by Tim Marquitz
She glanced toward the building, her purple eyes blurred by unshed tears, and she got to her feet. Mara knew the prognosis as well as Albion did, the medics not mincing words as they assessed Wilson’s condition. He’d been lucky to survive the trip to Saturnus. Anything else would be a miracle, yet they’d dragged him into surgery in search of that very miracle.
Albion took Mara’s hand and led her off. It was a few moments before she moved on her own and matched his pace. By then, they had reached a small, outdoor café with a view of the stars above the Saturnus station. They took a seat as far away from other people as possible, and Albion ordered for both of them, Mara staring off at the blackness that loomed above.
He left her to her reveries until the drinks came, pressing the glass into her hand. She drank it mechanically, and Albion gulped his down, the empty glass clacking as he set it on the table.
“Look, I know things were bad out there, but I need to know what happened. You fired on us.”
“I…I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I thought you were them.”
“Them?”
She nodded. “The Xebedons.”
Albion leaned back in his seat. “They were who attacked you?”
“We were on a mission for Covenant Command, a simple load and haul, supplies for the Denzo Outpost. Standard stuff: medical, food, and some light arms. Nothing special.” Mara shuddered as he eyes looked past him, unfocused. “Covenant had warned us the outpost had been silent for the last few weeks, but that isn’t abnormal for backwater stations like Denzo. You know how they are.”
Albion knew far too well. The farther the outpost was from the hub of allied space, the less organized and sophisticated they were. Some of the places might well be outhouses in space, a hundred colonists scraping by until the scavengers found them and wiped the place out or the station fell apart and drifted away. He’d spent cycles hunting space stations that had gone awry. The search rarely ended in good news.
“We arrived at the coordinates but Denzo wasn’t there. No wreckage, no sign of a struggle, nothing. They were simply gone. Vanished.”
Albion nodded and raised his glass for a refill. “What did you do then?”
“Reported it to Covenant Command, of course, but—”
“But you couldn’t reach them.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed, taking Albion in. “How’d you know that?”
“Command has blocked all inbound traffic. None of the communications channels are getting through,” he said. “Well, not to the rank and file citizen, at least.”
She growled and slammed her drink down, bourbon spattering the tabletop. “Those bastards.” While he didn’t want to see her angry any more than she was upset, at least the color had returned to her cheeks. The eerie paleness of her skin had been replaced by a warm red. “We turned around and backtracked, broadcasting the entire way, trying to get Covenant Command. And then the Xebedons hit us out of nowhere.”
Albion’s chest tightened at hearing that. He knew firsthand what the alien ships were capable of, being undetectable by Covenant craft. The tactical advantage of that alone made them almost undefeatable in direct combat.
And though he’d ordered Crate to turn over the code to the phase device soon after they’d come across the Excalibur, the military had yet to reverse engineer in any way that was helpful in detecting the Xebedon ships when they stepped outside of core space. Though, Crate had often used the alien technology to create small devices based on the phase device that had been immeasurable to the Excalibur and crew. It always made him wonder if Crate really had passed along the right code or if he’d monkeyed with it before handing it over. He wouldn’t put anything past the man.
“What happened? Lyana reported there were barely a handful of bodies in the ship as she made her way to the bridge.”
“They took them.”
Albion sat upright as if he’d been slapped. “What do you mean, they took them?”
“Took them,” she repeated. “After they took us out, they boarded and herded the crew like cattle into their ships.” A tremor shook her hand as she clasped to her glass. “Those spidery bastards swarmed the ship after crippling the Ithaca. They punched all those holes you saw after blowing the thrusters.” Her eyes swam in their sockets, anger and frustration spilling over. “They hit us from both sides, two of the damned ships sneaking up on us. We fought as many off as we could, but they just kept coming. Wilson and Cole dragged me to the null-pods, only there was a squadron there, too. We managed to get past them, but Wilson…”
Albion just nodded. It was clear what happened to Wilson. He looked as if he’d been torn apart from the inside. Memories of what Ares had done to the scavenger earlier filled his head.
“We managed to squeeze into the pod and get it sealed, but by then there was no one but us.” She dabbed at her cheek with the back of her hand. “Then they just left us there. That was when I triggered the distress call.” Mara finished her drink just as the server delivered two more. She clung to the second glass as if it were a life preserver. “Since we figured we were dead anyway, we re-routed what was left of everything but life support to the cannons. Then when you showed up, we thought they’d come back to finish us. You know the rest.”
“Yeah.” Albion chuckled, taking a sip of his drink. “We were just lucky we had our shields up and your cannons were damn near spent already.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry. Had I known—”
He reached over and took her hand in his. “No apology needed. I had Choi scan your ship and I’d completely forgotten those damn null-pods you installed. When the sensors rang back void, we moved in to take a look. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
She squeezed his hand and looked ready to say something, but her gaze drifted over his shoulder and locked onto something there. Albion spun in his seat to see Lieutenant Cole shuffling toward them. Albion sighed at seeing him, and Mara tightened her grip. Both knew exactly why he’d come in search of them.
Not even bothering to circle around the small gate that surrounded the café, he walked up to the rail and stopped before his captain. He shook his head, knuckles white on the gate.
