by Troy Denning
“You might look at it this way,” added a throaty female voice that Veta did not recognize. “Telling us would probably reduce the threat to your own life.”
Veta shot a glance in Fred’s direction and saw nothing in his bearing to suggest that he was surprised. It was hardly the same as checking his facial expression, but it likely meant the voice belonged to someone he knew, rather than being an ancilla creation.
“And who’s us?” Veta asked. “Fred may know you, but I don’t.”
“My identity is classified.”
“Of course it is.” Veta sighed. “Well then, Ms. Classified, if you’re trying to threaten me—”
“Not even a little, Inspector,” the voice replied. “But the ancilla did attempt to kill you—twice. If it’s hoping to keep a secret, your best chance of survival is to share what you know with us.”
“I’ve done pretty well so far,” Veta said. She was speaking with more bluster than conviction, but she needed to appear confident. “If I help you with your problem, you help me. Deal?”
“You know who your killer is?” the voice asked.
“I do.”
“Ma’am,” Fred said, “Inspector Lopis seems to have this crazy notion—”
“It’s not Mark,” Veta interrupted. “It’s—”
A sharp pop sounded in Veta’s helmet speaker.
Fred swore and switched immediately to TEAMCOM. “We’ve lost contact with Mama Bird,” he said. “The Gaos must’ve touched off a suborbital EMP.”
Either that, or Intrepid Eye didn’t want Veta using the uplink to reveal anything more to Ms. Classified. Given that she was probably some sort of ONI spook, Veta would have shared the ancilla’s caution under normal circumstances.
“Everyone knows the plan,” Fred continued. “Stick to it, and if you get separated, meet at the extraction point.”
A short silence followed, then—even though Veta heard no responses—Fred said, “Good. Any questions?”
“I have one,” Veta said. “What the hell is the plan? I don’t know it.”
“Stay close,” Fred said. “When the Warthog slows down, hop out and hide. Take the Huragok and the drone-bag with you. Olivia and Ash will be there to cover you, but they’ll be busy keeping you from getting blown up. You’ll be on your own with the artifacts.”
“That’s the plan?”
“Close enough,” Fred said. “Unbuckle your safety harness and take the Huragok’s tethers off the roll bar. You’ll need to go in a hurry.”
Veta hit the quick release on her safety harness, then twisted around to remove the Huragok tethers from the roll bar. The Huragok wasn’t much help, as it kept drifting into her line of sight and slipping tentacles in between her fingers.
“What about our deal?” Veta asked. “I tell you what I know, you help me catch my suspect?”
“No hurry now,” Fred said. “The uplink is gone.”
Fifty meters ahead, the road made a tight hairpin turn and started to descend into the adjacent valley. Ash and Olivia began to pitch weapons and equipment packs out of the back, but Fred didn’t slow. Instead, he turned toward Veta again and grabbed the Huragok by its head-stalk, then pulled it away from the roll bar.
“Okay, if you’re going to take the Huragok with you,” he said, “now would be a good time to get those tethers free.”
When Veta had unbuckled the last tether, the Warthog was only thirty meters from the hairpin and decelerating hard. Knowing the Huragok could float, she wrapped the free end of the dangling tethers around her hand, then pushed it out of the Warthog ahead of her, grabbed the drone satchel, turned in her seat, and stared down at the speeding ground.
“Now?!” she yelled.
“Affirmative.”
Veta felt Fred’s hand low on her back and realized it was either jump or get launched.
She sprang out, landing on her feet and thinking for a heartbeat that a leap out of a speeding vehicle was pretty easy, until momentum caught her and she went tumbling through a bank of ferns, over a large cycad, and finally came to a rest on her back, watching the cannon rounds shred the jungle canopy overhead and pieces of foliage flutter down like a gentle rain, and then the world began to shake as a trio of huge delta-shaped hulls streaked in so low she could see the weapon turrets revolving beneath their hulls and the missiles hanging beneath their wings and the long oval outlines of the drop hatches in their armored bellies, and suddenly the Wyverns were past, trailing heat plumes and jet fumes and a roar that made her teeth ache.
