“Governor?”
“We have very little time,” Ellis said, striding back toward the conference room, blinking her scratchy eyes.
Generals Grace and Kapoor stood up when she reentered. “Governor, we’ve been told,” said Grace. “Our condolences.”
“Recall our ships from Kiriken,” Ellis said. “Issue it as an executive order directly from me to their naval commanders through our closed-band comm relay. We can’t remain cowering here, letting them tear into us piece by piece. We need to strike while they’re still focused on their skirmish with the Sangheili. We’ve got their ground forces covered by the bombs—let’s take off their head,” she said, pointing to the cruiser’s beacon on the holographic map, “with whatever naval strength we’ve got left.”
Grace and Kapoor looked at each other with uncertainty. “Governor,” Kapoor said. “You’ve just received devastating news. This might not be the best time to—”
“We are under the occupation by an enemy military force that has the ability to kill every man, woman, and child in this city whenever they are disposed to. There is no best time,” Ellis said wearily.
Kapoor hesitated, then said, “We agreed to hold the ships back for reserves.”
“And now we need those reserves.” Ellis calmly looked them all in the eye. “We will not be given a better window of opportunity. It’s not the time to be cautious—it is the time to strike back. I’m not saying this because I just found out my son died. I’m saying this because we need to use everything we have to dislodge them from our world. Or everything we’ve sacrificed will have been in vain. Recall the ships. Now.”
Grace nodded. “Yes, Governor.”
The Jiralhanae would pay in blood for blood, Ellis thought. It was time to stop worrying about elegant solutions and to speak the language of violence.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
* * *
Anexus scrambled up the remains of a collapsed building near one of the taller barricades that Hekabe was using to observe progress. For a moment the Jiralhanae warrior paused to look behind Hekabe and out over the glassed area a kilometer away, now beginning to dip slightly as the molten earth compressed downward.
“Report,” Hekabe ordered.
Anexus nervously whipped around. “Three Sangheili frigates remain in orbit. But they are barely functional. They will not be able to attack us here. We have truly taken this world for ourselves, Chieftain.”
Hekabe rubbed the top of his gravity hammer thoughtfully. He was not interested in this world. He was interested in what was inside it. “The price?”
“Their other vessels have all crashed into the mountains that hem the desert—they are far removed from this city. Hammerstrike and Fighter’s Blood have fallen with them. Perhaps we should send the Foebane to the site to recover any survivors and weapons.”
“No, we will need it for transport soon enough. Foebane is sufficient for what is left of our purposes here. These humans with their pitiful strength will not be able to harm a Jiralhanae heavy cruiser. Have any Sangheili survived?”
Hekabe caught a whiff of anxiety from Anexus that told him more than words could. “Some. But we have the planet. We have the Foebane, and our cruiser can destroy the enemy from the air whenever we choose,” Anexus said, evidently overcompensating for any perceived weakness he’d shown earlier. “They will not be able to disturb us. Our clan is strong.”
“Strong,” Hekabe mused. “We say that. But when the humans and Sangheili joined forces, they hunted down what remained of our ships. They struck us down with impunity, even those who fled back to Doisac. They attacked without parley or mercy; they destroyed the very ships that protected our bloodline. Anexus, our clan’s lineage may die with us. Do you still dare to say that we are strong?”
Anexus did not know how to respond. He clearly wished to be anywhere else but here right now.
Hekabe sighed. “What I mean is this: do you truly think any surviving Sangheili will just stay put where they landed? And those that ally with the humans—will they remain weakened now that they are on the humans’ world?”
Anexus looked down at the ground near Hekabe’s feet. “No, Chieftain.”
“They will seek revenge.” Hekabe paused, but Anexus did not react. “So we will need to strike first to protect ourselves, before they have a chance to gather their forces. Send whatever remains of the Unggoy and three hundred warriors out to meet them, now.”
“The Unggoy are all dead. You ordered—”
Hekabe growled. “Then our warriors will have to suffice!”
