Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

by Eric S. Nylund

  The rear two Banshee pilots fell. Riderless, the Banshees nosed to the floor, bounced, and sparked to a halt.

  Linda dropped the magazine, examined the chamber, cycled the bolt, and then set it down. "I'm out."

  Kurt, Kelly, and Fred leveled their assault rifles at the remaining fliers and opened fire. Tracer rounds arced through the air

  and stitched over the Banshees. Smoke billowed from the leader, and erupted into a ball

  of flame that smeared through the air.

  The last lone Banshee pulled up and circled back.

  The advancing horde of Elites and Hunters was only two hundred meters away. A few in

  their ranks fired, and wild energy bolts streaked overhead.

  The towers now lay thirty degrees off the deck, and the "hill" only three meters tall. Kurt knew they'd soon have no cover left.

  Fred glanced at the open smoking bolt of his MAB5. "I'm out, too," he said.

  Kurt opened up the administrative subdirectory on his heads-up display and accessed SPARTAN-104's file. "As acting CO of Team Blue, 1 am hereby granting you a field commission to the rank of Lieutenant, Junior Grade," Kurt told Fred. "Congratulations."

  Fred shook his head, not understanding.

  Kurt uploaded Fred's change of rank, and his IFF icon blinked to the star-and-bar insignia of Lieutenant.

  "As an officer, you'll have to keep your eye on the larger picture, Fred. Get your team

  through that Slipspace field. I'll be right behind you."

  Linda and Kelly gathered around them.

  Kelly whispered, "We lost you once, Kurt. We're not going to leave you again."

  Plasma artillery pounded the face of the hill, shattering stone, and superheated

  convection rolls distorted the air.

  "No one's leaving anyone behind," Kurt assured her. "I just have to rig a little welcome present for our friends." He grabbed the pack with the FENRIS warheads, and swung it over

  his shoulder.

  Kelly, Linda, and Fred exchanged glances.

  "I'll be right behind you," Kurt told them. "Now, go. The SPARTAN-IIIs are going to need

  you."

  A hail of needier shards arced up and over the top of the slope, impacting the surfaces around them.

  The Spartans huddled together, presenting the smallest target surface, their energy shields flaring as the crystal rounds detonated.

  The hardened plates of Kurt's SPI armor cracked and the concussion rattled his bones

  and splintered the hardening bio-foam in his abdomen. He tasted fresh blood.

  The bombardment ceased.

  "Hurry!" Kurt told them.

  They all jogged to the center. The rift was fading and was now only a meter across. Deep

  inside, Kurt caught sight of a ribbon of blue and silver. Water glistening in the sunlight?

  Kelly and Linda entered without hesitation; Fred halted, turned, and held out his hand.

  Kurt took it and shook.

  Fred stepped backward and vanished.

  Only Tom and Lucy remained, still standing guard by the rift. Their SPI armor picked up

  and mimicked the gold sunlight in the fissure.

  "Okay you two—"

  "With all due respect, sir," Tom said. "We're not leaving. You'll have to court-martial us."

  Lucy said nothing, but made her intention to fight understood as she hefted their last SPNKr missile launcher.

  The rift wavered, dimmed, and contracted to a mere half meter.

  "There's no time for this," Kurt growled.

  Tom took a step closer to Lucy.

  Of course, Kurt had been foolish to think Tom and Lucy would leave him after so many years together—orders or not. Perhaps they even knew what he had in mind.

  "Okay, you win. How much ammunition do you have?" Kurt moved to Tom. "We'll pool our reserves."

  Tom looked down at his rifle—

  Kurt hit him, his flattened palm connecting with the underside of Tom's helmet. The impact lifted the Spartan a half meter off the ground, and he landed in a heap.

  Kurt wheeled on Lucy and held up a warning finger, indicating that she stay put.

  He checked Tom's bio signs. No bones broken. No cerebral swelling. Just coldcocked.

  "He'll live," he said. "You're both going to live. Now give me a hand."

  Shadows crisscrossed the hill, and fifty meters overhead Kurt watched three Banshees streak past.

  Lucy dropped the missile launcher and helped Kurt pull Tom up.

