She stepped in front of van Eekhout. “Let’s see your drinks.”
“Yes. That’s what I’m talking about.” Van Eekhout looked at Mike and Jai, then shrugged. “Okay, just me and the lady, then.”
Jai turned back to the surgical suite entrance, looking back into the room. “I’ll wait for the envoy.” Adriana could metabolize any amount of alcohol given at a fairly rapid pace; the important part was getting the ONI agent away from them for a moment so they could assess the situation.
Mike watched Adriana walk around the corner of the corridor. “I’ll go scout out the rest of this facility. See where the supplies are. Get a sense of its layout.”
“Good idea.”
“Are you worried about the envoy?” Mike asked.
“I’m worried about what she wanted to tell me up there,” Jai said. “She’s hiding something big.”
Rojka ‘Kasaan paused between boulders as one of his commanders hailed him.
“Thars has attacked the survivors that stayed behind at the Unwavering Discipline,” he reported. “A few were able to escape the slaughter to report. He is coming for us next and has working gunships.”
It would be hard for them to scout an entire desert. But with air support, eventually Thars would figure out where they were.
Rojka and the sixteen warriors that formed this strike force needed to move faster. The Spartans had stopped attempting to hide their tracks as they had pressed deeper into the desert and up through the mountains. But it had become clear that they weren’t headed for the human city.
There was something else out here.
“We must be getting close,” Rojka said. “The Demon Three will be within our reach soon enough. We will finally have our vengeance.”
Melody woke up with a start. She kicked the warm blanket around her feet off and twisted about to examine the clean, white walls that surrounded her. She’d had a nightmare about being left inside the red-lit belly of some horrible Covenant machine that snipped and tore at her skin with terribly precise movements.
No more pain, she realized as she sat up. She was wearing a surgical gown, and judging by the hazy feeling of goodwill dripping from her pores, she was also heavily drugged.
Jai stood by her doorway, still in full armor, and leaning against the side. The cold white walls of the room reflected on his visor. “Envoy. How do you feel?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know yet.” Melody pushed the blanket away and stepped off the bed. The metal floor was cool under her feet. Where were her clothes? The surgical gown fluttered and she grabbed the back of it to keep it in place. “I need to talk to the agent assigned here. Right now.”
She grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around her middle and over her shoulder like a toga. The tight feeling in her side shifted to a slight twinge. She may have felt good, but she wasn’t fully healed yet.
“You should rest,” Jai said.
Melody ignored him and walked out into the corridor. She didn’t have the layout memorized, but she’d seen documents about Gila Station. It was a pretty standard hidden forward-operating center. Which meant the galley and briefing room would be in the center.
She walked inward with the curved corridor, spiraling toward the sounds of chatter. Jai followed closely behind.
Adriana was in the corner with her helmet off, thumbing an empty glass. She had striking Slavic features, despite her extremely pale skin and abnormally bright eyes, which had an unnerving effect. The male she assumed was Van Eekhout appeared to be in the process of asking Mike a steady stream of questions about the SPARTAN-II program. “Forgive me, Spartan,” Melody said, her voice a bit fuzzy even to her own ears. “I need to talk to the agent.”
“No problem, ma’am. Glad to see you’re doing better.”
“I’m presuming you’re Commander van Eekhout, right?” she said, probing. She had never officially met him. She grabbed van Eekhout’s arm.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?” the agent asked.
“Where are Victoria, Jens, and Adam?”
“Who?” Van Eekhout slipped a shoulder under her arm and started to steer her back down the corridor.
“My staff,” Melody mumbled.
“It’s okay, I’ll walk her back,” van Eekhout said to Jai. “You’ve stayed with her most of the night. Why don’t you spend some time here with your team? Relax.”
Melody glanced back. “I don’t think they can do that.”
“We should all try anyway,” van Eekhout said. “Life’s too short. So, what about your staff?” The agent kept glancing back down the corridor toward the galley behind them.
“They came down in a shuttle during the battle. I gave them your coordinates.”
