by Matt Forbeck
“The AI?” As the words left her mouth, Molly knew she’d made a mistake, but she was too shaken to care.
Asha took Molly by the shoulders and peered into her eyes. “How do you know about that?”
“She was listening to us earlier,” Yong said. “Weren’t you?”
Molly blushed hard and nodded. “I know it was wrong, but I’ve been so worried. I mean, you two were talking about this thing out there activating, and I saw what happened on Sanghelios.” Molly’s emotions intensified with every word. “I’m just really scared. I don’t want you guys to leave and never come back. I don’t want to lose you too.”
“We would never do that, Molly.” Asha pulled her into a tight hug. “We will always come back. You hear me?”
“It’s okay,” Molly said into Asha’s arm. “I’d understand if you have to go. Just promise me that you won’t leave—not even to go back to wherever you’re working on that Guardian machine—without saying good-bye to me first. I can’t have another set of parents that don’t have time to say good-bye.”
Yong wrapped his arm around them both. “We promise,” he and Asha said together.
For several moments, the three shared a warm embrace that Molly never wanted to end. Eventually, though, her mind wandered back to Cortana and the message, and she needed answers. This wasn’t just a theoretical problem anymore, that Asha and Yong were sorting out at work. It was real and tangible and booming throughout their entire home.
“Okay, no more secrets,” Molly said. “I need to know what’s going on. This isn’t about classified intel anymore. It’s about our survival. I could tell from Director Mendez’s voice, things are bad. What’s happening?”
“You’re too young to be burdened with all this,” Yong said, exchanging a brief look with Asha.
Molly’s frustration rose. “We’re past that point. What just happened with that message? What’s going to happen to Onyx?”
Yong took a deep breath and plunged in. “It looks like this Cortana—a rogue AI—figured out a way to activate these Guardian constructs—like the one in the Sunaion vid. We’re not sure how or why or even where she’s taken all of them. We just know she’s responsible for what happened on Kamchatka and Sanghelios, as well as the other colonies that went dark before.”
“What do these machines do?” Molly asked. “Are they weapons or something else?”
Asha joined in. “Our working theory—based on a string of discoveries over the past year—is that the Guardians were built by the Forerunners to oversee inhabited planets and establish a kind of peace on them. One that they can establish by force if necessary.”
“Peace doesn’t sound so bad,” Molly said.
“Right,” said Yong. “But this would be a very restrictive peace put in place by an overwhelmingly advanced alien race, and it effectively means the loss of many kinds of freedoms. Each world suddenly wouldn’t have any say in what they do and how they do it, and they’d be threatened with violence if they step out of bounds. That’s tyranny on a galactic scale. Until tonight, much of this was just a rough hypothesis reinforced by translating some ancient texts we cobbled together about the Guardians themselves.”
“Right,” said Asha. “The basic gist is: sign up for my kind of peace, or have it thrust upon you. Violently, if necessary.”
“Which is exactly what Cortana was talking about,” Molly said.
Her Newparents gave her grim nods and fell silent for a moment. Then Yong said, “The Guardians themselves were harmless for eons, most of them just hidden out of sight and completely dormant. They’re ultimately just tools, instruments really, but now Cortana—and whoever the Created are—have activated them and assembled them somewhere.”
“The real question,” Asha said, “is what this all means—and not just for the galaxy, but for us here. Are they coming to Onyx? Can they get inside?”
That made Molly shudder. “What about the one already inside?”
“Director Mendez has three dozen soldiers at the site on standby, with enough firepower to drop a building. The last we’ve heard—which was less than an hour ago—there’s still no sign of life or activity from Onyx’s Guardian,” Asha said.
“That’s not to say that couldn’t change,” Yong said. “But if it does, I’m confident Mendez and his security team will do everything they can to keep us all safe. If there’s any place in the galaxy that could be protected from an attack, it has to be Onyx.”
That was exactly what Molly wanted to hear, which is why she didn’t feel that she could trust it. While Onyx might be next to impossible to break into, it was also the biggest and most powerful Forerunner construct in the galaxy. If Cortana knew about the Guardians and how to control them, it was hard to believe she didn’t know anything about Onyx as well. Whether Molly’s Newparents would admit it or not, this sphere had to be high on her hit list, even if she hadn’t quite gotten around to it yet.
It would only be a matter of time.
Molly could see in Yong’s and Asha’s eyes that they knew it too, but Molly couldn’t bear to add to their stress by pushing the issue. So she let it slide.
“I only know one thing,” Asha said. “There’s nothing we’re going to solve about any of this in a conversation with you right now. Yong and I have work to do. You need to try to get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Molly shuffled off to bed and did try to sleep, but she didn’t have much luck with it.
Judging by the way everyone else looked at school the next morning, they’d all had the same problem. Hearing an ominous message like that in the dead of night—on a heavily defended world that shouldn’t have any incoming transmissions—had that kind of effect on people.
When Molly got to school, she found that some of the classes had been canceled for the day. Tom and Lucy couldn’t make it to their regular self-defense lesson after school either. It wasn’t surprising, but Molly had been looking forward to meeting with the Spartans and getting their take on Cortana’s message.
