The Thursday War

by Karen Traviss

He strode back to a curve in the wall and stood almost touching it, then stepped back again, frowning.

  “There was a corner there,” BB said. “Perhaps the stone reconfigured itself, like the cartouche symbols. Perhaps it’s a security door.”

  Phillips reached out and put his hand on the wall. “That’s very weird. It feels soft, but it isn’t. I thought my hand was going to go right through it.”

  “You should check your blood sugar.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Do I?”

  “Look, are you telling me that these passages are changing while I’m walking through them?”

  “It’s entirely possible.”

  “Oh, shit. How do we get out again, then?”

  “You won’t know until you try.”

  Phillips looked at his watch yet again. He could have checked the time on his datapad or asked BB, but he seemed to take great comfort from that obsolete piece of jewelry. BB wondered why the time mattered so much to him when he had no schedule.

  “I’m going to keep going while I can,” Phillips said.

  He went on walking, one hand skimming the right-hand wall while he looked at the left-hand one. “In case the Sangheili come after me and drag me out before I’m done. Come on, BB. We’re looking for anything with those Halo symbols now.”

  He could just ask. The lens on this camera gives me a 240-degree arc, so I’ll see panels before he does anyway.

  After a few minutes, Phillips slowed down and stopped to look up at the ceiling. Then he retraced his steps a little way.

  “BB,” he said. “There aren’t any lights. I can still see just fine, but there aren’t any lightbulbs.” He pointed upward as if BB didn’t get it. “Where’s the light coming from?”

  BB felt an urge to do something specific but wasn’t sure what. The impulse tormented him, the pain of knowledge that he knew he had but that remained beyond retrieval. How could he possibly forget anything? He knew that he had to respond to that question by analyzing the environment in a certain way, but that was as far as he could get. It was both terrifying and uncomfortable.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I know that I ought to be able to tell you.”

  “You haven’t got any special sensors, have you? Never mind. Not much you can do when you’re stuck in a radio.”

  Stuck in a radio. “I’ll feel better when I’m back in … a vessel, then.”

  “Well, yes, because you’ll be able to move at a zillion klicks a second and zap enemy ships. And stick your nose in anywhere you like.” Phillips started walking faster. “Can you feel that buzzing sensation?”

  “No, but I can see more panels about twenty meters ahead of you.”

  Phillips scratched the back of his hand. “It’s making my hair stand on end.”

  BB found himself so disturbed by the gaps that he kept detecting in his knowledge that it began to distract him. But if I can process information the way Phillips says I can, why can’t I keep my mind on several things at once? There was something very wrong with him. He wasn’t sure whether it was getting worse or if he was just becoming more aware of it. He was thinking too much without acquiring new data to improve his decision making. He had to stop that right now and concentrate on the task at hand.

  “Good grief,” Phillips said. The passage opened out into a large, rectangular chamber completely lined with carved panels. “I think this is going to take us some time. Come on, BB. Lots to process. Starting here … y’know, this is like a decorated burial chamber in a pyramid. Maybe it’s just someone’s life story. Or a control room. Or both.”

  BB had no opinion yet. He started recording and interpreting the symbols, hoping for clarity. Phillips moved along the four walls, facing them and taking slow sideways steps with his datapad held in the capture position. He didn’t need to. Suddenly BB felt anxious. He couldn’t define it, but this was troubling him.

  “You don’t trust me, do you?” BB said. That’s it. He’s keeping it from me. He’s humoring me. “I’m recording all this.”

  “Oh, I trust you, chum. It’s the hardware I don’t trust. It’s let us down once, and if it lets us down again, we’ll lose all this.” His heart rate was up and he was breathing faster. This seemed to be genuinely exciting for him. “I think this is a hundred thousand years old, like Onyx. Malleable stone. Real solid state engineering. What kind of technology does it take to create that? Could they manipulate stuff at a subatomic level?”

  “What happened to them?” BB asked. “Perhaps someone pressed a Halo button and they wiped themselves out.”

