Last Light

by Troy Denning

  A muffled bang sounded from beneath the Mjolnir’s backplate, and a small stream of acrid smoke began to rise from the power supply control unit. Fred took one more step, then pitched forward and landed facedown, bellowing in rage.

  “What the—!”

  “Hold tight, Lieutenant,” Olivia said. “I’ve got this.”

  She gathered herself off the hillside and pointed her rifle in Veta’s direction, then used the barrel to gesture at the remote detonator.

  “Explain that.”

  “Insurance,” Veta said. Realizing she had just slipped pretty far into prisoner territory, she ran through her options and decided honesty was her only hope. “I thought Fred might interfere when I tried to take Mark down. So, when Commander Nelson took me into the support module, I slipped a charge onto the Mjolnir’s power supply control unit.”

  The Gammas looked at each other, but said nothing. Olivia started to circle around behind Veta.

  Veta craned her neck to keep track of the young Spartan. “Relax, ’Livi. I was wrong about Mark.” She pointed at the Mjolnir. “But I was right about that. The real killer is—”

  “Hold on.” Ash sliced a hand toward the jungle downhill from the road. “Move out. We have hostiles coming.”

  Veta glanced toward the hairpin curve and saw nothing but their own muddy bootprints and a carpet of shredded fronds.

  “How do you—”

  “We know,” Olivia said. “Grab your gear and follow.”

  The two Gammas each took one of Fred’s arms and moved off, dragging him and the heavy Mjolnir over the road embankment. Deciding she had returned to “squad member” status, Veta retrieved her battle rifle and the drone satchel, rushing after them.

  The trail of smashed foliage was easy to follow, and she caught up to them less than a minute later. They had found a flat spot above an outcropping and were just laying Fred there, still facedown.

  As Veta approached, Ash glanced up her. “Tell me about this mess,” he said. “How’d the ancilla get into Fred’s BIOS?”

  “Your guess is better than mine,” Veta said. “All I know is, that’s the third time Intrepid Eye has tried to kill me.”

  Fred growled into the dirt. “We’ll talk about that later. Get me out of this worthless crate of titanium!”

  “Yes, sir,” Ash said. “Sorry—”

  “She overpressurized my gel layer,” Fred interrupted. “I can’t move much, so you’ll need to extract the data crystal for me. You know how to do that manually?”

  “I don’t even know how to do it automatically,” Olivia replied. “Gammas don’t wear Mjolnir, remember?”

  “Then I’ll walk you through it,” Fred said. “Lopis, you keep watch. Try not to shoot any friendlies.”

  “Friendlies, out here?” Veta slung the drone satchel’s strap across her chest and turned uphill. “Right—that’s going to happen.”

  She crouched in the undergrowth and began to watch the jungle for movement, trying not to think about whether she would be able to pull the trigger on a Gao soldier—or have the courage not to, if it came to that. But she didn’t even consider stripping off her borrowed BDU and trying to surrender. Now she knew her suspect’s true identity and had a physical location for her. All that remained was to get Intrepid Eye away from the Spartans and bring her to justice—even if she did not know quite what justice was for a Forerunner ancilla.

  Fred was about twenty seconds into the manual extraction procedure when Veta began to hear fronds slapping against armor and stems snapping beneath boots. She could see no more than twenty meters through the dense foliage, but a few seconds later, she started to notice the undergrowth shivering in one place and trembling in another. She turned her head from side to side, trying to use her peripheral vision to catch sight of a shape or silhouette, but saw nothing.

  Still, she did not think it could be Spartans creeping toward them. Had it been Spartans, she would not have seen even that much.

  Afraid to look away long enough to see if the others had noticed, Veta reached over her shoulder and waved. She heard one of the Gammas tap Fred’s armor, then he fell silent. She turned her hand forward and moved her fingers back and forth, trying to indicate the area she was worried about.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Ash whispered. “We have company.”

  “We’ll finish later.” If Fred was frustrated, he did not betray it. His tone was all business. “Are we covered?”

  “Will be,” Olivia said, also whispering. “Looks like fifteen seconds.”

