Envoy

by Tobias S. Buckell

  Okay, they had limits, but not small limits, Melody thought.

  She could easily tell each Spartan apart, but primarily by the damage to their Mjolnir armor: all their battle scars made each of them distinguishable. The bent cap over the visor, that was clearly Jai. Mike had two scarred divots over his left breastplate in a rough X. An energy sword had clearly come dangerously close to him—twice. Adriana had burn marks across the back of her greaves, as if something had blown up near her legs.

  Those were the obvious bits of damage. Each Spartan had additional unique gouges and dents, as well as normal wear and tear. All of them told a story, some little piece of hell that Gray Team had somehow managed to survive.

  “This isn’t boot camp,” Adriana spoke up. “We don’t get to jog—we have to keep running and watch our backs.”

  The moment of levity broke. Melody watched Adriana wander over to a nearby sand dune. She faced north, her back to them.

  “Thank you,” Melody muttered as Mike made sure she was comfortable. Then he crested the dune to go and face the Karfu Mountains in the west, where they’d come from. He disappeared from Melody’s sight, though she heard his armored feet crunching across sand for another few seconds.

  Jai silently settled down just over her head at the top of the dune.

  “You almost had a moment of camaraderie there,” Melody said to him.

  “Almost,” Jai agreed, his voice neutral.

  “Is this going to affect your ability to fight if someone catches up to us?” Melody figured a challenge might draw the Spartan out.

  “The only time we fall back to normal, Envoy, is when facing action. For a brief moment, after we woke from cryo, it felt that way again.”

  “Your team is broken,” Melody said in a low voice. “It’s obvious even to someone on the outside.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am. We’re still operational.”

  Melody shifted to try and get a better look at the Spartan. The movement sent a dizzying spike of pain through her stomach. “That’s what you think. But what happens when things get really bad?”

  “We woke up in the middle of a firefight on a Covenant warship. And now everything we thought we knew about what’s going on out there is all wrong.” Jai waved up at the sky. “Yesterday’s enemies are now supposedly our allies, but for some reason they’re still trying to kill us. We fight all the way down here, crash-land, and are now being chased into the desert by some very angry aliens. How much worse can it all get?”

  Melody turned her head so that the Spartan couldn’t see her expression. “Oh, believe me, it can,” she said. “But I’m hoping it won’t. I’m so sorry.”

  She sighed and ground her head against the sand.

  “Sorry about what?” Adriana asked sharply.

  “That I unfroze you and brought you into all of this mess. Now you have to deal with—”

  “Shhh,” Jai said.

  “No,” Melody continued quickly. She needed to know they could handle what came next if she gave them the truth—

  “Something’s coming.” Jai stood up, sand cascading from his armor and blowing over her in a gritty burst of rain.

  “Oh.”

  Adriana had now turned and raised her plasma rifle.

  “Banshee,” Jai said calmly. “Contact imminent. At least some things don’t change.”

  The three Spartans waited in place for a brief moment. Melody strained her ears. Right on the edge of audibility, she could hear the whine of something swiftly approaching.

  “Stay down,” Jai told her.

  Plasma fire shattered the peaceful scene as the Banshee suddenly appeared overhead and wheeled back around in a blur to shoot into the dunes. Molten sand sizzled and pooled. Jai leapt into the air, firing at the vehicle as it swung around for another run. Melody ignored his instructions and twisted around to watch him bounce from dune to dune, dodging the plasma fire and an intermittent explosive fuel rod that jettisoned from its undercarriage.

  Adriana launched off into the air as well, the leap making her seem like an armored cricket. Her own rifle streamed plasma fire that seemed to perfectly curve up not to where the Banshee was but to where it was headed. She was leading her target, and at this range it was very impressive. The Banshee smacked into the line of fire and immediately wobbled. It attempted to swerve back to where it had come from, but Mike had already been waiting for that with a third barrage of plasma.

