Might, he thought heavily. A small word from which to hang the fate of lives.
Rojka waved his fighters to move with him, toward the large numbers of Sangheili in front of them who now opened up a path to let them through. As they passed, Rojka turned on his armor’s stealth camouflage.
“Let us find a way into this human keep and then kill the Demon Three,” Rojka said to Daga as they left Thars behind them and walked toward the mesa. “And end this once and for all.”
In the ready room, Jai crouched on the floor with his back against the wall. Melody sat at the side of the table on a chair a few feet away.
“You are persuasive,” Jai told her. “But I can’t convince this team to do anything right now. Not after what we’ve been through. We were forced to make a big decision out there, on our own. That call is still breaking us.”
“I gave you the information so you’d hear what was at stake. Your team listened. That’s all I can ask.” Melody leaned forward. “What are you going to do, Jai Zero Zero Six?”
She was using his number on purpose. A call to duty, Jai thought. She was good, the envoy. And she wasn’t wrong. The long, silent inner turmoil that he’d carried across the desert had eased slightly when she’d made the request that they assist. “I’m going to try to help you. This is what I was built for, wasn’t it? This is the information we have, what you gave us. That’s a hell of a fog of war. Doesn’t seem like there’s much of a question.”
“I truly believe this is the right fight, Jai,” Melody said. “I wouldn’t have put everything on the table if I didn’t think you guys should know it all.”
“I know.” He cocked his head. But believing something strongly didn’t make a person right. Insane asylums were filled with people who felt the same way. Conviction was a poor substitute for tactical thinking. “But the intel you just shared is the reason why I’m going to do this.”
“What about the rest of Gray Team?” she asked.
“What happened on . . .” Jai paused as he struggled with the way he’d phrased those words. “What we did to Glyke. I don’t know how we’ll ever come to terms with that. How I will. Yes, maybe it has broken us. But right now, because of the stakes, because of what’s at risk, we’ll fight. That we know how to do.”
An explosion shook the rock walls. Alarms blared. The comfortable brightness snapped off, replaced with emergency red lighting. Van Eekhout leaned around the doorframe with a BR55 battle rifle in hand. “Something violently breached the south entrance. Sensors show mass but no visuals. Computers are running through visual analysis, but they’re already inside.”
The Sangheili had arrived. Jai stood up. “Active camouflage,” he said.
“Probably,” van Eekhout agreed. “And once you get close enough, even to a shielded bunker like this, their sensors would be able to show them enough to get in.”
Adriana skidded to the door behind van Eekhout. “We need to get to your armory,” she said.
Mike thudded in to join them. “Sangheili?”
“Yes,” Jai said, and looked back to van Eekhout. “The armory?”
“There’s no time,” van Eekhout said. He tossed the BR55 at Jai. “Take my rifle. You can do more with this than I can. You need to get out of here, now!”
“No,” Jai said. “We’re Spartans. We fight.”
Van Eekhout stepped inside the ready room and squared off against Jai. “Really? Then get to Suraka. Because fighting here doesn’t help anyone—it just wastes time and resources. But we sure as hell need your help fighting Hekabe before he releases the Sharquoi on everyone and everything we’re all trying to protect.”
Jai glanced at Mike, then Adriana, who shrugged. “The ONI boy has a point,” she said.
Van Eekhout pointed down the corridor. “Here’s what you need to do. Follow this corridor. Take the second tunnel on your left. It dead-ends on a shielded hatch. Tap the code four-five-eight-six-one-eight to open it. There’s a ladder down the cliff face and a Warthog hidden at the bottom. Drive east thirty kilometers until you hit an old streambed. Then drive along that south until you get to Suraka. Other than that, good luck.”
“Melody?” Adriana asked.
“She can’t make it down the ladder in time like you can,” van Eekhout said.
Melody rapped Mike’s armor. “Get out,” she said. “They won’t touch me. Van Eekhout and I are worth more alive than dead. You’re the ones they have a vendetta against. Go—they’re in here already!”