  Phillips did an odd thing. He lifted the camera without unclipping it and stared into the tiny lens, as if he was looking BB right in the eye. His face was upside down until BB inverted it. It was a thoughtful gesture in its way: Phillips had obviously remembered that BB’s view of the world was limited, and was trying to imagine what he could and couldn’t see.

  “You can be a very depressing little bastard, you know that?” Phillips said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Ah, no worries. Look, start translating this for me. What is it? What does it say?”

  BB wondered why any gloriously intelligent species—any being—would destroy itself. Accidents, perhaps: carelessness. But deliberate destruction … that spoke of terrifying desperation. He wondered what that felt like to suddenly want to cease exploring, thinking, finding out, when all your existence before that point had been about the pursuit of it.

  He matched and juggled symbols, trying out meanings and looking for patterns. The Halo symbols were repeated in here with the same status icons as the panel in the passage. There were other symbols, too, some identical to the ones in Halsey’s lexicon, and some—ouch. BB tried again. He felt as if something within him had reached out and slapped him hard. He was following a pathway, certain that it led to something he already knew, but a barrier kept blocking him. It hurt. He received a dozen more smacks even when he tried to reroute.

  “I know more than I can retrieve,” he said. “I ought to be able to translate much of this, because I recognize it, but something won’t let me access the meaning.”

  Phillips sighed. “That’s probably because half of what Halsey found on Onyx ended up being classified. Don’t worry. You’ll sort it when you reintegrate with yourself. Do what you can for the time being.”

  “I’ve failed you.”

  “BB, humans are used to this. You go out drinking with friends. One of them gets completely hammered, does a few daft things, and next day he can’t remember what he said. But he sobers up, everyone reminds him what a dick he made of himself, and everything’s okay. It’s just a temporary embarrassment.”

  That level of detail sounded almost autobiographical, but BB decided not to ask. “Very well.” Phillips had complete confidence in him. BB hoped he had grounds for that. “We have what seems to be a repeater panel of the Halo status. And there’s also another panel with a reference to the regulator or regulations, the one with the negative phoneme, except there’s additional material.”

  BB re-ran every symbol in the room, every phoneme, every pictograph, every vowel point. So … that implied an agent, so this one didn’t mean regulations. It meant someone who imparted them, taught them, instructed, and the negative phoneme … ah, there were two versions of it, one with the sense of not to be changed, not to be questioned, immutable, didactic—which seemed to be a noun—and one that was a command, an exhortation not to do something.

  “Just tell me. Think aloud.” Phillips was starting to sound impatient. BB felt he was the drunken friend being given leeway in the belief that he’d be sober in the morning. “I’m a linguist too, remember.”

  “There’s a reference to an inflexible teacher, I believe. A dictator, in the literal sense. A didact. There’s also a warning not to do something regarding that person—or rank of persons. It could mean anything, but it’s repeated several times, and—oh, that’s interesting. There’s another occurrence of that super
ior idea.”

  Phillips had both hands flat on the wall now, but placed carefully in blank areas. “So, it’s something like don’t do X or Y regarding this rank or person … without the approval of a superior.”

  “That’s a big leap, but why not?”

  “It’s a control room. Or a guard house. It’s either the rules and regs written on the walls, or it’s an alarm center. Okay, perhaps I’m thinking too human. But everything we’ve seen says they had a lot in common with us. They weren’t methane-breathing globs of gel. Not that I’m being methanist.”

  “I believe some of the symbols are coordinates.”

  “Just grab everything you can. Once I’m out of here, I doubt they’ll let me back in.” Phillips pushed back from the wall and started pacing sideways around the edge of the room again. He recorded it all from a different angle. “For all we know, the Arbiter might blow this place up if ‘Telcam doesn’t win.”

  “Do you want ‘Telcam to win?”

  “Apparently, we want them both to win. And lose. A stalemate. A never-ending nil-nil draw that’s gone into injury time and has an endless penalty shoot-out.”

  “Should I understand soccer, Professor?”

  “You get the idea. We want to keep them busy.”

