Meridian Divide

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  “How much farther?” Evie gasped.

  Saskia shook her head. Glanced over at Dorian, who was running with a grim, fatalistic determination.

  “No idea,” he said, not looking at her.

  “It’s just a couple of kilometers,” said Commander Marechal, approaching behind her as he led the militia toward Desmarais. “We were close before. Now we’ve just go to—”

  A dark mass plunged down from the trees, growling and carrying a fat, heavy-looking weapon equipped with a curved, vicious blade. The last Brute. In one lunging movement, the blade arced through the air and sliced across Commander Marechal’s midsection. He crumpled, disappearing into the tall grasses.

  Dorian screamed, stumbling to a stop and then ducking to avoid the trajectory of the Brute’s weapon, still red with blood. The creature lunged forward, growling in its unfamiliar language, bringing its weapon to bear, moving to make Dorian its next victim. Saskia stumbled backward, unloading her rifle directly into the exposed base of the alien’s neck. The others nearby joined her attack, pumping rounds into the massive beast. It felt like they fired forever, and with every jerk of her rifle, Saskia thought of Commander Marechal falling beneath the Brute’s heavy blade.

  And then, finally, the Brute collapsed like a falling tree.

  “Run!” she screamed, jumping around its body. “Let’s go!”

  She held her rifle tight as the militia streamed past her. The pat pat pat from Owen’s rifle continued to ring out in the forest. At least they hadn’t lost him too.

  As soon as the last militia member had passed, Saskia followed behind them, sweeping around her gun, looking for more deadly surprises to drop out of the woods. The trees seemed to press tight together, as if they were hemming her in. She whirled around and stumbled her way up to the rest of the militia. The sound of Owen’s gunshots grew fainter. The forest closed tight around them. The air was so thick with humidity it felt unbreathable, and Saskia’s lungs ached as she surged forward. She wondered if Owen was still fighting the Elites. She couldn’t hear his gun at all now, but they were so insulated by leaves and vines, the quiet meant nothing.

  And then the forest ended.

  It was as if an enormous knife had come down and carved out a blank space among the trees. Houses dotted the grass, little metal cubes of the type used by early settlers. Most of them had been sealed shut.

  “Is this it?” Saskia jogged over to Dorian. “Desmarais?”

  “It’s the outskirts,” he said. “That pilot should be here somewhere.”

  As if in response, the door to one of the houses slid open with a creak and out stepped a woman in old military fatigues, a rifle strapped to her back. She squinted at the militia with an appraising look.

  “Where’s Commander Marechal?” she said. “And the Spartan?”

  Farhi stepped forward. The de facto leader, Saskia thought, now that Owen was still fighting and the commander was dead. She still couldn’t quite grasp the reality of what she’d seen. How suddenly he’d gone down. How lucky the rest of them had been to escape.

  “We got attacked by a lance of Elites on the hike here,” Farhi said. “Spartan Owen stayed behind to fight them off. As for the commander—” She took a deep breath. “A Brute got him. Surprise attack.”

  The woman pressed her hand to her heart, a small gesture of grief. Then she swept away a piece of hair that had fallen out of her braid. “We’ve got a small window for takeoff. The Covies run a regular perimeter sweep, and we’ll be pushing you out in the five minutes while they’re looking the other way.”

  Saskia slunk closer to the edge of the woods, her head cocked. She thought she’d heard something beyond the trilling of insects. Some kind of … snap. Not a rifle shot, at least. But the sound of something breaking—

  And then someone shouted, “Get down!” just as a massive figure erupted out of the woods in a spray of tree leaves and broken branches. Owen.

  In one liquid movement, Owen twisted in midair, shooting a wall of bullets into the dark shadows lurking behind the boundary.

  “Guess we won’t be waiting after all,” the pilot hollered before swinging her rifle around and firing off into the woods. The rest of the militia followed, just as a trio of Elites burst out shooting at Owen. Saskia squeezed the trigger on her rifle, although it seemed the bullets just dissolved into the woods without touching anything.