“I’m sorry,” van Eekhout said softly. “No one other than you and the Spartans have come here. Also, you know providing that kind of intel to a third-party violates protocol. You can’t just be handing over these coordinates.”
“They were my team. It was that or death.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that. But you of all people know the stakes and why we have these rules in the first place.”
“We knew the risk, but I didn’t think—” Melody said. But even in the heavy cloud of painkillers, she felt an ocean of grief strike her. Her knees wobbled. “I-I don’t think I can walk anymore.”
She drooped against the wall, trying to grab it to hold herself up. The tears that she’d kept bottled up because she’d been too busy trying to fix the situation, do her best, living minute to minute, finally caught up. She sank to the floor.
Victoria, Jens, and Adam were probably dead. Thousands were probably dead in Suraka. Somehow, as she’d watched the attacks from orbit, it hadn’t hit home how each pinprick of light, each explosion on the ground, meant lives lost. Individuals.
“Hold on a second,” van Eekhout said. “This will be uncomfortable.”
He slapped a patch on her forearm. Melody jerked back away from him, struggling to her feet. “What’s that?”
“Stimulant.” Van Eekhout placed a hand over it, stopping her from trying to rip it off. He didn’t look jovial anymore at all; his eyes narrowed, and he spoke with calm certainty. “Just hold on a second. I need you clear-headed, Azikiwe.”
A blast of energy poured through her. Melody’s eyes widened. “Oh . . . this can’t be good for me after surgery.”
“No,” van Eekhout agreed. The welcoming personality had completely disappeared. Van Eekhout’s jaw clenched; the mask had come off. This was truly ONI now, through and through. “We don’t have time, Azikiwe. I’ve tried to pry a few answers out of the Spartans and I’ve been keeping track of the general battle in orbit. Are you aware of the Jiralhanae incursion into Suraka?”
“I know one of their cruisers is hovering over the city. Did they start already?”
“Yes.” Van Eekhout turned around and stood by the wall, his face grim. “They knew exactly where to dig. And a Surakan intelligence drone captured some images showing that the Jiralhanae have already entered the structure.”
Melody stared. “Already? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. We thought it would take them months. ONI has readiness contingencies. None of them are forty-eight-hour plans. The first ship to reach us will be here in a day and a half, but it’ll probably get eaten alive by anything sitting in orbit. We’re in a lose-lose situation. I’ve already sent up the emergency beacon, for what good it does.”
“They should have had a fleet right here, waiting on the other side of Kiriken,” Melody said. “That could get help down to the planet faster.”
“Politically awkward,” van Eekhout said. “The Sangheili would have probably detected it and been upset by a larger UNSC fleet practically sitting on top of a colony they’re trying to make peace with—and that doesn’t even account for Suraka, which wouldn’t have approved either. The New Colonial Alliance could use the opportunity to stoke more unreset in the JOZ and beyond. And you know as well as I do, the UEG wouldn�
�t want extra ships taken away just for babysitting. They’ve been doing their best to not draw attention to this world. That was before everything went to hell.”
“We could appeal to any nearby Sangheili loyal to the Arbiter.”
“And then reveal that we knew about this possibility, but didn’t tell them? Why not set back relations with them, sure.”
“Screw politics. We’re beyond that. We’re deep into ‘everyone’s going to die’ territory,” Melody said.
“But we didn’t know that ahead of time. There are a lot of secrets scattered across many worlds. We can’t stick a fleet on each one. It’s expensive enough to construct ONI facilities near the ones we actually discover to monitor the situation. Let’s stop processing what could have hypothetically been done and focus on what we can do immediately to mitigate this situation. Gray Team has been reactivated. That means we have on-the-ground capabilities. We need to put them to use. Adriana tried to get me drunk, see if any intel came pouring out of me. Mike has already broken into several systems to verify everything I’ve told them and see what can be shaken loose. They’re sharp, Azikiwe, and very much on their game.”
Melody cautiously said, “I don’t . . .”
