But no matter how many times she carefully made that clear, that anything Rojka wanted was on the table, the fleetmaster had refused to talk about them.
They are demons, was all Rojka would utter when they met privately about the Spartans, the very subject upsetting him enough that Melody would drop it. Her staff had looked terrified whenever Rojka acted like that. Even his own retinue, the handpicked few around Rojka whom he trusted with the knowledge that the Spartans were on board, seemed uneasy about the subject being brought up. We will discuss their fate after the treaty, after we decide the fate of Rakoi—not before.
Melody smiled. Her staff—Adam, Victoria, and Jens. It would be good to see familiar faces again. They’d bonded under some horrible circumstances. Refugee riots in Valles Marineris on Mars. People throwing bottles at her from behind a barricade of furniture, just outside an office building in the Tenderloin District. Shouting at the soldiers not to fire.
Usually, hard times pulled people in uniform together.
Not Gray Team though. Not on the last mission, whatever it was.
She looked over at the endless sand dunes that sprawled off to her right. The Spartans had been on the move for hours. They’d been thawed from cryosleep, shot at, dropped out of orbit, crash-landed in the middle of a desert, and now they were plowing on. Just how the hell did they do it?
One step at a time, apparently.
Or in Melody’s case, one wheezy breath at a time. She coughed, wiping the backs of her fingers across her lips and looking at the blood on her fingernails.
That wasn’t good.
She realized that she might have to tell them the truth sooner than expected. Give up that dark secret and hand over to the Spartans the burden of what she knew about this world. The real reason ONI sent her here.
They weren’t cleared for it. But she had little choice, didn’t she?
Melody Azikiwe knew she was dying.
The Jiralhanae cruiser Foebane hung over Suraka, its great weapons now silent.
Hekabe pointed at the bottom of the deep pit they’d excavated. “There!”
Anexus squinted.
Hekabe retrieved his gravity hammer as well as an object wrapped in old cloth and thorn beast leather from an armored receptacle he had brought with him from Foebane. He then carefully picked his way down the smooth, gentle slope at the side of the pit. The hole stretched several kilometers from one side to the other, with an increasingly steep decline toward the center, a hundred meters deep at the very least. In some places, the vitrified soil that remained still glowed red from the ship’s plasma bombardment. The heat singed the unshaven fur around his legs, but he paid it no mind.
Anexus gingerly followed him. Hekabe had ordered the rest of his packs to stay back at the edge of the pit to protect his secret. “Yes, I see it!”
Smoke curled away from a fifteen-meter spire in the middle of the pit. As they approached, its details became more visible. The spire, which seemed to be a stark ivory color at first, finally caught the light and glinted, its oily blue and green surface shifting colors slightly as the sun played across it. Hekabe quickened his pace toward the spire, ignoring the heat of the barely cooled ground all around him. Anexus had paused to stamp at a small part of his leg that had caught fire.
“Exactly where the holy writs declared,” Hekabe said, deeply satisfied. He grabbed Anexus by the arm and dragged him forward. “Now I can tell you what I seek.”
“Chieftain?”
“When we displaced the Sangheili by the Prophets’ side as Honor Guard, most of our kind assumed we had succeeded in everything. We were promised the richest planets, the greatest Forerunner reliquaries. Total authority over the Covenant military. We knew we would stand with the Prophets when the Great Journey began.”
The ground cracked and popped as they walked across it. Anexus glanced nervously around. The crust under their feet threatened to break, dropping them down into the liquid rock that likely still roiled underneath. The oppressive heat made Anexus pant as he carefully followed. His weakness, even in the hour of their triumph, was dissatisfying to the chieftain.
“When the Prophets proved only to bring ruin on the Covenant by failing to secure the Ark and the Sacred Rings, still I did not lose hope. What remained of our people were scattered, fleeing from our new position of power to other hidden worlds. But I never rested, Anexus,” Hekabe continued. “Most would assume our kind to be incurious and primitive. But I took advantage of the opportunities presented to me while we had power firmly in our claws.”
