"Try this," Kassak said. The green-armored Grunt opened a panel and fished his arm inside. "That coolant line always shakes loose."
"A coolant line?" Mickey asked. "Running to the reactor? We didn't lose any fluid, did we?"
"Eayach, it'll be fine," Kassak said. "The reactor takes care of itself,"
Mickey stared at Kassak and then shifted his gaze to the other Grunt. Marmag was resting with his arms crossed and his rebreather unit to the wall, and when he noticed the Human's gaze, he waggled his head in a way that reminded Mickey of a shrug.
"The reactor flamed out when the Phantom crashed," Kassak said, oblivious to the other two and their silent conversation. "And when the coolant wouldn't flow right, it refused to fire back up. Happens every time. The Prophets knew what they were doing when they designed the engines!"
Mickey managed to not ask Kassak if he was talking about the reactor or the engines. Those were two separate things on a Pelican, and an Albatross, and every other aerospace vehicle that Mickey knew of, and he was sure that the same was true for the Phantom too. It was a minor point, but everyone said that the Covenant didn't understand their own technology, and Mickey was starting to wonder if that was true after all.
The Grunt threw his weight against a bundle of hoses and called out to his old friend. "Marmag, if you would do the honors… No, this one goes here, that one goes there!"
"Fine," Marmag did something that Mickey couldn't see, and then retired to his old position, crossing his arms again and going back to his half-sleep.
Nervously, Mickey turned to his console and keyed the ignition. A thrum ran through the dropship as the reactor came online and restored primary power to all of the subsystems. For a moment, the ODST had hope.
Then the Phantom shifted underneath his feet and the airframe groaned against the tree it had crashed into. Too late, Mickey realized that one of those subsystems was the engines.
Adam and Zaid, still standing watch on top of the dropship, were taken by surprise. The Phantom rocked underfoot and rose, throwing the two snipers off their feet. The ODST snatched his rifle, crouched to gain his balance, and triggered his jetpacks.
His jets flung him up off the dropship and away from the tower. Very suddenly, there was nothing beneath him. Just a chasm lined by massive tree trunks that fell away into a green mist. With his heart hammering, Adam made last-second course corrections and desperately fought for altitude.
The ODST almost didn't make it. His knees clipped the edge of the next tower over, and he ducked and rolled so that he, not his rifle, took the brunt of the fall.
"Dammit, Crespo!" Adam swore at the pilot. "Warn a bloke next-"
He'd landed on the next tower over, about a story above the Phantom's crash site. From his vantage point, he saw Zaid make his landing. The mercenary had been hauled into the air by his Drone, and now the bug was gently lowering him to the deck beneath the Phantom. The Jackal brushed wingdust off his shoulders as soon as he landed and then craned his neck up to stare at the trooper.
"To Hell with that," Adam breathed.
The Jackal sniper cocked his head. Wordlessly, the Jackal trotted over to some kind of energy projector that was set at the edge of his platform. The ODST had seen it earlier and mistaken it for a thermal vent of some kind. But the moment that the Jackal stepped in the blue exhaust, he was launched up and over the chasm that separated the two towers, landing right next to Adam.
"What was that?" the sniper's translator hissed. "Couldn't quite hear you."
Adam stared in horror at the thermal vent, which he now recognized as an advanced form of the gravity lifts that he'd seen the Covenant employ. "That's even worse!"
"What?" the sniper asked. "That?"
"Yeah, that. I'm never setting foot in one of those things," Adam said as he cocked a thumb at his jetpack. "I'm going to stick to tech that I can trust."
"Oh, but you can trust it! It's Forerunner-make, and it's as sure as the sunrise!" Zaid bragged. "Not like High Charity's knockoffs! You never know when those gravlifts will stutter and die."
The sniper stretched his left leg, and his ankle made a loud pop. "Ask me how I know."
"No, I don't think I will," Adam shifted further away from the Jackal. "Mickey, you got that dropship fixed upright, yeah?"