Gray Team took off down the corridor. Jai glanced back—leaving someone behind just felt wrong, he thought.
Melody watched the three Spartans turn the corridor. Once they were gone, she said to van Eekhout: “We need to fall back to the armory and bolt ourselves in.”
“There is no armory. We had a single battle rifle, and I just gave it to them.” Van Eekhout ushered her into the ready room and closed the door behind her. He tapped a password into the screen by the entrance.
“That’s not good,” Melody said. “Those Sangheili are coming for us, and they’re all pretty angry. It won’t take long for them to find their way here and break into this room.”
Van Eekhout walked to the back of the room and sat down. He put his feet up on the table. He wasn’t wearing any shoes: he must have rolled out of his bed and come running. “They’re always angry,” he said. “At this point, which one do you think is coming through that door?”
Explosions rocked the installation. A bit of dust trickled down from the ceiling.
“I took the Spartans away from Rojka. He might kill me for that,” Melody said. “If it’s Thars, he might kill me too for choosing to help Rojka all this time. They might kill you as well.”
The blade of an energy sword burst through the door. Embedded electronics spat sparks and hot cinders. It wouldn’t take long now.
“So, death at either door?” van Eekhout said, almost cheerfully. The dead-serious ONI agent had faded away to be replaced once more by the friendly van Eekhout. She wondered which was the facade and which was real.
“Maybe.” Melody stepped back from the door.
“I knew I was screwed the moment I got assigned to this backwater planet.”
The door blew inward and sliced through the conference table in the middle of the ready room. Thars stepped through, energy rifle aimed at Melody’s head. “Envoy,” he growled. “You do not even try to fight us. A dishonorable capture. I expected no less.”
CHAPTER 15
* * *
* * *
Hekabe, eyes closed, stood in front of the massive Sharquoi. He swayed slightly to the left, feeling the presence in his mind still seeping further and further in. The fearsome creature, just a few meters away, also slowly shifted its body to the left in perfect synchrony with Hekabe.
He could feel the Sharquoi, its potential. It was a speck of will deep inside the universe toward which he extended his own mind. Though the Hekabe of just hours ago would not have understood these words properly, because the words were only abstractions that didn’t quite capture the true feeling of control.
That Hekabe was gone. Vaporized the moment the Forerunner technology had bitten down through his forehead.
Yet there was a seed of the will and desire of the old Hekabe that still lived here. Like a flame in the distance.
He had learned so much in these last few hours. An unknown element deep in the substrate of this machine’s reach had embraced Hekabe and educated him. A presence of something that had taken on this mantle long before Hekabe. An ancient whisper of experience, or memory, guiding him. Something that had touched the Sharquoi long ago, and had left some residue.
Here is how to dwell in this new consciousness, it told him, if he strained to listen.
Those ancient snatches of memory gave Hekabe the glimpse of vicious surgical devices cutting deep into Sharquoi skulls to crack them open. Intelligent Forerunner machines delicately reaching down past viscera to stamp implants securely into brain tissue. Impla
nts of incomprehensible power that could effectively control the Sharquoi.
It was a challenging process. A desperate gamble and complete forsaking of ethical standards long held by the Forerunners. They were attempting to create soldiers out of a half-witted but physically imposing species, beings who had, for some inscrutable reason, proved completely resilient to the Flood plague. They were the perfect weapon, but they needed guidance, they needed to be controlled. And through a deft balance of stimuli to specific cerebral tissue and a burst of engineered hormones, the one who wore this strange device had near-absolute governance over the creatures’ physical functionality.
And now, here, it meant Hekabe could control the powerful thing before him.
The Sharquoi raised its fists into the air.
Hekabe could see it with his own eyes.
But he saw himself from the Sharquoi’s eyes as well. The neural twitches translated from the Sharquoi through its implants and then back to Hekabe. Looking down from above, the Sharquoi saw him as a small thing: tiny and weak. And Hekabe also saw himself standing in front of the Sharquoi from the perspective of three more of them that now stood off to the side. They had been awakened and had emerged from their stasis fields. Had he done that?
