He moved at a steady, mind-numbing jog, still too far out from his objective to bother with stealth. His team fanned out behind him, each team member carefully watching their section of ground for any sign of the enemy.
"Tango, two o'clock," Nate said, and then saw the target he was talking about. He switched from silenced pistol to silenced S2 sniper rifle and paused for a steady shot. The familiar whump of the silenced rifle thudded through him, and the target fell, none the wiser.
"Nice shot," Raphael-100 commented casually. "Got to be nearly a mile."
Nate nodded and settled back to speed. Somehow, he had a natural affinity for the sniper rifle. He could hit a soda can dead center from two miles away on a windy day. Without a spotter, or a scope adjustment. He could make the shot from the hip, but only one out of four tries – rifle level, it was closer to nineteen out of twenty. For some reason he had never experienced quite the same level of success with any other weapon. He was a crack shot with the S2 and better still with the S3, but no better a shot with any other weapon than any of his fellows. "There's a reason I'm a sniper, Raph."
"Tango at ten," Ezekiel-021 pointed out. "Extreme long range."
"I have him," Nate said, sighting the target through his scope before zooming in to place the crosshairs right over the Insurrectionist's center of mass. The range was too extreme to try for the headshot, much as Nate would have liked to. He pulled the trigger and kept watching. Just visible at this range was the tiny puff of pink mist as the projectile hit its target. A lung – not an instant kill but a kill all the same, and quick enough to disable the target that the element of surprise had not been lost. "Tango down."
"Nice," Zeke enthused.
"All units begin standard stealth procedure," Nate ordered. The five members of his team responded with green acknowledgement lights. They took comm silence seriously, and for good reason. Zeke and Raph had almost been killed a few months back during a raid. The cause of the disaster had been a single breach of comm silence, which the Innies had managed to triangulate.
Moving carefully from cover to cover, often commando-crawling to cover the space, Nate and his team crossed ground slowly, but it sure as hell beat being seen and losing the element of surprise. Raph's acknowledgement light went yellow, and Nate froze, signaling the rest of the team to do the same. Less than a foot away, a four-man Insurrectionist patrol passed by, oblivious to the six Spartans concealed by nothing more than a light layer of snow and a large helping of total stillness.
Zeke signaled green and then yellow, framing a question. Engage?
Nate responded with decisive red. No way in hell. If the patrol did not check in, it would blow their cover. The Innies he had already killed were fringe snipers, and according to intelligence they did not report unless they saw something.
Six Spartans waited, as still and silent as statues, until the Innies were well past. The wind whipped up flurries of snow, further obscuring Spartans and Innies alike, and finally Nate signaled to move out, opting for hand signals rather than acknowledgement lights. He led the slow but nearly invisible procession, then paused in cover, pointing at the fence twelve feet away and flashing his acknowledgement light yellow. Too far.
All five of his Spartans nodded their understanding. Nate looked for another way forward, but there was no cover anywhere that was any closer to the objective than the copse in which he and his soldiers were concealed. Finally, he used hand signals again to communicate an order to move forward anyway. Under cover of the gathering storm, staying as low as possible, he slipped through the fence just ahead of his team, and then stood, a foot behind the guard posted at the nearest door.
All it took was a squeeze from a gauntleted hand and the guard fell to the snow, neck snapped, stone cold dead. Another guard on the other side of the door saw the six Spartans and reached for her comm to raise the alarm, but was rewarded with the same fate.
They were in.
Nate led the way, sticking to shadows where he could and motioning that his Spartans do the same. Not for the first time, he wished he had access to the same technology that allowed UNSC Prowlers to cloak themselves and thus become completely invisible. A little bit of av-cam would go a long way. What little time he and his team had spent fighting the Covenant indicated that Covenant Elites had better cloaking tech, and some were equipped with av-cam units small and effective enough for deployment of cloaked infantry. He was nearly sure Engineering had a few burnt-out examples of such tech, but nearly sure and totally sure were two completely different things.
Someone's dress shoes clacked against the floor. Nate saw a shadow pass across a well-lit section of the passageway and frantically signaled his team to take cover as best they could. He folded himself into a space that was surprisingly small, considering the size of him, and prayed that his Spartans had managed to find sufficient cover.
The footsteps drew nearer. Nate didn't dare look. The Innie paused only a few feet away, then humphed and kept walking. The team let out the collective breath they had been holding. Cautiously, they waited, watching their motion trackers until the contact moved out of range and then listening intently as they waited for the enemy to move out of hearing range.