  “Get them to the freighter!” Owen bellowed, firing over his shoulder. “I’ll be there!”

  “You heard the man!” said Farhi. She yanked out her pistol and fired several shots toward the Elites. “Lead the way!”

  The pilot responded by letting loose a cloud of gunfire. “This way!” she screamed. “Got it set up behind the houses!”

  A stream of people stampeded toward the untouched neighborhood. Saskia got swept up in the group as they surged forward, and she struggled to get her footing on the damp, slick grass. Plasma fire streaked overhead, leaving trails of smoke in the air. Behind her, the Elites shrieked in their native tongue.

  A bolt whizzed past her head and struck Mousseau square in the back, sending him tumbling forward. Saskia screamed and stumbled down beside him. Blood oozed out of a charred hole in his shirt. In his skin.

  “Get up,” growled a familiar voice. A huge hand grabbed the back of her shirt and jerked her to her feet. She went limp, imagining the Elite’s sharp claws shredding deeper into her flesh. “We have to clear out of here now. That means leaving him.”

  Behind her, Owen nodded grimly, fired off a couple of shots. The Elites were still coming. And there were more than three of them now too. Saskia counted at least six scrambling over the grass as she jumped to her feet. Owen gave her a shove forward and then resumed firing. Through the haze of plasma smoke and fleeing bodies, she spotted a flash of metal. The freighter. People were already cramming aboard. She pumped her legs and arms even faster, her lungs screaming.

  “Right behind you!” Owen shouted.

  The freighter’s engine ignited. Farhi hung out of the hatchway, arm outstretched toward Saskia, her eyes on a point behind her. On the Elites, she was sure.

  “Jump!” she yelled, eyes flicking back to her for just a second.

  She jumped, caught her hand, slammed her feet against the hatch stairs. Farhi pulled her into the freighter, and she pressed up against the cool metal wall and closed her eyes. Gunfire outside. The freighter lifted, the pilot’s voice crackling over the speaker—Saskia couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  Owen. Were they leaving Owen behind?

  But then there was a clank, and the freighter tilted, canting to the side. Saskia grabbed hold of the wall to keep from tumbling sideways.

  “Clear,” Owen said.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” the pilot said, and this time Saskia understood every word.

  They flew through low atmosphere, the freighter slicing through the clear air just below the clouds. Dorian stared out the little portal window at the vast expanse of blue sky. From up here, Brume-sur-Mer was a speck of dust in the distance, and there was no sign of the Covenant. No sign at all that Meridian was at war.

  Victor, Evie, and Saskia had all made it aboard the freighter safely, and he was grateful for that. They were sitting together toward the back, sprawled out on the floor in the cargo area because all the seats were taken up by those with injuries. More injuries. Dorian had even watched Caird drag Dubois up the hatchway earlier, his arm black and bleeding from a plasma bolt. The sight of Dubois’s usual jovial expression twisted up in pain had jolted him in a way he didn’t expect.

  But Dubois wasn’t the only one who’d been shot, and Dorian heard from Kielawa that they were running low on biofoam. Over the constant whine of the freighter’s engine were the occasional bursts of pained groans, and Dorian wished more than anything that he could block them out.

  They were in the air for a long time. Had to be, with the way they were flying so low. No one really talked, and Dorian couldn’t blame the
m. He knew he and the rest of Local Team had gotten off easy. No injuries other than cuts and bruises, no deaths. Not because they were so great either. Just because they were lucky. Because Owen kept making sure they stayed out of harm’s way.

  He knew they shouldn’t be here. ONI’s whole justification for sending them to Brume-sur-Mer was that they knew Brume-sur-Mer and their job there had made sense. But Annecy? What good were they going to be there? Yeah, it was nice of Owen to tell Command that Local Team could take care of themselves. But in the end, they had been promised one thing and delivered another.

  They were just supposed to go to Brume-sur-Mer. Now they were stranded, and ONI didn’t seem to give a damn.

  A few hours into the flight, Evie came and sat down next to Dorian. She cradled a sleek black case to her chest.

