Bah’d looked out the back of the bunker and down the ridge toward the xenotime mine, where the chunky silhouettes of three huge figures were pushing through the mossy undergrowth. They were moving slowly, dragging sledges stacked high with crates of ammunition and explosives, as well as six big M68 Gauss cannons scavenged from destroyed Warthog LRVs. Like John, all three Spartans wore power armor, though the MJOLNIR program was still so new that as part of the COBALT field-testing project, each of their suits bore modifications that made them look like different-colored variations on a theme.
	“I had hoped there would be more of you,” Bah’d said. “It is going to be close, this battle.”
	“Not that close,” John replied. “We’ll stop them.” “With six Gauss cannons?” Bah’d shook her helmet and did not bother to ask about UNSC air support. Between the low cloud ceiling and the Covenant’s air superiority, a Sparrowhawk would not have lasted two minutes over the battlefield. “I do not think you have fought many armor columns, John. Your Gauss cannons will fire only a few rounds before they are taken out by those Wraiths.”
	“Wraith” was the common human nickname for the big gun carriages that dominated the Covenant column. John had counted fifty Wraiths in the column before leaving his observation post. He and Blue Team had destroyed at least twice that number since inserting on Mesra, but he didn’t bother to tell Bah’d. She wouldn’t have believed him.
	“We’ll use fire-and-move tactics,” John said. “Two bursts, and we’re gone. Reposition and repeat.”
	“On foot?” Bah’d asked. At more than a hundred kilograms apiece, M68s were unwieldy weapons for dismounted combat. “How is that possible?”
	“That would take too long to explain.” Again, John was dodging. Few people had the necessary security clearance to be briefed on the SPARTAN program. And, even had Bah’d been one of them, the last thing John wanted to do was recount how he and his fellow Blue Team members had been conscripted at age six and put into a top-secret project to develop bioengineered super-soldiers. “But we can do it. Trust me.”