by Eric Nylund
A figure lumbered out of a room and she ripped a short burst through it, taking out the knees while Clarence, in sync, shot out the chest, and Henry clubbed it with his bat as they fled past. They had no time to be more thorough. They dropped down ladders and slammed hatches shut behind them, seeking only to delay what was following. No time to sneak. All the noise they made, they were getting a lot of attention. A huge following. Benti had never been so popular in her life. Is it my birthday or something?
“Reload!”
The voice in her headset made her start. They were in radio range, oh at last!
“MacCraw!”
“Benti!” A pause and gunfire before the sarge spoke again. “Who you got?”
“Clarence.” She didn’t look at him or Henry. “And a couple of survivors. One deck to go.”
“Get your butt into gear; that ice cream isn’t gonna wait.”
“Yes, sir!” She’d never been so happy to be told to hustle. She turned to grin at Clarence.
It leapt out of the corridor before she could check. Something rabid smashed into her shoulder and threw her against the wall, so fast, all the air knocked out of her, head flung back knocked hard, the shock not enough to crowd out a terrible waft of rank decay and a moan that came from no human throat. Keep your eyes open, always keep your eyes open, her medic training kicking in, and her eyes were open, and she recognized Sydney, what was Sydney, before Clarence stepped between it and her, shot it, kept shooting it, never lifted his finger from the trigger, not even when it stopped moving.
Sydney. How could you do that to me?
She drew a breath in. Let it out. In. Out.
When Clarence looked at her, she knew it was bad. She could see it in his eyes. She couldn’t feel her arm; it hung too low on her lap, sleeve already saturated. Her eyes focused on the rifle in his hands. Orlav. Gersten.
You wouldn’t, she thought. You might.
Henry scooped her up in one arm, tucked her up against his chest, pushed past Clarence, and kept going.
>Lopez 1622 hours
Benti, alive. The voice had conjured up such relief for Lopez, adding a bead or two back onto the rosary. Conjured up images from a world that seemed so distant. The Red Horse. On leave, singing in a karaoke bar, getting blind drunk, picking up men, telling her how to smile properly. Did any of that exist anymore? Had it ever existed?
The airlock was miraculously vacant, but it wouldn’t be for long. Benti and Clarence were approaching from aft. They’d jammed the forward hatch behind them, using pieces of shelving from a barricade that hadn’t held the first time. Only one direction to watch now. Then jiggered the manual controls. Both were ready to go.
“Two pods,” MacCraw said, checking the time. “Two of us, some of them. What are we going to do?”
Lopez didn’t answer. What could she answer? Yeah, kid, we’ve still got some tough decisions.
Instead she said, “Benti’s taking her sweet time.”
“It’s those short legs.” MacCraw checked the time again. “Sarge . . .” The strain in his voice said everything. Let’s get the hell out already.
“Sarge!” Benti gasped over the radio, the signal good and strong. “Sarge, we’re coming, don’t shoot, oh please don’t—”
A flashlight jagged about, coming down the corridor, the figures behind it resolving.
“Covenant!” MacCraw shouted, down on one knee and finger tightening on the trigger.
“Don’t shoot!” Benti’s voice.
There, suddenly: a Covenant Elite sprinting down the corridor, assault rifle in one hand, cricket bat in the other, and Benti slung over his arm like an errant child.
Not even the craziest thing Lopez had seen all day. Didn’t register at first that Benti might be hurt.
“It’s okay! Sarge!” The panic in Benti’s voice didn’t make sense. “Henry’s okay! Don’t shoot!”
Henry? Lopez didn’t lower her weapon. “MacCraw, do not take your finger off that trigger!”
The Elite Benti had called Henry slowed, eyeing them warily. Closer now, she could see Benti’s shirt and pants soaked red, her arm tucked into her vest, bone jutting from her shoulder. Benti’s other hand gripping this Henry’s thumb for dear life. Behind the Elite, Clarence and one human survivor in prison clothes.
