by Various
Tom and Lucy sat back down at their desks, and Jun found himself an empty chair. He’d long ago thanked the two Spartans for going to such extremes to save him, which was more than Tom had expected. He didn’t save lives to be a hero; he did it because it was what he’d trained to do.
“That’s not what I meant to imply, sir,” said Tom. “It’s just that . . . despite our best efforts, most Spartans don’t have much of a life expectancy.”
“Fair enough,” Musa said. “But that’s what happens when you’re the best humanity has to offer. We send you out to deal with its deadliest threats.”
“That’s what we signed up for, sir.” Tom glanced at Lucy and Jun, who both nodded in agreement. “All of us.”
Musa smiled at him. “That said, it’s one of my greatest dreams to one day have Spartans retire from duty—voluntarily. That’s why I have people like you spend so much time and effort training our recruits to be the best. It’s not enough to have a Spartan’s strength and speed if you don’t have the mind and heart.”
“I think that was easier to accomplish with the earlier generations, sir,” Jun said. “When you start with six-year-olds, you catch them before they’ve developed any poor habits. With the Spartan-IVs, we’re using military veterans drawn from the UNSC’s best fighting forces. They may already be well-trained soldiers, but that doesn’t mean they’re cut out to become Spartans.”
Musa grunted at this. “Granted, we’ve just had a glaring example of that with Schein, but he’s clearly the exception rather than the rule.”
“How many exceptions can we tolerate, sir?” Jun said.
“Are you suggesting we return to kidnapping children from their beds?” Musa said. “We don’t have as many angry orphans to go around as we once did.”
Tom cringed inwardly at this. Jun, Lucy, and he had all lost their families to the Covenant as young kids, and as dedicated as they were to the Spartans, none of them had any desire to have that fate befall anyone else.
“Fortunately, we no longer have the need for that,” Musa said. “With the advent of the SPARTAN-IV program, we should be able to have a good supply of candidates for the future—and enough people to train them, even if there’s risk involved.”
Tom glanced at Lucy. She could only shrug, just as mystified as he was. Tom asked Musa the question he knew had to be on Lucy’s mind too. “Where does that leave us, sir?”
Musa pursed his lips and steepled his fingers before them. “Given the spectacular rescue you two mounted earlier, I think it might be time to get you back into the field. You’re too valuable to keep here doing jobs other people can manage. There’s one particular post that’s been asking for me to supply them with some help, and you two are uniquely well suited to the task.”
Tom leaned forward, and Lucy did the same. Jun, on the other hand, sat back to watch, having clearly heard this all before.
“Before I explain your new post, I should mention that it’s going to involve working with a different kind of population than you’re used to, one that includes a large number of civilians and our allies.”
That last bit piqued Tom’s curiosity. “Allies, sir?”
Musa flashed a solemn smile. “Our alien allies.”
“What?” Lucy shot to her feet in surprise, and Tom found himself joining her out of sheer instinct.
Musa glared at them both, and Tom stepped forward to defuse the situation. “I think what Spartan Lucy means to say, sir, is—”
Musa put up a hand. “I understand strong feelings about the Covenant, but you both need to update your attitudes. The Arbiter’s people are no longer our enemies, and we need them.”
“Sir, with all due respect,” Tom said, “they were shooting at us not that long ago.”
“We were shooting at them too. A lot. Especially the Spartans,” Musa said. “We’re asking just as much understanding of them as they are of us. And don’t forget, it was the Arbiter who helped us finally win the war.”
Tom glanced at Lucy. She shot him a resigned look and spread her hands wide, palms up.
“What’s the post?” Tom asked, still in disbelief. “I can’t imagine too many colonies would be happy to house humans and aliens alongside each other.”
“Actually, the location already has many humans and aliens working in concert,” Musa said. “They’re going to be expanding fast over the next few years, though, and security is going to be a primary concern.”
“I expect so,” Tom said.
“Not just because of living conditions,” Musa said. “The site itself could prove to be a magnet for trouble.”
Lucy had crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at Musa. If she thought Musa was holding something back, Tom felt inclined to agree with her.
“So what are we talking about here?” Tom asked. “A brand-new colony? A hidden ONI space station?”
“ONI doesn’t like to reveal the locations of any of its secrets,” Jun said. “Not even to our allies. Not if they can help it.”
Musa shook his head. “The Swords of Sanghelios wouldn’t be comfortable at an ONI site either, no matter how well we vetted it for them. And for security reasons, we certainly couldn’t let them wander about it freely.”
Tom didn’t want to get sidetracked. “So where are we heading, sir?”
“You and Lucy know it well,” Musa replied. “You’ve already spent a good deal of time there training other Spartans.”
“Onyx,” Lucy said in a hushed tone. “He means Onyx.”
Tom felt his heart skip a beat or three. “Onyx doesn’t exist anymore. Not the planet, at least.”
“The shield world,” Lucy said. “The sphere.”
“Exactly.” Musa said. “We have a small town’s worth of researchers already there, exploring the greatest Forerunner structure in the entire galaxy—at least that we’ve found to date. They need help. More to the point, they need protection.”
