by Various
“Uncle Danzer?”
He wasn’t really her uncle. He was family in the sense that they had lived together in cramped refugee huts on Mars for three years. They’d become the extended family that Dahlia had lost when Covenant ships appeared in the skies over the Outer Colonies. She’d spent her entire childhood moving inward. From the Outer Colonies to the Inner Colonies, and then eventually to Sol system itself.
And still the aliens had come for them. All the way to the mother world. Relentless in their destruction. Even before the second attack on Arcadia when she was seven, Dahlia had known that aliens were out there destroying human worlds. And for five years after the attack, all she had known was a life of running from the destruction.
Danzer and Pha had held her in their arms when the buildings exploded. Snuck her candy while packed in the holds of freighters running through the depths of space, fleeing the Covenant. Stayed up while Dahlia’s exhausted parents slept and told her they were going somewhere safer, somewhere they could start over again.
And over again.
Her uncles had always told her the best was yet to come. To survive and hold on. Even when her parents could only stare into the distance and wonder what would come next.
“Uncle Danzer!”
He turned now. Dahlia saw the slump in his shoulders and the empty eyes. “Dahlia?” He barely seemed to believe what he saw.
She ran up and hugged him. The dusty embrace left her weak with relief. She wasn’t alone anymore.
Danzer pulled away from her. “You’re alive,” he whispered in a shocked tone.
Dahlia looked over his shoulder at the fire. She remembered when she could bury her face in his chest and sob, but in the past she’d grown inches taller than the stout, square-jawed Danzer with his oddly pale hair.
There was something in the heart of the fire, under the dancing flame.
“Oh no,” she hissed. “Danzer, is that—”
Danzer wiped tears from his cheeks, streaking dirt into mud as he did so. “It was Pha. He died last night.”
She grabbed her uncle’s hand. They stood together and watched Pha burn.
“It’s a viral hemorrhagic fever of some kind,” Danzer said when the fire finally died down. “You were one of the first.”
“Doctor—”
“No. She died in the second wave. Before the communications repeater failed. Before people started bleeding. Pha and I took precautions. But we were already infected, it seems.”
“Then we need to go and fix the repeater. Mom and Dad are still alive. They need help.”
Danzer put a hand on her shoulder. “I can barely walk. The disease left me broken. It was all I could do to get Pha out here. But help me to your house—I will do what I can for your family.”
“Do you have any medicine?”
He looked sadly at her. “Not anymore.”
A bit more attention to dressing, goggles down and head wrap wound tightly, and Dahlia left Sandholm.
The storm’s remains occasionally tugged at her, but she made her way up the rough, sandblasted rock of Signal Hill as quickly as her battered muscles would let her. The illness had left her weak—usually she could skip her way up here to look out on the town and eat lunch.
Dahlia knew something was wrong as soon as she approached the last jumble of rocks. She should have been able to see the repeater from here.
When she scrambled up over the last three meters, she saw the silvered tower of the repeater knocked on its side and slightly down the incline. The wind must have blown it loose, across the ridge. A large boulder, likely dislodged in the process, had fallen on top of the repeater, damaging it beyond repair.
Dahlia sat down on the rocks. She opened a small canteen strapped to her side and pulled her head wrap’s strips aside by her mouth to sip. This was bad, she thought. Very bad. It would be two weeks before traders came by again.
Her parents wouldn’t live that long.
She was packing a large back frame with supplies when Danzer woke up. He’d been asleep on the living room rug, curled around a large floor pillow like a cat.
“Sorry, I was trying to be quiet,” Dahlia said, tying a sleeping bag onto the bottom of the frame. “I know you need your rest.”
Danzer shook his head and struggled to sit up. “I can barely take care of myself. It will take the two of us to care for your mother and father. What are you doing?”
“Neither of us can save them,” Dahlia said. She pulled the pack up on one end and lifted it experimentally. “I need to go for help. For them and whoever else might just be fighting this in their homes.”