Somewhere behind them, not yet visible, the deep unnatural choir of the Flood, like a physical presence. Sounded like they’d brought the whole ship in their wake.
“What’s this Covie bastard doing here?” Lopez demanded. “You said survivors, Private!”
Benti blinked groggily, a frown of concentration, yet still not fully there.
“She didn’t mean it,” Clarence said, glancing back at the corridor, mindful of the Flood, and then reached out with his pistol and shot the human prisoner in the head. The man didn’t have time to look startled, just dropped, a small and surprisingly neat puncture in his skull.
Lopez had no time to react. Everything happened real fast after that.
Henry spun, Benti crying out with the sudden movement. The Elite saw the dead prisoner, roared in unmistakable grief, and raised its rifle. Clarence jerked his own rifle up, staring down the barrel at the Elite.
Benti slapped its arm, pleading: “Don’t shoot! Nobody shoot!” But staring at Clarence. Lopez was staring at Clarence, too, stunned. A good man. A good shot. Someone she wasn’t sure she knew now.
And the Flood. Louder, closer, relentless, unstoppable.
Lopez’s rifle wavering between her Marine and the Covie: “Clarence, what the hell?”
Henry bellowed, a terrible accusation in that alien voice. She couldn’t get a clear shot with Benti there, just as Clarence couldn’t get off a shot at them without Lopez dropping him. Except she had MacCraw.
“MacCraw, shoot that—MacCraw?”
He wasn’t at her side. Behind her, one of the escape pods clicked shut.
“Fuck!”
The pod ejected.
From the bridge of the Red Horse: “Three minutes to launch sequence.”
>Benti 1623 hours
Benti stared at Clarence, her partner blurring in and out of focus. She really couldn’t see much of anything anymore. Knew her pulse was thready, that she’d lost too much blood, medic training both a blessing and a curse. Henry’s embrace felt like a warm bed around her body, a bed she was falling into.
“You’re ONI,” she said at last. “You’ve got to be.” She could see it in his eyes.
From off to their left, the voice of Lopez, coming through gauze: “ONI? I’m not surprised.”
Knew the good old sarge still had them in her sights or Clarence would’ve blown her away. She realized every sympathetic quality she’d found in him had come from her. Just because he never said. Anything that. Would change her opinion. Realized she was floating a bit now.
“It’s nothing personal. There were never meant to be any survivors,” Clarence said. “Benti, get down. Come on, you can walk.” He narrowed his eyes at Henry. “Put her down.”
The sounds of the Flood, coming closer. But muffled, like she had headphones on or something.
“You’re Section 3,” Benti said, quieter. A softness entered Clarence’s mouth and eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, but Benti didn’t think he was sorry.
“Clarence, drop your rifle,” Lopez said fuzzily. Except Benti knew Lopez had said it sharp. The sarge. Always said it sharp. “It’s two against one.”
Benti squirmed and made Henry set her down. She was almost there. She could almost see the end.
“Henry can have my ice cream,” Benti said.
She pushed off Henry and staggered into Clarence, legs so unsteady, and he was farther away than she thought. But still got too close-in for him to shoot her, inside his guard. She collapsed against him, with her one good arm around his neck in a hug.
As the Flood surged around the last corner and came toward them. A slavering mass of rage and violence and nightmares they never knew they had. Her vision blur
red, but she caught glimpses of what once were faces, moving with singularity of mind. They seemed to crawl on disembodied human hands and Covenant hands.
Pushed, then. Used all of her weight to push the two of them back toward the Flood. She had just enough strength to hold him there for the second necessary for Lopez to shoot him in the leg, the shoulder, send his rifle flying. Send him flying back into the corridor. Benti followed, to keep him out there, with them. The farther back into the darkness the better. Clarence was too wounded to stop her.
Lopez and Henry were shooting—at them, at the Flood. It didn’t make a difference now.