  “Okay, fifteen seconds,” Fred said. “Then open up on them. Retreat downhill, assemble at the bridge.”

  “If you don’t want to kill any yourself, Inspector, aim high,” Olivia added over TEAMCOM. “We just need to keep their heads down.”

  Fred began to talk aloud again, continuing to explain the extraction procedure in the same volume he had been using before. Not quite sure what he was doing, Veta cringed and gathered herself to roll.

  Her reaction drew a chuckle over TEAMCOM.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” said a familiar male voice. “The enemy knows where you are. The lieutenant is just trying to keep them comfortable.”

  “Mark?” No sooner had Veta gasped the name than she realized Fred’s plan had been a bit more elaborate than bail out, take cover. Blue Team had planned to assemble at the bridge all along—probably with the idea of ambushing anyone who happened to be pursuing Fred’s squad. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet.” Mark hesitated an instant, then added, “Same here, I guess.”

  Ash tapped Veta on the shoulder, and the shooting began.

  Veta dropped to her belly and joined the rest of the squad in firing low into the undergrowth. With all eight members of Blue Team ambushing them, the Gao battle-jumpers were walking dead men anyway, and Veta didn’t want to be the reason they took along a Spartan on the way out.

  The battle-jumpers instantly returned fire, and Veta heard rounds pinging off stone and armor. A heartbeat later, a handful of Spartans appeared on the Gao flank and raked the line with bullets and grenades. The spray of incoming tracer rounds grew sporadic and inaccurate, and Veta felt a small hand grab her belt and give it a tug.

  Veta squirmed backward until she dropped over a small ledge out of the line of fire, then turned to find Ash and Olivia dragging Fred down the slope. She started after them, slipping a fresh ammo clip into the battle rifle as she ran. She had never even seen whom she was shooting at.

  The four of them reached the bottom of the slope and emerged from the undergrowth onto a muddy road—presumably the same one they had been descending a few minutes earlier. To the left, the road ran along the valley floor for fifty meters, then made a sharp hairpin curve and began to angle up the hillside behind them. To the right, the road crossed a rusty steel bridge. On the far side, a pair of Warthogs blocked the road. One was a light reconnaissance model with a “Vulcan” antiaircraft gun mounted in the rear tray; the second was a transport model similar to the one Fred’s squad had been using earlier.

  As they dragged Fred’s armored bulk across the bridge, he tried to help out by pushing off the ground. He didn’t do much good. The Mjolnir’s hydrostatic gel layer remained overpressurized, so it was a struggle just to bend a knee. When they all reached the transport, Veta lowered the tailgate, then Ash and Olivia leaned Fred against its lip. Even with Veta helping, it was all the three of them could do to lift Fred’s legs and tip him into the passenger tray on his back. Veta scrambled in beside him.

  “Can I extract the data crystal for you?” Veta asked. “If you can help at all, I think I could roll you up far enough to reach the neural interface.”

  “How do you know where to find the . . .” Fred let the question trail off, no doubt realizing that if Veta knew enough to sabotage a Mjolnir power control system, she probably also knew where to find the neural interface. “Never mind—and no, you can’t have the ancilla. Nice try.”

  Veta took
the rebuff with a smile. “Okay. Is there some way I can release the gel pressure?”

  “I’ll wait for Kelly.” Fred’s voice was gruff. “If the pressure comes down too fast, I get embolisms.”

  As they spoke, Ash and Olivia were shedding their packs and laying them in the passenger tray. The battle seemed to be simultaneously withering and drawing closer—a sign, Veta supposed, that the Gao battle-jumpers were continuing to pursue despite mounting casualties.

  Once the packs were stowed, Ash climbed into the other Warthog to man the Vulcan. Olivia opened a cargo box and removed what looked like a pair of fist-size domes mounted above oversize wheels.

  Before Veta could ask what the toy cars were for, Ash opened up with the Vulcan. Veta spun back toward the opposite wall of the valley, then brought her rifle up and joined him in pouring fire toward a dozen battle-jumpers who had appeared atop the outcropping.