Hekabe had used his newfound authority aboard one of the Covenant cruisers to wage the final battle against the human and Sangheili forces on the Ark, the Forerunners’ great foundry-preserve that had created the ancient Halo ringworlds. The Sacred Rings were made to kill a mysterious parasite known as the Flood and usher their Makers into the divine beyond. But what remained of the Covenant was defeated by the Sangheili’s treachery, and so killed any hope for the Great Journey. Hekabe thought it might also be the end of all that the Jiralhanae had achieved in their coup . . .
And then he found this, the leather-wrapped object he carried.
Stealing the object Hekabe had brought to this world meant risking his entire pack on a stealth attack in the middle of this tragic defeat. Hekabe had led his warriors on a mission deep into the underworld of the Ark, when High Charity, the Holy City of the Covenant, crashed into the foundry’s surface, releasing the Flood across its surface. As the parasite infested the Ark, and Sangheili and Covenant ships fought above, Hekabe led his pack into the depths, finding this object—a holy relic—one of the most significant machines ever conceived of by the Forerunners. He had lost many good warriors that day. It was nearly six years later that he managed to decipher the relic’s hidden meaning and find the world it pointed to—Rakoi.
Pledging the warriors he’d gathered to himself in those six years to the weaker Sangheili kaidon on this world and then betraying that arrogant rodent Thars had been the last step on Hekabe’s long journey toward power.
Hekabe stopped at the foot of the spire. This structure, which he had risked everything to expose, was finally here in front of him. The spire was only the tip of what was buried deep, all the way to this planet’s mantle. Its roots reached down toward the magma. Based on what he had encountered on other worlds, Hekabe believed that it could power itself forever off that molten rock.
“Do we blast our way in?” Anexus asked.
“Only if you wish to die. This is far enough.”
He carefully put the relic on the ground, adhering to the ritual he had learned from the sacred writings.
The leathery covering sizzled and caught fire, quickly dissolving to ash. A metal box was revealed, Forerunner hieroglyphs imprinted on its sides. The symbols briefly flared with embers.
Hekabe opened the box by pressing grooves on its sides, ignoring the pain from the heat, and wrapped his large hands around a fist-sized, pearly metallic orb embedded into a blue-gray helmetlike device composed of strange ancient metal that seemed almost malleable. The moment he touched the object, blue arcs of energy traced their way through the metal, like the slow-moving lightning strikes he had seen many times sailing across the water-graves of Warial. The blue light lit Hekabe’s face from underneath in a ghoulish glow.
“Remember this moment, Anexus,” Hekabe said, as he carefully lifted the alien device up into the air. The ruined ground beneath them hummed, as though a mechanical sleeping giant rose from its slumber somewhere far below the crust of the cooling stone they stood on. Something indescribably vast, ancient, and powerful stirred. “This is the moment where Jiralhanae no longer struggle for their place. Where none of us will have to negotiate peace through weakness, but instead, we will demand respect by way of our strength.”
The spire trembled. Seams appeared on its sides and began to open.
“Our homeworld has been shattered. We are reduced to stealing from other species just to survive. The Sangheili
called us beasts of burden—mere thralls to be ordered—and they laughed.” Hekabe shook his head sadly. “I say instead we will rise. We will take what is rightfully ours, what the Prophets could never provide. And you, Anexus, you will one day tell others of this story, that you stood by me to see this glorious day.”
The spire before them now split apart, opening like a giant beak at first, then splitting yet again. Each sliver of spire lowered itself like a drawbridge, until what had once been seamless turned into four enormous triangular petals flowering before the sun. Each of the petals quickly fell open into the weakened rock, throwing up molten debris as their backs struck the surface.
Hekabe watched with interest as the nearest petal struck ground just a few strides away. Melted rock pelted down around his legs and feet, some of it sizzling on his armor. He moved forward with the device in his hand and stepped onto the petal. It was surprisingly cool under his foot, the heat unable to penetrate through the metal.
