The Cole Protocol

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “Hey now,” Delgado said.

  “Hey now what?” The leader reached over and grabbed Adriana’s shoulder. “Now listen here!”

  She shrugged his hand off and pushed it back. The stout miner staggered slightly, and for a moment, the whole group paused.

  Then the miner surged back, grabbing at Adriana’s shirt collar again. “You—”

  This time she grabbed his hand and twisted it. “Don’t touch me.” She didn’t ask this, she stated it. Like it was a fact.

  A second man swore and lunged for her as well. “We’ll do whatever the hell we want.”

  He grabbed for her arm, but she grabbed his instead and jerked it.

  Now she had both men by an arm, twisting their hands back around. “Now listen to me,” Adriana snapped. “If I want to ask after the Kestrel, or anything else that strikes my fancy, what makes you think you could stop me?”

  The air in the bar suddenly broke, and the faux politeness dropped. “None of that stuff ain’t none of your business, bitch!” another miner screamed. He threw a punch.

  Adriana let go of the two arms she held and grabbed the punch out of midair. She pulled the man toward her and slammed his head into the table.

  The table gave way and splintered where the man’s head struck it. He fell through the destroyed wood onto the floor in between Adriana and Delgado.

  A fight erupted, the whole bar streaming their way in, Delgado cursing as he pushed his way back farther into the booth. He hadn’t wanted to get involved, but the entire bar had already assumed they were working together.

  Adriana ripped the remains of the table out of the ground with a grunt. She held the large pedestal that had anchored it into the floor out in front of her with one hand, keeping the angry men at bay as she tapped her ear. “Yeah, okay, let’s bug out.”

  An explosion of brick, grating, and debris blew past Delgado.

  As the dust settled, he spotted one of the miners pulling a gun on Adriana. Delgado whipped out Señora Sies, and the men all froze.

  But they weren’t looking at him. As the dust cloud in the booth wafted away, they all stood looking at the giant gray suit of powered armor that had just burst its way through the wall of Eddie’s like it was balsa wood.

  “Don’t move,” the deep voice from behind the gold visor snapped. A large rifle in the Spartan’s hands covered the crowd.

  No one moved.

  This new Spartan grabbed Adriana and Delgado and pulled them back through the debris. Delgado’s feet scraped against the jagged remains.

  While the far back of Eddie’s was buried into the hard rock, this section had apparently been right next to a maintenance corridor.

  A few of the bar’s patrons tried to peer around the hole in the bar to see where they were going, but the armored Spartan fired the rifle at the bricks, and the faces ducked back into the bar.

  “Delgado, look at me,” Adriana ordered, and Delgado turned to her voice.

  Something very large smacked the back of his head and he fell to his knees in front of her, then passed out.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  FREIGHTER PETYA, JUST OFF HABITAT BOLIVAR,

  OUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

  Delgado woke up on a cot. He sat there, rubbing the back of his head and wincing. He was in the cramped crew quarters of a freight ship—bulkheads, grated flooring, flickering tube lights, and grime and grease was everywhere.

  “You’re up.”

  A giant machine had been welded into the back of the crew quarters. The voice came over the sounds of a maintenance pod whose arms sparked electricity as they carefully removed the suit of armor from a Spartan with almost midnight black eyes.

  The Spartan scratched his stubbly head and pulled on pants and a shirt. “Itches,” he said. “I’d like to take a shower, but we have to deal with you first. Adriana refused to leave you knocked out on the ground for those miners to eat alive.”

  Delgado stood up and stumbled. The Spartan grabbed him firmly by the arm and hauled him back up. Another giant of a man who stood so tall he blocked the lights above. Delgado blinked. “What do you want with me?”

  “You know who we are, right?”

  “Spartans. The boogeymen of Insurrectionist children everywhere,” Delgado grunted.

  His head still throbbed, but he was feeling scrappy despite the fact that this mountain of a human being next to him could probably break him in half like a stick. But if they were going to kill him, they would have done it already. This gave Delgado a sudden boldness as he straightened up. Delgado smiled.