  Kurt wrapped his limp arm around her shoulder. "You two didn't survive Pegasi Delta to die here," he told her. "There's too much left for you to do."

  She shook her head violently back and forth.

  "Yes," he said. "Don't make me…"

  His vision blurred and a wave of dizziness washed over him. His heart struggled, pumping harder and faster. There was a warm trickle in his stomach. He was losing more blood. Slipping into shock.

  Plasma blots stitched the stone nearby, shattering them, as Banshees screamed by on a strafing run.

  "Please," he whispered.

  Lucy reached up to Kurt's faceplate, touching two fingers to his mouth. She struggled to make a sound, but all she could manage was a half-choked cry.

  He took her hand, gave it a squeeze, and let go.

  Lucy lingered, looked at Kurt one last time, and then slipped into the rift.

  "Good-bye," he said.

  They were gone. All of them.

  Now Kurt could concentrate on what had to be done.

  He picked up Tom's MASK. Its ammo counter indicated half a magazine. It would have to do. He grabbed the last missile launcher, too. He was sure he could find a use for it.

  The "hill" around the center was only a meter tall now and shrinking rapidly as the concentric rings eased back to the floor of the room. The finlike towers folded inward, almost flat against the ground.

  Elite snipers poked over the top of the hill and fired a tight cluster of plasma.

  Kurt was too slow to dodge the shots. His SPI armor heated, cracked, and half of his chest plate shattered away.

  Smoldering, Kurt dropped to his knees. Blackness clouded his mind. He struggled to stay conscious—fought his way back by sheer willpower, and his vision cleared.

  The snipers backed away, not bothering to finish him off. More Elites appeared on the hill, now only a half meter tall, sinking even faster toward a level topology.

  A Hunter pair appeared on the slight rise and assessed Kurt. They snorted,

  unimpressed.

  Almost there, he thought. Almost done. Almost won.

  Kurt grabbed up the SPNKr launcher and fired from the hip. The missile rocketed toward

  one Hunter, hit, exploded, and knocked it off the top. Kurt leveled his assault rifle and sprayed the other Hunter, but it turtled behind its shield.

  The rifle's bolt clacked—empty.

  The Hunter stood and growled. Its mate, bloodied and still smoking from the missile impact, stomped toward Kurt, hands ready to tear him to pieces.

  Kurt ventured a glance back. The rift was only a flicker now, and shrinking.

  His mission timer read "0:47."

  A sharp bark behind the Hunters made them halt in their tracks.

  An Elite in golden armor strode toward them, gracing Kurt with a glance that was part disdain… and part respect. It jabbered orders at the Hunters and the others.

  Kurt's translation software deciphered part of this: "Damage not the center. Engineers with the Slipspace field shunts… Reopen the silver gate. Glory is ours!"

  A roar of thunderous triumph burst from the gathered Covenant.

  Kurt struggled to rise. There was more pain than he'd ever felt, and his legs had turned to wet sand. His vision tunneled… but he got to his feet… and raised both hands into a fighting stance.

  "You haven't won," Kurt said. "You've still got me to get through."

  The Ship Master assessed Kurt and nodded, perhaps understan
ding him, perhaps not. It gazed upon Kurt as an equal. A fellow warrior.

  Around them the concentric rings settled to the floor, and with a whispered hiss, all of the ridges melded into a single smooth surface. The fins touched down silently, thirteen clamping armatures splayed two meters from the center of the room.

  His countdown timer blinked at him: "0:00."

  He exhaled. The rift was closed.

  Kurt opened his team roster—subheading status—and moved Will, SPARTAN-043;

  Dante, SPARTAN-G188; and Holly, SPARTAN-G003 to the missing-in-action column, adhering to the tradition of never listing a fallen Spartan as "killed in action."

  Kurt then highlighted Lieutenant Commandeer Kurt Ambrose… and moved that name to the MIA list as well—next to Kurt, SPARTAN-051.

  The room started to spin. His mouth went dry He tried to swallow. Couldn't.

  His vision doubled and he thought he saw Tom and Lucy

  come back to get him… but it wasn't them. It was Shane, Robert, and Jane from Team Wolf Pack.