Anexus backed down the hill. “Of course, Chieftain. What about the humans who remain in this city? We will be vulnerable with little protection.”
Hekabe caressed his gravity hammer. “The humans are of no concern. We will have fifty Jiralhanae here. And we will have the Foebane. Or are you frightened?”
“Never,” Anexus said, anger dripping from his voice at the suggestion.
“Then send out the packs. Nothing crosses the desert between the mountains and the human city. Do you understand? Nothing can be allowed to stop our progress here.”
“How much deeper can we dig?” Anexus asked. “This planet . . . we will soon dig into the molten rock if we keep going. Maybe what you seek is not here.”
“Oh, it is here,” Hekabe said. “We are close, Anexus. Our time has almost come.”
There were now only three Sangheili frigates left in orbit. Governor Ellis looked at the reports in her office.
Could they realistically engage them? Suraka’s twelve surviving ships were armed but had no magnetic accelerator cannons. MACs had been the UNSC’s weapon of choice during the war against the Covenant. Only a slug launched by a remarkably long coil of magnets and powered by a ship’s engines could penetrate Covenant shields. But despite not having MACs, Suraka’s ships did have retrofitted point defense guns welded onto the outer structures. That had to count for something if they now outnumbered the Sangheili ships.
A swarm of lightly armored merchant ships versus three disabled Sangheili frigates that had just been in an intense fight with the Jiralhanae? It was a long shot. Sangheili ships were notoriously hard to hit. But they hadn’t come to the surface when the others fell into the Uldt. All indications hinted that they were crippled. Ellis couldn’t pass up the chance.
Lamar entered her office and closed the door behind him. “Governor.” He was calling her by title mostly now, she noticed.
“We’re not scheduled to meet for another fifteen minutes,” Ellis said, irritation creeping into her voice.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of General Grace.” He stood in front of her desk in an odd way. Formal. “I’ve been reading over the last hour’s intel.”
Ellis stood up as well. She walked around the desk and tapped on the holo-display’s file cache, bringing up the reports. “I’ve been poring over them too. It was right to recall our ships. We have an opening.”
Lamar nodded but didn’t relax his posture. “An opening, but to do what with? Until now, we’ve been under attack and fighting back where we could, figuring out what was happening. Now we have a moment to breathe, but we’re still in fight mode. I know it’s a bit late, and it’s not on our contingency plans, but I strongly believe we should take a closer look at evacuating any civilians we can with the assets we have. Contingency plans never expected the loss of all our slipstream-enabled ships. I agree, we need to recall the ships. But I do not believe we should attack the Jiralhanae, or the Sangheili for that matter. Now is the time to use those ships to evacuate Surakans. We need to protect our civilians while we’ve got this window—while the Brutes and Elites are focused on each other.”
So this was what had been eating him up for the last few hours. Ellis swiped the holo-display and brought a pane into view, showing a number of images pulled from close-band relays high above the planet’s surface. “Did you see the satellite feed of the crash sites?”
Lamar glanced
at it. “Not yet.”
“The Sangheili survived. Both sides. But they are grounded. Many of them are heading deeper into the desert. They’re moving toward Suraka.”
“Which is why we need to evacuate.”
Ellis slapped the holo-display’s sensor, collapsing the images. “There are a million people in Suraka, Vice-Governor.” If he was going to go on title, she could return the damn favor. “One. Million. How many people can we evacuate from the surface with twelve merchant ships? Seventy thousand? Standing side by side in cargo holds? And I don’t think I have to ask you, but where do they go? The Sangheili targeted everything with slipspace capabilities. They did this for a reason. We do this and we condemn those citizens to being crammed into ships, to wait in orbit until the aliens shoot them out of the sky or until they run out of air, whichever comes first? Are we going to force them to evacuate, to become refugees again? They’ve already been through this.”
“It’s a chance for life,” Lamar snapped. “Once they get into orbit and away, there’s an opportunity they can wait for rescue.”
