by Kelly Gay
No one would give her even the slightest clue as to what her future might hold.
And now, things had suddenly changed.
Her worst fear was coming true—she was about to be shipped off to an ONI black site, never to be heard from again.
Dammit, she couldn’t leave! Not now. Not alone. Niko was still out there somewhere, hiding, on the run.… He wasn’t here, that much she knew. Oh, God. What if she never got to see him again? Her body went rigid with the realization. Then, she twisted and fought, resisting any way she could, even making herself dead weight while raging and screaming, hoping the whole world could hear.
When the air changed, she froze, head coming up.
Her arms ached beneath the guards’ tight grip. Sweat ran down the sides of her face. She could barely breathe inside the hood as she stumbled along. But she was outside and for the first time felt a little bit of hope. Outside might never come again. It could be her only chance to escape.
The acrid, smoky tang of engine fuel filled the air, and she heard the familiar vibrating thrum of thrusters. Activity came from all directions, blasting her senses with a multitude of sounds and smells. It wasn’t hard to figure out that she’d been brought to a busy tarmac at a shipyard or an airfield, somewhere within two hours of Pilvros.
The crunch of soles on pavement reached her ears, additional footsteps approaching. Her knees went weak at the sound of Ram’s belligerent cursing.
“Ram!”
“You’d better keep your mouth shut,” one of the guards snapped, digging his thumb into her already bruised biceps.
“Ram!”
“Lessa!”
After everything she’d been through, it was the sound of his voice that finally made her break. A sob tore from her throat as warm tears flooded her eyes.
“Get them on board, now,” someone said.
She was jerked ahead a few more steps until a new vibration took over. Ship engines were easy to feel through the tarmac—she knew those well—but this was something else, something deeper. And it was growing.
Another tremor.
The guards halted. She heard shouts, orders, warnings…
The tremor should have faded like all the others during her incarceration, but it kept increasing until she was swaying on her feet.
The ground began to undulate in one bizarre wave after another.
Trying to keep their balance, the guards held her tighter, using her as leverage.
One petite girl keeping two ONI goons afloat didn’t pan out so well, and they crashed to the tarmac. Being small helped her crawl out from under the pile. As soon as she was free, she ripped the stupid hood from her head and was greeted with chaos. A hot blast of air sent her hair into her eyes and out in all directions, strands sticking to the tears on her cheeks.
The tarmac was in a state of emergency.
Carts and supplies being loaded onto a prowler in front of her toppled over. A stack of containers near a hangar crashed to the ground. A power station far on the other end of the airfield exploded into a plume of fire. Men and women in black uniforms ran in a dozen different directions while others stood still and shouted orders.
Lessa searched the chaos for Ram.
There.
“Ram!”
He was on the ground, struggling to his feet, but being held down by one of his guards, who had him by the right ankle. Ram kicked at him with his left leg, but the guy grabbed that ankle too. She raced forward, shoved the hood still in her hand over the guard’s head, then stomped on his wrist until he yelled in pain and released Ram.
A sharp, thunderous crack echoed over the area and barreled toward them, tearing through the ground, splitting the tarmac in two.
The pavement buckled upward, sending Lessa forward into Ram as he tried to stand. A string of profanity streamed forth, muddled by his hood. Quickly, she snatched it off his head and finally met his furious dark eyes. She’d never been happier in her life. “Thank God.” Her face split into a huge smile and she threw her arms around him.
“Have you seen Niko?!” she shouted over the din. The wind was fierce, sparks flying past, the whine of the prowler’s engine getting louder. It was taking off to save itself. They had to move.
“No! He wasn’t in my building!”
“Mine either!”
Good. She scanned the buildings. Just the two large cargo/hangar combos. They were the only ones. If they’d brought her and Ram together for departure, surely they’d have brought Niko too, if he’d been captured.
Behind them, one of the buildings backslid into the newly formed ravine. The prowler’s engines grew. Oh, hell. They were about to get blasted. “We have to go!”
Ram grabbed her hand and they took off, putting the tarmac behind them and heading for the barren hills.
They’d find Niko. They had to.
Then they’d get off this cursed planet and head for Myer’s Moon.
Their escape route became a deadly gauntlet of flying rocks and boulders and undulating earth. The ground thundered and groaned and exploded, sounding like the whole region was being ripped apart behind them.
By the time they risked stopping, Lessa’s lungs were on fire. She was broken and bruised, knees, palms, elbows, shoulders, forehead. Their run had been perilous enough on its own with the dry, rocky hills, but the intense earthquake had made it a veritable life-and-death situation. They’d fallen dozens of times on ground that constantly moved and trembled and collapsed, while under fire from loose rocks raining down like gunfire, and had dodged their share of boulders.
From their vantage on top of one of the highest hills, Lessa saw the devastation they’d left behind. Half of the airfield and its hangars were gone, disappeared over the edge of a narrow rift. That rift led to the rim of a crater nearly a kilometer away. Plumes of rocks and dust were still rising, making it difficult to see just how expansive it was.
