by Troy Denning
As long as Blue Team stayed near the edge of the chortling water, there was enough space to stand upright without banging their helmets on the glassy ceiling. They were in the same section of river John had traveled along before parting ways with Special Crew, and it looked even more battle-pocked from below than it had from the surface.
He found it kind of beautiful, all things considered. There were circles of luminosity floating in the spall basins beneath the bullet strikes, and beams of radiance descending through the shell holes. Clusters of brass casings gleamed beneath the water or lay half-buried in the sand, while wrecked weapons and shredded armor—both human and Banished—decorated the ground wherever the lechatelierite had been breached.
The company had traveled about a hundred meters when a long crash sounded behind them. John looked back to see chunks of glass still dropping out of the twenty-meter web of cracks that the shockwave had created in the ceiling.
“At least we know where our next pursuers will pick up our trail,” Kelly said over TEAMCOM. “I hope these people have a better plan than ‘run.’ ”
“They’d better,” John said. “You two keep an eye out behind us. I’ll see what they have in mind.”
A pair of status LEDs flashed green. John stepped into the shallow water at the river’s edge and began to advance past the rest of the column. As he moved, he tried to raise Linda and Special Crew on TEAMCOM, but received no response. It suggested they were no longer traveling along the river channel, since TEAMCOM utilized a multiband amalgam designed to maximize both line-of-sight and bounce propagation. To not be receiving under the current conditions, there had to be something literally blocking the signal—which didn’t seem at all unlikely, given John’s location.
As he drew closer to the front of the column, he began to hear Boldisar haranguing Erdei. “Nobody comes to Reach for R&R—not anymore.”
“Look, three Spartans aren’t enough to liberate the planet,” Erdei said. Boldisar had him more or less trapped, with his arm wrapped around her shoulders and her own arm supporting him around the waist. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“How do you know there are only three?” Boldisar demanded. “That’s the Master Chief back there. He wouldn’t be here if the UNSC wasn’t planning something.”
This won a few approving murmurs from nearby pioneers, before one of them noticed John approaching and whispered a warning to Boldisar. As he stepped out of the water onto the shore next to her, it was clear from the now-friendly greetings and nods he received that she had convinced the company the Spartans were there to help in their struggle against the Banished.
It wasn’t true, of course. But it would have been unthinkable to contradict a commanding officer in front of her subordinates—especially under the current circumstances, where she was attempting to keep morale up under such peril. John would have to give her the truth later in private, when she would have time to consider how best to explain the mistake—and when it wouldn’t lead to a collapse of unit cohesion.
Boldisar saw John and smiled. “We were just talking about you, Master Chief.”
“I heard.” John used his free hand to tap the side of his helmet. “Enhanced audio.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Boldisar asked. “Is there something you need?”
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” John said. “But there’s a twenty-meter hole in the ceiling behind us. That’s going to make it pretty easy for another Banished force to catch up.”
“How soon?”
“Uncertain,” John said. “The size of the canal blast will disorient them for at least half an hour—”
“Half an hour is plenty of time,” Erdei said. “We’ll be long gone.”
John ignored him and continued to look to Boldisar. “That hole is big enough for more than Choppers, ma’am. They won’t have any trouble reaching us.”
“Yes, they will,” she said. “Because you’re going to close the door on them.”
Boldisar pointed forward, to where the river bent south and traveled two kilometers under the battle-pocked glass before vanishing from sight as it bent west again.
At first John didn’t understand what Boldisar was indicating; all he saw was a sandstone slope ascending to the ash-clouded glass overhead. But as he scanned, he spotted the entrance to a passage similar to the one they had taken out of the irrigation tunnel.
“That corridor cuts out a seven-kilometer oxbow in the river,” Boldisar said. She glanced over her shoulder, then pointed at a woman being carried in one of the collapsible litters. “Tundé over there is carrying a kilogram of C10. You’ll have to ask around for a detonator, but there should be plenty.”
“Yes, ma’am,” John said. “Also, after we’re out of immediate danger, maybe we can talk.”
“I’d like that,” Boldisar said. “I have a lot of questions.”
“Of course, ma’am. I’ll tell you whatever I can.”
Setting down the casualty he was carrying, John collected the C10 package from Tundé, but didn’t bother asking around for a detonator. Fred always carried an ample supply of M356 universal-application C-class detonators—and besides, John couldn’t rely on the ones Boldisar’s people had, which might have deteriorated in the damp conditions to be expected in underground bunkers with no working ventilation.
John rejoined Kelly and Fred, and by the time he had convinced Fred that he was in no condition to set explosives with a concussion, the rehab pioneers were already squeezing through the shortcut passage.
With so many casualties, progress was slow. The litters had no trouble at all, but the two-man carries were another matter. Either the bearers had to shuffle through the tunnel sideways, or the injured had to dismount and advance under their own power.
By the time everyone had made it through the six-hundred-meter passage, the half hour that John had estimated it would take the Banished to renew pursuit was already past. As he pushed the explosive into the cracks and crevices that seemed most likely to collapse the tunnel, he could not help pausing to peer back down the shoreline, looking for the bell-shaped silhouette of the first approaching Chopper.