"That's a negative," Mickey sighed over the radio. "We've got the antigrav back up, but we're only going to be able to sputter along the forest canopy for a bit. These Grunts seem to know what they're doing, but we're going to have to take it slow."
"Copy that," Adam glanced at the green-painted Phantom. "Captain, I'm assuming you heard that?"
"I heard it," Dare responded. "I need you and the other two in the East Tower. We need a plan of action."
"Well, you asked for us," Adam said as he tucked his helmet under one arm and lit a cigarette. "What's the plan, boss?"
"One sec," Hawk touched a hand to his headpiece. "Got one of the few satellites the 'Dawn brought with her passing overhead, standby for telemetry… Yup. here it comes."
"Transferring to datapad… and this here holotank," Castillo gestured with the tacpad toward the Covenant holo-pedestal. In a moment, he unplugged the tacpad and passed it to Dare. "Here Captain, this should give us a better look at things."
"Got it," Dare pulled a small disc from her pack and synched it to the pad. "School circle! We've got to identify key areas and get moving!"
She cloned the information on the datapad to another and passed the two datapads around to the ODSTs. N'tho and Usze read over their shoulders but did not take up the unfamiliar Human devices. Orva, on the other hand, stalked around the group as if he wasn't used to standing still.
The holotank at the center of the circle hummed to life. Instead of a mad Prophet or a Sangheili with strange loyalties, it showed a lone forested mountain.
Castello cleared his throat and spoke. "The Brutes found what appears to be a weapon emplacement in the forest, what they call the Languid Sentry'. It's a huge battle station of some sort, roughly five kilometers across. The Ops center on the Shadow of Intent originally mistook it for a mountain. Ground penetrating radar shows it to be something else."
To the naked eye, it really did look like a mountain. The holograph complemented the illusion, making it hard to tell the difference between the structure and the foliage that grew around it.
The scans on the datapad showed that what appeared to be craggy rock faces and placid lakes poking out of the trees were actually towers and expanses of bare metal. Six leaf-like platforms radiated out from the central hub, alternately short and wide like shovelheads, or long and narrowing to a point like an arrowhead. Each platform was host to support towers and strange cantilevered structures. The central hub itself was occupied almost entirely by a thick mess of towers.
"Where are the Brutes?" N'tho asked as he read over Buck's shoulder.
"Radar's only picked up one dropship," Castello explained. "It's that one on Platform Three."
"One dropship," Buck replied, tapping the image on his datapad. "So between us and them, it should be an even- whoa, never mind."
Looking closer, Buck realized that what he thought was a Phantom docked on one of the outlying platforms was a Lich-Class heavy dropship. It took his mind a minute to adjust the scale of the whole structure.
"Hawk, just how big is this… this weapon emplacement?"
"This Languid Sentry is just under five kilometers across," the Marine replied. "It's a pretty big one."
"Five kilometers," Dutch said. "Hell, even if a hundred Brutes rode in on that dropship, it's going to be a challenge to find them!"
"That works both ways, and it may be to our advantage," Usze said. "Against a company of Jiralhanae, our numbers are not sufficient for a stand-up fight."
"Aye," Adam said. "But that station is plenty big enough to play the ambush game, whittle their numbers down a bit."
"We do not have the time for that!" Orva cried. "Our fleet is in battle right now. Every moment that we are delayed is a small victory for Truth."
"I don't know about that, look at this terrain," Dare said. "There's plenty of towers in the center and on the outlying platforms. Each of them is overgrown with trees. That's the ideal terrain for Orva's Rangers to operate in, and both of our snipers are jump-mobile. I think we can negate the Brutes' numerical advantage."
"Indeed, but time is short. My Rangers would be of better use seeking out the control room."
"Taking that control room doesn't do us much good if the Brutes bottle us up inside," Buck said.
"Absolutely," Dare agreed. "Ideally, we would destroy one of their force concentrations, and force the rest to scatter. Your Rangers are good for that. And we should eliminate their transportation so they can't quickly relocate or regroup."