Yes, some part of him had. It was a part muddled with the memories of his own mind that was now fusing with the power buried throughout his skull.
The three Sharquoi stepped forward to flank Hekabe.
From all the Sharquoi, he could now look back over his shoulder, where Oath of Fury still rested, and he could see the Jiralhanae packs fearfully staring at him and the mysterious creatures.
The ground shook as something far overhead exploded. Even the Sharquoi could feel that. Dust drifted through the air in lazy patterns.
Anexus, clearly grabbing hold of his courage, approached them. “The humans are striking back at us!” he shouted. To Hekabe’s own body, it sounded like a distant murmur from behind a closed door. But the Sharquoi could hear it, so through them, Hekabe could as well. Ground-based weapons thudded away at their excavation site.
“Let them strike,” Hekabe said. Anexus scrabbled back, eyes wide. The words had come, deep and terrifying, from the Sharquoi nearest to him instead of Hekabe, who still had his back to Anexus. The words were slurred, coming from an alien mouth, but recognizable and filled with vitality.
“We will be lost,” Anexus said. The stench of fear roiled off him. “The Foebane is taking damage from human ships.”
“We are not lost!” Hekabe now shouted with anger, through all of the Sharquoi. The packs collectively took several more steps back, edging closer to the bridge they had come across. One of the Sharquoi moved to release its brethren, which staggered out from their containment fields, freed from eternal suspension. “Tell Foebane to stand its ground at all costs. No one enters the citadel while we are down here. No one.”
He would need more Sharquoi to put a stop to the human counterattack. He would need more Sharquoi for all that he had planned.
Hekabe growled in frustration. He would have preferred to have had additional time to learn how to properly control these new charges. But this was time he didn’t have.
Accept everything, an instinct counseled him. Stop fighting, stop trying to bend their minds; your ways will not hold here. Direct them. Guide them. Unleash them. Be them.
Hekabe roared and punched the ground with massive, clawed fists. He saw this through other eyes. It was no longer Hekabe the Jiralhanae, but Hekabe the Sharquoi.
The Sharquoi’s arms struck with the same force as a gravity hammer, rippling the air with energy and concussive force.
A curious Jiralhanae warrior that had approached too close now flew back, tumbling into the air away from the point of impact and over the edge of the bridge.
As the luckless Jiralhanae screamed, dissolving in the lava, Hekabe opened his own eyes.
“Release more of them!” he shouted at the wind in his mind, as the human bombs above his head thudded and exploded against the top of the Forerunner structure.
Whether he could control the Sharquoi or not, it was time to unleash as many as he could. It was the only way to stop his enemies now.
Outside the ONI facility, Jai fell a hundred meters to the ground and hit solid rock. Pulverized pieces of debris flew away from the point of impact. The gel inside his Mjolnir armored hardened to protect him. The Spartan rolled and tumbled with the fall, bouncing off a boulder and sliding down scree until he came to a bruising, dizzying stop.
“Check in,” he groaned.
“The Warthog is up against the rock under the ladder,” Mike said.
“Here,” Adriana grunted. Jai stood up and spotted the Warthog. It had jet-black paint like others he’d seen ONI deploy, but it was immediately clear that, over the past six years, it had seen a number of design changes to its chassis. Adriana already limped toward it. Mike had bounced a bit farther on down and was scrambling over the rocks, heading for Jai.
“I don’t like leaving the envoy,” Adriana said, clambering into the Warthog’s rear bed and setting up on the Vulcan anti-aircraft gun.
Surprised, Jai said, “You think we should head back up?”
“It feels like we abandoned her,” Adriana said, echoing Jai’s thoughts. “And we don’t really know how those Sangheili will react.”