  “Don’t be spoiled, don’t start a fight. Always be careful, here at night. Because the Spartans might come, in suits that weigh half a ton. And they’ll steal from you all you gots, just like they did from Colonel Watts.”

  The Spartan cocked his head. “What?”

  “Just a kid’s rhyme,” Delgado muttered. “Yeah, there are a lot of rumors about you guys. Like the one about how you super soldiers took out Colonel Watts and the rebels’ whole network had to scramble to find a new leader. And there are other rumors, too. You know, a lot of people would be quite flattered that the UNSC created an entire special division of super soldiers just to come after them. But it’s all been different since Harvest fell, hasn’t it? The aliens sure bloodied your noses.”

  “Yes, yes they have,” the Spartan agreed.

  “Suddenly the idea of fighting for the right to your own survival isn’t such an alien idea.”

  “True,” the Spartan said. “But then, the UNSC never glassed an entire populace, so it’s not exactly fair to compare the UNSC/Covenant fight with the UNSC/Insurrectionist fight, is it?”

  The Spartan had a point.

  “What’s your name?” Delgado asked.

  “Jai. Spartan double-oh-six.”

  “You like your numbers. You have last names?”

  The Spartan didn’t even answer, just pulled Delgado along into the freighter’s cockpit, stooping to avoid hitting his head on the bulkhead.

  Another man, too massive not to be a Spartan, sat in the pilot’s chair. Adriana lounged near a navigation console. She spun her chair to face the two of them. “Mr. Delgado. You’ve met Jai, our team leader. In the pilot’s chair is Mike.”

  From the windows of the cockpit Delgado could tell they were still in the Rubble, but not hanging off a dock connector. They were moving slowly through the intricate maze of tubes and asteroids.

  Jai sat down at a communications console and swung around to face Delgado, who found a jumpseat.

  “You were right, back there. We used to go after Insurrectionists. But that’s what we were trained to do . . . We live, breathe, and eat this stuff, Delgado. We serve humanity, we exist to protect Earth and all her colonies.”

  “Huh . . . Nice sound bite.” Delgado crossed his arms.

  “That’s no sound bite,” Mike growled.

  Jai held up a hand. “We have given everything over to this, Mr. Delgado, don’t dismiss our entire lives so casually. I take it you are an Insurrectionist?”

  Delgado shook his head. “Not exactly . . . A lot of people on Madrigal were neutral, even loyal to Earth. But when Madrigal was being glassed, it wasn’t the UNSC that scrambled freighters and everything they had to evacuate people from Madrigal and try to hide them here.”

  It had been the rebels. Even though Madrigal refugees and regular miners fast outnumbered them here in the Rubble, there had always been strong respect for the Insurrectionists. Even Delgado. He owed his life to them.

  Jai leaned forward. “Then understand; we’re not here for a fight. But we are here to try and stop the Covenant from taking any more colonies. Or Earth.

  “For a while top brass and ONI agents have been worried about the Covenant’s progress. As a result, earlier this week the Cole Protocol went into effect. All UNSC ships have to jump randomly before making a jump to their next destination. If Covenant forces appear, they have to destroy all navigation data that might le
ad the Covenant back to Earth.”

  “Just back to Earth, huh?”

  “And to the colonies, that’s inferred. However, months before the Cole Protocol went into effect, ONI put together several Prowler Corps missions to get back behind enemy lines— including this team. We have a list of places where navigation data might have survived, and our mission is to make sure it’s all destroyed.

  “In the case of the Rubble,” Jai leaned further forward, intense. “We’ve been stuck here for almost a month. Every day we’re here, we’re not destroying data or checking over our targets elsewhere, and the greater the chance of the Covenant stumbling across the location to an Inner Colony, or Earth.”

  “What Jai’s getting at,” Adriana interrupted, “is the question of whether you really think the navigation data will be safe here in the Rubble?”

  Delgado looked around the cockpit at the three Spartans. “I’m not giving it over to you. You have to do your jobs. I have to do mine.”