But it never appeared, and by the time he’d finished, Fred had returned to fetch the casualty John had been carrying and disappeared down the tunnel again. John set the timer for five minutes and limped through the cramped passage, hunched over almost double, and emerged well downriver, on an empty shoreline under a ceiling of gray unbroken lechatelierite.
Alone.
The water was flowing less than a meter away, and the sandy riverbank to his left was churned up by the tires of two small, four-wheeled vehicles—presumably the excavation machines that Linda and Special Crew had taken underglass to avoid air attacks.
To John’s right, the tire tracks had been destroyed by dozens of boot trails leading fifty meters north into a freshly cut tunnel entrance the size of a Mongoose ultralight all-terrain utility vehicle. There, the river veered west again, but the sand along its shore was smooth and unbroken. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to guess that Linda and Special Crew had spotted one of the tunneling crew’s passages and enlarged the portal enough for their excavation machines to pass through.
John activated TEAMCOM again. “Blue Four, status?”
Kelly appeared in the entrance to the passage. “We’ve already tried. No contact.” She waved John forward. “Come along, will you? They’re not waiting on anyone, and it would be easy to get lost in this place.”
John hustled down the shore and stepped into a dimly lit warren of underglass passages, where Kelly was watching a pioneer demolitions technician pack C10 into sandstone wall crevices. There were no casualties anywhere and no sign of Fred or anyone else. But a trail of boot prints led fifteen meters up the main tunnel into a small, man-made side-passage.
Beyond there, the tire tracks grew apparent again, continuing up the main tunnel to a Y intersection barely visible in the dim light ahead. Kelly saw where John was looking and spoke over TEA
MCOM to avoid being overheard by the demolitions tech.
“They claim the left branch ends in a sinkhole a kilometer away, and the right branch leads to a slew of dead ends, except for one connection that circles around to join the route we will be taking.”
“Well done,” he replied. “Did you mention the excavation machines?”
“Negative. I thought you might want to handle that yourself.” She gestured toward the demolitions tech. “And I don’t think they’ve guessed. That’s why they’re rigging this.”
“Who do they think is making tire tracks?”
“They seem to be assuming that the Banished have recovered some of their vehicles,” Kelly said. “They’re terrified their underglass network has been exposed.”
“Network?”
“That’s what they say,” Kelly said. “It sounds sizable.”
Fred’s voice chimed in over TEAMCOM. “And it might be safer to travel under the glass than on top of it at this point. Maybe we should conscript the demolitions tech to guide us. I can be back there in two—”
“Negative.” A distant rumble sounded as John’s charge sealed the shortcut passage that he had left a few minutes earlier. “Stand down and don’t talk to anyone. Your judgment might not be the best right now.”
“Acknowledged.”
“That should be affirmative, Blue Two.”
“What if they ask questions?”
“You might try saying you’ll think about it,” Kelly said. “They’ll understand the delay.”
“Just don’t upset anyone,” John said. “We need intelligence, and they have it.”
“Understood,” Fred said. “And… affirmative.”
The demolitions technician finished her work, set a motion-sensitive trigger, and led the way into the side passage. The tech had done a decent enough job that there was a chance Linda and Special Crew would miss the trap if they came back this way, so John lingered at the entrance long enough to scuff a half-arrow onto the wall, pointing toward the traps. That way, Linda would know to look for trouble ahead.
After twenty meters, the side passage opened into a large irrigation tunnel, similar to the one in which they had met Erdei and his company. But the pipe that formed the tunnel bottom was even larger in diameter—big enough to hold what appeared to be a flatbed farm wagon. As John rose to his full height, he saw that the wagon was hitched to a hydrogen-powered field tractor—and that two similar rigs sat in line ahead of it.
The casualties had been loaded onto the first two wagons, and Fred was sitting on the third. Colonel Boldisar stood next to the driverless tractor, waiting for John and Kelly.
“No need to walk for a while.” She motioned them aboard the wagon. “We can take the Juh Mező aqueduct most of the way to Base Gödöllő. The militia has a facility there where we can attend to your injuries.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” John said. “We’d appreciate anything you can do for us, and anything you can provide in the way of intelligence on the Banished dispositions.”
“Of course, Master Chief,” Boldisar said. “Whatever you need, we’ll be happy to provide. We certainly don’t expect the Spartans to do all the work on their own.”
“Good thing,” Fred said over TEAMCOM.
John flicked two fingers, ordering silence. “About that, ma’am.” He took a quick glance around to make certain none of her people were within earshot, then said, “I need to tell you something. I’m afraid we’re not here on the mission you assumed.”
The color drained from Boldisar’s face. She pulled her lips in, biting them, and looked away. “How do you know what I assume?”
“I heard what you told Major Erdei about me being here,” John said. “About me not being here unless the UNSC was planning something. It’s not what you may think.”
“Of course not.” Boldisar forced a smile. “What do I know about liberating a planet?”
“But, ma’am—”
“We’ll have to talk about this at the debriefing,” Boldisar said. “When I can give you that intelligence you need.”