“Who the hell is coming?” Ellis asked. “Our contacts in the New Colonial Alliance? They’re engaged in battles of their own, and over the last three months, we’ve been tenuous allies at best. When we agreed to work with the UNSC and the Sangheili for peace here, the NCA stopped talking to us. If anything, we’re probably on their list too.”
“The UNSC had an envoy in that Sangheili fleet. They’re sure as hell going to come looking for her.”
“For one person? Yeah, eventually. They’ll send one little ship to extract her. If she was even still alive.”
“They’ve made an investment in getting us peace with the Sangheili, Governor. This conflict puts them at odds with the Arbiter and it places their entire alliance on shaky ground. They won’t just let the dust settle—they’ve got stakes in this thing.”
“But without communications, all they know is that things have gone dark. Earth has its own issues to deal with, Vice-Governor. This will be a political nightmare for them. They want peace with the Sangheili. They’ll give us up in a heartbeat for a chance to keep the Arbiter’s people by their side.”
“Evacuation is not a good chance, but it’s still a chance.” Lamar stabbed his finger at her.
“And what about those left behind?”
“Evacuate as many as we can to the oases. Aza Oasis, Herndon Lake, Fallen Tree—there are places they can shelter.”
“To be hunted down later.”
“We take your path, then we risk everything. If we fail to stop either side, we effectively doom everyone, whether by the boots of the Jiralhanae or the swords of the Sangheili. Don’t forget, there are still plenty of fighting Sangheili over in Rak who could cross the Uldt for our heads overnight. That’s in addition to the ones already headed this way.”
“You’d leave most of us stranded and defenseless with your plan,” Ellis shot back. “It’s foolish.”
“It’s at least something.” Lamar’s voice cooled. “It’s better than sacrificing us all for a personal act of vengeance.”
“Vengeance?” Ellis cocked her head. “Is that what you think this is?”
He couldn’t meet her eyes but looked behind her at a point on the wall. “You just lost your son.”
“Lamar.” She kept her voice level and calm. But she hit the desk with the palm of her hand. “How the hell could you say something like that to me? I didn’t lose my senses. I am grieving, but it has not overwhelmed my ability to look at the facts we face.”
“It’s too great a price to pay for the opportunity to gain air strike abilities,” Lamar stated, but less strongly now.
“Could be.” Ellis grabbed his shoulder. “Or it could be our chance to secure this world despite everything that stands against us. If we don’t try this, we guarantee that we’ll remain weak and at their mercy, especially if we just try to hide and wait this out. Coming here, it was a gamble. Deep down, we’ve all known this. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.”
“But we don’t need to compound the risk. We’ve been at peace since we arrived here, Governor.”
“We were fooled because those first years went so easily,” Ellis said. “But now we have to decide whether Suraka lives or dies. Whether this world is ours, or whether we hand it over to these creatures and just give up. Whether this world becomes Rakoi for good, and the Carrow we’ve fought and died for fades into memory.”
Lamar rubbed his forehead. “I’ve been at war for so long, Governor. UNSC, Covenant. I just want to stop seeing bodies in my dreams. I thought I could get away from it, here, help you build something different. And now I’m being asked to do it all over again.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “Lamar . . . we’ll do this together. I need you to stand with me. I need your wisdom, your advice. I can’t fight you and these monsters alone. I just can’t.”
They both leaned against the desk. Lamar wiped the corner of an eye. “Okay.”
“Also, please stop calling me ‘Governor,’ damn it. We’re not going through hell and back just to have you refer to me by my title.”
He laughed. “Sorry. Old grunt’s habit.”
“Old habits are easy to fall back on.”
Lamar took a deep breath. “Briefing, then?”
“I’ll follow in a minute—looks like Pope is all but jumping up and down by the window to get my attention.”
Ellis watched Lamar walk out. She let out a deep sigh and rubbed her hands.