“But they know more about that situation than we do,” Mike said. “These things the Jiralhanae are looking for are clearly a greater threat. Sometimes—”
Jai fired the Warthog up, interrupting him. Mike immediately attempted to access the vehicle’s command console to assess its capabilities. But Jai didn’t pull the Warthog out from under the shade of the rock recess; he turned in his seat to face the two other Spartans.
“Listen. We’ve already been through hell. What happened on Glyke . . . I take the blame for that. I’m responsible for pushing the team in that direction and not waiting for more intel. That’s my fault. We’re in a similar spot right now, without clear direction. So I need to make sure we’re all on the same page. I need to make sure this is a decision we make as a team.”
“We’re going to Suraka,” Adriana said after a moment. “Even if I don’t agree with leaving the envoy behind, even if we’re in the dark about what we should do next. If the Jiralhanae are attacking humans in the city? That’s an easy fight to jump into.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “We’re still Gray Team. It’s us against everything else, same as it ever was. Even when it’s all gone to shit. We head toward the fight, not away from it, and we’ll figure it out when we get there. That’s what we do.”
Jai didn’t say anything. Just nodded and accelerated the Warthog out onto the dunes, headed east at full speed.
Melody Azikiwe stood defiantly as Thars stalked around the ready room. “And you swear you have not seen Rojka ‘Kasaan?”
The Sangheili seemed puzzled.
Again, she shook her head. In the corner of the room, Commander Greg van Eekhout hung from between two Sangheili soldiers’ arms, having been bruised and battered by Thars for the past five minutes. “I have not seen Rojka since orbit, Shipmaster,” Melody said quietly in flawless Sangheili.
Thars kicked the ruins of the conference table. “Again! He runs from me again!”
Thars had apparently arrived expecting to find a very different situation. This didn’t make sense. Last time she was with Rojka, he was preparing to fight Thars to the death. For some reason, Thars had now expected the kaidon to be here, according to some mutual plan. What the hell is going on?
“You still refuse to tell me where the Demon Three have gone.” Thars stopped pacing. He looked thoughtfully over at van Eekhout. He pulled out his energy sword. It flared to life.
Melody stepped forward. “Shipmaster! What are you doing?”
One his commanders backhanded her in response. Melody sprawled to the floor, hitting the pieces of table. She scrambled back up and wiped blood from her upper lip with a sleeve.
“Humans will find horrible things done to you two, atrocities that they will believe Rojka committed in this station, and I will apologize to them profusely that I was not able to reach you in time to stop it,” Thars said. He arced the energy sword through the air, slicing first into van Eekhout’s head, then shoving the blade slowly down to cut his body in two. The Sangheili on either side stepped back in disgust as each half of the remains of the ONI agent fell by their respective feet.
Melody stifled a scream.
Thars turned back to her. “My cousin Rojka feels there can be a peace between our kind, Envoy. But after all that has happened, do you also believe it? Do you think you can let go of seeing an ally killed like this before you? Will that hatred with which you now stare at me be something you could dam up?”
“I’m willing to do so.” Melody tried not to look at the ruined body of Commander van Eekhout. She swallowed bile and stared directly back up at Thars’s pale, unblinking eyes. “We have to be. Or all we’ll do is destroy each other. There will be more war. More hell.”
Thars scoffed at her. “What do you know of war’s hell, Envoy? Sitting in your comfortable negotiation rooms and dining with ambassadors as you travel around in comfort. You are soft, and you talk all the time.”
“I am Kenyan,” Melody snapped at him. “I was there when the Covenant attacked the East African Protectorate. I have lost more than you suspect, Shipmaster. And yet here I am, fighting for peace. Fighting for the survival of our species. I’ll fight for it until I die. But never lecture me about loss when all my family and friends lie dead under glass by the actions of your kind.”
“These are just words to me. You do know what horrors the Demon Three unleashed, well after our peoples had established peace?” Thar raised his voice. “Do you know about Glyke?”
“Yes. I know what they did.” Melody defiantly refused to close her eyes. And if he killed her right now, she would stare him down until the last moment.
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