by Matt Forbeck
But that would not be the end. Later that same day, Ruk took Dural aside on one of the Cathedral’s parapets, for what he knew would be a condescending effort at counsel. “You have done a fine job with establishing your control over the Servants, but you have made yourself no allies.”
Dural grunted. “I wasn’t aware that I needed to.”
“You have the potential to be a great leader. Perhaps even a kaidon in your own right. You have all the intellect it requires, and much of the training. But you lack the temperament. It’s far easier for a warrior to follow a leader he esteems, as you did with the field master.”
Ruk turned Dural around and had him look out at the hundreds of faithful souls who had followed him here, halfway across the galaxy, on a desperate mission to try to take back their people’s destiny from humanity and the traitors who had abetted them. “I do not need their love,” Dural said. “I have won their respect. That should be enough.”
“It was not enough for Buran.”
“And for that, he paid the proper price!”
“There was one thing he was not wrong about.” Ruk picked his words with care. “Our warriors are becoming restless. They need a purpose on this world, or they will begin taking it out on each other—much like Buran did with you.”
Dural knew that Ruk was right, yet he worried that, despite all of their preparations, they were not ready. His warriors were certainly in fine fighting shape, but even after weeks of spying on the human settlement, they still did not know enough about their fortifications, both outside the main complex and within.
What is their arsenal composed of? How will they respond to a direct attack? Will the Servants be able to carry the day, or will the humans wipe them from the land?
Even if Dural could not answer those questions, another posed an equal threat.
Will any further hesitation give the humans time to mount their own strike?
“I agree,” Dural told Ruk. “Ready or not, the time has come. Gather our forces.”
The warriors were thrilled by the news. A murmur of excitement ran through the entire fortress as the Servants of the Abiding Truth readied themselves for the assault, preparing weapons and equipment as they had trained to for years. Finally they would accomplish what they had come for: spill the blood of humans and traitors and take Onyx for their own.
The Pale Blade found his way to a balcony in the upper reaches of the Cathedral, chanting the prayers for divine favor he had learned in his childhood. Ruk and some of the more seasoned commanders joined Dural—these few would take the helm on this mission—repeating the prayer’s lines after him. They would embody the soul and spirit of Field Master Avu Med ‘Telcam in the battle that was to come. Their victory would be in honor of him.
From their lofty position on the Cathedral, the group gazed out over the rolling hills and wooded valleys that stretched out before them. Their prey sat just on the edge of the horizon, in a cluster of buildings they could only vaguely make out at this range. The humans and their allies were unaware of the Servants’ plans and, Dural hoped, had been lulled into a false sense of security by their absence.
The Pale Blade and his forces would make them come to regret that.
As Dural watched, a dark shape rose suddenly in the distance, in the general direction of the human settlement. It was so far away that it looked almost like a small animal climbing upward, although it easily dwarfed most of the structures near it. Dural had to close his eyes hard, opening them and focusing again at the horizon, unsure if he could believe what he saw. . . .
Yet the vision remained.
As the shape rose, it splayed a set of wings outward. Shining brilliantly in the sharp sun, it gleamed like the metallic soldiers fashioned by the Forerunners to serve as their undying warriors, their floating pieces held together by an invisible energy field that resembled sorcery more than science. Those machines were called armigers, robotic bipeds the Forerunners had deployed at numerous sites to protect what the gods had left behind from faithless vermin.
But this was different, and not just due to its enormous size. As it craned its vast segments out even farther, it came to look like a predatory bird or—even more likely—a herald of death. It had no legs, hovering high above the ground instead, and its wings comprised a hundred smaller segments, all of them spread so wide they seemed as if they could encompass a city.
Questions flooded Dural’s mind.
Is this a new weapon the humans have uncovered? Will they now be able to send it against us? Have they been planning this since our arrival? Or has this also taken them by surprise? And now that we know about it, can we perhaps somehow turn it against them?
“What in the names of all the gods is that?” Dural asked.
To his surprise, an older warrior, Kurnik ‘Nuusra, spoke up, his voice filled with awe. “I have seen something like this before, Pale Blade. The keep of my people, the Westward Temple of the Sea, was built near the ruins of such a construct, an ancient machine that they discovered in the depths of the Csurdon Sea. The ancient texts called it a Guardian. My people considered it our sacred duty to watch over it, as the gods had clearly once sent it to watch over us.”
“And did it ever act in such a manner?” Dural pointed at the Guardian hovering in the distance before them.
Kurnik shook his head. “It never showed even a heartbeat of life. To see one here, inside Onyx, and fully active and alive? This surely must be a sign from the gods.”
“Perhaps . . .”
Dural had to know more. They had to get closer to this Guardian. He just didn’t know how wise that might be.
As they stared at the construct, a number of human ships rose into the sky, everything from their harshly angled heavy frigates to their smaller, fully weaponized fighters. From this distance, they seemed little more than insects when compared to the Guardian’s monstrous size. After a few moments, they opened fire on the machine, and the air around the Guardian filled with bullets and shells, the reports of which rolled toward the Servants like distant thunder.