“ONI didn’t ask you to retrieve the Spartans out of goodwill,” van Eekhout snapped. “They’re the closest thing we have to a backup plan for if and when things go bad in Suraka, which is right now. We have emergency authorization and we need resources on the ground. Desperately. We need Gray Team. This is what they’re trained to do—take orders and execute them against threats to humanity.”
Melody remained silent.
“Look,” said van Eekhout, “this is the first time we’ve met, but I can imagine the training they put you through. When things went sideways, you had to know that if you got the Spartans out of that mess up in orbit, it might come to this. And you knew they’d be effective weapons.”
“Things aren’t exactly fitting ONI’s predictive models, Commander. I’m not sure they’re ready to take orders like that right now,” Melody said.
“It doesn’t matter,” van Eekhout said. “They’re probably already listening to us right now.”
“That’s correct,” Jai said, stepping carefully around the curve of the corridor.
Van Eekhout smiled coldly. “Well done. I almost didn’t hear a footstep.”
Adriana thudded around from the other side of the corridor, not bothering to sneak up.
Melody did her best not to flinch as the half-ton of armor halted just in front of her. The towering female Spartan, her helmet back on, raised a finger that could kill them in a heartbeat and pointed it at van Eekhout. “So, ONI already has plans for us. To use us as weapons? But you thought it would be a good idea to keep us in the dark?”
Van Eekhout straightened. “There is more happening on this planet than you know. Much more. The UNSC needs your help. Humanity needs it.”
“Nice speech,” Adriana said, dismissively. “I know that’s what ONI created us for. We don’t need a stirring, ‘once more unto the breach’ speech. You don’t know what we’ve done and seen out there. And you certainly don’t know Gray Team. We’re not just going to jump because you bark at us.”
The floor shook slightly as Mike stepped into view. “We’ve always been a little . . . different,” he said. “Even from other Spartans.”
And that was true; Melody knew that from the briefings. Adriana had gone undercover in civilian populations when they were at Twenty-Three Librae. They’d temporarily “reappropriated” ships from ONI in the name of accomplishing their objective. Even in training as children, they’d been hard to control.
These three were considered wild cards.
And yet they always got the job done, even if they didn’t play by the rules. In humanity’s most desperate hours, they’d been depended on to fight against the Covenant on countless worlds. And now Melody had to depend on them once more. There was no other choice.
Adriana half-turned to look at Melody. “Tell me, Envoy, are you part of the Office of Naval Intelligence—something you might have failed to mention earlier?”
Melody saw no point in lying to them. She had been just hoping to get them off-planet and warn ONI that Jiralhanae were digging up the city. But she hadn’t expected things to move along so quickly. She needed their help. “I work for the UEG. But yes, I’m also serving as a liaison for ONI. I don’t have formal rank in their org. I’m not even on the books. For this mission, I was trained by them for one thing. To break out Gray Team if things got out of hand. That’s why you’re awake right now, that’s why you’re alive and not slag in Unwavering Discipline’s debris field. I’m still one hundred percent Diplomatic Corps. But I’m with van Eekhout here—this world needs your help.”
The three Spartans looked at each other, their thoughts impossible to read behind reflective visors.
“Okay, then,” Jai finally said. “How bad is it? I mean, what exactly are we facing here?”
He sounded tired, behind that mirrored visor. Tired but grimly resigned.
Melody hesitated. “I’m not going to lie to you. It’s bad. Very, very bad. And it’s going to get far worse now that the Jiralhanae have broken through the ground and found what they’re looking for.”
Hekabe now led three heavily armed war packs down into the bowels of the ancient construct. The Forerunners had excavated deep, creating under the planet’s crust a tower of empty space the size of a small city. As they descended, Hekabe could see through struts along the exterior wall. The chasm hidden below was large enough that where it reached the molten lava, it could house three swooping Forerunner towers that would dwarf any of the human buildings above them. Delicate bridges, which looked vaguely like an insect’s legs, reached out to sink into the walls of the chasm to hold the towers above the red-hot glow below them.
