The Cole Protocol

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “Do you believe him?” Zhar asked.

  “I think Reth believes what Reth is saying.” Thel sat down, suddenly tired.

  “What games are we caught in the middle of?” Zhar asked.

  “I do not know,” Thel said. He toyed with the image of the Kig-Yar ship on his screen. It was the closest thing the Kig-Yar had to a true fleet ship, similar to the designs of refitted Kig-Yar raiders that had fought the Covenant from asteroid belts before the Kig-Yar were granted a place within the Covenant.

  He wondered if the Kig-Yar had managed to put a Slipspace drive on it.

  It looked likely, though Thel wondered if the cobbled-together affair would make it through. It certainly didn’t look like it.

  But it had weapons. Thel made a decision.

  “We will take that Kig-Yar ship. We will use it to destroy all this heresy. If the Prophet of Truth shows up and tells me to stop, then I will do so. Tell the others to prepare, and tell these Unggoy to ready themselves to be useful.”

  Until the Prophet of Truth himself showed up here, Thel had to follow the orders he was given. And since the Jiralhanae would be back with the High Prophet of Regret soon, Thel wanted his actions to show that he had done his duty.

  Yes. The human habitats here would burn, just as their world Charybdis IX had burned.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FIVE

  HABITAT EL CUIDAD, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

  Delgado didn’t even think twice—he grabbed the gun and kicked Bonifacio in the stomach. But in that split second Bonifacio’s three men piled onto him, trying to yank the gun away as they smashed his ribs.

  As he gasped from the pain, Bonifacio shouted, “Shoot them both and throw them out the damn airlock!”

  But Delgado had the gun up and pointed at Bonifacio despite the pain of getting pummeled by the bodyguards. “Get away from me. Or he dies.”

  The three overly muscled men backed away, their guns now out and trained on Delgado.

  Bonifacio smiled and held his hands up. “Now, easy, Delgado. Come on. We can work something out here.”

  “Screw you, Bonifacio.” Delgado wasn’t in the mood for his bullshit now.

  “Give me a gun,” Bonifacio snapped. The nearest heavy tossed him one. Delgado hesitated, not really wanting to fire a gun inside his own ship. That hesitation cost him, because now Bonifacio had a gun of his own pointed at Diego. “I’m going to shoot Diego if you don’t hand that over.”

  Delgado thought about it for a second. Giving away the data would certainly endanger the Rubble. Bonifacio, it was now obvious, would not be taking this data to the Exodus Project. No, he was going to sell it to the Kig-Yar. All signs pointed to it. Delgado shook his head.

  Bonifacio shot Diego in the chest. Blood sprayed and hit the floor as Diego collapsed, clutching the wound with a look of shock on his face.

  Delgado leapt over to Diego as he shot at Bonifacio, who ducked out into the corridor and ran for cover.

  Delgado waved the gun at the bodyguards. “Back up. Back up.” They were hired help—their hearts weren’t into the idea of a close-range shoot-out, luckily. Only Bonifacio was insane enough to fire inside a damn spaceship, Delgado thought. He grabbed Diego’s collar and pulled him out of the kitchen and down the corridor.

  Bonifacio fired down at him from the cockpit, the bullets sparking off the metal bulkheads.

  Delgado fired back as he dragged Diego to the airlock. This was all messed up. Very messed up.

  Diego moaned as Delgado pulled him into the lock and cycled into the habitat’s lock.

  A very loud bang startled him.

  The airlock seal broke as Distancia abruptly cut loose, her engines firing.

  Air whistled out of cracks in the warped airlock. Red alarm lights blinked, and Delgado kicked at the door leading into the habitat.

  It wouldn’t open, of course—with the outer seal broken emergency systems had kicked in. As long as the simple sensors on the outside detected loss of air the inner door was locked.

  Delgado grabbed the emergency phone, and got Bonifacio’s voice. “I just used an emergency Security Council code to override communications from your airlock,” Bonifacio said flatly. “And I canceled the airlock’s alarm.”

  The strobing lights shut off. It would look like a false trigger. A mechanic would be sent out at his leisure instead of an emergency crew.

