HALO: Battle Born

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  Owen was the first to move, the floor creaking as he shifted his weight. “What else did you hear?” he asked.

  Saskia and Victor glanced at each other. “Not much,” Saskia said, turning back to Owen. “Just that they were searching for some kind of artifact, and that as long as they were searching for it, the colony was safe from glassing—” She shook her head, her eyes wild. “What does it mean? What artifact could possibly be in Brume-sur-Mer?”

  Owen didn’t seem to be paying attention, though. He had turned toward the window, and two Owens, the real Owen and the ghost of his reflection, gazed out at the rain.

  “Well?” Dorian said, breaking the silence.

  “How much do you know about the Covenant?” Owen asked.

  Victor blinked, glanced over at Evie, then at Saskia. Both of them looked as baffled as he felt. Dorian, of course, was just leaning back in his chair, scowling.

  “We know the species,” Evie said. “They teach us that in history at school.”

  “Mrs. Elwin told us about their religion,” Saskia said. “Weren’t you in her class, Victor?”

  He blushed again. Mrs. Elwin’s current events class was the first time he’d ever laid eyes on Saskia Nazari. “Yeah. It’s all tied up with their government. Most species they try to convert, but not us—”

  “Yeah,” Owen said. “Not us.” He stood up, paced across the dining room, his armor strange in the soft glow of the chandelier. “Did your teacher tell you who the Covenant worship?”

  Victor glanced over at Saskia, who shrugged and shook her head. He tried to remember. “Some old aliens, right? They’re dead now?”

  “Yes.” Owen stopped. “We call them the Forerunners.”

  The name chimed in Victor’s memory. It was such a bland word for a race of gods.

  “What does this have to do with anything?” Dorian demanded. “Does it matter what aliens the Covenant worship?”

  Owen whirled around. “This entire war is about who the Covenant worship. It’s the entire reason they want to exterminate us.”

  “They have a reason?” Evie said. “In school—”

  “Of course they have a reason,” Owen said. “But ONI keeps as much key information out of civilian ears as possible. It’s for your own benefit.”

  Dorian snorted, but the others all leaned forward, eyes wide with interest and fear. Victor felt the way he did whenever he wrote the scripts for his movies, like he was on the verge of uncovering some unimaginable secret.

  “So are you going to tell us or not?” Dorian said. “What exactly is the artifact they heard about?”

  Owen sighed. “The Forerunners left artifacts behind. One of the central tenants of the Covenant’s religious belief involves seeking out these artifacts.”

  Victor felt dizzy. “You’re saying there’s a Forerunner artifact in Brume-sur-Mer?”

  “I don’t know,” Owen said. “But the drilling would suggest as much, yes. As would the energy shield.” He paused. “I suspect what you saw in town was an archaeological dig. The Covenant think there’s something here, and they’re looking for it.”

  Silence, and the rain. The Sundered Legion ship seemed suddenly absurd now, compared to the possibility of some ancient alien something buried beneath the rows of shabby wooden houses that Victor had known his entire life. Strange enough to think of a hangar hiding in the woods, but here was something older and even more bizarre, something Victor couldn’t even imagine.

  And the Covenant had come and destroyed his home for it.

  “What sort of artifact is it?”

  Evie. She spoke in a raspy whisper, barely audible over the rain.

  Owen shook his head. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you. And the voices you heard on the comm are right. The artifact’s presence here must be keeping the Covenant from glassing the planet.”

  He fell quiet, the cold reality sucking all the air out of the room. Victor glanced at Saskia. “Even if we got that Sundered Legion ship to work,” he said. “Even if we had a pilot—”

  “You’ve got a pilot,” Dorian said roughly. “I know how to fly.”

  “Really?” Victor blurted out.

  Dorian glared at him.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re blocked in by an energy shield. And we can’t just leave everyone in town here to die.”