  With a loud cracking sound that cut through the air, the vehicle’s sealed carapace split open. A Sangheili fell out of the cockpit and down to the sand as the crippled Banshee continued its track and disappeared off into the distance, finally exploding between the dunes.

  Adriana hit the ground next to the Sangheili. “Dead,” she reported. Melody felt an odd twinge of sadness. She might very well have met that pilot while aboard Rojka’s ship.

  Jai looked toward the burning wreckage, smoke rising before the harshly orange setting sun. “Ninety-six kilometers to go,” he said. “And now they know where we are. Time to get moving again.”

  Vice-Governor Lamar Edwards spread images out on a viewscreen in front of the generals as Ellis Gass entered the all-too-familiar confines of the planning room and its oversized conference table. She looked around. “What is this? Pope?”

  Travis looked completely lost. “The meeting was last minute—I don’t have an agenda.”

  “Vice-Governor?” Ellis asked, her lips pressing together, the words sharp and questioning.

  Lamar pointed his index and middle fingers at the screens. “The Jiralhanae have been ruthless about any attempt by us to get eyes on what they’re doing. They’ve used their cruiser to shoot down Pelicans. We’ve lost drones, recon teams, anything that gets near. Until now.”

  Grainy, motion-streaked pictures of the Brute-occupied terrain filled the screens.

  “I thought there was going to be an update on our naval force,” Ellis said. “I wanted a precise ETA on their arrival in orbit.”

  “An F-99 we had hidden at Aza was dispatched three hours ago and managed to transmit about a dozen images before they shot it down. We now have intelligence that needs consideration,” Lamar said. “It places our decisions in a new light.”

  Ellis glided into a seat. Here was the old veteran who had once claimed to her over drinks that military intelligence was an oxymoron and laughed when he said it. “Lamar, at our last meeting we talked about the alternatives.”

  And now he was ambushing her.

  “The Jiralhanae have not tried to expand out past clearly demarcated zones,” Lamar continued. “We wondered if they were just holding the area. Now we know: they are excavating. We saw similar behavior from the Covenant during the war.”

  The three generals and Lamar turned to look at Ellis and Pope.

  “So, Governor, it’s not an invasion,” Kapoor said. “I think we are just accidentally in their way.”

  “Right,” Lamar said. He pointed at one of the images. “There was something buried under that part of the city.”

  “So then it’s twice as important that we strike!” Ellis stopped herself from shouting by steadying herself before continuing. “Since when has an archeological dig by anything Covenant-related ever resulted in them uncovering something for the greater good? You’ve read some of the reports about the things the Covenant searched for during the war, so have I. This could spell disaster. The galaxy is apparently full of destructive Forerunner machines waiting to be dug up, and they usually wind up getting a lot of people killed. We need to hit them hard before they find whatever’s down there.”

  Lamar swept most of the onscreen images aside and pointed to a single zoomed-in and enhanced photo of what appeared to be splayed out metal leaves on the ground. Ellis could see a vertical shaft and large spiraling ramps heading deep underground, like threads on a screw nut. “It’s too late, Governor. They’re already down there. The reason we were able to get close is that a large number of Jiralhanae are no longer present her
e—most have actually left the occupied area and gone into the Uldt.”

  “Lamar, what you’re doing—”

  “All I’m doing is presenting information and choices, Governor, Generals.” Lamar pointed at the picture up on the screen again, his face nothing but earnest and concerned. “You mentioned the Covenant excavations in the past, Governor. Well, I’ve been on the ground when things like this have happened before. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and I’ve seen the toll in the lives of people who’ve had to go through it. We need to think about saving people now, before it’s too late.”

  “As of yesterday, Lamar, everyone here has also been on the ground for things like this,” Ellis snapped. “That’s why I want the damn ETA on the ships! So that I know we have something in orbit to attack the Jiralhanae before they do move to kill us all.”

  General Grace spoke up. “The fleet will hit orbit in four hours and twenty-five minutes.”

  Ellis looked at the generals. “Well, it appears my vice-governor is trying to pull something of a coup here,” she said darkly.