  “You bastard.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Delgado.”

  “Go to hell, Bonifacio.” Delgado slammed the phone against the wall until it broke.

  Bonifacio had killed them. Almost as good as a bullet, Delgado thought.

  He sat down next to Diego, holding a hand to his chest. Diego stared up at the ceiling, his breathing irregular and gasping.

  “I’m sorry, Diego,” Delgado said, looking down at his old friend.

  Diego bubbled blood up from his mouth, but said nothing. Delgado closed his eyes and bit his lip.

  Already the air seemed to be getting thinner. Delgado lay down, breathing shallowly.

  Then he reached down into his right shoe and tugged out the small beacon Adriana had given him.

  Delgado opened the casing and pressed the red switch. A small green light flickered on, and started pulsating.

  He closed his eyes and waited.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  METISETTE ORBIT, 23 LIBRAE

  Reth lay curled up on the uncomfortable slab, thinking about the warmth and closeness of a Kig-Yar nest, and how far away such things were from him at the moment.

  He hurt everywhere, thanks to his treatment by the Sangheili. Oh, they’d pay for this. Reth followed the orders of a Prophet. Who were they to treat him so cruelly?

  The Sangheili thought they were lords of it all, but they were just thugs, Reth thought. Little different from the Jiralhanae and their violent approaches to everything in the world.

  Soon the Prophets would listen to all Kig-Yar, Reth thought. Reth was here, working to find the secret of the human homeworld. It would have been his already, if not for the Sangheili meddling.

  “Unggoy!” Reth carefully got off the bench, his limbs protesting, his steps dizzy.

  The Sangheili would have to go. Things were so close to being finished. Soon his human agent would have the location to Earth for him. Once Reth had that, then the army of Unggoy he’d gathered on Metisette would be ready to be unleashed on the Rubble. The asteroids would make wonderful Kig-Yar nesting grounds.

  “Unggoy, where are you? You must attend me. Are you not believers in the mission the Prophet of Truth himself gave to me, and thus to you?” Reth collapsed to the ground in front of the energy bars that kept him jailed.

  Once he had the Rubble, he thought through a haze, and the location to Earth, the humans’ Exodus Project would provide him the vehicle he needed to then bring the Unggoy to attack the human homeworld.

  A daring plan.

  A Kig-Yar plan.

  A plan the Prophet of Truth had agreed to when Reth presented it after returning with the secret of the Rubble and the humans’ desire to trade. He’d kept it a secret from his own Shipmistress, a violation that would have gotten him castrated if found out, but it had paid off handsomely.

  “Unggoy!”

  Now they’d been discovered, the Jiralhanae were returning to broadcast the news about the discovery of the Rubble to a different Prophet.

  The Kig-Yar couldn’t stop them. But they could move the plan up, so that they wouldn’t look like traitors, trading with the humans.

  No, it was time to destroy the humans and their homeworld and show the Prophets that it was the Kig-Yar, not the Sangheili or Jiralhanae, who were the most cunning and loyal and holy subjects of the Covenant.

  The shuffling steps of two furtive Unggoy soldiers got Reth to focus on the ground in front of his long face.

  “Sangheili kills us if we release you,” one of the Unggoy protested.

  “And you’ll risk your chance at joining in
the Great Journey because you’re scared of these Sangheili,” Reth hissed. His ribs hurt.

  The Unggoy shuffled their feet again, methane snorting out from their masks as they looked back and forth at each other.

  “Will you risk the Sangheili destroying the Redoubt, and all you’ve built on Metisette?” Reth asked. “Will you see all the Unggoy on that planet punished, when they’ve been following the right Path?”

  They glanced at each other again. “Our nipple brothers would be all killed?”

  The Unggoy sucked food from a shared tube, a nipple, Reth remembered. “Yes, your nipple brothers would all die.”

  That was enough to get them to free him. One of the Unggoy tapped at the controls for Reth’s cell.

  Reth smiled as the energy bars disappeared. He rolled out of the cell before the Unggoy changed their minds. “Quick, you must help me escape.”

