by Kelly Gay
As it well should be.
CHAPTER 29
* * *
We leave the system, and Captain Forge sets course for a small moon called Myer’s Moon, in the Shaps system, a familiar waypoint the crew uses to refuel, restock, and rest between missions.
Ten days pass before we arrive, make a quick visit to the outpost, and then settle on a wide stretch of beach near a shallow sea. I used the time to engage my neural interface and guide my armiger’s machine cells to begin the transfiguration process I desire. I made it a slow process to ease the crew into accepting something other than what they have grown used to.
Had the ship upgrades proceeded, it would have taken us mere hours to arrive, but the captain is stubborn and afraid of change. Change is a force she cannot control, so she ignores it and instead looks for ways around the obvious course of action.
I do not need to convince her or push her in the right direction. She will come around.
I know her story, and I know her life will never be as it once was. She has found too much and lost too much to ever go back.
She understands this too.
Once the ship powers down, the airlock doors release and the cargo ramp descends. The metallic echo of my footsteps fills the hold as Niko and Lessa run through the ship, dressed in very little, towels tucked beneath their arms.
In minutes, they are off the ship and racing across the sand straight into the water.
I walk to the head of the cargo ramp and marvel at this very human picture framed by the metal plating of the ship. Their laughter echoes over gentle waves as iridescent moon crabs tiptoe for shelter and birds cry overhead.
It is their spot, they say. Discovered many years ago.
Captain Forge appears next to me. She is wearing very little as well. Her hands are full with towels and a blanket.
I do not communicate with her, and I find quite abruptly that I am not in a sharing mood.
Ram Chalva arrives with a grav cart loaded with chairs, drinks, and food. The captain places her items in the cart, and then we are headed at a sedate pace to the beach.
Later, after swimming has exhausted them, Ram stands and smiles at me, a flash of white through his dark beard. “I’m going to collect wood for a fire. Come help me,” he says, walking off.
I follow him into the rocky landscape sparsely populated with coniferous trees, curious at the cause of my maudlin state. I pick up dry sticks.
“This is very different from space,” he notes.
There is a wisdom in him that is not present in the others.
“Yes,” I say.
It has been a very . . . human day.
My armiger feels unnatural here. In space, it is indeed different. I am among technological advances such as myself. But here on the beach, I stand out. I cannot swim or drink or eat . . . though I do remember those experiences.
“You were human once,” he says, hunting for tinder.
I was. I am.
I do not know how to answer.
“You are whatever you choose to be, Spark.”
Ram Chalva is a watchful man, the kind who sees into the heart of things much more easily than most.
A loud scream echoes over the rocks, followed by laughter. We step to the edge and see Niko and Less half-carrying, half-dragging the captain back into the water.
“You ever think of giving up your quest?” he asks me.
I turn to him, prepared with an immediate denial, but the words seem stuck in my vocal components. Finally I manage, “No, of course not.” But there is no fire behind it. “Do you ever consider giving up yours?”
I mean, of course, his desire for revenge against Gek ‘Lhar.
He regards me for a long moment, then dips his head in acknowledgment.
We return to foraging for wood.
Night falls, and the sky shifts through stages of orange, pink, purple, and then an inky blue. Stars appear. The campfire sparks and snaps and shoots embers into the night. It is a lovely sound, the sound of fire. The sound of friends. The sound of laughter.
I have joined them via my avatar, using Niko’s datapad, and am presently admiring the way the starlight reflects on the dark water.
Lessa turns to me and says: “Do you think there’s a God? I mean, an omniscient and omnipotent one?”
Before I can answer, Niko laughs and rolls his eyes. Lessa’s expression darkens.
“I am not old enough or wise enough to know such things,” I say.
“Did you believe in a god in Marontik,” she continues, “when you were human?”
“Many believed in the animal spirits who reigned over the Western Grasslands: the Jaguar, the Crocodile, the Great Elephant, and Abada the Rhinoceros. But above all, we believed in the Librarian, the supreme Lifeshaper. She was our goddess, our mother—kind, loving, and beautiful beyond compare. She rode on a great starboat, and appeared to us when we were infants. In Marontik, there was a temple built in her name, and my sisters served there as prayer maidens.”
“You really think she’s alive?” Niko asks.
“I know so.”
“You sound like Rion,” Lessa says with a smile. “I guess sometimes you just know, right?”
Captain Forge gives her a nod and there is a small smile on her face, but there is also sadness. She does not know if her father is alive; she only hopes.
Like me, she burns with the need for answers. All this time, all these years—long years in Rion’s time frame—John Forge has been gone, yet she cannot give up the search. He is family. So she exists on hope.
We are the same in this. And the loneliness, the need to connect with family and loved ones is strong. It drives us both.
Guilt suddenly washes over me. Perhaps it is the moment, the connection I currently feel with her. I have the answers she seeks.
I should tell her the truth.
Is that not the kind thing to do?
I watch her smile at the group’s conversation, her eyes bright, a twist to her lips, finding humor in small things. . . .
What will it do to her? I wonder. What will she do when she learns he is truly dead, that her relentless search all these years has been in vain?