  Saskia shifted in her seat, her gaze tilted downward. Owen watched them for a moment, unspeaking, then said, “I agree.” He lifted his chin, planted his armored legs hard on the floor. The damaged section of armor stood out stark and angry, a melted mass on his hip. But the rest of him looked like a weapon.

  “This artifact—it’s our leverage. We can’t let them to get to it.”

  “How exactly are we going to do that?” Dorian said. “Fight them? We barely even have weapons.”

  Owen gave one of those disconcerting smiles. “Not fight. Not exactly.”

  Then he leaned forward, pressing his palms on the table, and began to talk.

  Saskia crouched in what had once been Brume-sur-Mer’s only coffee shop. She thought she could still catch the earthy fragrance of coffee beans beneath the stink of plasma and smoke. And the rain. Sometime while they had slept, it had started to rain, and when they woke up, the driveway outside Saskia’s house was rushing like a river. “This is good,” Owen had told her, the two of them eating a reconstituted breakfast in the kitchen. “Gives us cover.” Saskia had only nodded in agreement and stirred her soupy eggs. She still hadn’t told him about her father’s armory. She hadn’t told any of them. Before, she hadn’t been sure she trusted them; now she had waited too long, and she was afraid they would kick her out if she revealed she’d lied. Victor seemed convinced she wanted to abandon the town to the Covenant—they all did.

  And part of her had wanted to. Part of her.

  Rain blew in through the shattered coffee shop window, pooling on the dusty tile. Saskia hunched a meter away, the rifle propped up on a pile of broken chairs. Her comm pad rested on the floor beside her, the screen black.

  Saskia shifted her weight, moving her legs out from under her. They tingled as the blood rushed back in. How long had she been sitting here? It seemed stupid to think the Covenant would come out to the drilling site in this rain. But Owen had positioned her in the coffee shop anyway. “Just in case,” he’d told her, pressing one armor-heavy hand on her shoulder. It hadn’t felt like a human touch.

  Somewhere out there in that rain, the rest of them were making their way through the old neighborhood with Covenant weapons. Owen had been able to procure a fully automatic plasma rifle. Saskia wasn’t sure how he got it, but she could guess. Right now, Owen and the others were taking position at key spots, and she was the backup. If the Covenant showed up: Shoot them.

  The rain pounded harder and blew into the coffee shop in misty clouds. Saskia peered through the scope of the rifle, zeroed in on an empty place out in the street. Raindrops glowed green from the night vision. She wasn’t sure exactly what her father had in his armory, only that most of them were prototypes, things that hadn’t been officially approved for production yet.

  She should have told them about the armory the first night. The situation was life-or-death, not just for her and the others, but for the whole colony. She shouldn’t have let her parents’ warnings about the classified nature of the weapons and corporate espionage and intellectual property theft get in her head. They’d raised her to never get too close to anyone, that she was never part of the town, not really. At first, she convinced herself that the invasion hadn’t changed that.

  After all, she was the only one without family in the shelter. The only one with nothing to fight for. That was how the others saw her, wasn’t it? And she could see the truth to it.

  Saskia heard the faint whirring of a large machine in the distance.

  She stiffened, crouched lower behind her wall of broken chairs. Her heart hammered and a sickness rose in her stomach. They’re going to need me after all.

  She
felt around on the floor for her comm pad. The noise grew louder; a pale light spilled across the street. Evie had set up a local channel for them to use when they were split up like this. They’d tested it back in Saskia’s safe room, after the military channel Owen had given them access to didn’t work—still scrambled, he’d said. Evie’s local channel wouldn’t be strong enough to reach outside of Brume-sur-Mer, but at least it could keep them in contact with one another.

  She tapped in the code, hit send, threw the comm pad aside, and peered through the scope again. The night vision was washed out. She switched to normal view. It was murky and violet, but she thought she could see well enough.

  She hoped she could see well enough. She would only have one shot.

