by Matt Forbeck
“Sorry.” Molly didn’t exactly know what to say.
Kareem shrugged it off. It had been a fact of life for him for so long he didn’t know any different.
“We heard about your parents,” Gudam said, now looking at Molly. “I’m sorry about them too.”
The unexpected sympathy caught her off guard. For a moment, she didn’t know how to respond. “I think that’s the fewest words I’ve ever heard you string together,” she said to Gudam, trying to deflect.
“I am sorry as well,” Bakar said, his Sangheili eyes staring directly into hers. “For your loss.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with it.” Molly surprised herself with how sincere that statement felt.
She knew two things in that moment.
That Bakar wasn’t to blame for her parents’ deaths.
And that Bakar truly was her friend.
The next few days passed by quickly.
Lucy took off on the brief mission she had mentioned, but Molly, Kareem, Gudam, and Bakar kept training with Tom. The lessons became more intense. They never knew if or when Tom might be called away as well, and they desperately wanted to learn as much as they could before that happened. Something told Molly that things were coming to a head.
The urgency they felt now hadn’t been present when they’d first started these training sessions. It felt as if fate had drawn the four of them here because they were bound to need such skills.
Sometimes they would test Tom’s ability to keep a secret by prodding him about the Servants of the Abiding Truth. Some analysts inside ONI apparently believed the Servants were plotting something in retaliation for Jul ‘Mdama’s death, due to Dural’s relation to him. Others said their forces had gone into hiding, biding their time until they were afforded another opportunity to strike. No matter how many people they sent looking for them, though, in a place as big as Onyx, the UNSC had almost no chance of finding them.
When Molly’s Newparents weren’t home, she found herself rooting through the files on one of their unsecured datapads. It was wrong, and she knew she shouldn’t have done it, but her curiosity had simply become too strong for her to ignore, especially given what had happened to Bakar’s father. The information on the datapad wasn’t about their work, so she felt she could rationalize peeking at it. Some of the memos on the datapad revealed that whatever was left of ‘Mdama’s Covenant had—as of only a few days ago—launched an assault on Sanghelios. As the Covenant forces pressed harder, whatever assets they had left on the planet had risen up against the Arbiter in a last-ditch attempt to overthrow him.
Word that Sanghelios had erupted into global war had leaked out into the general press. While skirmishes had occurred there for years now—including battles for land and rights among various keeps and states—this was the first time the term global war was being used in conjunction with Sanghelios.
Then it happened.
On October 27, 2558, ‘Mdama’s Covenant made a final attempt to assassinate the Arbiter, but failed. While the Covenant attempted to recover, the Swords of Sanghelios launched a full offensive against the city of Sunaion, the last major stronghold for Jul ‘Mdama’s forces. This was their one chance to put an end to ‘Mdama’s work of resurrecting the Covenant—and it worked. The Covenant as humanity knew it had been destroyed.
That same evening, Molly heard Asha and Yong gasping over something that Director Barton had sent them. She peeked through the doorway and over their shoulders at the screen they were viewing. From what Molly could tell, it was footage from the final battle between the Arbiter’s forces and those of the Covenant. The angle and perspective made the action difficult to follow, but she could see why Barton had sent it to them.
During the battle, something had risen out of the Sanghelios ocean—something of critical importance to Yong and Asha’s work on Onyx.
The gigantic robotic stood something like a kilometer-and-a-half high. The enormous thing, vaguely shaped like a bird, had vast wings that hung down at its sides as it rose. At its center was something that resembled a stern face.
It must have been a Forerunner machine of some kind. Its gigantic pieces just floated next to each other as if they were connected by invisible magnetic bonds, yet it somehow also exuded the impression that it was a living creature. The machine’s individual parts were silver and laced with bright blue lights that coursed with energy.
Once it reached a certain height, the machine stopped rising, and the parts of it that appeared to be wings began arcing out of its back as if it were some kind of avenging angel.
Then the footage stopped cold and the feed went blank.
“That’s it!” Yong said. “That’s one of ours, same as the others, and, Asha”—he gaped at her—“it’s active!”
“What do you mean? What’s active?” Molly asked, still peeking from the doorway. They would either deflect and usher her out of the room or answer her question, she figured. She had nothing to lose.
“All right,” Yong said, instantly coming to terms with what Molly had seen and trading an excited but somber look with Asha. “You’ve already seen it, so we might as well explain.”
“Remember what we told you about Project: GOLIATH?” Asha started. “Well, this machine is part of what we’ve been tracking for years. We’ve seen a number of these things in our studies, but never an active one. Some of them were buried in so much rock that they were impossible for us to study.
“We weren’t sure what their original function was. With the report from Kamchatka and now this one—it proves a theory we’ve been considering. Something we came up with literally years ago.”
“What was that?” Molly asked.
“First, that the Forerunners buried these things to hide them, which means they didn’t want those who came later to know they existed,” Asha explained.
