by Matt Forbeck
Molly liked most of the people she knew there, but it seemed that they were so cut off from the war that it didn’t mean much to them. To most of Earth before the Covenant showed up, the war was out of sight and out of mind. True, some of them had volunteered to fight against the Covenant, and Molly applauded their bravery for that. Yet, the people she knew in Wisconsin, of course, were the ones who’d stayed home, who knew the least about what was going on in the colonies as the Covenant wiped out one world after another.
Maybe they did what they could to support the war effort, but as far as Molly was concerned, it was hard to know what you were supporting unless you saw it firsthand. To most of Earth, the war was both literally and emotionally light-years away. It was always someone else’s problem.
Plus, by the time Molly started living in Wisconsin, the war had already been going on for twenty-four years. An entire generation had grown up under the looming shadow of an interstellar invasion by an alien force armed with superior technology. That was all they had.
The adults who knew about the time before the war would never understand Molly’s generation. Not truly. The war was the backstory of their entire lives.
But Molly was the only one in her Wisconsin town who’d actually experienced it in person, for whom war wasn’t just background but the darkest chapter of her life.
When Molly moved to Aranuka, she’d hoped for a better time at school. Unlike in Wisconsin, she had something vital in common with her neighbors there. They’d been through a Covenant invasion and survived. The sudden and traumatic attack of Earth had put them all on a level playing field. Molly hoped there would be some kindred spirits she could connect to and relate with. But that never happened.
Many of the kids she went to school with hadn’t been in Aranuka during the actual invasion or even seen the Covenant’s destruction outside of newsfeeds. Like Molly, they’d come with their families from relatively secure locations to fill the massive hole the attack on the space tether had created. Many places on Earth had remained untouched by the Covenant, and the majority of these citizens had come from such locations.
At the time, Molly figured she could at least bond with the ones who had been somewhere directly attacked during the Covenant’s invasion, even if that was on Mars or Luna, both of which were also ravaged during the assault. But a crucial difference kept cropping up. While even those people had all survived alien invasions, Molly hadn’t been around for their experience.
They already had plenty of friends they’d formed a trauma bond with in the aftermath of their particular Covenant attacks, and despite her hopes for friendships, they never welcomed Molly into their groups. Some even showed animosity when she tried to find her way in. Their differences in experience had created even more challenging barriers than before.
Ironically, Molly found herself more alone in Aranuka than she had been in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, the people had tried to bring her into the fold, even if it was out of some kind of botched effort toward sympathy. In Aranuka, everyone immediately expected her to be part of a different group because of where she’d come from and what she’d been through.
But no one had been through what Molly had, which meant she didn’t have a group. She just had herself.
Molly didn’t know how that was going to work in Onyx. But given all of her apprehensions about the place, she didn’t have high hopes. Still, she would put on a brave face for her Newparents, mostly because a large part of her had abandoned any hope for a normal life the moment she’d met Kasha ‘Hilot. Also, it had become clear over the past few days that her Newparents had enough to deal with, adjusting to their new jobs and the urgency that seemed to attend Project: GOLIATH.
Fortunately for Molly, she’d arrived near the start of a new school session, so she didn’t have much catching up to do. It was October back on Earth, and although Onyx’s natural calendar—if such a thing could be conceived of—didn’t match up with Earth’s, the research community’s policy was to observe Military Standard Time, which was, at least in theory, universal across all UNSC sites.
Pax Institute featured an odd mixture of architectural styles drawn from humans, Sangheili, and Forerunners. Parts of the education facility seemed to be designed to make all species feel at home, which Molly admitted was a strangely impressive task. The building complex featured large spaces with high ceilings. Many of them had no ceilings or roofs at all and stood open to the sky, or so it seemed to the naked eye.
The colors of the school tended toward neutral: pale grays and purples with highlights of glowing blue lights that seemed to suffuse every room. The interior doors were made of a kind of transparent barrier that activated and deactivated when someone approached them, and the walls—even the interior ones—had long windows so one could see people moving all about one at any time. Some of these qualities may have simply been for aesthetic purposes, or to present a comfortable, egalitarian atmosphere in which very different species could coexist.
Knowing ONI probably had a hand in the school’s design, Molly suspected other motives, such as security. ONI would want to lock down quickly if something went terribly wrong.
Much of the school’s design—and scale—allowed her to circumnavigate any interaction with the other species, which was her biggest concern. In fact, she could have minimal interaction with all of the other students, largely due to the class sizes and the general scope of the campus. She had seen several groups of aliens milling about the buildings and in a few of her classes, but she easily avoided them, finding the farthest possible seat in a class, even if it was in the front row. Molly fantasized that she might be able to complete the rest of her education and even leave Onyx without talking to or even having eye contact with another species.
The thought gave her some measure of relief.
During the last of her morning classes, Molly heard the word Huragok again, the same creatures Director Barton had mentioned on their approach to Onyx. Paxopolis—and the larger Trevelyan research facility—had a small team of Huragok. They worked alongside the researchers, giving them an opportunity to control and manipulate Onyx’s native environments and even to improve and repair the new structures the humans had built here.
