“And yet since your kind is without justice you still will not give them over to me,” Thars said. “I assume they run for the human city, Suraka. Which route do they take?”
Melody swallowed and looked at the remains of van Eekhout, the sight of his mangled body and the smell of cauterized flesh threatening to overwhelm her. “I will not tell you that.”
She tensed, waiting for the killing strike.
Thars cocked his head. “You know I will find them. We found you here.”
“If you find them, your fight will be with them,” Melody said. She was doing her best to remain steady. Just keep him talking, she thought. She was only trying to buy time at this point. The longer Thars stood here, the better chance the Spartans had.
“Do you see?” Thars announced to the other Sangheili in the ready room. “All humans are the same. This one protects the Demon Three. What difference does it make whether they killed Sangheili innocents after we had laid down our weapons, or if it was her that did the killing? She helps them now. Perhaps she even worked with those who plotted the genocide of Glyke back then. You see how all humans are complicit?”
“And have you not stood in the command bridge of a ship that murdered innocent civilians by the millions, at the order of the Prophets?” Melody asked. “Are you truly any different than the Demon Three?”
“Guard your tongue, human.” Thars raised his energy sword and turned to her, his voice calm. “I will now ask my questions a final time. You will answer, or suffer an end the same as your friend’s.”
Melody took a deep breath as she tore herself away from staring at van Eekhout’s body and back directly to Thars. She needed to keep the Sangheili engaged, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could do that. Take a big gamble, then, she thought. Tell him everything you’re not supposed to.
“Do you know what the Jiralhanae you allied with are really here for? Why they really agreed to come to this planet? You have spent all of your time asking how you might take control of Rak from Rojka . . . but since you brought Hekabe here, this has been the wrong question,” she said.
Thars did not respond. Melody continued.
“I need you to think about threats to your people, your keeps, here on Rakoi right now. You need to know what the Jiralhanae are planning to do. They will destroy everything you are fighting for. They are going to release something horrible onto not just this world but Sanghelios, Earth, everywhere.”
Thars pushed the very tip of his energy sword into her shoulder. Melody screamed as skin and muscle sizzled.
Thars stepped forward. “I do not care about the Jiralhanae. Where. Are. The Demon. Three.”
Melody tried to grab his forearm, but was struck from the side. She gasped as the wind was knocked out of her and she rolled into the wall. Something invisible had grabbed her. She could see the edges of whatever held her down shifting as it moved, the other side of the room gliding over it: it was active camouflage.
“Traitor!” Thars bellowed.
Melody’s head snapped as she was picked up and the invisible figure sprinted for the door. Plasma fire splashed hot against the frame.
They veered down the corridor and more invisible forms started firing back as Thars’s own Sangheili spilled out of the room to give chase. Thars’s fighters ducked back inside as ignited plasma grenades flew through the air to stick to the floor in front of them.
Explosions rocked the corridor and a powerful blast of heat roiled down between the walls toward the invisible fighters. The active camouflage flickered and failed as a large form appeared crouching, protecting Melody from the explosion.
Melody gasped, staring at a familiar Sangheili face. “Rojka?”
Rojka’s fighters appeared around her, their active camouflage deactivating and their armor shields flaring. Rojka yanked her down the same tunnel the Spartans had used to escape the facility. Melody could see the desert through a hole the Sangheili had blown in the now-glowing rock.
He continued running for it, holding Melody all the while, his fighters falling in behind them. They were laying down covering fire back at Thars.
“Rojka, go, I can’t survive that jump!” Melody shouted. They obviously weren’t going to be using the ladder down.
“Trust me, Envoy,” he told her.
Then his strong, saurian legs tensed. They had to be hundreds of feet above the desert.
“No, wait!”
Rojka leapt out into the hot void.
They hit something a second later with a metallic bang. Melody opened her eyes and saw that Rojka held on to the bay door of a Phantom dropship with one hand, and her waist with another. He pulled her into the vessel’s open bay while it drew away from the mesa’s rock wall.
