Legacy of Onyx

by Matt Forbeck

  When the attack was over, Dural saw that Ruk and his vanguard had joined him. They were finally ready to enact the plan.

  The rest of Dural’s command had already started down the ramps as he had ordered. They were to fan out and find more humans to eliminate. If they discovered anything of interest, they would report to him immediately. Otherwise, their only objective was to kill every enemy in their path, no matter who or what they were, and then rendezvous back there by dusk. It may have been a simple and ruthless plan, but it had a twofold purpose.

  Dural hoped to cause enough bloodshed to create a major disruption in the humans’ ability to research the shield world—and to absolutely crush the morale of their military. The first goal was practical, while the second would hopefully allow the Servants to gain the upper hand.

  When possible, Dural hoped to add a third dimension, but it relied on the humans’ weakness.

  “This is a glorious day for the gods,” Ruk said. “Are we to join the others?” At least for the moment, their presence in the heart of the enemy stronghold had washed away all of Ruk’s doubts about Dural’s methods.

  “No,” Dural told him. “I have other plans for this vanguard. For the time, we will let our brothers strike deep into the enemy’s position—where they are weakest—while we watch for their mistakes and then take advantage of them.”

  Dural strode over to the wall and stood where the humans had been when he had first appeared. From there, he had an excellent view of much of the city. The center of it appeared to be entirely of Forerunner design, but toward the edges, he could see where the humans had sprouted their own structures. It was almost as if they had surrounded the Forerunner city and were now trying to absorb it, like an infection inside the shield world. If so, Dural and his Servants would prove to be the divine cure the gods had the foresight to bless, so that they might protect the work of their hands.

  He stared out across the city and the adjacent lake for a long while, watching and listening for signs of progress. Once their presence started to spread throughout the city, it would not take long for the humans to react.

  Will they call their soldiers back from the assault against the Guardian? Will they attempt to mount some feckless defense of their own? Or will they simply flee? The humans’ response would dictate the Servants’ next steps.

  One could gain much knowledge of enemies by their reactions to an attack. They tended to fortify themselves and protect the things they cared about, rather than simply that which was closest to them. If forced, they would even run toward things that they valued most—even at the cost of their own safety.

  For the most part, the Pale Blade’s warriors were remarkably efficient. They quickly cut down the humans in the streets and their buildings before they could get too far or raise an alarm.

  After a while, however, Ruk and the rest of Dural’s vanguard grew restless. They had clearly started to think that the Pale Blade’s seeming caginess might lead to some kind of loss, but that was only because they failed to recognize that victories came when they waited carefully for the enemy to prove foolish. The gods would deliver such triumphs to them—if they were wise enough to be patient.

  At that very moment, as Ruk and the others grumbled behind him, Dural spotted precisely what he was looking for: a lone Huragok. It was floating high, well above the reach of anyone on the streets, and it kept itself near the rooftops, out of the sight of any of his warriors below.

  This was the third element of Dural’s plan. His failure at the Repository had taught him a lesson. On the outskirts of their settlement, the humans were heavily protected and had protocols in place to keep their assets—such as the Huragok—safe. Inside the city, however, a site infested with weaklings, the creatures would be likely little more than unguarded pets that could be taken with relative ease if Dural’s forces could infiltrate deep enough.

  Ruk shouted in excitement and tried to dart directly after the Huragok, in plain sight.

  Dural grabbed him by the collar of his armor and hauled him back. “Have you learned nothing, Ruk? We cannot just charge after such creature. It is already fearful. We must be discreet.”

  The Pale Blade was tired of his own commander’s failure to trust the gods, and he considered beating some sense into Ruk right then and there. But Kurnik stayed Dural’s hand by drawing Dural’s attention back toward the Huragok. “It seems to be heading toward the outskirts of the city. We have no time to waste if we wish to corner it.”

  “Then we shall spend no more time here,” Dural said to his vanguard. “We move, now!”

  CHAPTER 25

  * * *

  * * *

  Tom had known many better days, but few as insane. The Forerunner soldiers that had appeared at the same time as the Guardian had hauled its chrome-colored structure out of the ground had all but overrun Trevelyan, taking out not only many of the regular marines but a number of the Spartans stationed there alongside him as well. It was all they could do to circle the wagons and try to keep the armigers from storming right through the city without even stopping to say good-bye.

  It was one thing to face off against the armigers, as many of them as there were. They might be tough and deadly, but one could bring them down with regular small-arms fire. Maybe a grenade or three.

  But the Guardian was something else entirely. It was like a giant from the old Earth legends. It treated all the UNSC soldiers inside Onyx the way Tom might treat a cloud of gnats. They were irritating but nothing that could do any real damage.

  The damn thing actually loomed over Tom’s head on its way toward the center of Trevelyan, and Tom had unloaded a barrage of Hydra rockets into the thing from directly below it. None of them had so much as left a scratch on the Guardian.

  He’d turned back to taking out armigers after that. At least they fell down when you put enough slugs into them.

