Fractures

by Various

  The navigation officer broke the silence. “Target back in visual range! No deviation from intercept course!”

  “Forward plasma cannons fully charged!” the weapons officer announced. “Ready to fire on your command, Shipmaster!”

  Inside the holo-tank, Spear of Light emerged around the limb of Duraan’s dark side. Shadow of Intent’s cluster of intelligent circuits had been estimating the cruiser’s speed, trajectory, and other flight characteristics based on data processed before it disappeared behind the planet. This computational matrix was primitive compared to the artificial intelligences that ran most human ships. But now that the carrier’s many electronic eyes had reestablished line of sight, the matrix realized it had made one significant miscalculation—that the Prelate had done something unexpected while out of range—and it quickly corrected the error.

  The Half-Jaw was the first to notice the change inside the holo-tank. “Look,” he said, pointing to the image of Spear of Light. “He’s turned his ship around.”

  Squinting close to the tank, the Blademaster couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing: Spear of Light was now hurtling engines-first toward Shadow of Intent. “Why would he do that?!”

  But Rtas had no answer. All he knew was that the Prelate’s trap was closing and he was running out of time to stop the jaws from snapping shut. “Shield status,” he growled. “Both ships!”

  “His no longer register on the scan,” the weapons officer replied. “Ours are sixty percent forward, twenty percent lateral and aft—but falling fast! Optimal range in fifteen seconds!”

  Shadow of Intent had seven heavy plasma cannons evenly spaced in a deep depression that ran port to starboard around its prow. The weapons could fire individually, or combine their energy into a single devastating mass that would annihilate the smaller cruiser. But there was a catch. Rtas needed to lower Shadow of Intent’s shields before he fired any of its plasma weapons, otherwise the shaped energy charges would detonate against the inner surface of the shield, wreaking havoc on his own ship instead of the Prelate’s.

  This was standard procedure—a necessary dropping of one’s guard before mounting an assault. The Prelate would know this, would have planned for this. But the Half-Jaw had no more time to ponder, and he made the only decision that made any sort of sense.

  Forget how tired you are and throw the hardest punch you can!

  “Pool all channels into cannon number four!” Rtas shouted to his weapons officer. “Fire when ready!”

  The command deck dimmed as Shadow of Intent’s reactors shunted power to the plasma cannons. The shields around the carrier’s prow scintillated and then dispersed. A split second later, a bright magenta streak of superheated gases wrapped in magnetic guidance fields shot out from the carrier’s nose. If Spear of Light had taken evasive action, the plasma torpedo would have altered its trajectory to stay on target. But the cruiser kept right on coming.

  “Our shields are back up!” the weapons officer cried. “Five seconds to impact!”

  The Blademaster leaned closer to the tank, his eager eyes glued to an icon that showed the estimated point of impact. “We’ll hit his cruiser dead astern and burn a hole right through it!”

  But as the tremendous plasma torpedo neared Spear of Light, something strange began to happen. While the ship hadn’t deviated from its path, the torpedo’s fields sparked and flared as if lit by an invisible flame. Plasma vented quickly through widening weak spots in the torpedo’s fields, and it veered off course—only by a few degrees, but enough so that it only grazed the cruiser’s portside plating instead of slamming into its engine cluster.

  “Minimal damage to target!” the weapons officer said.

  The Blademaster pounded a fist on the holo-tank railing. “Impossible! How could we have missed?!”

  “The storm . . .” Rtas said, as another puzzle piece snapped into place. He now pictured the red dwarf’s maelstrom hitting Duraan’s light side, churning against the planet’s magnetic field and then spilling around its dark side in violent, unpredictable vortices of highly charged particles. These whorls of radiation had torn away the torpedo’s fields just as they were slowly reducing Shadow of Intent’s shields—just as they had already disabled the shields around Spear of Light.

  “Quick charge forward cannons!” the Half-Jaw barked. “Divert all necessary power from lateral and aft shields! Fire all cannons in sequence, quarter-second dispersal!”

  Again the lights on the command deck dimmed. The cruiser shuddered as the cannons shot in quick succession. In the holo-tank, seven smaller torpedoes streaked toward Spear of Light, which was now less than ten thousand kilometers from Shadow of Intent. Already the torpedoes’ fields were shimmering wildly as the storm did its worst. But the torpedoes had much less distance to cover now, and Rtas only needed one to hit. . . .