“Damn it.”
Mara sunk into her seat, but it wasn’t sadness that impressed itself upon her features, but fury. Her eyes grew a deeper shade of violet, a sure sign she was pissed. Albion had seen that often enough to know what it meant. She sat stoic for a few minutes before finally reaching over and laying a hand over Cole’s. He grunted at the contact and lifted his chin to meet her eyes.
“If Captain Albion doesn’t mind, return to the Excalibur and make yourself of use to the crew. We’ll be departing soon.”
Albion gave a nod of approval, and Cole, clearly a man of few words, marched off toward the docks. The captain watched him for a moment before Mara tugged at his hand and brought his attention back to her.
“I need your help, Marek.”
“Of course,” he answered, the words spilling from him before even thought about it.
She sighed in obvious relief, offering him a soft smile in response to his words. “I need to return to Covenant Command, in person. They have to know about the Xebedons and what their communication silence has cost us.”
Albion grimaced at the request, but he bit back his distaste of the Covenant home world of Belltros and agreed, telling her he’d take her despite it all. Command needed to know the Xebedons had struck further inside allied space than the outer rim. As horrible as he imagined the confrontation with Command would be, he knew it had to happen. Mara had lost her ship, her entire crew, while under Covenant business. They had an obligation to her.
He stared at her across the table as she finished her second drink, her hand steady on the glass now. Albion didn’t envy what she was going through, but he understood it. She had done what all good captains did when things out of their control took the lives of crew members. She’d compartmentalized the grief, the sorrow, and pushed her anger out in front as a
shield. Mara set the glass down with intent, and rose to her feet, the violet of her eyes practically beaming. She held her hand out to him.
Albion grinned and took it, clambering to his feet, the two of them heading for the Excalibur. She walked with purpose, and Albion found himself having to hurry to keep up. Still, the smile stayed plastered to his lips. He knew from experience that someone at Covenant Command was in for the worst day of his or her life. He even felt sorry for this unknown person.
For a minute, anyway.
Six
Covenant Command
Sector 001, Allied Space
The trip to the Belltros took far longer than Albion had the patience for. He’d taken Vice Admiral Vance’s words to heart—Mara’s effort to annihilate the Excalibur fresh in his mind—and dropped out of hyperspace well outside the planet’s defense ring, broadcasting his identification across all channels the moment he hit core space. By the time they’d gotten close to the outer shield barrier of Belltros, the Excalibur had an escort of no less than six Covenant destroyers and a squadron of fighters flitting about, making their presence known.
Captain Albion stared out the view screen as they were ushered toward the planet, their entourage keeping pace beside them. He’d long ago ordered the claxons silenced, as the fleet ships had locked their cannons on the Excalibur early on and, despite proving their identification multiple times, the weapons had never been untrained. Orders burst through the channel with annoying regularity, warning Albion against raising shields, changing speed, or altering course. Threats followed those commands, and Albion knew, without a doubt, they were serious. He’d seen what happened to a ship that violated protocol above Belltros.
“Land gate dead ahead, Captain,” Choi said, magnifying the image on the screen.
No matter how many times he saw it, the monolithic gate never failed to impress. Crafted from an alien metal the Covenant had stumbled across ages back, the land gate appeared as though it were a giant hexagon floating in space, an antenna array jutting from all sides. Around it, stars flickered and shined, but within the gate, only an ebony darkness roiled.
As they drew closer, all but one of the destroyers pulled back, the last inching closer to ensure that, should violence be necessary, the Excalibur wouldn’t survive it. The fighters continued their aerial acrobatics, the land gate so huge they had no need to adjust their approach to slip through alongside the two larger ships.
“Hold for shift,” Choi said.
Like phase space, but on a much larger scale, the land gate, when activated, would cleave through core space and provide direct access to the atmosphere of Belltros below, bypassing the harsh conditions inflicted upon a craft as it entered the atmosphere.
The Excalibur split the black sheath, and Albion felt the buzz of the gate as its energies washed over them. Pins and needles tingled throughout his body, and he clenched his teeth against the feeling. He’d felt much worse, but the transference wasn’t without its pain. Albion glanced at Lyana and saw her rubbing her neck. Choi just sneered at his console and, Randall didn’t seem to notice anything at all. Mara hovered at Albion’s side, hand on the back of his seat, fingers clenching and unclenching of their own accord. Her eyes were narrow slits as they slithered through the gate. It affected everyone differently but, fortunately, its effects were short-lived.
The absolute darkness that had enveloped the view screen peeled away and the brilliance of day spilled through before Choi could mute it.
“Owwww,” Lyana muttered. “Why do you always forget to do that?”
Choi shrugged. “Some habits are better than others.”
“Keep it down, people.” Albion, not that he could see again, the dots having left his eyes, stared out the view screen at the planet below.
They slipped through a layer of clouds after leaving the gate behind, and Belltros appeared before them, lush and green with great swaths of blue. The escort ship continued to bombard them with coordinates, issuing orders and threats, but Albion tuned it out and just stared. As much as he hated the political aspect of the Covenant home world, he was enthralled by the planet itself.
