The Thursday War

by Karen Traviss

  And then one of the Sangheili turned to face Vaz.

  “Nishum!” he roared.

  Vaz didn’t need a translation. The hinge-heads surged forward and he ducked back. Mal and Naomi got the idea instantly. They started running down the side of the temple building toward the rear, followed by a roaring that sounded like the surge of a tidal wave.

  “Dev, here we come,” Mal said. “Plan B. Up and out, fast as you can.”

  The noise of the drives suddenly rose into a high-pitched whine. It was going to be a rough takeoff. Vaz skidded around the end of the wall just behind Naomi, who reached into her belt and flung something back over her head without even looking. Vaz caught a glimpse as it arced over him.

  “Just smoke,” she said. “Every second counts.”

  The smoke grenade went off behind them with a loud bang and Vaz spotted Tart-Cart’s velvet gray nose up ahead. The next thing he saw was half a dozen Elites between him and the ship. The dropship’s side hatch was open. If this wasn’t ‘Telcam’s guys coming to help them out, it was going to turn ugly pretty fast. Then one of the hinge-heads answered the question by aiming his plasma pistol, and a green bolt of energy sizzled off Vaz’s shoulder plate, almost bowling him over. Something caught him and shoved him upright in a second—maybe Naomi, maybe Mal—and his body did what it had learned to do without thinking: he returned fire, and kept firing as he ran, crashing into one Sangheili so hard that the impact hurt deep in his sinuses. He didn’t realize how high he could jump until he landed in the open hatch and smashed onto the coaming. He rolled clear and grabbed the first arm he could see. Mal hauled him through the hatch and Naomi jumped onto the step, holding on to the hull.

  “Go, Dev,” Mal yelled. “Lift. Go go go.”

  The dropship shot up vertically like a mortar. Vaz found himself on his back, looking through the open hatch at a fireworks show of green and white streaks zipping past Naomi, framed in silhouette for a second. The hatch shut and sealed with a fwoomp of air.

  “So,” Devereaux said. “No Phillips. If he’d been outside, I’d have found him.”

  “If he’d been inside, we’d have found him.” Mal leaned over Vaz and checked him out. “So, apart from explaining to Osman how we managed to start a riot and kill a few hinge-heads on holy ground, I think we ought to start an aerial search.”

  Vaz’s ribs were starting to throb where he’d fallen against the hatch. “He can’t have gone that far. No more than thirty klicks, even if he was running.”

  Naomi looked down at him and BB’s voice emerged from her helmet. It didn’t look as funny as it had an hour ago.

  “That,” BB said, “depends on how he left the temple.”

  SANGHELIOS: EXACT LOCATION UNKNOWN

  “That didn’t happen,” Phillips said. “Did it?”

  For a moment he thought he’d stepped into the temple grounds, but his stomach was still cartwheeling as if he’d done a somersault. A breeze played on his face.

  Ontom was gone. He had no idea where he was.

  He stood in a ruined building—no roof, no windows, just three crumbling stone-block walls—in the middle of nowhere. Hip-high, dark green grass rolled and swayed like an ocean for a couple of kilometers ahead of him. He turned around slowly, taking in a small town in the distance, and decided that his only chance of getting out was to walk to the nearest keep and beg for help. Maybe a little sleight of hand with an arum would be his passport.

  If only BB would suddenly snap back to normal.

  “That was a portal,” BB said.

  “I sort of worked that out.” Portals were routed all over the place, usually not on the same planet. The sky looked the same; the air smelled familiar. “But we’re still on Sanghelios, aren’t we?”

  “I believe so. I still have my positioning system.”

  “How far from Ontom?”

  “I estimate eighty kilometers.”

  It seemed a pointlessly short journey for a portal given the energy needed to power it. But perhaps it made sense when the Forerunners were last here, and at least the thing still worked even though the exit end was in ruins. Phillips took a look around the structure and wondered whether it was worth risking an unencrypted broadcast. He didn’t have any protection from the rebels now, no top cover as Mal called it, and announcing that he was a good pal of the Arbiter might get him killed with equal speed.

  The ODSTs would definitely come looking for him sooner or later. He had to make it easier for them to find him.

