Retribution

by Troy Denning

  The sound of Castor’s attacks changed from a sizzle to a screech. Veta popped her head up to discover the Jiralhanae had changed tactics. Now he was slashing at the operator’s cabin, trying to cut through the little AlON shield above the ore box.

  The loader bucket rose higher, and Veta saw daylight ahead. Not just a distant circle. A whole wide curtain of it.

  “Oh, shit,” she said into her TEAMCOM microphone. “That’s the haulage portal. We’re almost out.”

  There was no response, of course.

  “Team leader? Anyone?”

  Still on her own.

  The loader bucket retracted into the ore box and began to tip. The operative inside slid out and landed on his feet in front of the cryo-jars. He was now behind Castor, holding a portable laser drill in both hands, in a good position to cut the Jiralhanae down.

  But his gaze drifted toward Veta’s hiding place at the back of the ore box and lingered an instant, and Castor spun, bringing his own drill around. The Brute thrust the bore in low and brought it up through the operative’s torso, and the man’s body fell in two different directions.

  Then Castor’s gaze slid toward Veta . . . and lingered there.

  Veta’s first instinct was to remain motionless because active camouflage was more effective that way. But she hadn’t been moving when the Papa-10 operative spotted her, and she wasn’t moving now.

  Castor was still looking in her direction.

  Mud.

  The LHD had dragged her through hundreds of meters of it, perhaps thousands. She had to be coated in it. She probably had some on her helmet where she couldn’t see it through the faceplate, maybe on the sides or down along her jaw or up above her brow, somewhere that made her look like some kind of apparition or giant tunnel moth hovering around the cryo-jars.

  Castor turned his head toward the operator’s cabin. But he was a lousy actor, and his eyes remained fixed on the cryo-jars. Veta drew her sidearm and stood, deactivating her camouflage so he would see the weapon aimed at his face. If she opened fire, the mud in the barrel would block the bullet and trap the muzzle gases, and the damn thing would blow up in her hand.

  But Castor couldn’t know that. All he would see was an M6C aimed between his eyes, and the haulage portal was coming up fast. It was a bright green wall of light now, with a steel support beam hanging down just beneath the back of the tunnel, resting atop a pillar standing against either rib. If Veta could stall the Jiralhanae’s attack until the LHD made it past that beam, she could leap out of the ore box and roll away. With a little luck, she wouldn’t be injured too badly to fish the remote from her cargo belt and finish the job.

  She was exceeding authorization, but too damn bad. If Fred didn’t like it, he needed to keep up.

  When Veta did not open fire, Castor finally cocked his head, and she knew she was running out of time. She waved the muzzle of the gun, motioning him to jump. The portal was so close now she could see the mountain across the valley, a glassy gray slope of lechatelierite.

  Castor snarled and raised the laser drill, and the LHD finally reached the portal.

  The dokab’s head hit the support beam running across the top.

  It was only a glancing blow, but enough to stagger him and send him stumbling toward the rear of the ore box. Toward Veta. He hit the cryo-jars and lurched forward as the LHD accelerated out into the open air.

  Veta ducked under his tumbling mass, then raised both arms and pushed off, putting her legs into it and wishing SPI was more than semi-powered armor. Thankfully, the vehicle’s acceleration was working in her favor.

  Castor hit the ore box’s rear wall behind her at his midsection, then seemed to teeter on the edge of tumbling out or falling back inside. She continued to push, and the LHD bounced over a hump, and gravity and momentum took care of the rest.

  The Jiralhanae’s legs flew skyward—and he was gone.

  Veta caught a glimpse of Hestia V’s green-banded mass hanging above the mountain ahead—then slammed into the ore box’s side wall as the operator took the LHD into a sharp turn.

  Veta looked like a Spartan-III—maybe a miniature version—but the Papa-10 woman had to assume she was at least associated with Spartans. And the bitch was still trying to knock her around?

  Papa-10 was definitely involved in a rogue operation. Or maybe one so secret even Spartans were subject to termination if they happened across it. Either way, Veta didn’t like it.