Ram was bent over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, but his gaze was firmly on the scene spread out far below.
“What the hell is happening?” she managed when her breath finally settled.
Slowly, he straightened, shoving the hair from his face.
His answer never came. Through the thick dust cloud, they saw two ships. Prowlers, maybe—it was difficult to tell. Missiles streaked from the ships and lit up the dusty sky, tracking up and up, drawing their gaze skyward.
Through the haze and dust, Lessa caught sight of a shadowy winged behemoth.
“Jesus,” Ram said, throwing his arms around her and pulling her down. “Get down!”
They dropped to their knees, Ram covering her as a fierce back-line wind hit, like a vacuum pulling every bit of loose rock and dirt from the hill. Ram’s hold tightened as they started to slide.
Suddenly everything paused.
Just stopped.
The sound of her pulse was the only thing Lessa could hear.
They started to relax, then a deep, warped noise she’d never heard before hit the region, sending a dense, thumping shock wave through her whole body. Her eardrums screamed and her teeth chattered.
Silence descended.
Eventually bits and pieces of fine earth floated down, softly pinging the hill.
Ram released his hold and sat back, stunned. They watched the two prowlers fall quiet into the crater.
“EMP,” she said, though her voice sounded odd, as though underwater.
“What?” Ram stuck a finger in his ear and shook it.
“EMP!” Explosions rang from the crater, followed by a plume of fiery smoke.
She looked up, but the sky was clear. Whatever had been there was gone.
The sense of dread and disorientation wasn’t just inside her; it seemed to settle over the land. Lessa wasn’t even sure she could begin to make sense of what had happened or what she had seen in the sky. If Niko were here, he might know.…
She glanced at Ram, seeing him similarly affected.
“We need to find my brother.
We need to get off planet.”
Ram stared into the distance. “I… I’m not sure we’re going anywhere.”
Ships were falling from the sky.
In silent distant streaks, they fell, too horrible, too unbelievable, and too shocking to wrap her mind around. Lessa’s heart ached for those onboard, and she knew this quiet vision would haunt her forever.
By the time it was over, she’d counted seven lost vessels and who knew how many more beyond their field of view.
That something could cause an EMP of such magnitude was terrifying. Were they under attack? Had the Covenant come back? Was it something new? The implications, the idea they might be at war again, scared her to death.
She was struck with the sudden certainty that there wouldn’t be a reunion on Myer’s Moon—not on time, anyway. They were literally in the middle of nowhere; there was nothing else around as far as the eye could see. She and Ram had a long road in front of them, getting back to civilization, trying to find Niko… if he was still around, if he hadn’t left the planet already, if he hadn’t been on board one of those ships—God, no, she couldn’t think about that—wouldn’t think about it.
Lessa pushed to her feet, wiping her grimy hands on her pants. Inside, a dull aching pain gripped her heart, but outside she drew in an ample breath and let it out slowly before offering Ram a hand up. “Come on, old man. Let’s get moving.”
CHAPTER 37
Ace of Spades / Slipspace to Bastion
Rion sleeps. Twelve hours have passed and she shows no signs of waking. After learning of yet another destination in our search for answers, she proposed going to Myer’s Moon to wait for the crew and then later, once everyone was reunited, complete the journey to Bastion. But I reminded her that only she and I have been given access. There was no guarantee that Lessa, Niko, or Ram would pass the Precept’s judgment, much less his test.
And there was no reason to put them in that sort of danger.
“We’ll need to send a wave space message on to Myer’s Moon in case they arrive before we do,” she said.
I could see the distress this caused the captain; having to choose between the crew and me. When I offered my apology, she surprised me. “I know there’s more out there in the galaxy, pulling at you.… Whatever it is, it’s important and tied up with the past and the Librarian and things to come. I heard her back in the mountain. I know you need to go. And as weird as it sounds, I know I need to take you there.”
It appeared we had both stumbled onto a path laid out long ago, and like me she wanted to finish it.
I thanked her even as she swayed on her feet, and then I guided her to her quarters and into bed. Her questions about Bastion would keep.
The coordinates on the key took us to a small unnamed star system, and the large moon of its outermost planet. On our approach, a diaphanous sterling web of hard light came into view, a half million kilometers from the moon, with a violet hole in the center. I checked our coordinates again to find they did not in fact point to the moon, but to this strange, ethereal web, undulating in space, its immense strands slowly reworking and moving.
—It is a static portal.
—What else can you tell?
—It is small. Responds to specialized keys. Only one destination. Designed for long-distance slipspace journeys of hundreds to thousands of light-years. Should we wake the captain?
—No.
—We are entering the portal? She will want to know.
He will make a fine and dutiful AI.
—We are entering.
Our entry into the static portal was uneventful, though a strange sight as the webbing seemed to electrify, powered by the wealth of vacuum energy all around us. The violet center grew, eventually swallowing us up, and launching the Ace of Spades through slipspace.
