The Cole Protocol

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “That’ll have a chilling effect on the pawn shops near military bases,” Li said.

  A strained smile quirked on Watanabe’s lips. “One imagines. However, I’m not talking about the usual levels of black market collectibles. Until the Cole Protocol was put in place, we saw a dramatic increase in Covenant weaponry flooding the market. My fellow analysts and I came to believe that somewhere out there, Insurrectionists or other parties may actually be trading with the Covenant. Or, alternatively, they are being co-opted by the Covenant somehow, instead of merely being destroyed.”

  The ONI agent stood up and tapped the chart table. A hologram of a plasma pistol appeared. “A shipping container was found in a routine board-and-search late last week on its way to Charybdis IX. It contained three thousand fully charged plasma pistols on board, and a thousand plasma rifles.”

  “Enough to arm a significant number of Insurrectionists,” Kirtley said. He folded his arms.

  “Correct,” Watanabe said. “Now, this was a slow freighter, and ONI agents from Charybdis IX intercepted it well before it got to the planet. It had another week of travel yet to get to orbit. Our orders are to head out to Charybdis IX and meet with ONI agents there. We’re going to find out who’s receiving these guns, where they come from, and why the Covenant is acting in a whole new manner with this gunrunning.”

  They all sat in silence, digesting the mission. Commander Zheng stood up. “Well, it sounds like this is going to lead us to Insurrectionists. And I don’t know about you all, but I’m ready to repay them for what they just did.”

  “Yessir,” they all chorused. Except Badia, who glanced down at the floor and closed her eyes. Keyes wondered if she was thinking about all the dead from the last engagement.

  “Then let’s get to it. Keyes, lay us on a course straight for Charybdis IX . . . after our random jump, of course.” Zheng leaned back, watching them all with calculating eyes.

  “Of course, sir.” Keyes looked around at the bridge crew as they stood up. They were on their way to forming a comfortable team in a surprisingly short time.

  And judging by the tiny smile Zheng had on his lips, he felt the same way. Maybe Keyes had read his standoffishness wrong; maybe Zheng was just eager to get back to the fight. No matter which, it was still a good thing to see a ship’s crew coming together.

  Keyes had a feeling it would be important. Insurrectionists and Covenant working together left a very bad taste in his mouth.

  They’d need to be at their fighting best on this ship in the days ahead.

  But whatever Zheng may have had in mind, Keyes noticed that the other officers seemed eager to get out of the chartroom and back to their duties, at a safe remove from the Commander.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  UNSC FRIGATE MIDSUMMER NIGHT, CHARYBDIS IX

  Keyes moved down the corridor quickly, crewmen snapping to attention as he passed. He had just laid them into a geosynchronous orbit over Charybdis IX, right above the capital city of Scyllion. A Pelican was being prepped to take Akio Watanabe dirt side. Things were moving along.

  He paused at a corridor. The hanger bay would be this way.

  He was still getting a feel for the frigate: adding to the ship’s speed meant reconfiguring the normal layout of a ship of this class.

  “Lieutenant Keyes,” buzzed a frantic voice in his earpiece. “We need you at sickbay, now. It’s Jeffries.”

  Keyes turned around, then turned around again. Medical no longer lay at the heart of the ship, but farther off to the starboard.

  Keyes broke out of his fast walk into a half jog. If Jeffries died, he’d never forgive himself for asking for his transfer.

  “Lieutenant!”

  It was Faison. He stepped out of the corner of a junction from behind a bulkhead.

  “Yes?”

  Five Helljumpers tackled Keyes from the side.

  He went down, shocked. Then self-defense training kicked in. Keyes fought his way free of the hands holding his legs and kicked the nearest Helljumper in the head.

  The kick sent the man down, but not before another behind Keyes put him in a chokehold.

  Sputtering, Keyes managed to swing and dish out a black eye. He ripped free of their holds again, but three more Helljumpers joined the fray.

  They came with duct tape.