It was Danzer and Pha that taught her to reject the past, focus on the present, plan for the future. If you do not live for a future, Pha once told her, it will never come. She was sixteen, but sometimes she wondered if the war hadn’t just thrown her past any childhood and straight into a strange, forged sort of artificial adulthood. The kind where a child would stroke their own parent’s arm and tell them to stop crying because it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad because that’s all the child had ever known.
“We are weak,” Danzer said. “I’ve barely survived this, just like you. You have to be weak as well. And Suraka is three hundred kilometers away.”
Dahlia nodded. “I can’t make Suraka, yes. But I can get to Masov Oasis.” That, she knew, was only seventy kilometers away. Halfway between Sandholm and Rak.
Danzer struggled to his feet. “The oasis? Masov Oasis is Sangheili territory. Aliens.” He hissed that last word with disgust, fear, and hatred. The Sangheili were monsters, the atrocities they’d committed horrendous. Danzer would never forget them and made a point to make sure Dahlia wouldn’t either.
“I know.” Dahlia swallowed, trying to drive the image of reptilian eyes and leathery skin out from her mind. “But I can get there in three days. Dad said there are human smugglers who trade with them. Maybe even our traders. If I can use the comm systems there, I can call Suraka for help. Maybe I can even buy medicine.”
Discard the past, forget the aliens, Dahlia told herself. Think only of the things that you need there.
It wasn’t going to be that easy.
“That is no place for you to be,” Danzer said. “People that close to alien land tend to die. One way or another.”
“You need to help my mom and dad. And you need to rest. I’m going. You know how it is, Danzer. We have to put one foot in front of the other and survive. That’s what we do.”
“There’s an old military surplus Mongoose quad bike in the doctor’s shed,” Danzer finally said. “It’s gassed up. It’ll get you to the oasis in a day.”
A day?! And help for her parents shortly after. Dahlia felt a small explosion of hope. Danzer nodded, recognizing her expression. He wobbled over to the footlocker near the door and tapped a code in. “Your father gave me the unlock pass,” he explained as he opened it. He reached in below the sand equipment, pushed back several towels and bags, and pulled out a heavy rifle.
“I knew Dad had an old rebel weapon held over from before the Covenant,” Dahlia said. “He kept it from me. What do you think I’ll be doing with that?”
“That is an M295 Designated Marksman Rifle, manufactured by Misriah back during the Insurrection, and you’re going to need protection. You’ve got a damn good eye for popping scale lizards. I’ve seen it.”
“I think this is going to be cumbersome,” Dahlia said. Not at all like the comfortable, low-caliber single-shot hunting rifle she preferred for shooting the lizards that dug into their sheds and chewed everything up.
“Semiautomatic.” Danzer handed it to her. “There’s one in every house, under lock. We figured, if the aliens attacked, we needed to be able to fight back.”
Twenty households. As if, Dahlia thought, they could hold off the Sangheili after so many others with better equipment and training had failed. But maybe that was what it had taken for her parents to sleep at night.
Dahlia hefted the large rifle. “
I’ll take it.”
I’ll pack it up and never use it, she thought, rewrapping her sleeping bag around it and the two magazines that Danzer gave her.
“Be safe,” he told her at the door. “Just talk to the human traders. Avoid the hinge-heads.”
“I will.”
They hugged, and she stepped outside.
The sound of the storm bars locking in place behind her made Dahlia flinch.
Dahlia found the Mongoose exactly where Danzer said it would be. Fully gassed. A bit beat up, but then they’d been nearly beggars anyway when they’d come to Carrow.
It roared to life under her, and she gunned it down between the buildings, testing the throttle while she was on a flat, straight road. Just five minutes later, grinding up the sand near Signal Hill, she slowed down to ten kilometers per hour.
Usually taking a quad bike into the desert meant ripping up the dunes, tossing a rooster tail of fine sand up into the air. But she couldn’t afford to snap an axle or break a wheel out here. The bike needed to get her all the way the oasis. A missed rock, a plunging gulley—either of those would risk her family.
The ride settled into monotony. Up a hill of sand, check her bearings on the crest, down the other side. Trace the sides of old riverbeds.
