Saskia and Evie had both knotted roses out of old clothes, an old woman two bunks down showing them how to do so. The roses had been for Dorian’s bandmates. Their names had come in yesterday morning. Xavier Dupont. Alex Linville. Hugo Chastain. Saskia thought of watching them play as she twisted the fabric around into the approximation of a flower. In some ways, it had seemed like such a pointless gift, but it was also everything she had to offer.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
Saskia blinked at the voice. “Owen?” She lifted her head off the cot.
And gasped. It was Owen, only he wore a crisp UNSC military uniform rather than his heavy, plated armor. He smiled, patted his side.
“They got to me just in time,” he said.
Saskia jumped off her cot and hugged him without thinking. She was surprised when he returned it.
“I can’t believe you got better so quickly!” She pulled away from him.
“We’re designed to.” His smile broadened. “I was actually sent to fetch you.”
“What?” Saskia’s hopes glimmered: Had her parents decided to surprise her? Had they shown up on the Sparrow without letting her know first?
Owen smoothed down his coat. “Naval Intelligence wants to see you.”
All that hope washed out of Saskia. Goose bumps rippled over her forearms. “ONI? Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure. But they want to see all four of you.”
“Now?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Saskia looked down at her clothes: a drab cotton shirt, a pair of loose-fitting pants. Everyone in the refugee barracks had been issued the same clothing.
Owen put his hand on her shoulder. “You look fine. They know what you’ve been through.”
“I look like garbage,” Saskia said.
Owen laughed. He actually laughed, like a real human being, someone who understood jokes.
“I looked a lot worse during my first meeting with ONI,” he said.
Owen guided her forward, toward the exit. Out in the corridor everything was quiet save for the soft hum of the ship’s engine and the clicking of Owen’s regulation shoes on the tile. The holo-images at the memorial flickered silently as they passed.
Saskia’s heart pounded. ONI! What could ONI possibly want with her? With all of them?
Eventually, they came to a narrow door at the end of the corridor. Owen pressed his hand against the identification lock and the door slid open, revealing a conference room lit with garish yellow lights. The others were already there, along with a tall, angular woman dressed in a dark, severe suit set. She smiled thinly at Owen.
“Thank you, Spartan. Saskia Nazari, welcome.”
Saskia crept forward and slid into a seat beside Victor. She hadn’t seen much of the others since they’d arrived. They’d been caught up in their families, and anyway they’d all been placed in different refugee barracks, spread out across the ship.
Owen sat down at the far end of the table. The woman stayed standing. She held a military-issue black comm pad in the crook of one arm, and she tapped at it, reading the screen.
“Before we begin,” she said in a clipped voice, “I must remind you that the conversation we are about to have is highly classified as part of the functional operations of the Office of Naval Intelligence’s XEG presence on this ship.”
Saskia glanced over at Victor beside her. He just looked dumbfounded.
“Excuse me,” Dorian said, leaning forward, folding his hand on the table. “What exactly is XEG?”
The woman stared at him, and for a moment, Saskia was sure she was about to have him shot. But then she said, “The Xeno-Materials Exploitation Group. We’ll explain more in due time. Now, as I was saying.” She swept her gaze around the table. “What you hear in this room is not to leave this room.” She peered at them over the top of the comm pad, her eyes as sharp as a laser. “Do you understand?”
Saskia shifted uneasily.
“Do you?” the woman prompted.
“Yes,” Evie said first.
“Yeah,” said Dorian.
The woman turned her gaze to Victor and Saskia. “And you two?”
Saskia nodded, whispered a faint yes. Victor gave his assent.
“Very good.” The woman tapped on her comm pad. “You may call me Daniella. Spartan-B096 gave me a full report of your activities on Meridian.”
A holo flared to life, four figures racing through a hazy gray wood. It took Saskia a moment to realize she was looking at herself, tattered and soaked with rain, clutching a plasma pistol to her chest. It was all of them. Dorian. Victor. Evie. They were marching through the forest on their way to rescue the townspeople from the shelter.
Daniella looked up at the room as the holo played out across the table. “I reviewed the feed recorded by Spartan-B096’s armor during your activities. I must say, I was very impressed. We all were.”
Saskia shivered. Who was we? She wondered suddenly if there were others watching this meeting, behind cameras or trick windows. She forced herself not to glance around.
“We are planning on giving all four of you the UNSC Medal of Honor.”
Victor let out a strangled gasp.
Daniella turned to him. “I see at least one of you recognizes it. As for the others …” She paused, smiling faintly. “The Medal of Honor is our highest civilian award. You four will be the youngest to ever receive it.”