  Lamar looked horrified. “Governor!”

  “Oh, call me Ellis,” she growled at him. She turned back to her generals. “If what he says is correct, then we face an even graver danger than we did before. I understand I am the civilian authority. I understand I do not have absolute jurisdiction in a situation such as this, and I know I don’t have your fighting experience. But we have each laid our plans out: fight or flight. Do you feel we can execute a direct strike to remove the Jiralhanae permanently? Or should we make plans to run? You need to tell me now. And once we hash this out, I don’t want to have to figure it out all over again. Because if there’s one thing I think everyone in this room can agree on, it’s that we don’t have the luxury of time.”

  “The price will be high,” Kapoor said, leaning in. “Lives will be lost. But in the Brutes’ weakened state, I believe we have a chance.”

  “You might not have fought before, Governor,” General Grace said as she rubbed the side of her temple, giving Lamar a frustrated look. Judging by the angle of the images, Ellis had to assume the intel must have come from Grace’s camp. Yet the general clearly hadn’t been prepared to see the executive branch of Surakan government openly fighting in a meeting room. “But you were elected to run both civilian and military, even if this falls under an emergency protocol—it’s ultimately up to the security council here. In my opinion, direct strike is the most viable solution.”

  Ah, Grace is furious with Lamar, Ellis realized. Apparently, Lamar should have met with the generals to gauge his support before attempting this end run around Ellis. But then, Lamar always said what he thought and then followed orders. He was a good soldier that way. Even now, he was sitting down and accepting that the room hadn’t taken up his idea.

  “That’s a majority consent. Let’s move forward with the operation: give the orders for them to move into position. We’ll synchronize the attacks when air support arrives,” Ellis said.

  She’d thought they’d laid Lamar’s desire to evacuate civilians to rest earlier. Instead he’d been quietly still working at it without letting her know he wasn’t going to drop it. But she would have to deal with her unexpectedly rebellious vice-governor later.

  Now was the time to act.

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  * * *

  By the moonlight, Jai-006 led the team up to a rock mesa. Here the desert had given way from dunes and scrub, to valleys and flat-topped stone carved into smooth shapes by intense winds and storms. Larger boulders dotted the slopes. It had been awkward getting Melody up around the boulder fields and sudden cliffs, but they’d finally managed by strapping the stretcher onto Jai’s back.

  “Do we need to know anything about defenses this place might have?” Jai asked Melody.

  She took a moment to respond. “We’re there already?”

  “These are the coordinates you gave us. So how do we get in safely?”

  “Low-power general transmission. It’s proximity-based. I have to think about the passcode—give me a minute.” She went silent. Jai put the stretcher down.

  “Melody?” She seemed out of it, as if dozing. Jai tapped her on the shoulder, then clapped his armored gloves.

  She snapped back awake, at first startled and then groggy. “I’m not sure if I’m going to make it, Jai,” she muttered. “I need to tell you . . .”

  “You were going to give us access codes,” Jai prompted. “We’ll come back to other things you need to tell us after that, okay?”

  Melody nodded, pushing her dark, curly hair away from her face. “You want to broadcast, low-power, the following passcode.” She rattled off an obviously memorized sequence of random numbers and letters. “Then tell them my name.”

  Jai followed the instructions.

  “She’s passed out again,” Mike said.

  “Not good.”

  They had spread out, each of them facing a different direction of the mesa’s tabletop. Jai checked his plasma rifle. After the firefight with the Banshee, the remaining energy was low.

  “No response?” Adriana asked.

  “Nothing.”

  A rectangle of light stabbed upward into the night as a trapdoor near a cairn of rocks slid open. The top of the trapdoor was covered in dirt that danced random patterns from the vibrations of powerful motors inside, and a large boulder wobbled as the disguised slab of a door shifted aside. A skinny man with jet-black hair appeared from under the shadow of the entrance, and looked around.

  Gray Team had their rifles trained on him in a split second, but the man didn’t even blink; he just peered closer at them. “Spartan Twos!” he shouted. “On Carrow! I just had to come up and see it myself.”