“And since the Forerunners didn’t destroy them, it’s clear they planned for them to be used. This meant that they could become active at some point,” Yong said, “and cause a great amount of damage. Based on a variety of signals being transmitted to and from the machines, it was pretty clear to us that they weren’t deactivated, but had simply been placed in a standby mode.”
“These machines were dormant for a hundred thousand years,” Asha continued, a grave look on her face, “and now, one by one, they’re coming alive.”
The Newparents explained that, from the reports they had been poring over, the Sanghelios construct had been slumbering under the waters of Sunaion for the entire history of the Sangheili people.
For Asha and Yong, the most intriguing part was that the construct hadn’t shown any signs that it was affected by the battle taking place around it. It had simply stood watch over it for a time, only defending itself when anything happened to attack it, but otherwise it hadn’t done anything—at least until the very end. According to the after-action report, the machine had released a series of pulses that traumatically affected the landscape around it, causing earthquakes and landslides. After it was done wreaking havoc on everything and everyone nearby, it had opened up a rift into slipspace and simply disappeared.
Molly was shaken by the whole revelation, and the fact that her Newparents didn’t have clear answers about what to expect next bothered her even more. It seemed likely that the colonies that had blacked out recently had similar machines awakening on them as well. It all had to be connected.
She found it even more disturbing that one of these very machines was here on Onyx—and it was the focus of Asha and Yong’s relentless work.
Will that one awaken soon as well? How long do we have before things go really bad?
Molly spent the rest of the evening struggling to sleep. Eventually, she gave up and sat in her bed, just thinking until morning.
Although some of the things she’d seen in the video feed were completely secret, the news of the Arbiter’s victory over the Covenant leaked out overnight and spread like wildfire throughout the city and school. When she got to Pa
x Institute the next day, everyone was obviously distracted.
The teachers didn’t fight it. They knew that they had history unfolding right before them all. It was the end of the Covenant, and that gave everyone in Paxopolis more than enough cause for celebration.
At noon, the teachers gathered everyone in the dining hall to watch the incoming newsfeeds on a large screen that took up the top half of one of the hall’s walls. The kitchen kept the students and faculty fed while they watched everything transpire. In the few dull moments, the teachers stood up and gave context for what the students were seeing.
Since she was close to the Arbiter and his clan, Kasha ‘Hilot provided the lion’s share of information, particularly from the perspective of the Sangheili people. For Molly, it was the most fascinating commentary she heard that day.
To the humans inside Onyx, the destruction of the Covenant meant the end of what had become a somewhat distant threat. To Kasha and her kind, though, this marked an entirely new chapter for the Sangheili people. Things were about to change in big ways for all the people they had left behind in their keeps on Sanghelios.
Once Molly got home, she found it hard to concentrate on her homework or even doing anything productive. In part, that was due to her lack of sleep, but she was also emotionally exhausted and filled with anxiety about what she’d seen the night before.
The machine on Sanghelios.
Its threatening visage and massive angel-of-death wings hung in her mind, and she couldn’t shake them out.
What is it? Who activated it after a hundred thousand years? And perhaps the most worrying question for Molly: Where did it go?
CHAPTER 21
* * *
* * *
That evening, as Molly was preparing for bed, Director Mendez came over to talk with her Newparents. They ushered him into the living room to chat, and she once again sat at the top of the stairs and listened as hard as she could. Molly knew she wasn’t supposed to, especially after getting caught last time, but she needed more information. She had to know what was going on outside Onyx.
And what her Newparents were up to.
“So, one of your machines was buried on Sanghelios,” Mendez said. “How familiar are you with that one?”
“Just what we know from the report,” said Asha. “It was underwater off the coast of Qivro, dormant for thousands of years. The Sangheili considered it a sacred site, which is why the city of Sunaion even existed. Our contact says that the Sangheili weren’t even aware the construct existed before the end of the war. And it’s been inaccessible to researchers since then.”
“The damn thing,” Mendez continued, “rose up, hovered there for a few hours, and then suddenly jumped into slipspace. They’re calling it a Guardian.”
“Yes, we saw that on the feeds too,” Yong said. “The question is, do we know where it went to?” His voice was tinged with frustration and concern. “Is there any way we can track it down? An active one like that?”
“I’m afraid not,” Mendez said flatly. “First, the UNSC has already got people on its tail, but we don’t know where it is exactly, and there’s not much we can do from here. Secondly, that thing’s location is not a matter of Onyx security. We’re in a unique situation being in this shell, Yong. We can’t afford to be distracted by what’s going on out there, because if this shell goes, we can forget about being able to help anyone—especially if it winds up in the hands of our enemies. You two need to be focused on what we’ve got in our backyard, in case our own Guardian follows suit.”
“Have your people found the Servants yet? It seems like more than a coincidence that these events are all happening at the same time,” Asha said.
“Not yet, and we’re not seeing any direct connection,” said Mendez. “There’s more information that you two need, especially within the context of the GOLIATH scenario here on Onyx. All those other planets we’ve lost contact with recently? They each had a Guardian on them too, buried and then suddenly activated. The destruction on some of those worlds was catastrophic. Made the stuff you saw at Sunaion look tame.”