Molly had never seen a Huragok in person, but she had spent the better part of the previous night learning about them from the Onyx briefing vids Director Mendez had mentioned. They were living machines the Forerunners had designed millennia ago to maintain their technology. These jellyfish-like creatures of tech-imbued flesh were filled with some kind of gas that made them float. Instead of arms and legs, they had prehensile tentacles that could wield just about any tool—whether human or otherwise, according to the vids.
The Covenant had apparently enslaved the Huragok, referring to them as Engineers, while to the Forerunners they were apparently known as servant-tools. To Molly, however, the images and vids made the Huragok look like something that belonged deep underwater. She would be perfectly fine if she never saw one in person, and part of her hoped that she wouldn’t.
When her grade broke for lunch, Molly made her way to the campus dining hall. As she expected, the hall was just as architecturally and technologically impressive as the rest of the school, but that didn’t make it more inviting. Most of the students eating in the hall sat at round tables in groups of up to eight. Even though Molly could see pockets of friends, she was too new to identify any of the cliques she expected to find here, but she didn’t suppose it mattered. None of those groups were likely to want to have much to do with her.
And that was fine by her. She didn’t want anything to do with them either. Her plan wasn’t to make friends. It was to just get through the day, hopefully without having to interact with any other students . . . especially the aliens.
Molly stood in line with the rest of the students to get her food, but when she looked for a place to sit down, it seemed as if every table she spotted was already occupied or spoken for. Most of the people sitting at the tables were human
, but one corner of the hall seemed to have been set aside for aliens—the other species, as Kasha ‘Hilot had reminded her. About half those were filled with Sangheili, while the rest overflowed with the smaller Grunts. Glancing at them, Molly felt a familiar revulsion and anxiety rising in her stomach, just like when she’d met the Sangheili headmaster.
Molly found it incredibly telling, and even alarming, that despite all of the positive ideals that had been lauded during her initial meeting with Director Mendez and his team, this room—in the middle of the most social activity of the day—told a completely different story. Part of this made her feel vindicated: Molly wasn’t the only one who didn’t like this idea.
The aliens seemed to share her apprehension. She certainly wouldn’t have been comfortable with humans and Sangheili commingling at the same tables, and the hall showed her that—at Pax Institute—little effort had likely been made at uniting the different species on Onyx.
They looked as divided as ever.
As Molly surveyed the hall, she spotted plenty of seats open at one of the tables at the far end of the room, right at the border between the human side and everyone else. After closer examination, however, she saw that a single Sangheili sat there, eating alone. That made Molly’s decision easy. She wasn’t about to sit next to him, even if that meant her skipping a meal altogether.
Eventually, after navigating the full hall, she spotted an entirely empty table a little farther along that same borderland. She claimed it for her own: Molly Patel, nation of one. This might not be a bad lunch experience after all, she dared to hope.
Ignoring the other tables, Molly made quick work of her food and was just about to start her dessert when a human boy—roughly her age—came up to her table with his tray and cleared his throat. He was thin and lanky, and moved as if he’d just hit a growth spurt and didn’t quite know how to handle his frame. The boy had curly dark hair, deep-set brown eyes, and a crooked smile that told Molly that he was probably more uncertain than happy at the moment.
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
Molly didn’t care what he did. She gestured to the open seats at the table. “Do you think there’s room?”
“Thanks.” He sat down with an empty chair between them, careful not to get too close. “You’re new here, right? I saw you on the transport from Earth.”
Now that he mentioned it, Molly had seen him there too but had completely forgotten about it. So many people had been on the vessel, and she’d done her best to ignore most of them. “Ah, that explains it.”
He cocked his head at her, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Why you don’t have any friends here either.”
“Well . . . I actually started here three days ago, which I guess means that I have a head start on you in that department. Doesn’t look like you’re doing too great either.” He let out a nervous laugh. “My parents keep telling me it’s only a matter of time. We haven’t even been here a full week, right?”
“Did you have a lot of friends at your last school?”
The boy hesitated for a moment, apparently unsure how much he should divulge about his past life with a total stranger. Then he shook his head.
Molly had to admit that it took some guts to tell a complete stranger that you didn’t have friends anywhere at all. He could have lied—he could have told her whatever he wanted—but he didn’t. She realized she probably couldn’t have done that right out of the gate. And she hadn’t exactly been the most cordial of strangers.
Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye, she thought. He’s not an alien, so at least he has that going for him.
“Me neither,” Molly finally said. “Let’s make that the basis of our table.”
His eyes lit up, and he smiled. “The thing that binds us together?”
“Exactly. Outsiders-only table. Insiders not welcome.”
It happened in an instant: Molly didn’t feel so alone anymore.
The two introduced themselves and chatted over lunch and then went outside into the school’s courtyard for the rest of the hour. The sky was a bright blue, and the planet they called Mackintosh loomed like a solemn visage spread above them. The courtyard sat out to one side of the school, behind the main building. The area right outside the school was paved with concrete, but it eventually gave way to a wide field of trimmed grass. Benches had been scattered all around it, along with a few repulsor courts on which to play gravball sports, such as slingshot or ricochet.