“ONI Research Facility Trevelyan.” Tom rubbed his jaw as he thought of Kurt-051—the former commander of the SPARTAN-III training facility on Onyx, where he and Lucy had helped train Gamma Company.
The last time he’d spoken with Kurt, the man had knocked him cold and thrown him through a teleportation portal to save his life, then ordered Lucy to follow after him. After that—with the rest of Blue Team safely away—he’d detonated a pair of nuclear warheads to destroy an entire army of Covenant soldiers trying to wipe them out.
Tom and Lucy had been the last to see him alive. They hadn’t been back to the area since they’d escaped the shield world about a year ago, but they’d heard about the facility being named in Kurt’s honor.
“It’s gotten somewhat bigger than just ONIRF Trevelyan by now,” Musa said.
“So, you need us to protect the researchers inside a place the size of a solar system,” Tom said.
“We’re talking a surface area of more than half a billion Earths,” Musa said. “It’s going to take more time than anyone alive today has left to explore it, even with a thousand people there dedicated solely to that task.”
Jun nodded in agreement. “Not to mention the four planets now inside the sphere too. When the shield world expanded from slipspace, it enveloped the system’s existing inner planets.”
Tom frowned. “You really think it’s a safe-enough place to risk having civilians in residence?”
Musa nodded. “Onyx has stood there without trouble for countless years. I don’t think it’s in danger of imploding anytime soon.”
“It was caught in a slipspace bubble only twenty-three centimeters across for most of that time. That’s the kind of change that could cause all sorts of strange things to happen inside there.”
“They’re probably hoping it does. That might help speed up the research immensely. Besides, whether it’s dangerous or not is beside the point. The secrets to be pried out of that place could be invaluable. Do you have any idea how many researchers have already volunteered to move into the sphere?”
“It’s in
the thousands,” Jun said. “Many more are on the way, just as soon as ONI can vet them.”
Musa continued. “And do you think all those researchers, who decided to dedicate themselves to plumbing the mysteries of the most massive Forerunner installation ever discovered, moved there by themselves? You know how big the place is. They’re not there on yearly fellowships. This is a lifetime commitment for every one of them. They brought their families with them.”
“They’ve even had a few babies born there,” Jun said.
“Whether you like it or not, there’s already a city of sorts inside Onyx, one that features human families working, learning, and living alongside aliens. The only question is whether or not you want to be involved with protecting it.
“Because you’re absolutely right. The researchers are sure to face dangers of all kinds, both from threats within their society and without. And rather than ship in entire brigades of marines tromping all over the place, it seems to me we’d be better off supplementing the limited number of forces already there with a few seasoned Spartans instead.
“This will be a very different posting for you. The people inside Onyx don’t need warriors. They need watchers. Protectors. And given the history you two have with Onyx and the way you performed on Gao, there’s no one better to manage it.”
Tom opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. He couldn’t think of a single decent objection to the assignment. He’d been a Spartan nearly his whole life, and he could see just how valuable a pair of them would be at Onyx. This was a job that needed doing—alongside supposedly friendly aliens or not—and he and Lucy were the perfect personnel for it.
Musa tapped the surface of the table in front of him. “You don’t have to love the Sangheili, Spartans. But you’d better learn to live with them.”
Tom craned back his neck to stare at the interior of Onyx as the ship he and Lucy rode in emerged inside the Forerunner Dyson sphere. The gigantic world—worlds, really—arced away backward, in all dizzying directions at once. The surface of the sphere was so large that he had no hope of being able to take it all in—nothing more than the tiniest fraction of it.
Visually, he couldn’t see everything at once. There was no vantage point inside the sphere where anyone could manage that.
Was Onyx even the correct thing to call the sphere? It had sprung from inside the original planet of that name, but the planet was gone now and the sphere was several orders of magnitude larger. Still, the two places were part and parcel with each other, weren’t they?
For some reason, although it might be technically wrong, calling the sphere Onyx felt right, although Tom knew he had no say in the matter. Such decisions were made far above his pay grade.
From the outside, the place—call it what you will—looked like nothing at all. The material that made up the exterior of the Dyson sphere was a dark brown, and it seemed to absorb any light that wasn’t shined directly against it. From a distance, it was invisible to the human eye. As you got up close, it didn’t resemble a sphere so much as a gigantic wall that soared off at dizzying angles. It made Tom feel like a flea falling toward an exercise ball.
Inside, though—once you got through the dense, protective shell that separated the habitable interior from the rest of the galaxy—it was gorgeous. The pilot of the transport took a long, languid turn around the area surrounding the entrance before heading to the landing strip, Tom staring out the viewport before him the entire time.
Even through the glass, the full-spectrum sunshine felt real and warm and—hard as Tom found it to believe—welcoming. That struck him as weird, given what happened to him and Lucy the last time they’d been inside the shield world: fighting for their lives, searching for a way out, and figuring on being trapped here until they were old and gray, if they even managed to survive. It hadn’t seemed nearly so inviting then.
Now, though, Tom had to admit that Onyx felt like a new frontier. A wild and unmapped land he and Lucy could explore alongside the researchers they were ordered to protect—a new set of skills for them to learn, and new responsibilities to master.
