As the dropship continued its descent, Kelly realized the pilot was trying to insert covertly. He was coming in slow to avoid a sonic boom, and he was maintaining a steep, steady course that minimized time-of-visibility, but made his craft easy prey for ground-based missile systems. Clearly the aliens believed they were landing unobserved. And that was the kind of mistake that could be used to turn a mission into a disaster.
	Rather than betraying her own presence by breaking comm silence, Kelly had her onboard computer project the dropship’s probable landing zone. She was only a little surprised to discover that the site was less than a kilometer away, just beyond the gully where she and the Castoffs were now hiding. But it made sense. She had strayed only a little distance off the rest of Blue Team’s course to the Wheatley , and if the Covenant intended to attack Blue Team from behind, they would naturally try to follow the same path.