  The two Unggoy grabbed him under his arms as he wobbled, prompting Reth to grunt in pain. Together, all three hobbled down the corridor until Reth had them stop near a service panel.

  The Sangheili may have taken the ship by force, and cowed the Unggoy, but Reth still had some tricks of his own. He shut down the ship’s computer system with an override password.

  While the Sangheili raced to reboot the system, he had the Unggoy drag him to an escape pod.

  Minutes later the cylindrical pod shot out of the ship, veering back toward Metisette at top speed, as the Sangheili coasted with a dead ship.

  It was time, Reth thought bitterly while rooting around the pod for a medical kit, to show the Sangheili that Kig-Yar could fight.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

  Mike flew the Petya through the Rubble, flipping the ship end over end for sudden deceleration, and weaving his way around docking tubes and asteroids.

  In the confines of the airlock, braced against Mike’s radical maneuvers, Jai swore. “I don’t see why I’m in the airlock for the quick rescue, Adriana. He’s your pet Insurrectionist.”

  “Shove it,” Adriana muttered over the suit radio.

  Jai stiffened. “Is that how you talk to rank?”

  “When rank stops whining I’ll modify my behavior,” Adriana said. “Besides, I need to be in the medical bay in case Delgado’s hurt.”

  “So we’re trusting an Insurrectionist AI and rushing to help an Insurrectionist. You see anything wrong with this?” Jai asked.

  Another voice crackled in his ear. The AI. Juliana. “Technically the Rubble is a collection of people with many different backgrounds. Only a small percentage of them are actually Insurrectionist as you understand it—”

  “Can it,” Jai muttered, as Mike flipped the ship again, making his stomach lurch. Mike fired the engines to dodge docking tubes. “Anything new about Delgado?”

  “The airlock the signal emanated from is still throwing me error codes from the broken seal,” Juliana reported. “You’re still the closest ship. An emergency crew is outside the lock on the habitat side, but can’t get at it, of course. I’ve broken the communications block on the airlock, but no one inside is responding.”

  Jai thought about that. A broken airlock and silence. “Doesn’t sound too promising.”

  “No,” Juliana replied. “It doesn’t.”

  “Coming in on the lock,” Mike shouted. Jai felt the Petya shudder like it never had before, and he was pressed against the side of the airlock despite the artificial gravity.

  He was glad he wasn’t looking at this from the cockpit.

  Metal ground on metal as Mike forced the wrecked airlock against theirs.

  “We’re go on your command,” Mike reported.

  Jai faced the thick metal door with its yellow stripes and red warning symbols and notices. “Do it.”

  The airlock sprung open with a gust of air. Then the habitat’s airlock ground open with a tiny puff of air.

  Jai forced his way through the moment the gap was large enough.

  Two men lay on the floor of the airlock’s nonslip metal surface. Delgado, a gun in one hand and the other bloody, lay over the stomach of a man with a bad chest wound. Blood pooled the floor around them, freezing as the vacuum sucked air and warmth out even faster now that a bad seal was in place between ship and habitat.

  Jai threw Delgado over a shoulder of his gray MJOLNIR armor, and picked up the other body as gently as possible, aware that he could be making the chest wound worse.

  He cycled through back into the Petya, thudding his way past bulkheads into the tiny cramped offshoot to the crew quarters where Adriana stood ready by a large metal table.

  She looked up. “Two? Who’s the other one?”

  Juliana flickered into being over a nearby shelf. “That’s Diego Esquival.” Her voice sounded muted, as if she were shocked.

  Adriana shook her head as she checked him over, while Jai held him in his arms still. “He’s dead.” She pulled Delgado off Jai’s shoulder and set him on the table. “But Delgado’s got a pulse. Store the other man into one of the cryogenic pods.”

  Jai walked Diego’s body around the table and to one of the three pods. Once he set it down and closed the lid, the automated systems kicked in. Diego was frozen in his last minute, for all the good it did him.

  When he turned around, Adriana had an oxygen mask on Delgado and the computers reading his vitals.

  Delgado stirred and opened his eyes, the oxygen taking effect. He tried to sit up, but Adriana put a hand on his chest to keep him in place. “You’re back on the Petya, Delgado.”

