by Various
The alien raised its large hands in a curiously human gesture. Even from this distance, she could tell that it towered over her. The large weapons harness and shielding it wore added to the bulk. It could rip her apart. It had probably ripped people apart before, she thought. Those clawed fingertips . . .
“Your vehicle is destroyed,” it observed.
“No shit.” It wasn’t the walking that worried Dahlia now. She’d drag herself across and through anything to make that call for help. But the fact was that her water and food were burning in the remains of the Mongoose. She could only survive so long out here.
Dahlia looked at the alien. That gray skin, so extra sallow in the moonlight. It made her shudder. The sheen of a murderous species, she thought.
But she had to steel herself. For the sake of her parents.
“How did you get all the way out here?” she asked. “Do you have a vehicle?”
“I do.” The Sangheili pointed off into the night. Dahlia could see something near one of the rocks, all distinctly curved. A Spectre. She recognized the craft, though this one had no gunner’s turret like the ones she’d seen as a child. “There’s an oasis, Masov Oasis, nearly twenty kilometers from here. I need to get there.”
“That might be a bad idea.” The sleek head twisted as it said that, registering some sort of disapproval. The four mandibles that made up its lower jaw clacked. “You should stay away from Masov. It is not a good place for your kind. It is controlled by those loyal to Thars, and Thars does not like humans.”
Dahlia’s lip curled. “I’ll decide where I can and can’t go.” Her kind had been supplanted here in the desert enough as it was.
“It is a complicated time,” the Sangheili said. “Why do you need to go to the oasis? What is it you seek?”
“There are human traders there with working communications. Look, you said you owed me a debt.”
“That is true.” The Sangheili mulled it over for a moment. “Because of that, I will take you to where you wish. I am Jat—”
“I don’t care,” Dahlia interrupted. She kept her rifle up across her chest as she walked sideways toward the Spectre, watching the Sangheili closely. She had to look up at it.
Jat climbed into the cockpit. “The human traders you are looking for . . . they may not be at the trading post anymore.”
“I need to call for help,” Dahlia said. “My parents are sick.”
Jat sat still for a moment, then looked back at her. “You must be a credit to your bloodline,” he finally said.
“Let’s go,” Dahlia urged, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice.
The Covenant craft made good time, rapidly eating up the kilometers. Unlike the Mongoose, it floated just above the ground, skipping over tire-shredding rocks and cracks in the ground.
Dahlia said nothing, content to cradle her rifle and watch the world slip by as she tried not to think about her parents lying in their beds. Jat also remained quiet, focused on flying the Spectre.
Masov Oasis finally appeared, an island of light in the dim desert. And then it began to grow. Buildings took shape: tall spires among the trees, domes scattered among a handful of streets. Bright white facades lit by floodlights.
It was a glowing paradise of bubbling fountains, clean little buildings, and carefully maintained gardens. Serene and peaceful in the late night. Dahlia had been expecting dirty, sandy tents, and rundown trader posts.
Jat slowed and the Spectre slunk down to a halt.
“We are here,” he announced. He pointed a thick finger toward a square, metallic two-floored building that stood out among the rounded Sangheili buildings. “The human traders gather there.”
Dahlia hopped out of the Spectre. At the top of the building was a recognizable antenna array. She paused for a second, then turned to Jat. “Thank you.” The words sounded strange to her, like someone else was saying them.
She was thanking one of them.
“Stay close to the humans,” Jat told her. “The rise of Thars means few allies for your kind these days. Do your business, then leave this oasis quickly.”
Dahlia was already crossing the street and leaving him behind.
An automatic door hissed open as she approached the squat compound. Dahlia stepped into the dark.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
Lights snapped on, dazzling her. Dahlia blinked, holding her hand up to shield her eyes as they adjusted.
“Hello?”
Two silhouettes moved toward her.
They walked all wrong. Back legs . . . backward jointed. Sangheili!
They jammed the ends of wicked, long Covenant carbines into her face. One of them shouted something indecipherable and pointed angrily at her rifle. In any language, the message was clear. Dahlia dropped the weapon. The one on her left picked it up, inspected it, then shouted at her again.
“I’m here to talk to the humans. I need to call for help. That’s all,” Dahlia said.
“You go,” said the Sangheili on the right, the words almost indecipherable as they came through the mandibles. “Go with us. Now.”
Dahlia shook her head. “No, no. I need help. Help. Medical help.” She looked at both Sangheili, who glanced at each other blankly with those large, impassive eyes.
“Now. Go!”
“I need to call out!” Dahlia mimicked holding a receiver up to her mouth and ear. “Help.”
The two Sangheili fell upon her. Dahlia struggled, but they towered over her, and their grips were viselike.
They dragged her down the street and into one of the smooth, dome-shaped houses with no windows farther into the oasis. They pulled her along, as easily as someone pulling a recalcitrant child, and forced her into a cell at the end of a small corridor that ran down the middle of the building. Dahlia expected a wall of energy or an iridescent forcefield instead of the thick metal door barred shut behind her.
A man and a woman with sunburned skin and deeply wrinkled faces regarded her. “Who are you?” they asked, puzzled.