The petals had parted to reveal an open core—a sheer ledge that surrounded a hole which fell down into the darkest depths of the planet. Ornate ramps impossibly spiraled around the core, carved into the gray metal structures. They seemed to wend in and out of the raw bedrock. A red glow illuminated the empty abyss of the shaft. Entire handfuls of the tallest buildings in the city around them could be swallowed up in that dimness, Hekabe realized as his eyes adjusted to the scale.
“Come, Anexus,” Hekabe ordered, “summon the war packs to join us. They too should bear witness to this event.”
Anexus instead looked frightened, peering down the suddenly formed entrance to the structure. “What is it?”
“Power, Anexus. Power that the Prophets would have hid from us all. What lies beneath would have let us win the war against the humans and the Sangheili. It is what will make us strong again. Come with me, and I will show you what the gods attempted to keep secret, even from their own kind.”
CHAPTER 11
* * *
* * *
Rojka ‘Kasaan stood near a small body of water as one of his warriors crawled out of it onto its muddy bank. After the crash of the Unwavering Discipline, and after he had fought for his life while trapped on his own command bridge, he had overseen salvaging whatever the surviving crew could from the wreckage. They had dragged out weapons, equipment, and supplies onto the side of the mountain, and then quickly continued their hunt. “The humans’ escape craft is down there, Fleetmaster. But there are no bodies.”
Rojka looked at the disturbed water. Shimmering, rainbow-colored oil coated the surface. The tracker that Rojka had tagged the Demon Three’s ship with had failed when they landed in this very spot. Presumably their arrival had been violent—he silently hoped there was injury involved, but not fatal: Rojka himself wanted the honor of providing that. Then the Demon Three must have shoved their escape craft into the water. “Was there a sign of fire in their craft?” Rojka asked.
The warrior looked surprised. “Yes, Fleetmaster.” A number of Sangheili were scattered around the site, keeping their weapons aimed up the mountain in case of ambush. Others walked the grounds, looking for clues along the giant run of plowed earth the human pod had clearly made when it crashed.
“They pushed it into the water to extinguish a fire?” Daga asked. “But where did they go afterward?”
Scanning the location intently, Rojka walked the area in circles and stopped near a tree with several broken branches. He pushed at the branches, gauging their strength. “No one has found any demon armor?”
“No, Fleetmaster.”
“The envoy is wounded and they carry her,” Rojka announced. There were missing branches that had been broken free. He guessed they had been lashed together with some ties. It could feasibly carry a human, but not a Spartan. “That will slow them.”
He looked at another broken branch from a leafy section of the tree.
Clever. They would use that to disguise their tracks.
“What is it?” Daga asked.
“Look for any disturbance leading away from the site. Not the prints of their feet. Any disturbed ground, something that could not have been caused by the wind. Everyone!”
As Rojka turned, he again caught the pillar of smoke up the mountain range. Unwavering Discipline burned still. Rojka growled in the back of his throat. Since he had learned to walk, he had looked up to the vessels heading into the inky black of space and wanted nothing more than to command one of them. He had all but worshipped the greatest and most renowned of Covenant shipmasters his entire life. And he had fought so hard toward the goal of being one himself. To stand with a control dais beneath his feet.
Life once had such purpose. Yet now his ship lay destroyed on this planet’s surface. Half of the surviving crew he had been forced to leave behind. They would attempt to fix whatever they could pull from the wreckage, then catch up to him. The other half, who now stood around Rojka, equipped with a handful of working vehicles, hunted the Spartans with no delay. And the crew who had perished, Sangheili who looked to him to pilot them among the stars, lay inside the ship. They had died fighting the intruders or as their own ship fell apart around them on impact. Their bodies too would become part of the pyre of his own dreams. All his hopes had been swallowed up by deceit and betrayal.
Thars ‘Sarov. The envoy. The Demon Three.
Daga moved beside him, looking in the same direction. “We lost many.”
