Shadows of Reach: A Master Chief Story

by Troy Denning

  Another series of seismic bangs sounded out on the glass, and John began to hear cheering voices over the militia’s command channel. He pounded south along the perimeter road and, three hundred meters away, saw lines of militia Warthogs rolling into town, rocket launchers shrieking and Vulcan machine guns chugging as they mowed down Banished defenders.

  A third round of explosions sounded out on the barrens as John reached the lookout tower at the south end of the shield barrier. Conscious that he had nothing with which to defend himself but a submachine gun and a pistol, he stepped into the tower base and allowed the gravity lift to carry him up to the watch platform. He took a moment to verify that the three Unggoy lying on the platform floor were actually dead, then peered through one of the gun ports designed to protect the sentries during a battle.

  Out on the glass, he saw a heavily cratered trench that had been cut into the lechatelierite perpendicular to the village boundary—not parallel to it, as would be normal. It was anchored at the shield barrier just south of the depot yard, and extended eight hundred meters west, so the Banished armor could not intercept the stream of arriving Warthogs without crossing it.

  And the Banished had crossed it. A line of armored vehicles lay broken and smoking inside the trench, and a hundred meters south of it lay a second trench and a second line of destruction, and beyond that lay a third trench and a third line of demolished armor. A fourth line—perhaps half the column’s total strength—was pursuing some seventy militia rangers south across the barrens… toward a fourth trench.

  The rangers were taking tremendous casualties. In the time it took John to estimate their number, another seven fell to plasma cannons or rockets. No sooner had the survivors reached the next trench than the Banished armor was upon them, the Marauders and Wraiths spinning in place to fire plasma mortars down its length, the Ghosts and Choppers racing along, spraying plasma bolts and cannon rounds.

  No more than forty rangers remained to climb out, pausing to lob grenades and fire rockets at the vehicles behind them.

  Kelly’s voice sounded over TEAMCOM: “They’re quite mad. Imagine what they could do with proper training.”

  “I’m not sure I want to,” John said. “At least not until we get the nukes out of their hands.”

  As soon as the surviving rangers were ten paces out of the trench, a series of C10 charges detonated behind them, hurling Ghosts and Choppers skyward, splitting Marauders down the center, and blowing pillars of flame through Wraiths. A quarter of the vehicles failed to emerge on the other side, leaving eight Marauders and fifteen Wraiths to continue the pursuit, and not even fifty pieces of smaller armor.

  John estimated thirty rangers—the only ones left alive—running across the glass, headed for a fifth trench about a hundred meters away. The Banished armor lingered behind, lobbing fire after them, but clearly evaluating the wisdom of keeping up. A hundred meters beyond that fifth trench, Special Crew was using the drilling jumbo and LHD to finish a sixth trench. John opened a magnification window and saw that Van Houte and Chapov were together on the jumbo, one driving while the other handled the drills. Mukai was on the LHD.

  And three hundred meters beyond the sixth trench, a long column of Viery Militia Warthogs and Gungooses was continuing to stream into New Mohács, taking almost no fire from Banished defenders and no casualties that John could see. This town might not be liberated yet—but it would be by dawn.

  Lieutenant Chapov’s voice sounded over TEAMCOM. “I apologize for cutting you off, Master Chief,” he said. “I needed to finish that trench.”

  “That’s understandable,” John said. “I’m glad you did.”

  “You are?” Chapov seemed rather stunned. “Uh, I know I shouldn’t have risked the excavation equipment without talking to you, but TEAMCOM—”

  “No need to explain. Well done, Lieutenant.”

  Chapov fell silent for a moment, perhaps because he was watching the last of the Banished armor flee across the glass. Finally he said, “Really?”

  “I wouldn’t make him say it twice,” Fred said, breaking into the conversation. “He hates that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  0504 hours, October 12, 2559 (military calendar)

  UNSC flagship Infinity

  Orbital Approach, Planet Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

  Catherine Halsey stepped onto the bridge of the UNSC Infinity and found herself looking down the length of a bustling command aisle toward a large, multi-pane viewport. Beyond it hung a pale orb about the size of a mass spectrometer, its albedo so high even its night side shone like alabaster in the light of its two moons. It pained Halsey to see Reach so barren and lifeless. It had been her home since she was eighteen, so it was only natural to be troubled by the tragedy that had befallen it. But her disquiet ran deeper than that, perhaps because the desolation reflected her own misgivings about some of the work she had done there.

  Not all of it, but enough that she had to practice lucid dreaming if she hoped to get any sleep at all. It had been on Reach that Halsey had conscripted seventy-five six-year-old children into her clandestine SPARTAN-II program. She and her staff had molded them into the finest warriors humanity had ever produced, bioengineered super-soldiers who could be deployed in small numbers to leverage the outcomes of major battles and put down the Insurrection that had threatened to tear apart humanity’s nascent interstellar civilization. But the cost had been terrible. Thirty recruits had perished during the physical augmentation procedures that she herself had designed and performed. Another dozen had been crippled. She had been able to rehabilitate a number of them, but not all. The loss still weighed heavily on her.