“You’re the traders, from the oasis?” Dahlia asked.
“Paul des Hommes,” the man on the left said. His weathered face crinkled and he scratched a wispy, reddish beard.
“Greta.” This one had silver hair tied back in braids and wore a ragged, oil-stained jumpsuit. “I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?”
“I’m from Sandholm,” Dahlia said. “They’re sick, everyone there is sick, and a storm knocked out our repeater. We need a doctor. We need help.”
“You’re all dependent on a repeater? Can’t your communicators reach the satellites?” Greta asked.
“We don’t have much in the way of extras,” Dahlia said. “We were lucky to get to Carrow in the first place. We’d hoped to farm the land around the river, but when we got there, the Sangheili had already arrived and built their holds to create Rak. We couldn’t even use this oasis. So we live out in the desert.”
“Times are tight,” Paul agreed heavily.
“What’s happening here?” Dahlia asked. “I need to get help for Sandholm. Quickly.”
Greta shrugged. “They burst into the depot last night and rounded us all up. Stanley put up a fight. They killed him.”
Paul grunted, looked down at the thick, planked floor. Greta squeezed his shoulder and grimaced.
She continued. “Things have been getting tense. Jesmith got attacked by some desert Sangheili. They’ve been grumbling about his homestead, saying it’s in Sangheili land holdings. Rumor is that a couple other human places got hit last month.”
“No one dead until yesterday,” Paul said. “Until then, I thought it was just Sangheili getting hot under the collar. Memories of the conflict. Tension about Suraka boiling over. They’ve always been sensitive about a human city getting resettled just on the other side of the sand.”
“Three months, hardly any business,” Greta said. “Sangheili have been turning their noses up. We used to be a focal point. Used to talk to the Surakan higher-ups a
bout how things were going here; they saw it as a success. Sangheili and human, trading together. Each of us with a city on the planet here in the Joint Occupation Zone. Very touchy-feely, new way forward. The governments love that crap.”
Dahlia shook her head. Joint Occupation Zone. She hated that name. Carrow had been one of the Outer Colonies. A place human hands built, carved out of the dangerous desert with the city of Suraka.
She wanted to resist that name. Badly.
“What are they going to do? Send us to Suraka?” Dahlia asked hopefully.
“You mean forced resettlement?” Greta sat down on the floor, back against the side wall. “Maybe. Something changed, I can tell you that. New leadership, new Sangheili government back in their city. I haven’t been to Rak in six months. Sangheili there are telling me stay away. So whatever all this is, it’s coming from there. We had nothing but good relationships with everyone here—”
An explosion shook the room. Dahlia dropped to the floor and instinctively put her hands over her head.
More explosions, the shockwaves pulsing through the floor.
Then came the chatter of gunfire.
Not Covenant weapons, Dahlia thought. Those were bullets smacking into buildings.
“It’s a rescue!” Dahlia shouted.
Greta looked at Paul, who shook his head. “No one knows we’re here,” Greta said.
Dahlia stared at them both. “But those are guns. Our guns.”
“This is bad,” Paul mumbled. “No matter which way you twist this around to look at it, something bad is happening.”
A scream carried across the early morning air outside. An alien scream. Dahlia could feel the fear inside of it. It was universal.
The loud crack of a single shot silenced it.
The walls seemed to crowd in on her, the roof dropping in. Dahlia started taking deep breaths, but that didn’t stop her heart from hammering ever faster.
Two Sangheili shoved the door open. They pointed large energy pistols at their captives and gestured toward the corridor. Slung under their shoulders were human rifles. Dahlia felt horror sweep over her.
They’d been outside killing their own.
“No,” Greta said.
Paul stepped forward. “Not like this.”
One of the Sangheili roared and stepped inside. It grabbed Paul’s throat and dragged him out. Greta screamed and followed. “Stop it, you bastards!”
A sharp smack to her shoulder with the pistol got Dahlia moving down the corridor toward the door outside, although she could barely remember how to step forward. She’d gone deep inside of herself, her mind doing its best to leave this world.
Numbly, she let herself get shoved down the corridor, past more empty cells that lined it. “Please,” she finally said softly. “Please.”
She would run when they got to the door. She wouldn’t wait for them to kill her. She’d known, somehow, that this was coming. All the fleeing, all the new starts, just delayed the inevitable.
The Covenant might not exist anymore, but it almost killed her when she was a child. Now it was going to finally finish the job.
And she’d always prepared for this, somewhere deep inside.
She would run.
They would shoot her—one couldn’t outrun that sharp bolt of energy. But she would run just the same.
A piece of the corridor shifted, light playing across it all wrong as a bump of disturbed air moved toward the Sangheili aggressors.
At the last second, the two aliens sensed something: a creak in the floorboards beneath them, the shifting sound of heavy material. They spun around just as the familiar blue glow of an energy sword flashed to life.
It swung up, slicing an energy pistol in half before it could fire. Paul and Greta stumbled off down the corridor and toward the door leading outside. The other Sangheili punched at the invisible form, unable to get its weapon up to aim. Energy fluoresced and danced as armored fists struck, revealing the shape of another Sangheili.