  “So he got it here safe and sound.” Dorian sighed.

  “He sure did.” Evie set the case gently beside her. The artifact was in there, secured behind two locks. Owen had asked her to manage it once they were on the freighter, since she was the only one out of the militia who had some familiarity with the thing.

  “What do you think we’re going to find there?” Evie said, her face faintly lit by the glow from the locks. Dorian reached over and dropped the flap back over the opening.

  “Who knows,” he said.

  “Owen told me that ONI thinks the actual artifact may be split into parts. If the Covenant figure out where we are, they’re going to come after us. So they can get this, the first part”—she nodded at the box—“and then whatever’s in Annecy.”

  “Great.” Dorian leaned back against the wall so he could feel the comforting rumble of the freighter’s engine.

  “I hope whatever it is,” Evie said, “it’s easy to get. I mean, they said the city was evacuated. Lucky them.”

  “Seriously. Imagine getting out of there with time to spare.” Dorian laughed, even though it felt bitter in the back of his throat.

  The freighter flew on. The sunlight coming in through the windows dimmed and then darkened completely, leaving them with only a few watery emergency lights. Evie fell asleep with her arms wrapped around that stupid artifact. Saskia was snoring softly across the way, along with basically everyone else on the freighter. But Dorian couldn’t sleep. His thoughts kept churning wildly through his head.

  And then he felt the shift in altitude as the freighter began dropping toward the surface. He stood up, picked his way around the sleeping soldiers to a window. He figured even with the evacuation, Annecy’s AI—if it still remained active and intact—would keep the basic grid up. It was always something, to see a city lit up from above. Granted, the biggest city he’d ever seen was Port Moyne, when Mr. Garzon was first teaching him to fly. He figured Annecy would look like a galaxy in comparison.

  But nothing appeared in the window. There was only the endless sweep of black, the ghost of Dorian’s reflection in the glass. He frowned. Picked his way over to the other side of the freighter. Nothing.

  “What are you doing?” Owen asked. His voice was quiet, but Dorian jumped when he heard it anyway.

  “Wanted to see Annecy from above.” Dorian looked over at Owen, his armor making him a shadow monster in the dim lighting. “Didn’t Commander Marechal say ONI had told him it had been evacuated a day ago? The grid should still be up, right? For stragglers.”

  “Is that what he said?” Owen asked.

  “I thought so.” Dorian frowned. Owen always got cagey when they talked about ONI, but this wasn’t getting at anything classified. The commander had told all of them this not even twenty-four hours ago.

  God, it felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Perhaps there was already an attack,” Owen said carefully.

  Dorian’s chest seized up. “What the hell? You mean you’re flying us straight into a war zone? After what just happened?” He glared. “Aren’t you in communication with ONI anyway? Why didn’t they tell us to turn around?”

  Owen held up one hand. “I have been, and I haven’t heard anything. It was simply a guess. It’s just as likely the infrastructure has been shut down.”

  People were stirring, groaning, pushing themselves up. Dorian glanced around at the militia, at the dried biofoam patchworking their faces, at their tattered, blood-and-mud-streaked clothes. Everyone looked like they’d aged years since the attack on the excavation site.

  “You wouldn’t take them straight into battle,” Dorian said, turning back to Owen. “Who cares what ONI says?”

  “ONI is focused on keeping humanity from going extinct,” Owen said brusquely. “So that’s why I listen to them.”

  Dorian’s face went hot.

  “Something you need to learn,” Owen said, “is that self-preservation stops being so important when the preservation of your entire species is on the line. This isn’t just about you or me or the soldiers on this freighter. It’s about every human being in the galaxy. It’s about understanding that as a soldier, you might just have to sacrifice yourself for peace.”

  Dorian looked down at his hands, his thoughts fluttering between angry, probably ill-conceived retorts and memories of Remy and Uncle Max. They were supposed to be safe now. But Owen’s words made Dorian realize that they weren’t. Not as long as the Covenant were gunning for humanity.

