“Oh, calm down,” said Valois. “Annecy was one of the first cities hit. Six months ago. Too little too late evacuating the place yesterday.” He gave a cruel, rumbling laugh.
“Six months?” Dorian shouted.
Several people shushed him, and Owen’s light swept over the teams, landing on Dorian like a spotlight. “We need to be quiet,” he said. “You know that.”
“Six months?” Dorian whispered to Valois. “That can’t be right.”
Valois smirked. “Trust me, kid. I was here.” He leaned in close. “Guess you don’t know everything, do you?”
“Stop screwing around with me,” Dorian snapped.
Valois’s expression hardened. “I’m not screwing around with you. This whole area was the first one hit, although there are rumors that the fighting in atmo has been going on for even longer. UNSC and the Meridian Special Forces were deployed to put a stop to it. Survivors were shipped off to refugee planets. And the government did everything they could to tamp down on the news. They weren’t totally successful, but a bunch of backwater high school kids wouldn’t have been paying attention, right?”
Owen sent a couple of Red Squad members ahead into the chewed-up structure as reconnaissance. The others all huddled close, backs together for warmth, but Dorian slipped away from the group and headed toward the collapsed building. His head buzzed. Trust me, kid. I was here. Six months ago? Valois was a jerk, but he’d never been a liar. How could Meridian have been under attack for six months without anyone in Brume-sur-Mer hearing about it? Unless Valois was right, and the news had been heavily guarded somehow. Brume-sur-Mer was on the other side of the world. But beyond even that, Owen had told them that the fighting had only been going on for a week, up outside the atmosphere. Nothing grounded.
What the hell?
“Dorian!” Evie hissed from behind him. “What are you doing? We can’t split up.”
Dorian stared at the piles of twisted, melted metal.
“He lied to us,” Dorian said.
“What are you talking about?” Evie sidled up next to him and activated a little palm light that cast a small sphere of blue illumination over their feet.
“Owen,” Dorian said. “When he told us that Brume-sur-Mer was one of the first hit. He lied to us.”
“Why, because this place is bombed out? It’s been three months.”
“No.” Dorian’s mouth was dry, his voice scratchy. “Because Valois told me he was here when it happened. Six months ago.”
The wind picked up, whistling mournfully as it blew through the rubble.
“Valois told you that?” Evie shook her head. “He’s messing with you. We would have heard about it.”
“Not if they kept it quiet.”
“They?” Evie laughed. “You sound like the insurrectionists in our history book.”
Dorian rolled his eyes. The wind buffeted against him, sending goose bumps running up his legs. “If they were trying to avoid a panic,” he said. “If they thought they could keep it contained. I could see it. We were on the other side of the moon, so they wouldn’t have even had to be that successful for us to not notice. But Owen should have told us. He shouldn’t have claimed Meridian had just been fighting for a week.” Dorian squeezed his fingers around the butt of his rifle. “He shouldn’t have lied to us.” He gave a bitter laugh, looked over at Evie in the darkness. He could barely make her out in the starlight. In the battle light.
“Makes you wonder who else is lying to us,” he said.
“Don’t,” Evie said.
“Nguyen! Rousseau!” Farhi shouted. “Get your asses back here. We’re taking shelter.” She strode across the open space, shining a light in their faces. “Don’t run off like that. This isn’t that beach town you grew up in. You don’t know this place.”
“Don’t know a lot of things,” Dorian muttered, but he followed Farhi anyway.
Dorian woke with the sun. Easy to do when there wasn’t a roof to block it out. The light came spilling in, pinkish and not any warmer than the night had been. At least they’d managed to find some emergency blankets, the fabric lined with liquid heaters. This place had been some kind of travel center, a hub for freighters and automatic cars. The supplies had all been pretty much ransacked, but Valois knew his way around, found the blankets tucked away in a cabinet on the rickety second floor.
Of course Valois knew his way around. He’d been here before.
