“We die by your side, glorious and honorably!” a warrior called out from one of the entrances to the command bridge.
“Indeed,” Rojka said, turning and looking down the main corridor from where his death might approach.
He fervently hoped Thars himself would lead the attack.
CHAPTER 2
* * *
* * *
Melody ran through the high, almost cathedral-like arched corridors of the Unwavering Discipline. The walls of the alien ship swirled with dark reds and purples unlike any of the neutral, gray materials Melody knew from her time on UNSC vessels. The first time she’d boarded a Sangheili ship, Melody had surreptitiously knocked on a wall to make sure it was solid, not some fleshy substance, as if she were standing inside some living thing. A giant whale.
Right now she was deep in the belly of the beast. Inside a Covenant ship.
No, not Covenant anymore, Melody corrected herself, as she skidded around another bend. This was a Sangheili ship. The Covenant had mostly collapsed during what the Sangheili often referred to as the Great Schism. And they were still trying to figure out how to thrive in this new post-Covenant era. That included a splinter group of Sangheili swooping down on what had once been a human colony world on the edge of the Joint Occupied Zone. A world this splinter group of Sangheili had believed was abandoned.
And it had been, to be fair to the Sangheili, until those who’d been forced to leave it during the war finally managed to come back.
The human refugees who had narrowly survived the Covenant’s vicious attack on their world returned to Carrow’s surface, moving in to rebuild the abandoned city of Suraka, and they immediately found the Sangheili already several months into building their own keeps on the far side of the desert that separated them.
Go broker a peace between the Sangheili and Surakans on Carrow, Melody had been told. Fighting’s already breaking out in the Uldt desert. Talk to Fleetmaster Rojka ‘Kasaan. Find a solution that everyone can live with, because we can’t let this blossom into a local war on Carrow that drags the UNSC into an all-out conflict over the JOZ with the Sangheili.
But understand that it will all be a cover for a much more important mission—
“Watch yourself, nishum!” A Sangheili foot soldier shoved Melody aside as he bounded around a turn. She dodged just in time to avoid being slammed against the wall by another just behind him.
Nishum: the name of an intestinal parasite, used as a pejorative for human. Melody watched him disappear, then kept moving.
After the Covenant first showed up a generation ago, there’d been a brief, exciting moment across a number of military-contracted scientific communities on Earth where they debated what it truly meant to make contact with not just one but multiple alien species for the first time. Surely the initial attacks in the Outer Colonies had been the result of some sort of communication breakdown, a misunderstanding.
Melody guessed that, at the first notice of the Covenant’s existence, it had been thrilling to know that humanity was not alone. For several days, the universe would have had stopped seeming so vast and sterile. There was suddenly the promise of teeming civilizations and incredible discoveries humankind had yet to stumble across.
Any feelings humanity would have had like that were quickly strangled and murdered, as reports and vids of planets that had been glassed by Covenant ships trickled back to those same communities. The Covenant’s leadership—the Prophets—wrapped their atrocious actions in a religious fervor that burned inexorably from world to world. It was like a horrific story from the pages of some history book. It hadn’t been a dream come true to find out that there were other thinking creatures out there in the void of space—it had been a damn nightmare.
The Covenant implacably destroyed human outposts and colonies no matter what was done to stop them . . . until the threat finally made it to Earth itself, to the coastal megacity of New Mombasa—the one place on Earth that she called home. Melody had stopped thinking about the future, back then. There had only been survival.
After the war, Melody faced her fears, however, and became an envoy to some of the very aliens that had laid siege to New Mombasa, those who had destroyed everything she’d once loved and held dear. It was almost impossible to stop thinking of them as part of a merciless enemy force and start considering them as individuals. Individuals made up of different political groups and tribes. Especially since they had stratified and splintered after the war into different ideologies. And different levels of threat.
Some of her colleagues still referred to the Sangheili as the Covenant, but it was an incorrect shorthand. As an official envoy, a diplomatic representative of the Unified Earth Government, she knew better. There were countless different Sangheili groups, all with distinct ideologies and agendas. Some looked very much like the former Covenant, but others were the exact opposite.
Again, these were Sangheili. Not the faceless foes of the past thirty years. She’d spent two months embedded here in their culture, on their ship, as she had tried to negotiate peace.
But that had clearly failed, and now Melody was back to where she’d been as a civilian in New Mombasa: once again focused on surviving minute to minute.
Another brutal impact rocked the Unwavering Discipline. She slammed against the nearby wall and caught her breath. Melody wondered if she could have tried harder to urge Rojka to attack his enemies when they began destroying human ships that could get out to call for help. It would make us look weak, she knew Rojka would have told her. You must always show your power when negotiating with Sangheili, Melody had been taught.
She summoned all her strength at hand. This next step was going to be hard.
Melody turned the corner and passed through the door of one of the ship’s armories. A massive Sangheili weapons master looked her up and down with all the studied displeasure of a creature finding something foul on its doorstep. Other Sangheili browsed the racks of Covenant weaponry stretched behind the alien, and there was a studied hush in the air, as if they all stood inside a library.