“Rion . . . ?” I begin before I can stop myself.
Her head turns. The light of the fire reflects in her dark eyes. She looks younger, not so burdened by worries at the moment.
I find I cannot get the words out, cannot be the deliverer of such pain.
Nor can I stomach the thought of losing what little trust she now has in me. I did not complete the revival of the communications array on Triniel. And in doing so, I did something good. I have gained their trust. I cannot lose it now.
“Is something on your mind?” she says.
“It is nothing important,” I reply.
No.
The time is not yet right for truths and pain.
CHAPTER 30
* * *
Myer’s Moon, Shaps system, July 2557
The next morning, Rion woke with a long stretch and a decent attitude. The sunlight and fresh air had done her a world of good. After taking a quick shower and grabbing an energy ration, she decided to link up to the local commsat in orbit and see how things looked in the salvaging world.
Once the link was established, she opened chatter, waypoint forums, and private channels, waiting for the latest news and messages and posts to download. It didn’t take long, and soon she was browsing the trader and salvaging channels.
Apparently she was the subject of several posts.
Gek ‘Lhar had placed a very large bounty on her and the Ace of Spades crew.
Very, very large.
Well, that’s what she got for shooting him in the face and laughing at him as an invaluable Forerunner debris field exploded around his ears.
She rubbed a hand down her face and let out a heavy sigh.
Could be worse.
There were several messages from Nor. About favors, Gek, and . . . a message from Agent Hahn c
aught her eye. She opened it and read what was there.
Well, well, well. Now Hahn wanted to make a trade. He was offering the return of Little Bit’s projections, their personal items from the warehouse outside of New Tyne, and the credits ONI had seized from their bank accounts. In exchange, he was asking for the salvage they’d taken from Geranos-a.
He crafted a convincing argument, she’d give him that. He wrote about good relations, no underhanded tactics—just a simple trade, and then they’d go their separate ways, his only objective being securing the salvage and clearing them of all crimes against the UNSC Salvage Directive.
What a load of crap.
There was nothing simple about it.
ONI would be out to capture the salvage, along with Rion, her crew, and her ship. There was absolutely no way they’d just let them dump the salvage, no harm, no foul. ONI had to be sure they were getting it all, and in order to do that, interrogations and a ship-wide search would have to be conducted.
As she ate her energy bar, her thoughts spun.
She didn’t just want their things returned. She wanted the Office of Naval Intelligence off their backs for good.
Later, Rion headed outside in search of the others. She found them down the beach by the tide pools with fishing poles made of thin sticks.
Climbing the rocks, she watched them for a moment, noting that there was nothing big enough in the tide pools to actually eat. She put her hands on her hips. “And this is what we call an exercise in futility, children,” she said, smiling.
Lessa’s line snagged a moon crab. “Oh really? Who’s futile now?” She flung the thing out of the water with a squeak, aiming directly for Rion.
Rion jumped back as the stunned little crab sailed past her and plopped into another pool. Laughing, she caught sight of the armiger sitting atop the rocks above them and made her way up to join him.
“Enjoying the break?”
He didn’t answer the question, saying instead, “I had forgotten how much I once liked the water.” Since Triniel, he had been changing more and more, his alloy nearly smooth now and a luminous silvery-gray. His face was different too, she’d noticed back on the ship—his eyes bigger, kinder, if such a thing was possible, the angles less severe. “They are amusing to watch—ah, finally.” He suddenly stood and called, “There are other ways to catch a fish!”
In an instant, the armiger’s forearm and hand realigned, becoming a weapon and firing a gold energy beam into the waves. A second later, a large fish plopped onto the rocks, landing right at Niko’s feet. The kid screamed as the fish flopped around. The siblings then engaged in an amusing wrestle to catch the thing.
The armiger sat down, chuckling as his weapon mutated back to a hand and forearm. “I have been waiting for that fish to get close enough to the rocks to do that.”
Still absorbing what she’d just witnessed—the armiger transforming its components into weapons—Rion said, “With a sense of humor like that, you fit right in.” She gestured to his arm. “Could you always do that?”
“Not until I repaired my neural machine cell interface on Triniel.”
So he was armed even when he wasn’t. Rion stood up and brushed the sand from her rear. “Come on, I’m gathering the crew. Seems Agent Hahn is ready to make a deal.”
Some time later, after Ram had built another fire and Niko was roasting the fish over the flames, Rion told them what she’d learned and what Agent Hahn wanted in return.
“You can’t sell him out, not after what he’s been through!” Niko said, shooting to his feet, ready to defend Spark at all costs.
“Calm down, kid,” Rion said. “No one is selling anyone out. I’m just telling you what they said, not what we’re going to do.”
Niko turned his attention to the avatar, which had joined them via his small holopad that had been set atop the cooler, while the armiger was presently in the ship’s hold. “We’re not selling you out.”
“I am not worried that you will.”
“We know it’s a trap,” Rion said. “But there might be a way to go to this meeting and get our things back without being apprehended. If we set the time, pick the place, and use it to our advantage. And . . .” She drew in a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but we use the upgrade seed.”