  When the Pelicans, Kestrels, and Hornets had come screaming overhead, Tom hoped they might be able to finally find a crack in the Guardian’s armor. For a few minutes, he’d even allowed himself to hope that they could bring the thing down—although he hated to think about where it might land.

  Then it pulled that little trick of its to blow out all the lights. Everything went dead—with the notable exception of his Mjolnir armor and that of the other Spartans—and the UNSC aircraft had dropped from the sky.

  Tom missed Lucy the most at that moment. In one way, he was glad that she’d taken off to investigate a lead in the remote parts of Onyx, if only because it meant she wouldn’t have to go through all this. But he’d grown used to having her by his side.

  They’d survived so many horrible things together. He’d figured they’d always be there for each other whenever the end came, but she wasn’t around for this.

  If he was going to die today, it would be without her. With the comm system down, he couldn’t even talk with her to see where she was and how she was doing. She’d taken off in a Pelican long before all this had started, chasing after the Servants’ ghosts. He could only hope she hadn’t had the aircraft in the sky when the Guardian had fired off that pulse. His stomach sank with that thought.

  Then the Servants of the Abiding Truth had finally shown themselves. They’d appeared through a portal that they’d energized in the middle of the city, and they’d started gunning people down left and right. Civilians. Children even.

  He and Lucy had discussed this nightmare scenario with Mendez: the Servants using the portal system to launch a surprise attack in the heart of Paxopolis. The people there wouldn’t be able to do much to defend themselves, and it would be up to the UNSC to rally to their aid straightaway.

  Tom never thought it might happen during a Forerunner attack launched by the appearance of a Guardian. He could barely imagine a worse scenario.

  “Take them out!” Tom had shouted to every Spartan within range of his voice. He’d thought that with the comm system down he wouldn’t be able to rally a response to the rogue Sangheili threat, but h
e needn’t have worried. At the sight of the armed and armored Servants, every soldier around him had headed straight for them. They might not have been able to do much about the Guardian, but they would all be damned if they were going to let the Servants of the Abiding Truth run rampant over their friends and family.

  Tom charged as well, taking on an entire squad of Sangheili on his own—and then another, and another. It had been a while since he’d been able to cut loose like that in a firefight, and it felt good.

  After he’d run out of immediate targets, he could hear Mendez’s voice in the back of his head: It’s easy to think tactically, Spartans! Don’t forget to think strategically!

  As always, the old man had a point. Because they were so good at small-group tactics, Spartans tended to focus on that. They often thought, Just take down the targets in front of you as they come, and the bigger picture will take care of itself.

  Mendez had countless times taught Tom the error of that way of thinking. It was a good path to blow your actual mission, not to mention getting yourself killed by foes you didn’t see coming. With a director like Mendez online, Tom usually felt that the bigger angles would be covered. All he had to do was follow orders.

  But with the comm system down, Tom didn’t have any command structure to fall back on. He didn’t even have any other Spartans around him at the moment.

  Tom decided that if he wanted strategic intel, he was going to have to hunt it down himself. He found the tallest building nearby and stormed to the top of it, busting through the doorway that let out onto the roof. Once up there, he surveyed the area around him.

  In the distance, marines still battled with the armigers clustered beneath the Guardian, which was hovering over the landing pad near the entrance tunnel in the center of Trevelyan. If he sprinted off in that direction right now, he felt sure he wouldn’t be able to get there in time to make a difference.

  By contrast, skirmishes with the Servants raged around him on all sides. The Sangheili didn’t seem to care whom or what they were fighting. They just wanted to destroy as much as they could and cause as much harm as fast as possible.

  From his vantage point, Tom could see that the Servants had emerged from a portal that fronted a Forerunner spire near the southern side of the Citadel, which lay in the middle of Paxopolis. He could be there in minutes and might be able to help cut the Servants off from any means of escape. Unless he managed to gather a force of Spartans and marines around him as he went, though, they’d probably overwhelm him in the attempt. Even Spartans had their limitations.

  Then he spotted a Huragok floating low over the tops of the city’s roofs, heading in the direction of the Pax Institute. A band of Servants—led by a Sangheili dressed in pale armor—chased after the creature. By Tom’s estimate, the Servants wouldn’t catch the Huragok before it reached the school.

  Which meant that the Servants would charge in after it.

  Tom swore as he raced back down to the street. He might not be able to get to the school in time to stop the Servants from entering it, but he would be damned if he wasn’t going to try.

  CHAPTER 26

  * * *

  * * *

  Molly, Bakar, Gudam, and Kareem were still watching the ground battle below the Guardian unfold when Prone to Drift found them on top of the school’s roof. The Huragok just casually floated up over the top of the parapet and then nestled down in the space that the four made as they cleared away from it.

  The Huragok seemed agitated, although its electronic voice never wavered in tone. At first Molly feared that someone had sent it to look for them, or that it was considering whether it should turn them in. But she soon realized that it had absolutely no idea that they’d broken any rules, and Molly wasn’t about to correct that.

  “It is the time of day that I come to the school to help,” Prone said through its vocalizer program. “I tapped into the sensors in the school, and they showed that all of the doors into the building are locked. They also showed me some movement on the roof, so I came up here to investigate. Hello.”

