Last Light

by Troy Denning

  The stench continued to grow stronger as the team crept forward, and Veta began to recognize other scents as well—fried electronics and spilled cooling fluids, scorched dirt and incinerated plants. A Spartan-III—probably Tom—suddenly appeared on the slope ahead, his SPI armor making it seem as though he had simply separated himself from a nearby tree fern. He signaled the trio to take cover behind a nearby outcropping, then vanished again.

  Ash led his companions forward to the outcropping, where Veta took a knee downslope from Olivia. They were so close to the crash site that she could hear the Falcon’s doors and weapon mounts creaking as it shifted on the hillside, but the wreckage remained veiled by a bank of emerald fronds at least ten meters deep. She tried to avoid picturing her friends and colleagues who had been aboard because she didn’t want to fall prey to the anger and sadness she could feel rising inside, didn’t want to do something foolish in a fit of rage or find her reactions numbed by sorrow. She could tell by the relative quiet and the odor that it was likely none had survived; the best she could hope for now was to confirm their identities and assure their loved ones that the end had come too swiftly for the victims to feel much pain—even if that was not quite true.

  Curious as to why Tom had told them to hold at the outcropping, Veta glanced up at Olivia. The Spartan was looking downslope, toward the battle still raging in the valley. She had replaced her missing SPI helmet with a standard marine model, so her narrowed eyes and set jaw were apparent. Knowing better than to give away their position by breaking the silence, Veta merely looked in the same direction.

  She saw only jungle.

  Then the sound of an ambush erupted thirty meters below—a layered chain of three-round bursts punctuated by grenade detonations and howls of anguish that were nearly inaudible over the cacophony. The attack was quickly answered by thudding maulers and whining plasma bolts, and it grew obvious that if Blue Team had beat the Keepers to the crash site, it had not been by much.

  Veta watched in fear and awe as the firefight shredded the jungle, Jiralhanae warriors bounding through the smoke and foliage. Most were turning to meet the Spartans who had ambushed them. But a handful—at least half a dozen—were scrambling uphill toward the still-hidden crash site.

  Olivia and Ash opened up with their battle rifles, trying to force the climbers back into the killing zone, but doing little more than blowing jungle down and bouncing rounds off Jiralhanae armor. Veta joined in, trying for neck and knee shots. She saw one of the Brutes go down, but at least four continued to climb, angling away, deeper into the jungle, where they were harder to target.

  Particle beams streamed in from across the valley, spraying fronds into the air and chewing through the outcropping that Veta and her companions were using for cover. Mark opened up with his own sniper rifle, and the hail of death diminished . . . but not fast enough. First Ash, then Olivia and Veta were forced to stop firing and drop out of sight, and Veta realized there was no longer any doubt—the Jiralhanae were going to beat them to the crashed Falcon.

  Veta rolled around the base of the outcropping and wedged herself behind a boulder. She found herself looking across a ten-meter clearing of combat-denuded jungle into a brake of still-standing cycads. Just inside the thicket sat the mangled silhouette of the Falcon. She saw at least three Jiralhanae climbing toward the wreck, mere meters from its sagging tail.

  Veta backed away from the boulder and peeked uphill. Olivia and Ash were crouched down behind the outcropping, still hiding from Keeper sniper fire, but also watching her intently.

  Veta tossed her battle rifle aside, then drew her SAS-10 from its holster and raised her brow. Olivia rolled her eyes, but smiled.

  Ash nodded. He raised three fingers, then lowered the first. A breath later, he lowered the second. Veta sprang up and raced across the beam-chewed clearing, not sprinting so much as leaping, slipping, and clambering.

  The Jiralhanae snipers did not find her until she was halfway across, and by then her legs were trembling so hard she could barely keep them beneath her. She went down in the mud as a tree fern exploded into splinters half a meter above her head. She crawled into a tangle of fronds, and a geyser of dirt shot up to her left. She changed strategy and rolled under a fallen cycad, a purple flash blowing the crown apart beside her.