Melody mustered up a reservoir of calm. “I am here for weapons,” she said with all the affectation of a general who expected everyone to jump at the sound of her voice.
The towering guard looked haughtily back down at her. “A weapons master cannot equip you,” he growled with a deep rumble. “You are not a fighter.”
In charge of this armory, the Sangheili guard was the closest thing to a quartermaster Melody had encountered aboard the ship. “How will I prove my honor when your vessel is boarded?” she snapped at him. Several warriors perusing racks of weaponry in the far back paused to look over at her. “Will you strip that from me by your refusal to give me a weapon?”
The Sangheili seemed agitated. “You are a weaponless negotiator. A human. You were not permitted to bring weapons aboard to begin with.”
“That was before,” Melody said. “But now I’m forced to stand with you. I will fight. I must fight.”
“This I understand,” he replied. “But . . .”
“But yet you still refuse me.”
That finally got his attention. He reared back and balefully regarded her. “You have no rights here. You are not Sangheili.”
“I have the right to fight with honor! Summon your fleetmaster. Refuse Rojka ‘Kasaan to his face. But I—” Melody gambled and hoped that Sangheili were unsure about other species’ emotions, as she was sure her fear showed on her face right now. “I will be armed.”
Now she mentally crossed her fingers and shoved past him, leaning her shoulder in hard so that when she struck him, it would actually move the alien ever so slightly out of her way.
He’s going to cut off my head, she thought.
The weapons master was visibly furious. But the thought of hailing the fleetmaster for something so seemingly trivial was clearly not a palatable option, and the strike she half expected from behind never came. Melody didn’t dare turn around or show weakness. She walked ove
r to the nearest row of weapons.
With a slightly trembling hand, ignoring the murderous stares of the Sangheili further down the stacks, she grabbed three plasma grenades. One for each of the pockets in her uniform.
But then there was the most important thing. On a tour of the armory two months ago, she’d noticed something almost discarded in a corner. Was it still here? Melody stalked around the shelf. Yes, there it was: a dusty Kig-Yar point defense shield. She strapped it on her forearm and tested it. The transparent concave shield of energy flared into existence.
She quickly turned it off and grabbed a plasma pistol. Type-25 Directed Energy Pistol—she remembered that from ONI training. It was one of the smallest weapons in the Covenant arsenal, yet in her human hands it looked massive and bulky.
“A tiny weapon for a tiny creature,” one of the warriors standing nearby spat as she left, still working on cultivating an air of confidence aimed in their direction.
The guard growled as she left but made no move to stop her or confiscate her ordnance.
As soon as she was out of the armory, Melody let out yet another breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and then started to jog. She’d been walking the innards of this ship for weeks now. It had taken her all of that time to persuade Fleetmaster Rojka to agree to a meeting with the leadership of Carrow’s human contingent over the future of the joint occupation of the planet by their two species. It had been the first formal meeting since they’d both settled into Rak and Suraka on their different sides of the Uldt.
She’d even hoped that maybe, when it was all over, they could sit down over coffee and perhaps even settle on the same damn name for the planet.
Then the real fighting started. It had sprung from Rojka’s own ranks, once-loyal allies that had become enemies, possibly seeing his willingness to negotiate as weakness. Many Sangheili down on the planet and in the fleet had been expecting to force the humans into a treaty of the Sangheili’s choosing. Words like compromise and negotiate weren’t an active part of their lexicon.
Melody would have put money on Rojka winning this little civil war until the Jiralhanae had arrived. ONI reports indicated that the Brute fleet’s leader had even more seasoned warriors behind him, and was a far more skilled commander than the Sangheili estimated.
None of this was going as planned. She’d expected to have much more time to figure out how to negotiate both a planetary peace and the other mission—the critical handover back to ONI of the Spartans locked away in individual cryotubes. ONI wanted their property back and Melody was supposed to get it for them.
Instead, she was now risking her life at the last minute to try and get at the Spartans while the world fell apart around her.
What a mess. What a damn mess.
These ships are too old, Rojka ‘Kasaan thought. The deckplates creaked. The engines struggled; there were not enough trained Sangheili throughout to maintain them. Barely enough to crew them. In fact, these aging cruisers had not been flown for some time. Rojka had been bitter about being forced to watch over the ill-repaired reserve fleets during the Great Schism.
But when it had come time to assemble a small fleet of his own out of those ships, and flee to create a new life, he had been fortunate to have that ability. Other kaidons did not have such a luxury, landlocked to their own worlds and whatever fates they held.
Now, to watch these same ships he had nursed and rebuilt over the years burn—that tore something deep inside him.
Khoto ‘Gaaran, one of his trusted commanders, hailed Rojka from the still-surviving frigate Vengeful Deed. “I will not be able to join your side,” Khoto said. “The Jiralhanae fleet divides us too effectively.”
“I thought you were already gone to us,” Rojka said. And then after a moment: “Khoto, you have fought as well as any fleetmaster could expect. I would not fault you for turning back for Sanghelios. Leave Rakoi in your wake; there is nothing more for us here on this world, I fear—”
“I think I can severely damage the lead Jiralhanae cruiser,” Khoto interrupted. “It has turned from battle and is heading down to the planet’s surface.”