  There were hundreds of Spartans with him on the platform— from Alpha and Beta Companies, Dante, Holly, Will, and even Sam… all ready to fight and win this last battle with him.

  Hallucination? Maybe. It was nonetheless welcome.

  The ghostly Spartans nodded, and gave him the thumbs-up "can-do" signal.

  Kurt wouldn't let them down. All he had to do was single-handedly stop a Covenant

  army. One last impossible mission… the short definition of any Spartan. It was the least he owed them.

  The Fleet Master Elite snarled at Kurt, and the translation filtered through his helmet's speaker: "One last fight, demon. You will die and we shall reopen the silver path."

  "Die?" Kurt laughed. "Didn't you know?" he told the Elite. "… Spartans never die."

  Kurt turned his gauntlet face-up and pressed the detonator.

  EPILOGUE SHIELD WORLD

  CHAPTER

  FORTY 2205 HOURS, NOVEMBER 4, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM THE MOON OF ONYX ABOARD THE UNSC PROWLER DUSK

  "Sir, something!" Lieutenant Joe Yang hunched over his sensor station, energy spikes dancing on-screen. "Double BMP signature. Subsurface." He shook his head and tugged at one eyebrow nervously. "Multiple energy signatures now. Hundreds. All underground."

  Commander Lash and Lieutenant Commander Waters stood over Yang's shoulder and tried to make sense of it.

  "Definitely nukes," Waters breathed. "Radiological ratios indicate it's one of ours."

  The electromagnetic pulses faded into a roiling sea of larger waveforms.

  "That's a lot more energy than two FENRIS warheads," Lash said. "Something bigger is going on down there." He exhaled, and his breath came out in tremulous shudders. No one noticed.

  He opened a SHIPCOM Channel to Cho. "Status of the Slipspace capacitors?"

  "Seven-three percent," Cho answered, "losing point oh three percent per minute, sir.

  "Stand by to jump-heat the reactor," Lash told him, "and shunt all power to the Slipspace system."

  There was a long pause over the COM, then, "Aye, sir. Cho out."

  Jump-heating the rectors would send up a signal flare to the

  Covenant armada. Lash hoped, though, whatever this planet-side activity was would distract them and give the Dusk a chance to finally escape.

  Lieutenant Bethany Durruno rocked back and forth in her seat, her eyes glued to the three satellite uplinks streaming through her NAV station. She tapped on a trio of microthruster controls, keeping the BLACK WIDOW satellites just hovering at extreme contact range.

  She was right on the edge. For that matter, so were Yang and Waters. Even Cho belowdecks was showing classic withdrawal signs that accompanied combat fatigue.

  The Dusk had survived the destruction of Admiral Patterson's fleet, and then stayed quiet and camouflaged in the dark while the Covenant armada ran right over them.

  That had been the hardest on his crew—moving meter by meter toward the moon, drifting through a debris field full of shattered UNSC ship hulls, destroyed escape pods… and thousands of bodies of the bravest men and women in the Navy

  They'd made it undetected to the opposite side of the silver moon of Onyx, and gently came to rest in the shadow of a crater. While the Dusk settled to the surface. Lieutenant Commander Cho had released three baseball-sized BLACK WIDOW stealth satellites, so they could monitor the Covenant forces.

  "Energy waves spreading across the planet, sir," Yang said, utterly confounded by his readings.

  "Put it on-screen," Lash ordered.

  The three main viewscreens flickered to life as the feed from their satellites streamed images of Onyx: oceans of lapis and pearl-colored clouds, emerald continents with zigzagging mountain ranges.

  In high orbit glided Covenant vessels. They moved in packs, simmering blue against the black of space.

  A dot appeared on the planet's surface—a red flare that arced

  upward, showering molten rock and ash. Three more winked on… then a dozen more flashed… then hundreds.

  Jagged cracks tore between the eruptions and a spiderweb pattern of glowing lava fissures spread over the world. They reached the polar regions and the ice caps detonated into geysers of steam.

  "Plasma bombardment," Waters whispered. "The Covenant are glassing the place."

  "No plasma detected, sir," Yang said. "All energy originating from inside the planet."

  A single beam of light pierced the thickening clouds—a blinding gold hue that sliced the

  upper atmosphere and shot into space.