  Keyes found himself being trussed up and dragged into a nearby storage room, the door locked behind them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.

  The Helljumpers surrounded the furious Keyes, who was then raised up onto a table with a solid thump. Faison walked over and viewed the results. He nodded. “Good.”

  “Hoo-ah,” they replied.

  “Lieutenant Jacob Keyes.” Faison leaned over and looked him in the eyes. “Do you know how many Navy brass have pulled rank on me in the middle of combat action?”

  “I have no idea, Mr. Faison.”

  The Helljumper smiled. “None, Mr. Keyes. At least, none that have lived.”

  Keyes knew that the Helljumpers regarded themselves as tougher, more willing to fight, than regular marines or Navy men. They were certainly far crazier.

  Faison pointed at one of the men. “Chesnik, do it.”

  A buzzing sound came from Keyes’s right. One of the Helljumpers whipped out a huge Bowie knife—and cut the sleeve off Keyes’s uniform. A smarting pain shot up his shoulder. He twisted to look. Chesnick was holding a portable tattoo machine, a long metal penlike tool with an ink reservoir on the end. Chesnick leaned in and pressed the needle into Keyes’s arm and started etching a careful swoop.

  Keyes stopped struggling, leaning back as the needle continued its smarting journey over his arm. “You’re all crazy,” he said. “Guess I won’t have to court-martial you, though.” He took a deep breath.

  “Well, aren’t we lucky,” Chesnick replied, and then leaned back. “Done.”

  Faison pulled out a huge knife of his own from an ankle sheath. It had the words “Bug-Hunter” traced on the blade. He sliced the duct tape off.

  “You’d make a hell of a marine, Keyes,” Faison said. “You saved a lot of our asses out there.”

  Keyes shook his head. “Should have seen it coming earlier.”

  “No,” Faison said. “Anyone else would have stood there and let us do our job, and we’d all be dead. We owe you, Keyes. You ever need a favor from a Helljumper, no matter where, you just roll up your sleeve and ask.”

  They opened the door, and it seemed like half the ship’s Helljumpers were waiting in the corridor.

  “You’re not bad for an officer,” said Markov, just outside the door. “But if you ever take my armor again, it’s your ass.”

  “By the way, next time, try not to scream so much,” another Helljumper shouted while laughing.

  The center of the corridor became a gauntlet, with Helljumpers pushing Keyes on through all the way down the line, many of them slapping the newly inked tattoo and laughing as he winced.

  At the end of the line Akio Watanabe waited stiffly.

  “If you don’t mind, Lieutenant Keyes, now that you’re done playing with your new friends, I have a favor to ask.”

  Keyes had a wide grin on his face from the relief that the Helljumpers weren’t actually going to kill him and a bit of pride from their actions. “Of course, Major Watanabe. What is it?”

  “I’d like you to come dirt side with me. There are not a lot of people I implicitly trust. The nature of the job, you know. Judging by your actions, you seem like a man I could trust with my life, implicitly. I would count most of the bridge crew as trustworthy, given my research on them, but to be honest, Mr. Keyes, I think they just plain don’t like me. How that would play into a split second’s hesitation to back me up in a dangerous situation, I’m not sure . . .”

  “You’re a cynical man, Major.” Keyes did not like Watanabe’s judgment of his fellow officers. A force was only as good as the man next to him. It was who you fought for, when it came down to it, b
ut that bond started with a fundamental trust. A trust that Watanabe did not have.

  “Comes with the job.” Watanabe’s smile wasn’t so much a smile, but bared teeth. “Will you come anyway?”

  Keyes nodded stiffly. “If those are your orders, of course.”

  Watanabe grabbed Keyes’s arm and looked at the lettering. “The ODST tattoo. They must really like you. You know what it means?”

  “No.” Keyes shook his head, pulling his arm back. Watanabe kept his grip on the arm. It was surprisingly tight.

  “The kanji stand for ‘bastard,’ or ‘bad ass,’ depending on who you talk to. Lieutenant?”

  “Yes?”

