―In for a penny, in for a pound," Four said.

When a diode on one end flashed, indicating the upload was complete, Four yanked the wafer out and handed it to Two, who stuck it into her helmet too. One was prepared to order Three to do the same but that proved unnecessary. Soon all four of their HUDs featured translucent V-shaped arrows with range meters that indicated the direction of their individual pylons.

―Everybody set countdown timers for . . . T-minus ten minutes," One said. ―This spot is Rally Point Alpha. Return here once your blow packs are set. Then we‘ll have Hopalong give his buggers the good news they‘ve been liberated. We‘ll evacuate them beyond the blast radius before detonating the C-12."

One pointed at Hopalong, then pointed at the ground. ―You stay here and wait ‘til we come back.

You got me?"

The Drone just cocked his head and wiggled his mandibles in her general direction.

Spartan: Black checked their assault rifles one last time. Locked and loaded.

―Let‘s get some," One said.

―Universe needs less ugly," Three declared.

Then they headed off, alone, in four different directions.

Black-Two‘s HUD led her down a wide rabbit hole that snaked several levels deeper into the earth so narrowly that she had to scale down feet-first. At the nadir of the passage, where it began snaking back up again, a fissure in the side of the tunnel faced a much larger cavern beyond.

Two turned on the horizontal lantern over her visor and peered through. The beam illuminated subway tracks, a stalled train, and several signs in Spanish in the human-hewn tunnel on the other side.

She flicked the light off and made her way up the rest of the tunnel in the green gloom of

light-enhancement. The range counter in her HUD said she was within fifty meters of her anti-grav pylon. The tunnel emptied out into another with a level floor and a ceiling high enough for her to stand up all the way again.

As soon as she did so, a Jackal rounded a bend, his beak pointed downward at a translucent

glowing cube in his hands.

Right before he walked into her, he looked up, sensing an obstruction, and Black-Two unloaded her assault rifle into his face and neck. The deafening digging sounds reverberating off every inch of the warren completely drowned out the burp of the AR and the Kig-Yar dropped without a cry.

Black-Two crouched behind the bend in the tunnel, but no companions of the dead Jackal emerged.

Her motion sensor remained clear of red dots. The countdown on her HUD hadn‘t quite reached eight minutes.

Near the floor, along one wall, she found a crevice big enough to stuff the Jackal‘s corpse into in case any hostiles decided to come up the tunnel behind her. She scraped gravel to cover the purple bloodstains on the tunnel floor and accidentally kicked the smoky cube the Kig-Yar was holding. As the cube bounced across the floor she thought she could see three-dimensional images in the center of it. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

The sides of the cube were perfectly clear, and its interior was filled with a cloudy gel that churned and swirled as if it had its own internal air currents. In the center of the mist stood a slowly rotating three-dimensional image of a Yanme‘e male, wings extended. A few Covenant characters floated near its feet. Black-Two had studied her Interrogator enough to recognize these characters as numbers—years, in fact. Two dates about a decade apart.

A trio of buttons appeared beneath Black-Two‘s fingers on the surface of the cube. She tapped one, and the mist seethed, wiping away the large image of the Drone, and started cycling through a series of images inside an immaculate plasticine honeycomb marred by a spray of Drone legs, abdomens, heads, and splashes of their green-gray blood. Interspersed among these three-dimensional tableaus of slaughter were scenes of smashed eggs, presumably Yanme‘e as well, shell shards hurled

explosively against the luminescent hive walls, the not-quite-living insides scooped out and oozing across the floor. The same Kig-Yar character floated beside each image, every time.

The countdown on her HUD reached five minutes.

She removed the Interregator from her forearm and waved its optical scanner over the cube until it picked up the Jackal word.

While she waited for the Interrogator‘s wheel icon to stop rotating, she played with the cube a little bit more, punching other buttons and seeing where they took her. In all cases, the mist wiped away the existing image and replaced it with another 360 degree three-dimensional image of an individual Drone, attached to various scenes of hive carnage, all accompanied by the same Kig-Yar character.

At last, the Interrogator flashed at her. ―Untranslatable," it claimed. ―Word itself translation from Yanme‘e language. Nearest analogue(s): ‗Unmutual‘ (43% accuracy), ‗Incapable of Socialization‘

(51% accuracy)."