Rojka’s fighters were jumping out of the hole for the ground below, some of them finding purchase on the same dropship. Others fell toward the ground, hitting it in an explosion of dust and leaping into a run. More of his own soldiers awaited in a small assortment of ground vehicles a hundred meters from the mesa’s base.
“Why the rescue?” Melody asked, shouting as air whipped at them in the bay.
“You know where the Demon Three are going,” Rojka said, letting go of Melody. “We came to retrieve that information from you. Then I witnessed Thars renege on his word to protect you. And there is also the interesting query you raised about the Jiralhanae.”
“You’re still hunting Gray Team?” Melody shouted back, hyperaware that all Rojka would have to do was shove her out of the bay and she would plummet to the desert floor to a certain death. “Will you be trying to torture that out of me?”
“We now have little time. I suspect I already know where the Demon Three will be: Suraka. What I require now is more information about the Jiralhanae. Were you being honest, human? You were claiming to warn Thars of them. You said all Sangheili here on Rakoi are in danger. I have a duty to protect them. They are mine. These few vehicles are the last of what remains of Discipline, all that I have left to protect my people. Tell me more, Envoy. Why was there such a human facility hidden here in the desert? What is really happening?”
Melody looked back at the mesa through the open bay. Pain tore through her shoulder at the movement, making her gasp. The seared skin under her ripped and bloodied Diplomat Corps uniform was cauterized, but not ready for her to move. Rojka’s leap had torn some of the charred skin apart, and now Melody could feel blood trickling down under her arm.
The mesa’s entire rocky top jumped up slightly into the air, disturbing dust and sand. Then explosions ripped through the space above and the rock face, and it imploded down into a giant cavity—the entire facility swallowed up with a belch of fire. Rojka looked back, somewhat startled. “What was that?”
“I think that was Commander van Eekhout’s last gift.” She’d always dismissed rumors about ONI installations that would self-destruct if they couldn’t confirm that the station’s authorized keeper was alive. She’d wondered if she’d been playing for time inside a ticking bomb.
“Indeed. That will slow Thars down,” Rojka said, approvingly. They watched the fireball over the desert slowly dissipate.
“You think he survived?” Melody asked.
“Doubtless.” Rojka leaned out the open bay as smoke curled upward from what remained of the mesa. “Thars would not have wasted any time exploring the facility for clues. He is too impatient, he would have left the structure to get to his vehicles. He will be pursuing us shortly. I’ll be sending a Banshee and a few of my fighters off in another direction to confuse him.”
With a grunt of pain, Melody moved to stand beside Rojka and figure out the next decision she had to make. Rojka had been an ally. But ultimately, he was Sangheili. If ONI had requested the utmost secrecy from her, prohibiting her from telling the Spartans about the Sharquoi without authorization, what would happen if she told Rojka?
Nothing good.
Here, in the middle of battle, she needed to make a choice that might have far greater implic
ations down the line. Could Rojka be trusted? How long had she really known the Sangheili kaidon and fleetmaster? Was it too late to even matter?
Rojka realized she’d moved. He snaked his head down to be level with hers.
“You told Thars he asked the wrong question,” Rojka said. “What question should I be asking?”
Melody looked from the burning facility to Rojka’s large, unblinking eyes.
“The question you should be asking is . . . what are the Sharquoi?”
CHAPTER 16
* * *
* * *
The attack on the Jiralhanae cruiser hovering over the edge of the city began from the ground. The Surakan militia had kept a dozen Kodiak mobile artillery tanks in a reserve underground. The large, heavily armored vehicles were easy to navigate through the streets, and quick to reposition themselves where needed. When ready to fire, they moored themselves to the ground by stabilizers to launch powerful anti-armor rounds at targets. The Kodiaks now opened up, hitting the cruiser’s well-defended belly all at once.
