John brutally yanked the weapon away from the soldier. There was a loud cracking sound as the man’s shoulder dislocated. The wounded trooper stumbled forward, off balance. John spun the rifle and slammed the butt of the weapon into the soldier’s side. The man exhaled explosively as his ribs cracked. He grunted, and fell unceremoniously to the floor, unconscious.

John spun to face the left-flank gunner, assault rifle leveled at the man’s head instantly. He had the man in his sights, but he still had time—the soldier was not quite in position. To John’s enhanced senses, amped up by Cortana and the neural interface, the rifleman seemed to be moving in slow motion. Too slow.

The Master Chief lashed out with the rifle butt again. The trooper’s head snapped back from the sudden, powerful blow. He flipped head over tail and slammed into the ground. John sized the man’s condition up with a practiced eye: shock, concussion, fractured vertebrae.

Gunner number two was out of the fight.

The remaining gunner completed his turn and opened fire. A three-round burst ricocheted off the MJOLNIR armor’s energy shield. The shield’s recharge bar flickered a hairbreadth.

Before the soldier could react, the Master Chief sidestepped and slammed his own rifle down—hard. The trooper screamed as his leg gave out. A jagged spoke of bone burst through the wounded man’s fatigues. The Master chief finished him with a rifle butt to his helmeted head.

John checked the condition of the rifle, and—satisfied that it was in working order—began to pull ammo clips from the fallen soldiers’ belt pouches. The lead soldier also carried a razor-edged combat knife; John grabbed it.

“You could have killed them,” Cortana said. “Why didn’t you?”

“My orders gave me permission to ‘neutralize’ threats,” he replied. “They aren’t threats anymore.”

“Semantics,” Cortana replied. She sounded amused. “I can’t argue with the results, though—” She broke off, suddenly. “New targets. Seven contacts on the motion tracker,” Cortana reported. “We’re surrounded.”

Seven more soldiers. The Master Chief could open fire now and kill them all. Under any other circumstances, he would have removed such threats. But their MA5Bs were no immediate danger to him... and the UNSC could use every soldier to fight the Covenant.

He strode to the center pole of the tent, and with a yank, he pulled it free. As the roof fluttered down, he slashed a slit in the tent fabric and shoved through.

He faced three Marines; they fired—the Master Chief deftly jumped to one side. He sprang toward them and lashed out with the steel pole, swiped out their legs. He heard bones crack—followed by screams of pain.

The Master Chief turned as the tent finished collapsing. The remaining four men could see him now. One reached for a grenade on his belt. The other three tracked him with their assault rifles.

The Master Chief threw the pole like a javelin at the man with the grenade. It impacted in his sternum and he fell with a whoopf.

The grenade, minus the pin, however, dropped to the ground.

The Master Chief moved and kicked the grenade. It arced over the parking lot and detonated in a cloud of smoke and shrapnel.

The three remaining Marines opened fire—spraying bullets in a full-auto fusillade. Bullets pinged off the Master Chief’s shield.

The shield status indicator blinked and dropped with each bullet impact—the sustained weapons fire was draining the shield precipitously. John tucked and rolled, narrowly avoiding an incoming burst of automatic-weapons fire, then sprang at the nearest Marine.

John launched an openhanded strike at the man’s chest. The Marine’s ribs caved in and he dropped without a sound, blood flowing from his mouth. John spun, brought his rifle up, and fired twice.

The second soldier screamed and dropped his rifle as the bullets tore through each knee. John kicked the discarded rifle, bending the barrel and rendering the weapon useless.

The last man stood frozen in place.

The Master Chief didn’t give the man time to recover; he grabbed his rifle, ripped off his bandolier of grenades, then punched his helmet. The Marine dropped.

“Mission time plus twenty-two seconds,” Cortana remarked. “Although, technically, you started to move forty milliseconds before you were ordered to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The Master Chief slung the assault rifle and bandolier of grenades over his shoulder and ran for the shadows of the barracks. He slipped under the raised buildings and belly-crawled toward the obstacle course. No need to make himself a target for snipers... although it would be an interesting test to see what caliber of bullet these shields could deflect.

No. That kind of thinking was dangerous. The shield was useful, but under combined fire it dropped very quickly. He was tough... not invincible.

He emerged at the beginning to the obstacle course. The first part was a run over ten acres of jagged gravel. Sometimes raw recruits had to take off their boots before they crossed. Other than the pain—it was the easiest part of the course.

The Master Chief started toward the gravel yard.

“Wait,” Cortana said. “I’m picking up far infrared signals on your thermal sensors. An encrypted sequence... decoding... yes, there. It’s an activation signal for a Lotus mine. They’ve mined the field, Master Chief.”

The Master Chief froze. He’d used Lotus mines before and knew the damage they could inflict. The shaped charges ripped though the armor plate of a tank like it was no thicker than an orange peel.

This would slow him down considerably.

Not crossing the obstacle course was no option. He had his orders. He wouldn’t cheat and go around. He had to prove that he and Cortana were up for this test.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Cortana replied. “Find the position of one mine, and I can estimate the rough position of the others based on the standard randomization procedure used by UNSC engineers.”

“Understood.”

The Master Chief grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, counted to three, and lobbed it into the middle of the field. It bounced and exploded—sending a shock wave through the ground—tripping two of the Lotus mines. Twin plumes of gravel and dust shot into the air. The detonation shook his teeth.

He wondered if the armor’s shields could have survived that. He didn’t want to find out while he was still inside the thing. He boosted the field strength on the bottom of his boots to full.

Cortana overlaid a grid on his heads-up display. Lines flickered as she ran through the possible permutations.

“Got a match!” she said. Two dozen red circles appeared on his display. “That’s ninety-three percent accurate. The best I can do.”

“There are never any guarantees,” the Master Chief replied.

He stepped onto the gravel, taking short, deliberate steps. With the shields activated on the bottoms of his boots, it felt like he was skating on greased ice.

He kept his head down, picking his way between red dots on his display.

If Cortana was wrong, he probably wouldn’t even know it.

The Master Chief saw the gravel had ended. He looked up. He had made it.

“Thank you, Cortana. Well done.”

“You’re welcome ... ” Her voice trailed off. “Picking up scrambled radio frequencies on the D band. Encrypted orders from this facility to Fairchild Airfield. They’re using personal codewords, too—so I can’t tell what they’re up to. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.”

“Keep your ears open.”

“I always do.”

He ran to the next section of the obstacle course: the razor field. Here, recruits had to crawl in the mud under razor wire as their instructors fired live rounds over them. A lot of soldiers discovered whether they had the guts to deal with bullets zinging a centimeter over their heads.