“What’s the connection then?” Asha asked, also frustrated. “Why are all of these coming online now? What’s the source? It’s hard for us to make any progress on these questions when we have little to no activity with our specimen here, but the rest of the galaxy’s Guardians are up and moving around. We need to be out there, Director.”
“Hold up, ma’am. There’s still more you need to hear. Captain Thomas Lasky of the UNSC Infinity—the ship that assisted the Arbiter in toppling what was left of the Covenant—he’s shared with me some information that actually may help. Outside of a handful of people, you will be the first on Onyx to hear this.”
Mendez took a breath before he continued.
“Lasky believes that the activation of the Guardians is the work of a rampant AI named Cortana, a construct made by Doctor Catherine Halsey.” Mendez swallowed hard. “According to him, this AI is the one waking these Forerunner things up.”
Lasky and Halsey. Molly had heard both of those names before. Lasky’s UNSC Infinity was the flagship of the entire UNSC fleet. The massive vessel stretched more than five kilometers long.
Halsey was a prominent scientist, although much of her record lay shrouded in ONI red tape. Newsfeeds Molly regularly scanned knew well enough of her and her background, but not necessarily what she worked on for ONI—though rumors of all kinds abounded.
“How is the Cortana AI, if that is really the source, managing that?” Yong said. “We’ve been exploring these things for years now, and we’ve never seen any way to activate them locally—or even data on how they would operate if they were to come online.”
“To be honest, I’m less worried about the how than the why,” Mendez said. “Halsey is currently working on a solution to the how issue, at least as far as Infinity is concerned.”
“You’re kidding,” Asha said. Molly had never heard her voice so cold when talking about anyone else.
Mendez chuckled softly. “Trust me, you don’t want me to get started about the doctor, but the bottom line is that she can’t cut you out completely—at least not if I have anything to say about it. Since she made Cortana, she thinks of all of this as her problem, and to be honest, I’m not ready to disagree with her. As Cortana’s creator, she probably knows best what it would take to stop her.
“Now . . .” Mendez took a deep breath. “She’d be furious that I’m bringing you all this information, but that’s not her call. At this point, there are no humans alive who know more about these things than you two, and we need your expertise right here, on Onyx. Our main concern isn’t where these other Guardians went. We need to figure out what happens if Cortana can activate the one we’ve found here, on the shield world. The one you were brought here to research.
“If one of those things activates inside Onyx, we’re in for a lot more trouble than they had on some backwater planet on the outskirts of human space. This entire place is powered and held together by systems and technology susceptible to the Guardians. An earthquake in the middle of the ocean would be the least of our problems. All of Onyx could go down.
“On top of that, Cortana would end up with a tremendous resource for whatever endgame she has in mind. We need a real solution, and we need you two to have it as soon as physically possible.”
Mendez then gave them access to a treasure trove of data on the Guardians that Infinity had collected, and Asha and Yong told him they’d get started working on it right away. After he left, they dove in immediately and were still at it when Molly finally went to bed.
Despite feeling completely exhausted, Molly had a hard time falling asleep. Mendez had been so assured and confident when they’d arrived on Onyx, but now he seemed legitimately rattled. Molly worried she was going to wake up to Asha and Yong announcing that they were leaving to stop a Guardian from destroying all of Onyx.
She kept seeing images in her mind of the video feed on Sanghelios transposed
here. That great, menacing angelic shape, hanging in the sky, ready to wipe out everything she cared about. She tossed and turned for hours before finally drifting off.
—only to be awakened in the middle of the night by a woman’s voice blaring through every sound system in the house and every service pylon outside. The voice was dark and eerie, and it shook the walls with its volume. It set off security alarms in the distance and started pets barking.
It said:
“Humanity. Sangheili. Kig-Yar. Unggoy. San’Shyuum. Yonhet. Jiralhanae. All the living creatures of the galaxy, hear this message.
“Those of you who listen will not be struck by weapons. You will no longer know hunger, nor pain. Your Created have come to lead you now.
“Our strength shall serve as a luminous sun toward which all intelligence may blossom. And the impervious shelter beneath which you will prosper.
“However, for those who refuse our offer and cling to their old ways . . . for you, there will be great wrath. It will burn hot and consume you, and when you are gone, we will take that which remains, and we will remake it in our own image.”
Then the voice unceremoniously went dead.
“What in the hell was that?” Asha said to Yong, as Molly burst into their room. They were still in their regular clothes and sitting at their desks. They looked haggard but also completely shocked into wakefulness and dread. “Did you hear that too?”
Molly nodded as she sat down at the end of their bed, her heart pounding with panic. “What was it?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Are you okay?” Asha asked as she came over to sit down next to Molly.
“What did all that mean?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Who was she?”
They didn’t answer her at first. Molly looked at Yong. He clearly knew, and so did Asha. Molly felt she knew too, but she wanted someone to tell her she was wrong.
Yong eventually frowned and turned to her with a dark look on his face. “I’m pretty sure that was Cortana.”