An interesting development, Rojka thought. Where is it going? The daylong battle in orbit had changed from feinting and dancing around each other into the locked embrace that was currently the final showdown. He hadn’t had an opportunity to scan the planet’s surface since his enemies had closed in on him.
“It is finished,” Rojka said. “There is only death here now. Leave, my friend.”
“I have no plans to leave,” Khoto said. “And there is nothing for me on our people’s homeworld. I came here of my own volition. And now it has been spoiled for me. First by the humans, and now by our traitorous own. But I am closing in. The Jiralhanae will know our vengeance.”
Khoto’s small and barely shielded frigate would last minutes, if that.
Rojka watched the holographic projections of the battlespace as the Jiralhanae cruisers responded to the Vengeful Deed’s sudden swoop toward their leading warship. They lumbered about, trying to catch it. The space between the vessels quickly filled with a barrage of plasma fire from the Jiralhanae craft as they gave up on the chase and simply started shooting.
Within seconds, the debris of Khoto’s ship spread out in a fading cloud. Rojka closed his eyes for a brief moment and allowed himself to silently mourn his friend.
“Fleetmaster, the traitor hails us,” a communications officer called out. Rojka’s eyes snapped open, watching the Jiralhanae cruiser continue to make its way for Rakoi’s surface.
Rojka turned his attention to the command bridge, incredulous. “Thars himself wants to speak, now?”
“Yes, Fleetmaster,” the officer replied.
“Put him through, then.”
Thars ‘Sarov appeared in a hologram before them all, and it took everything for Rojka to hold on to the reins of his rage. He would remain calm, not show his emotions to an upstart that still licked the shell of his own afterbirth off his face. An upstart that Rojka had sheltered, given ships to, and even elevated to the rank of shipmaster itself!
Cousin. Traitor. Worm.
“So . . . you will be trying to board my ship soon,” said Rojka. “I wonder if you will come to face me yourself? Or will you wait until others have risked all?”
Thars did not allow himself to be baited. The younger Sangheili appeared to gloat instead, enjoying a moment of triumph from afar.
“Surrender now, and I will let your lineage and what few supporters you have among the keeps of Rak live,” Thars said. “Tell them all to cooperate and not seek revenge.”
Ah. Thars was worried about holding on to power. A confident leader would move forward and not try to cut a deal. He would face the challenges and dissenters after a moment of grasping for control, and do this head-on. Rojka decided to prod this deficiency.
“Do you see the Jiralhanae headed for the surface?” Rojka asked. “What reserve ships have you set to protect the keeps of Rak? Fool! The Jiralhanae are now moving against you.”
“Rak does not need protection, cousin,” Thars rumbled. “The Jiralhanae are not headed for our colony. They are landing their packs in the human city. I knew they would do this.”
“Was that their price?” Rojka said. “If you’d stood by my side, we could have had all that we wanted from the humans.”
“Yet you negotiate with the creatures that destroyed our own homeworld!” Thars shouted. “Or do you not remember Glyke? Have you forgotten the strong rivers and thundering winds of the world that we were born to? And all the Sangheili who burned with it? The humans will give us nothing that we cannot take! But you? We all know you would let them leash you, and that your human master walks the halls of your ship.”
As Rojka had watched the human ships burn, he had kept thinking of ways to work with the envoy to keep war from obliterating yet another world. There had been so much death already. And Glyke . . .
He pushed that from his mind and squeezed his
fist tight to speak. “You did not destroy the human fleet—you dealt it a blow that gave us a solid ground with which to negotiate.”
“An act you would never have had the courage to begin.”
“But many of those ships in the attack fled to regroup,” Rojka continued. “That is how the humans fight. You cannot swat a cloud of flies and declare them dead. They are still hiding out in the system, waiting for their best chance to strike back. A bargain with the humans would have—”
“Left us bowed before an inferior species. The humans here on this world will know our strength. When I am done, they will even cease to call it their home.”
Rojka forced himself not to howl with rage. What strength did the Sangheili have left here after fighting each other and destroying so many of their own ships? Thars had made them weak. And now he had invited another enemy into the fray. “Thars. The Jiralhanae will betray you.”
“After they take care of the humans for us?” Thars said. “Then they will have served their purpose. I will come from behind and slit their throats, one by one. And then I will occupy the city such that when the human military arrives, I will explain that their colonists needed protection from the Jiralhanae. I will not have to beg them for anything—they will be indebted to me.”
Rojka digested that. The plan, though overly complex, did have merit. “I must admit that you are cunning, like the humans.”
The satisfied look on Thars’s face faded. “While you played steward to a dusty, mothballed fleet around Sanghelios, I watched Glyke burn with my own eyes. Our homeworld, cousin, brought to utter and complete ruin even after the war with the humans had come to an end. A cowardly assassination by cowardly creatures. Do not compare me to the vermin. I will have Rakoi as payment. Tell me only if you want your name to be added to your clan’s battle poem. Or if I should merely bury it in the rubble I shall make of your family, along with the keep you have built on the desert’s edge.”
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