  Suddenly a miniature star erupted in the holo-tank as Spear of Light’s engines engaged, full thrust. The Half-Jaw watched three of his shots go wide, a fourth boil a deep scar across the cruiser’s back, and the rest evaporate in the particle furnace of the cruiser’s exhaust. Venting atmosphere and shuddering terribly as it decelerated at a rate far exceeding its structural limits, Spear of Light came alongside Shadow of Intent close enough to scrape the outer limits of the carrier’s portside shields—but these shields were gone now, their energy siphoned off for the Half-Jaw’s hasty volley.

  Both ships were flying side by side at point-blank range. For the moment, however, neither could harm the other. The Half-Jaw couldn’t order another plasma shot without suffering splash damage to his own ship. And even Shadow of Intent’s less powerful point-laser batteries would need time to recharge.

  “They’ll be running for their escape pods . . .” the Blademaster said. But his boisterous voice betrayed his age, and he stammered a little, trying to rationalize everything that had just occured. “The Prelate has no choice! If . . . if he stays where he is, we take him apart with lasers. If he moves, we use the cannons. Surely he knows he’s doomed?!”

  But “escape pods” was all the Half-Jaw heard. For in that moment, Rtas felt his enemy’s trap snap shut, and he finally understood: The Prelate never intended to destroy Shadow of Intent. He planned to steal it.

  “All hands!” Rtas shouted into a ship-wide channel. “Arm for battle! Close quarters!” Then, locking eyes with the Blademaster: “This Prelate will not take our ship!”

  The escape pod blasted out of its mooring socket, and Tem’Bhetek slammed backward into his harness. A reactive gel layer inside his armor protected him from the punishing acceleration as the pod sped across the narrow gap of space between the two capital ships. The pod’s viewport blast shields were down, and it was running dark. But through the low-light optics in his visor, the Prelate could see the sharp outlines of five Jiralhanae crammed into harnesses around him, each one fully enclosed in deep-blue, vacuum-rated armor that glimmered with reflections of the pod’s flashing status lights.

  Behind the Prelate’s pod, nine more were launching, each with five Jiralhanae inside. These fifty warriors—the entirety of Spear of Light’s remaining crew—knew they had just punched a one-way ticket, that there was no turning back. But whatever nervousness the Brutes might have felt when they were near the miniature Halo was absent now. Hurtling toward an enemy, weapons in hand, these ruthless creatures were in their element. Tem felt a surge of confidence. We are going to make it inside that carrier and tear the Sangheili apart!

  It had been an audacious plan. A single light cruiser against an assault carrier. Outmatched in arms and armor, the Prelate had known one thing for certain: Spear of Light would never survive the fight. But the genius of his strategy was accepting the inevitable destruction of his ship and turning it to his advantage.

  The Prelate had visited Duraan’s system once before, on one of the many training missions that had kept him far from home. Back then he and his inexperienced Jiralhanae crew had been surprised at just how rapidly Duraan’s red dwarf star
had degraded their cruiser’s shields. But the Prelate had filed away this miscalculation, as he did with all his missteps, as a tool for self-improvement. Years later, when he had wracked his brain for the best place to spring a trap, his memories of the red dwarf’s powerful storms, as well as Duraan’s small, poorly armed settlements, quickly sorted this planet to the top of the list.

  Like most plans, this one had variables the Prelate couldn’t control, the biggest of which was the Half-Jaw himself. The red dwarf could do only so much to degrade Shadow of Intent’s defenses. For the Prelate’s gambit to work, he needed the Half-Jaw to throw everything he had at Spear of Light—to so desperately want to kill the Prelate here and now before he could do any more harm that he would be willing to expend Shadow of Intent’s many advantages in a single devastating blow.

  The Half-Jaw had swung hard, but the Prelate was still standing. And now the odds were no longer in the Sangheili shipmaster’s favor. In a close-up fight, the Prelate knew his Jiralhanae could match any Sangheili. And as for the Half-Jaw? Tem’Bhetek fingered the hardlight shield projector and plasma rifle attached to his anti-grav belt. I will deal with him myself.

