Last Light

by Troy Denning

  When he didn’t elaborate, Veta decided to keep pushing. “But?”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. The last thing Target Alpha wants is to draw attention with this murder spree.” Fred moved his finger to the top of the list and tapped the UNKNOWN GAO RADICAL entry. “That’s who we’re looking for.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s not complicated,” Fred said. “They’re the ones with the most to gain from this mess.”

  “That’s not evidence.”

  Fred shrugged. “You’ll find the evidence,” he said. “That’s what you do.”

  “It is, but what if the evidence doesn’t point to a radical?” Veta asked. “What if it points to a Spartan?”

  Fred pointed at the datapad. “It looks to me like Major Halal has ruled out the Spartans.”

  “I’m not the major,” Veta said. “But let’s talk about the rest of the battalion first. How large is it?”

  “About nine hundred people.”

  “Nine hundred? You’re kidding me.”

  “No, ma’am,” Fred said. “Three combat companies, the scientific units, a security company, and a couple of support companies.”

  “And what about equipment?” Veta asked. “Is there anything someone could use to crush bones this way and tear off limbs?”

  “Probably,” Fred said. “Nothing special springs to mind, except maybe a cargo walker or a munitions loader. But it would be tough to get any of that equipment down here without being seen.”

  “How big is it?” Veta asked. “Would any of it leave tracks?”

  “They’re powered exoskeletons,” Fred said. “About three meters tall and probably two wide. The cargo walker has legs and pads; it would be fine on the concrete, but if you stepped into the mud or rocks, you’d be in trouble. The loader has tracks. It could probably go anywhere—but you would know it had been there. The trail would be obvious.”

  Veta nodded. It was about what she had expected, but she would assign someone to check out the rest of the battalion’s equipment. “What about weaponry?” Veta asked. “Any close-quarters stuff that could cause what we’re seeing?”

  “No, ma’am,” Fred said. “Any battalion has plenty of weaponry that can tear a person apart. But our weapons are designed to kill quickly, efficiently, and usually from a distance. Anything designed to cause a slow death like that . . . well, you won’t find that in a marine armory.”

  Veta paused, then said, “Then I guess that leaves your own Mjolnir armor. How many Spartans are assigned to the battalion?”

  Fred did not answer at once.

  Veta let her breath out. “Please don’t tell me that’s classified, too.”

  “It is,” Fred said. “But I have clearance to share personnel information with you. There are eight Spartans attached to the 717th.”

  “Eight?” Veta checked Halal’s list of suspects again. “Halal only lists three—you, Kelly-087, and Linda-058.”

  “Probably because we’re the only three who wear Mjolnir,” Fred explained. “The other five wear SPI.”

  “SPI?”

  “Semi-Powered Infiltration armor,” Fred said. “It doesn’t significantly enhance strength or agility, so I assume the major saw no need to create a separate category for the Spartan-IIIs.”

  “Why not?” Veta asked. The Ministry of Protection had shared their intelligence on Spartans, so she knew that there were different kinds, and that both Spartan-IIs and IIIs were unimaginably strong, quick, and deadly. Unfortunately, that had been about the extent of the Ministry’s intelligence. The file had speculated on the possibility of special selection criteria and biological enhancement, but otherwise seemed to have no explanation at all for their prowess. “From what I understand, both Spartan-IIs and Spartan-IIIs have superhuman strength even without powered armor.”

  “That’s beside the point,” Fred said. “None of us has the strength to crush femurs or rip arms off with our bare hands.”

  Veta considered Fred’s reply, trying to figure out how she could check the claim, then finally realized she couldn’t. Unless she found documented proof of a Spartan performing a similar feat in the past, she simply had no way to prove or disprove the lieutenant’s assertion.

  “You’re sure about that?” Veta asked. “You’ve seen what even normal people can do when their adrenaline gets going.”

  “Inspector Lopis, I’m sure.” Fred’s tone grew stern. “Spartans may be superhuman . . . but they’re not serial killers.”