Veta lay breathless, taking stock of her aches and pains, slowly coming to realize they weren’t so bad—that the worst of it was a sore jaw because she had clenched her mouth too hard. She sat up and discovered she was still clutching the drone satchel to her chest with one hand and holding the Huragok tethers in the other.
But the Huragok itself was not at the other end of the tethers. It was about five meters away, barely visible because it had dropped into a stand of club moss to tend a badly gashed walking snail as long as a man’s arm. Veta stood and, still clutching the drone satchel, started in its direction. The Huragok turned its head-stalk briefly in her direction, then gathered the snail in its tentacles and zipped off into a bank of undergrowth. Veta cursed under her breath and started to crash after it.
Ash’s voice came over the comm. “Take cover now,” he said. “Those Wyverns have augmented imaging systems.”
“And if the turret gunners see you,” Olivia added, “the Huragok won’t matter.”
Veta scrambled into a thicket of ferns, then looked up the road toward the hairpin curve.
The Wyverns had stripped the foliage from a forty-meter swath of jungle, leaving nothing standing except barren trunks. The only sign of the Warthog was a dark column of smoke rising from just beyond the hairpin, and in the sky, Veta could make out the dark, V-shaped specks of three aircraft. There was no sign of any of the Spartans—but then, there wouldn’t be. They were already hiding.
The trio of vessels seemed to hang on the horizon for a moment, then began to grow larger. She tried not to panic. It made sense that the Wyverns would do a flyby to inspect the damage. That was probably standard military doctrine.
And even if it wasn’t, they were heading back toward the Vitality Center, where the main battle was taking place.
Veta had just about convinced herself that everything would be fine . . . when the Wyverns began to slow. They were the size of her fist now, and beneath their bellies she could see the dark specks of Gao battle-jumpers starting to slide down their drop lines. The brainchild of General Hector Nyeto, battle-jumpers were armored stealth troops trained to operate behind enemy lines for months or years with no supervision or support. Doctrine called for a company of battle-jumpers to attack an initial target as a unit, then break into squads and scatter, with each squad locating and attacking its own high-value targets. But they were often used in other roles, as well, and were even rumored to have destroyed a Covenant task force on its way to glass Gao.
“No good.” Fred’s voice came over TEAMCOM. “They didn’t buy it.”
Taking a guess at what might be coming next, Veta looked for the Huragok—and found it five meters off the ground, carrying a bundle of twitching red feathers high into the crown of a towering tree fern.
“Lopis,” Fred continued, “take the drone and the Huragok and start down the road into the valley. We’ll catch up.”
“Sorry,” Veta said. “I can’t do that.”
“You hurt?”
“It’s the Huragok,” Ash explained. “It slipped its tether, and now it’s patching up birds high in the trees. No way Lopis can get to it.”
“What about you or ’Livi?” Fred asked. “If we go back without that thing, Parangosky will make us lab rats for the bio-warfare division.”
“Better that than getting chopped up here,” Olivia said. “Sorry, Lieutenant—the Huragok is taking off. If we try to go after it, we’ll have three Wyverns and a platoon of battle-jumpers chewing our t
ails.”
After a frustrated pause, Fred said, “Copy that. The Huragok is on its own for now. Lopis, get going before the suppression fire starts.”
Veta did not have to be told twice. She raced back toward the road—and nearly ran into Olivia as the Spartan stepped away from a splintered cycad.
Olivia held out a battle rifle and ammo satchel. “Take this,” she said. “That peashooter of yours won’t be much use against armored battle-jumpers—not at any kind of range.”
Veta started to take the rifle . . . then recalled who she would be firing on. The very thought stunned Veta into letting her hand drop.
“But I’m Gao,” she said. “Same as them.”
“Right. And you’re wearing UNSC battle dress.” Olivia jammed the rifle against Veta’s chest plate. “They won’t know the difference.”
By then, the Wyverns were close enough that the battle-jumpers were now body shapes instead of specks. Had Mark been with them, he would be starting to pick them off with sniper fire about now. She took the rifle and ammo satchel.