She stopped every half hour to wipe the sand that had whipped through the seam between flesh and goggles to irritate her eyes and take a drink of water.
At times she found herself losing against waves of exhaustion. Her eyes would close for a second, then she would jerk back awake, swearing at herself. It would take just a few seconds to have it all come to a tragic end.
“Walking will be even more exhausting, if you haven’t broken your neck,” she berated herself. The fear and adrenaline cleared her vision and forced her to sit upright, keeping her going after her shoulders began to slump.
But eventually she would falter.
There was still sunlight. It would get harder to navigate at night, when she would have to depend on the headlamps. She wanted to squeeze every minute out of the day, as this was the time to drive faster.
But eventually, five and a half hours in and with the gloom of early evening, Dahlia began to slow the Mongoose down. She picked through a boulder field, slowly curving around the looming stones as the sun set.
“That’s it,” Dahlia said as the Mongoose coughed underneath her. She let go of the handlebars and massaged her palms. Leaned back and stretched.
How much longer would it take to get to Masov Oasis across the remaining terrain? Three to four hours by daylight. Five by night? Maybe more.
Dahlia swung her legs over the side to stand up and stretch as she considered what to do next. Her knees buckled under her. She fell to the sand next to the quad bike, her back slapping piping-hot sand lightly layered over a bed of wind-polished rock.
She was far, far more tired than she realized. Hanging on by a thread.
I’m in no condition to push on, she thought. One hour. Recharge, reset, continue.
She’d pulled the Mongoose into the lee side of a rock. If a storm kicked up, she’d be able to huddle between it and the bike for protection.
Dahlia crept over to the back of the bike and untied her sleeping bag. It flopped to the sand, unrolling to reveal the rifle.
At first she tried to pack it away. But she kept fumbling and dropping it. Dahlia finally sighed and pulled the rifle up into the bag with her, out of the sand.
It was hardly an ideal companion. All metal angles and lethal promise, it jabbed her kidney whenever she rolled to the side.
But after three minutes, she wasn’t conscious enough to care either way.
The signature spat of an energy weapon jerked Dahlia awake. She wiped sweat from her forehead and glanced around, panicked. Nightmares. She was flashing back to the attack on Arcadia, her home world. Memories nine years old etched so deeply into her that they felt like they had happened yesterday. The whine of Covenant weapons that left seven-year-old Dahlia shaking, curled up in a ball next to the wall while her parents tried to shield her as the battle raged outside.
Hunger. Days without food. Walking. Running to make evacuation points.
It wasn’t just sweat wetting her cheeks now.
The distinct sizzle of an alien weapon cut through the night air. Dahlia’s blood ran cold. She hadn’t been dreaming.
Dahlia scrabbled out of her sleeping bag, yanking her rifle free. Three more shots came, from the far side of the boulder field. Dahlia wanted to hide. Her hands shook, the pit of her stomach turning inside out.
But she had to push on. Needed to make sure they didn’t stumble upon her. Bitter experience taught Dahlia to suppress the fear and keep moving.
It may have been night, but in the unoccupied desert, the stars themselves provided light, filling the sky with an entire galaxy’s worth of scattered points and constellations Dahlia still wasn’t accustomed to, even after five years on Carrow. The massive moon’s pitted face filled the air with a silver-green light. She used that light to move from shadowy boulder to shadowy boulder, while still keeping an eye on the Mongoose.
She just needed to figure out where they were, then she could fire up the Mongoose and circle around, get back on a heading for the oasis. She did not want to drive right into what very much sounded like a shootout. She’d learned that much from being a bug caught up in the maelstrom of war before.
Three more shots.
They were echoing around the rocks, confusing her sense of where they came from.
Dahlia climbed up one of the toppled boulders to get a vantage point. She crawled slowly once she got to the tip, lying flat on her stomach and scanning all around. She kept her father’s rifle hugged close in one hand. In a flash it had gone from being a jabby annoyance to the world’s greatest security blanket.
There.
Another shot lit up the night like a lightning bolt. Down on the ground, to the east. Dahlia twisted around to face it. She started to ease back down toward the sand, but then pulled the bulky rifle up so she could use the scope.