Saskia felt dizzy. She pressed her palms against the top of the table to steady herself.
“We’ll be announcing it publicly, as part of an award ceremony. It should boost morale among Meridian’s survivors. However”—Daniella flicked her hand dismissively—“that is not why I’m here.”
Saskia barely heard her. The UNSC Medal of Honor! She looked across the table at Evie and Dorian, who seemed just as stunned.
“In his report, Spartan-B096 mentioned that you found evidence that the Covenant were attempting to retrieve a Forerunner artifact. That is—concerning to us.” The holo froze. It no longer showed the four of them marching through the woods, but rather the Covenant drilling structure in Old Brume, in the moments before the explosions went off.
Daniella set the comm pad down and leaned over the table, her eyes piercing. “We want you to go back.”
“What?” squawked Dorian. “After we nearly killed ourselves getting off Meridian?”
Evie jabbed her finger in his rib cage, scowling. He glared at her.
Daniella just smiled at this, however. “We’ll train you, of course. And equip and compensate you. All four of you were set to graduate this year, so this isn’t terribly unconventional, and you will be the appropriate age by the time we’re finished. We can conduct a truncated version of our ground operatives training program.”
“Truncated?” asked Victor.
“We don’t know how much time we have before the Covenant uncover the asset. We’ve developed a specialized team to secure the artifact before the Covenant do. All four of you have skills that will be immensely beneficial. Besides which, you know the terrain better than anyone we have on our side. You proved extraordinarily adept at avoiding the Covenant. We want to know what that artifact is. We want”—she paused, her eyes glittering—“to potentially retrieve it for ourselves, to aid with the war effort.”
Saskia drank this all in, her heart thudding. They wanted to send them back? It seemed cruel, after everything they’d been through. And yet she couldn’t deny the thrill Daniella’s words had sent down her spine. She would be immensely beneficial.
Daniella straightened, smoothed out the harsh lines of her suit. “We won’t be sending you off to training tomorrow, of course. You’ll have time to rest and recover. To see your families.”
“And if we don’t want to go get ourselves killed for ONI?” Dorian asked. “I mean, it’s always easier sending kids to die, isn’t it?”
Daniella smiled. There was something predatory in her smile, Saskia thought. Something dangerous.
�
��You’re not a child, Dorian.”
Dorian frowned.
Daniella tilted her head. “I know you aren’t the UNSC type,” she told him. “But you won’t be part of the UNSC. Not officially. You’ll be a special … militia organization, a subset of Meridian’s local defense force that’s working directly with ONI. No one’s going to make you cut your hair.”
Dorian rolled his eyes. Daniella just gave him that harsh smile again.
“Think about it,” she said, to all of them. “This week you rescued your town from certain destruction. Now’s your chance to rescue your entire colony, and all of humanity.”
She didn’t give them a chance to respond to that. Just scooped up her comm pad and strolled out of the room, leaving them in the stifling fluorescence.
For a moment, they all sat in silence. Owen was the first to speak.
“I know it seems like too much,” he said, very quietly. “But give it time. Civilian life will be hard for you now.” He paused. “You’ll see.”
Saskia looked across the table at Evie and Dorian. She looked at Victor, slumping back in his chair, his expression vaguely stunned. She thought about the four refugee barracks, crammed with the population of a town she had never thought she was a part of. She had brought them here. Her parents had abandoned her to an invasion, and she had fought back instead of hiding.
“I’ll do it,” she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper.
Evie jerked up her head. “Really?” she said.
Saskia swallowed. “Yeah. I want to do it.” She smiled at Evie, at Dorian. At Victor, who smiled awkwardly back. “But I don’t want to do it alone.”
The room buzzed with silence. Saskia wasn’t sure what they would say. She wouldn’t blame them if they said no. They had families.
“You won’t have to,” Evie said.
“Yeah,” Victor said. “You won’t.”
Everyone turned to Dorian. He shook his head, looked at some spot on the wall. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m in too.”
It felt too enormous a decision for such a small room. But Saskia knew it had really already been made for them, during their week down on war-torn Meridian. Their town had burned, and they had changed.
Somehow, they had become heroes.
CASSANDRA ROSE CLARKE’s work has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award, the Pushcart Prize, and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. She grew up in south Texas and currently lives in a suburb of Houston, where she writes and serves as the associate director for Writespace, a literary arts nonprofit. She holds an MA in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin, and in 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle.
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First printing 2019
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e-ISBN 978-1-338-33572-9
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