  The Tunnel Weasel entered an immense chamber filled with the sound of roaring water, then followed a gentle curve toward a well-lit loading zone in front of the glass-walled passenger lift. Fifty meters ahead, just beyond a stone-paved seating area filled with tables, benches, and a now-closed concession stand, a huge waterfall lit by golden spotlights plummeted out of the cavern ceiling and disappeared through the floor to a pool somewhere far below.

  As the tram stopped, a pair of UNSC marines in black BDUs stepped away from the lift entrance and saluted Fred. Both had sandy, short-cropped hair and square chins. In fact, the only difference Veta could see between them was that one had brown eyes and one had green eyes.

  “Welcome back, sir,” said Green Eyes. He glanced at the body bag in the second car. “Do you need to make an action report?”

  “Not at all, Private.” Fred stepped out of the tractor unit, slapped his battle rifle onto the magnetic mount on his armor, and retrieved the body bag from the second tram car. He draped it over his forearm, like a waiter would a towel. “She’s not one of ours.”

  “Good to hear, Lieutenant.” The soldier nodded to his brown-eyed companion, who stepped back to the lift and jabbed the call button. “Have a good trip, sir.”

  The lift opened. Veta scrambled through the door behind Fred. She felt her stomach sink as the lift car started to rise, and she quickly found herself staring down on the golden-lit waterfall from above. Once the lift had departed the cavern and entered a stone shaft ascending toward the surface, Veta opened a file on the datapad.

  “Lieutenant, maybe you can give me the names and identification numbers for those Spartan-IIIs you mentioned,” she said. “I just need to cross-check their locations against the timeline, so I can rule them out.”

  “I’d be happy to, Inspector.” Fred sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth. “Tom-B292, Lucy-B091—”

  “What about their last names?”

  “None,” Fred said. “Mark-G313, Olivia-G291, and Ash-G099.”

  “And the B and G prefixes?” Veta asked.

  “Their training companies,” Fred explained. “Beta and Gamma.”

  The lift reached the surface, and Gao’s orange daylight flooded into the car. After the darkness of the caverns, Veta was blinded for a couple of seconds, and when the door swished open, she was surprised to hear angry voices echoing across the courtyard.

  A small hand grabbed Veta by the biceps and quickly drew her out of the lift. “Better move along, ma’am,” said a female marine. “We’ve had reports that some of them are armed.”

  As her vision cleared, Veta saw a wall of UNSC marines standing fifty meters away, holding their assault rifles at port arms and facing the Montero Vitality Center’s closed entrance gate. Beyond the soldiers, on the other side of the wrought-iron gate, she could see placards and banners waving against a curtain of jungle mist.

  Fred stepped out of the lift behind Veta, still carrying the bagged body over his forearm, and turned toward the interior grounds of the spa.

  “I hope you work fast, Inspector Lopis,” he said. “Because this kettle is about to boil.”

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  * * *

  7.46 billion system ticks following stasis cessation

  324 meters belowground, heat extraction vent 3012

  Jat-Krula Support Base 4276 Service Caverns

  Karst system Edod 9, Planet Edod, Star Coro,

  (Human Designation: Campos Wilderness Distri
ct, Planet Gao, Cordoba System)

  A low groan, throaty and distinctly human, rolled from an intersecting conduit ahead. Intrepid Eye stopped immediately and floated up into a nearby dome, inverting her bulky maintenance skin so she could continue to observe the area without exposing it to view. With ten utility arms dangling beneath a bell-shaped instrument housing, the skin had a tendency to draw unwelcome attention.

  But Roams Alone continued blithely ahead, crossing in front of the conduit just as a lamp beam shot out to split the darkness of the main passage. The Huragok was caught in a blue cone of light for a few hundred ticks, a helmet-shaped form with a lumpy body and several long tentacles, floating nearly a meter above the cavern floor. The lamp beam swept swiftly onward, and Intrepid Eye hoped the human had not registered the Huragok’s presence.

  Then a voice hissed, “What was that, Hayes?”

  The lamp beam stopped moving.

  “What was what, Major?” This voice—the one called Hayes, no doubt—was quieter than the first and closer to the conduit mouth. “I was looking at mud.”

  “Ahead of us,” the first human—Major—whispered. “Like a jellyfish floating in the air. Green, maybe a meter across.”