  “So . . . we noticed you didn’t tell the Security Council that you ran into a Spartan,” Adriana said.

  He looked up at her, startled. How did she know that? What all were the Spartans into? How much of the Rubble had they gotten bugged? “Why would I? You’re not good at keeping a low profile, it seems, with your dramatic attempt to sneak around and ask questions failing so spectacularly.

  Jai folded his arms. “You picked a stubborn one to save, Adriana. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what?” Delgado asked.

  Mike shook his head. “Let him be, Jai. Let him be.”

  A moment passed between the three Spartans. A decision.

  Delgado shivered. He’d bet anything his life had just been on the table.

  Jai stood up. “My team thinks you’re one of the good guys, Delgado. I don’t know. Mike, we passing the ship yet?”

  Mike turned back around. “Yes. Let me flip us around.”

  Delgado frowned as the Rubble rotated around the ship. The freighter’s cockpit shook a bit as distant thrusters farther down the hull fired.

  They drifted past one of the larger habitats on the edge of the structure. Docked to it was a ship that didn’t look all that different from the Rubble itself—a Tinkertoy assemblage of parts of varying age, shapes, and function.

  It slowly passed by, and then Jai turned to Delgado. “It’s hard to trust people who do business with the enemy, Delgado, and that’s a Jackal ship. Also known as: the enemy.”

  “Yes . . . that’s a Jackal ship,” Delgado said. “But most Kig-Yar are like us. Rebels. Asteroid dwellers. And they’re helping us.”

  The Covenant had once seemed an implacable foe. A force of nature. When the conglomeration of aliens first made contact ten years ago, at the planet Harvest, the images of destruction relayed back were horrific. Covenant ships and their plasma weapons destroyed the surface of the agrarian world until nothing was left.

  Madrigal had not lain too far from Harvest. And after the destruction of Harvest they’d readied themselves for the inevitable. And readied, and waited. Until 2528, when the Covenant stumbled into orbit around 23 Librae and destroyed Madrigal, the survivors fleeing to the Rubble.

  When the Kig-Yar came back to 23 Librae, looking to mine the asteroids around Hesiod, they found the Rubble. Everyone had girded themselves for another one-sided battle. But instead the odd, birdlike aliens had furtively begun trading with the humans. They’d even established refuges on some of the outer asteroids.

  So as the Rubble heard snatches of rumors and data about the Covenant destroying all humanity, they had to second-guess what was happening. After all, they were still alive.

  And yet . . . it had taken the Covenant three years to get around to attacking Madrigal. Delgado knew the Rubble might still be on the list.

  “The Jackals are helping you by violently hunting for the navigation data?” Jai asked.

  “I know,” Delgado muttered. “I don’t particularly trust them either.”

  “So you know,” Jai said, “the moment you hand over the data, the Covenant will deal with the Rubble the same way they did Madrigal.”

  Delgado had no reply. He stood with his arms crossed, staring at Jai. “Maybe. It’s our problem, not yours. The UNSC isn’t running things here.”

  “All right,” Jai said. “But we’ll be watching you.”

  The freighter thudded into dock under Mike’s control. The air inside shifted, and Delgado’s ears popped. Adriana led Delgado down to the airlock, where the door had already opened.

  Delgado hesitantly walked through. He bit his lip. They wouldn’t shoot him in the back, would they? They had honor, and a code, didn’t they?

  Adriana leaned against the rim of the airlock. “Good-bye, Mr. Delgado. Try to stay out of trouble.”

  He turned and looked back at her, the tall, dangerous Spartan without her armor. The freighter’s airlock door lurched, and started to slowly close, rust scraping off the surface as it did.

  “And don’t forget, there were no Spartans here.” She said it seriously, without a sense of humor.

  After the freighter left, Delgado looked out one of the airlock portholes at the distant Jackal ship.

