by Kelly Gay
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For my family, near and far, and those we lost this year:
Chester, Sam, Warren, Randy, and Lynda
Prologue
* * *
What a rudimentary way to transport a body, dragging it by the ankle across the sand. Nothing more than scrap, the sum of its existence reduced to mass and decay and a complete lack of dignity.
Four corpses lie ahead in the sand, facedown, dressed in patches of charred skin and bits of burnt cloth. Together with this fifth and final companion, they are all that is left.
The others—and there were many others—perished in the explosion. Perhaps this was a kinder fate, for had any managed to survive, they would have suffocated quite slowly in this planet’s thin atmosphere.
I, of course, am the exception.
Always surviving. One way or another. My purpose unfulfilled.
I wonder how many stories I will get, how many beginnings and endings, and when the cycle will finally end.
Perhaps the great Forerunner Theoretical Humble-Through-Study was correct when she posed the idea that the mind never truly dies; it only evolves, each evolution growing further beyond the grasp of those who came before, until finally it is as if the mind no longer exists at all, for we have lost the ability to know it. It is only with great misunderstanding that we view the end.
I am not at an ending, however.
I have just begun.
And this new beginning is quite extraordinary. I am no longer bound by service and compartments and walls. What remains of my thoughts and memories are finally free to roam. Like apparitions, they appear and disappear. Gone. Then back again. I sift through these endless recollections, learning to nurture them in an effort to save them, giving them time to grow and find their proper place once more in the scheme of my long existence. I believe, given time and freedom, I might recover and properly catalog them all.
Equally as extraordinary, fate took my vessel and my humans, but in return gave me shape and mobility instead. A head. Torso. Arms and legs. Feet. Hands. Fingers. . . . This form draws even older memories through the murk and mire of millennia, the past seeping through, refusing to be forgotten, bringing darker recollections I am not yet ready to acknowledge.
I glance at the fingers curled around the pale, bruised ankle. Alloy fingers now, not flesh and bone and blood, but form nonetheless. Hard blue light shines between my alloy plates, giving these parts anchor and design and power. With every slow step, the long, jagged piece of metal I commandeered from the wreckage and repurposed into a staff stabs into the sand, helping to maintain my balance and account for the damaged leg I have yet to repair.
Now that I have pulled the body to lie with its companions, I raise my staff with both hands and jab it into the ground, using it as a tool to bury the remains. The wind blows over the loosened sand, picking it up and sending tiny grains against my metal parts. These hit with a cascade of sounds. The different pitches like . . .
Rain, my memory tells me.
It sounds like rain. And I remember.
As I listen and dig, my mind drifts from one memory to the next before settling on a familiar topic: the notion of culpability.
Calculations are inconclusive, but my actions managed to play a significant role—roughly 62.35 percent—in the demise of the ship and crew, though there were external factors on their part and on the part of others.
Still, the guilt at this unexpected turn weighs heavily. There is regret and sadness as well. These emotions are remembered and permitted to simulate, to flow and saturate into every part of my essence, simulations that I feel quite keenly.
It is the least I owe them. Isn’t it?
To feel something.
It is a human thing to do, after all.
And I am still human.
Am I not?
I send this stream of thought and deliberation to another sector to be analyzed while I focus on the task at hand.
Digging a mass grave in the sand is not difficult. There is, in fact, no physical exertion whatsoever. My new form uses hard light and costs me nothing but time.
Time . . .
My greatest enemy. My greatest friend.
I pause and glance at the wreckage.
After several days, it still smokes, burns, and sparks. Beyond this scene, on a low rock-strewn dune, rests the antenna I fashioned from the wreckage. Even now it broadcasts my distress call to the stars.
Patience was not an attribute I was born with, but I have endured it and eventually I learned to accept it.
And so . . . I can wait. I am good at waiting.
Someone will hear. They always do.
Ho-hum.
Back to digging I go. . . .
SATCOM T-2
J-Node// RELAY: 75153
New Tyne, Venezia
March 3, 2557
0210 STANDARD
//FORWARD: UNSC TAUROKADO
//AUTHORIZATION KS-67159-021127
//URGENT//
//TO: W. HAHN
AFTER ACTION REPORT: ACE OF SPADES
Hahn, my cover is blown. I lost access to the field pad, ship, and crew. This is my final report.
Per my last transmission, ACE OF SPADES found the SPIRIT OF FIRE’s log buoy on Laconia. During departure, we rescued salvage captain RAM CHALVA from Sangheili commander GEK ‘LHAR, and left under fire.
Coordinates from the log buoy were obtained by tech and nav officer NIKO, and CAPTAIN RION FORGE initiated a slipspace jump, following the coordinates into uncharted space. Without my field pad, tracker, and nav records from the ship, there is no way to pinpoint or even guess at a sector locale, much less a star system. Sorry.
I can tell you that, near the coordinates, we found complete planetary destruction, namely a dense ring of debris orbiting a dwarf star. No physical evidence of the UNSC SPIRIT OF FIRE was detected upon initial scans. However, we did identify a small Forerunner facility with an operational, though fragmented, AI.