Dural had previously wanted to know what kind of weaponry the humans had inside Onyx, and he now had his answer. Without significant vehicles of their own, the Servants could not hope to stand against them in open battle—that much was now clear. A handful of Ghosts and Banshees would prove no match against such human warships. Yet despite the humans’ violent onslaught, the Guardian hadn’t wavered in the slightest, much less fallen.
“This is too much for us to stand against as we are. We need to return to Hesduros,” Dural said soberly to Ruk. “Now.”
Too shocked to speak, Ruk only nodded his agreement. Whether facing the warships and fighters or that invincible Forerunner monstrosity, neither would lead to victory for the Servants of the Abiding Truth—not at their current strength. They needed to find another way into Onyx, a passage that would allow them to bring their own vessels. That would be their only hope for taking this world.
Before Ruk could leave to enact Dural’s orders, however, the towering machine began to move. It raised its wings up and brought them forward. A sphere of energy arced between them and then split apart into a violently explosive pulse. The blast didn’t seem to harm the construct at all, despite how traumatic it appeared. The shock wave that radiated outward from it, though, shook the air like a hurricane in every direction. Dural felt the atmosphere rock as the wave bore down toward their own position.
That was when it happened.
The glowing thrusters of the human warships that had been attacking the Guardian all went black at once. As they lost their momentum, gravity reasserted its control over them, and they began to plummet from the sky, violently exploding on impact and throwing the human city and its outlying territory into chaos.
A moment later, the Guardian hovered alone in the sky.
Dural peered down over the parapet and saw that whatever had robbed the humans of their power had also struck the Servants. The lights in the camp around the Cathedr
al had all gone out. The Banshees and Ghosts they had brought from Hesduros had all fallen cold and dead.
Dural’s commanders quickly assembled around him, moaning in horror, as if they had been fully defanged.
“That blast must have shut down every power source in this part of the shield world,” Ruk said to Dural. “We must leave here immediately. Truly, the gods are against us!”
Dural drew his energy blade and thumbed it on. Rather than being struck dead, a familiar blue glow leaped from the hilt and hummed to life, forming its lethal shape.
My blade is still active.
And if his sword functioned, then it meant their other weapons would too.
“That is where you’re wrong,” Dural told the shaken warrior. “If all major power sources are down in this region, it is not a disaster at all. Not for us.
“It is an opportunity.”
CHAPTER 23
* * *
* * *
Not long after the teachers brought all of the students back inside the school, a series of violent explosions thundered in the air.
Clearly the UNSC had launched some kind of counterattack, but to what extent remained a mystery. The distant thrumming of weapons fire continued uninterrupted for a minute before one final deep alien-sounding boom. Then the power in the school went out completely.
To Molly’s surprise, the surge that cut the power didn’t just affect the school but everything inside it too. The lights went out, their datapads all died, and nothing electronic worked at all. Whatever it was killed the power in everything they had.
Seconds later came another series of explosions. These sounded the closest, shaking the ground with the force of an earthquake—the last one blowing out several windows in the dining hall. Curious, Molly ignored the teachers’ orders to stay away from the windows and ran to one that had shattered, finally getting a chance to look outside.
Across the outskirts of the school grounds and in the less populated region just before the first Barrier sprawled the smoking debris of at least two UNSC frigates. Looking to their left, Molly caught a glimpse of yet another ship nose-diving into the ground with a mighty crash that shook the entire school. Ash and dust whipped across the ground in strong gales, obscuring the destruction for a moment before dying down.
Turning back from the window, Molly realized that the power inside was still out. Most of her fellow students gaped back at her with wide eyes, probably thinking she had a death wish. She’d been through blackouts before, mostly back in Wisconsin during one of the big storms there. While those blackouts may have taken out the power, they hadn’t also drained the energy out of every battery. She hadn’t thought that was possible. Something incredibly strange was going on.
The Guardian had to be behind it.
They were fortunate that this had happened in the middle of the day, otherwise they’d have been plunged into darkness. She peeked outside once more to see the debris from the crashed UNSC warships strewn across the ground in the distance, with large gouts of flames stabbing out of them. In the sky above, the Guardian seemed to remain untouched and continued to surge with power.
It was the only thing still active.
Dinok ‘Acroli—the Sangheili teacher who’d stopped Karl, Zeb, and Andres from bullying Molly and the others the first day—pressed through the crowd of students along with Aphrid and a handful of other teachers. They came and stood by Molly, peering out through the windows at the destruction.
The fight had only lasted for a few seconds, and the UNSC had lost. Real people had been on those ships—probably including parents of some of Molly’s fellow students—and the Guardian had effortlessly killed them all.
Kasha ‘Hilot arrived moments later and began grouping students and teachers together, making each adult responsible for a handful of tables. Molly and her friends wound up with Dinok watching over them and two tables of Sangheili. She was disappointed when Dinok made her leave the window and sit down at a table, but she’d already seen everything outside there was to witness—at least for now.