  Wavering spectra flashed on Yang's screen.

  "We've seen that before," Lash said. "Combined drone fire."

  A second beam joined this first one; then thousands flashed on and radiated from the

  surface of Onyx—scintillating lances filled space and transformed the world into a sea urchin of pure energy.

  Covenant ships caught by the beams vanished, instantly ionized.

  Onyx shattered and the surface exploded into space.

  Obscured by layers of dust and fire, a blazing pattern emerged beneath: crosses and lines and dots.

  "Magnification factor one thousand," Lash ordered.

  Yang was frozen.

  Waters bent over and tapped in the command.

  The view on-screen blinked and stepped closer—past boiling air, clouds, tumbling mountains—zooming to ground level, revealing a lattice of three-meter-long rods and half-meter blazing red spheres that hovered between them, forming a crystalline structure.

  "Back it off," Lash said

  The view pulled back and showed that this drone-constructed scaffolding stretched over kilometers… they had been under

  every landmass, every ocean… under the entire surface— orderly linked rows like the carbon bonds of an infinite polymer chain, or an immense colony of living interlinked army ants.

  The drones were the planet Onyx.

  "There are trillions of them," Lieutenant Durruno whispered. Clusters of drones heated; culminated beams shot forth again, targeting more distant

  Covenant vessels and vaporizing them.

  "They're protecting this place," Waters said. "Why?"

  "Shockwave from surface detonation impacting far side of the moon in seven seconds,"

  Durruno said. The blood drained from her face.

  The viewscreens filled with static.

  "Lost the satellites," Yang cried.

  "Cho," Lash said. "Jump-heat the reactor and dump everything into those capacitors.

  Now! Get us out of here!"

  ←

  ^

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-ONE

  nOO HOURS, NOVEMBER 4, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) UNDETERMINED LOCATION WITHIN FORERUNNER CONSTRUCT KNOWN AS SHIELD WORLD

  The Spartans and Dr. Halsey gathered about the graves of William and Dante.

  It was a fine spot: sunlight dappled the river that flowed past this grove of oak trees. A
path of banded onyx curved through the area. They had pried up some of the slabs, scratched in William's and Dante's names, and erected two more to serve as markers for Holly and the Lieutenant Commander.

  Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez read from a small black

  leather book: "We have come to a place far from home / Time long passed since we have seen the sun rise / A place where peace can fimally come / A place where we can rest and laugh and sing and love once more."

  He hung his head and closed the volume, A Soldier's Tale: Rainforest Wars, the military classic written in 2164.

  There was a moment of silence.

  "Burial detail dismissed," Fred told them.

  Ash set a spent brass casing on each marker, a token of respect for his fellow Spartans. He didn't know what else to do.

  It had been a full day and a half since the Lieutenant Commander had ordered them into the rift, and a day and a half since it had sealed, stranding them all here.

  The shock of losing him and the others hadn't worn off. They all felt numb and hollow. Spartans usually did not have the luxury of grief; contemplation of the dead was almost always truncated by another mission, a battle, and their focus redirected to the larger strategic picture of saving humanity.

  … Not this time.

  The Slipspace rift had been stable when Dr. Halsey and Chief Mendez had first passed through, dropping them three meters onto a grassy hill. The cryo pods and Team Saber had followed shortly thereafter. They watched as the opening then started to collapse.

  When Fred, Linda, and Kelly emerged, they immediately tried to return. Tom and Lucy had tumbled through the opening, and by then the rift was too small. They could only watch as it compressed back to a single wavering dot and vanished.

  Most of them had thought the Slipspace passage would move them to an interior room within the artificial construct known as Onyx.

  No one, not even Dr. Halsey, had been prepared for this.

  Overhead blazed a golden sun. The sky, if it could be called that, was robin's-egg blue at the horizon but quickly deepened

  to indigo and black the higher one looked, then warmed again as it neared the sun. There were no stars.

  The surface stretched out in all directions—meadows, rivers, lakes, forests, winding paths all perfectly flat. All flat, that is, until Linda sighted through her Oracle scope. She then discovered every horizon sloped upward until these curving surfaces vanished in the extreme distance.