Travis took the opportunity and quickly slipped in. “Governor, there was a Mayday from a lifeboat. The officers who received it are debating whether or not to take it seriously or if it’s a Sangheili ploy. The call came from the Karfu mountain range. It’s an old UNSC channel.”
“So there might have been a UNSC ship in that battle?” Ellis asked.
“Maybe they were keeping an eye on the proceedings. ONI might have been up to something. It’s odd. The lifeboat’s call sign is a bit strange too. One of the operators thought it might be a joke. The call sign is Whiskey Tango Foxtrot One.”
“That has got to be human.”
Travis nodded earnestly. “That’s what I thought.”
“Can we spare some patrols to head out into the desert and sniff around? Wait a second. Is this even on the briefing agenda?”
“No. But someone I know on the front lines was worried it wouldn’t get up the command chain to the generals quickly enough due to the chaos. They back-channeled the intel to me.”
“Keep this off any agendas for now,” Ellis said. “I’ll talk to General Kapoor afterward. And please keep it to yourself as well. At least until we know for sure if it’s real and who made the call. Okay?”
She didn’t want Lamar reversing course to go back to clinging to the hope that the UNSC would suddenly arrive to save them all. They couldn’t afford that, no matter what this lifeboat meant for their situation.
The coming strike against the Jiralhanae still needed to go forward without any other complications. They needed to send these bastards the message that their world wasn’t up for the taking.
Melody lay sideways on a flat, wide rock that radiated heat into her ribs. Despite the hard edges, she felt comfortable, almost sated, and didn’t want to move at all. She stared at the snarled, stunted tree nearby for a long minute and enjoyed the faintest breeze across her skin.
But, she realized fuzzily, Sangheili ships didn’t have stunted trees in them, did they?
She must have hit her head really hard. The last thing she remembered? Firing the plasma pistol over and over after she’d sat down in a storage bay on an ex-Covenant cruiser, blood dripping from her chin as she clutched her side.
Melody looked along her body, grabbing for the spot and wincing. The jagged piece of metal didn’t stick out of her uniform anymore, but under the ripped cloth, biofoam leaked out of the wound.
Overhead, mountain peaks thrust into clear, saffron-tinted skies. Where am I? Carrow?
&
nbsp; Melody struggled to stand, gasping and holding the torn skin just below her rib cage. A parched desert stretched away from her as she turned around, her back to the peaks. She was most of the way down the lower slopes of the mountains. Heat rippled in the air above the distant sand.
“Rojka! What have you done?” she called out. “Are we on Carrow?”
She staggered forward and dropped to her knees as the pain lanced through her stomach. The ground thudded as a half ton of gray armor slammed down next to her. Melody looked up to see herself in the reflective visor bent down over her. Her curly hair flew every which way, and she looked so weary. An older version of herself. A crazed version.
“Easy, easy,” the massive Spartan said gently. “You can’t be walking, ma’am. You’ll start bleeding again. We’re making you a stretcher right now. Come, lie down.”
He delicately picked her off the hot sand and carried her back over to the rock. Melody grunted as he placed her down. “How bad is it?” She pressed her hand to the tear in the uniform.
“You have internal injuries. Our descent onto the planet was particularly rough.” The Spartan removed her hand. “Please try not to move unless you have to.”
Melody raised her hand. Dark blood dripped from her fingers. “We’re on Carrow, right? Why are we down here?”
“Frankly, I was hoping you could tell us that, ma’am,” the Spartan said. “We were revived on a Covenant ship, in the middle of a firefight between two groups of Elites, and dropping down here was our only option out of it.”
Melody slumped onto the rock. Not good.
“I’m Melody Azikiwe. I’m an envoy for the Unified Earth Government. What’s your name?”
“Jai Zero Zero Six.”
“Gray Team, as I live and breathe,” Melody said, half smiling. Not that there would have been other Spartans in old Mjolnir armor frozen away in the holds of a Sangheili cruiser. For some reason, though, the confirmation buoyed her spirits. Slightly. “Are the rest of them with you?”
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