Nate checked his sensors again, and then carefully eased out of cover just enough to see whether there were other contacts that didn't show up on the motion trackers. There was nothing there, so he stood and motioned for his Spartans to follow.
As one cohesive unit, they ghosted through the compound, careful not to be seen or to make any sound. The silence was absolute and borderline unnerving, but the benefit of it was that Nate and his team could hear enemy contacts well before their motion trackers, or eyes, could see anything. Footsteps were the only sound, and gave a very good indication of where not to be. Nate closed his eyes and concentrated on what he could hear. A faint buzzing told him the central heating was on, which was no surprise. He let his mind paint a picture of where everything was in relation to his team, and the schematic he had studied at length.
Nate opened his eyes to Cassiel-104's acknowledgement light blinking yellow twice, and then green once, and yellow again. Another question. See anything?
Red, then yellow. No. Nothing. Yet.
Based on the schematic, the objective was likely to be in the middle of this facility. The room was heavily guarded and they would probably have to fight to gain entry. Nate had studied and studied the schematic and it simply was not possible to enter that room other than through the only door. He needed a decoy – and to hope that the guards were poorly trained – to be able to get in without a bloodbath. He and his Spartans were dreadfully outnumbered, outgunned, and only very lightly armored. He might be able to get in and out and keep most of his team intact, but barging in all guns blazing was going to get someone killed.
The Spartan kept moving. It was dangerous to stay in one place for too long in a combat zone. He wanted to think free-fire, but it wasn't. Not until his team was discovered and the inherent threat became direct and imminent. Nate shrugged just enough for his brothers and sister to see, and counted himself lucky that he had Raph, Zeke, Cas, Eli and Lin at his back. There were no soldiers in the universe better suited to backing him up than the five he had worked with for the better part of the last thirty years.
Flicking his acknowledgement light yellow twice, he paused. Eyes open.
Still on point, Nate crept forward inch by slow inch, paying careful attention to what his ears told him. Zeke and Cas moved carefully forward to stand at his flanks, and Raph, Eli and Lin took up the rear.
Yellow. Green. All clear. Green again, twice. Keep moving. Taking his own advice, the Spartan moved quickly but silently from cover to cover, crossing another well-lit stretch just short of a dead sprint before all but sliding to a stop in cover. Eli nearly ran into him, and Cas swore under his breath, barely enough for Nate to hear through their helmets and a couple of inches of air. He gave the all clear again, accompanying the acknowledgement light signal with a shrug. Just being careful.
Progress was frustratingly slow and there were a number of close calls. Once, Nate had to reach out of cover and snap an enemy's neck to keep him from calling in a sighting of a roughly humanoid shadow where such a shadow should not have existed. That was sloppy, and Nate was of a mind to reprimand Raphael for the mistake. It would have to wait, of course, so wait it did.
Eli signaled red, yellow, green. That was too close. Nate nodded in agreement, then glanced at Raph, who swiftly looked at the floor and then forward down the corridor again to signal his embarrassment and that he would do better. They moved on again after that, Nate still on point. All good leaders led from the front, not a protected position in the middle.
Time passed. Nate's eyes were too busy glancing around to make sure that he and his team weren't seen to know how much time, but he guessed that the mission clock was probably around three hours by now, including the time taken to sneak in. That put it on approximately two hours inside the facility. It was too much time, but if he pressed on any faster he and his Spartans would begin making mistakes big enough to potentially cost them the mission.
Progress report, he demanded of himself, then proceeded to give it. Mission clock approximately three hours. My men and I have been inside the facility for some time, and progress is slow. Enemy traffic inside is heavier than expected, demanding that we spend much time in cover. Kill count is already higher than expected, all kills attributed to mission leader. Mission status green. He paused. For now.
Pushing aside all thoughts of reporting, Nate pressed himself up against a wall and proceeded sideways. The team followed before he had time to order them to, working with their leader in that communication-free way only a Spartan team could. When he stopped at a corner and consulted his motion tracker, Lin dropped to a prone position and commando-crawled forwards to peek cautiously around. Her light flashed yellow and then green, the signal for all clear.
Nate moved and then gave the move out order. Typically it would have been met with five green acknowledgement lights but to send the signal took a moment's distraction so in tense situations the system was only used for orders and important questions. Anything else was hand and posture signals, which were more subtle and often more effective.