Also, our scans of the debris field revealed that GEK ‘LHAR arrived in the general area and made it to the Forerunner facility ahead of us. The Sangheili recovered what CPT. FORGE referred to as a Forerunner device called a “luminary.”
Hahn, it didn’t end well. There was an altercation at the facility, and we lost our second-in-command, CADE MCDONOUGH.
After this casualty, we recovered the fragmented AI from the facility. CPT. FORGE allowed it to modify the ACE OF SPADES’s internal systems. I don’t believe this was the right decision, but losing CADE immensely affected her and the crew, so there may not have been completely rational thought in the moment.
The AI, which the crew dubbed “LITTLE BIT,” contains memory portions suggesting the SPIRIT OF FIRE was responsible for the system’s planetary destruction. I feel confident there is much more to discover in this debris field, both Forerunner and UNSC. However, extreme caution is advised as GEK ‘LHAR is now fully aware of its location. To my knowledge, only these three, ‘LHAR, FORGE, and LITTLE BIT, possess the location of the debris field.
My true motives for being a part of the ACE OF SPADES crew were discovered by LITTLE BIT. Upon arriving in New Tyne, I left the ship while CPT. FORGE was occupied with unexpected repairs and seeing to the injuries GEK ‘LHAR inflicted on RAM CHALVA while he was in captivity.
I’m requesting immediate evacuation from Venezia. Someone died, Hahn. This isn’t the song and dance you sold me back on Sedra. I want out. Now.
//END
CHAPTER 1
* * *
Komoya, Sverdlovsk system, May 2557
Despite its reputation as the junkyard of the Via Casilina, Komoya was one of Rion Forge’s favorite stops along the interstellar trade route.
The small, murky moon might not have the soft-sand beaches of Emerald Cove or the crystal-capped mountain peaks of Forseti, but what it lacked in geographical marvel it more than made up for in its exotic fusion of misfits and adventurers. Komoya was a true galactic melting pot. It had substance and grit and—
“Gnats!”
Niko slapped his neck, then picked a tiny black carcass from his skin and flicked it away in disgust.
“And this dirt. I swear it’s everywhere. I hate Komoya.” He walked awkwardly for a few steps, shaking one leg, then the other, to display just how invasive the fine soil had become. “See what I’m dealing with here?”
“Trying not to see, actually,” Rion said in a dry tone, checking the time. “Who cares about the dirt when you have a view like that?”
From their slightly elevated position on the road, Komoya was laid out amid a filthy halo of multicolored lights. The city might be warm and damp—and, yes, everything was coated in a fine layer of grit—but the scenery was spectacular. Hundreds of derelict, abandoned, and decommissioned starships sprawled over eleven square kilometers of Komoyan mudflats and low plains, all connected by a web of dirt roads and makeshift bridges.
In the center of this immense collection sat the CAA Chalybeate, a decrepit colony vessel that had landed here almost sixty years ago for repairs and never left, becoming the unofficial capital of Komoya. At nearly a kilometer and a half long and with the capacity to hold ten-thousand-plus colonists, it was a city unto itself, its fusion reactor still generating power, and the ship’s AI not only continuing its function as superintendent but taking the role of chief administrator among the other working ship AIs. They saw to everything from orbital surveillance and defense to communications satellites and municipal functions.
Chalybeate’s hatches and doors and cargo bays had long been exposed to the elements, roads having been built to link directly through the ship, over the muck to the next ship, and the next, and the next . . .
Each vessel had transformed into its own small district, complete with apartments, interior marketplaces, public works and services, and exterior bazaars, which lined the makeshift streets and alleys between ships. Overall, it was a rowdy, patchwork kind of place, home to scouts, salvagers, pirates, and opportunists of every stripe, all contending with an ever-growing population of ex-Covenant species.
Despite the influx, most coexisted amid the chaos, each trader needing the others to survive. They’d evolved into a tidy, unpretentious ecosystem existing here in the sludge, and Rion—unlike Niko—liked it just fine.
Insects, drawn by the night lights and the constant spew of carbon dioxide from Komoya’s residents, bit and buzzed and played their familiar songs, competing with the sounds of conversation, music, and the general ambient drone of the city.
Rion could have chosen to hide out on any number of moons or planets or asteroids within three star systems, but Komoya had several things going for it. It was close (relatively speaking) to their home base on Venezia; it boasted one of the best shipyards in the Outer Colonies; and Rion just happened to own a warehouse located at the edge of the city.
“I’ll be glad to get off this hellhole,” Niko muttered, kicking at the dirt beneath his feet as they walked. “I don’t know why you had to drag me outside.”
“Believe we covered that already.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, just so we’re clear: there’s no such thing as spending too much time in my lab. And there’s no fresh air anywhere on Komoya.” He glanced at the glades and canals along this portion of road and wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Are you going to complain all the way back too?” Because he’d done the same on the way to the shipyard, and despite her fondness for the tall, gangly young man, with his chaotic hair, ridiculous IQ, and amusing personality, Rion had her limits.
And those limits had been sorely tested the last few months.