Two shrugged, dropped the cube, and made her way to the mouth of the tunnel. One of the

Beacon‘s pylons passed a full story over her head as she peeked just over the ground level. An erupted heap of asphalt four or five paces away momentarily blocked her view from the pylon‘s guard—three Jackals and two Hunters—but they soon marauded into view. They weren‘t looking in the direction of the pylon at all, but were fixated on the Drone swarm as it fell like titanium rain into the horizon below the Beacon‘s massive, pulsating belly, crisscrossing with a second curtain that showered upward, into its bowels.

The counter on Two‘s HUD ticked down below one minute.

Pre-fight adrenaline slammed into her veins. Her heart rate shot up to a dance-floor drumbeat.

Ten seconds. She flexed her hands around the AR.

―Engage," Black-One whispered across her helmet speakers.

Immediately, the sharp rattle of Black-Four‘s battle rifle could be heard even over the noise of the excavation. The Hunters turned and began bounding toward the opposite pylon.

Black-Two popped out of her hole and fired three short bursts at the back of the Jackals‘ heads as they fell in behind the Hunters. Jets of purple spray squirted skyward as they pitched forward.

One of the Hunters instantly spun its spiny head around and pointed its blank gaze at Black-Two.

She despised the damn hulks and their completely blank, gray nonfaces, for they had no expressions to read, no way to tell if they had spotted you or not—

Until they started lumbering toward you, swinging their massive, armored legs with frightening rapidity, as this one did now.

Two leapt all the way out of the hole. She sprinted for the teepee-shaped pile of a collapsed concrete kiosk half a block away.

When she turned to let off a few bursts in the Hunter‘s direction, the emerald discharge from an assault cannon slammed right into her chest with a deafening roar of static, lifting her off her feet and slamming her onto the ground.

Getting knocked over saved her life, for as she thudded onto her back a second green ray of incendiary plasma blasted directly overhead. With her energy shields completely knocked out and the HUD shield alert honking a furious warning at her, the second blast would have cut her in half.

Two looked up over her chest and saw both Hunters rumbling down on her. She quickly rolled

ungracefully behind the rubble cover and willed her shields to recharge, but the Hunter was looming over her before she had a chance to catch her breath. The armored bulk raised its triangle-shaped shield over its head, ready to bring it down on her in a crushing blow.

Instinct took over. The Hunter was tall enough for her to somersault between its legs, and her maneuver caused it to simply further pulverize the pile of concrete when it guillotined its arm down.

Until her shields returned, she didn‘t stand a chance mano a mano with the Mgalekgolo. But she had an equalizer: the blow pack. She slung one off her shoulder and hung it by its strap onto one of the Hunter‘s long spines jutting from its back.

She then sprang up, leaping up over the Hunter as it tried to reach back to grab the pack and rip it off—but its armored arms simply wouldn‘t turn that way. She used his head as a springboard and backflipped over the pile of rubble, remotely detonating the C-12 charge as she landed.

She would have been vaporized if the concrete pile of the kiosk hadn‘t been between her and the blast. The Hunter disappeared inside an abrupt ballooning mushroom of dust that radiated outward and completely subsumed Two.

When it finally receded, there was nothing left of the Mgalekgolo but a few sizzling bits of chitin fused to the ground and carbonized ropes of blackened worm. The concrete kiosk had been

pulverized into powder.

The ground trembled beneath her feet and Black-Two whirled around just in time to see the other Hunter barreling furiously toward her. Her shield bar hummed back to full power. The barrel of the Hunter‘s assault cannon swirled a fierce emerald green, indicating it had charged for a second blast, but Two threw him off by opening up point-blank with the AR, forcing the thing to throw up its shield to protect itself.

They danced like this for a few seconds—the Hunter recharging, Two sidestepping and firing, the Hunter forced to stop and defend itself. Two knew she couldn‘t keep this up all day. For one thing, the Mgalekgolo had more armor than she had ammo. She had to maneuver herself into a position to land some shots in the exposed orange flesh between the armored plates around the neck and

midriff, but of course the beast was making sure to keep those areas blocked with his shield.