  “Diego?” Delgado groaned, looking around. “What about Diego?”

  Jai and Adriana glanced at each other, and Delgado saw it. He seemed to fall back in on himself, shaking his head and looking off into the distance. “Damn that bastard.”

  “What bastard?” Juliana asked from the corner of the room.

  Delgado twisted to see her better, and his mouth fell open. “You!” Warring emotions crossed his face. Jai figured the man had wondered if the AI was not to be trusted, but that the revelation still caught Delgado off guard.

  “Yes, me.” Juliana grinned. The hologram folded its arms. “What happened, Delgado?”

  “Bonifacio happened.” Delgado all but spit the name out. “He took Distancia. He also shot Diego.” Delgado bit his lip, and slowly sat, holding his knees to do it with a grunt.

  “I knew Bonifacio was a sketchy man. I have watched him smuggle things into the Rubble. I know of ten different caches he uses. He’s definitely running those covenant guns to the colonies. He campaigned hard for that Security Council spot,” Juliana said as Adriana and Jai watched the exchange. “But to do this?”

  Delgado looked at the AI. “We have to catch him.”

  “He’s not even trying to run,” Juliana said. “Your ship is slowly coasting through the Rubble.”

  “Bonifacio thinks I’m dead. He’s taking his time, so he doesn’t alarm anyone.” The group looked at each other, and Delgado caught the glances. He raised his voice. “Oh come on, I would not have done this. Why the hell would I risk my life to break an airlock? And do you think I shot Maria’s brother? Really?”

  Jai tapped the table. “Juliana, he makes a good point.”

  Delgado turned around to him. “And since when are you and the Rubble’s AI all working together? When the hell did that start?”

  “When the Jackals started getting too close to the data,” Jai said, staring Delgado down.

  Juliana was quiet, her eyes closed. “Okay Delgado. I think you are right. We have a big problem.” She opened her eyes to look at the three people staring back at her, and the equations streaming across her holographic body suddenly flashed bright red. “Kig-Yar ships are withdrawing all throughout the Rubble. They’re en route for Metisette.”

  “You told us the Jackals were up to something, like an invasion. Could this be it?” Jai said.

  “Their encryption is good. I can’t break it just yet. But communications traff
ic is up and that can tell me something. I’ve never seen activity like this. Delgado says Bonifacio is stealing the data. And this is happening at the same time as the largest movement of Kig-Yar ships we’ve seen since they first started arriving to make a presence on the Rubble. It has to be related.”

  “Damn,” Delgado said. “We were right—all they wanted was the data. They’re making a move now, right?”

  Juliana continued. “Distancia is moving in the direction her flight plan indicated, but could make a break for it the moment it gets clear of the Rubble to wherever the Kig-Yar want it to. We have to get to it and stop Bonifacio. And prepare for whatever it is the Kig-Yar are up to.”

  Jai nodded. “Our first priority is Bonifacio.” They had to focus on that; that was Gray Team’s mission. Adriana met his eyes, then nodded. She agreed. “Once we have that secured, Juliana, you have our assistance.”

  The AI had her eyes closed again. Planning, running through the millions of threads spread all throughout the Rubble in a way no human could.

  But she was an AI close to rampancy. Jai wondered how much they should follow her plans.

  He’d have to revisit that once they had their hands on Bonifacio and the navigation data.

  Juliana faded, becoming almost a ghost in the bright medical bay, then she appeared again. “Okay,” she almost whispered. “I can pass the fix I have on Distancia onto you, but I’m going to need some of you to help me. One team goes after Bonifacio, the other I need to do something a little bit trickier.

  “There’s a Kig-Yar ship still in the Rubble. I can’t crack their encryption, but if I can physically get into one of their systems, that would let me figure out exactly what they’re up to. If it’s a full-scale attack, we need to know for sure so that we don’t make a big mistake. If we use non-Rubble attackers, then the Rubble can deny this little incursion was our doing if things turn out to be okay with the Kig-Yar.”

  Jai looked at the AI. “You want us to board a Covenant ship?”