  Veta scrambled forward with sniper attacks still peppering the hillside around her, and then she was across the clearing and back into the relative safety of the jungle, peering around the trunk of a giant tree fern. She saw no sign of Ash or Olivia yet, but took the torrent of particle beams tearing through the jungle upslope of her to mean they were still alive and moving. The Falcon’s twisted black wreckage lay ten meters up the slope, in a long slide-scar ringed by blackened foliage. Its severed rotors and stubby wings were resting on scorched ground a few meters above the rest of the craft. At the uphill end of the slide-scar, pieces of shattered cockpit were strewn about an impact crater the size of a freight truck.

  Three Jiralhanae were already at the crash site. One was keeping watch, scowling over his plasma rifle back toward the clearing, on the lookout for whatever was drawing the tempest of sniper fire—even if the jammed comm channels prevented him from asking for details. The other two Brutes were working from opposite sides of the Falcon’s twisted hull, leaning into the still-smoking passenger compartment to extract HMGs and human bodies. There was no sign of Fred, but that meant nothing. He could have been thrown clear when the Falcon crashed or fallen out beforehand. Hell, he might even have survived and dragged himself off into the jungle with the ancilla—though even Veta had to admit that the last possibility was probably more wishful thinking than a long shot.

  It sickened Veta to see the way they treated her dead colleagues, dragging them out of the wreckage in pieces and tossing them aside. With luck, she would make them pay. But not until she had a combat plan—Veta had learned at least that much from the Spartans.

  The fourth Jiralhanae was farther uphill, just past the impact crater, ascending a small talus field toward a chest-high outcropping of limestone. Even larger than his companions, this one wore a long gray beard, and the ceremonial braiding etched into the collar of his armor suggested he might be some sort of chieftain. He was armed with a sickle-bladed carbine that Veta had heard both marines and Spartans refer to as a “Spiker” during the battle in Wendosa.

  Olivia and Ash were nowhere to be seen, but it seemed unlikely they had been hit as they bolted across the clearing. They were Spartans, and Spartans rarely made themselves easy to spot. Still, Veta knew that waiting to regroup was not an option. The duel between Mark and the enemy snipers continued to rage, and particle beams were probing the jungle all around her. Gripping her SAS-10 in both hands, Veta activated the laser sight and rolled to a knee.

  A mudball dropped into the foliage ahead of her.

  Stifling a cry of surprise, Veta looked back and found Olivia lying in a tangle of fronds about five meters upslope. Instead of a battle rifle, the Spartan was holding her combat knife, and she was signaling WAIT. When Veta nodded, Olivia pointed from the SAS-10 to herself to the wreckage, then paused a moment. She used her thumb and forefinger to represent a pistol . . . and point it up the hill at the chieftain. Finally, she lowered her thumb, and the message grew clear: COVER ME, THEN KILL THE CHIEFTAIN.

  Veta acknowledged this to Olivia, and the Gamma disappeared back into the fronds.

  At the wreckage, the Jiralhanae on watch duty was still scowling, but now his plasma rifle was pointed at a pair of fallen cycad trunks. Veta feared for a moment that he had spotted Ash—until a soft clunk sounded about halfway between the trunks and the frond tangle where Olivia was hiding. The warrior swung his weapon back toward the sound, and Ash slipped out of the jungle behind him.

  Moving so swiftly he seemed more blur than soldier, Ash reached up to grab the rear of the Jiralhanae’s helmet, then pulled the warrior over backward and slashed a combat knife across his throat. Ash lowered the body gently to the grou
nd and, stepping away while blood was still spurting from the wound, spun toward the far side of the wrecked Falcon.

  By then, Olivia was racing across the hillside toward the near side of the crash. As she approached, a Jiralhanae suddenly backed out of the Falcon’s door, and Veta feared for a moment that he was turning to defend himself.

  But when the big warrior stood upright, he was holding the Forerunner artifact, cradling its limp body in both hands and speaking to it in reverent tones. A heartbeat later, Olivia leaped onto his back and plunged her combat knife deep into the side of his neck.