Dorian wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and blinked up at the sky blossoming with streaks of pink and silver. He kept waiting for a Covenant ship to mar the view, but nothing flew overhead. There weren’t even any birds.
He sighed, dropped his head back down. Yellow Squad was on patrol, and he spotted Caird leaned up against a big picture window, the glass miraculously still in place. Everyone else was still sleeping, piled up next to one another for warmth. Dorian stood, stretched. Dragged the blanket with him as he walked over to the windows.
He knew what he was going to see there in the soft dawn light, but the shock still raced through him like lightning. The travel hub was situated on a hill overlooking Annecy. These things usually were, Dorian’s mom had told him once. One of those useless facts she’d shared with him before she joined up with the UNSC.
But Annecy just—wasn’t there.
Dorian could see where the city had once been. Roads crossed over the softly rolling hills, intersecting the blackened frames of former buildings. Wreckage lay in monstrous heaps, more of that twisted metal and molten stone. The image unrolled all the way out to the horizon.
“Sure is a sight,” said Caird.
Dorian jumped, then pulled the blanket more firmly around his shoulders, straightening his spine. “What was the point of evacuating a day ago?” he said, the question dry on his tongue because it wasn’t the question he really wanted to ask—why hadn’t Owen told them the truth? “Were people really still living here?”
“Yeah, they were,” Caird said. “People don’t like giving up their home if they can help it. And the outskirts of the city aren’t as bad as …” She gestured at the view. “But with us here, we risk the Covenant coming back, and it was safer to give the orders. We’ll see how many people listened.”
Dorian stared out at the remains of the city. From this distance, they looked like ash.
“Did the city really fall six months ago?” he asked.
Caird hesitated. “Yeah.”
Dorian closed his eyes against the sting of the truth.
“Look, I’m sorry. The information was classified. I only know it because my CO back then was from Calais, about a hundred kilometers away. Said Annecy got blasted from out of the sky. He’d been home on leave when it happened, so my whole team got looped in on the information control.” Caird laughed, shook her head. “Imagine that. Home on leave and you see the opening shots of a months-long battle.”
“Yeah,” Dorian muttered. “Imagine that.”
Caird sighed. “I know it’s a shock. But they had the Covenant quarantined in this area and they wanted to avoid panic.” She reached over and put a hand on Dorian’s shoulder, and it sat there, a deadweight. When he didn’t respond, she dropped it and then ambled away, starting the final patrol of her shift. Dorian pressed his hands against the cold glass.
Six months. Six months. The thought burned in his head until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He spun around, went over to the place where Saskia and Evie and Victor were sleeping. Six months. What had he been doing six months ago? Working with Uncle Max, writing songs, skipping the last class of the day so he could go down to the beach for a few more hours before the rainy season set in. All the while this city on the other side of the world was burning.
He knelt down and shook the others awake, jostling them and hissing, “Get up! Get up!” Evie was the first to respond, her eyes fluttering open. She peered at Dorian like she didn’t quite recognize him. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“Get up,” Dorian said. “I need to show you something.” He sho
ok Victor and Saskia at the same time, more roughly than he ought to. Saskia moaned and swatted at him. Victor’s eyes flew open.
“What the hell, man?”
“He says he needs to show us something,” Evie answered, pushing herself up to sitting. “Wow, it’s cold in here.”
“Keep the blanket,” Dorian said. He gave Saskia one last shove, and she rolled over, groaning.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Get up,” Dorian told her. “We’ve got to talk to Owen.”
“I thought you wanted to show us something,” Victor said.
“Yeah, well, that too.”
Now that all three were awake, they roused themselves quickly, their training kicking in. Dorian stood a few paces away, arms crossed over his chest to keep out the cold air. When they were ready, he led them over to the windows.
“Oh my god,” whispered Saskia, the first one to respond at all.
“We knew it was destroyed,” Victor said, wrapping himself more tightly in the blanket. “You woke us up to show us this?”