  She sat in the corner and braced herself, then pointed her M6C at the AlON barrier. The operator ducked out of sight, and the LHD began to travel straight again.

  Veta fished another detonator from her cargo belt and inserted it into the last charge. She thought about giving the woman a chance to surrender, maybe explain to Admiral Osman how she had gotten involved in transporting asteroidea antibodies. Remembered that Osman was either a part of this or had been kept in the dark herself, decided it wasn’t worth taking chances—not when Veta’s only weapon was a pistol full of mud.

  The LHD veered left and began to slow. Veta climbed over the back wall of the ore box and dropped onto the lechatelierite, the LHD going so slow now she wouldn’t have fallen if the surface hadn’t been so slick. She rolled twice and came up on her knees, wondering where Castor was—and whether he was in any shape to come after her.

  She found herself looking down a valley that had been half filled with mine tailings and glassed over by a Covenant plasma bombardment. The LHD was already seventy meters ahead, pulling up next to the bullet-shaped hull of a small utility skiff with a Pinnacle Station identification number on its nose. The skiff’s boarding ramp descended, and a tall, thin officer in service khakis raced down to meet the LHD. The distance was too great to distinguish his features or determine his rank, but he was carrying an MA5-series assault rifle.

  Veta pulled the remote from her cargo belt and powered it up.

  The officer went to the LHD operator’s cabin, pointed toward Veta, and began to speak urgently. The operator jumped out and snatched the assault rifle, then shouldered the weapon and turned.

  No choice.

  Veta hit the detonator remote and smiled.

  CHAPTER 27

  * * *

  * * *

  0433 hours, December 16, 2553 (military calendar)

  Haulage Portal (exterior), Jenny Lynn Tantalite Mine

  Moon Meridian, Planet Hestia V, Hestia System

  Castor was still gathering himself when a mighty explosion shook the air. The ground shuddered beneath his knees, and loud bangs began to echo off the nearby mountains. He turned and saw a web of crevices racing across the gray flats in the valley bottom. One of the fissures opened a meter to his left, and he rose and went to the edge and found himself looking down through twenty centimeters of dirty, fused glass. A substrate of yellow tailings-sand was quivering so hard he thought it might liquefy and swallow him alive.

  He let his gaze run along the fissure for fifty paces, to an armored human silhouetted against a pillar of flame so bright it made his eyes hurt. It looked like the same enemy he had faced in the back of the mining machine, a soldier too small to be a Spartan—even a female Spartan. Yet, she wore semi-powered infiltration armor and fought like a grattle-bah shrew with a bunker full of kits to defend, and for some reason she had let him live when she had the chance to kill him.

  He did not know what to make of such a foe.

  As the conflagration waned, a burning wheel emerged from the fire and rolled across the glasslands. Then the mining machine’s loading bucket tumbled from the sky and clanged down, landing a dozen meters from the bullet-shaped wreckage of what Castor now recognized as the hull of a Pinnacle Station utility skiff. The tiny soldier continued to kneel on the glassy ground, watching the flames and oblivious to her observer. It could only have been she who caused the explosion—no one else remained alive.

  She had destroyed the cryo-jars and ruined ONI’s murderous plan to create a bioweapon. The woman had even motioned for him to ju
mp when any Spartan would have shot him dead.

  Perhaps she was not his enemy after all.

  As the flames withered and the twisted shape of the mining machine grew more distinct, Castor considered asking for help. The tiny soldier was clearly dangerous, yet she also seemed smart and pragmatic, and there simply had to be a reason she’d spared him.

  But his translation disc had been destroyed along with his armor, and while he understood human language well enough, when he tried to speak it, all that emerged was a rumble. In his experience, humans who did not know him well seldom responded to such attempts with anything other than cowering or weapons fire.

  In his current state, Castor could risk no further injury. The M6 sidearm the woman carried would not normally concern him, but he still had a rifle round buried in his side and a borehole through his shoulder. If she pointed the pistol in his direction, his only defense would be to drop to his knees and beg for mercy.

  And begging? That Castor would never do.