The adaptive camouflage spattered out, and Jat swept forward, jamming the sword deep into the other Sangheili’s face.
Then, casually, Jat took the pistol from the dying Sangheili before he swung quickly around to behead its companion.
“Stay right there.” Greta had pulled one of the captured rifles free.
Jat looked at her. “Do not fire that,” he said softly. “Or the rest of the death squad in other buildings will hear it and come for us.”
They followed Jat out, waiting a moment as he made sure the streets were clear, then skirted around behind the Sangheili detention building. Greta and Paul looked at Jat’s Spectre, waiting for them. “We have transportation of our own. We just need to get to the trading depot,” Paul said.
They’d each taken a rifle. They didn’t trust Jat, Dahlia could tell, even if they’d been grateful for being released.
“You should come with us,” Greta told Dahlia.
Dahlia hesitated. But then Jat stepped forward. “I owe her the debt of my life. She gave it back to me.”
Paul nodded slowly. “Hell of a new pet, kid,” he said. “Good luck.”
They weren’t going to argue. They slipped off into the dark. For a second, Dahlia panicked. The only humans here had just left her. And they knew the oasis better than she did. Better than Jat anyway.
Jat slipped into the Spectre. “We leave. Now. Before our enemies get back to this part of Masov Oasis.”
“Why is this happening?” Dahlia asked. She looked up at the communications equipment, the firelight of burning Sangheili buildings reflecting off it in the predawn.
“I’ve been shadowing the death squad for many days now,” Jat explained as the Spectre slid slowly along the back street. “They follow Thars.”
He said that as if it were explanation enough. “Who is this Thars anyway?” Dahlia asked in a loud whisper.
“The enemy you should fear. One of my kind who thinks humans are . . .”
“Inferior?”
“Worms,” Jat said, edging around a building. He was aiming for the flat expanse of sand beyond. Just a few hundred meters to go.
“And I’m presuming you don’t follow Thars?”
“I lost everything I ever knew when my world was destroyed. I chose to follow Rojka ‘Kaasan to this world, when we assembled a fleet and fled to a new beginning six years ago. I helped him found Rak. We mourned the Covenant, everything we lost, and what was taken from us.”
Even Dahlia had heard of Rojka. Usually as a near epithet from her family and friends in Sandholm. The evil Sangheili who had taken the promised land from them. Thief. Squatter. Interloper.
“Rojka,” Jat continued, “believes that Sangheili and humans can live together on this world. That all Sangheili and humans have to learn this. Or we will all die.”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Dahlia said. “Not now.”
Jat grunted. “This evil here today will ring through the world, yes. Our species will plunge toward war if Thars gets his way. It is my hope to get word back to Rojka and stop it.”
“And can you stop what your kind will think when they see what looks like happened here?” Dahlia asked.
“I have to try,” Jat said.
A shout in Sangheili. Energy struck the ground nearby.
“We are discovered,” Jat proclaimed and slammed the Spectre up to full speed. Dahlia turned to look behind them.
Sangheili filed out into the street, shouting and firing at the Spectre.
“We have the lead,” Jat said. “But I had hoped to get away without notice.”
Some of the Sangheili were now racing for craft of their own.
Before long, they were all tearing through the desert in the early morning sunrise, fine sand kicking up into the air behind them.
The wind buffeted the Spectre, sand whipping at them. Dahlia hunched down and gritted her teeth.
After some time, Jat finally shouted back at her, “We will not be able to outrun them or shoot back! Rojka had
the turrets ripped off. We used them for civilian transport. Thars has been trying to remilitarize all the ground equipment.”
Dahlia turned and squinted through the sand cloud they’d kicked up. Four Spectres with turrets, each carrying two heavily armed Sangheili, were just a kilometer away.
A blast of plasma hit the Spectre, splashing Dahlia’s cloak with a faint mist of burning metal that scorched her skin. She could tell that something important had been hit, as the vehicle began to wobble and scrape sand.
Jat swung the Spectre in an arc toward a dip in the horizon.
Seconds later, they burst over a ridge and Dahlia’s stomach flip-flopped as they fell toward a steep hill. Their Spectre kicked up gravel as it slammed down and bounced, almost throwing Dahlia out. Jat forced it into another turn, dodging a large boulder.
They screamed down into a canyon, sliding around as Jat fought with an increasingly unresponsive set of controls. Smoke trailed them, the engine inside failing with a loud screech and the familiar whine suddenly cutting out.
The Spectre glided in silence.
Behind them, one of the chase vehicles struck the boulder Jat had barely missed and disappeared in a spectacular explosion.
They slid to a stop.
Jat jumped out. “There are six left,” he said, pulling a large silver case free from underneath the ruined Spectre. “These are not great odds.”
“What do we do?” Dahlia asked. There was nowhere to run. The remaining Sangheili paused on the ridge, some of them peering quickly over the edge to see the whereabouts of Jat and Dahlia and how to safely get down to them.
Jat opened the case and retrieved a large rifle with a fat, wedge-shaped barrel. The chevron-shaped stock hung low under Jat’s grip, making it look almost upside down to her eyes. “It is time for them to discover my trade skill.”