“Until we figure out exactly what’s happening out there, we are going to remain on full lockdown,” Kasha said, once the teachers had gathered their groups of students. “All communications are currently down, but I have sent a runner to communicate with Director Mendez. Until we hear back from him, our established protocol is to stay put.”
Karl’s hand shot up, and Kasha acknowledged him with nod of her head. “Why can’t we just go home? Some of us live close by.”
“The safest place for us all is right here,” Kasha said. “We don’t want the security force to have to worry about hundreds of children running loose across Paxopolis while they try to respond to this situation—whatever it might be—and your parents know that you’re safe with us as part of our existing protocol.”
“Well, I think I’d personally feel safer at home.” The students at Karl’s table laughed nervously at that. “Why don’t we take a vote on it?”
Kasha folded her arms over her chest and leveled a solemn stare at him. “You’re mistaking this school for a democracy, and yourself for an adult.”
Karl opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off.
“We have enough reserves of food and water for us to hold out for some time, should we need to, although I very much doubt it will come to that. With luck, we will resolve this shortly and have you all on your way home soon.”
She ended the conversation with a sharp bob of her long neck and left the dining hall. Once she was gone, the room erupted into conversation again, although this time, the students kept it to a dull roar.
After several minutes, Dinok leaned over Molly’s table and glanced at each student in turn. “You seem like a good bunch of fledglings. Could you mind yourselves if I took a quick walk in the yard to assess the situation?”
Gudam lit up at that idea. “Will you take us with you? I’d love to get a better look at that machine again. Do you think it had anything to do with the blackout? I mean, sure, it had to, right, but what? I don’t know of anything that can completely strip the energy from everything, just like that, but whatever did it sure did it well, if you know what I mean?”
Kareem put a hand on Gudam’s arm to steady her, and she finally stopped talking long enough to catch her breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a weak smile. “I tend to get carried away like that when I’m nervous.”
“No,” Dinok said flatly, in his no-nonsense way. “I will not take you with me. But if you remain good until I get back, I will tell you what I see.”
“Fair enough,” Kareem said. The rest of the table nodded assent at Dinok, and he turned and left.
“What do you all think?” Kareem said once they were alone again. “About that thing out there, I mean?”
“That thing is called a Guardian.” Molly was no longer concerned about keeping it a secret. If there was ever a time to be honest with her friends, it was now.
“How would you know that?” Bakar asked.
“My Newparents came here to research one buried on Onyx . . . probably this same exact one.”
Understanding dawned on their faces. “I wish my parents had been assigned to something so amazing,” Gudam said.
“Maybe,” Molly said, suddenly concerned for Asha and Yong. She wondered where they were. Did they travel out to the Guardian today? Were they near it when it rose from the ground? “As you can see, it’s not exactly the best kind of amazing.”
“We are doomed,” Bakar said.
The statement shocked Molly. Not because of what had been said, but because of who had said it. Bakar always seemed so confident and self-assured that she hadn’t ever expected to hear such a gloomy prediction come out of his mouth.
“Seriously?” Molly said. “Just like that?”
“Did you not see what it did to those ships? To the city? The machine is invincible.”
“He’s got a point,” Kareem said. “You saw the size of that thing. Ev
en if they can get our stuff online again, how could they possibly stop it? It’s not hard to do the math, Molly.”
“We don’t know that everything’s out. Just because our stuff here in the school wasn’t shielded from whatever happened doesn’t mean that the security force’s weaponry is all shot too. I mean, if we had the means to protect something against that kind of attack, don’t you think they’d use it in Trevelyan rather than the school?”
“Maybe the Guardian only shut everything down because we attacked it,” Kareem said. “You heard that message last night.”
Molly shrugged, not ready to concede the point, but Kareem was right. That’s what the message had said, and despite that the first response of the UNSC had been to attack. Molly knew why they had done so. The UNSC was well aware of what the Guardians had been doing across human space, and those soldiers had been trying to prevent the same sort of thing from happening to Onyx.
“So you think Director Mendez just launched an attack on the Guardian, and what happened was a response?” Gudam asked.
“Director Mendez only presides over the security of Paxopolis. He is not in charge of Trevelyan or the ONI complex,” Bakar said. “That duty belongs to Director Barton.”
“Either way, they did what they thought was best,” Molly said, cutting off the speculation. “I really hope they’ve got something else up their sleeve though. There has to be a way to stop that thing. Someone’s just got to figure out how.”
Molly peered back out the window at the plumes of smoke that marked where the ships had gone down, though, and she couldn’t help but wonder: If the UNSC can’t protect us, who can?
Hours later, about the time Pax Institute was normally supposed to let out, Kasha entered the dining hall to report on the situation. “We’re still waiting to get an all-clear from Trevelyan to send you home to your parents. At the moment, no power is working anywhere in Trevelyan or Paxopolis, and there’s been some damage to the surrounding buildings. However, my runners are still in communication with Director Mendez. He will let us know as soon as it is safe to proceed outside.