Battle Born

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  “What the hell is that?” he shouted.

  Owen was at his side almost immediately. “The Covenant have probably discovered that the shelter door is open. We need to move fast.” He took off running toward the beach. Dorian followed, half-blinded by the rain.

  The road sloped down, gritty with wet sand. Dunes rose up ahead, and beyond them, the pale glow of light that seemed to cyclone up into the gray sky and disappear. It had to be the shield generator, on the beach just like Owen had said. As they rounded the corner, they could now see it clearly. Tall, angry waves crashed up against the enormous Covenant platform.

  Victor pulled a round metal canister out of his bag. The last of the explosives from Dorian’s house. He handed it over to Dorian. There were two more in the bag, including one that was four times as powerful as the canisters. Dorian didn’t even know why Uncle Max had it.

  “Lay them out!” Owen shouted. “We’ve got one shot at this. Then take shelter.”

  Dorian nodded and raced forward, lungs and limbs burning. He set his gaze on the water. Last year during weather like this he had been down on the beach, watching Hugo surfing in the storm waves. It felt as intangible as a dream.

  He skittered down through the dunes, stumbled out onto the beach proper. Behind the hum of the energy shield, the waves roared. He slowed to a jog and made his way to the shoreline, where the sand sucked at his boots and erased his footsteps. The shield generator—even larger than he had imagined it—thrummed in front of him, its prongs funneling energy upward into the clouds. He set the canister down at its base and then moved back.

  Victor was jogging toward him. He no longer had the backpack. All the bombs had been set.

  “We need to get farther down the beach!” Dorian shouted at him. “This is too close!”

  He didn’t know if Victor could even hear him over the wind and the waves and the rain, but Victor veered off to the left at the last minute, and then Dorian followed. He glanced back, spotted Owen behind them. Owen held up one hand. Five seconds.

  Dorian turned forward and pumped his arms, running harder than he thought he could.

  Four.

  Rain lashed at his face.

  Three.

  Victor was a dark smear up ahead.

  Two.

  The siren rose and fell like the rhythm of the ocean.

  One.

  The entire world shook. A wall of heat slammed into Dorian’s back and shoved him off his feet. He hit the sand headfirst and rolled. The pain from the glass cuts awakened, screaming from the sand. He couldn’t hear anything. Not the ocean. Not the siren.

  He pushed himself up. The beach was on fire.

  “Victor?” he shouted, though he couldn’t hear his voice. In the orange light, through the mist of thick smoke and burned sand, he saw a dark lump on the beach. He struggled to his feet, dragging his rifle behind him. The dark lump moved. “Victor!”

  He knelt down beside him. Victor rolled over, rubbed at his face. Dorian’s ears rang—his hearing was coming back. “That was fun.”

  Dorian grinned. Then he looked up through the haze, his eyes watering. From the distance, the generator initially looked like it might have survived, but then he saw the scorch mark amid the shower of falling sand. A third of the generator had been riven completely off.

  The shield flickered.

  “I think we got it,” he gasped.

  Victor lifted his head, tilting his gaze toward the ocean. As they watched, the shield shimmered and flickered and then collapsed entirely, revealing the broad stretch of black sky.

  Dorian let out a shout of victory and leapt to his feet. “We did it!” he screamed. “The stupid thing’s out.”

  Victor laughed deliriously beside him.

  Dorian turned to the beach and looked back at the fire. Where the hell was Owen? Fear stabbed through his elation. Yeah, he’d been behind him, but his entire body had been programmed to survive worse. And in that suit—

  “Owen!” Dorian shouted. He stood up. “Owen, where are you?”

  And then something stepped out of the flames. A man made of metal, skin gleaming orange.

  Owen held up one hand over his head in a weary hello.

  “He’s fine,” Dorian said. “You hear that, Victor? He’s fine.”

  “Of course he is,” Victor mumbled back.

  Owen glided toward them, the fire scorching the beach at his back. He stopped a few paces away, bringing the railgun up to his shoulder.

