by Various
Kasha held out a long, four-fingered hand, and Lucy stared at her delicate digits in surprise. After an awkward moment, Tom took Kasha’s hand in his own and gave it a solid shake. It felt warmer and softer than he would have guessed. Almost human. “It’s good to meet you,” he said as earnestly as he could manage.
Kasha gave Tom a cold nod of acknowledgment but continued to stare openly at Lucy. She flexed the two sets of paired mandibles that formed her jaw and then spoke. “I understand how you feel. I am still becoming used to the idea of this project as well.”
“I feel like I should be shooting you,” Lucy said. Her chin jutted out as she ground her teeth together.
Tom braced himself for the Sangheili’s response. She stood a full head taller than him. If she attacked, he’d hit her low and fast.
Kasha’s eyes widened as she bobbed her head on her long neck. “I have already chosen the spot on your neck where my blade belongs.”
Tom’s trigger finger itched for his sidearm. He was sure that if he went for it, though, Kasha would strike. But if he waited too long, he might never get the chance to fire it—Sangheili were blazingly fast, even from the enhanced perspective of a Spartan.
“Okay, then. Glad to see we’re all getting along just fine,” Mendez said with a forced laugh. No one else joined in.
Lucy and Kasha kept their eyes locked on each other for so long that even Tom became uncomfortable. He wanted nothing more than to draw his weapon. Every iota of his training—training that Mendez himself had drilled into his head—told him that was the right thing to do when faced with an enemy in a time of war.
But the war was over, and Kasha was no longer the enemy.
“You’ll have to forgive Lucy,” Tom finally said as he edged a shoulder between Kasha and Lucy. “We’ve never seen a female Sangheili before.”
While that was true enough, it wasn’t why Lucy had opened the conversation with Kasha via an implied threat. The woman was on edge. Maybe it was being back here inside Onyx for the first time since Kurt had died saving them. Maybe it was the fact that Kurt paid with his life to defend this place from her kind, and now the Sangheili were walking around on it like they owned it.
Hell, Tom felt a bit emotional himself. But he couldn’t let that potentially spoil what Mendez said the Sangheli were trying to help with here. If all the researchers from different species could learn to work together here inside Onyx, then he and Lucy could certainly keep calm and do their part too.
“I did not realize there were any female demons,” Kasha said evenly. “I meant . . . Spartans. On Sanghelios, we females consider it our sacred duty to raise our brood and run our keeps and our cities. We traditionally send our males off to war.”
“Are you not considered tough enough to handle the fighting?” Lucy said.
Kasha rasped through her mandibles, and Tom had to fight the urge to step back. “Fighting is easy. Anyone can wield a weapon. We take care of the complicated things. Families and business. It is much more difficult to build than to destroy.”
Lucy considered this for a moment. Then she gave a sharp nod and turned away. Kasha continued to stare at her until Mendez spoke up.
“You’ve both had a long trip,” he said to Tom and Lucy. “Let’s get you situated in your quarters at the school, and we can talk shop tomorrow.”
“If you’re not a warrior, then why are you working the security detail with Chief Mendez?” Tom asked Kasha as the four of them headed for the exits.
“Fighting is not the only skill necessary to secure a settlement,” the Sangheili said evenly.
“What is it, then?” Tom asked. “Vigilance?”
Kasha shook her long face from side to side. “Teamwork. Back on Sanghelios, it was my duty to manage the entire city-state of Hilot, with a dozen keeps under my purview, housing thousands of families. My mate, Gerdon, was kaidon of Hilot, and he rallied us behind the Arbiter during our civil war. He paid for that decision with his life.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom said, unsure of what else to add. To his surprise, he realized his words were far from empty. He actually did sympathize with Kasha over her loss.
“In the chaos, I took charge of Hilot until the shooting ended. At that point, I handed over the reins to Gerdon’s best friend, who became our new kaidon. I stayed on to advise Gerdon’s mate, Dinnat, but I did not stand in her way. My job was now hers.”