  And then he thought about his parents, two people he hadn’t thought about in months. He didn’t even know if they were alive—he hadn’t received a transmission from them since before the attack. He’d always felt like they’d abandoned him when they joined up with the UNSC. For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe they’d done it for his protection, even as they left him behind.

  A sacrifice.

  The whine in the engines shifted as the freighter switched over to hover.

  “We’re touching down already?” Dorian broke away from the Spartan—and his own complicated thoughts—to press his hand against the window. It was completely dark outside save for a few red flares sputtering against the shadows. In their dim light, he thought he saw the hulking boxes of buildings off in the distance. But he couldn’t be sure.

  The pilot’s voice boomed through the freighter. “Welcome to Annecy,” she said, and there was a brittleness to her voice that Dorian did not like. Had she been there before? “I hope you’ve got your coats because it’s cold out there.”

  The militia groaned at that. “Figures ONI would send us to the top of the world and not even get us jackets,” grumbled Kielawa. “Guess we’ll have to scavenge for them.”

  “Hopefully there’s something left to scavenge from,” muttered Valois.

  Dorian felt a twist of paranoia. “Why wouldn’t there be?” he asked. “It was just evacuated a day ago.”

  Valois chuckled. “You really believe that?”

  And like that, the twist of paranoia became a deadweight in the bottom of Dorian’s stomach. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

  Caird shrugged. Something in her seemed to have dimmed with Dubois’s injury. “We had this saying in my family. Got it from my great-grandmother, who fought with the Insurrection. You never take ONI at their word.”

  The hatch hissed open, and frigid air blasted through the freighter, much to the mumbled protests of the militia—except for the remaining members of Green Squad, who slapped each other on the back and made a big show of expressing their love for that bone-chilling Caernaruan breeze.

  Dorian shuffled over to where Evie and Saskia stood with Victor, all three of them taking stock of their meager belongings. “Something’s up,” Dorian said.

  “What are you talking about?” Victor popped up the lid on the box of ammunition in his bag, then immediately frowned at its contents. “I hope there’s a supply drop somewhere.”

  But, Dorian realized, putting his thoughts into words felt a little too paranoid. “It’s just weird, all the lights being out. Don’t you think? Brume-sur-Mer wasn’t like that even after the invasion.”

  “Yeah,” Evi
e said. “Salome kept things running. Those infrastructure AIs usually do, don’t they?”

  “Weapons ready!” Owen shouted. “We don’t know what we’re going to find out there.”

  Victor sighed and tossed the ammunition back into his bag. “Lot of good they’ll do us.”

  “We’ll find more ammunition,” Saskia said. “It’s a city.”

  Dorian racked back the slide on his rifle and tried to shake his uneasy feeling as they marched off the freighter and into the frigid dark. Wind swept across the open landing pad, slicing at Dorian’s bare arm. He gritted his teeth together, trying to keep from shivering.

  Fortunately, Owen activated a light on his suit, a beacon to lead the team across the open. Risky, Dorian thought, but they didn’t have much of a choice, did they? They were lucky they had weapons.

  They moved quickly, feet skittering across the smooth concrete surface. Stars swirled brightly overhead, their patterns distorted by blurs of red and pink light. The battles raging above Meridian. Dorian had never been in a place dark enough to see them before. The thought made him shiver almost as much as the cold.

  “Approaching a structure,” Owen said, voice staticky from the wind. Dorian’s eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he was able to better make out the building up ahead. It didn’t quite look right, though.

  Beside him, Evie gasped.

  “It’s been destroyed,” she whispered, and instantly the dark lumps in the distance sharpened into focus. Half the building was rubble, the metal twisted into monstrous shapes that rose up off the landing pad like claws. Owen’s light swept over the damage, creating sharp shadows that made Dorian’s skin crawl.

  Someone let out a low whistle.

  “Heading left,” Owen said, guiding them toward the part of the structure that was still standing—mostly. The top half was jagged and torn, and it took Dorian a moment to realize that the roof had been ripped off.

  “What happened here?” Saskia said. “What weapons could …” Her voice trailed away. “It can’t be safe for us to be here.”