  Watanabe let go of Keyes’s arm. “Make sure you visit the ship’s armory before we leave.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  SCYLLION, CHARYBDIS IX

  Scyllion burned.

  Jeffries lazily swung the Pelican above the tightly clustered skyscrapers of the city, and through patches of billowing, black smoke from burning piles of furniture and barrels on the roads.

  “Food riots,” Watanabe said, hanging on to webbing and looking out the back of the Pelican with Keyes. Jeffries had already lowered the ramp for a hot drop.

  Keyes walked to the back and looked out. “I never thought I’d see anything like that in the Inner Colonies.”

  “Hold tight, sir,” Jeffries shouted back. The Pelican slowly banked around a set of towers.

  Watanabe looked out at the random pillars of smoke mingled among the concrete, steel, and mirrored windows of the city. “It started as a corporate mining town. The whole thing was laid out and designed to keep all money in the corporation. You worked for them, paid rent to stay in an apartment they built run by a division of the mining company. You shopped at company-run stores. You traveled on the company line. It is an example that used to be taught in business schools.”

  “So what’s happening now?” As Jeffries straightened the Pelican out the city fell away behind them, towers glinting as the sun sunk down behind the city skyline, its orange hues streaking the clouds. Scyllion looked as if it were made of gold due to the sunset filtering through its windows.

  “They had a monopoly: they started raising prices dramatically. People became trapped. Once here, the price of living exceeded their company pay, putting them further and further in debt with no way out.

  “It became a problem when a rival company tried to get mining rights and was barred by the puppet government the company had funded here on Charybdis IX. So the new company funded dissatisfied and trapped workers back in ’25, hoping to shake things up politically a bit, and Scyllion’s police shot a few of them during a protest march. Since then, Insurrectionists have been a huge problem here. Scyllion’s corporate masters are now spending more money on trying to get everything they can off planet and back to colonies closer to Earth to protect their assets. ONI recommended that the UNSC implement martial law last year.

  “We just don’t have the troops and ships to spare,” Watanabe finished.

  The Pelican flew over the edges of Scyllion, passing over a long snaking river. Warehouses lined the banks, and large container ships lay at dock next to concrete wharfs.

  “Here we are,” Jeffries announced in their earpieces. The Pelican slowed, its engines swiveling to redirect thrust.

  They landed on a pad on top of one of the warehouses. Watanabe let go of the webbing and walked down the ramp. Keyes followed him.

  The Pelican revved up and lifted off, leaving them on the suddenly quiet rooftop pad.

  A woman with long hair and grubby gray overalls stood waiting for them at the stairwell leading down to the warehouse.

  “Corinthia Hansen,” Watanabe said. He shook her hand. “Lieutenant Keyes, this is our ONI contact on the ground here. She’s been coordinating tracking the influx of Covenant weapons and trying to get them off the street to be examined and destroyed. She was also responsible for intercepting the Insurrectionist ship.”

  “Good to see you, Major Watanabe.” She looked at Keyes. “What’s the Navy here for?”

  “Peace of mind. A line to further resources back in orbit if we need it.” Watanabe looked around the pad. “Your report said you had crew uniforms and fifteen agents?”

  “Downstairs, in the Hogs. You can change en route, we’re short on time.”

  “Why the rush?” Watanabe asked. “I thought we had more time?”

  “Yeah, in case you didn’t notice, the city is rioting. It’s only a matter of time before the crowds downtown decide that there might be food or resources out here. The Insurrectionists agree—they’re coming in early to take the guns. So let’s get rolling.”

  Keyes raised an eyebrow. In his experience changing plans on the fly added to the potential of things going wrong.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  SCYLLION WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, CHARYBDIS IX

  Civilian Warthogs waited in a line for them on the lower floor of the empty warehouse, as well as three large trucks pulling containers. Hansen had them get in the back of the truck in the middle.

  It was full of stacked crates, with just a four-foot empty gap near the doors. Or at least Keyes thought so, until Hansen walked to the wall of crates and pressed her palm against them.

