HALO: Battle Born by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Author:Cassandra Rose Clarke [Rose Clarke, Cassandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2018-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

Thirty minutes later, Dorian and Evie were nestled up in the thick branches of a banyan tree, peering through the leaves at the stretch of Brume-sur-Mer’s main street. Owen and the others were somewhere on the edges of downtown—not far, really, but enough to feel risky.

Down below, the twisted remains of cars lay in broken heaps along the sidewalk, and the storefronts were streaked with black scorch marks. The glass in the windows had melted into gleaming, transparent lumps that glistened in the light cast by the tall, strange pylons that the Covenant had set up along the road like streetlights. They looked like some kind of comm system, though it was impossible to tell.

“Why did they do this?” Evie whispered. “What’s the point?”

Dorian shrugged. What was the point of the Covenant slaughtering everyone on Tomas’s boat? They were civilians. They weren’t a threat. And yet they were all dead anyway.

“It’s just what they do,” he said. “They hate us.”

“But why?” Evie’s voice rasped. “It’s so—so illogical.”

“The UNSC used to kill colonists,” Dorian said. “And they were the same species.”

“They killed insurrectionists,” Evie said. “It was war.”

“This is war too.”

Evie sighed and fell quiet. For a moment, they just sat in that thick silence. Then Dorian heard the whirring sound of heavy pneumatic joints slowly approaching from the east.

“Crap,” he said.

“I hear it too.” Evie pulled back from the leaves and tilted her head, listening. “It’s coming from that direction.” She pointed off to her left.

Dorian nodded, then pressed a finger to his lips. Evie nodded gravely. He moved into a crouch, and then, balancing himself against the tree’s trunk, crept closer to the origin of the sound. He peeked through a gap in the trees.

Bit back a shout of fear.

It was some kind of purple-armored ground vehicle, not a ship, that crawled on four legs, tottering like a crab. Atop its main chassis was an armored cowling, narrow and swept back—which might have been the operator’s cabin. It was also too wide for the road, and Dorian suddenly understood why the shops and the cars were all so damaged.

The vehicle lurched down the street, scrabbling over the wreckage of the town. Smoke billowed up into the air. Dorian watched the vehicle’s movements and then he jumped back into place beside Evie, who was staring with her mouth hanging open.

“We should follow it,” Dorian breathed into her ear.

Evie jumped. “What?”

“That thing’s huge,” he whispered. Noise from the vehicle’s movements swelled, drowning out their conversation. “It’s got to be going somewhere important.”

Evie looked back out at the street. Her eyes narrowed into that look of determination Dorian had seen when she hacked into Salome’s system.

“The roofs,” she said.

“That was the plan.” They had chosen that particular tree for their stakeout because its branches brushed up against the roof of the nearby bank. They wouldn’t have cover on the roofs, not like they did in the trees, but if they stayed behind the vehicle, they should be okay. He hoped.

The tree branches

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