“If Tom and Lucy have been called out of town, that can’t be good,” Kareem said, as Molly sat down next to him in the dining hall, where the school had sent all the students during the canceled classes that day.
“It’s not the first time it’s happened,” Gudam said. “They have more important things to do than to meet with us on many days. After all, how many Spartans do we have inside Onyx? I’ve only met those two, although I suppose that raises the question, doesn’t it? Maybe they have more over at Trevelyan? Or just poking around inside the sphere somewhere? It’s a big place. Huge! Wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
Bakar let out a grunt. “The Unggoy always see demons everywhere.”
“Why is it that the Sangheili call Spartans ‘demons’?” Molly asked.
“When you’re part of a religious cult that wants to conquer the galaxy and someone steps up who can finally stop you, what would you call them?” Kareem said.
“That is part of it,” Bakar said, “but not all. The warriors who faced the Spartans on the field of battle claimed they fought like powerful beings from beyond these worlds: demons. The name fit well, so it stayed with them.”
“I always thought it was because of the armor,” Gudam said. “They don’t exactly look human in those things, do they? Much more like machines of death and destruction!”
Molly had to admit, she’d never seen the Spartans that way, but then they’d always been fighting for her rather than against her. If she was worried about them coming to kill her family, she might have thought of them as demons too. That’s how she’d seen the Elites for years.
“But they’re on your side now too,” Molly said. “Our side, I mean. Do they still scare you?”
Gudam’s head bobbed up and down. “Not as much as they used to, of course. I know they’re just augmented people under their armor, right? And I’ve talked with them enough times to know that they’re good people too, but they’re still faster, stronger, and tougher than me. Plu
s they’re trained to kill. So I’m not terrified of them, but I always make sure I treat them with the greatest respect, just like I would a loaded weapon, you know?”
“I suppose.” Intellectually, Molly understood what the Unggoy meant, but she just couldn’t feel it in her gut. To her, soldiers weren’t the people who came to kill you. They were the ones who saved you.
And Spartans were the greatest soldiers of all. Molly had no doubts that they’d rescued humanity more times than she’d ever know. The Master Chief? He’d saved the whole galaxy and stopped the war with the Covenant.
Of course, he’d had the Arbiter at his side. An alien of the species that had once decimated Paris IV. The species that had murdered Molly’s parents and had narrowly missed killing her—but not for any lack of trying.
Thinking of it that way, Molly managed to wrap her head around how Gudam felt. How the Unggoy thought of Spartans, that was the same exact way Molly had felt about Sangheili for a long time. The difference, though, was that the Covenant had been attacking humanity, not the other way around.
When it came to the Unggoy, though, it felt different because Gudam’s people hadn’t joined the Covenant voluntarily. Long ago, they’d awakened on their own world to find alien ships overhead, destroying their homes and forcing them into slave labor. It made Molly wonder: What would have happened if the Covenant had won the war? Would humanity have become cannon fodder like Gudam’s people?
Or worse?
Molly glanced across the table at Bakar. His people hadn’t been subdued. The Sangheili had been part of the original alliance that formed the Covenant. Was he a demon to her? She called him a friend, but would she ever be comfortable enough with him to turn her back on him?
At that moment, Molly couldn’t say.
When Molly finally got to have an actual lunch, she and her three friends tried to pretend that nothing was happening, that they weren’t all scared out of their minds about what was going on. The teachers all spoke in hushed tones with worried faces, and the students mirrored their apprehensive mood.
Cortana’s announcement had them all on edge—some more than others.
When the students went out into the yard, Karl and his crew made a beeline for Molly’s group, just as on her first day. She wondered for a moment if they had different intentions this time, but their scowls made it clear they didn’t. They went straight up to Bakar, who was crouched down, reading.
“What did you hinge-heads do?” Karl said.
Bakar didn’t respond. He just kept his eyes focused on his book.
Karl tried to knock the book out of Bakar’s hands, but Bakar moved it out of the way just in time.
That only made Karl angrier. “Hey!”
Bakar glanced up at Karl and cocked his head sideways at him.
“What did you hinge-heads do? On that blood-soaked homeworld of yours?”
“You are going to have to be more specific,” Bakar said.
Karl lashed out at the book again. This time when Bakar moved the book, Karl let his hand follow through to smack Bakar in the head, right above his eye.
Bakar touched the spot where Karl had hit him and rubbed it with his hand, but other than that, he remained still. It was impressive but somewhat unsettling to watch the Sangheili hold his temper. Molly had sparred with Bakar before and knew how strong and fast he was. He could have reached out and broken Karl’s neck in a single move.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Karl said. “That message that went out last night and woke everyone up. Who do you think is to blame for it?”
“What are you talking about?” Zeb peered at Bakar from behind his brother. “He knows exactly where it came from.”
Bakar put his book down on the ground and stood to his full height, focusing his gaze on Karl as he rose. “Speak plainly.”
Karl leaned in and snarled at Bakar, “You think it’s humans trying to take over the galaxy like that? The Created? Sounds like another kind of hinge-head terrorist group to me.”