  The Covenant vehicle crept into view, the light from Covenant pylons that lined the road casting everything into harsh shadows. It looked like a large metallic insect, crawling over everything in its path. Saskia pressed her finger against the rifle’s trigger. Owen had told her what to do. “The Locust has weak defenses. Concentrated fire should take it down, as long as you act fast. Aim for the generator lights. They’re small, but you’re a good shot.” She’d wondered how he knew that—had someone told him about her shooting the Jackal back when she saved Evie? The compliment made her blush regardless, and she thought about it now, shrouded in darkness, surrounded by the thrum of rain and the Covenant Locust.

  The vehicle filled up her line of sight. It was very large and threatening this close.

  For a moment, she panicked: All she saw was the mass of the Locust, its enormous armored body that sat atop its chassis and four legs. No lights.

  You’re a good shot.

  But as the Locust crawled closer, she saw flashes of blue glow from cylinders behind its chassis. They were small and mostly protected by the vehicle’s armor. Even in the scope, they looked impossible to hit. From her current position, this was as good a chance as she’d have.

  Saskia sucked in a deep breath of air. Exhaled.

  Squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle kicked back and slammed into her forehead, and she forced it back down again, her finger pressed against the trigger, releasing a stream of gunfire.

  Alien voices erupted out of the rain, chattering and indecipherable. A plasma bolt sliced through the light fixture overhead, sending shards of glass raining down on her. She choked back her fear and held her place.

  But then the Locust’s turret started to turn.

  No, she thought, just as she saw a dazzling burst of light. But the dazzle didn’t fade, and then she smelled smoke, and she realized the vehicle was burning.

  She’d gotten through the defenses.

  Saskia grabbed her comm pad and her rifle and darted behind the counter. More plasma fire. Had they seen her? Or were they just firing into the space? It didn’t matter. She had to get out of here before they fired on her with the vehicle’s cannon.

  She charged into the shop’s back storage room. Unlike the front, it was pristine, untouched, plastic tubs of synthetic coffee beans lining the shelves, waiting to be brewed. The sound of Covenant voices followed her as she pushed out of the storage room and into a tiny back office. More plasma fire, although it sounded distant.

  I’m going to get out, she told herself. I’m going to get out.

  She slammed out of the back door and into a wall of rain. She faltered for a moment, blinking at the darkness. But then she heard the hissing pulses of a plasma rifle and she took off again, feet pounding against the cement. Dorian had given her the escape route—out the back, through the delivery parking lot, into the wooded area that cut between the shops and the houses.

  “It’ll be easy to lose them back there,” he’d said. “Especially in the rain.”

  Saskia hoped he was right. She leapt over the edge of the parking lot and landed in a mess of soft, sucking mud.

  Behind her, everything illuminated.

  She didn’t turn around, didn’t look back at her attackers. She only ran, slipping and stumbling over the mud and grass. The trees seemed a million kilometers away until she darted past the first of them. A plasma bolt winged past, close enough that she felt the heat of it on her cheek. She veered left, into the tangle of underbrush, and flung herself onto the ground. Her lungs burned; her side stung with a sharp cramp.

  Footsteps pounded past. Someone barked out something in the Covenant’s language, and Saskia pressed her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Then someone answered, farther away. Footsteps retreated.

  For a long moment, Saskia lay motionless in the undergrowth, rainwater sluicing over her. The Covenant soldiers’ voices faded away until there was only the sound of rain. Saskia straightened up, shaking. Then she plunged off into the underbrush, fighting against vines and tree branches until she emerged on the other side. A fence rose up in front of her—on the other side were houses, the edge of the neighborhood where the Covenant were digging. Saskia ran along the perimeter of the fence until she found an unlocked gate—Dorian had sworn there would be at least one—and slipped into the house’s backyard. It was small and neat, a flare of amaryllis growing in the corner. Untouched by the fighting.

  She pulled out her comm pad and her heart sank. No confirmation message from Victor. She opened up her message—had it sent? It said it had, but they hadn’t confirmed receipt. Maybe they just forgot? Or maybe Evie’s local channel wasn’t as foolproof as they thought.