Sudden movement to Two‘s right drew the barrel of her AR in that direction, but when she saw Hopalong clambering out of the hole she lowered her rifle. He hop-flew in shallow, graceless parabolas toward the underbelly of the Beacon. She looked in that direction and saw that the Yanme‘e had stopped working. Instead, they swarmed across the machine‘s surface in a single glittering curtain. Unnervingly, every one of their amber, half-egg eyes seemed to be fixated on the approaching Hopalong with burning intensity.

Much to her shock, as soon as the Hunter spotted Hopalong too, he swiveled around and lumbered after him, completely forgetting all about Black-Two. He stopped once to aim and fire a concussive green stream at the Drone, but Hopalong managed to get just enough altitude on his membranous wings to levitate out of the way.

It was then that she spotted the smoky cube in Hopalong‘s claws, the one she had left behind in the tunnel.

It all clicked instantly in her mind at just that moment.

Unmutual.

Incapable of Socialization.

Dead Drones and eggs.

A jolt of fear electrified Black-Two‘s spine. She found herself running after the Hunter, who continued to fire and miss at Hopalong. She dropped to one knee and let off an AR burst at the Drone, but the gun was spent. Cursing, she snapped in a fresh clip as fast as she could.

Hopalong was far enough away that Two couldn‘t be sure, but it looked like the cube in his claws flashed as his digits flew across the device‘s multichromatic controls.

She could see glittering crystalline flashes as, one by one, the collars fell off the necks of the Drones waiting patiently on the Beacon.

The Hunter fired again, and missed again.

―Black-One, this is Black-Two, please come in immediately, Black-One . . ."

―Black-One here. I don‘t have time to chat. I‘ve got a Hunter with a fuel rod cannon with my name on it pinning me down—"

―We‘re about to have much bigger problems, Chief. If anyone‘s placed their packs I say we evac our asses ASAP."

―What? Why? What do you see?"

At that moment the last few collars fell off the Drones‘ necks.

―We‘ve been tricked," Two said, desperation creeping into her voice. ―This is no ordinary

collection of Drones—they haven‘t been ‗enslaved‘ here—"

When the Hunter turned around and started running away, the bottom of Two‘s stomach fell out.

― This is a penal colony! " Two shouted.

Like an explosive cloud of shrapnel, the Drones launched themselves off the Beacon toward

Black-Two in a spinning, chittering horde, each mass murderer of their fellow Yanme‘e and killer of their young and defiler of their hives clicking and whining out the same word, over and over again, the only Yanme‘e word Two had understood as Hopalong had repeated it so urgently back in the penthouse:

“FREEDOM.”

THREE

_____________

Black-Two‘s motion sensor became subsumed with red dot after red dot until it looked like

someone had cut her cheek open and the blood was seeping over the display, drowning it in crimson.

The cloud of Yanme‘e slammed into the Hunter and in the blink of an eye he was covered in

dozens of them. He let off an emerald swath from his assault cannon that dismembered any Drones in the path of the blast, but others instantly choked the gap closed. Together, the buggers lifted the Mgalekgolo high in the air. The barrel of the assault cannon was still recharging a flickering green when they ripped the Hunter‘s limbs and head from its body. The ropy, eellike worms that

comprised the creature‘s true ―self" cascaded like grain from a silo out of the ruptured shell. The Drones unthinkingly swooped down on the worms before they hit the ground and tore them into bright orange-red chunks with their claws and mandibles.

Two caught only a few glimpses of this over her shoulder, for almost as immediately the Yanme‘e launched themselves in her direction. She turned and sprinted in the direction of the Beacon‘s antigrav pylon. Once she was within twenty meters she let the second blow pack slide off her shoulder and into her hand. She twirled it twice and hurled it at the pylon, where it hit about three meters up and stuck in place with a magnetic thunk .

She turned ninety degrees and ran toward the hole she originally came out of. All around her buggers exploded out of the ground and shot into the air; undoubtedly the hive sleeping below the surface now awakened to a glorious living dream of unbridled mayhem and carnage, no longer held in check by their Covenant wardens.

Two plunged headfirst into the warren just as a horde of Drones dove down to snatch her up as well. The Yanme‘e slammed into a pileup, clogging the tunnel‘s mouth and fighting among each other for the right to pursue her.