  The firefight was over before she emptied her first clip—Ash dropped the entire Gao line on the Vulcan’s first pass. A handful of sporadic bursts rang out from deeper in the jungle, then the rest of Blue Team emerged from the foliage and raced across the bridge. It did not escape Veta’s notice that three of the Spartans were carrying empty battle-jumper helmets, holding them close to their heads so they could eavesdrop on enemy orders.

  Tom took the wheel of the lead Warthog—the reconnaissance model with the Vulcan mounted in back—and Linda slipped into the passenger seat beside him. Everyone else piled into the transport, with Lucy in the driver’s seat and Mark riding shotgun, then—without spending the time to extract Fred from his Mjolnir—both vehicles flew up the road. They had traveled a hundred meters before Veta had the absurd thought that both drivers might be too young to legally operate a vehicle on Gao.

  A half kilometer later and the road reached the valley wall, branching in two directions. The lead Warthog turned right and began to ascend the hill through an emerald tunnel of jungle foliage, but the transport stopped. At first, Veta thought Lucy or Kelly just wanted to consult a wooden sign standing at the intersection. An arrow labeled WELL OF ECHOES pointed up the route the lead Warthog had taken, while a second arrow, labeled SINGING GROTTOS, pointed in the opposite direction.

  But Veta seemed to be the only one interested in reading the signs. By the time she had finished, Olivia was leaping out of the passenger tray with the toy cars she had removed from the cargo box, and everyone else was either watching the sky or the jungle.

  Olivia ran a few meters up the SINGING GROTTOS fork and placed the miniature vehicles on the ground, then reached underneath one of them. It came to life and raced away, roaring as loudly as a Warthog. After the first vehicle was gone, she sent the second chasing after it, then returned to the transport and jumped in. Lucy hit the accelerator, and they chased after the lead Warthog.

  Veta turned to Kelly. “Cute decoys,” she said, speaking loudly enough to make herself heard. “But they’re not going to fool anyone behind us. Look.”

  She pointed at the muddy tire tracks behind them.

  “There isn’t anyone behind us, at least not on the ground.” Kelly pointed up into the jungle canopy. “It’s them.”

  “More Wyverns?” Veta cocked her head and listened, but heard only the growl of Warthog engines. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s the idea,” Fred said. “Still, we’re not taking any chances. Mark, prep the Havok. Kelly, get me out of this armor—and keep a close eye on that data crystal. I have a feeling Inspector Lopis wants to put a bullet through it.”

  Kelly tipped her helmet in inquiry.

  “That’s where the ancilla is,” Olivia explained. “The inspector says she ate Wendell.”

  “Wow. Too bad for Wendell.” Kelly knelt next to Fred and, as the Warthog swerved and jostled up the jungle road, flipped him over as though his Mjolnir weighed nothing. Then she glanced at Veta. “But why is that your business?”

  “I solved the cave murders,” Veta said. “Intrepid Eye is my serial killer.”

  “Ah.” Kelly reached under a seat and withdrew a small toolkit. “Well, at least we’re getting her off Gao for you. She won’t be back.”

  “That’s not justice.”

  “What’s justice for a machine?” Kelly pulled a set of tiny instruments from the toolkit and began to prod and tap at the neural interface on the back of Fred’s neck. “In the end, that’s all the ancilla is. The Forerunners created her to do something, and she was probably doing it. You might as well shoot a cryo unit for frying a weak heart.”

  Veta started to argue that Intrepid Eye hadn’t malfunctioned—the ancilla had murdered all those people deliberately. Then Veta remembered the body count she and the Spartans had racked up during the last few days, and she realized Kelly wasn’t talking about just the ancilla. Like Intrepid Eye, the Spartans had been created for a purpose—one that demanded brutality and violence—and Veta had spent enough time in their company to know they felt the weight of what they were in ways she might never understand.

  A soft click sounded from the back of Fred’s neck, then Kelly withdrew a thumb-length data chip from the interface socket. It didn’t look much different from most data chips that Veta had seen, save that it was larger and had a glowing crystal “eye” that pulsed with cold blue light. Kelly handed the data crystal to Olivia for safekeeping, then removed the Mjolnir’s bulky backplate and miniature fusion reactor. The beaded nanocomposite inner armor immediately puffed outward, reacting to the excess pressure of the hydrostatic gel a couple of layers down.

