As they started figuring out the details, she smiled at Pope. “It’s nice to be thinking about zoning and planning committees again. Building things.”
Travis glanced over at the rubble. “Well, it’ll take a while before we’re back to normal.”
“But we’re headed in the right direction,” she said. “We’re moving forward again.”
And for the moment, even through her pain at losing her son, something actually felt good.
Jai watched, incredulous, as the Surakan squad came into the bunker room with weapons up and tight to their shoulders.
That’s saying a lot, he thought.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to fully disarm,” the squad leader said. “Sorry, orders. Then I’ve also been asked to read you a formal statement regarding the UNSC and Surakan jurisdiction.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Adriana said slowly. Jai saw her hand twitch toward the rifle the ONI agent had given them.
Jai looked at the wide eyes and sweat on the squad leader’s upper lip. “We’re here to help,” he said. “You can stand down.”
“Sir, we’re to disarm you and you’re to remain here,” she repeated.
“There’s a greater threat we need to warn your superiors about,” Jai said. “Ma’am, if you’d just—”
“I’m not authorized to talk to you about any activities outside my field of authority. You’ll have to take that up with my superiors when they arrive. I’ve been ordered to hold you here till then. Please disarm. Now.”
This squad leader knew that the Spartans could run right through them if they wanted to, and that there wasn’t too much the unarmored Surakans could do about it.
“Let’s just see where this goes for now,” Jai said to Adriana and Mike via helmet-to-helmet communications.
Adriana reluctantly set the battle rifle down on a nearby table. The squad leader visibly relaxed. It was the symbol of the gesture: they both knew that the Spartans were still just as dangerous.
Jai raised his hands to shoulder level, placating the squad. “Okay, as a show of good faith, we’re disarming, even though it’s about to get really messy. You may want to put a rush request on your supervisors’ getting here, so that it’s not too late.”
“Spartans, as representatives of the UNSC, I’m ordered to inform you that your presence here is illegal and unrequested. I’m to ask you how you arrived, what your mission is, and other pertinent queries about your presence here. Your answers will be recorded and put on file.”
“So you’re about to be attacked by something that could wipe humanity off this planet permanently, but yes, we will stand here disarmed,” Adriana grumbled.
“We can still help,” Jai said. “They want to ask questions, while we need to pass on what we know to the highest authority possible.”
The squad leader rubbed her forehead, clearly stressed. “Look, there’s what I’ve been ordered to do and what you need to do. I’m not an idiot. I’m going to try to find some overlap here. If you have intel that’s important, I’ll want someone to debrief you even if everyone upstairs would rather that you just sat still here. I’m going to try to hunt down someone who can get the gears moving.”
“How long are we talking about?”
“Give me twenty minutes,” she said. “I promise, I’m not going to leave you blowing in the wind. We Surakans may have struck out on our own here, but we fought side by side against the Covenant. I’ve seen Spartans in action firsthand. Personally, if you’re worried about something, I’m worried about it. Give me some time to get things moving though, okay?”
“Thank you.” Jai nodded. He checked the name patch again. “Carson, what’s your rank? What do I call you?”
“Sergeant Rae Carson, sir.” She moved forward and shook his hand.
As the squad left and locked the door, two of them posting up outside, Adriana laughed. “Different military, same shit. Paperwork and hierarchies to get things done.”
“You saw the city. It’s a large ship to steer,” Jai said. “They’re moving as quickly as they can without causing themselves trouble.”
“But will it be quick enough?” Mike asked. “You know we can still leave at any moment, right?”
Jai walked over to a slit in the bunker and looked at the city’s skyline.
“We have to hope this’ll be quick,” he told them. “Give them a chance. I want to play aboveboard, after all that’s gone down. The last thing we need is to start another war between Earth and the colonies just because we picked the wrong planet to land on after a six-year nap. We’re going to need their support anyway, when it comes to it. And I have a feeling they’ll be forcing weapons into our hands before long. This hasn’t even gotten started yet.”