But this was just a diversion. Jiralhanae patrolling gunships—a collection of Phantoms and the cruel machines the Brutes referred to in their native tongue as “grave-makers”—chattered loudly as they pressed toward the Kodiaks, opening up a mixed barrage of directed energy and searing hot metal projectiles.
As the positions of the Jiralhanae shifted, six Pelicans swung in from the Uldt desert, flying low and kicking up sand as they rose up toward the cruiser. While the Brute gunships engaged the mobile artillery and the anti-air squads protecting them, and firefights ripped the streets apart, the handful of Surakan aircraft began the first wave of attacks. They banked hard as they climbed along the enemy ship’s hull, gaining altitude to jettison the highest nonnuclear payload Suraka had in its reserves directly onto the cruiser. The vessel’s shields shimmered under the bombardment but continued to hold.
Wising up to this diversion, a number of Jiralhanae Phantoms disengaged from the street fighting in order to deal with the Surakan aircraft. They climbed swiftly into the sky, attempting to cut the Pelicans off.
The Pelicans at first dodged ferocious waves of enemy firepower from the cruiser’s point defense system, which halted abruptly as the Jiralhanae’s own gunships veered too close. The Pelicans took advantage of that to break free and launch back down toward the surface. The Phantoms would have likely pursued but were frozen by what they now saw in Carrow’s sky.
From the east, three glowing fireballs fell from the sky, leaving long trails of smoke. From the west, eight Surakan merchant ships emerged from the cover of clouds and began pummeling the Jiralhanae cruiser with their own point defense weaponry. The concentrated firepower lit up the side of the cruiser.
“This is the tricky bit,” General Kapoor said, observing the entire battle from the wall of screens in the underground operations center. General Grace sat nearby, arms folded, eyes fixed on the scene, and Ellis stood just behind her.
The Surakan ships were also a diversion—the three balls of light that plummeted toward Suraka from the east were the real attack. Several half-mined asteroids had been jockeyed into stable orbits between Carrow and its moon, and then brought dangerously close to the suborbital plane before being shoved out of orbit by the four remaining Surakan ships. They used an advanced coralling technique with hull-mounted magnetic grapplers and terraform vices, a procedure that had—up until just the last hour—only been untested theory. Now it was the real thing.
It was a huge gamble. If the Jiralhanae cruiser fled, the Surakans would be effectively bombing themselves. But if the encroaching ships could keep the Jiralhanae pinned in place just long enough, they would never be able to counter the three giant space rocks.
The front line of Surakan ships continued to lay into the cruiser. It responded, a devastating cloud of blinding white fire that quickly ripped four of the vessels apart. The survivors continued unabated, targeting the shields, and the Jiralhanae cruiser bore the brunt of a concentrated attack from the ships above and artillery below.
More focused on the threat the Surakan ships posed, the enemy ship didn’t acknowledge the burning asteroids cutting through the atmosphere toward it until it was too late. The closest Surakan vessels pulled off to the side just at the last second as three chunks of metallic space rock struck the Jiralhanae cruiser in quick succession. The first one failed to penetrate, but megatons of kinetic energy had suddenly been released. Its shields flickered, already stressed by the incessant barrage dealt to it by the Surakan ships.
The second rock exploded against the cruiser and a brilliantly white fireball blossomed on the hull.
General Kapoor pumped a fist in the air. “There it goes!”
The third rock struck.
The Jiralhanae cruiser appeared to fold in midair, gushing blue and white flames and canting over as it dipped out over the far edge of the crater, a giant wounded beast trying to escape the harassing Surakan ships, which now descended and began nipping at it.
The Jiralhanae cruiser finally pitched to the ground just outside Suraka and crumpled between the city and the rocky hills that led out into the Uldt. The rumbling sound followed for those underground a few long seconds after.
“Governor.” General Grace turned in her chair to face Ellis. “I’m proud to say, we have taken back Suraka.”
