sooner than expected, and they still had a lot of digging to do. He descended the slope a dozen meters so he wouldn’t disturb the sleeping Mesranis, then crab-walked across the mist-swaddled slope toward the Fifth Battalion command post.
The tangled undergrowth in this part of the jungle was blanketed by a buildup of gossamer web so deep and thick it was impossible to see the terrain beneath. The stuff wasn’t strong enough to impede movement, but it did conceal a lot of sunken ground and fallen logs—tripping hazards that could turn a solid tactical plan into a disaster. He would have to keep that in mind.
He reached the command post, an open-topped bunker dug into the reverse slope. An arm-length arachnid crouched atop the dirt wall opposite him, lurking in the gossamer ground web and keeping watch on the soldiers in the pit below. With pincers the size of combat knives and eight dorsal eyes set above eight furry legs, the creature looked more dangerous than it was. As long as no one stuck an unarmored hand or boot into a hatching crèche, the arachnids were supposed to be pretty harmless, and the Mesranis usually tried to leave the things undisturbed.
In the bottom of the bunker, a dozen Mesrani aides were working comm sets and adjusting tactical arrays. Four officers stood at a portable field table with slumped shoulders and uneven balance, studying a bank of video displays linked to remote observation cameras. As combat-control technology went, the system was primitive and cumbersome, but it had the advantage of not requiring a satellite feed or drone link—a major benefit in an environment where the enemy dominated both air and orbit.
John picked an open spot, then jumped down into the bunker. Most everyone glanced in his direction—when a Spartan in four-hundred-and-fifty kilograms of Mjolnir power armor dropped two meters into a two-meter-deep hole, even soldiers asleep on their feet felt him land—then turned their attention back to their tasks. But the commanding major, a slender woman in a full helmet and muddy jungle-pattern uniform, allowed her gaze to linger.
“You are the support I was promised?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Through the major’s transparent eye shield, John could see a narrow nose, high cheeks, and black brows over eyes sunken with exhaustion. She had a wide mouth with thin lips savaged by chewing and dehydration. He raised his hand in salute. “Master Chief John-117, at your service.”
She touched her fingertips to her helmet in a gesture that seemed more greeting than salute. “Your surname is a number, one hundred seventeen?”
“Ma’am, it’ll be simpler if you call me John or Master Chief.” He was not at liberty to explain the designation protocols used in the top-secret SPARTAN-II super-soldier program, so he tried to change the subject by dipping his faceplate toward the long squiggle of unrecognizable characters on the major’s name tape. “I apologize, Major. I don’t know how to pronounce your name.”
“Bah’d de Gaya y Elazia de los Karim.” She lowered her hand, and the corners of her eyes wrinkled in amusement. “It will be simpler if you call me Bah’d.”
John snapped his hand down. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Bah’d.”
“Yes, ma’am.” John winced as soon as he spoke. He and Blue Team had been fighting alongside the Mesranis for six days, but he still found their egalitarian militia so odd that he had trouble remembering to address the officers by their first names. “Apologies, ma’am—I mean, Bah’d.”
“Better.”
Bah’d looked out the back of the bunker and down the ridge toward the xenotime mine, where the chunky silhouettes of three huge figures were pushing through the mossy undergrowth. They were moving slowly, dragging sledges stacked high with crates of ammunition and explosives, as well as six big M68 Gauss cannons scavenged from destroyed Warthog LRVs. Like John, all three Spartans wore power armor, though the MJOLNIR program was still so new that as part of the COBALT field-testing project, each of their suits bore modifications that made them look like different-colored variations on a theme.
“I had hoped there would be more of you,” Bah’d said. “It is going to be close, this battle.”
“Not that close,” John replied. “We’ll stop them.”
“With six Gauss cannons?” Bah’d shook her helmet and did not bother to ask about UNSC air support. Between the low cloud ceiling and the Covenant’s air superiority, a Sparrowhawk would not have lasted two minutes over the battlefield. “I do not think you have fought many armor columns, John. Your Gauss cannons will fire only a few rounds before they are taken out by those Wraiths.”
“Wraith” was the common human nickname for the big gun carriages that dominated the Covenant column. John had counted fifty Wraiths in the column before leaving his o
“We’ll use fire-and-move tactics,” John said. “Two bursts, and we’re gone. Reposition and repeat.”
“On foot?” Bah’d asked. At more than a hundred kilograms apiece, M68s were unwieldy weapons for dismounted combat. “How is that possible?”
“That would take too long to explain.” Again, John was dodging. Few people had the necessary security clearance to be briefed on the SPARTAN program. And, even had Bah’d been one of them, the last thing John wanted to do was recount how he and his fellow Blue Team members had been conscripted at age six and put into a top-secret project to develop bioengineered super-soldiers. “But we can do it. Trust me.”
Bah’d ran her gaze over his power-armored form again, appraising him from his angular helmet down to his lug-soled sabbatons. John was glad that his face remained hidden behind a gold reflective faceplate. The biological augmentations that he had endured as he entered adolescence had increased his height to more than two meters and his mass to almost a hundred-and-thirty kilograms. But he was still only fifteen years old, with a youthful face that tended to undermine the confidence of seasoned commanders like Bah’d.
Finally Bah’d nodded. “Very well, John. I will trust you.” She turned back to her weary officers and motioned him to join them. “It seems I have no choice.”
John stepped to her side and waited while she introduced the commanders leading the remnants of the battalion’s three companies. There were two men and a woman, all identified by first name only, all haggard and sunken-eyed from many straight days of combat and movement. None of Bah’d’s officers looked older than twenty-three or -four, and only one wore the double bars of a captain on his collar tips. The other two were still lieutenants—a sign they had been reassigned in the field to take the place of a fallen superior.