Clarence was shouting something. At her, but it sounded so far away. His eyes were wild and scared, and part of her felt proud to be scary and part of her had never wanted to see Clarence scared.
She was losing her grip on him, and a bullet had found her side, just pumped in there like it belonged, took more energy out of her.
Clarence had just about managed to put his pistol to her head to get her off of him, when she tripped him.
And the Flood washed over him, over her.
Found them.
Suddenly they were pulled back. A sensation of flight, then. A blessed numbness and strange alertness. Looking up for a moment to see that she’d done it—that Henry and Lopez, framed by the doorway, firing away, were far enough away to close the door on both them and the Flood. Yeah, they were shooting her and Clarence, but they didn’t mean any harm. They would never mean her any harm.
Clarence writhed in the embrace of what looked like part of Simmons, screaming, “Don’t let them take me!” It was too late for that. She wanted to say, “Relax, Clarence. You’ve got my back,” but her mouth didn’t work quite right. Don’t want to wake up. Not now. Not for this sad party.
Last thing she remembered: Lopez’s face clenched in concentration, standing in Henry’s shadow, as Henry fired point-blank into the Flood and into her. Thought she saw Lopez raising an arm in a gesture of good-bye.
Tried to hold onto that image as the Flood repurposed her.
>Lopez, 1624 hours
Lopez, tired as hell, blinked, and . . .
Henry roared, deep and eternally Covenant, and next to the discord of the Flood, something welcome and familiar to Lopez’s ears. He fired into the mob that had taken Benti, ammunition spent in an instant. Hurled the rifle hard enough to knock an infected prisoner off its feet. Raised his cricket bat. Lopez opened fire, taking no specific aim. A glance at her ammo counter.
“Benti!” Brought back only to be taken away.
The ammo counter ran down.
“Clarence!”
All her beads gone. All her kids gone.
She couldn’t see them in the throng anymore. Couldn’t pick them out. Couldn’t spare . . . anyone. A handful of infection forms scuttled across the ceiling. She lifted her sights. Shot them as they launched at Henry. Small pops. Puffs of green powder.
She dropped and Henry swung his bat, smashing an infection form she hadn’t seen away from her. She rolled back into the airlock. Slapped the controls as Henry joined her, beating away at a transformed Elite. Beating it into a green froth before the airlock sealed.
With infection forms on the inside.
She twisted, firing a crazy line around the airlock, chasing the zoomy little maggots. Had no swearwords left to use on them. One popped. Two popped. Henry pushed her aside. Swung his bat. Four popped. Punched the last so hard against the wall the panel dented, green sludge on his fist. He reeled back from the puff of spores, waving them from his face.
Safe.
They looked at each other. The small room thundered with the pounding at the door.
The ship’s PA crackled again.
“Shiva armed. Targeting lasers online. Initiating launch sequence in forty-five seconds—”
The airlock door dented inward, and both flinched, taking a step away from it. A step toward the last pod. Henry was big. There was only room for one. This alien, this enemy, had carried Benti to safety. On this ship of messed-up humans.
Finally understood how this was all going to go down. Some little backwater side action, maybe a footnote in some ONI operative’s field report.
And beyond the door, something bigger and badder than all of them.
It’s a big, bad universe, Sergeant.
Henry’s four jaws flexed. Lopez narrowed her eyes. Put her finger on the trigger. Noticed Henry’s grip on the cricket bat tighten.
Covenant aren’t the worst of it.
No.
But they were pretty damn hideous.
“Sorry, Henry,” she said, “but there’s only one pod.”
She pulled the trigger.
Click.
No ammo.
Lobbed the last curse she had in her, and hefted the rifle like a club.
“. . . thirty seconds—”
The Covenant Elite snarled, jaws spread, and raised his bat.
And they went at it.
ICON
________________
ICON Soldiers forged from youth to serve as tools of war—weapons of direct and conclusive destruction—the men and women of the classified military project known as the SPARTAN-II program will live on in legend following their exploits during the Human-Covenant War.