“Affirmative,” John said. “As long as you understand—”
“I understand very well, Master Chief.” Boldisar stepped away from the tractor and started toward the front of the column. “I will send your driver back shortly, but I’m afraid it may be some time before the corpsman can get to you.”
“That’s fine,” John said. “We can look after ourselves. But if you have any spare debriding agent, we need to tidy up these wounds as soon as possible.”
“I’ll have the driver bring back whatever we can spare. Now, please excuse me. I have a great deal to attend to.”
She strode off so fast that she nearly broke into a run. Fred turned his faceplate toward John, then held it there expectantly until John finally spoke over TEAMCOM.
“What?”
“That order about not upsetting anyone,” Fred said. “Was that just for me?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
1200 hours, October 8, 2559 (military calendar)
Dombräd Springs, Észac Plain
Continent Eposz, Planet Reach
A hundred and fifty paces across the glass, two Banished Phantoms sat in a rough triangle with Castor’s own craft, their sterns facing inward toward a central point that denied the occupants a direct attack angle on the other vessels. Their loading ramps were nearly down, revealing darkened troop bays that were almost certainly packed with heavily armed escorts.
Once the ramps had settled onto the glass, Castor extended his hand for his dokab’s gravity hammer. Being one of the rare Jiralhanae who preferred the wisdom of killing his enemies from afar to the thrill of flattening them in melee, Castor rarely carried the weapon and had not even bothered naming it. But under the circumstances, the hammer was both a good choice and a ceremonial necessity. Without it, his fellow chieftains would view him as weak. And if that happened in any way, they would be unlikely to set aside their foolish power struggle long enough to help him figure out where the demons and their digging machines had gone.
Castor started toward the hatch—only to feel the hammer holding him back. He turned to look at the warrior still grasping the bottom of its handle, a stocky Jiralhanae in the blue-and-gold armor of the Keepers of the One Freedom.
“There is no need for worry, Feodruz,” Castor said. “We come under a parley pact.”
“There is always need for worry, Dokab,” Feodruz said. As the commander of the Dokab’s Escort, it was his duty to protect Castor—and it was his life that would be forfeit if he failed. “Especially with the Banished. They have broken parley pacts before.”
“But they will not this time,” Castor said. “We are Banished now, and due the same honor as any Banished clan.”
“What honor?” Feodruz asked. “The Ravaged Tusks are smugglers and slavers, and the Legion of the Corpse-Moon are barely more than raiders. If either clan has any honor at all, it is only that of fearing Escharum.”
“Under the circumstances, that is the only honor necessary,” said Inslaan ‘Gadogai. The Sangheili blademaster was standing at Castor’s side, unarmored as usual, but wearing his plasma sword on the belt that cinched his tabard around his thin abdomen. “Fear is a more reliable guarantor than honor.”
“Were that so,” Feodruz said, “the Keepers would not be the only clan following Escharum’s command to search for the Portal under the Mountain.”
“There can be no arguing with that.” ‘Gadogai tilted his diamond-shaped head to the side, a peculiar gesture the Sangheili sometimes used to signal acquiescence. “As you wish, Commander. It is your life at risk.”
“My fate is unimportant,” Feodruz said. “I think only of the dokab’s life.”
“As do we all,” ‘Gadogai said.
Castor looked down on the blademaster. “For as long as it serves Escharum.”
“That need not be said.” ‘Gadogai clacked his mandibles in the Sangheili gesture of affirmation. “Does it?”
Ca
stor grunted his annoyance, then nodded to Feodruz. “We will wait,” he said. “It would not do to appear overeager.”
Feodruz released the handle of the gravity hammer. “You are most wise, Dokab.”
Castor lowered the hammer’s head to the deck beside his foot; from the shadows at the back of the troop bay, he looked out over the helmets of twenty kneeling Keepers. There were ten Kig-Yar with pulse carbines and ten Jiralhanae with spike rifles, all gathered along both sides of the bay and ready to open fire at the first hint of trouble.
Though Castor could not see into the dim troop bays of the other two craft, he knew the situation in both would be much the same, with his two counterparts looking out over the heads of their own warriors. Even under the best of circumstances, Jiralhanae tempers and pride could turn prearranged parleys into bloodbaths, and knowing that a bevy of opposition longshooters were ready to open fire tended to have a calming effect.
After a few minutes, a towering Jiralhanae with a blocky head and massive shoulders filled the loading hatch of the Phantom on Castor’s right. Though the distance was too great to make out facial features, Castor had met Deukalion before and could picture the chieftain’s raw visage with its bony cheeks and sunken green-gold eyes the color of Soiraptian malachite. He remembered Deukalion’s muzzle was almost cube-shaped, and his blunt tusks were covered in etchings that named all the condemned he had sent to die in the lung-liquefying atmosphere of the corpse-moon.
Deukalion spread his arms, holding his gravity hammer one-handed, and called out. Castor could not understand what he was saying, but after a breath, Krelis—whom Castor had brought along to serve as his adjutant—spoke from the information station in the corner of the bay.
“Dokab, he is saying that you are the one who begged for this parley.” Krelis’s tone was resentful. “He asks why you are afraid to show yourself.”
“Make no reply,” Castor said. “Have the sensor master listen to the sounds in his troop bay.”