“No,” said Evie, her face ashy and pale. “No, it’s because it happened six months ago. Is that what you’re getting at?” She turned to Dorian. “The city’s been like this for six months.”
Dorian nodded once.
“What are you talking about?” Victor snapped. “The invasion started three months ago.”
“No, it didn’t,” Dorian said.
Saskia tore her gaze away from the ruins of Annecy and blinked at him, her eyes shining. “What are you saying?”
“Owen lied to us when he said Brume-sur-Mer was one of the first hit. When he said the fighting had only been going on for a week. He lied.”
Victor and Saskia stared at him. Evie kept gazing out the window, her fingers pressed lightly on the glass.
“Why would he do that?” Saskia asked.
“That’s why I woke you up,” Dorian snapped. “I think we need to go ask him.”
“Are you sure this happened six months ago?” Evie whispered.
Dorian glared at her, annoyance flaring up in his chest. “Yes!” he said. “And I didn’t just hear it from Valois. Caird confirmed it, and we can trust her. Owen lied to us, and it makes me want to know who else has been lying to us.”
“Dorian,” Evie said softly.
“Don’t act like you haven’t thought it too,” Dorian said.
Victor sighed. “You’re acting paranoid. There’s no reason to think—”
“Six months!” Dorian shouted, gesturing out the window. “Our world has been under attack for six months, and we didn’t know anything about it. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like we weren’t being lied to.”
Silence. The space around them felt suddenly enormous, and Dorian felt very small. The lightening sky overhead exposed him, exposed all of them. And all he wanted in that moment was to be on a ship heading back to his uncle.
“I’m going to find Owen,” Dorian said. “You can come with me or not. But I’m going to get some answers.”
He whirled around, skirting the remainder of the militia, all of them sleeping beneath the softly glowing blankets. They could sleep anywhere, he thought. He hadn’t seen Owen all morning, and he hoped he was still in the building. Not that Dorian wouldn’t set out across the ruins to confront him.
He heard the patter of footsteps behind him, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he was surprised to find Evie and Saskia, their expressions determined. Even more surprising was Victor, strolling behind them with his hands in his pockets, his head dipped down.
“You’re gonna get your asses kicked,” Victor said sheepishly. “Couldn’t let that happen.”
Dorian rolled his eyes.
“He’s not going to get his ass kicked.” Saskia sighed. “But I do hope we can get some answers.”
They found Owen holed up in a narrow little room in the center of the building, the walls crumbling and half-melted around him. He was talking with somebody, Evie could tell, but it was through the comm in his helmet rather than the comm pad he’d been using before.
“Must be classified,” Dorian said, seething.
Owen hit the side of his helmet and the visor slid away. “You should be sleeping,” he said. “Getting your energy up.” He paused, taking them in. “All four of you. You’re my only intact team.”
Evie felt a pang in her chest.
“Yeah, because ONI won’t let us do anything,” Victor said. Saskia nudged him hard in the ribs.
“We need to talk to you,” Dorian said. “It can’t wait.”
Owen’s eyes betrayed nothing. Evie wanted to put a hand on Dorian’s shoulder, to try and calm him down. It wasn’t exactly helping their case that he was acting like he didn’t understand the chain of command. Like they were just a bunch of scared, confused kids stranded in the middle of an alien invasion.
But before she could move, Dorian stepped forward, into the room. Owen sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “I was finished with the briefing anyway.”
“Briefing?” Victor said. “About what? What are we going to be doing?”
“Let’s hear what you want to talk about first.” Owen stepped forward, guiding Dorian back out into the hallway. “More structurally sound out here.”
“So why were you in there?” Dorian asked.
“Better security.” Owen’s mouth twitched a little. “Relatively speaking.”
They stood in a semicircle out in the hall, cold wind howling around the corners. Evie shivered; she wished she’d brought the blanket with her. Who cared how it would look.
“It’s about Annecy,” Dorian said. “We know you lied to us.”
Owen didn’t react.