CHAPTER 18
* * *
* * *
Did the ground just tremble? Ellis stopped looking over her notes from where she sat at a desk in a makeshift control center, hastily set up in the bombed-out first floor of a bank. Was that her imagination? Maybe it was time she got some rest.
But there it was again. A loud thump resounded from the crater.
“What was that?” she shouted.
Outside the bank, militia ran for the edge of the crater only a few dozen meters away, as shouted orders punctuated the air. It looked like a hive of camouflage ants had been kicked as Surakan soldiers boiled out of tents. So far, only drones had actually been sent into the hole at the center of the crater, but they were lost. They had ceased transmission shortly after descending the shaft. The Surakans had been prepping a recon team per Ellis’s orders just moments earlier.
Whump. The noise and vibration came again. From her seat, Ellis could see the heavy-caliber guns placed on struts up along the rim of the crater all firing at once. The deadly chatter of weapons fire didn’t stop, filling the air with a constant braaap.
Ellis moved out from the bank, into the street. The sound of the guns were drowned by several Pelicans that appeared overhead, firing missiles down into the crater. The street shivered again. A piece of building facade cracked and fell off rebar, slumping down to the ground in a cloud of gray dust.
Travis Pope ran up to her. “We need to get out of here!” he shouted.
“What’s going on?” Ellis asked.
“They’re pouring out of the crater.” Travis grabbed her arm. “We need to get to safety. Now!”
Ellis shrugged his grip off, ignoring his urgency, and crossed the street to the rubble pile.
“Governor!”
She quickly crawled up toward the nearest emplacement. Three militia surrounded a fourth with another heavy machine gun on a tripod, shooting down into the crater. Hot casings showered the emplacement. One of them noticed her approaching. “Hey! No civilians. Get back to a bunker!”
Keeping low, Ellis continued to scramble her way into place just behind a large chunk of debris that shielded the gun. As she got there, the gunner finished the belt. They changed the ammunition as one of them shifted over to her.
“Get. Back. Down,” he yelled at her. “You too!”
Travis had crawled up on his hands and knees, following Ellis. “That’s the governor!” he shouted. “Sergeant, that’s the governor you’re talking to.”
The sergeant swore and pulled his helmet off. He jammed it down on Ellis’s head. “What are you doing here, Governor?”
“I have to see what’s going on.” The machine gun blasted away, the rest of the firing team ignoring the shouting as they continued shooting downslope. “What are the Jiralhanae doing?”
“Those ain’t Jiralhanae!” the gunner spat, pausing as they fed yet another belt into the gun.
Ellis crawled up to the edge of the rock and peered over.
Hundreds of gray monsters were swarming out from the excavated structure’s entrance at the center of the crater. They looked like cyclopean nightmares, enormous bipeds with muscles bunched and corded—something from ancient mythology that had suddenly become very real.
Their elephant-thick legs thudded as they moved, giants above the humans, destroying everything within arm’s range, but they operated in an eerie synchrony. Like bees escaping a hive, clusters of them flew toward threats and crashed into them. Militia Warthogs roared around the crater, trying to engage the sudden menace, their machine guns kicking as they fired away.
“They’re too big!” Ellis said, her voice drowned out by the sound of the firefight that had erupted. She’d never seen these creatures before. One of them plowed into a Warthog, punching the vehicle with its clawed wrists and flipping it end over end.
The monster half turned upslope, revealing what looked like a single eye fixed and staring in her direction. But it wasn’t an eye—it was fleshy, a part of the creature’s bony forehead.
A surface-to-surface missile struck the monster, fired from another nearby Warthog. The explosion shook the ground, and the familiar thump reached Ellis. The fireball faded away and the massive creature still stood there on the blackened ground, unmoved. The beast struggled forward, skin burning. It didn’t seem to feel any pain as it reached for the Warthog skidding past and yanked a soldier from the vehicle.