A length of totally clear hallway was ahead. Nate frowned, eyeing the guards posted at the door. That was the only way through. It and two more doors between this passage and the objective. Minimum carnage would require some skilled shooting with the silenced M6D sidearm at his hip. He flicked Eli's light to gain the other Spartan's attention, then put a nav marker above the guard he wanted to delegate to his other sharpshooter. He lifted one hand with three fingers raised. On my mark.
Eli nodded. Got it.
Nate counted down with his fingers, then pulled his fist downward. MARK! Two whups rang out within half a second of each other – Nate had it at an eighth – and two guards fell with neat holes drilled between their eyes. For the moment, that door was clear. Nate moved forwards, watching his motion tracker for any sign of targets on the other side. There was one. He pointed at himself. Mine.
He moved slowly until he got close enough to the proximity-activated door for it to chime cheerfully, and then sprinted at it, slipping through the narrow gap just as the guard on the other side realized it was opening. Combat knife already drawn, Nate grabbed his target's shoulder with his free hand, and, from behind, slashed the knife across the Innie's neck. The target fell with a muffled gurgle.
An alarm sounded. Nate and Raph cursed violently in perfect unison, and all six took off at a flat out sprint towards the next door. Nate's ears told him that the nearest enemy contact was just far enough away that he and the team could get to the other side of the door and break the mechanism with just enough time to get to the objective before the Innies could break through.
"Screw comm silence," Nate muttered to himself, and then opened a closed channel to his team-mates. "You all know the plan for this eventuality. Get in as fast as possible and then get the hell out as fast as possible. Don't die in the meantime. Comm silence is worthless now, so swear at me all you like."
"Whose hare-brained plan was this anyway?" Lin joked. Nate smiled at her self-deprecating humor.
"Yours," Eli reminded her helpfully.
"Stow it," Nate ordered. This was no time for the usual battlefield banter. If they had the breath to tease each other, they weren't running fast enough. "Have you forgotten the meaning of haul ass?"
With that reaffirmation of his authority out of the way, Nathaniel kicked it up a gear, leaving his team in the dust. He was damn fast, even for a Spartan, and that coupled with his savant-like sniping ability made him an excellent scout and point-man. He was careful to keep his speed reasonable, so his team could stay together, and soon Eli and Lin had caught up. Raph and Cas were not far behind, but they were still trailing, so Nate slowed up a little more and let them catch up.
Cassiel was audibly at his limits. His breathing was heavy and easily audible. Raph was a better runner, and had hung back to keep his assigned 'Rifle Brother' company. Now that the group was bunched again, Raphael took point, and Lin dropped back to let Nate draw level with the new point-man.
"Don't forget-," Nate began.
"-nobody left behind, yeah, I know," Raph finished for him. "You treat us like you're the only one with a clue, sometimes."
"It's my job to make sure we all make it out of here in one piece. Perhaps I do my job a little too well, but wouldn't you rather that than lose a brother or sister?" Nate started backing off the speed a little bit. This next door, if they hit the proximity sensor too fast, would not open quickly enough for two Spartans running abreast to get through. In full MJOLNIR, that would have made little enough difference. Nate and Raph both had the mass to bash through even if it failed to open.
However, lightly armored as they were, they weighed significantly less, and therefore had less momentum – and there was also the small but significant factor of impact protection. This light stuff, little better than standard-issue Marine gear, was dreadful in comparison.
"Steady off," he ordered. "These doors don't like dead sprints."
A few more strides and the door chimed and began to open. Two more long, loping strides and he and Raph were through. The rest of the team piled through behind, and Nate hit a manual terminal to close the door.
"Get clear," Eli warned, placing small amounts of plastic explosives in critical parts of the door mechanism. "This will only be a little blast, but the shockwave's a bitch." He set the last charge, and then activated the timer in his HUD. Nate watched the numbers count down and was the last to bolt for minimum safe distance. Just as he reached it, the explosives blew. Another alarm went off.
"Run! Just run and keep running! It's not far now. If it shoots at you, shoot back. You don't have time to miss!" His voice was urgent but controlled as he issued the orders. It was more of a task to appear calm and in-control when he had to scramble to keep his footing – and failed to – as one boot struck a puddle of lubricant. Raph grabbed his shoulder and hauled him along until he could find his feet again.
Nate switched mid-stride from pistol to sniper rifle. He could hit with the S2 at any range barring so close the barrel was too long, and nothing ever got that close. Eli did the same. That concerned Nate – skilled as Eli was, he did not possess the same uncanny talent for nearly always finding the right bearing regardless of scope, environment and weapon position. That was Nate's talent and Nate's alone.