  Five seconds out of the socket, and Shadow of Intent’s point lasers still hadn’t fired on his pod. This was good, because the pods had no significant shielding; even a single laser salvo would mean the end of the Prelate and his Jiralhanae. The pods’ primary advantage—the one thing that made them superior to standard boarding craft in this situation—was their straight-line acceleration. They were designed to get away from a dying ship very quickly. And a burst of speed was all the Prelate needed to reach Shadow of Intent.

  Now more than halfway across the gap, the Prelate knew the laser batteries must be down, crippled by the stellar storm. Which left one last problem to overcome: the pods had no rams—reinforced docking gantries built into the noses of Covenant boarding craft that they used to lamprey onto a target vessel’s hull and cut their way inside.

  Instead, the pods could enter only through a door that was already open. And fortunately for the Prelate, Shadow of Intent had one that was very hard to miss: the entrance to its port-side hangar. An energy field barred the hangar, keeping the carrier’s artificial atmosphere in and all unauthorized vessels out. On a feed from his pod’s forward-facing camera that the Prelate had slaved to his visor, he could see the field’s telltale violet glow. But the hangar door was flickering, clearly weakened by the storm, and the Prelate knew their velocity would carry the pods safely through.

  Fifteen seconds after the Prelate’s pod had burst from its socket, its smart circuits cut the main engine thrust and fired its maneuvering rockets, applying as much braking force as possible. A moment later, his pod was across the hangar threshold, still moving fast, but angled toward the deck. The pod landed hard on its belly, rocked onto its rounded nose, and screeched forward at an angle, shedding ablative tiles, stabilizing fins, and other exterior parts until it ground to a halt halfway across the hangar. As the Prelate wrestled out of his harness, he could hear the other pods hit and rasp across the deck, occasionally colliding with a bone-jarring crunch.

  But when the Prelate blew the seals on his pod’s airlock and moved outside, more wobbly on his legs than he would have liked, he was relieved to see that all ten pods had made it safely inside the hangar. Their hatches exploded open, and the Jiralhanae emerged, some a little shaken, but all with weapons ready.

  The bay stretched out before the Prelate, half a kilometer to the carrier’s starboard side, where there was another large energy-field door. To his right were passages to the carrier’s reactors and engines. To his left were vehicle repair bays and armories that led to Shadow of Intent’s ship-to-ground gravity lift. Beyond the lift were passages that spanned a graceful arc connecting the ship’s teardrop stern section to its hooked prow. In the dead center of the prow, protected by hundreds of meters of hull plating and honeycombed superstructure, was the carrier’s command deck. This was Tem’Bhetek’s objective, and if he could survive the sprint from here to there, this carrier would be his.

  Bright green plasma bolts skipped across the hangar floor. The Prelate spun back behind his pod as the barrage spattered up and over the ship and then hit a Jiralhanae out in the open on the other side. The Jiralhanae’s chest plate buckled, his organs boiled and burst, and he fell backward with a mournful howl. As the Brute hit the floor, the Prelate closed his eyes and drew a deep breath . . . and his body did what it was designed to do.

  Of all the Forerunner technologies the San’Shyuum had tried to unlock, genetic engineering had proved the most difficult. This was largely due to the fact that the Forerunners had refined their bio-enhancing tools and procedures for their own physiologies, not for other sentient creatures. Coupled with San’Shyuum taboos against doing anything that might further jeopardize their already limited ability to reproduce, research into this particular brand of Forerunner magic was completely ignored by all of their ministries save one: the Ministry of Preparation.

  The Prelate slipped his left hand into his hardlight gauntlet and pulled it away from his belt. He activated the gauntlet with a forearm snap, and as its bright blue, crescent-shaped shield appeared at his wrist, the Prelate felt the world slow around him. The roars of the Jiralhanae and sharp reports of their weapons stretched and faded into the background. By the time the Prelate was around the front of his pod, shield up and sprinting forward, his enhanced nervous system and musculature were already fully engaged, and he now acted almost without thinking.