  Realizing she was up next, Veta sprinted up the slope toward the Jiralhanae chieftain. She passed Olivia and Ash while they were still riding their foes to the ground, then raised her SAS-10 and began to move the laser targeting dot toward her quarry. Still seemingly unaware of his companions’ fates, the chieftain had set his Spiker aside, and he was leaning over the little outcropping, using both hands to draw something up from the other side.

  Veta was probably fifteen meters away, easily within the pistol’s range and her skill level—but not against a heavily armored objective while she was sprinting uphill. She continued a few more steps until she reached the loose talus below the outcropping, then took a knee.

  Meanwhile, the chieftain was drawing himself upright, groaning with effort as he pulled a figure in scorched Mjolnir onto the outcropping. It could only be Fred, of course. The armor looked oddly stiff, as though it had somehow entered rigor mortis or the mechanical joints had locked up when Fred died, and Veta was surprised to find her heart drumming and her hands shaking.

  She told herself it was just physical exhaustion—the effects of a grueling trek and a hellish battle—but even she knew it was more than that, that she felt real grief for the Spartan commander. She still hated what he stood for, and she had no illusions about the things he had done for the UNSC. But as for Fred himself? Veta suddenly realized she was going to miss him.

  She let out a calming breath and braced herself to fire—then winced as a particle beam streaked past her shoulder and sent shards of limestone spraying into the air. The chieftain’s head snapped around to look, and Veta realized that the sniper attack had robbed her of an easy kill shot to the back of the neck. She put the SAS-10’s targeting dot on the soft spot behind the Brute’s knee instead and pulled the trigger.

  The Jiralhanae gave a gravelly bellow in response, but Veta had no idea whether it was in pain or anger. She was too busy rolling across the slope, dodging particle beams. Recalling an admonishment Fred had recently given her to never move predictably in a sniper zone, she reversed directions and brought her pistol up again, swinging the barrel back toward the chieftain.

  He was standing on one leg, with the other hanging by the bloody remnants of the knee joint. One hand was reaching for his Spiker, the other sweeping Fred’s Mjolnir-clad body off the outcropping toward her. Mark’s SRS99 began to boom again from somewhere uphill, returning the sniper fire that had been harrying Veta all along.

  Guessing she had maybe a full second before the next attack, Veta set her targeting dot on the Jiralhanae’s massive hand and fired. The appendage exploded in a bloody spray, and Fred’s Mjolnir crashed down into the talus above her.

  It began to descend headfirst, triggering a small rockslide that came straight at her. Veta rolled aside, and, as the slope around her erupted with beam strikes, decided it was time to bug out. She sprang up, whirled around to run . . . and was nearly knocked off her feet as a fist-size rock caught her between the shoulder blades.

  A fierce jolt sizzled down her spine, then her right thigh exploded into pain as something heavy clipped her hip and knocked her leg out from beneath her. Veta managed to twist back around and saw Fred’s Mjolnir shooting past. It hardly looked like a safe ride, but at least it was sliding on top of the rocks and traveling the same speed as the slide. She drove off her left leg and dived, throwing herself on top of Fred.

  Veta landed with her face at waist level, her shins and feet bouncing through the rocks behind them. She reached up and managed to slip a free hand under a chest plate, then pulled herself up until her ankles no longer seemed in danger of being crushed.

  The ride down the steep slope was longer, faster, and rougher than Veta would have expected—if there had been any time to think about it. Terrified of being crushed when the armor began to tumble, she looked for a soft place to roll off and saw Olivia flash past. Then the Mjolnir reached the bottom end of the slide-scar and entered the jungle. But instead of catching on something and going into a flip, the armor rode up over a frond tangle, and they shot into the air like a missile.

  Veta pressed her head close to Fred’s and held on tight as they remained airborne for what must have been a dozen meters. As the Mjolnir dropped back toward the ground, she pulled her hand from beneath the chest plate and jumped off into what she hoped would be a reasonably soft thicket of fronds.

  The impact didn’t crush her, but it didn’t end well, either. Veta crashed through the thicket as though it wasn’t even there, and then continued to tumble down the slope on her own. After a dozen rotations, her calves finally slammed into a mass of spiky leaves, and she came to a painful, spinning halt.