Ellis gasped as it ripped the man apart. Blood sprayed through the air as limbs smacked to the ground.
Another missile struck, and this time the beast toppled forward.
But more creatures were streaming out of the ground to replace it. Hundreds now. They overwhelmed the few Warthogs left in the crater like a gray wave of raw power and violence, pummeling and crushing them almost as though the many forms were a single creature.
“They’re breaking through!” the sergeant shouted, and pointed.
The creatures had now jumped over the far ridge, destroying gun emplacements as they pounded and flowed their way through.
“They’re going for the ships!” Ellis yelled. In the distance, the creatures were striking militia deployed around one of the larger Surakan vessels. One of them vaulted over the defenders and bolted inside the ship’s main hangar bay. Ellis didn’t even want to imagine what it would do to anyone inside the cramped quarters there.
“Fall back to rally point bravo!” The sergeant grabbed Ellis by the wrist and pulled her down the rubble. Just a hundred meters north along the rim, a wall of gray surged its way up and over the slope, barreling through a shower of gunfire and slamming into the gunner.
Ellis stumbled and hopped down the debris onto the road.
“What the hell are those things, Governor?” the sergeant asked.
“I don’t know.” Several Warthogs screeched to a halt on the road nearby and more militia jumped out. They ran up the rubble to the crest, weapons ready. Then artillery started booming from down the streets—heavy machine guns and munitions launched from within the city. Small, fiery mushroom clouds bloomed over the crater.
“Governor, we have to get to safety,” Travis said.
“No,” Ellis said, dazed. “No! W-we won.”
“Governor!”
Three of the creatures smashed over the ridge, plowing through the militia there.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought numbly, staring at the blood. Screaming came from everywhere. Bullets pinged off the rubble pile as Travis yanked her across the street. Personnel streamed out of the command center and ran down the road away from the sound of weapon fire, but then stopped as more of the hulking creatures thudded down out of the crater and pursued them into the street.
“Governor,” the sergeant said. “We’ve been cut off from our rally points.” A squad now surrounded her like bodyguards. There was nowhere to go. Travis had picked up a rifle from somewhere, dropping everything else in the process. Important papers. Rebuilding plans. Blueprints. Our future.
She took the helmet the sergeant had jammed onto her head earlier and gave it to him.
“No, Governor,” he protested, but she silently pushed him back and stared at the horrors around her.
These massive, towering creatures clambering through the streets, openly and with incredible speed, actively seeking out their Surakan prey. A cluster of them moved in sync to attack a Kodiak artillery tank at the nearest intersection. Despite militia firing at them nearly point-blank, the monsters moved unimpeded—almost completely oblivious to the attack—and slammed their fists into the tank’s cannon until it bent and the vehicle exploded.
What the hell had the Jiralhanae found down there? Ellis squinted as she watched the destruction move down either side of the street, the gray monsters annihilating anything in their way. Fear choked the back of her throat, but she forced it down. Suraka needed her. The fight wasn’t finished yet. She might be about to die, but her mind still kicked into overdrive. Everything is connected, she thought to herself. Examine what you know.
The creatures were too coordinated to be individuals, so there had to be something driving their activity, as if they were part of a greater mind. They must be related to the Forerunners. And they must be under the control of something.
Or someone . . .
Up on the lip of the crater, Ellis noticed the first living Jiralhanae she’d seen since the start of the attack. Large and proud, he wore the armor she’d previously seen designated for their chieftains. Shards of strange metal gleamed from his skull as he climbed up onto the debris and looked out over the chaos, intently focused on the creatures.
She understood, almost instantly, that this was why the Jiralhanae had come here. This was what they had been after the entire time. This one was somehow orchestrating all of the chaos. She pointed to the squad. “Shoot that Brute. Now!”