  He turned away and studied the rolling glasslands ahead of him, wondering how he would survive a foot journey across such a vast and hostile wasteland without Orsun at his side. The trusted warrior had been with Castor since the day they had both answered the Prophets’ Call. More times than Castor could count, his loyal friend had been there to lend a shoulder after a hard-fought battle—or to carry him outright—and it was impossible to imagine continuing on the Journey without him.

  But what choice did Castor have? He could not expect a Huragok to appear out of nowhere again and come to his rescue—as had miraculously happened six months ago on Gao, after the Battle of Wendosa. The Oracle had touched him with her grace then and many times since, when she urged him to build Salvation Base and helped him rebuild the strength of his Keepers by preying on infidel vessels. But she had not appeared to him since the destruction of the Contemplarium, and Castor knew it would be unconscionable to hope for her aid again.

  First, he had to prove himself worthy.

  Castor squared his shoulders and began to walk. Perhaps he could persuade a pack of frightened humans to help him find a way off Meridian—he had no idea how, of course, especially without his translation disc. But he would find a way.

  It was what the Oracle demanded of him.

  0448 hours, December 16, 2553 (military calendar)

  Tailings Basin, Jenny Lynn Tantalite Mine

  Moon Meridian, Planet Hestia V, Hestia System

  Fred emerged from the haulage portal at the rear of the column and followed the other Spartans out onto a fissure-webbed basin of glassed ground. He was stripped of as much of his armor as could be removed without a Brokrr assembly—which wasn’t much, just his helmet and a couple of vambraces and a greave that had split when the ten-ton LHD drove over him. His injured arm was bound tight to his side, which kept the ends of his broken collarbone from rubbing against each other and causing too much pain. But his ribs were a problem. Every time he inhaled, it felt like someone was sliding a knife into his lungs. Which wouldn’t have bothered him, except he was not in the habit of bringing up the tail on a mission. And the pain had made it hard to keep up.

  After a ten-kilometer run through the slippery darkness of the Jenny Lynn mine, he was starting to wish he had been given some Gamma-style biological augmentations. A little extra endurance and strength would have been nice about now.

  Well, except for the part about needing smoothers to keep your aggression in check and being reassigned to a non-acknowledged black ops team because Command didn’t want to take the blame if you went sideways. That was all part of the deal for Lopis and her Ferrets, and it stank like a Kig-Yar incubation chamber.

  “There!” Ash’s voice rang out from the head of the column, electronically modulated because he was communicating through his helmet speaker. “In front of the shuttle!”

  The three Ferrets broke into a sprint, racing toward a cluster of smoke threads rising from the still-smoldering wreckage of the LHD and a Pinnacle Station utility skiff.

  “Hold on!” Kelly ordered. “You haven’t been—”

  “Let ’em go,” Fred called. Given the barren slopes surrounding the basin, there wasn’t much chance of an ambush—and he was as eager as the Ferrets to confirm that Lopis was still in one piece. “Secure the landing zone and call the Turaco. We need to extract now.”

  Kelly flashed the OKAY signal over her shoulder; then she and Linda peeled off in opposite directions to secure the perimeter. The Ferrets were already at the skiff, waiting at the base of a blast-curled boarding ramp that touched ground only by virtue of two collapsed landing struts.

  And there was Lopis, descending the ramp, dragging along a charred corpse she apparently meant to deposit next to the two bodies already lying on the ground. Nearby lay a small collection of soot-covered electronics, including a flight-recorder box and a main processing unit.

  As Fred drew near, he saw that one of the corpses on the ground wore service khakis with the name B. CRADDOG above his right shirt pocket. His collar tips had the double bars of a senior lieutenant, but there were no insignia indicating his unit or MOS. The corpse beside him had no identification whatsoever, save for a ballistic vest worn under a pair of Pinnacle Station construction crew overalls. Judging by size, the body had probably been female, but it was too charred and mutilated for him to be sure.

  Lopis reached the bottom of the ramp and turned toward her Ferrets. “Everybody okay?”

  Olivia, now carrying her helmet, cocked her head to one side. “You’re worried about us?”

  “I never stop,” Lopis said. She pushed the pilot’s torso toward Mark. “Put this with the others.”