Even Lucy nodded to recognize the sacrifices Kasha had made for her people.
“I will tell you the most important lesson I learned in that time: only by acting in concert with others can you build an army. Only armies can defend worlds. A single warrior on his own is worthless.”
“Tell that to the Master Chief,” Mendez remarked. He motioned for Tom and Kasha to halt, and they did. “You two stay here and wait for the baggage. Lucy can help me hunt down our ride.”
“Forget where you parked?” Lucy asked.
Mendez snorted. “Let’s just say I think you could use an excuse to stretch your legs.”
Lucy rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue. She fell right into step beside Mendez as he marched off toward a parking structure.
For a long moment, neither Tom nor Kasha said a word. Tom had never been much good at small talk, and he had no idea what he and a Sangheili could chat about in any case. Eventually, though, she broke the silence.
“I am sorry I upset your friend.”
“She’ll get over it.” Tom wasn’t clear if he was trying to reassure Kasha or himself about that. “Your speech is excellent.”
“Thank you. I have been studying it for some time.”
“Why did you take it up?” Tom was sure he’d never had the urge to learn how to speak Sangheili.
“Early on, it became clear to me that it would be a useful skill, no matter which way the war went.”
“Do you regret which way it went?” Tom frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to come across as hostile.”
“I am not offended.” Kasha hesitated for a moment. “I do not regret it at all. I sometimes miss the old ways, but that does not comprise any true regret. I am pleased to no longer have my people serving the Prophets.”
Tom pondered that for a moment. Then something struck him as wrong. “Where are the rest of the Sangheili? I mean, shouldn’t there be more of you here?”
“There are many of us. Not as many as there are humans. . . . Most of us do not venture out to the spaceport unless there is a purpose, the arrival of a Sangheili transport. Instead, we do research in the field or remain in Paxopolis.” Kasha noticed the confused look on Tom’s face. “That is what we call the settlement that sprang up around the Onyx United Research Project. It means ‘City of Peace.’ ”
“How’s that working for you so far?”
Kasha swayed side to side. “It appears Chief Mendez was forced to requisition a few Spartans to aid us.”
“Well, hopefully we can smooth things out.”
“The Demon—your Master Chief—aside,” Kasha said as she glanced over Tom from head to toe, “can one truly create such heroes?”
“That’s what the SPARTAN program set out to do,” Tom said.
“And has it accomplished that goal?” Kasha asked.
Tom didn’t have enough experience with Sangheili—outside of shooting at them—to tell if she was being sincere or sarcastic, but he decided that, after the tension with Lucy, the least he could do was give her the benefit of the doubt.
He gave Kasha a noncommittal shrug and, as he opened his mouth to explain further, heard from behind him:
“You’re not talking shit about the Master Chief, are you?”
For an instant, Tom thought he was the one being addressed. He turned around to see a lantern-jawed human soldier staring right past him at Kasha, his eyes wide and angry. Tom recognized him as one of the other soldiers who’d come in on the transport with Lucy and him. They were supposed to be continuing on to someplace else—Tom forgot exactly where—but they ha
d disembarked to stretch their legs.
“This is a private conversation,” Tom said, hoping the man would take the hint.
“Let the hinge-head speak for herself.”
For her part, Kasha didn’t flinch. She returned the soldier’s gaze. “I am here to learn as much as I am to teach.”
“So you’re just talking shit about Spartans in general, then?” The soldier looked to Tom. “Are you just going to stand there and take that?”
The rest of the soldiers who’d been on the transport stood huddled near the exit from the terminal, carefully ignoring their compatriot’s confrontation. They weren’t about to stop him. Tom only hoped they also wouldn’t jump in to help him should the conversation take a dark turn into violence.
“Come on.” The soldier took a step closer to Kasha. “Tell me. Were you one of the bastards who glassed our planets? How much blood do you have on those hands of yours?”