They stared at her with mouths agape. Niko’s fish caught fire and fell into the flames. And still no one moved or spoke. Rion used a stick to move the fish off the coals. She supposed she’d earned their reaction. They all knew Ace held a special place in her heart, so the fact that she was willing to change it was a stunning revelation.
“To escape, we’ll need a ship more advanced than or at least comparable to what ONI will bring,” Rion continued.
“Rion,” Lessa said. “You don’t have to do this. Ace is your ship. . . . If you’re doing this for us—”
Rion shook her head. She had given this a lot of thought. “I’m doing it for me too. I have very little left of my father, and I want it back. Everything we’ve been through—I don’t want it to have been for nothing.” She dug in the sand with her foot. “This is what we wanted. This is why we went to Geranos-a. We’re in ONI’s sights and that’s not going to change, no matter what’s decided. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d really like to make them think twice about making enemies out of salvagers.”
“So what’s your plan?” Ram asked.
“We control every detail of how this goes down. ONI will underestimate us—they can’t help it. They have no idea that we have the armiger on our side. They have no idea that he’s anything more now than what he was when brought on board the Rubicon. We’ll use all that to our advantage. And we’ll give them what they think we have.”
“And if things go south?” Ram asked.
“Oh, I’m counting on things going south.”
Niko blinked in surprise. “Wait. We want things to go wrong?”
“As a distraction,” the armiger surmised.
“Exactly. You all should know that Gek ‘Lhar has issued a very large bounty on us, me in particular. All the salvagers, traders, and mercs are talking about it. Which means ONI will have a hard time catching us when everyone else is trying to do the same.”
Niko frowned. “Sounds real safe.”
“It will be, if we play it right.”
“They’ll have their prowler in orbit,” Ram said, “maybe more than that. We might escape the meeting, but what about escaping the planet?”
“That’s why we use the upgrade seed. If we’re caught in space, then everything achieved on the ground will be for nothing. We need to make sure we can outrun them.”
Her chest went tight with the reality of what she was saying. She didn’t want to reconfigure her ship, didn’t want anything to change. But things had changed . . . and it was high time she accepted it and started playing by new rules, not the old ones.
She had a chance to outmatch the Office of Naval Intelligence itself and get her personal items back. And now, thanks to the armiger and his upgrade seed, she’d have the capability to search the galaxy more quickly than she’d ever thought possible. With the projections returned, finding her father seemed more of a reality than ever before.
How could she turn her back on an opportunity like that?
“Yes,” she finally said. “I’m sure.”
“So how do we do this?” Ram asked, looking at the armiger. “What can we expect?”
“The upgrade seed will not change the outer appearance of the ship; it will only strengthen its existing materials by hard light bonding. Inside, quantum and hard light filaments will intertwine with the ship’s existing systems, all directed by smart upgrade code, which I devised back on Triniel to create a custom integration between Forerunner technology and your ship’s current specifications and technologies. Therefore the advancements are bound by the limitations of the ship’s human design.
“The upgrade can be applied in orbit, but it is better to ground the ship and run on a
uxiliary power as the seed does its work. Once the process is complete, the Ace of Spades will have fully integrated Forerunner technologies, everything from stealth capability to upgraded weapons, comms, and navigational systems, kept within the framework of human operating functionality. The biggest feature, however, is the advance in slipspace travel. The upgrade seed will create a seamless integration between your FTL drive, Forerunner translight technology, and the slipstream flake, taking into account the materials available to work with and the size of the ship, of course.”
“Well,” said Niko. “As much as I loved the little guy, this leaves LB’s efforts in the dust.”
“Okay, so that’s settled then. We’ll do it here on the beach,” Rion said. “I’ll reply to Hahn, and then we’ll get started.”
CHAPTER 31
* * *
Everyone is asleep.
Dawn is approaching.
The upgrade process took approximately eighteen hours, fifty-three minutes, and eleven seconds. It is now complete, and the ship will prove an ample vessel in which to complete my task.
I stand at the control panel in the cargo hold and use it to access the comm satellite in orbit.
Once I enter the Juridical code into a secure message, I send and settle in to await a reply.
A warm breeze moves over the water beyond the cargo ramp. I imagine it picking up its salty scent and carrying it into the hold. The rhythmic sound of waves is quite enjoyable as well.
I let my mind wander through the present and into the deep past, the friendships made in Marontik, the courage of youth, the reckless and wild belief in invincibility. The friendships made amid fears and horrors. . . .
They are all there, waiting for me—personalities roaming in the halls of living memory. The only thing missing is me.
A reply flashes on the panel.
As expected, Catalog’s designation appears.
This Catalog is the last survivor of a triad, which formed during the end of the war to investigate crimes against the Mantle and record events surrounding the Didact, the Librarian, and Bornstellar. One of the triad was with the Librarian on Earth before the firing of the Halo Array; the second died on the shield world Sharpened Shield. As a triad, they formed a local network to share all recordings and investigative findings. “One unit, with three points of view,” as they say.