  For a time, Veta lay motionless on the muddy slope, resting on her back with her head pointed downhill and lower than her boots. She heard Fred’s armor continuing to crash along the slope for another several seconds, drawing a series of shouts from a company of soldiers who seemed to be ascending the slope toward her. Then, finally, the crashing stopped, and the commotion of the distant battle began to settle over the jungle once again.

  At first, Veta was afraid to move because everything hurt and she wasn’t sure what might be broken. After a moment, the pain began to subside, and she was afraid to move because the hill was so steep and muddy that she thought she might go sliding again. Then, as the blood continued to settle in her head and she began to get her bearings, she was afraid to move because she could hear someone coming through the jungle toward her.

  Veta flexed her hand and was glad to feel the SAS-10 still in her grasp. That was the first rule of a gunfight—don’t lose the gun. She checked to make sure the safety was off—it was—then tried hard to listen for the approaching footfalls above the drumming of her own heart.

  The muzzle of a rifle pushed through the undergrowth. Veta brought her pistol up and pointed it along the rifle barrel toward a shell of mottled green chest armor.

  “Hold on, soldier!” The voice was husky, male, and human. “I’m on your side.”

  Veta raised her gaze and found herself looking at a gaunt UNSC marine with a three-day growth of beard. She pointed the SAS-10 away, then asked, “Who are you?”

  “Alpha Company,” the marine replied. “We’re here to relieve you.”

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  * * *

  1105 hours, July 6, 2553 (military calendar)

  Constantine Suite, Montero Vitality Center, Montero Jungle

  Campos Wilderness District, Planet Gao, Cordoba System

  Veta did not remember the entire trip back to the Vitality Center, but she did recall the early parts. A pair of medics had immobilized her inside a body-bracing buoyancy litter that looked a lot like a giant tube puffed full of helium, then floated her through the jungle for hours. When they had finally reached the valley wall, they had attached a cable to the “BBB board”—as they called the litter—and climbed alongside as a winch hauled her up to a waiting Warthog.

  By that time, Veta had been pretty certain she was not critically injured, but the medics had insisted that she needed to be checked for head injuries and spinal damage. In no position to resist—and utterly exhausted—Veta had allowed herself to be loaded into the Warthog.

  Asleep before a second litter was loaded, Veta remembered only snippets of the ride afterward—just vague sensations of motion and a surreal growl of downshifting engines. And she had no idea how she had come to wake up in a b
ed large enough for two Jiralhanae, smelling of soap and shampoo and dressed in a clean set of UNSC marine fatigues.

  The chronometer on her bedside table read 11:05, which suggested she had been asleep for eighteen hours.

  Veta pushed herself into a seated position and glanced around the opulent bedroom. It was at the upper end of spa chic, with a separate seating area, white curtains drawn across an entire wall of glass, and a frosted-pane door opening into an elegant, white-tile washroom. Across from the bed, her SAS-10 and other personal gear lay atop a long, low dresser, along with a bowl of fruit, a glass, and a water pitcher etched with the Montero Vitality Clinic’s tree fern logo.

  A sharp knock sounded from the double doors adjacent to the dresser. Before Veta could swing her feet onto the floor—or even ask who it was—a female sergeant opened a door and stepped inside.

  “Commander Nelson to see you, ma’am.”

  “Now?” Veta asked, still not quite certain she was awake. “I mean, already?”

  The sergeant—a blue-eyed woman with a slender nose and a square jaw—looked at Veta as though she had asked whether humans breathed oxygen.

  “Yes, ma’am.” She looked away, then addressed someone in the adjacent room. “She’s decent, Commander.”

  Veta checked to make sure all of the uniform’s buttons and fasteners were closed, then rose—a little stiffly and unsteadily at first, but without any sharp pains or throbbing aches.

  By then, Murtag Nelson was stepping past the sergeant, looking rumpled and even more tired than the first time Veta had met him. In his hands, he carried a silver tray complete with a bowl of snacks, a decanter filled with red Gao bitters, and two short glasses filled with ice. Without invitation, he crossed to the seating area, placed the tray on a glass table between two plush white chairs, and then turned to face Veta.