  Phillips stood staring at the wall for a long time without saying a word. Then he reached into his bag and took out something. It was food. BB could hear his jaws chomping and see the movement of his throat. Eventually he swallowed for the last time and went back to the wall, running his hand along it.

  “Furry barrier … another furry barrier … and now the dictatorish didactic bit … whoa.” As his hand passed over the panel that warned not to do something, whatever it was, the symbols changed conspicuously. One of them lit up, red and blue. “Christ, is that light right in the stone? That’s some trick.”

  “I really think you should leave it alone.”

  “I hear you.” Phillips took a lot more images of the panel, then touched the plain section next to it and the lights went out. “I hope it’s not a burglar alarm. If we get a bunch of Forerunner cops kicking the doors down, you’ll know what it was.”

  “There are no more Forerunners.”

  “You’re never normally this literal. I could get pissed off with this if I didn’t know you’d be back to normal soon.” Phillips went on, touching every part of the walls that he could reach. He didn’t seem deterred by the risk. Then, without warning, a piece of stone extruded from the wall as his fingers passed over it. For a second it looked like a plain brick, but then it took shape, developing intricate perforations and turning into a sphere.

  “Doorknob?” BB suggested.

  Phillips pressed his face close to it as if he was trying to peer inside. BB couldn’t see his expression, but he heard the wet click as his jaws moved and the muscles under his chin tightened. He was smiling.

  “No,” he said. His fingers spun the sphere and BB could see that the doorknob was in fact interconnecting, nested layers. “Arum. Do you remember any of that? The Sangheili puzzle ball that’s supposed to teach their kids persistence and that everyone has their allotted station in society. Except arums are completely smooth, and this has holes carved in it.”

  “And you’re going to open it.”

  “Might as well try.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “We’ll see.”

  BB had to admit it was an impressive skill. It took Phillips under a minute to turn the spheres in such a way that something went click deep inside. That was very fast indeed for a slow-thinking entity like a human.

  “Now what?” Phillips stepped back. “Don’t I get a cuddly toy or a coconut or something? Ah … look.”

  The panel in front of him was changing completely. BB watched the stone rearranging itself like coalescing mercury. Now the symbols offered a long list of options, locations judging by the string of numbers after each, and the engraving right at the top read …

  “Doors.” BB was pretty sure now. “Portals. Entrances. Powered in some way. Expressway? Elevators? No, Professor, don’t touch them.”

  Phillips took a deep breath and held it. “Let’s give it a go,” he said. “This might be the only chance I ever get.”

  “Don’t you think that we should wait and—”

  “Can’t,” Phillips said, and touched the first symbol on the list.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT THE FORERUNNERS AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED IS WHY THEY’RE NOT AROUND ANY LONGER. SPECIES GO EXTINCT ALL THE TIME, BUT SOME OF THEIR RELATIVES USUALLY SURVIVE. A TECHNOLOGICALLY SOPHISTICATED, GALACTICALLY DISTRIBUTED RACE GETTING WIPED OUT TO THE LAST INDIVIDUAL, THOUGH—THAT REQUIRES INTERVENTION.

  (ADMIRAL MARGARET PARANGOSKY, CINCONI)

  VADAM, SANGHELIOS

  So this was Jul’s world; this was what he did, what he’d done almost every day since Raia had first met him, and it was nothing like she’d imagined. It was noise and shock and blinding light, and now it stank of blood, too.

  She ducked as the bolt of white fire came right at her. It was pure instinct, absolute animal terror, but the missile detonated some way off Unflinching Resolve’s bow and never made contact at all. The shock wave did, though. The ship shuddered and bucked. Two strips of metal broke free from the bulkhead and shot across the deck, one bouncing down the polished metal, the other embedding itself like a blade in one of the warriors at the helm controls. He went down like a felled tree. The metal fragment vibrated for a few seconds, standing upright in his back. Two of his brothers rushed forward to drag him clear but Raia didn’t see where they took him or even if he was still alive. She cowered. Nobody on the bridge took any notice of her. She couldn’t see what was happening outside, and the glimpses she snatched of monitors and sensors meant nothing to her.