  “No idea.” Hayes’s reply was barely audible to the inadequate microphones on the maintenance skin that Intrepid Eye currently occupied. “Better hang tight, Major.”

  The lamp beam switched off, and the two humans fell silent. Intrepid Eye remained inverted in the dome, waiting for the pair to move on—and hoping Roams Alone would not grow too inquisitive. A rare biological Huragok of the Lifeworker rate, he had only recently begun to encounter surface-dwelling species, and his insatiable curiosity about them was becoming a distraction she could not afford.

  It had been seventy-six planet rotations since an automated distress signal from Jat-Krula Installation 444-447 had roused Intrepid Eye from her stasis. Her many requests for a status report remained unanswered, and her own attempt to launch a reconnaissance drone had caused a massive cave-in, triggering a disaster that had left Covert Support Base 4276 entirely nonfunctional. Apparently, the accident had also damaged the base’s external communications array, as the only response to Intrepid Eye’s call for assistance had been an infestation of humans in the service caverns.

  They were everywhere. As Intrepid Eye went about her work trying to locate the problem with the communications array, she was constantly avoiding them. She encountered them riding through ventilation tunnels in their primitive vehicles, sitting and talking near steam vents, sloshing around in drainage conduits. Once, she even came across several of them bathing in a settling pond, laughing and splashing about without any thought to the damage they were doing to the filtration system.

  Intrepid Eye had been tempted to handle that problem with a few hundred volts of electricity, but such an attack would have been a gross violation of protocol. Jat-Krula Covert Support Bases were designed to be indiscernible from the native terrain, and it would have been unthinkable for an archeon-class ancilla to compromise one in a simple fit of pique.

  At last, a low rustle sounded from the conduit, and Intrepid Eye watched in infrared as a lightly armored human—Hayes, she assumed—squirmed into the main passage. He was cradling a projectile weapon in both arms and rotating his helmet back and forth, no doubt using his own thermal imaging system to inspect the area.

  Roams Alone could not resist the temptation. The soldier’s shoulders had barely cleared the mouth of the conduit when the Huragok began to descend from above, tentacles splaying to initiate an examination.

  Hayes yelled in surprise and rolled onto his side, swinging his weapon up toward the Huragok.

  Intrepid Eye had no choice. She hit the human with three thousand volts.

  The brilliance of the flash washed out her infrared imaging, so she switched to optical. Hayes was sprawled faceup, dangling out of the conduit and caught in the throes of a seizure. His chest armor was glowing white from the heat of the strike, his weapon clanging against the cavern floor every time he suffered a spasm and squeezed the trigger again. Roams Alone hovered above the stricken soldier, waiting for the firearm to fall silent so he could save the human.

  It was an intention Intrepid Eye expected. Like all Huragok, Roams Alone lived to maintain and repair, which meant he felt compelled to mend any damaged life-form he encountered. At first Intrepid Eye had been willing to indulge the Huragok’s compulsions, even among humans, because Roams Alone was always careful to eliminate any memory of his presence. But that did not prevent his patients from realizing they had been healed while inside the caverns. Word had spread, and now desperately ill humans had begun to swarm into the cave system in search of their own cure.

  Hayes’s firearm finally depleted its ammunition and fell silent. Intrepid Eye quickly dropped out of the dome, where Roams Alone would be able to see her, and began to twist the maintenance skin’s utility arms through a rough approximation of the Huragok sign language.

  <>

  Roams Alone extended his head-stalk and turned three eyes toward Intrepid Eye, then signed, <>

  <> Intrepid Eye replied.

  The newest arrivals—the soldiers—were Intrepid Eye’s real problem, of course. They had begun to map the service caverns and work their way down toward the heart of the support base. Suspecting that they were searching for Roams Alone, Intrepid Eye had transmitted yet another emergency request for aid. Then, hoping to buy time for help to arrive, she had activated her Aggressor Sentinels and unleashed them on the soldiers.