“Valois and Caird told Dorian that Annecy fell six months ago,” Evie said softly. “But when we found you in Brume-sur-Mer, you said the Covenant had only been attacking Meridian for a week or so.”
“Of course, we hadn’t heard anything ourselves,” Victor said. “Nothing in the newsfeeds.”
Dorian glared at him. “I explained that.”
“He’s right,” Owen said, after a pause. “It wouldn’t have been in the newsfeeds,”
Saskia took a deep breath, looking as if she’d just been punched in the stomach. “So it’s true,” she said. “You lied to us.”
“I was following orders,” Owen said. “Information about the land attacks on Meridian was to be kept in quarantine. UNSC did not want panic. Civilians were kept out of the loop unless they were in an affected area.”
“What are you saying?” Evie’s voice felt dry. “Are there parts of Meridian that don’t know we’re under attack at all? Still? ”
Owen fixed her with a clear gaze. “It’s certainly possible.”
“There’s a chance the colony could be glassed!” cried Saskia. “You of all people—”
“Understand what happens when people panic,” Owen said. Evie glanced at Saskia, wondering what else she had learned about Owen’s origins. She had shared what little she knew while they were at training. He’d been a war orphan. “We can’t even evac military personnel from certain parts of Meridian right now. Do you think we can afford to divert military resources toward transporting civilians off-world? Any weakness in our armor against the Covenant would lead to a bloodbath. You want me to treat you like adults? Like soldiers under my command?” He looked hard at Victor. “You want to fight ? That’s the reality. That’s the calculus of war. And it’s what’s kept humanity alive so far.”
Evie took a step back as Owen brushed past them toward the rest of the militia.
“People have a right to know,” Dorian said, his voice low and angry. “If we had known that the Covenant were targeting Meridian locations, you think I would have gone out on a boat with—” He stopped, took a deep breath. “People—my friends—are dead because we were unprepared. Because we didn’t know. And you just—just kept lying to us. Because UNSC told you to.”
“And to protect you,” Owen said,
turning. “If I had thought it was prudent to share the history of the attacks with you, I would have. But it was irrelevant to our survival in Brume-sur-Mer. It is, quite frankly, irrelevant to our mission here.” Something in his expression darkened, flickered, returned to normal. “ONI has a potential location for the second artifact, based on the images of the first artifact’s map that I sent them. And I told you, you’re my only intact team. Given that fact and your previous experience, I think you’re going to be our best option for making contact. But you have to understand that I can’t tell you everything I know. I will never be able to tell you everything I know.”
Dorian’s face twisted with anger, but Evie stepped forward, her hand on his arm. “We aren’t actually in the military,” she said. “Things might be different now, but before … we were just kids. And we were scared. And you did lie to us.”
Owen stared at them, his eyes hard and glittering. “All four of you know how fraught an evacuation can be. Now imagine an entire world trying to leave the surface of Meridian—and flying straight into Covenant forces.”
Evie stepped back, her cheeks burning. She hadn’t even considered that possibility, despite living through it herself.
“I’ve watched the Covenant use evac vehicles for target practice,” he said flatly. “When I lied to you back at Brume-sur-Mer, it was to focus your attention on the matter at hand, not on hypotheticals that could get people killed. Meridian has not fallen yet, which is why we are here—to prevent that from happening. The people on this world have a chance to survive if we do our jobs right.”
Evie felt numb. She understood better why ONI had sequestered information about the earlier attacks, even if the lie still stung.
But Dorian, she could tell, was even more furious. “You still lied to us.”
“Sometimes,” Owen said, “a lie is the only difference between people living or dying.”
Dorian spat. He jerked his arm away from Evie and stalked down the hallway, his footsteps echoing off the crumbling walls. Evie watched him go, her chest twisting. Part of her wanted to go after him. She was hungry, and cold, and still covered with mud and dirt from retrieving the first artifact. She had no idea when she would be clean again. When she would be safe.
Meridian Divide Page 15