  “Get ready,” he said.

  That was when Dorian heard it, over the muffle of his damaged eardrums. The scream of Covenant propulsion engines.

  He looked up.

  Beyond the fire, dots of blue light from the Banshees were now headed their way.

  Saskia huddled next to the shelter door, arms wrapped around herself. The rain had turned cold, and a sharp wind blew in from the direction of town, carrying smoke and the occasional burst of gunfire.

  Hurry, she thought. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  It was torture, waiting without the comm system up. She had no idea if Evie had even made it to the city computer, much less if her virus had worked. She had no idea if Owen and the others had survived their carefully staged distraction, a series of explosions designed to take out the energy shield and lead the Covenant away from the shelter.

  All she knew was the rain, the cold, and the locked door.

  She tried it again, the way she’d been trying every few minutes. It didn’t budge.

  Lights flashed in the distance, over the town. Aircraft? They were moving away from her. Toward the beach. Toward Owen and the others.

  “Saskia Nazari?”

  Saskia jolted at the voice. It was Salome, shining out of a hologram projector built into the shelter door’s lock. Saskia let out a long sigh of relief. Evie had done it.

  “Salome,” Saskia said. “Are you here to open the doors?” Please, please, please—

  “I am.” Salome tilted her head. Her projection shimmered. “The threat of the Covenant is at an acceptable level. Evelyn Rousseau told me to open shelter door number five.”

  “This one?” Saskia said cautiously.

  Salome nodded. “It’s unlocked, by the way.”

  Saskia’s adrenaline surged. She pushed on the latch and felt it move beneath her touch. The door creaked open.

  “The threat from the Covenant is at an acceptable level.”

  “Thank you.” She glanced over her shoulder at Salome. “You’ve just saved all their lives.”

  “The threat level from the Covenant is at an acceptable level,” Salome said again. A side effect of the virus, Saskia figured.

  She slid in through the door, closed it behind her, then tested to make sure it was still unlocked. It was. She took a deep breath and descended the stairs into the shelter proper, following the sound of panicked, babbling voices. Her heart surged, and she doubled her speed, leaping over the last two stairs. She landed in half a meter of water and her heart dropped.

  “I’m here to get you—”

  She froze.

  There was no one in the shelter. The emergency lights glowed a sallow yellow, and the air was thick with humidity. The voices she’d heard rising up along the walls. Not voices.

  Water.

  The water had swollen above the grating, surging and roiling and splashing up in miniature waves. When she’d come for the concert, it had been a low trickle, barely visible in the darkness. Now it was a white water, surging underneath the town.

  Saskia waded out of the stairwell. The water splashed around her thighs, and she had to brace herself against the wall to keep from being swept away.

  A voice crackled over some ancient sound system: Salome.

  “Attention,” she said. “The threat from the Covenant is at an acceptable level.”

  “No!” screamed Saskia. “No, Salome, that’s not—”

  “Door number five is open. Please proceed calmly to the exit.”

  Saskia took off, half run
ning, half swimming, water splashing up around her. Salome repeated her message. “The threat from the Covenant is at an acceptable level.”

  “No, it’s not,” Saskia shrieked. She had to get to everyone and explain. Salome was making it sound like the Covenant had left.

  Saskia moved as fast as she could, cold water splashing everywhere. She hoped this corridor was the only way to get to the exit. Dorian had told her the shelter was designed to be easy to navigate, but down here everything looked the same.

  Salome’s voice droned on in the background.

  A triangle of light appeared up ahead, brighter than the dull safety lights casting everything in eerie shadows. Did Saskia hear voices? It was hard to tell, with the river, and with Salome’s warning blaring out of the walls. But as she approached, Saskia was sure of it. Definitely voices. Panicked, confused voices.

  The corridor ended at the light, a sharp turn veering off to the right. The water level was lower and Saskia picked up speed as she careened around the corner.