  Saskia’s head buzzed. She shoved the comm pad back in her pocket and jogged around to the front of the house. The street number glowed faintly on the bricks: 23. What street was this? She pulled out her comm pad again (still no confirmation) and checked the map. Rue Cascade. She was on the right street. She just needed to get to number 57. Their rendezvous point. Dorian’s suggestion—he said no one had lived there for years. It went unsaid that it was a good choice because they wouldn’t risk finding bodies when they went inside.

  Saskia ran down the empty street, past the rows of dark houses. The streetlamps burned like always, but the houses seemed to be sleeping. Or dead.

  Number 57 was as dark as the others. But that didn’t mean anything. They would want to blend in. Saskia went up to the front door and pushed it open. Unlocked, just like Dorian said it would be. She stepped inside and dripped on the tiles in the foyer. Kicked the door shut.

  “Hello?” she called out low, her voice tremulous. “I’m here.”

  Nothing.

  Saskia slumped up against the closed door. Her head spun with terror.

  They hadn’t made it.

  They hadn’t gotten her message.

  She didn’t let herself think of the other possibility. That was the possibility she would have to prevent.

  She opened up the map on her comm pad. Evie and Dorian had estimated the location of the dig to be on Boulevard du Lac, near Rue Montagne, a few blocks over. If the Covenant were scouring the coffee shop or the wooded area looking for her, then they wouldn’t have found them yet.

  Saskia raced out of the house, back into the pounding rain.

  Evie nestled the bomb at the base of a towering tangle of alien-alloyed beams. It was a narrow metal canister, palm-sized and ordinary. It sat there like an egg, inert until it wasn’t anymore.

  The rain was falling in sheets, and even the Covenant’s sleek, organically shaped drilling infrastructure didn’t provide any real shelter. She hated this part. She’d done it five times already, with five different bombs, and every time she felt like her body was collapsing in on itself.

  She leaned down, pressed her thumb against the activation button.

  The bomb lit up red.

  She darted away, stumbling over charred bricks and wood, their ashes turned muddy from the rain. Half the houses on this block had been destroyed, left in tall blackened piles. And then there was the drill site, where the rubble had been cleared away and the strange alien infrastructure constructed—a network of scaffolding and observation platforms that had somehow assisted the Locust in
the Covenant’s extraction efforts. Evie couldn’t tell how it worked. She could barely even look up at it because of the rain.

  “Is the package secure?” Owen asked, his voice mechanized behind his helmet.

  Evie nodded numbly. “Activated and ready.”

  “I see it.” Dorian was standing beside Owen, hunched above an oversized, militaristic data pad. The glow stained his face blue and illuminated the fat drops of rain thrumming around them. He tapped at the screen. “Still waiting on Victor.”

  The bombs had come from Dorian’s house. He called them explosives and said his uncle always kept a set around in case they were needed for construction projects. But they were designed to blow up old buildings, he’d argued, not Covenant technology.

  “It’s better than nothing,” Owen had said. “And we’ll use as many as we can spare. A big enough explosion, in the right place, could even take out a Covenant shield.”

  “What about the rain?” Evie had asked. “Won’t that dampen the effects?”

  Dorian and Owen had looked at each other. Dorian shrugged.

  “Let’s hope not,” Owen had said.

  They were about to find out. Evie wrapped her arms around herself, trying to fend off the torrent of rain. Dorian tapped his screen. “Looks like Victor’s activated his. As soon as he gets back—”

  Owen jerked around, whipping his gun off the holster fixed to his back. “Get down.”

  Evie dropped into the mud and broken bricks, pulling Dorian down with her. She fumbled around with the comm pad—she had to send a message to Victor, tell him to stay put.

  Owen stalked forward through the rain. Evie took deep, panicked breaths. Then she felt a warmth on her shoulder—Dorian. It was easier to breathe then.

  Owen stopped. Crouched down a little.

  A figure burst out of the shadows and barreled toward them.

  “Covenant!” it shrieked. “The Covenant are coming!”