The boy, Kareem El-Hashem, had been living on Luna when the Covenant had first invaded the Sol system. Although Luna had been attacked by the Covenant, Earth and Mars had taken the brunt of the assault. Kareem’s mother was apparently an expert in Unggoy culture, and when she’d gotten the invitation to join the researchers in Onyx, they’d picked up stakes and moved the entire family, rather than try to rebuild what had been taken from them.
“Unggoy?” Molly said, as they strolled out into the courtyard with the rest of the students. “You mean Grunts?”
Kareem shrugged, apparently not approving of the pejorative. And he didn’t seem worried about whether Molly approved of his mother’s career. “They’d probably prefer Unggoy, right?” he asked, correcting her. The two finally found a spot in the shade of a large oaklike tree overlooking a pickup gravball game not too far off. “She’s been studying them for years.”
“Seems like we’ve got plenty of live specimens for her in this place.” Molly cast a glance to a group of Unggoy at the far end of the repulsor courts.
“During the war they were part of the Covenant. They may have been small but they were still warriors. Maybe they’re not as intimidating as the Mgalekgolo.” Kareem offered a knowing glance. “But there are a lot of them out there. More than most people realize.”
Molly suppressed a shudder at the mention of the Mgalekgolo. She hadn’t given them a thought in months. They were creatures that had served in the Covenant during its prime, known to humans as Hunters. Massive, heavily armored bipeds with an immense shield on one arm and an assault cannon on the other, Hunters apparently traveled in what was referred to as bonded pairs—which meant they fought in packs of two. The most intriguing and somewhat horrifying thing about them was that they weren’t actually biped aliens, but rather vast colonies of intelligent eel-like creatures that had tightly woven together to form a body. Or so the terminal vids had informed her.
“Hold on,” Molly interjected, as a horrible thought occurred to her. “We don’t have any Hunters here in Onyx, do we?”
Kareem shook his head. “Not as far as I can tell, but I just got here, like you.”
“No. It’s mostly humans,” a nasal, high-pitched voice said immediately behind them. “Plus they have a bunch of Sangheili, of course. And a few of my kind too.”
Molly spun around in shock. Though it spoke with their words, whatever had snuck up behind them was not human.
The thing stood about four feet tall, not including the large pack it wore on its back, out of which a tube snaked around to clamp over where its nose should have been. The alien’s body was covered in a rigid shell, much like that of a crab, except it was a vibrant purple running toward blue. Its skinny arms and legs ended up in somewhat oversize hands and feet, and the smaller creature stared up at them with unblinking eyes set over a lipless mouth filled with jagged teeth.
It was an Unggoy.
The UNSC soldiers had called this species Grunts because they were forced to do much of the scut work of the Covenant during the empire’s rampage across human space. Unggoy were often used as cannon fodder, the first line to soften the enemy before the other troops were deployed. Molly didn’t feel the need to have sympathy for any part of the Covenant, but she’d noted more than once that there always seemed to be so many Unggoy in combat stills. That wasn’t surprising, she supposed. The Covenant probably had a constantly replenishing supply, forcing each generation to give their lives for the cause.
And for thirty years that cause ha
d been the extinction of humanity.
“Hello,” the Unggoy said with eerie clarity. “My name’s Gudam Keschun. I’m a student here too.”
Molly just stared for a second. She could barely think of what to say to this creature that had caught her completely off guard. After about five awkward seconds she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. “Are you in our class?”
Molly didn’t know why she had asked that. She didn’t care and didn’t want to talk any further, but it was the first thing that came to her instinctively.
But Molly also found that it didn’t seem to bother her to be this close to an Unggoy. Unlike the Sangheili she’d seen on Onyx, this little Unggoy seemed relatively harmless. For a moment, she had to remind herself: this was a kind of creature that had been at war with humanity not so long ago. They might even have crewed the ship that killed her parents back on Paris IV.
“Of course,” Gudam said. “That’s why I’m here, right? They don’t let the little ones interact with the big ones. By age and maturity, I mean, not size, right? Or I’d never be allowed anywhere near aliens as big as you, much less the Sangheili students. I think they’re even born taller than the adults of my species!”
That must have been a joke by how much Gudam seemed to laugh at it, though it was difficult for Molly to tell if the creature was joking or simply struggling to breathe. The thought of an Unggoy finding itself funny was intriguing enough for Molly to crack a smile. It was such a human thing to do.
“Gudam’s in our math class,” Kareem said. “She’s the teacher’s pet.”
What? Molly was trying to parse what she’d just heard. Gudam was a she, which had not been obvious to Molly at all.
“You’re only saying that because she’s my mother, but she doesn’t favor me more than any of the other five in my clutch.”
Other five? Again, Molly had a hard time comprehending. “Your mother’s the teacher? And there are six of you?”