  She found herself in a massive room, the light so bright it hurt her eyes. For a moment, she blinked, trying to make sense of the chaos. People. Hundreds of people, splashing around in the ankle-high water, shouting, arguing. Half of them were gathering up soaked blankets and supplies, the other half seemed stricken still with fear.

  Saskia was pierced with a sudden, paralyzing anxiety. None of these people would listen to her. None of them had even noticed her.

  “The threat level is acceptable?” a woman shouted, off to Saskia’s right. “What does that even mean?”

  “What do you think it means?” said someone else. “The UNSC kicked the Covenant’s ass. What are we waiting for?”

  “Why is it just one door?”

  “The others are flooded!”

  “I’m not going out there. Not until we know for sure.”

  “Me neither! How do we know it’s not some Covie trick?”

  “Better than drowning!”

  The conversations bled together in Saskia’s head. She hadn’t prepared for this when she and the others had made their plan with Owen. Saskia will get everyone to the hangar. That was her job. She thought she might have to fight off the Covenant. Not deal with panicked townspeople.

  She moved forward, deeper into the crowd. She splashed through the water as she scanned the faces, looking for some familiar adult.

  Except what good would an adult do? They were all as panicked as the kids. Maybe more so. What she needed was a way to get everyone’s attention.

  “—at an acceptable level. Door number five is open. Please proceed—”

  Salome. She needed to get Salome to broadcast a message for her. Saskia darted through the crowd, over to the nearest wall. There had to be some kind of comm station around here somewhere. The place was old enough that they would have built them into the walls.

  There. Up ahead. A panel of blinking lights. Everyone was ignoring it while they scurried around. Must have realized the system was down. But she didn’t need the system. Not in town. Salome was clearly able to access the shelter’s communications.

  Saskia shoved her way through the crowd and slapped her palm against the contact button.

  “You know it’s worthless!” someone shouted. “Comm system’s still down.”

  Saskia ignored her. “Salome,” she said into the speaker. “Salome, let me talk.”

  A hitch in the announcement and suddenly Salome was in two places: reciting her blasted message and speaking softly to Saskia through the comm station.

  “What can I help you with, Saskia Nazari?”

  “Can you patch this through to the sound system?” Saskia asked. “I have to explain what’s going on.”

  “I’ve got the matter under control,” Salome said.

  Saskia gritted her teeth in frustration. What would happen if she told Salome she’d been infected with a virus? She should have paid more attention in computer science. The last thing she wanted was for Salome to lock the door if she found out the Covenant were actually still a threat.

  “You don’t,” Saskia said. “People don’t know what’s going on. The path outside the door—it’s clear. I need to tell them that. Okay?”

  A pause.

  “Salome?”

  “Okay. Patching through now.”

  Salome’s voice vanished from the loudspeaker, and in the silence it was replaced by confused gasps, some shrieked insistences that this all had been a Covenant trick.

  “Ready,” Salome said in her soft comm station voice.

  Saskia took a deep breath. “Hello?” she said, her voice wavering and unclear. “Hello? Attention?”

  The panicked hum of voices transformed into confusion. “Who’s that?”

  “Salome?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Attention,” Saskia said, more firmly now. She braced herself against the wall. “My name is Saskia Nazari.”

  Her name drew a gasp of shock, the way she expected it to. It was followed by a quiet murmuring.

  “Me and a team of—of others, we were trapped outside during the invasion. We’re here to get you off the planet. To safety. We have a ship. We were able to open one door, door number five.” Voices rose in confusion, and people were turning toward her, gaping at her with wide, desperate eyes. She peered over at them. “I’m here to escort you to the ship. There’s a Spartan—”

  The voices exploded. Old-timers shouted in distrust; young people whispered in disbelief.

  “A Spartan,” she said, more firmly, “who was stranded here. He’s been helping us. He’s leading a distraction against the Covenant—”

  “The Covenant are still here?” came a voice from the back.

