Oh, man. I had four papers assigned out of the blue, and final exams as well, but finally have chapter seven done. [i][b]Chapter Seven[/b][/i] I opened my eyes as the shockwave rushed by. I watched the fire engulf the Covenant forces that had taken so many lives today, the ground around the station shoot upwards in a massive cloud of dust, then implode as the rooms underground filled in with those that had previously been above them. But none of us cheered. We were all too tired, too mournful of those lost, to applaud even more destruction. I continued to stare out of the open back of the Pelican. The plasma fire had melted one of the hydraulic arms that controlled the hatch, and Luck was unable to close it. The eight of us in the back of the pelican remained silent until Luck spoke up. "So... You gonna introduce me to your new friends, Roland?" It was Duncan who replied first. "I'm Lieutenant James Duncan, Ma'am, and this is Corporal Benjamin Bishop. And you are?" "Tracey Lukenowski, Luck for short. What about you two? And is that a Spartan?!" She spoke to the rest of the men. "Frank Young, civilian." He spoke without lifting his eyes from the metal grating of the pelican's floor. "Wesley, engineer" "I am Keiichi-047, Ma'am." "Oooh, and polite too! Roland, you need to bring friends along more often." Luck joked. "Hey, Spartan, hand me the bomb," Wesley requested "I still need to configure it to detonate remotely, instead of with a timer." "Careful" The Spartan warned, "one slip that thing could fly out of the back." He reluctantly handed the weapon to the engineer. Wesley began working on the surprisingly small device with a pocket screwdriver and some parts he had grabbed from the station. "Hey," Bishop said. We all turned to him. That was the first word he'd spoken today. "I thought you said you were setting the reactors to a laser trigger. Why'd you use a timer?" Wesley seemed a little surprised at the question, but continued to work on the bomb as he answered. "I told you how long that would take, and we didn't have that much, time, so I did the quicker thing, and just rigged them to blow right then. The meltdown process takes about five minutes, so that's how much time we had to get outta there. "[i]About[/i] five minutes?" I put forth. "Yeah, it could've been a little more, could've been less, it was a gamble, and it paid off." "You mean you bet our lives on a --" I began. "--Duncan, Roland" Luck cut in, "incoming transmission from Vice Admiral Whitcomb." "Put him through." Duncan replied. Luck flipped a switch, and the Vice Admiral's voice sounded over the speakers. "I trust you have the nuke secure and are en route?" "Affirmative, sir." Duncan quickly responded. "Once there, we should be able to just drop it and go." "It's not going to be that simple, Lieutenant. The encampment is surrounded by some sort of shield. The bomb will not be able to pass through unaided." "Shields?" Wesley questioned. "Yes, similar to the ones on their ships. However, once the bomb is inside, the shields should trap the explosion within, and completely eradicate those inside." "How are we going to get through those shields?" Duncan demanded. "You have the engineer, you tell me." The Vice Admiral answered "I'll work on it." Wesley assured when I looked in his direction. "Are there other strike teams assaulting the other installations?" I asked Whitcomb. "No. To my knowledge, nobody even knows of the camps except for those under my command. Too many comms arrays have been disabled, and I have been unable to contact others in command. I only hope they can figure it out before it's too late... Contact me after you're finished, I have a bit of a mess here to attend to." And with that, the Vice Admiral left us with the crippling realization of how much control the Covenant really had. He couldn't even contact the rest of the ground forces. I watched as the sun set behind us, the sky around us red with dust and fire. Wesley had finished with the bomb, and he had been thinking to himself for a while now. He still hadn't found a way inside the shields. "They must have a system that allows themselves in, but nothings else. How would we bypass that?" I heard him mumble. "The Spartan sat up quickly, looking at Wesley. "Radar signals!" He proclaimed. "Yes!" Wesley answered excitedly. "That would enable them to discern themselves from us. They use the same signals we use for our Friend or Foe tags! We could.... How would we bypass that?" he asked the Spartan. "I don't have their signal to replicate. We would need..." My interest faded, and I returned my attention to the sky. The sun was now out of sight, and I was watching the stars. There were so many of them. I stared in wonder at them as we moved along. I was in the back of the pelican, across from the Spartan, and I could feel the wind in my face. My mind ignored the silver fringe of the pelican in my vision, and focused on the sky. I felt like I was flying, and then my mind began to shift direction. [i]I wonder if there are more stars than people dead after today.[/i] My vision blurred as tears came to my eyes. I remembered my sister all those years ago. [I]Her death times a billion[/i] I thought. [i]That was the battle for reach[/i]. As the realization hit me of how important this was, it only hardened my resolve to get revenge. "...If we had one of the radar jammer prototypes from the generator station, we could use that, but those were all destroyed..." Wesley sighed. "What about a body? Like a dead elite or something?" Bishop suggested. "That might work, but it's possible that the Covenant have that covered, dead bodies don't show on our radars, I'm sure it's the same for them." Keiichi answered. "We also don't have any bodies, or living Covenant." Wesley added. Bishop looked down at the floor, going back into silence. "Uhh... Roland, you might want to come look at this." Luck yelled back from the front of the pelican. I turned from the view of the sky, and joined her in the cockpit. "I can see the Covenant compound, we're getting close." She pointed forward towards a glowing settlement. It was massive, the shields apparently transparent, like the shields of the Spartans or Elites, but there was a huge, umbrella-shaped cover being projected upwards, which I knew were projecting images of the ground, to hide the installation from orbital view. There was also a small Covenant ship under the cover, dropping what appeared to be vehicles. "What is it?" Duncan mumbled as he joined us. "...Holy -blam!-!" He exclaimed when he saw it. "The Covenant have more of those?" We were silent as those words sunk in. "Once we're above it, stop and hover, so we can finish preparing." I spoke up "Wesley and the Spartan are still working on a way to get through the shields." "They better hurry their asses up!" Luck remarked. "Those Covies are gonna notice us sittin' pretty over their heads. We won't have long once we're there." We rode onward, watching the glowing compound disappear beneath the false canopy that shielded it from overhead view. It was another ten minutes before Luck gave the confirmation that we were directly above it. I turned to the engineer. "Anything yet?" "Nothing." Wesley solemnly whispered. "Without some form of Covenant radar, there's no way we're getting in those shields." We crowded around the bomb, focused on nothing more than finding a solution. Suddenly, the Pelican shook violently, and the sound of an explosion took our attention. I turned to see three Banshees closing in on us, a green cloud slightly obscuring my vision, from where the mortar shot had hit.