  Mark slipped his hands beneath the corpse’s armpits and held the body there for a moment, his helmet dipping forward as he contemplated what he had just been given.

  Finally, he shrugged and said, “Sure, Mom. Whatever you say.”

  Once Mark had dragged the body aside, Fred stepped forward and demanded, “Lopis, what part of ‘let Command sort it out’ did you not understand?”

  Lopis remained on the ramp, where she only had to crane her neck a little to present her faceplate to Fred’s gaze, then pointed to the pile of bodies and electronics.

  “What do you think that’s for?”

  Fred scowled. “I have no idea,” he said. “Trophies?”

  “Evidence,” Lopis said. “We’ll turn it over to Osman and let her deal with it.”

  “I was talking about the cryo-jars,” Fred said. “And the prisoners.”

  “I know what you were talking about,” Lopis said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You couldn’t wait for support?”

  “Are you kidding? We would’ve lost the cryo-jars.” Lopis gestured at the smallest corpse. “Besides, the idea of taking prisoners went out the window when that one pointed an assault rifle at me.”

  “So . . . you blew her up?”

  Lopis shrugged. “All I had was a sidearm, and it was packed with mud.” She looked away. “So yeah, I did what I had to.”

  Whether she was being apologetic or evasive, Fred could not decide. He thought about it and recalled the heel marks they had found between the LHD tire tracks in the mine. The drag trail had run through the mud for more than a thousand meters, all the way from Adit 2 into the interlevel access ramp, and holding on to the LHD that long had been an impressive feat for someone with no biological augmentations.

  It was also a pretty convincing explanation of how her M6C got packed with mud.

  “Okay,” Fred said. “You had to blow them up or let them take off with the cryo-jars. Osman should buy that.”

  “Thanks,” Lopis said. “You’re a prince. Really.”

  Fred felt the heat rise to his cheeks and looked away.

  “Just doing my job, Inspector,” he said. “Same as you.”

  1448 hours, December 17, 2553 (military calendar)

  Medical Bay, ONI Sahara-class Prowler Silent Joe

  Deep Space Re
ndezvous, Geryon Sector

  Even out of uniform, Fred-104 looked like the custom-built soldier he was, with meter-wide shoulders and thighs the size of wotha casks. His pale skin was laced by three decades of combat scars, and above his regulation boxers, his abdominal muscles were so sharply defined that they could have been sculpted by a Renaissance master. A clavicle sling pinned one arm to his side, and an immobilizing cast encircled his biceps. Veta couldn’t remember the last time she’d come across a nearly naked man—at least one who wasn’t lying dead on a morgue slab—and not felt a twinge of apprehension.

  A female imaging tech in medical scrubs peered out from behind Fred’s torso. “I’m sorry, ma’am, you’ll have to come back later. The lieutenant is about to have a follow-up scan.”

  Veta started across the cabin toward Fred. “I’m afraid I can’t wait.”

  “Ma’am,” the tech said. “This is a medical facility. The patient deserves—”

  “It’s fine.” Fred looked around for a robe and, not seeing one handy, simply shrugged and said, “Give us a minute, Ensign.”

  “Very well, sir.” The ensign shot a scowl toward Veta, then started for the hatchway. “I’ll be back in five.”

  If Fred was uncomfortable or annoyed, he didn’t show it. “Sounds like you’re shipping out.”

  Veta nodded. “The Gammas are already loading our gear,” she said. “Osman needs us back at the Mill yesterday. She wants us to finish training because there’s something big coming down the line.”

  Fred’s mouth tightened just a little bit. “Any idea what?”

  “Not a clue.” Veta hesitated, knowing she probably shouldn’t ask the next question. “What about you? Have you heard where you’re headed next?”

  Fred shook his head. “Never do, until we’re halfway there.” He gave her a conspiratorial wink. “But I’d tell you if I knew.”

  Veta smiled. “Same here,” she said. “Any word on Damon?”

  “They’re still working on a recovery,” Fred said. The AI’s data crystal had been cracked when Fred’s armor was damaged. “Apparently, getting run over by a ten-ton LHD is no easier on an AI than it was on me. Who knew?”