  The crates swung aside.

  Inside was a fully furnished mobile command center. Screens hung from the walls with information, and ONI agents stood in front of them, murmuring into microphones.

  At the back agents in black body armor checked their weapons and eyed Watanabe and Keyes warily.

  The ONI mobile command center jerked into motion, and Keyes grabbed a wall.

  Hansen pulled a gun out from her waistband and handed it to one of the agents. “We’re hoping we can help you out, Watanabe, and get them to give up what system the weapons came from. But I’m pretending to be crew of that ship, so it’s dicey. Our main goal is to give these Innie creeps the crates, and then see where in the city they end up. Give them a few days to talk around the crates, give us some intelligence, then we can roll in and bust them. Because the last thing we need are the mobs that are out there right now getting their hands on Covenant weapons.”

  She walked away from them both to go check on one of the monitors.

  Keyes leaned over to Watanabe. “I get the feeling you’re not exactly wanted here. They seem to think they’ve got the whole thing figured out.”

  Watanabe shrugged dramatically. “Between your crew and these agents, my not being wanted around places seems to be a character failing of mine, I’m sure.”

  Hansen looked back down the center as Keyes laughed. She waved them over. “Here’s an example of the product.”

  She picked up a hefty Covenant plasma rifle and gave it to Watanabe. Unlike the ulitarian, industrial human weapons, the Covenant device was smooth and aerodynamic, almost organic. The plasma rifle consisted of what looked like two large semiautomatic weapons welded together: one on top, the other beneath. The pair of curved bodies were mated via the trigger guard, and then at the front with a second guard.

  “They’re not quite right,” Keyes said. “What’s that on the side?”

  From what Keyes knew in briefings, Covenant plasma rifles had a small temperature gauge on the side. This had been replaced with a counter with the numerals “380” glowing on the tiny display. Someone had already tested the weapon.

  “Good eye,” Hansen said. “Yes, these guns let you know how many shots are left. There is also this.”

  She reached over and took the bulky weapon back from Watanabe. A quick, firm press near the front of the plasma rifle caused the casing to click, and a tiny targeting reticule popped up.

  “What we have here,” Hansen said, “is a Covenant weapon that seems modified for human usage. The counter, you’ll note, doesn’t use any form of Covenant numbering, but rather our own.”

  The truck ground to a halt.

  “The Insurrectionists are already here,” someone repor
ted from a monitor.

  “Good.” Hansen tapped her earpiece. “Everyone knows their places, let’s get it done.”

  She walked out the back with the plasma rifle in hand.

  One of the agents at the monitors waved them over. He pulled a stool out from the wall. “We can hear what Captain Hansen there is saying, and see through a buttonhole camera.”

  Keyes and Watanabe stood by the agent’s shoulder. “What’s your name, son?” Keyes asked.

  The agent glanced back. “Smith, Josh Smith, sir.”

  “Good to meet you, Smith.” On the screen Hansen moved close to a trio of men wearing simple gray coveralls, just like herself. The man in front had a military cut, and scarred cheeks from some sort of explosion, and was whip-thin. “Who are we looking at here?”

  Smith tapped another monitor lower down on the wall to reveal a set of files pertaining to the operation. “The man in front, that’s Jason Kincaide, a known Insurrectionist. Mid-level sort of guy. The other two are just heavies of his.”

  Hansen approached Kincaide, and they shook hands. The sting was on.

  But in the back of the unit, someone held up a hand. “We’re getting reports of disturbances four blocks away. Can someone bring up the live sat imagery?”

  One of the larger screens flickered. Keyes walked away from Smith’s station and looked at it.

  There were thousands of people milling about.

  “I can get street cam shots,” Smith said. He minimized the video of Hansen and Kincaide meeting each other and exchanging code words, and pulled up a small window showing a street corner.

  The rioters had a large battering ram, made from a choppeddown tree. They were smashing in a door to a warehouse while the crowd shouted encouragement.