  The Spartans were right. The moment the Jackals got their hands on the navigation data they’d probably sell it to their brothers in the Covenant. He was going to have to figure out how to secure the navigation data. There were way too many people after it. If the Rubble was going to survive against the Covenant, it needed to be safe.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  FREIGHTER PETYA, OUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

  Jai watched the last sliver of light fade away as the airlock shut. They were back alone in the freighter Petya. He folded his arms as Adriana walked back up at him.

  “We should have kept him,” Jai said as she passed.

  Adriana paused and looked him eye to eye. “We’ve had this discussion. If you’d like to order me to go get him, Petty Officer Jai, I will follow your commands.”

  He stared back at the intense blue eyes. “Would you?”

  She sighed and left him leaning against the wall. The freighter shuddered as Mike disengaged the airlock and coasted away from the asteroid.

  Gray Team, Jai thought to himself with a small amount of frustration.

  He’d ask what he’d done to deserve being put with the other two, but he already knew. It had started when he was six. He’d been snatched away from a life he only dimly remembered and taken to a military training facility on the planet Reach, along with seventy-five other children.

  Jai remembered being herded into an amphitheater after waking up from the chill of coldsleep by a tough, gristly looking Naval drill instructor in fatigues. Every child had had an instructor standing next to them.

  And then, up front on a raised dais, a woman with dark hair and gray-blue eyes cleared her throat. Beside her stood a man with medals that they would all come to respect and fear: C.P.O. Mendez. But it was clear this woman was in charge. All the big Navy men in the room responded to the crack of her orders with a nervous jump.

  The woman had looked at the crowd of nervous children and told them “As per Naval Code 45812, you are hereby conscripted into the UNSC Special Project, code-named SPARTAN II.”

  Conscripted.

  Jai hadn’t liked the sound of the word. It felt wrong. And when he’d heard it, he stood up and tried to leave. The heavily muscled drill instructor next to him had grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him down.

  Shocked, Jai continued listening as the woman said, “You have been called upon to serve. You will be trained . . . and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.”

  He’d been six, damnit.

  His life in Bhuj in an orphanage hadn’t been much better than the hellish boot camp that followed the next morning, all orchestrated by C.P.O. Mendez, but Jai had roamed the streets on his own time back on Bhuj. He’d scrapped with other urchins, stolen fo
od, and found all the best boltholes in the city to hide and watch other people from.

  It had been his life, and even as a wiry six-year-old, Jai had decided conscription didn’t figure into his plans.

  After the first night of boot camp Jai met Adriana, who’d been out that night sneaking around.

  “Are you leaving?” she’d asked in awkward English.

  “Yes,” Jai said. “I need something to pick a lock with.”

  Adriana had handed him a sliver of metal from under her tongue, a paperclip stolen from somewhere on the base.

  Jai had picked a lock and they’d snuck out from the barracks, using the shadows until they’d broken for the gates.

  He got halfway up the fence before the guards turned the electricity on, and Jai had dropped to the ground with Adriana, both writhing in the dust and screaming.

  “Good evening,” Mendez had said, walking up to look down at him. “I don’t recall giving you two permission to leave base.”

  Neither of them said anything; they just stared at the forest off in the distance.

  So the next week Jai used a blanket to help them climb, and the guards caught them on the other side. And after that, it was sprinting across the barren space around the camp. They were hunted down in the forest, but he and Adriana split up and eluded their pursuers for days. They came after him on the roads past the forest, hunting them down in large teams by Warthog and Pelican.

  But no matter how much Mendez punished him with extraordinary runs, push-ups, latrine cleaning duty, no matter how hard he tried to break him, Jai and Adriana always planned the next attempt.

  The men who had to catch the young Jai paid the price too. The tougher he trained under Mendez, the harder he fought when captured. Guards got shattered kneecaps, lost eyes, fingers, and toes. They’d started tranquilizing him from a Pelican at the end, waiting until he burst from the forest and shooting him down from the safety of the sky.

  Until one day, five months in, the woman asked for him. Catherine Halsey. Always watching them from a distance, always scribbling her notes down.