“Thanks, ’Livi,” she said. “I’ll see you in the valley.”
Olivia smiled. “Probably.” She stepped back against the splintered cycad and seemed to vanish as her armor’s photoreactive panels adjusted. “And even if you don’t, I’ll be there.”
Veta cast one last glance toward the Huragok and caught it looking down in her direction. It was hovering just below the canopy, surrounded by wheeling birds and holding a limp ribbon-snake in its tentacles. But its head-stalk was tilted slightly, and it seemed to be contemplating Veta with a gravity she had not seen in it before. She raised a hand and beckoned. The Huragok blinked three eyes in slow succession and rippled a pair of tentacles. The motions seemed a deliberate response to Veta’s gesture—and they seemed an awful lot like a Huragok “good-bye,” especially when it rose into the canopy and vanished among the birds.
There was nothing Veta could do for the creature—machine, she reminded herself—except hope it was clear before the Wyverns opened up. Weighed down by satchels and weapons, she stepped onto the road and hurried around the hairpin, then started down into the relative safety of the valley below.
She had no idea whether she could bring herself to fire on a Gao soldier, even in self-defense. But from what Veta could tell, Arlo Casille had just overthrown a sitting president in order to assault the 717th—and that gave her serious pause. He was risking all-out war with the UNSC, and even worse, he was after the ancilla. And what if he succeeded? Veta had talked to it. Gao did not have the expertise to control Intrepid Eye. Veta wasn’t all that sure the UNSC did, either.
She had run about a hundred meters when the Wyverns started chugging again. She jumped into cover on the downslope side of the road and looked back toward the hairpin. Whole sections of barren trunks were flying everywhere and spinning to the ground, and the tracers were so thick the air seemed on fire.
Then the trio of Wyverns eased into view, their jet engines now idle and wing-mounted rotors providing lift. Their undersides were dotted by the dark ovals of open hatches, and the battle-jumpers were halfway down their drop lines, spraying small-arms fire down into the jungle to clear a landing zone.
When no return fire rose from the ground, Veta began to wonder what she would do with the drone satchel if the Spartans were dead. Certainly, she had no intention of turning any Forerunner technology over to Arlo Casille. He was too reckless to be trusted with it—the Wyvern assault alone proved that—but she knew better than to think she stood much chance of eluding sixty battle-jumpers with air support.
As the lead Wyvern passed over the hairpin curve, the scream of missile launches rang out from the jungle floor. A smoke trail streaked up toward the nearest aircraft and entered an open drop hatch. Nearby hatches belched flame, and half a dozen droplines fell away. The next missile struck the same target, taking out a wing-mounted rotor and sending the craft spiraling into the jungle.
The second Wyvern took a two-round volley, one missile blowing a wing apart, another skipping off its armored underbelly, then detonating under the tail. The Wyvern tipped sideways and slid toward the ground.
The last Wyvern fired a counterstrike, sending its own missiles streaking down toward the Spartan launch sites. Veta could not see the impact zone from her position, but she counted eight columns of flame shooting skyward. Terrified for Ash and Olivia, she rose from her hiding place and, avoiding the road, started up the slope straight through the undergrowth.
She had climbed about a quarter of the way when controlled bursts began to rattle off near the hairpin. She looked toward the sound and saw no sign of the shooter, but it was clearly a Spartan. Beneath the remaining Wyvern, one battle-jumper after another was going limp or starting to writhe, and within seconds, less than half the Gao team was still returning fire.
The last Wyvern dipped a wing and banked away. The battle rifle stopped firing for a moment, then Fred rose from between a pair of fallen logs and quickly shot three Gaos in the back.
Veta was horrified by the cold-blooded attack—and conflicted. During the battle with the Keepers of the One Freedom, she had killed several Jiralhanae and Kig-Yar in the same manner, and felt elated because they wouldn’t be shooting at her later. So what was the difference now—that Fred had killed humans, or that they had been Gao?
Veta was still struggling with the question when Fred ceased fire and ran toward her. An instant later, she heard someone crashing down the slope on her flank. Bringing the battle rifle up as she spun, Veta found a pair of motioned-blurred forms in SPI almost on top of her. Both wore heavy equipment packs.