  “I can’t hide, BB.” There was a panel of carved symbols on a slab of masonry but half of it had crumbled away. Phillips recorded a few images anyway. “So I might as well make myself conspicuous. Nice brisk walk into town.”

  “I think that’s a collective of keeps called Acroli. But I can’t tell what its loyalties are.”

  “I have a feeling it’s not going to make much difference. I’m a worm. An arum-solving worm.”

  “Professor, I find I’m having to revise my translation.”

  Phillips was sure he could see smoke in the far distance. He checked his datapad map, which wasn’t exactly reliable. He should have asked the Arbiter for an accurate chart. “Is that a problem, BB? Because I think you got the word for portal right.”

  “Coordinates,” BB said. “I must have interpreted the numbers wrongly. Or Halsey did. This location doesn’t correspond to the position I would have expected.”

  “Back to the drawing board.”

  “It’s important. I need to work out how the Forerunners navigated, or else you won’t know the locations of the Halos.”

  “How come your security thingie hasn’t wiped your awareness of Halos?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very distressing.”

  Phillips didn’t know what to say to comfort him. He wasn’t even sure if changing the subject worked. “We’ll sort it out later,” he said. “Let’s get home first.”

  Somehow he’d always expected the Sangheili to have sophisticated security that could pick up an alien incursion anywhere on the planet, but here he was, ambling through a meadow within sight of a town, and nothing had swooped on him, shot at him, or detected him yet. He was used to a world where security cameras picked him up two hundred times a day just wandering around Sydney and where his bank and comms provider knew his every desire, habit, and movement, let alone all the government snoopers who’d probably been keeping tabs on him without his knowledge. Yes, but I’m a snooper now. ONI was right about the technological infrastructure going down the pan with the San’Shyuum. They’d only been gone a few months but they’d left a massive hole.

  The town was getting closer. So were the palls of smoke behind it. Phillips started to rethink his perspective, wondering if the smoke was actually closer than he’d first thought and that he was walking into trouble. But there was no other place to head to. He felt in his bag to see if he had anything sharp that he could use to defend himself. Okay. Two-fifty centimeters of Sangheili, one-meter-seventy me, and the winner would be … not me. Then his fingers touched cool, polished wood, and he took out the arum that he’d been clutching before the explosion, the one that had contained the message from ‘Telcam. That would get him out of more tight spots than any knife. He spun the nested spheres, got it open, and bent down to pick up a small stone to place in its heart. All he had to do when confronted was rattle it and dazzle his enemy with his dexterity.

  “What’s that?” BB asked.

  “You know what this is, BB.” Oh God, is the rest of his memory failing, too? “It’s an arum.”

  “I mean that up ahead.”

  Phillips had been too wrapped up in the arum to notice. He scanned along the radio cam’s line of sight, looking for whatever had grabbed BB’s attention. The grass was moving about fifty meters ahead of him, and it wasn’t the wind. Something was wading through it. There must have been wildlife on Sanghelios, even livestock, but he knew nothing about it. He decided to assume it would sink its teeth in him.

  �
�What do you think it is, BB?”

  “Something short.”

  “Or something with its head down, stalking us.”

  “I’m just the radio cam, Professor. It’s stalking you.”

  Phillips started thinking what he’d do if the thing — whatever it was —came at him. Okay, he had a bag, and he had a lump of wood, and he could swing that like a sock full of coins. Yet again he thought how helpless he was compared to Mal or Vaz. Vaz would probably have head-butted the thing and then eaten it raw. Nothing scared him. Christ, even Devereaux wouldn’t have broken a sweat: pilot or not, she’d been through exactly the same training as the two guys. Phillips envied their absolute physical confidence.

  He noted that he didn’t compare his lack of survival skills to Naomi’s, though. Naomi was beyond human. Nobody expected him to shape up to a Spartan, not even his ego.

  “Professor, I think there’s more than one,” BB said helpfully. “The grass is moving in several places.”

  “Pray for sheep.” Phillips put the arum back in the bag, transferred everything breakable to his pockets, and began twisting the fabric to make a long handle. His heart started pounding. Swing it nice and hard. Whack. Really hard. Job done. “Or whatever Sangheili rear for dinner.”

