Halo: Contact Harvest

by Joseph Staten

Page 4

 

  < Appreciate it. DCS has been on me for weeks about the Q4 projections. Soy might come in a little light. But wheat is going to be— >> * WARNING! PRIVACY BREACH!

  [DCS. REG#A-16523. 14. 82] * < Just adding my note to the ladys. No need to cut the red tape twice, right?

  >> * VIOLATION! YOUR INFRACTION HAS BEEN LOGGED— < Hey! Whoa there!

  >>--AND WILL BE SUBMITTED TO DCS-S-- SSSSSSsss* >>(. . . ) ˜ STANDBY/REBOOT >>(. . ) >> () < Partner?

  < You OK?

  >> APOLOGY. UNKNOWN SYSTEM ERROR.

  >> PLEASE REPEAT PRIOR REQUEST.

  < Nah, were all set. Have a safe slip, you hear?

  >>AFFIRMATIVE. > The NAV computer had no idea why it had temporarily shut down. It had no memory of its COM with Mack. The AIs file was there—encrypted and attached to Sifs report. But the NAV computer believed the two documents had always been linked. It rechecked its slip calculations and increased reactor flow to its Shaw-Fujikawa drive. Exactly five seconds later, a sunburst of sundered space-time appeared off Wholesale Prices prow.

  The rift remained open after the freighter disappeared, its shimmering edges warping the surrounding stars. The blazing hole flickered stubbornly, as if it was determined to choose the moment of its closure. But once Wholesale Price moved deeper into the Slipstream, pulling its sustaining power with it, the rift collapsed in an insignificant burst of gamma radiation—the quantum mechanical equivalent of a shrug.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EARTH, GREATER CHICAGO INDUSTRIAL ZONE,

  AUGUST 10, 2524

  When Avery woke, he was already home. Chicago, the onetime heart of the American Midwest, was now an urban sprawl that covered the former states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The territory wasnt part of the United States, not in any formal sense. Some people who lived in the Zone still considered themselves American, but like everyone else on the planet they were citizens of the United Nations—a sea change in governance that was inevitable once humanity began to colonize other worlds. First Mars, then the Jovian moons, and then planets in other systems.

  Checking his COM pad on the military shuttle from orbit to the Great Lakes Spaceport, Avery confirmed he was on a two-week pass—that hed be able to enjoy his first extended break from operation TREBUCHET. There was a note on the pass from Averys CO detailing the injuries sustained by the marines on his last mission. All of Averys alpha squad had survived with minor injuries. But bravo squad hadnt been so lucky; three marines were killed- in-action (KIA), and Staff Sergeant Byrne was hanging by a thread in a UNSC hospital ship.

  The note said nothing about civilian casualties. But Avery remembered the force of the haulers blast, and he doubted any had survived.

  He tried not to think—let his mind go blank—as he boarded a maglev passenger train from the spaceport to the Zone. Only later, when Avery stepped out onto the elevated platform of the Cottage Grove terminal, did the hot and humid air of a late Chicago summer snap his senses back into focus. As the sun dove to a fiery finish, he enjoyed what little breeze was coming off Lake Michigan—lukewarm gusts that hammered up the east-west blocks of tumbledown gray- stone apartments, scattering the autumn leaves of the sidewalk maples.

  Arms laded with duffel bags, and wearing his navy-blue dress pants, collared shirt, and cap, Avery was drenched with sweat by the time he reached The Seropian, a center for active retirement—or so its hospitality computer told him—as he stepped into the towers stifling lobby. Averys Aunt Marcille had moved to the complex a few years after hed joined the marines, vacating the same walkup apartment on Blackstone Avenue theyd shared since Avery was a boy. His aunts health was failing, and shed needed the extra care. And more to the point: she was lonely without him.

  As Avery waited for an elevator that would take him up to the thirty-seventh floor, he stared into a recreation room filled with many of The Seropians bald and silver-haired residents. Most were clustered around a video display tuned to one of the public COMs all-news channels.

  There was a report of fresh Innie attacks in Epsilon Eridanus—a series of bombings that had killed thousands of civilians. As usual, the broadcast featured a UNSC spokesman who flatly denied the militarys campaign was faltering. But Avery knew the facts: The Insurrection had already claimed more than a million lives; the Innie attacks were becoming more effective, and the UNSC reprisals more heavy-handed. It was an ugly civil war that wasnt getting any prettier.