Now that our journey has begun and Rion sleeps, I retreat to my “as-was” spot to sit near the river Sahti and watch the flow of muddy water. In my hand, a long stem of grass yet to drop its seeds. These I pick out one by one, mulling over recent events and trying to fit them into a proper place, a proper theory.
The Librarian’s words, those three sentences, those twelve words:
“Find what’s missing. Fix the path. Right what my kind turned wrong.”
So many wrongs to choose from. And what meaning had they now? What connection to Bastion—a place I knew nothing about, a place of myth and whispers and shadows. What was it, really? Had it survived the war? What sort of place was it? What secrets might it still contain?
Was it the sanctuary I was hoping it would be?
Ah. Sanctuary. It hurt to give thought to the idea. To the word. To the hope it inspired.
That perhaps some Forerunners still remained…
The theories I had are now obsolete. Or are they?
That itch I cannot scratch, that constant pull… for purpose, for something… Perhaps in Bastion will lie the answers I seek.
Or perhaps I placed too much importance on my purpose when one may not exist at all. Purpose suggests design, planning, structure. And I am no longer a monitor beholden to such things. I am free.
Am I free?
I think of the words Rion shared with me on our journey into the Precept’s facility. I think of the guilt I have carried and refuse to let go, creating a prison of my own making. A thousand centuries is long to carry such a burden.
Bornstellar once asked me if it were my choice, after all we had seen and survived… would I fire the rings?
And my answer is still yes.
Perhaps it is time to let it go. Perhaps then I will be free.
I ponder for some time these many things, eventually moving on.
The ship is running optimally. Little Bit’s matrix has been cleaned and restored once more. He has passed his testing and is a capable ancilla to run this vessel’s systems and calculate slipstream navigation points with ease while making adjustments to the hybrid engine as necessary.
I am… proud.
And it appears I have made myself obsolete. Apparently, I don’t want the vocation of ship’s AI after all. While a simple endeavor requiring minimal effort, the role is too contained, too compartmentalized, and perhaps in this way too reminiscent of my past as Guilty Spark. Just because I can run a ship or ten thousand ships doesn’t mean I should. Or that I want to.
I need more.
I am built for much, much more.
* * *
—Should I wake her now?
—No, Little Bit, let her sleep. She needs it.
—A biological weakness.
It would seem so to him. While I have the advantage of understanding, he does not.
—I have analyzed those old signals, the ones heard while scanning in Torba. They are very old. I cannot find the proper data string in my core to analyze further.
In many ways, Little Bit holds more knowledge about the Forerunners than I do, being one of their constructs with the lofty position of caring for an entire shield world. What things he must have known and carried in his memory, all of Forerunner history and technology.…
—Would you like me to have a look?
I could easily do so without asking. But invading Little Bit’s privacy and availing myself of his data is a line I wish none to cross with me, therefore I will not cross with him. The idea of losing his trust actually pains me. I so enjoy our friendship.
—Please do.
Immediately I move into his matrix and glide through to his core, a hall with no floors or ceilings, just walls filled with millions of data pockets that stretch on and on and on. There is order here, however, and I send out searcher requests.
A response is almost immediate.
Instantaneously, I am there and note a pocket outlined in blue awaiting my attention.
I move inside it. Another hall, this one cloudy and decrepit.
Oh, it is jumbled, these old data points.…
The blue searcher response leads me on, pursuing its target until finally a small stri
ng of data seems to match with the signal and divests itself of one word:
Guardian.
CHAPTER 38
Ace of Spades / Bastion / Orion Nebular Complex
While the Ace of Spades traversed slipspace, Rion had gotten several nights of sleep in a row and was feeling a hell of a lot better than she had in weeks. Physically, her wounds had healed, and she was well on her way to gaining back the weight that she’d lost. Her dreams had been quiet, though occasionally plagued by events on Erebus VII, and as much as she hated to do so, she had turned to preloaded subcutaneous smart anxiety injections to ease the trauma and stress of sudden flashbacks—both during sleep and while she was awake.
The ensuing days were spent continuing to repair minor and cosmetic damage that had occurred when Ace crash-landed inside Zeta Halo, mostly within the cargo hold and the maintenance corridors beneath—bent storage bins, blown fuses, cracked interfaces…
The Librarian’s confessions weighed on her mind in the quiet of her work, and she no longer thought of them as dreams at all, but more of an interactive simulation, a story either downloaded into her during their time in the mountain or maybe—more wildly—a story stored in all humanity, one that just needed a kick start, an activation. It didn’t make Rion special; it just meant she’d been in the right place at the right time.
And now she had to finish it. It would never sit right with her to abandon the journey now, not after all they’d been through to get to this point, not after all that Spark had endured.
As she entered the bridge, a slight mix of apprehension and impatience went through her. While she had to give the crew the time alotted, she was ready to get this final destination out of the way and then, finally, make the jump to Myer’s Moon to reunite and, who knew, maybe down the road reconnect with her brother.
“So what are we looking at?” she asked, coming around her chair, eager to finally get a glimpse of Bastion as Ace dropped into normal space.
“Calculating now,” Spark said, his avatar lingering in his usual spot over the tactical table.