  He was ready. He really was going to take a swing and brain whatever came at him. He was in full primal mode, about twenty meters away from the target, and pumping up a good head of adrenaline to carry him through. Then something bobbed above the top of the grass. It stood up. It was deformed and comically ugly, or at least he thought it was until he realized it was wearing a breathing mask and the hump on its spine was a backpack.

  “Unggoy,” BB said. “Grunts. They breathe methane.”

  Two more masked heads popped up. Phillips had never seen a Grunt in the flesh before. It was nice to be taller than an alien for a change.

  “Yeah, and methane’s flammable.” The Grunts just stared at him. “Do they fight?”

  “Some do. Most are just manual labor.”

  “Okay, silent routine, BB.”

  This was no time to make new enemies. Phillips lowered his bag slowly and tried to look nonthreatening. They’d speak Sangheili. He could dazzle them.

  “Hi,” he said. “My name’s Evan. I’m lost and I need help. I was invited here by Thel ‘Vadam and I need to contact his office.”

  The Grunt looked up at him through slit-like eye-pieces. “You talk funny. Fancy, but funny.”

  “Do you work here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is this a farm?”

  “Yeah.”

  Okay. This is going to take some time. “If I knock on the door, will the farmer help me?”

  “Nah,” said the Grunt. His two buddies padded a little closer. “He’s a bastard. They all are. Elites. Hate ’em.”

  “I just want to make a call to the Arbiter.”

  “You want to go to the keep?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  One of the other Grunts shuffled through the grass and stood in front of Phillips. He pointed into the distance with an oversized hand. Whatever they looked like without the masks, they probably weren’t much prettier.

  “Wassat smoke?” he asked. “Humans invading? You’re a human, yeah?”

  So they didn’t even know there was a coup going on. Why should they? They seemed to be just farmhands. “Yes, I’m human, but no, we’re not invading.”

  “Oh. Pity. Our ancestors tried fighting the Elites. But the bastards glassed them.”

  “And gave us all the shitty jobs,” his buddy added. “We hate ’em.”

  “So you said.” The smoke was looking way too close for Phillips’s comfort now. He could hear drives whining in the distance, but the vessels could have been anything from civilian transports to crop sprayers. For a Sangheili expert, he still had a lot of gaps to fill. “Look, I’m going to walk down to the keep. What’s the elder’s name?”

  “Jicam,” said the main Grunt. “You ought to shoot him.”

  “Don’t take any notice of Dengo,” his buddy said. “He’s sucking too much infusion. Passes the time in this job, you know? Just approach nice and slow. You want us to walk with you?”

  “Okay.” Phillips thought that would make getting shot on sight less likely. “What’s infusion?”

  “It smoothes the day out. You want some?”

  Oh. Dope. Alcohol. Whatever. “No thanks, I don’t think I’ve got the right body chemistry.”

  Phillips started walking and the Grunts trotted along with him, two at his side and one some way behind. When he pushed through the grass, he walked straight into a mown area and realized they’d been cutting whatever the crop was and decided to take a very long break. They grabbed any excuse to stop working for a while.

  So I’m making friends with Unggoy. Wow. That’s got to be worth another paper. Professor Evan Phillips, alien pundit, part-time spook. Oh, the lecture tours … the TV gigs.

  And the obituary, if I’m not careful.

  He could hear a vessel approaching from behind and looked over his shoulder to see a purple streak that could have been a Banshee zip overhead at high speed in the direction of the smoke. Now it was starting to worry him.

  I really should have thought a bit harder about that smoke.

  “They got trouble,” Dengo said. “Hah.”

  Another Banshee shot overhead, then another, and another. Five seconds later, instant bolts of green light punched down from the sky and sent balls of flame and black smoke roiling into the air. It wasn’t the town. They definitely hadn’t hit the keep. They couldn’t bomb the keep, he needed it in one piece, he had to make that call to the Arbiter’s office, or else—

  “Get down, Professor,” BB said. “I know you told me to be silent, but take cover.”