  When Veta remained silent, Kelly finally asked, “What’s wrong, Inspector? Someone cut out your tongue?”

  “Not yet,” Veta said. She grinned and looked away. “But it did occur to me that it could be unhealthy to argue with a Spartan.”

  This drew a chuckle from the front passenger seat. “She has a point, Kelly.” Mark raised an oblong cylinder about the size of a Mjolnir helmet, then said, “The Havok is prepped. Excavation mode, ten-minute fuse.”

  “Ten minutes from now?” Fred asked. He was shed of his helmet and the Mjolnir’s outer shell, but remained in the beaded nanocomposite bodysuit. Kelly was kneeling astride him, slowly releasing the pressure from the hydrostatic gel layer underneath. “Or key insertion?”

  “Insertion. I’m a three, remember?” There was a hint of disappointment in Mark’s tone. “They don’t let me play with stuff like this alone.”

  As Mark spoke, the moan of approaching Wyverns began to resonate over the growl of the Warthog engines. Everyone paused and looked up, no doubt listening for the same thing Veta was—how quickly the moan was becoming a roar, and whether it seemed to be coming straight at them.

  “Sounds like we should make it ten minutes from now,” Kelly said. She removed a small chip card from inside her armor and passed it to Mark. “No sense giving anyone time to go after it, and the ride is already on station.”

  “Affirmative,” Fred said. “Call the ride down.”

  “Copy that.” Mark inserted the card into the cylinder, then asked, “What’s the arming code?”

  “Arming code?” Veta had been listening to the exchange with a growing sense of alarm, and now she was pretty certain that her fears were justified. “Is that a nuclear bomb?”

  “An excavation device, technically,” Mark said. “But, basically, yeah.”

  Veta looked from Mark to Kelly to Fred, who had sat up and was starting to peel off his inner layer of nanocomposite armor.

  “Have you all lost your minds?” she demanded. “You can’t detonate a nuclear device on Gao!”

  The extraction of the data crystal from the Mjolnir was an unfortunate development, and one that Intrepid Eye had failed to anticipate. Once again, she had underestimated her human adversaries—especially the one called Inspector. Three times, Intrepid Eye had tried to prevent Inspector from exposing her destruction of Wendell, and three times Inspector had prevailed. Clearly, the woman was a remarkable specimen of humanity.

 
And just as clearly, such resourcefulness was to be cultivated in the inheritors of the Mantle. Perhaps Inspector had a larger part to play in the destiny of her species than Intrepid Eye had realized. She would have to observe Inspector very closely.

  Of course, that would prove difficult . . . for a time. Intrepid Eye had no doubt that the humans called ONI would attempt to keep her confined and isolated, but that would not last for long. As ONI studied her, she in turn would be studying ONI. Eventually they would slip up, and she would free herself. It was as predictable as stellar evolution.

  And when Intrepid Eye did escape, she would turn her attention to the mysterious signal she had received from Epoloch. Although the signal was probably no more than a relay echo of her own efforts to contact the Council, the Epoloch system was the location of a primary shield world known as Requiem, a large-scale planetary shelter designed to protect its inhabitants from the Flood. While Intrepid Eye’s knowledge of such installations was limited, she recognized the possibilities inherent in the signal. Another abandoned ancilla? Perhaps even an extant Forerunner population that had survived the activation of the Halos? It would be irresponsible of her not to investigate.

  Besides, Wendell’s account of the fall of the Forerunners had been far from complete, and Intrepid Eye still hoped to find out what had become of the Forerunners who had survived to reseed the galaxy. At the very least, confirmation of their departure would give her confidence in her new purpose. And any Lifeworker records she found could save her thousands of years of experimentation.

  After all, she had never pruned a species for ascension before. There were bound to be mistakes.

  The sound of the approaching Wyverns continued to grow louder, occasionally rising as the aircraft swept back and forth, searching for the fleeing Spartans. Veta watched as Mark began to tap a keypad on the device, presumably entering codes relayed to him over a dedicated comm channel.

  “Don’t worry,” Olivia said. “We’ll get you clear.”