“We tried to build something here on this world, Daga. Now it is all ashes. We cannot even defend Rak. Our lineages will be vulnerable to the Jiralhanae and the Spartans, maybe even the humans. We have failed.”
Maybe the humans were right in the way they fought for life, not honor. Perhaps survival was tantamount, not the integrity of valor. Had he not been goaded into this battle with Thars, Rojka could have simply withdrawn to protect his keep at Rak. Or hidden away and waited until he was stronger.
He thought back to the cool river running through ‘Kassan Keep. The cylindrical spires of his greenhouses and the columns of the courtyard in his half-built home. The trees, the farmlands just outside of it. Those who remained in Rak, who were right now likely laying supplies in the bunkers and wondering if they had a future.
So many things had changed. Would Rojka end his life questioning everything? Was nothing he had been taught by his uncles on the sand of his keep back on Glyke set in stone? Certainly not, because Glyke itself had been destroyed. It almost felt like everything he had thought and believed on that world had been swept away along with it.
Daga had looked startled to hear his fleetmaster admit defeat, even tentatively. Maybe, Rojka thought, Daga too would try to kill him soon.
Was Rojka really a coward? Perhaps secretly, somewhere deep inside, his reason for coming to the surface was to survive Thars’s attack in order to just live?
Rojka looked away from his ruined cruiser in the far distance. “We who live owe a debt to those who perished today. We must continue our fight.”
“Those warriors have returned and wish to report to you.” Daga pointed to three Sangheili standing farther down the slope, waiting. “They found the disturbed ground you ordered them to look for. It appears that the Demon Three headed out into the desert. They may have changed course once out in the sand though, as the wind has blown over their trail.”
Rojka considered their path. “They will likely be headed to the human city.”
So they could still hunt the Spartans and bring vengeance. He had that much at least. Rojka banished his dark thoughts with a blast of anger. “Send the Banshees we have up ahead to scout for them. But stay low. Thars might be still looking to see if any of us survived.”
“Thars,” Daga spat. Both Sangheili looked up in unison at the peaks of the mountains beyond Discipline and the plumes of distant smoke from the other crashed vessels.
They had been listening in on communications between Thars and his commanders. Some of his fleet had survived the Jiralhanae attack, but only at great co
st and with severe damage done to their vessels. Without the ability to quickly repair their ships, and with limited resources themselves, Thars would be grounded as well—especially given that what little survived of his fleet, licking their wounds in a suborbital drift, remained completely out of communication range.
But Thars’s patrols were headed for the remains of Unwavering Discipline. That much was clear. Soon the fighting would begin anew.
“Thars doomed us all with his poor strategy,” Daga said. “To fight an evenly matched battle is to destroy both parties. It is something to do only if one is desperate and certain that the only enemy is the one you currently fight. We were not true enemies, Kaidon. Thars is a fool who should pay with his life.”
“Eventually,” Rojka said. But Thars was only a distraction. He looked back out at the desert. “First, we find and kill the demons. That is all that matters for the moment.”
They had covered so many kilometers that when the three Spartans stopped, Melody was taken aback. She expected them to just keep running until they got to Gila Station. But they were human, she mused. They had to have limits at some point.
Mike dug a pit in the sand on the lee side of a dune and placed Melody’s stretcher gently into it. The warmth from the sand seeped through her clothes. She wriggled gently against it, letting it form to her back. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s a lot more comfortable than the webbing.”
“It won’t be a long stop,” Mike said. “We just need time to let some lactate clear out of muscle tissue. Then we can press on.”
“Remember training, when Mendez’s excuse was that he was just curious about how far we could go before collapsing?” Jai asked.
“I threw up three times,” Mike said.
“You came up with the idea of carrying each other when someone needed rest so we didn’t have to stop, just to mess with his head.”
“Five hundred kilometers, three days. Mendez finally stopped it because he started to get worried,” Mike said, with what might have been a slight chuckle.
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