  The Grunts swung around to see where that foreign voice was coming from. Phillips watched four small specks in the sky getting bigger by the second, probably the Banshees on the way back from their sortie. But there was one too many, and then one of the roofs on the keep exploded, sending masonry and glass high in the air. This time he ducked. He hit the ground facedown in the grass. There was a deafening zzipppp that sounded as if someone had ripped a giant piece of fabric right next to him, the smell of burned air, and an explosion like a grenade. Dirt and water rained on him.

  The Grunts went crazy, or at least two of them did. It wasn’t water. It was blood. Phillips lifted his head a fraction and he could see it. He couldn’t work out what was going on now because the Grunts were screaming, but he knew they’d lost one of their buddies. Curled and misshapen pieces of metal lay in the grass a few meters from him, still hissing. So that was what happened when you hit a methane tank.

  Phillips waited, still clinging to the ground, but he couldn’t hear the Banshees now. He risked pushing himself up on his hands and looked around again. The Grunts were hunkered down, now chattering furiously.

  “Hey,” Phillips barked. “Hey—guys, get a grip. We can’t just sit here all day. Come on. Let’s get to the keep.”

  “They killed Sensen,” Dengo said. “Bastards killed him.”

  “You don’t know which bastards.” Phillips knelt up. What would Mal do? What would Osman do? “They’re fighting each other. But you work for the keep, yes? Then we go there. Even if it’s just to arm ourselves. Okay, you’re Dengo—what’s your name?”

  “Gikak.”

  “Move it, Gikak.”

  Phillips got to his feet and started walking. If he was honest with himself, he was close to loss of bowel control again, but he’d lived through this once and that meant he could live through it again. Even ‘Telcam thought the gods were looking out for him. Sometimes telling yourself a really big lie was as good as the real thing. When he looked behind him, Dengo and Gikak were following obediently.

  “You better knock on the door,” Phillips said. “I might be too much of a surprise.”

  He could see what the smoke was now. It was a downed vessel, something s
mall, fighter-size; he could pick out the shape of the hull between the trees. With any luck, whoever had done the strafing run wouldn’t be back. He couldn’t see anyone as he approached the keep—small, tatty, nothing like the Arbiter’s imposing headquarters—and the Grunts did as they were told and went ahead.

  “Just observe, BB,” Phillips whispered. “Let me do the talking.”

  The huge double door didn’t open for a few moments and the Grunts just stood there looking lost and confused. Then one side eased half-open, followed by the muzzle of plasma pistol.

  “My lady Elar,” Gikak said. “Sensen’s been killed. We found this human. He’s lost.”

  The door opened fully. Phillips had never been up close to a Sangheili female before. They were almost as big as the males and this one seemed to know how to handle a weapon.

  This was hands-on anthropology, live and raw.

  Charm. Courtesy. Oh God. Do it.

  “Hello, my lady,” Phillips said, terrified. “May I come in?”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  YOU NEED TO DO MORE THAN OVERTHROW THE ARBITER. YOU NEED TO WIPE BOTH HIM AND VADAM FROM THE FACE OF SANGHELIOS, BECAUSE AS LONG AS THAT STATE EXISTS, IT WILL REMAIN LOYAL TO HIM, AND IT WILL EXERT ITS POWER AND INFLUENCE.

  (SHIPMASTER BURAN ‘UTARAL TO AVU MED ‘TELCAM)

  UNSC PORT STANLEY, IN SANGHELIOS ORBIT

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Mal said. “It was a bit of a balls-up. But we had to open fire.”

  Osman hoped that her dismay didn’t show on her face. She steeled herself to sit well back in her seat and not lean forward toward the cam mounted on the console. They’d done all they could, and she certainly couldn’t have done any better. She needed to project her confidence in them.

  “You’re entitled to defend yourselves,” she said. “We can only take diplomacy so far. Is Vaz okay?”

  She could see movement behind Mal in the crew bay. Vaz was sitting up against one of the bulkheads in his tank top with one arm folded across his chest, fending off Naomi’s first aid. The Spartan ran out of patience, grabbed him by one shoulder, and pinned him while she sprayed salve on his burns.