  Buran roared, exasperated, grabbing the helm. “We must withdraw, Field Master. Do you hear me? We need to withdraw, or move into orbit.”

  ‘Telcam stood at the console as if he hadn’t even noticed the ground fire coming up at the ship. The deck shook again.

  “And the Arbiter will pursue us into space, Buran, and where will we go from there?” he asked. “We have nowhere to retreat.”

  “We weren’t ready to move.”

  “But we moved nonetheless, and the battle isn’t lost yet. Come about. Bring the ship around.”

  Raia looked to her side. A young male was trying to repair a control panel that smoked and sparked every time he touched it.

  “We’ve lost navigation, my lord,” he said. “I can’t repair it.”

  “Then we fly by sight, Dunil.” ‘Telcam stalked across the deck and went to the other viewscreen. “I need cannon. Now.”

  Raia caught Dunil’s eye. “Are we going to crash?” she asked.

  “Possibly, my lady.” He lowered his voice. “Bend your limbs and protect your head if we start to lose height. That might save you from breaking bones.”

  The booming sound was louder and the white-hot flashes were much closer together now. Then the whole ship lurched as if it had crashed into something. Raia felt the shock ripple back through the deck. Jets of white vapor began punching out of conduits that then burst and sent fluid gushing like a ruptured artery.

  “Direct hit!” someone roared. “Direct hit! The hull is breached, we’re losing height, we have no propulsion—”

  The ship peeled off in a totally different direction, suddenly much quieter, and for a moment there was an illusion of things returning to normal, but everyone was rushing to console positions and Raia knew it was anything but.

  “Crash landing,” Buran yelled. “Brace for crash landing. Steer to the shore.”

  “Shipmaster, we can’t—”

  “I said steer for the shoreline!”

  I won’t survive this.

  I’m going to die, and I’ll never find Jul.

  Raia braced as she was told, waiting second after second for an impact that would throw her into dar
k oblivion. I’m sorry, Jul. I had to try. Then there was a huge jolt, then another, and another, and the deck was bouncing her like a pebble on the skin of a drum. Metal screamed. Fittings tore from the bulkheads. The lights went out. Then everything stopped dead and she was flung into a row of bench seats.

  Now I’m dead. Now I’ll see for myself if the gods exist or not, and if they do I shall spit on them for abandoning us when we most needed them.

  But she wasn’t dead, or else she wouldn’t have been able to feel the rip in her shoulder muscles as someone grabbed her and tried to pull her with them.

  “Get out, my lady.” It was Dunil. “We’ll be burned alive if we don’t run.”

  Instinct made her scramble upright and run with him, stumbling over bodies and not looking down to see who they were. She was swept up in the tide as everyone abandoned ship. Cool, fresh air hit her face and she was suddenly skidding down a torn sheet of metal the size of a raft, hot under her hands, then falling a short distance onto grass and pebbles. She had already run some way from the wreckage before she looked back to see what was cracking and groaning behind her.

  Flames licked what was left of the hull for a few moments, then engulfed it. The last thing she saw before she fled for her life was jets of leaking coolant ignite and send columns of flame into the air like blowtorches. When had she last run like this, throwing every muscle fiber into it? She’d been a child. She’d been playing chase with her brothers and sisters. As she grew up, she learned that females didn’t run. They had no need to.

  But she needed to run now. Her legs pumped but she felt as if she were struggling through mud. Her lungs screamed for breath. Then a blast—silent, oddly silent—caught her full in the back and lifted her off the ground. She landed hard and the last gulps of air were knocked out of her. Noise and blisteringly hot air swept over her moments later. All she could do was lie there, unable to move, noticing just how many small black clouds of smoke were hanging in the sky above her, and wait to die.

  Someone grabbed her arm again and pulled her to her feet. “Run, my lady.” It was Dunil, the young male who’d been so patient with her on the bridge. “We have to get out.”