“That message didn’t have anything to do with the Sangheili, much less Bakar,” Molly said.
Karl turned to gape at Molly. “You’re taking a hinge-head’s side?”
“Karl, use your brain. Did you notice how the woman making those demands spoke our language perfectly? That was a human voice.”
Zeb came sniffing around toward Molly. “You little traitor.”
“It’s a fact, Zeb.” Molly pointed at Karl. “Wake up. You’re wrong.”
“It was an AI who made that declaration. She was created by humans,” Gudam said. “The Sangheili don’t use AIs, not like the human-made ones anyway.”
“How do you know that, crab-girl?” Karl said with a condescending sneer. “You ever work with one?”
Then something happened.
The air suddenly felt electric to Molly, as if a charge were running through her skin. For a second, she thought it was just adrenaline starting to pump into her, getting her ready to physically respond to Karl and his crew.
She’d felt something like that before, back when Karl had knocked Gudam to the ground. For a moment, she’d wondered if it was going to be her first day at the institute all over again—except with weeks of self-defense training behind her, this time would be different.
Kareem put himself between Gudam and Karl. “Leave her alone.”
Karl sneered at Kareem in disgust. “You really are the worst excuse for a human ever.”
Kareem cocked back his fist, ready to take out Karl with a preemptive move, but before Kareem could throw a punch, Gudam grabbed his wrist. He tried to pull his arm free, but she wasn’t letting go.
“No, don’t!” she began, but Karl cut her off by punching Kareem straight in the mouth.
The blow knocked Kareem backward, and he stumbled into Gudam. She tried her best to hold him up, but he was too big for her to handle. They tumbled down together.
Karl stepped forward to press his advantage, but Molly cut him off. Zeb moved toward them—bringing his leg back to start kicking Kareem or Gudam—and didn’t see Molly coming. She shoved him as hard as she could into his brother, knocking them both off course.
Kareem and Gudam took advantage of this to scramble to their feet. Kareem put his hand to his battered lips, and it came away covered with blood.
On the other side of the scuffle, Bakar stood up and blocked Andres from entering the fight. At his full height, Bakar towered over Andres and every other human in the yard. The boy glared up at Bakar with such disgust that Molly could barely stand to look at him.
The worst part for Molly wasn’t that she was appalled to see someone glower at a Sangheili like that. It was that she recognized his expression.
She’d seen it in the mirror.
“Hold it!” Bakar said, and Molly realized that he wasn’t looking at Andres, or even speaking to him. Bakar was talking to all of them. “Look.”
A collective gasp of disbelief went up from the rest of the people in the recreation yard, and Molly snapped her head around to see what they were staring at.
At the edge of the horizon, well beyond Paxopolis and Trevelyan and the outskirts that surrounded them, a large object began to rise into the sky. Dark against the pale clouds, the shape first appeared to be slender, moving like a dragon uncoiling from its lair. But slowly it spread out in pieces—some of which were unattached to the main object—fanning out in the shape of wings, like a rising phoenix.
As the sun glinted off its exterior and blue arcs of energy crackled across its flayed shape, they could clearly see that it was not a creature but a machine—and it was enormous. It leered down at Paxopolis with a harsh, implacable visage, just as its creators must have intended.
If Molly hadn’t just seen such a machine in her Newparents’ vids from Sunaion, she would not have recognized it for what it was or even believed such a thing was possible.
This was a Guardian.
As she came to that realization, it began to edge closer to
the city.
Someone started screaming—Molly couldn’t tell if the sound was human or not—and then most of the others in the yard joined in. She heard an eerie siren spin up in the distance, perhaps as far away as the first Barrier outposts, which were in roughly the same direction as the place where the Guardian had emerged.
Then Kasha ‘Hilot’s voice sounded over the school’s comm system. “Students! Please remain calm! If you are in your classroom, please stay in your classroom and listen to the instructions your teachers give you. If you are not in a classroom, please proceed to the dining hall immediately.”
The moment she was done speaking over the comm system, Kasha appeared at the dining hall’s outer doors and began shouting at the students in person. “Fledglings! Children!” she said in a voice that would not tolerate any dissent. “Come back into the building, now!”
Most of the students had already started moving toward the doors, and the sight of their fierce headmaster standing there and urgently waving them in spurred the crowd to hustle. Kasha carefully managed the flow by checking the students as they came in, making sure that their flight from danger didn’t become a stampede.
Karl yanked Zeb by the arm and hauled him toward the school without even glancing back, and Andres chased after them. The sight of the Guardian had apparently removed all thoughts about finishing their business with Molly, Gudam, Kareem, and Bakar.
The four stood back for a few seconds and watched the bullies flee into the crowd of students surging into the building. “I think we just went from danger to doom,” Kareem said, as he and the others turned toward the looming Guardian. It had grown larger against the skyline as it approached.
Bakar gazed up at the massive Forerunner machine, just as stunned as any of them by its massive presence. “Let us hope not.”
CHAPTER 22
* * *
* * *
The Servants of the Abiding Truth had fallen headlong into grave misfortune.