“Hey!” Olivia called over TEAMCOM. “Your side, remember?”
Veta lowered the weapon. “Sorry. I—”
“Time to go.” Ash took her by the elbow and started down toward the road. “A bunch of those guys survived, and it won’t be pretty if they catch up.”
They met Fred on the road. The squad started downhill at a jog, and the two satchels slung over Veta’s shoulder began to swing around and make it difficult to keep up. Fred fell in beside her, then reached over and relieved her of the burden.
“There’s a bridge at the bottom of the hill,” he said, speaking over TEAMCOM. “If we get separated—”
“Got it,” Veta assured him.
“What about the Huragok?” Ash asked. “It could still be up there.”
“It’s not,” Olivia said. “One way or another, the Huragok is gone. If it had wanted to come with us, it would have been here by now.”
“ ’Livi, I realize you owe it,” Ash said. “We all do. But you know the standing orders about those things. We’re supposed to—”
“We can’t worry about the Huragok now,” Fred said, ending the debate. “Even if it survived, going back will only draw attention to it—and the enemy can bring a lot more to a recovery effort than we can. Besides, we still have another factor to worry about.” Fred switched to a dedicated channel between him and Veta, then said, “Fill me in on this business with the ancilla.”
“Now?” she asked.
“Affirmative,” Fred said.
“So the uplink is back?”
“Negative,” Fred said. “But things are getting intense, and nobody wants you taking your secrets to the grave. Right?”
“Not this secret,” Veta admitted. They were moving along quickly, but fortunately it was all downhill, and she was not so winded that it was difficult to talk. “Open your faceplate and shut down your comm. We shouldn’t talk about this over the air.”
Fred made no reply for three steps, but Ash and Olivia both gave a thumbs-up signal—probably an acknowledgment that they would keep him posted about anything important that came over the comm net.
Fred raised his faceplate. “Still worried about Wendell?”
“Not Wendell,” Veta said. “Intrepid Eye. She told me she had taken Wendell’s place.”
Still moving along, Fred cocked a dark brow. “Intrepid Eye . . .?
Is that what the ancilla calls itself—herself?”
Veta nodded.
“And you believe her?”
Veta shrugged, an awkward gesture in her BDU. “How would I know?”
“You’re the detective.”
“Give me a break,” Veta said. “It’s not like I could read her face or body language. But, yeah. I think she might have ‘eaten’ Wendell. I can tell you she had complete control of the support module.”
A worried look came to Fred’s eyes. “Then why did you tell Olivia to find Wendell back at the support module? Why did you tell her twice?”
“I’m not really sure,” Veta said, puzzled by the sudden alarm in Fred’s voice. “I was barely conscious at the time. Maybe I was trying to confirm it, or maybe I thought if you got Wendell—”
She stopped midsentence as Fred grew ungainly and began to stumble. Thinking they were under sniper attack, Veta dived for the side of the road—and heard Fred’s boot thud down behind her.
She landed in a forward roll and kept going until she hit the uphill edge of the road. She sprang up, then spun around to find Fred lurching in her direction. His carriage was awkward and stiff, and she could tell by the confusion and horror in his expression that he was fighting for control of his own motions.
Veta reached into her thigh pocket. “Ash, ’Livi!” she called. “Help!”
The pair stopped and spun around . . . then scowled in confusion.
“The ancilla!” Veta yelled. “It’s . . . I think it’s in his armor!”
Veta felt something square in her pocket and pulled it out—her comm pad, not what she wanted. Fred was only three meters away now, his entire arm twitching as he and the ancilla fought for command of his weapon hand. She dashed down the road until Ash and Olivia were between the two of them, then jammed the comm pad back into her pocket and found what she was looking for—a remote detonator.
Veta spun around to find Ash and Olivia already tumbling across the ground. Fred’s expression was one of helpless anger, but his movements seemed to be growing smoother, and she knew Intrepid Eye was winning control of the Mjolnir. She switched the detonator on and flipped the safety cover aside, then pressed the trigger pad.