“I had nothing to do with the war,” Kasha said. “This is my first time away from Sanghelios.”
“But you were still part of the support system, weren’t you?” the man said, undeterred. His lower lip quivered as he spoke. “You made it possible for them to leave their homeworld, to slaughter so many people. To kill my friends.”
Part of Tom couldn’t help but sympathize with the soldier’s rage. He’d felt it himself for a long time. He’d lost his own parents—his whole birth world—to the Covenant that Kasha had once been a part of. That tragedy had fueled him to become a Spartan in the first place, and he’d struggled since to release himself from that anger. Still, he’d come here with Lucy to help keep the peace, to keep all the residents of Onyx safe. A brawl in the spaceport wasn’t going to make for a good start at that. He needed to put a stop to this, now.
Tom turned and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Stand down, soldier,” he said in a gentle tone. “The war’s over.”
“The hell it is.” He shrugged off Tom’s gesture and took another step toward Kasha.
She didn’t yield a centimeter.
“No, it’s not over,” the soldier said. He leaned closer to Kasha until the much-taller Sangheili had to look straight down at him to meet his upturned eyes. He stabbed a thick finger at her chest. “Not until we’ve wiped out every last one of these Covie bastards one by fu—”
Kasha caught the man’s finger in a clenched fist. “My condolences on your many losses.” She lowered her brow at him. “But I will not be held responsible for acts I did not commit.”
With a ferocious snarl, the soldier butted his head into Kasha’s chin. The blow knocked her reeling back on her haunches, and she let go of his hand. Freed, the man launched himself at her with a knife that had magically appeared in his hand.
Without thinking, Tom lashed out and grabbed the soldier by the wrist of his knife hand.
The man gaped at him in shock and frustration. “You kidding me?!” he shouted, punching at Tom with his free hand. “You should be helping me take her down!”
Tom turned into the blow and took it on his left shoulder. As hard as the soldier struck him, it wouldn’t leave much more than a bruise. Even without his Mjolnir armor, Tom’s biological augmentations made him more than a match.
Tom spotted the other soldiers now coming over, and he couldn’t be sure of their intentions. He knew he could take them all on as well, but he didn’t want to mark his return to Onyx by thrashing an entire squad of UNSC soldiers. He wasn’t even sure why he was fighting them.
His emotions about the wisdom of the Onyx United Research Project were as mixed as anyone’s, and most of them centered around the expectation that he’d be forced to work side by side with the aliens who’d been trying to annihilate humanity not that long ago. He’d only just met this Sangheili, and had no reason to leap to her defense like this.
But still, he knew a bully when he saw one.
Tom twisted the soldier’s arm until the man squealed in pain and the knife clattered to the floor. Enraged, the man hammered at Tom with his free fist, smashing him over and over.
Finally, Tom picked the man up off his feet and launched him at the other soldiers coming their way. “Catch!” he shouted.
As the soldiers moved to do just that, Tom turned and helped Kasha to her feet.
A gunshot rang out, and Tom spun around, putting himself between Kasha and this new threat.
The soldiers had all frozen in place, still cradling in their arms the one who had attacked the Sangheili. None of them had pulled a weapon.
Chief Mendez stood there with Lucy behind him, his smoking gun still pointing into the air. Civilian or not these days, and despite all of his peacetime talk, he didn’t walk around Onyx unarmed.
“This ends right now!” Mendez said as he lowered his weapon. He pointed at the soldiers. “You aren’t even stationed here. How long did it take you to figure out a way to make sure you’re never coming back?”
The soldiers set the man who’d gone after Kasha on his feet. “But, sir—!” the Sangheili’s attacker began.
Mendez wasn’t having any of it. “Don’t ‘but, sir’ me, soldier! You and the rest of your squad double-time back to your transport and sit there until it takes off again. Your shore-leave privileges have just been revoked. If you care to argue the point, I suggest you head over to Trevelyan HQ and introduce yourselves to Hugo Barton. But take it from me, you don’t want to know what ONI’s severance packages involve. They have only one, and it takes the ‘severance’ in that term to heart.”