  The plasma fire had come from the aft side of the hangar. Six Sangheili had emerged at the top of a ramp leading to Shadow of Intent’s reactors. All of these warriors were lightly armored and carried only plasma pistols, and had likely been tasked with engineering duties rather than ship security. The Prelate went right for these unlucky first responders, half running, half gliding across the hangar, dodging their wild shots with quick lateral pulses from his anti-grav belt and swatting away accurate ones with his hardlight shield. In mere moments, the Prelate was across the hangar and up the ramp, a few paces from his foes.

  He swung his shield in a low arc at one Sangheili, severing both its legs at the back-bent junctions of its calves and elongated ankles. There was barely any resistance as the shield’s photonic edge slid through armor, flesh, and bone. Spinning through the cut, the Prelate caught two more Sangheili with his primary weapon, a variant of the Covenant plasma rifle preferred by the Jiralhanae. Colored red instead of blue, the snub-nosed weapon was nicknamed “blood-hand,” and true to its name, it fired twice as fast as the standard model and required a firm grip to keep it from bucking off target. The Prelate expended half his rifle’s charge, hitting the two Sangheili in their lightly armored abdomens. As they crumpled to the deck, the Prelate squared his stance and brought his elbow up into the neck of a fourth charging warrior. The Prelate wheeled to follow this Sangheili as it fell, and then pulsed his rifle into its astonished face.

  By then, a squad of four Jiralhanae had made it halfway from the pods to the ramp, and they dispatched the last two Sangheili with their own rapid-firing plasma rifles.

  Tem’Bhetek forced himself to take two deep breaths. Enhanced hormones were surging through his system, but he didn’t want to peak too early. He and the other Prelates had trained long and hard in the Sacred Promissory. Deep in its halls within the rocky foundation of High Charity’s dome, they had learned the dangers of pushing their altered bodies too far: sudden, debilitating exhaustion, seizures, and, in rare cases, death.

  In short bursts, the Minster of Preparation had told the Prelates, you can defeat any foe. Even, the Minister had hoped, the humans’ demonic Spartan soldiers.

  But that had been a different time and a different war. As far as Tem’Bhetek knew, he was now the last of his kind. All the other Prelates had died at High Charity.

  And if you aren’t careful, you’re going to join them!

  Uncannily quick, the Prelate raised his hardligh
t shield and deflected three shots from a Covenant carbine rifle. The bright green hypersonic slugs ricocheted with glassy pings, sparking radioactive fuel. A glance to his right and the Prelate identified the shooter: an Unggoy standing on the other side of the bay, at the top of a bow-side ramp. Two squads of Sangheili rangers were spilling down the ramp past the Unggoy. Mixed in among the silver-suited warriors was a Sangheili armored red, carrying an energy lance. Even at this distance, the Prelate knew this Sangheili was female—and familiar . . . but he had no time to collect his thoughts before his body was sprinting forward, preparing to meet these new threats.

  “Squads four and five, join squad two! Take the reactors!” the Prelate ordered as plasma fire sizzled past him from behind. Without looking, he knew more Sangheili were emerging from the engineering bays, but he guessed they were small in number and that the remaining Jiralhanae could handle them. “The rest of you, to me!”

  The Jiralhanae he’d tasked against the oncoming rangers were already charging in that direction, some of them bent forward in a feral hunch, pawing the deck with their armored claws. But when these Brutes were within leaping distance of their foes, the rangers activated the maneuvering jets embedded in their armored shoulders and heels. The carrier’s artificial gravity was still operational, and while the jets’ chemical propellants performed far better in zero-g, they helped the rangers match the impact force of the heavier Jiralhanae. After a terrible crash of armor and a quick skirmish in which five Jiralhanae and three rangers fell—one with a cut across the neck from the Prelate’s shield—the two sides retreated into a stalemate, trading shots from the cover of loose, opposing rows of crated Phantom parts.

  Although the Jiralhanae still outnumbered the Elite rangers almost two to one, the Prelate knew he couldn’t afford to get bogged down. His plan relied on surprise and speed, and he now had precious little of both. He had no firm idea how many Sangheili were aboard Shadow of Intent, nor how many were still between him and the command deck. But more were certain to spill into the hangar soon. “Squads one and two: disengage and head for the command deck!” the Prelate shouted. “All other squads: covering fire! Keep those rangers pinned!”