He discovered he was looking forward to it.
As the transport came in for a landing, Tom thought the location to be incredibly similar to the surface of any other lush, perfectly habitable world—with one massive exception. At the horizons, the features of the planet didn’t curve away out of sight but upward in every direction, almost indiscernible to Tom’s eyes. At some point, the haze of distance and the glare of the sun in the center of the sphere began to obscure the details, and they grew more indecipherable until they disappeared entirely into the bright blue sky.
The parts of Onyx that Tom could see, though, included large bodies of water, tall mountain ranges, areas covered with snow, and even lines and patches of blackness, spots where perhaps the Forerunners who’d built this place hadn’t quite finished the job. Each of those patches had to be the size of a continent, if not an entire planet . . . but he couldn’t manage to wrap his head around the idea. It was madness to contemplate it.
As Tom and Lucy emerged from the transport, they stopped for a moment to stand on the concrete landing strip. The air was crisp and clean, and it smelled of flowering plants and ocean salt and thriving life. As the transport’s engines cooled, Tom heard birds calling somewhere, and although he didn’t see a dark cloud in the sky, somewhere in the distance thunder rolled.
“More worlds than you could explore in a lifetime,” he said under his breath.
Lucy stood beside Tom on the landing strip, her eyelids closed and a faint smile creasing her lips as she basked in the warm breeze. After a moment, she opened her wide brown eyes, caught him watching her, and laughed.
“I guess we could get used to this,” Tom said with a shake of his head.
The rest of the passengers on the ship had continued on ahead of them. Maybe they’d been there before and had gotten used to the environment, but Tom had a hard time believing that anyone could ever lose the sense of awe such a construct inspired. To think there were these places scattered about the universe, placed there by the Forerunners untold eons ago. It made Tom feel both minuscule and very lucky at the same time.
Tom and Lucy strolled across the open yard toward a green-paneled building that, in stark contrast with the surrounding natural beauty, had been slapped together with UNSC standard-construction modules. As they entered the building, a man stepped forward and greeted them with a salute. “Welcome, Spartans, to your new home.”
“Chief Mendez!” Lucy yelped in surprise and delight, leaping at the man and enveloping him in a hug. Just as shocked as Lucy, Tom couldn’t help but join in when he recognized him too. Fortunately, Mendez ignored the terrific breach in protocol and returned the embrace.
He held both Spartans at arm’s length to get a better look at them. Neither Tom nor Lucy had seen him for an entire year, but Mendez didn’t seem to have aged at all. He had a bit more silver in his short-cropped hair and a few more lines on his weathered face, but that was it.
“We heard you’d retired,” Tom said.
“They’re not going to get rid of me that easily,” Mendez said with a soft laugh. “I actually did turn in my stripes, but retirement didn’t sit all that well with me.”
“I suppose being career military will do that to you,” said Tom. “I mean, after you’ve saved humanity a couple of times, it has to be hard to just go curl up on a beach somewhere, right?”
“Well, when I think of all the things we had to do to win the war . . .” Mendez turned away, not able to meet their eyes any longer. The smile faded from his face. “Let’s just say it’s nice to have an opportunity to do some unalloyed good.”
“That was Musa’s pitch to us too,” said Tom. “Helping directly instead of training others to do it.”
Mendez gave him an approving nod. “They say those who can’t do, teach. Time to get back to doing instead. I’m happy to have you two along for the ride.”
Tom shot L
ucy a surprised look, which she returned. “You’re not just here for a visit?”
Mendez shook his head. “I’m in charge of security for the settlements. Everything that’s not directly under ONI, at least. You two will be working with me.”
Tom and Lucy snapped to attention and saluted Mendez. “Our apologies, Chief. We didn’t realize—”
Mendez returned the salute with a soft chuckle. “At ease. You’re fine. We’re in new territory here, all of us. The war’s in the past. We’re here to help these people push us forward. A new era of enlightenment awaits us, or so they tell me. All joking aside, if they manage to decode even a sliver of Forerunner tech here, just imagine what that could do for us all.”
Tom did his best to relax. “I suppose I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Mendez clapped him on the shoulder. “Spartan . . . as strange as it may sound coming from me, I’ve found that sometimes you need to leave the gun in the holster and focus on the tools of progress instead.”
Lucy warily glanced around. “Some habits are hard to break.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Mendez replied. “In all honesty, this should be a relatively cushy post for you both.”
“How do you figure that?” Tom asked.
Mendez gestured all around them. “Spartan, we’re inside the most secure facility in the galaxy. Not even a nuke could get through the exterior, and we have total control over the main access point.”
“What about internal threats?” Lucy said, her voice suddenly turning brittle as she took a step back.
At first Tom didn’t understand what was going on, and then he saw the female Sangheili entering the building from the opposite set of doors, heading straight toward them.
Mendez caught the look on their faces and immediately realized what the problem was. “Ah.” He stepped back to allow the Sangheili into their conversation as she arrived. “Allow me to introduce Kasha ‘Hilot. She’s my second-in-command of security at the Onyx United Research Project.”