Why the entry point wasn’t a lift or portal of some kind, Hekabe was uncertain. The ways of the Forerunners were often inscrutable. The air around the central shaft rippled with heat as the packs followed Hekabe down the curving ramps carved into the walls. The red glow battled the blue tracing light of the Forerunner architecture as they slowly all spiraled deeper and deeper in longer and longer arcs.
The structure wasn’t limited to just the shaft and the towers hovering above the pit of molten lava. As he walked farther down, Hekabe saw corridors leading away from the shaft, like spokes on a wheel, on every level.
While he could not guess what machinery and purpose the places in those spokes held, it was clear this had been a site of great power for the Forerunners. “Surely this is a hell,” Anexus growled as he looked over the side of the ramp.
Hekabe did not respond. This was not hell. It was destiny.
Above them, the pale circle of the sky grew smaller as they circled down toward the magma.
They finally reached the last curving ramp and approached the bridges leading to the great towers in the heart of the void. A city within the city, Hekabe mused to himself. A fortress within a fortress.
“Are you sure of this, Chieftain?” Anexus asked. “Up ahead, do we truly know what waits? The Forerunners have kept this a secret—perhaps it should remain so. Even the Prophets would not have dared such a thing!”
Hekabe laughed at the captain and raised Oath of Fury. “Anexus, look at this weapon. It is unwieldy. It does not reach far. But the impact is so strong that with it I can stand against any threat in hand-to-hand combat. Yet it was not always my own. I had to first take it,” he said, grasping it tightly. “I have learned that the only thing worse than fear is the failure to act—to take what should be mine by right.”
Anexus stared at the weapon with lust. “It is said you took your hammer from one of the Banished.”
Many Jiralhanae were flocking to the Banished, seeing their growing strength and pledging to follow Atriox, their infamous leader. They were a powerful sect that had begun well before the Covenant’s demise. But Hekabe was no such follower. He still believed i
n the ancient ways. “One of Atriox’s best warriors—the chieftain called Odanostos—died struggling to hold on to this very handle. I rent it from his grasp and smote his face with it in front of his own soldiers. Now they all know who wields the Oath of Fury.”
If Anexus’s eyes could get any larger, Hekabe thought, he would look like one of the Prophets themselves.
Hekabe waved them on through the cavernous tunnel. They jogged across the final bridge until Hekabe stopped them in front of the towers. These massive structures reached high into air, vanishing into the darkness that masked the ceiling. The collection of angled spires were connected at their bases by a single, imposing wall, with ramparts and walkways slung across the upper levels. It was clearly a citadel of some kind. A defensive fortification.
Directly in front of them, an enormous entrance led deeper into the citadel—wide as the bridges they had ventured across, even large enough to navigate a Lich gunship through with ease. But it was closed, completely sealed off by a seemingly immovable wall.
Hekabe kneeled before the great arches of the entrance and took off his battle helmet, placing it on the ground beside him. Then he once more opened the engraved container. The strange blue-gray machine inside—an ancient helmet itself of some kind, embedded with the orb he had first used to gain access to this place—surged with arcs of electricity that coursed along its organic shape. Hekabe forced himself to hold his hands steady in front of the curious eyes of the war packs watching him.
“Understand this, Anexus,” Hekabe said. “We do not need to fear anything because I already know what waits for us inside this place.” He slowly set the Forerunner device onto his head. Initially the device seemed too large, doubtless because it was made to be worn by gods.
The metal shifted with new purpose. Nanotechnology inside met the warmth of organic touch, and parts of the device wriggled like a living thing, then jammed threads down in through the chieftain’s skull. Hekabe wanted to gasp, but he bit the impulse back as blood dribbled down his forehead. Hekabe wiped the stinging fluid from his eyes with the back of a hand. He had known of the object’s power beforehand, that it contained the technology of the gods inside, mysteries that were incomprehensible to him. Hekabe had read an account of what would come next. The device he’d rested on his head would be reconfiguring itself on a molecular scale as it studied his living matter, his brain tissue, and adapted itself to him.
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