Prepared for the harsh realities of combat against known enemies, but thrust into battle with forces unimaginable—and terrifyingly alien—the Spartan-IIs, and later the Spartan-IIIs, delivered numerous decisive victories against the overwhelming might of the Covenant.
Altered to a level far beyond that of normal human, the warriors of the Spartan-II program were humanity’s best, and possibly only, hope when faced with the threat of extinction from an advanced alien collective bent on our eradication in the name of false prophecies and hidden agendas.
Rising through the flames of war, echoing through the silent vacuum of space, word of the Spartans’ deeds spread throughout the human colonies—offering salvation, offering a faint glimpse at ultimate victory.
Thus came a “Demon”—a hero, a soldier, a man. One Spartan above all others; equal, but for one defining factor—one immeasurable advantage. Like his brothers and sisters, he was trained to fight, to win, a master of the latest weapons of war. But Spartan-117, the Master Chief, had one intangible asset few others possessed—luck.
Added to an unmatched drive to win—whether it be a simple game, or heated combat—Spartan-117’s uncanny combination of finely honed skills and unprecedented good fortune made for the ultimate warrior in a battle against impossible odds.
Never one to give in, never one to relent, the Master Chief, and each of his fellow Spartans, did more than engage the enemy; they delivered hope—with each burst of gunfire, with every battle won.
PALACE HOTEL
* * *
ROBT MCLEES
THE HASTILY concocted mission to board the Covenant carrier that dominated the sky over New Mombasa ended almost as soon as it had begun. A single Scarab—one of the Covenant’s ultra-heavy ground-based weapons platforms—had knocked the entire assault group out of the air, leaving Master Chief Petty Officer “John” Spartan-117 to pull himself out of the burning wreckage.
“Aside from the Covenant discovering the location of Earth and our being on the ground with no viable means of transportation to our objective, I’d say we’re in pretty good shape.” Cortana’s voice seemed to come from just over the Spartan’s shoulder. The AI had been put in his care a little over a month ago and he still wasn’t used to the intimacy of its communication.
“How’s that?” John said, glancing over his left shoulder, half expecting to see her.
“We have one of the top-ranking members of the Covenant leadership within our reach—there’s a Prophet Hierarch on that ship. On top of that? We’re still alive, Chief. And while there isn’t anything I can do about the Covenant being here, I am working diligently to devise a viable solution to our other problem at hand.”
John moved betw
een what meager cover the few abandoned vehicles littering the toll plaza afforded him. As he closed in on a row of toll booths, he found his eyes drawn to the mouth of the outbound tunnel of the Mtangwe Underpass. It looked like a kiln—exhaling heat and light. Cutting across the plaza was a smear of molten glassiness three feet wide leading to the tunnel mouth and then up away from it along the face of the city’s famous sea wall. Curiously, the inbound tunnel was undamaged. A dull smile crossed his lips behind his visor as he considered his options. He thought back. The correct choices have always been this obvious. He had always been able to see the tiger and the lady—doors had never factored into the equation.
A thin whine from above signaled the arrival of Banshees. John dashed beneath the canopy of concrete that sheltered the island of toll booths—he was less concerned about the Banshees’ effectiveness as attack aircraft and more about remaining out of sight. He flattened himself out against one of the booths momentarily and looked through its clouded and sagging polycarbonate window. The attendant, still seated within, wasn’t much more than a partially articulated skeleton hung with the charred remains of a uniform and fused to an ergonomic seat bolted to the floor.
“His name was Carlos Wambua, age fifty-two, widower, three adult children. The oldest still—” Cortana rattled off before John cut in.
“He just sat there—the position of his feet,” John pointed at the man’s smoldering shoes with his chin for emphasis. “He didn’t even try to get away. From his position he would’ve been able to see the tee forty-seven even before it crested the bridge—that’s a little over eight hundred meters out.” He gave his gear a shake test then moved to the corner of the structure.