Aides and military personnel clapped and cheered, and even the tired generals took a moment to smile. Ellis stared at the screen, looking at different feeds of the Jiralhanae ship burning at the edge of its crater: the horrible monster had already dug its own grave. The cruiser had been hovering above the city for so long that it seemed odd to see the sky now clear.
Grace started giving commands. Dropships to be landed on the city’s outskirts to release extra troops. Militia to be moved down toward the massive hole in the earth and flush out whatever remained. “I don’t want a single Jiralhanae walking around the city. We start mopping them up, now.”
Travis Pope put a hand on Ellis’s arm. “This is a triumph, Governor.”
She’d done it. She’d fought them back. Kept the city alive and steered her people through hell. Ellis numbly looked around the room. She should be celebrating, but her nerves felt too raw. The idea of not being focused on one emergency after another felt dangerous. She wasn’t sure she knew how to switch off.
Sleep. She would have to go to sleep. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to dream. Didn’t want to have to grieve her son’s death. Didn’t want to have to feel.
“Pope, ready a Pelican. I was interrupted the last time I tried to go out and put eyes on the situation. Now I want to see firsthand what we’re going to need to do for reconstruction.”
He nodded and left to make arrangements.
Lamar detached himself from the corner of the room. He looked exhausted and more than a little sad. She wondered if he regretted his actions. Would there be an apology from him after he’d tried so hard to stop her?
It didn’t really matter.
“Governor.” He looked down at the raw patch of skin on her forearm. “You haven’t slept in days. You need to get some rest. Trust me, I’ve been here before. It’s going to hit you. You can’t put it off forever.”
“Rest is close at hand,” she told him coolly.
He heard the rebuke in her tone, which she wasn’t bothering to soften now. He nodded. “I understand. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
He had to suspect now that she would be asking for his resignation. Eventually. But he still stood in front of her, awaiting her orders. “I want teams sent down within the hour into that structure they dug up. We need to take whatever the Jiralhanae were willing to fight so hard for and get it ourselves before the UNSC arrives. Whatever it is, I’m willing to bet it will make all of this hell worth it. Drones go in first. Let’s be very careful. Whatever they’ve got left down there is going to be cornered, and they’ll fight like it.”
“I’ll arrange it now.”
/> Of course, Ellis knew that he would. Even with everything that had happened between them, he would do what was necessary.
“I hope you’ll let me make a secondary suggestion?” Lamar asked.
She gave a small sigh. Okay, here was his slack. “What?”
“We still have the perimeter mined. Let’s leave it in place until we know what we’re dealing with down there.”
“I’ll do more than that,” Ellis said. “Grace says we still have a couple of rocks in geostationary orbit left with four of our ships. We’ll get them prepped to aim for the area if we discover that we need to. We may have our disagreements, Lamar, but I am an engineer. I always have backups.”
Lamar looked relieved. “Thank you.”
Hekabe could barely tell who or what he was anymore. The howling wind in his head that was the computational matrix of all the Sharquoi neural networks connected through a quantum entanglement array and then plugged into his own mind had scraped away anything and everything that he’d once been. It had then spread throughout something greater, and it was growing faster than he could control.
All this new neural tissue. It both empowered and energized him. But at the same time, it stretched him out so thinly across the Sharquoi.
How many of the creatures had he released?
A thousand?
No. Three thousand.
Hekabe had to stop and think, pull himself together, concentrate on finding the answer that might be slowly floating to him. How could he control so many Sharquoi at once?
He saw himself collapse to his knees, blood streaming from his nose.
You’re still fighting, the echo under the wind said. Let go.
Hekabe finally did so.
The wind struck him harder now, searing through every neuron. Hekabe wept from the pain of it but did not fight anymore. He let the fury of it all wash right through him.
And then he stood. He wiped the blood from his nose and looked at the terrified packs strung out midway on the bridge. They gaped at the multitude of Sharquoi placidly lined up and waiting to cross. Some of the Jiralhanae glanced overhead, nervous about the commotion above. It had died away only seconds ago with a violent thunder.
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