But there was no one who could even try. The chieftain was too far away, and the surviving militia in the streets had to focus on the massive gray creatures. One of the beasts, fists dripping with fresh blood, finished its carnage with a stomp of its trunk-like leg and turned toward the small group of militia around Ellis at the base of the building.
It charged, and the entire squad opened fire as it came at them.
Ordnance smacked into thick flesh and muscle. Purple blood dripped from ragged holes, yet the creature continued inexorably forward.
The squad rushed it in an effort to protect the governor. It batted them aside as if they were a bare nuisance. Bodies hit the nearby buildings with a red smack and didn’t move again.
Travis ran forward and fired his rifle directly at the thing’s head. In response, it speared him, the movement a snakelike, rapid snap, with the two jagged spikes on its right wrist. Travis writhed and blood gushed out of his mouth as the creature lifted him into the air as if to examine his body.
Ellis screamed in a mix of rage and fear. She’d known she was going to die as the whirlwind of carnage took over everything around her, but now it hit her like a wall of anger.
I stopped all this! This isn’t supposed to be happening!
A rocket streaked through the street and hit the creature’s chest. The blast threw Ellis back, and she slammed her head against the asphalt.
Dizzied, she sat up as the creature’s enormous charred body hit the ground.
A smoking helmet bounced at Ellis and stopped at her feet. She picked it up and stared at it.
A Pelican flared out hard, spinning in the air just above the road and striking brick facade with its rear fins. The entrance ramp lowered into the road and her vice-governor stood on the edge of it. He wore an armored vest and had a rocket launcher over one shoulder. “Governor!”
Ellis stared at him.
“Get in!”
She launched like a sprinter off the line. The moment her feet hit the ramp, the pilot opened the throttles. The Pelican clawed into the air as Lamar fired another rocket, knocking an approaching creature back down to the road.
As they spiraled up into the air and over the crater, Ellis could see hundreds more gray forms spilling over the crater’s edge, flooding the streets, and expanding out into the city. From this height, they looked like a murky and vicious disease invading a body.
“What’s
that?” Lamar asked, pointing to the charred helmet in her hands.
Ellis looked down, not realizing she still had it in her hands. The edges burned at her palms. She dropped the helmet, startled.
“Pope,” she said. “That was Pope.”
And a sergeant she didn’t know the name of. And his team. And all those other soldiers who had died in the last ten minutes for Suraka.
As well as everyone else that was about to die now.
Grit and sand smacked the Phantom as the Sangheili pilot dropped out of high speed to swing low to the ground, clipping its flight and landing abruptly. Melody winced in pain, the shaking jarring her injured shoulder. She kept a hand up to it. None of the Sangheili had offered her so much as a bandage; they’d just tried not to look at the blood that had seeped through her fingers, likely out of shame for her.
Rojka stood behind the pilot. Something had their attention. “The humans managed to destroy the Jiralhanae cruiser over the city,” Rojka said, sounding mildly surprised.
Melody, still pressing a palm against her shoulder, stood up and walked past Sangheili fighters to the armored cockpit. She looked at a curved display that perfectly recapitulated the lay of the land, presumably through hull-mounted sensors.
The remains of the Jiralhanae cruiser were buried in the desert to their left. And Suraka, finally, was directly ahead. The metal and glass skyline shimmered like a mirage in the heat that lay between the distant city and the Phantom. Rojka had made this team travel far out into the desert instead of making a straight beeline for Suraka, part of a set of maneuvers—including splitting his warriors into three groups—to keep Thars from tracking them. One group took to the sky in the Phantom, the other two remained on foot, dividing the ground craft between them. Rojka had since lost contact with three warriors who had reported Thars’s survival at Gila Station, though he wondered if they were still traveling to Rale or had possibly taken a route closer to Suraka.
Delays in evading trackers aside, things were about to come to a head. The skyline was in their sights now. They were only a minute or two out, and now they had to be cautious about human attacks.
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