Raised on a desert planet, which had been saturated with plas-residue due to it being a foothold in the Covenant’s advance in the early cycles of its expansion, Albion saw Belltros as a paradise. Because Galian 4’s atmosphere had been thinned by radiation, the wind blew constantly, tearing away the earth, lashing at its populace with a constant bombardment of dirt. It was like being embraced by sandpaper. Albion had learned to live covered from head to toe in thick cloth, and that barely kept the tongue of the desert at bay. But Belltros was just the opposite.
They drifted over a lake on their way toward the Covenant headquarters, and the water gleamed a brilliant blue. Captain Albion adjusted his view so he stared straight down at it. He spotted people on the shore and envied them their peace right then. Between the harsh battering of his home world and the vast emptiness of space, Albion had spent the majority of his life running from one adversity to the next.
He reached over and clasped Mara’s hand, eliciting a smile in response.
Though they were there for business, Albion hoped, however foolishly, that they might find a moment, he and Mara, to slip away and take advantage of the beauty that was Belltros. After all, they’d been through of late, especially her, he knew they could use a break. Needed one, in fact. He only hoped they could find time for it.
Albion dragged reluctant eyes from the crystalline lake and watched as Choi guided them toward the landing field, institutional gray replacing the gorgeous blue far quicker than the captain would have liked. The Covenant destroyer had peeled back, letting the fighters take the lead as the Excalibur slowed and veered toward its designated berth, which stood a good hundred meters above the ground. It looked like a giant vice to Albion and, given how it worked, it might as well be one.
Choi drifted over top of the berth and there was a sudden flutter as gravity rolled back. Unlike the passage through the land gate, where the conversion from zero-G to full gravity happened without notice within the gate itself, the transition to the berth was obvious. Albion’s stomach tightened as the mechanical arms of the berth closed about the Excalibur, locking it in place yet not actually touching the ship.
Designed for deep space, no gear to facilitate an actual landing, the Excalibur hovered in the null-space of the berth, protected from the ravages of Belltros’s atmosphere. The interior lights flickered, and Albion groaned as the warning messages changed, now ordering them to stand down and await boarding.
“Ares is in stasis?”
Lyana nodded so the captain signaled his crew to what they were ordered. They piled into the transit shaft and made their way to the main hatch. The hatch, Choi having allowed outside access to it, swung open just moments after they arrived. A squad of Covenant shock troopers spilled in through the opening, guns raised.
Equipped with standard Covenant battle armor, the Marines looked impressive. Eyes glared at the crew though reinforced lenses set in angular helmets that always reminded Albion of a jackal. The rest of the armored suits were sleek, minimalist in design to allow for free movement, but the rifles they held in the crew’s direction were massive. They might as well be cannons, Albion thought as he stared down barrels easily as large as his clenched fist.
The Marines took up positions on either side of the crew, angling their weapons so that, should they need to use them, only Albion and his people would get caught in the line of fire. He admired their precision, if not their flare for overkill.
Once the Marines were in place, a smaller group of people entered the Excalibur. These were dressed in the administrative uniforms of the Covenant, split down the middle with blue one side and black down the other. The woman leading the group carried a scanner in her hands. She glanced it as she approached.
“Captains Albion and Rellith?”
Albion and Mara nodded in unison.
“I am designate Corun,” she sai
d, her words clipped, her voice nasally. “I understand you are here to speak with Chancellor Albright?”
“We are,” Mara answered. Albion remained quiet, letting her take charge of the niceties. He wasn’t very good at them and, clearly, Mara had remembered.
The designate glanced between them, looking first to Albion, then to Mara, finally deciding to it was Mara the designate needed to deal with. She nodded in acknowledgment.
“Then follow me, please,” she said, holding up a finger as the rest of the crew shuffled forward. “No,” she told them, turning back to Mara. “Your crew must remain onboard the craft. Only you and Captain Albion are invited.”
“Well, ain’t that just hospitable of you?” Lyana shook her head and glared at the designate.
To her credit, the designate met the hostile stare of the commander without flinching. “My orders are from the chancellor herself. Should you have issue with them, feel free to file a complaint through official channels.”
Lyana raised her arms in mock surrender. “This one’s got a spine,” she said with a laugh. “Guess I’ll just do that then. Though…I’d have to find an official channel that wasn’t blocked, now wouldn’t I?”
The designate’s eyes narrowed, and Albion decided it was time to end the confrontation before it got too far along.
“That’s enough, Commander. Stay put and entertain yourselves without blowing up the ship, and we’ll be back as soon as possible.”
Lyana grinned and offered up a half-ass salute, Choi following her example, but neither said anything else. Crate stood there with a raised eyebrow, trying not to laugh. Albion turned to Harkon.
“Keep an eye on the kids, Ensign. You’re in charge.”
Lyana burst in laughter at that and slapped Randall on his back, causing him to stumble forward. “Cap just hung you out to dry, buddy,” she told, grabbing him by the shoulders and leading him toward the transit shaft. The rest of the crew, including the quiet Cole, followed.
“Is this a good idea?” Mara asked as the designate led them out of the ship and into the waiting shuttle that hovered outside.