  One of the residents in the rec room, a black man with a deeply lined face and a crown of wiry gray hair, spotted Avery and frowned. He whispered something to a large white woman in a voluminous housedress, overflowing a wheelchair by his side. Soon all the residents that werent hard of hearing or too dim-sighted to see Averys uniform were nodding and clucking— some with respect, others with scorn. Avery had almost changed into his civilian clothes on the shuttle to avoid just this sort of uncomfortable reaction. But in the end hed decided to stick with his dress blues for his aunts sake. Shed waited a long time to see her nephew come home all spit and polish.

  The elevator was even warmer than the lobby. But inside his aunts apartment the air was so frigid, Avery could see his breath.

  "Auntie?" he called, dropping his duffels on the well-worn blue carpet of her living room.

  The bottles of fine bourbon hed bought at the spaceport duty-free clinked together between his neatly folded fatigues. He didnt know if his aunts doctors were letting her drink, but he did know how much she used to enjoy an occasional mint julep. "Where are you?" But there was no reply.

  The flower-patterned walls of the living room were covered with picture frames. Some were very old—faded prints of long-dead relatives his aunt used to talk about as if shed known them personally. Most of the frames held holo-stills: three-dimensional pictures from his aunts lifetime. He saw his favorite, the one of his teenage aunt standing on the shore of Lake Michigan in a honey-bee striped bathing suit and wide straw hat. She was pouting at the camera and its cameraman, Averys uncle, who had passed away before he was born.

  But there was something wrong with the stills; they seemed oddly out of focus. And as Avery stepped down the narrow hallway to his aunts bedroom and ran his fingers across the frames sheets of glass, he realized they were covered in a thin layer of ice.

  Avery rubbed his palm against a large holo-still near the bedroom door, and a young boys face appeared beneath the frost. Me, he grimaced, remembering the day his aunt had taken the still: my first day of church. Wiping downward, his mind filled with memories: the suffocating pinch of his white, freshly starched oxford shirt; the smell of carnauba wax, liberally applied, to mask the scuffs in his oversized, wingtip shoes.

  Growing up, Averys clothes were almost always worn out hand-me-downs from distant cousins that were never quite big enough for his tall, broad-shouldered frame. "Just as they should be," his aunt had said, smiling, holding up new pieces of his wardrobe for inspection. "A boy isnt a boy that doesnt ruin his clothes. " But her painstaking patching and sewing had always ensured Avery looked his best—especially for church.

  "Now dont you look handsome," his aunt had cooed the day shed taken the frozen still.

  Then, as shed done up his little paisley tie: "So much like your mother. So much like your father," according to assessments of an inheritance Avery hadnt understood. There had been no pictures of his parents in his aunts old house—and there were none in her apartment now.

  Although shed never once said anything unkind about them, these bittersweet comparisons had been her only praise.

  "Auntie? You in there?" Avery asked, knocking softly on her bedroom door. Again, there was no answer.

  He remembered the sound of raised voices behind other closed doors—the angry end of his parents marriage. His father had left his mother so distraught that she could no longer care for herself, let alone an active, six-year-old boy. He took one last look at the holo-still: argyle socks beneath neatly cuffed tan slacks; an unaba
shed smile, no less sincere for his aunts prompting.

  Then he opened her bedroom door.

  If the living room had felt like a refrigerator, the bedroom was a freezer. Averys heart dropped into his stomach. But it wasnt until he saw the line of sixteen evenly spaced cigarettes (one for each hour of her waking day) untouched on a bedside vanity that Avery knew for sure —his aunt was dead.

  He stared at her body, stiff as a board under the layers of crocheted and quilted blankets, as the sweat on the back of his neck froze solid. Then he stepped to the foot of the bed and lowered himself into a threadbare armchair where he remained, spine set against the cold, for almost an hour—until someone keyed the apartment door.

  "Shes in here," muttered one of the complexs orderlies as he tramped down the hallway. A young man with a sunken chin and shoulder-length blond hair peered into the bedroom.

  "Jesus!" He jumped back, catching sight of Avery. "Who are you?"

  "How many days?" Avery asked.

  "What?"

  "How many days has she been lying here?"