  “Yes.” Saskia looked out at the crowd, all those pale, frightened faces staring back at her. “But the shelter is starting to flood—”

  “Half of it’s flooded out completely,” someone shouted.

  “We knew we had to act fast,” Saskia said. “If you want to fight, to help with the distraction, the Spartan and the others are at Brume Beach. They have weapons.” She hoped they had made it, at least. “Everyone else, I can take you to our ship.”

  Everyone stared at her.

  “That’s it,” she said. “Please, hurry, we don’t have much ti—”

  It was enough. The crowd erupted into motion, surging toward the exit, churning up the dark water. “Slowly!” Saskia shouted into the intercom. “The water in the corridor came up to my thighs, and it’s moving fast. Be careful.” She took a deep breath. “And let me get to the front. I know where we’re going.”

  They didn’t listen.

  Saskia dropped her hand to the pistol. Owen had told her that they might be panicky, that panicked people didn’t always listen to reason.

  She pulled the pistol off her belt and fired it into the wall. Chunks of stone exploded out into the water.

  Someone screamed, and then there was a ripple effect, people slowing, staring at her in horror.

  She stepped forward into the crowd, holding the pistol over her head. This time, the crowd parted for her—or maybe they parted for the pistol. She didn’t care. Whatever worked.

  “Saskia!” A man came pushing through the crowd, his eyes and hair wild, his face haggard. “You said there are others.”

  She stopped and looked at him.

  “Is my daughter one of them?” he gasped. “Evie? Evie Rousseau?”

  Saskia nodded. “She’s the one who got Salome to open the door,” she said softly.

  “Oh, thank god.” He sagged in place. “My daughter. She’s my only daughter.”

  “She’s fine,” Saskia said. “You’ll see her soon.”

  This was technically true: Evie was supposed to meet up with Saskia on her way to pick up Victor’s car so she could pick up the others from the beach. Assuming Victor’s car still worked. They hadn’t had a chance to double-check. But Saskia didn’t think Evie’s father needed to know all of that.

  “Thank you,�
�� he said. “Thank you.”

  Saskia wasn’t sure what else to say, so she only smiled and pressed onward into the crowd. She wondered where her parents were. If anyone would come to tell them she’d survived. If a light would switch on behind their eyes when they learned she had.

  But right now, her parents didn’t matter. What mattered were the people in the shelter, almost the entire population of Brume-sur-Mer. And they were looking at her like she was their leader.

  “This way,” she shouted, gesturing with the pistol. “We’re going to be walking a full kilometer through the woods! Don’t bring anything you can’t carry!”

  She led the crowd into the corridor. The water had risen by another several centimeters.

  “Hold on to the wall!” she shouted, glancing back at them over her shoulder. “Don’t try to move too fast.”

  She led them down the river that had once been the corridor, up the stairs, into the gray daylight. The rain had slacked off, but the air was thick with smoke from the fires.

  “Oh my god,” someone gasped behind her. “The town. It’s on fire.”

  “We don’t have time,” Saskia said. “I told you, the others are keeping the Covenant away from us.” She turned around, walked backward toward the woods. “There’s a path!” she shouted. “It leads to an old Sundered Legion hangar. That’s where we’re going. Stay alert! If you can fight, move to the edges. If not, stay in the center!”

  People listened to her. They were afraid, that much was clear, but they did as she said, rearranging themselves as they spilled, blinking and gasping, out of the shelter door. Saskia stepped away from the crowd and directed them to a narrow clearing between the trees. “Follow the path,” she said. “It’s faint, but it’s there.”

  She watched them go, all these people she had lived so close to for the last five years. She didn’t know any of them, not really, but it didn’t matter. They were shaking and afraid, their eyes darting around like they didn’t trust the open air. But she was going to get them to safety.

  A woman peeled off from the line of townspeople. “I want to fight,” she said.

  Saskia blinked.

  “You said some people were fighting to keep the Covenant away.”