Two didn‘t give them the chance to decide the contest. She primed one of her M9 grenades and underhanded it at the hole. The Drones‘ shadows wisely flew in retreat as the frag exploded, bringing down the upper wall of the tunnel and sealing Two inside.

The warren maze writhed with the fluttering shadows of rioting Drones in every direction. Two scurried a few meters in the direction of the original rally point then stopped, spotting the fissure leading to the subway system.

Bracing herself against the opposite wall of the tunnel, Two pushed off with her

MJOLNIR-enhanced legs and put her shoulder into the fissure. She smashed through to the other side in a cloud of dirt and rocks.

Immediately, she pressed her back against the train tunnel. A few Yanme‘e stuck their heads in through the unfamiliar hole to investigate, but not seeing anything moving, and since Two‘s black armor and gunmetal gray visor perfectly camouflaged her presence among the machinery-covered wall, the buggers moved on with a low, disappointed chatter.

Once her motion sensor cleared of red dots except at the margins, Two walked over to examine the sleek, dust-covered train car. A brief inspection indicated it was intact and straddled a single rail that snaked away into a tunnel unimpeded by any debris or cave-ins she could see.

―Who‘s dead?" One‘s voice crackled over her helmet.

―Not Two," she replied.

―Not Four," Four said, calmly, over AR fire. No matter what kind of 110 percent FUBAR situation Spartan: Black found itself in, Four‘s voice never rose, never wavered; he always sounded like he was shopping for groceries. Two found that both extremely lovable and extremely disturbing about him.

―Black-Three? Black-Three, this is Black-One, come in," One called over the open channel. There was no answer, but Two heard the ragged sounds of what she was sure was breathing.

―Chief? Recommend we change rally points," Two said. She placed a white dot on the team‘s

motion displays to mark the location of the subway tunnel. ―I found the Arias transit system. Train looks like standard colonial model, running on internal cell power, and this one is . . ." She popped open the service hatch on the side of the train car to check. ―Yeah, it‘s fully functional. We rev this thing up we can get the hell out of Dodge right under the swarm‘s noses."

―I‘m all for that," One said through what were clearly gritted teeth. Two could hear her firing her AR too. ―It‘s a goddamn bugger convention down here."

―Chief," Two blurted out, ―I‘m an idiot. I shouldn‘t have trusted Hopa—that damn bugger. He played me like I was a naive social worker. I‘m so sorry. I—"

―He played all of us, Two," One said. ―I fell for it too. No need to beat yourself up about it."

―Yeah," Black-Four said, ―particularly when there are so many buggers down here happy to do it for you."

―Shut up, Four," Two said.

One said, ―Black-Four. New objective. Shoot your way to Two‘s choo-choo. It is now Rally Point Beta."

―Copy that," Four responded, then was drowned out by automatic fire.

A pair of blinking yellow dots appeared on the edges of her motion sensor: her fellow Spartans, fighting their way to her.

Just a pair, though.

―What about Three?" Two asked.

―He‘s not responding," One said.

―I can hear him breathing. He‘s still alive."

―But unconscious." There was resignation in One‘s voice.

Two didn‘t think. ―I‘m going after him."

―Belay that, Spartan," One said sharply. ―I‘m not losing half my Fireteam."

But Two was already plunging back into the warren. ―I‘ll be back with him before you‘re done firing up the train for evac."

The pointer to her Beacon pylon remained active, so despite her grenade‘s cave-in she was able to circle back through the now largely empty tunnels to her original position. She leapt out onto the surface of Verge and headed to the opposite corner of the Beacon, which still listed in midair, firing its energy beam to the heavens, albeit in a pitiful stream since the Drones had stopped feeding it precious helium-3.

The Drones swirled all around the Beacon—really, as far as Black-Two could see—in a

pinwheeling, asymmetrical blur of gray-blue wings. Frequently a pair would collide then claw at each other with high-pitched clacking and squeaking. Other Yanme‘e would hover in midair and stupidly watch them battle until the victor had torn the vanquished limb from limb—literally.