Niko glanced over his shoulder at the shipyard they’d left a few minutes earlier. Pieced together over the years, it appeared to be a random jumble of scaffolding, cranes, docking stations, repair berths, and large outbuildings. “Drained you dry, huh?”
Ace of Spades—her ship, her workhorse, her home, her passage to the stars—had just passed her flight test. She was back there in berth, ready to fly. Five weeks just to get parts to repair a fried FTL drive, and another four for the techs to install it and make sure Ace was spaceworthy.
“Yeah, kid, drained me dry.” Three entire bank accounts had been wiped clean. Parts and labor—and the bribes necessary to ensure that Ace’s repairs stayed off the books and, more importantly, off local chatter—had erased half of her life’s savings.
One more blow like that, and she’d be out of business.
Not to mention the fact that her financials wouldn’t stay off the radar for much longer.
“Have no one to blame but me,” she said under her breath.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Cap. Or on Little Bit. He didn’t mean to fry the FTL. Our technology couldn’t keep up.”
“Something he could easily have calculated.”
“Sure, had he not been fragmented,” Niko reminded her.
Rion let out a soft snort. They’d had this argument too many times to count in the last several weeks. Niko worshipped the AI, and ever since they’d fled Venezia and arrived on Komoya, the kid had holed up in his corner lab with the colloquially named Little Bit, quizzing the thing, learning to make sense of LB’s fragmented leaps from clarity to nonsense, working out answers to old questions and forming new ones.
“Less thinks you’re becoming obsessed.” She checked the time again.
“Less likes her labels.” He waved at another insect. “If you could only see what I see. . . . We think we’re so advanced, but the Forerunners were a gazillion years ahead of us. Our advances are child’s play in comparison. They could build entire planets, Cap. We saw it for ourselves—well, the aftermath, but still. Planets.
“And now we have this gateway to the past in our possession. We have LB. Not the military, not intelligence, not the science or tech sector. We do.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to walk backward so he could face her. “Just imagine what we could learn. All knowledge and tech that’s been withheld from us in the name of ‘defense.’ All the things we can create and understand and share with the little guys, all the places LB can point us to, the things we can uncover about the past.”
Rion lifted a brow. “That’s a lovely little speech.”
He turned around and fell in step beside her. “Okay, fine. I might be a little obsessed, but who wouldn’t be?”
Me, she wanted to say.
Rion had taken the ancient, fragmented AI on board her ship, where it immediately began evaluating Ace’s systems. But it had been her decision to allow it in, to modify and change. . . . She’d sat there on the bridge, watching the pod carrying Cade’s body sail into a nearby dwarf star, and permitted the AI to reconfigure Ace’s engines without thinking too deeply of the consequences.
LB had created a streamlined slipspace portal that had gotten them from uncharted space back to Venezian orbit in record time. The jump ended up killing her drive and causing something he casually referred to as “just a minor bobble in space-time reconciliation,” whatever the hell that meant.
It was a miracle they’d made it back to Venezia in one piece.
“He’s not all bad, you know. The tech we’ve been working on couldn’t be built without him. And he did save our asses from Kip. . . .”
LB’s discovery of their engine
er’s treachery had bought them enough time to settle Ram Chalva in the hospital and call in a favor to get a tow out of town and straight to Komoya. It hadn’t taken long, though, for Kip’s true employer, the Office of Naval Intelligence, to come calling—a week later an Agent Hahn began sending Rion private messages through trade forums and chatter, asking for information on her debris field. . . .
All of which she ignored.
Rion had an entire galaxy in which to hide. ONI wouldn’t find her until she began accessing her accounts. Today was that day, and Rion intended to be long gone before the spooks could arrive.
She had plans. Plans to avenge Cade’s death, plans to recoup their losses, and plans to go back to the debris field to look for her father and his missing ship.
Rion checked the time again.
One more thing to do and then they’d be gone.
“Heads up, guys,” Lessa’s voice finally buzzed through comms. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s here. I got eyes on Gek ‘Lhar.”
Rion had been expecting the news, but hearing it and knowing the alien bastard who’d murdered one of their crew was nearby stalled her in her tracks. Fresh grief rushed in, causing a sharp stab of pain through her chest. Ten weeks was hardly enough time to mourn the loss of the man she’d known and loved, in one way or another, for a decade. Not nearly enough time . . .
Niko stared at her with wide, emotional eyes, and for a moment she didn’t know what to say. His grief was just as legitimate as hers, Cade having been a mentor and a stable father figure where none had ever been before. And while she wanted to comfort him, now was not the time. Instead, she grabbed his shoulders and gave them a good squeeze. “Put it in a box, kid,” she said softly. “Remember the plan.”
He nodded quickly, attempting to regroup. “Destroy the roach.”
“That’s right. His honor, his dignity, his standing, his credits, his ship . . . we’re taking it all, everything. Until he’s left with nothing but those dog tags on his shoulder. And when it’s all gone, when we’ve broken him, we’ll take those too, and send him straight to hell where he belongs.” She released his shoulders, let out a deep sigh to regroup as well, and ruffled his hair. “You good?”