  Six hundred million system ticks later—nearly a week, as humans measured time—Intrepid Eye had been down to half the Sentinel complement, and still no help had come. Changing strategies, she had taken the risk of eavesdropping on the soldiers’ communications—and learned that the situation was far worse than she had imagined. Not only were the soldiers aware of Base 4276’s existence, but they were hunting her instead of Roams Alone.

  Yet Intrepid Eye had also learned that the soldiers were unwelcome visitors on Gao, with only a short time to accomplish their mission before their reluctant hosts forced them to withdraw. And that was when Intrepid Eye had understood how to stop them.

  Roams Alone continued to hover above Hayes.

  <> Intrepid Eye signed again. <>

  A negative ripple ran down Roams Alone’s tentacles. <>

  <> Intrepid Eye signed. <>

  Roams Alone’s tentacles fell slack, and for a thousand ticks, Intrepid Eye thought he might actually obey her order.

  Then the Huragok’s tentacles began to undulate again. <>

  Before Intrepid Eye could object, Roams Alone dropped down in front of the conduit, then extended three tentacles and wrapped them around Hayes’s arm.

  The soldier’s companion, Major, did not understand, of course. From the conduit emerged a human hand holding a sidearm. A pair of loud bangs reverberated through the cavern, and Roams Alone went spinning up the passage, his gas bags whistling as he lost buoyancy.

  Intrepid Eye shot forward and felt four rounds pierce the outer shell of her maintenance skin. Fortunately, the machine was as sturdy as it was simple, and none of the slugs hit anything more critical than an actuating cylinder. She extended a utility arm and activated an electromagnet, then heard knuckles popping as the sidearm was ripped from Major’s grasp. The human cried out in surprise, and the weapon clanged into Intrepid Eye’s ferro pad.

  A hundred ticks later, faster than any human could have reacted, a request by Major for reinforcements went out over a broad spectrum of wavelengths. This far underground, there was little chance of the transmission reaching anyone who was not in a direct line of sight, but Intrepid Eye activated a spotlight anyway and moved forward to shine its beam into the tight confines of
the conduit.

  She found only an unarmored human squinting into the light, his face contorted with fear and confusion.

  “MAYDAY, MAYDAY,” the transmission continued. “MAJOR IRA HALAL IS UNDER ATTACK. SEND HELP AT—”

  The transmission ended in a burst of static as Intrepid Eye jammed fifteen of the sixteen frequencies being utilized.

  Over the remaining frequency, Intrepid Eye demanded, “IDENTIFY YOURSELF. WHY DID YOUR HUMANS ATTACK?”

  “IN REPLY TO YOUR REQUEST: INFORMATION CLASSIFIED,” the entity said, “IN REPLY TO YOUR QUESTION: SELF-DEFENSE. NOW, IDENTIFY YOURSELF AND SURRENDER.”

  Intrepid Eye paused for a few hundred ticks as she traced the transmission source to a primitive information processor strapped to Major’s forearm. Clearly, the entity within the processor was attempting to make contact with the soldiers’ primary communications array. And, given that the soldiers were from another world, the array would probably have access to an interstellar communications device—perhaps a supraluminal transmitter or even a quantum entanglement relay, but something that Intrepid Eye could seize and use to contact the Forerunner ecumene.

  “REQUEST DENIED,” Intrepid Eye replied to the processor.

  She shot a skein of self-guided cables into the conduit and had them wrap themselves around Major’s elbow, then began to draw the soldier toward her. He fought back with his free hand, pulling a knife from his belt and hacking at the cables. The blade was too soft to damage the casing, but Major was slashing about wildly, striking the wall as often as he did the cables.

  Intrepid Eye did not care about the scratches the panicked man was inflicting on the walls, but she could not let him damage that primitive information processor—not when it was her best hope of learning why she had received no response from Installation 444-447 or anyone else in the ecumene military.

  Before continuing, Intrepid Eye activated the maintenance skin’s rear lens and saw Roams Alone pressed against the far wall of the passage. He was struggling to stay afloat, with his head-stalk curled back so he could inspect the holes in a deflated gas cell. Satisfied the Huragok would not be able to place himself in further danger when she drew Major out into the main passage, Intrepid Eye quadrupled the rate of extraction.