That must have been what the Kig-Yar character ―Unmutual" meant: the Yanme‘e equivalent of a personality disorder, an inability to relate to others. While in humans such psy-chopathology could create cunning, hyperaggressive killers, in Drones, with their even more rigid socialization, Unmutuals were incapable of working in concert with the rest of the swarm as a single, coherent unit. The efficient Covenant wasn‘t about to let those minor details waste a vast source of manpower, however: Unmutual Drones were yoked to Beacons and worked to death by Kig-Yar.

A host of Unmutuals clung to the underside of the Beacon. As she ran underneath it, a few dropped down and attempted to hoist her into the air. She knocked them off her back with the butt of the AR.

A solitary Drone plopped down directly in front of her, blocking her path, and she took it out with a short, controlled burst.

Yet they kept dropping down, forcing her to zigzag around them. By the time she emerged on the other side of the Beacon there were dozens of them standing as still as statues facing her, simply watching her with cocked heads, mandibles twitching.

A yellow dot appeared on the edge of her motion sensor.

―Black-Three, come in!" she yelled louder than she needed to. ―This is Black-Two. I am closing in on your position. Give me your status."

There was silence for a moment then Three groaned across her speakers:

―Buggers picked me straight up in the air, and they would have torn me apart like a wishbone if I hadn‘t let loose with my AR."

She sprinted a beeline for the dot, closing to twenty, then fifteen meters. She was on the edge of the city, and a few skyscrapers loomed before her. The ground was uneven enough that she couldn‘t see any sign of a Spartan lying before her.

―Can you move?" she asked.

―I don‘t know . . ." She heard his MJOLNIR shift and creak, and then he cried out. ― Goddamn it! They dropped me way high up, and I landed right on my ankle . . . must‘ve broke, even inside my armor . . . And the biofoam pinned it in the broken shape! Goddamn stupid skunkworks piece of shit

. . ."

―Just sit tight," she told him.

She was within ten meters of Three. A Drone landed in front of her, arms spread, but she didn‘t slow down. Instead she barreled right into him, smashing her assault rifle into his face and knocking him over. She put a foot through the front of his thorax with a crunch and squish as she ran over him.

A menacing buzz made her look behind. The Unmutuals were falling into a single curtain behind her. Her dispatch of the last Drone must have overcome their innate selfishness. They were very slowly, but very deliberately, roiling toward her, a solid wall of flickering death.

Her motion sensor showed she was practically on top of the yellow dot, so she stopped.

Looked down.

Black-Three was nowhere to be seen.

―Where the hell are you?" she asked.

―How the hell am I supposed to know, man? They dropped my ass on some roof somewhere."

―You‘ve gotta be kidding." She scanned the buildings in front of her and had to guess which one the yellow motion sensor dot pointed her toward. ―Why can‘t this goddamn thing be more specific about altitude?"

―Write a letter to the friendly folks at Naval Intelligence," Three groaned.

She could hear the swarm surging forward. She threw herself through what remained of the

plate-glass windows lining the lobby of an office building and made for the fire stairs, which wound up a reinforced concrete shaft on one side of the building.

Two took the steps five at a time. The building had to be forty stories tall.

She whipped past the sign for the thirtieth floor when the walls of the stairwell began to tremble and an intense, overpowering hum began vibrating through the shaft. She worried the building was about to collapse. She passed a hole punched in the wall and saw five Yanme‘e desperately crawling through the exposed, rusting rebars and realized the entire swarm was trying to claw their way inside at once.

She looked behind and saw the shadow of a huge mass of Drones surging up the stairwell right behind her.

― Aaaaaaaah, " Three crackled over her speakers. ―They found me, Two, they found me! Stay back, you goddamn buggers!" She heard him firing his AR. ― You wanna piece of me, you’re gonna have to work for it! "

She sprinted the rest of the way up to the roof and burst outside to see Black-Three lying on his back struggling with a Drone who was trying to rip his AR out of his hands. The crumpled husks of bullet-ridden Yanme‘e lay all around.

There was something about the Drone fighting with Three that looked familiar—the four missing limbs.

Hopalong and Three both turned their heads to look at her at once.

She didn‘t hesitate.

She unleashed a short, controlled burst at Hopalong, ripping him away from Three and knocking the Drone off the building.