The guards at the final door jumped into action as the six Spartans rounded the corner. Nate's rifle kicked and a guard fell before he had time to process the fact that he had to shoot. Eli was almost as fast, but missed, swore, and had to try again. Six incredibly skilled, highly-trained Spartans against ten incredibly skilled, highly-trained ex-UNSC rebels worked out to be a fair fight when the rebels' superior arms and armor were taken into account. Ordinarily it would have been a walk in the park. Nate wished for his MJOLNIR suit, and knew from their postures that his team wished the same.
He fell back and took cover around the corner. There was nothing between his team and the guards. No cover, not much in the way of armor, and as for weapons, they had pistols. Nate and Eli had sniper rifles, but they were awkward and unwieldy in such close quarters. Raph had a rocket launcher – useless – and Lin, Cas and Zeke all carried spare pistols as their secondary weapons.
Again, Nate's rifle kicked, and a guard fell, followed by two more shots and two more kills before he ducked all the way into cover to reload. The sniper popped out again ready to fell the last few guards. His rifle kicked, and something punched him hard in the shoulder an instant later. His entire right arm went limp, and his weapon fell to the floor, useless. He fell back to cover again to unholster his pistol, then rushed the last guard, firing as fast as the gun would pump out the projectiles – which was about half as fast as he was pulling the trigger.
The guard fell, and he leapt over the pile of bodies. The team followed, and Nate had to fend off questions from a very concerned Lin as he clicked the safety on and picked up the object they had been ordered to retrieve. It looked useless and valueless to him. No purpose whatsoever on a battlefield, and it didn't look like it could sell for enough money to be worth the cost of this mission.
"What is it?" Zeke wondered.
"Doesn't matter," Nate said, shoving it into the hardcase on his left thigh. "Let's get my rifle and get the hell outta Dodge."
"Already got it," Cas said, coming back through the door and slinging the S2 across his back. "You need treatment for that."
Nate glanced at his wounded shoulder and shrugged with the other one. "It's not so bad."
"You're impossible," Lin sighed.
"What happened to fast?" Eli reminded them. The hollow banging on the door they had disabled was getting more insistent… and Nate could clearly hear the door threatening to give way. He glanced at his team-mates and then bolted out the door and down a perpendicular hallway, the five other Spartans in tow.
"All right, boys and girl, listen up. If they catch up to us, we're dead. If there are any other security forces in this facility, and we come within range of their weapons, we're dead. If they follow us and catch up before evac arrives, we're even more dead. There's no more time to waste."
"Sir!" five voices rang out in unison.
"Good, you all understand. I don't have to remind you to look after your Rifle Sibling – and no swapping this time, that's how Lin and Cas nearly got killed on our last mission. Each of you has one objective: get your assigned partner out of here alive. We all know where the evac point is, we all know how to get there, we will have to split up. I'm relying on all of you to make sure your partner is safe."
"Safe," Raph scoffed. "What does any of us know about safe?"
"Perhaps not dead is a better way of putting it," Nate conceded, trying and failing to ignore the stab of pain in his shoulder. It threw him off his stride; he stumbled, and Eli had to grab him to keep him from falling flat on his face.
As he ran, he managed to push the pain from the forefront of his mind, but Nate still felt like someone had stabbed him and was now twisting and wiggling the knife. It hurt like hell.
"What in the…? Hey boss," Lin said from the front, "I have a friendly contact!"
"Try to raise them, but don't stop running, and don't slow down."
"Aye aye, sir."
Nate ran almost blindly, following Eli more than leading the team or even paying any attention to the actual plan. He pushed back against the grey haze that played at the edges of his vision and pulled up TEAMBIO to check his own vitals. It took him a moment to find his own name and stats, and when he found what he was looking for, he swore.
"What is it?" Eli asked, all but dragging his leader now.
"Blood loss," Nate managed, battling now for consciousness. "Shit. Shoulders bleed almost as bad as heads do."
"All right. I have command. Just stay on your feet." Eli switched seamlessly from the second-in-command who took orders without question to the leader whose word was law. Nate smiled faintly. This was why he had chosen Eli. The other sniper could just as easily be a leader as a follower. Flexibility made for a very good Two.
His legs felt like some odd mix between lead and jelly. Nate forced one foot in front of the other for a few more strides, and then gave up, concentrating all his strength on staying conscious. Eli paused for what felt like an age but was really a second to swing Nathaniel over his shoulder, and then sprinted onwards. The bouncing made the pain in Nate's shoulder worse, and the blackness swallowed him.