The man gaped at Mendez in utter astonishment. If he’d actually been expecting a commendation for taking down a Sangheili in their midst, he was sorely disappointed. He looked to his friends for support, but they each took a step away instead. None of them wanted anything to do with him.
Mendez holstered his pistol and spoke to the soldiers in a calm, clear voice. “You got me?”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers replied in unison, even the one who’d attacked Kasha. They spun on their heels as a unit and disappeared back into the spaceport.
The few other people in the area—who had been gawking at the incident until now—saw the look on Mendez’s face as he scanned for more trouble. They all embraced the wisdom of going right back to whatever it was they’d been doing.
“You have my gratitude, humans,” Kasha said to both Tom and Mendez. “Not for protecting me. That I could have managed myself.”
A true statement—in a fair fight, he would have put all his money on the Sangheili. But rather than harming the man, she’d shown tremendous restraint.
“What for, then?” Lucy asked, a curious look on her face.
“For teaching them a lesson. I have not been here long, but it comforts me to know that not every human inside Onyx wants to place my head on a spike over the gate of their keep—whether they act on that desire or not. That is a lesson much better taught to them, as well, by a fellow human.”
Tom, Lucy, and Mendez all nodded in agreement with that sentiment.
“So what’s going to happen now?” Tom motioned his head toward where the soldiers had vanished.
“Tomorrow I’m going to open a conversation with Barton about not lowering the standards we use to vet soldiers to be stationed here. I don’t care how many people we need to keep this operation in tip-top order—I don’t ever want to see a yahoo like him around here again.”
“Must be hard to find enough soldiers who don’t bear any ill will toward the Covenant,” Tom said. “I mean, this place is huge.”
“As professionals, I expect them to stow that ill will and treat our allies with respect. At the very least, I’ll make sure Barton stations any potential troublemakers in a remote sector where they don’t have to interact with our new pals. Ever.”
Tom glanced at Kasha. “You feel all right about that?”
The Sangheili shrugged. “I am not afraid of them.”
“What does scare you, then?” Lucy said.
“Wait until you see the rest of Onyx,” Kash
a said.
Tom wasn’t sure the Sangheili was joking, but he couldn’t help cracking a smile about it anyway.
WHAT REMAINS
* * *
* * *
MORGAN LOCKHART
This story takes place immediately following the mysterious and tragic events that transpired in Halo 5: Guardians on the glassed colony of Meridian—a world that had fallen after a series of unrelenting Covenant attacks that stretched from 2548 to 2551 (Halo 2: Anniversary era), shortly before the end of the war.
October 25, 2558
Hello? Can anyone hear me? I’m at Meridian Station. Everyone’s dead. Governor Sloan isn’t here. I . . . please? Is there anyone left here but me?”
Static. And then silence. Evelyn’s hand fell to the console, palm pressed down hard in an attempt to remain steady. “Everyone’s gone. I’m alone here.”
Her legs crumpled, and this time she did not resist. She knelt on the dusty ground, even as a deafening blast enveloped the entire station.
Darkness had already settled when Evelyn Collins limped from the remains of the Meridian Station comm tower in search of a place to bunk. The atmosphere of the glassed colony was still too choked with debris to allow much light through, and the lamps that girded the town against the night had been fried in the shock wave, along with everything else electronic. Fortunately, Evelyn had fumbled her way to an emergency kit and located a flare.
The flare lit in a hiss of sulfur, illuminating the still remains of the station. The squat buildings were intact, but it was as if large structures had been uprooted and scattered. Wreckage littered the ground. Pockets of fire burned in and around the station, illuminating small patches of the area’s remnants.
“Won’t be able to get through the doors to the inner station,” she murmured. The residential district had been under lockdown since the attack by those things—Sloan had called them Prometheans—had started.