“As you can see, the enemy approach is cautious.” Bah’d pointed to the leftmost video display, where a swarm of chest-high, mask-wearing bipeds were pushing through the mist ahead of a slow-moving armored personnel carrier. The UNSC had nicknamed the short bipeds “Grunts,” and they were just one of five different species of Covenant aliens that John had fought so far.
“We assume that the Covenant expect us to hit them several kilometers below the Nasim Bridge,” Bah’d continued, “then force them to fight for every meter of ground. And, had we the strength, that is exactly what we would do.”
As she spoke, a plume of fire erupted at one corner of the screen, hurling pieces of an unlucky Grunt two meters into the air. Immediately the APC’s cannon turret swung around and began to cut through the nearby undergrowth, triggering a half dozen antipersonnel mines and filling the mist with pillars of flame. The Grunts panicked and dived for cover, two of them landing on mines that sent them riding fiery geysers straight back into the air. Then more plasma bolts began to pour in from the left side of the display as several vehicles offscreen opened fire.
“The aliens have reached our first field of antipersonnel mines, five kilometers from the bridge,” Bah’d explained. “There are three more small fields between there and the two-kilometer mark, all laid in the undergrowth alongside the road.”
“To encourage the Covenant to stay on the road,” John surmised. “And then?”
“A kilometer of antivehicle mines,” answered the man with the captain’s bars—Bah’d had introduced him as Aurello. “Planted under the roadbed and on its far side.”
“Why not the near side?” John asked. “Short on mines?”
Aurello’s eyes remained blank for nearly five seconds before he finally seemed to realize he had been asked a question.
“We have plenty of mines, thanks to your 24th Marine Engineering Brigade,” he said, “but not very much time. If we encourage the aliens to travel close to the gorge, there is hope some vehicles may slip over the side.”
“We have learned to seize every advantage we can,” Bah’d added. “The last kilometer before the bridge is heavily mined, and there are supplemental explosives alongside the gorge. With luck, the rim will collapse when their combat bridging vehicles attempt to launch their spans.”
“Luck works best when you’re prepared,” John said. It was something that Franklin Mendez, the Spartans’ senior drill instructor, had been fond of saying back on Reach. “And you definitely seem prepared.”
The corners of Bah’d’s eyes wrinkled again, and she and Aurello exchanged glances. John didn’t understand what they found so funny, but he didn’t take offense. The entire battalion would probably die in the next few hours, so he was glad to brighten their day in any way he could.
John turned to the middle display screen, which showed a relief map of the anticipated battlefield, and asked, “Where do you want us?”
“Perhaps we should tell you what we have planned,” Bah’d replied. “Then we will discuss it.”
“Discuss it?”
John glanced at the chronometer on the heads-up display inside his helmet. In response, the Mjolnir’s onboard computer—linked to his mind via a neural lace implanted at the base of his skull—immediately displayed an ETA for the enemy column. That was how the lace worked, reacting to his thoughts even before they grew conscious. It made John feel like there was a ghost living inside his head. But it was the neural interface that allowed him to manipulate a half ton of power armor as effortlessly as his own body—and to process a raging torrent of tactical data without drowning in irrelevant detail. Without the lace, he would have died a dozen times during the last six weeks alone.
“With all due respect, Bah’d, I’m not sure we have time for discussions. The first Wraiths will reach the Nasim Bridge in”—John checked the ETA on his HUD—“seventy-eight minutes. My team and I have firing lanes to clear and emplacements to dig.”
“Then why do you waste time questioning my wishes?” Bah’d’s tone switched from sharp to gentle: “This is how we do things in the Militia of Mesra—together.”
“Yes, ma’am,” John said. “My apologies, ma’am.”
Bah’d rolled her eyes at his reflexive deference, then turned to her female lieutenant. “Hiyat, will you share our thinking?”
Hiyat was a tall woman with coffee-colored skin and tired amber eyes that nevertheless sparkled with amusement.
“Yes, ma’am.” She shot John a look of contrition—then added, “Of course, ma’am.”
Everyone laughed too hard, and John found himself a bit unsettled by their forced humor in the face of certain death. Altered mental states were a symptom of combat fatigue, especially in exhausted soldiers who were using too many stim-packs in an effort to maintain alertness. Still, John forced a scratchy chuckle through his helmet’s external voicemitter. It never hurt to be a good sport.
Hiyat took a step back, then traced her finger along a jungle road as it left the Nasim Bridge and ran along the near side of the gorge. After a kilometer, it made a sharp hairpin swing around the end of Sarpesi Ridge and proceeded back toward the command post before turning off toward the xenotime mine, three kilometers away. Along its entire length, the road was the only level ground on the map.
“As you see,” Hiyat said, “the Ytterbium Road runs beneath our position for over two kilometers, from the Nasim Bridge until it turns toward the Doukala Xenotime Works. The road is mined with Lotus antitank charges the entire length.”
“So the enemy’s progress will be slow, and they’ll be exposed to attack the whole time.”
John was eyeing the rugged terrain on the back side of Sarpesi Ridge, noting how difficult it would be for the Wraiths to leave the road without plummeting into the sheer-walled valley below. He reached over Hiyat’s head and touched the screen where the road snaked along the notch-shaped walls of a precipitous ravine marked the Kharsis Flume.
“Have you thought about adding supplemental explosives above this flume?”
Hiyat craned her neck, her eyes running along John’s arm as though she had just realized how tall he was. When her gaze reached his fingertip, her eyes drifted back to his faceplate.