N'tho spoke up. "The Lich must be destroyed. This is a priority. Our Phantom would be no match for the Lich, even had your pilot not crashed it. And that grand conveyance has the weapons to hunt us down."
"We can take care of that," Dutch replied.
All three of the Elites gave the ODST a look. "Do not be so sure, Human,"
"I've run the simulations," the ODST replied. "Liches are hardy, but we've brought anti-armor weapons. I think we should bait this thing out into the open as soon as possible, so we can remove it from the playing board."
"If Dutch says he can take it down, then it's goin' down," Buck glared at the Elite.
"This is no mere Phantom to be taken out with your primitive weaponry," Usze chastised. "This is a Lich, with everything that it entails."
"More than that," Orva added. The ranger captain reached over Adam's shoulder and brushed a claw over the Lich. "That is an armed pattern, and doubtlessly armored as well."
"Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see who's proven right," Dutch bit out through clenched teeth, his fingers drumming against the magazine of the SMG that was slung under his shoulder. "I mean, if that Lich is that tough, we might as well abort the mission right now, because it's going to be dogging us all over the OZ."
"That is true," Usze conceded.
"Perhaps you boys could pull off the same trick you pulled in Mombassa," Dare suggested. "If we capture the Lich, that takes it out of the Brutes' hands, and secures our transportation back to the fleet."
"A daring idea," N'tho said with more than a trace of mirth as he circled around the group. He stared at the holoprojection of the station, and Buck swore that the Elite was tempted to go for it, but then the Elite clapped his mandibles in the negative. "But it is impossible. Had I a lance of infiltrators at my back, I would do it. But we have none, and the Brutes know we are coming."
"For once, I agree with the split-lip," Buck said. "No way we get that lucky twice."
"Then strike it from the skies," Orva declared. "Fight the Brutes if we must. Then we make all haste for the control room-"
"Sure thing," Hawk said as he went back to typing on the laptop (Field computer?) "So long as you can tell us where that battle station's control room is."
"Is that not what you were brought along for?"
"Funny," the Marine replied. "We can't find any presence for that battle station in the local network. Can't even ping it. If I had to guess, that platform is an independent battle station with its own network, and it probably only communicates with the Ark on a high level. We'll need to be on-site to patch in."
"So you'll have to come with us?" Dare asked, doubtfully.
"'fraid so, ma'am," Castello said. "But if you're going to shut down the Brutes' transportation, you'll need us on-site anyway. Someone's gotta shut down the trams."
"Trams?" N'tho asked. The Spec Ops Sangheili leaned closer to the holoprojector, studying the holographic model of the battle station.
"Yeah. You know, multiple cars strung together, run on rails-"
"I know, Human," the Elite retorted. "How do you know that there are trams?"
"I'm taking an educated guess. See that long thin structure that runs around the perimeter? It connects all of the individual platforms. You see similar structures on some of the largest space stations that Humanity ever built."
N'tho glanced at Usze, and the ascetic nodded.
"Yes, brother, that does sound familiar."
"Oh, good. You've seen one of these things?" Dutch asked.
"Not as such," Usze replied. "But perhaps some have. In the time of the Forerunner, they built enough Watchstations to blanket the stars, and then they set them to defend harborages and habitats. These Watchstations were all but wiped out in the war against the Flood. Few were ever found, and none intact."
The Ascetic carefully took a pad from Dare and examined the image closer. "All I know is that the Forerunners built their Watchstations with towers and trams as if they were made to be dwelled in. But they also carried the most potent weapons imaginable. The thirty-two supreme plasma lances that defended High Charity were taken from the Watchstation."
"So if the Brutes take this station?" Dutch asked.
"It could decide the conflict above in a matter of minutes."
"Then I guess we have to capture it," Dutch began.
"Or we could blow it up," Mickey pulled a can of C-7 foaming explosive from his belt and tossed it between his hands. "Either's fine by me."
The room rang with the shouts of all three Elites.
"That's it, then," Dare said. "We're taking that station."