She sucked in her breath. An all-too-familiar alien form stood on the sand, advancing toward a fallen figure.
“Sangheili!” Dahlia’s voice shook as she whispered.
The saurian alien was pulling an energy magazine out of its pistol and slapping a new one in. Something lay wrapped in a cloak on the ground by its feet.
Was it human?
The figure on the ground raised a hand as if pleading for mercy. It was too dark and far away to identify its species. Everyone in Sandholm had heard stories of human settlements being attacked—the Sangheili regarded this side of the desert as theirs.
The Sangheili raised the pistol and took aim.
This couldn’t be right, Dahlia thought. Even among the aliens, there was some kind of law, honor. You couldn’t just execute someone right there in the sand.
And if that was a human being lying down on the ground . . .
“Stop!” Dahlia shouted, standing up and aiming the rifle as she hopped to the ground.
The Sangheili pivoted to face her. It cocked its head, eyes showing no emotion as it looked her up and down.
Then it swung the energy pistol toward her.
“No!” Dahlia warned, taking a half step back. “Don’t do it.”
The alien paused, weapon halfway between the figure it was menacing on the ground and Dahlia, not sure where to put its attention.
She started to squeeze the trigger. Go the distance? Kill another living thing? Yet, it was going to be it or her, it seemed. And as part of the Covenant, the Sangheili had killed everything she’d once known.
It snapped its pistol up, moving unnaturally fast.
“Oh shit.” Dahlia pulled the trigger as a blast of heat ripped past her, close enough to singe her cloak. She saw sparks as the bullet from her father’s rifle smacked into the rock just above the alien.
A blue glow lit up the darkness and sank into the Sangheili’s chest as the figure on th
e ground reacted with similar speed as its foe. The two blades of an energy sword ripped up through the alien’s torso, and either side of the split creature fell to the sand.
Another Sangheili stood up, its backward-jointed legs immediately clear to Dahlia by the light of the energy sword.
It turned toward her, fresh blood smoking as it evaporated off the blades.
“Stop right there!” Dahlia shouted, voice quavering. “I will shoot.”
“I will yield,” it called back to her. It paused and turned off the sword, reholstering it to its waist.
“Just go,” Dahlia said. “Forget I was here.” She shouldn’t have gotten involved. She didn’t know who these creatures were, or what they were doing out here.
Her hands shook. Facing off against one of them out here in the cool desert night felt like a nightmare made real. Don’t come any closer, she prayed. Skies. Stay right there.
Thankfully, the alien did so.
But it did not leave just yet. “I owe you my life. That is an extraordinary debt,” it shouted. “You distracted Ruha here long enough for me to kill him.”
Dahlia lowered her rifle. She wanted to throw up, but swallowed hard and stepped back around the rock. “I don’t care. I’m leaving, now. Do not get in my way.”
Her Mongoose chose that exact moment to explode.
Dahlia staggered back and stared at the flaming wreckage, shocked. She looked down at the slightly charred edge of her cloak, the rock, and the angle toward the Mongoose. The plasma from the energy-pistol shot had just grazed her and the rock, and must have critically damaged the quad bike.
She dropped to her knees. “No, no no,” she whispered. “No. . . .”
This couldn’t be happening.
She leaned back to swear at the stars, then jumped up with her rifle to point it at the Sangheili, who had taken the opportunity to move closer.
“Stay back, Covenant!” she shouted.
“I am not Covenant. The Covenant is dead. It was a lie. I am Sangheili.”
Dahlia raised the rifle. “The Sangheili killed a lot of humans before you figured out it was a lie. Just stay back.” She wasn’t going to give it a pass for attempted genocide, even if some Sangheili had later decided it had been a mistake. Not now. Not ever. The Sangheili, with all the other alien species in the Covenant, had destroyed so much. They didn’t get to just walk away from that. And to add insult to injury, they certainly shouldn’t have been able to settle on any of the human planets in the Outer Colonies. Hell, it probably learned how to communicate with humans just so that it could fight them better during the war.