  This wasn’t the usual demeanor of the average ONI agent.

  “I take that is Melody Azikiwe?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Jai said.

  “I was told to keep a lookout for her if things turned inside out. Obviously that happened, as we don’t get visitors, as such, here. She’s not part of Naval Intelligence, but I know my supervisors gave her training and prep.” The man cocked his head and stared at her slumping body on the stretcher. “We better get her downstairs. You’re coming in too, right? Can one of you just carry her down for me?”

  Jai looked around at the night sky instead of answering.

  The agent saw the movement. “Yeah, there’s a Banshee lurking about fifty kilometers away: it’s the perimeter of a recon picket. The rest of the party is still further out. But it’s secure down below.”

  “Okay.” Jai and Mike picked up the stretcher.

  “Excellent. I’m Commander Greg van Eekhout,” the man said, sticking out a hand. The Spartans brushed past the gesture and he lowered his arm. “Yeah . . . good to meet you too.”

  He followed them into the well-lit cavity, roughly the size of a Warthog garage, and then down a flight of stairs built into the landscape as the heavy, shielded trapdoor thudded shut overhead. That wouldn’t be easy to pry open without the proper codes, Jai noted.

  “It’s pretty flat up there, makes for a nice makeshift landing pad, though the pilots always complain about coming here anyway,” van Eekhout explained. “The next supply run is actually in three days, so I’m afraid I’ve eaten most of the good stuff. We’re down to the cans and freeze-dried stuff now. I may have some cheese that’s doing well, possibly a bottle of vodka, but don’t tell anyone—I had to bribe the resupply coordinator to get me it. God, I really miss beer.”

  Jai stopped at the bottom. There was now a good twenty meters of rock above him. He approved. “The envoy needs medical attention, immediately.”

  Van Eekhout shouldered past them and looked down at Melody. He leaned over and poked at the biofoam. “Follow me. I can fix her up.”

  “You have medical training?” Jai asked.

  “No, no, not at all. You don’t want me fiddling around inside you. But . . .” Van Eekhout led them around a corner and p
ressed his palm against a lock display.

  The door opened and lights flickered on. Jai froze. The room looked like a Covenant torture chamber, packed with machines that extruded insect-like mechanical legs and a variety of devices that looked like energy weapons with cauterizing tools that flipped out from their ends like jackknives as they woke up.

  “We do have an automated surgical suite. It’s basically a Covenant design from a downed corvette that ONI gutted, installed here, and reprogrammed to . . . better handle humans.”

  “We’ve seen the originals in person before,” Jai muttered. “On the Covenant ships.”

  A surgical table grew spontaneously out of the floor in the center of the room, machines folding together and apart in unison to create a perfectly flat surface. They lifted Melody onto it.

  “And now,” van Eekhout said, “we let the ‘doctor’ do its magic.”

  “I’m staying here,” Jai said.

  “No, you’re not.” Van Eekhout pointed around the room. “Surgical environment, Spartan—it won’t operate with you here. It needs complete sterility.”

  “Have you seen the suite in action before?” Jai asked.

  “Of course! Now come on, you need to wait outside.” He waved his hands, forcing them back out of the room. Jai dutifully reversed his course to stand in the corridor. Van Eekhout smiled and tapped the lock. Part of the wall before them cleared to transparency, showing the surgical arms deftly removing cloth and probing Melody’s wounds.

  “Now.” Van Eekhout put a hand up on Jai’s armored shoulder. “It’s not every day a Spartan arrives on your doorstep. I cannot waste this opportunity. Are you hungry? Can I get you a drink? Do you ever take those helmets off? Seriously, I’m really curious.”

  “We’re fine, sir,” Jai replied. “We’re remaining battle ready for now.”

  “Good call,” Mike whispered, helmet to helmet. “I don’t trust this guy. Something’s off.”

  “I’ll distract him,” Adriana said, responding via helmet.