  "Listen, unless I know—"

  "Im her nephew," Avery growled, his eyes locked on the bed. "How. Many. Days. "

  The orderly swallowed. "Three. " Then in a nervous torrent, "Look, its been busy, and she didnt have any—I mean we didnt know she had any relatives in-system. The apartment is on automatic. It dropped to freezing the moment she …" The orderly trailed off as Avery stared him down.

  "Take her away," Avery said flatly.

  The orderly motioned to his shorter, plumper partner cowering in the hallway behind him.

  Quickly the two men positioned their stretcher beside the bed, peeled back the layers of bedding, and gently transferred the body.

  "Records say she was Evangelical Promessic. " The orderly fumbled with the stretchers straps. "Is that right?"

  But Averys gaze had returned to the bed, and he didnt reply.

  His aunt was so frail that her body left only the barest impression in the foam mattress. She was a small woman, but Avery remembered how tall and strong shed looked when Zone social services had dropped him on her doorstep—a mountain of surrogate maternal love and discipline in his wary, six-year-old eyes.

  "Whats your COM address?" the thin orderly continued, "Ill let you know the name of the processing center. "

  Avery drew his hands out of his pockets and laid them on his lap. The squat orderly noticed Averys fingers tighten into fists and coughed—a signal to his partner that now would be a good time to leave. The two men worked the stretcher back and forth until it pointed out of the bedroom, then bumped it noisily down the hallway and out the apartment door.

  Averys hands shook. His aunt had been teetering on the edge for some time. But in their recent COM correspondence, shed told him not to worry. Hearing that, hed wanted to take his leave immediately, but his CO had ordered him to lead one more mission. A whole hell of a lot of good that did anyone, Avery cursed. While his Aunt lay dying, he was strapped to a Hornet, circling the Jim Dandy back on Tribute.

  Avery leapt from the chair, stepped quickly to his duffels, and pulled out one of the fifths of gin from the duty-free. He grabbed his navy dress coat and stuffed the glass flask into an interior pocket. A moment later, he was out the apartment door.

  "Dog and Pony," Avery asked the hospitality computer on the way down to the lobby. "Is it still in business?"

  "Open daily until four a. m. ," the computer replied through a small speaker in the elevators floor-selection pad. "Ladies pay no cover. Shall I call a cab?"

  "Ill walk. " Avery twisted the cap off the gin and took a generous swig. Then he added to himself: While I still can.

  The bottle only lasted an hour. But others were easy to find, as one night of drinking became two, then three. Gut Check, Rebound, Severe Tire Damage: names of clubs filled with civilians eager for Averys money but not the slurred stories of how hed earned it—except for a girl on a low-lit stage in a dive off Halsted Street. The pretty redhead was so good at pretending to listen, Avery didnt mind pretending it had nothing to do with how often hed tapped his credit chip against the jeweled reader in her navel. The money drew her freckled skin and smell and lazy smile closer, until a rough hand fell on Averys shoulder.

  "Watch your hands, soldier boy," a bouncer warned, his voice raised above the clubs thumping music.

  Avery looked away from the girl, her back arched high above the stage. The bouncer was tall with a substantial gut that his tight, black turtleneck could barely contain. His strong arms were padded with a deceptive layer of fat. Avery shrugged. "Ive paid. "

  "Not to touch. " The bouncer sneered, revealing two platinum incisors. "This is a class establishment. "

  Avery reached for a little round table between his knees and the stage. "How much?" he asked, raising his credit chip.

  "Five hundred. "

  "Screw you. "

  "Like I said. Class. "

  "Already spent plenty …"Avery muttered. His UNSC salary was modest—and most of that had gone to help with his aunts apartment.

  "Aw, now see?" The bouncer jabbed a thumb at the girl. She was slowly sliding backward on the stage—her smile now a worried frown. "You gotta talk nice, soldier boy. " The bouncer tightened his grip on Averys shoulder. "Shes not one of those Innie sluts youre used to out in Epsi. "

  Avery was sick of the bouncers hand. He was sick of being called boy. But having some civilian puke insult him—someone who had no idea what he had actually gotten used to on the frontlines of the Insurrection? That was the last straw.

  "Let me go," Avery growled.

  "We gonna have a problem?"

  "All depends on you. "

  With his free hand, the bouncer reached behind his back and pulled a metal rod from his belt. "Why dont you and me step outside?" With a flick of his wrist, the rod doubled in length and revealed an electrified tip.