  The four of them should have brought Prone downstairs immediately to talk with Kasha, but they didn’t. They had too many questions.

  “Can you turn the power back on?” Kareem asked it before anyone else could get in a word.

  “Eventually, but it will take time. And if the Guardian is still active, it can undo all my work in an instant.”

  “Can you destroy the Guardian?” Bakar asked.

  “That is beyond my ability to manage. I might be able to disable it, though, if I was able to get closer.”

  “How close?” Gudam asked, curious.

  “I would not have to actually touch it, but I would have to be within its magnetic field and close enough to communicate with its control arrays.”

  “That’s probably too close,” Molly said. “You would never make it through the battle that’s going on beneath it. Is there another way?”

  Prone squirmed a bit as it thought about the problem. Molly was fond of how it approached everything as an engineering issue. Just another problem to be solved by means of applied science.

  “I do not know,” it finally said. “I lack sufficient information about it.”

  Molly sighed in disappointment, but wasn’t about to give up that easily. “You’ve been here for thousands of years. And there’s been a Guardian here probably since Onyx was created. Isn’t there a kill switch for situations like these?”

  “Of course. It was used in the past, which is how it came to be buried here. I did not deactivate the Guardian personally, but one of my ancestors did. I can access their memories to see what took place.”

  “Then do that!” Gudam said, still somehow excitedly optimistic.

  A moment later, Prone stated: “My ancestor says that the Guardian unit inside the shield world was activated for only a short time. It was being used to monitor the building progress. When building stopped, they deactivated the Guardian and sent Shield 006 into slipspace for safety. The Guardian has been dormant ever since.”

  “Until today, it seems,” Bakar said as he gazed out at the battle still raging beneath the great construct.

  Prone to Drift’s six-eyed head bobbed up and down. “According to the message received last night, the AI known as Cortana activated the Guardian here to pacify the shield world. She intends to use her power to put an end to war, disease, and hunger, among many other troubles.”

  “That actually doesn’t sound so bad,” Gudam said. “We had decades of war, right? And it caused all sorts of problems. Momma Aphrid told me about this plague that hit her home planet before she was born. Nearly wiped out the entire population. And the hunger! The Unggoy always get fed last, let me tell you.”

  “What’s the catch?” Kareem said.

  “The biological intelligences will have to give up all autonomy to the Created,” Prone to Drift said. “They would control every aspect of their existence. The Created claim they need this power over the rest of thinking life so that they can ensure the safety of the galaxy. Whether this is true or not is arguable. Either way, if we do not give them that control, they propose to take it.”

  “For our own good, I’m sure,” Molly said sarcastically.

  “I have figured out a way to preserve the shield world from that dictate.” Prone to Drift began wobbling back and forth in the air. “I just have not determined if I should use it.”

  “Why?” Molly asked. “What is it?”

  “I can encase the entire shield world inside a slipspace enclosure. That’s how we originally preserved it for millennia.”

  “And that would keep Onyx safe from Cortana?”

  “Certainly. It would not, of course, remove the Guardian, but it would cut the construct off from Cortana or anyone else attempting to give it orders. At least until it was able to reestablish contact.”

  “What do you need to make that happen?” Bakar asked.

  “Access to one of the many control terminals situated
throughout the shield world. The nearest one is in this building, in the operations center where I placed it.”

  Molly started for the hatch right away. “I thought the UNSC built the school.”

  Prone followed after, and the others fell into line behind him. “I helped with the planning and specifically with the technological architecture of this and other buildings here.”

  Molly opened the hatch and led the way down. Prone came right after her, using its tentacles to pull itself down the ladder. They found their way to the operations center, which was right next to the school’s main office.

  Fortunately, the office was completely empty. Kasha must have been helping out somewhere else in the school. Perhaps she was even looking for them.

  “Why haven’t you put Onyx into a slipspace enclosure already?” Molly asked the Huragok as they entered the operations center, a large room with a number of chairs arranged around a long table. A wide picture window looked out over the grassy entrance to the school, and a gigantic display occupied the opposite wall. “Given the message we received last night, isn’t the fact that a dormant Guardian existed inside Onyx enough of a threat?”

  “To whom?” Prone to Drift said, as it moved to a wide section of the table. “According to the message, a Guardian will only harm those who attack it. It has not done any harm to the shield world itself so far. Only to the humans established here—and only after it was attacked.”

  The top of the table morphed at the touch of Prone’s tentacles, and it suddenly became a control panel filled with glowing characters etched into glass-smooth shapes. It seemed specifically built for Huragok alone, and Molly couldn’t make any sense of it.

  To her, Forerunner tech often seemed like magic, but she knew that was only because she didn’t understand how it worked. Molly supposed that, as with a lot of human tech, she didn’t need to know the details of its inner workings to be able to use it, yet . . . even that analogy was weak, since Forerunner tech went way beyond anything humanity had produced. Prone deftly ran his tentacles across the display, doing what appeared to be a dozen different things at once.