  That had been forty years ago, when Halsey had been one of the youngest and most trusted scientists working for the Office of Naval Intelligence. At the time, she had told herself she was sacrificing the few to save the many—and, of course, her superiors had agreed. But even then, such platitudes had done little to soothe a conscience burdened by the knowledge of what she had stolen from those children.

  Reach was also where Halsey had created Cortana, one of the most unique AIs who had ever existed, and who had helped John-117 win countless battles before losing her way in rampancy and becoming perhaps the greatest tyrant in human history.

  At least Halsey had no misgivings about that part of her work.

  Had Cortana never been created, humanity would simply no longer exist. Without Cortana, John would never have been warned about the true nature of Halo, and the Forerunner monitor 343 Guilty Spark would have convinced him to activate the Halo ring designated Installation 04—and destroy all sentient life within a radius of twenty-five thousand light-years. Had Cortana not outwitted the monstrous Gravemind a few months later, the parasitic Flood would have spread throughout the galaxy and turned humanity into a collective of mindless ghouls. If Cortana had not been there to infiltrate the Mantle’s Approach, the ancient Forerunner known as the Didact would have composed the entire population of Earth, destroying their bodies and trapping their digital essences forever. Before going rampant, Cortana had saved humanity many times over.

  So, if it had now fallen to Halsey and Blue Team to liberate humanity from Cortana’s despotism, she saw no reason to feel guilty. When it came down to it, the human race still existed to be liberated.

  But there wasn’t much time now. The Infinity needed to keep to its schedule.

  Captain Thomas Lasky was not at the holographic situation display near the back of the command aisle, so Halsey started forward. Her gaze remained on Reach, where the splinter-sized silhouette of an Anlace-class electronic warfare frigate floated above either pole, with a third over the equator, cones of almost-imperceptible radiance shimmering from their bellies as they wrapped the world in a full-spectrum jamming blanket. The blue specks of a hundred efflux tails were sweeping across the planet’s pale disk, Longswords systematically searching out and destroying thousands of old satellites still in orbit around the planet. Most of the satellites were
probably nonfunctional or incapable of contacting a Waypoint station nearly a trillion kilometers away, but even a single escaped transmission might be enough to alert Cortana and bring a Guardian through slipspace to investigate.

  As Halsey continued walking, it became obvious that the apparent size of the planet was growing no larger—which meant the Infinity’s orbital approach had stalled. She passed a doorway leading to a bustling combat information center where two dozen operators and compilers sat at an oval console bank, analyzing input streams and evaluating messages before feeding the data into the tactical holograph that floated in the center of the array.

  Halsey paused only long enough to confirm that Lasky wasn’t peering over the shoulder of some plotting director or sensor supervisor, then continued toward the front of the command aisle. The Infinity was thirty-three minutes behind schedule and there was no indication that anyone aboard was trying to make up time. According to Halsey’s calculations, the ship had to enter orbit in the next twenty minutes. A minute more, and there wouldn’t be time to insert the assault force before dawn reached New Mohács. If that happened, the troop drop would be delayed until nightfall, and the Viery Militia would be forced to hold the village for another twelve hours.

  And Blue Team would be forced to help them, because right now they were stranded behind enemy lines with no means of transport. Orbital communications were being jammed, so they wouldn’t know the Infinity’s situation. They would, of course, take matters into their own hands and steal something from the Banished, then try to cross a thousand kilometers of glass barrens under hostile air superiority.

  They wouldn’t make it. Halsey knew this, because she had run the simulations a thousand times. And they never made it.

  Not once.

  Halsey came to the bridge’s holographic situation display at the center of the command aisle. Flanking it along the perimeter of the compartment were easily over a dozen operators, monitoring ten different kinds of sensors pointed in twenty different directions, plotting trajectories, listening for enemy transmissions, coordinating screening patrols, evaluating contacts, and performing all the myriad tasks necessary to safeguard a five-and-a-half-kilometer supercarrier in hostile space.

  She spotted Sarah Palmer first, a giant brunette woman in Mjolnir armor towering over a cluster of senior officers gathered around a bank of sensor consoles at the fore of the deck. This wasn’t a good sign. A Spartan-IV, Palmer hadn’t even been born when Halsey dispatched John-117 and her Spartan-IIs on their first missions. Now Palmer was the commanding officer of the Infinity’s complement of Spartan-IIIs and -IVs—and she was supposed to be in the launch bays, preparing to insert with her troops in the first wave of drop pods.

  The Infinity’s commander, Captain Lasky, stood on Palmer’s far side, completely hidden save for a gesturing hand and forearm with his captain’s stripes on the sleeve cuff.

  Halsey reached the forward end of the holographic situation display and cut across the deck toward the sensor station. She had barely taken two steps before her escort said, “Ma’am, you can’t go any farther.”

  She ignored the woman and continued toward the sensor station. Ensign Teslenko, one of several young officers who rotated escort duty whenever Halsey left the Science Decks, had no doubt been ordered to keep tabs on Halsey and make sure she didn’t attempt to depart the Infinity. But that wasn’t how the arrangement had been presented to Halsey. Lasky had claimed the escorts were there to serve as aides and liaisons, and that was how Halsey treated them—as her assistants, not her keepers.

  When she continued across the deck, Teslenko took her by the arm—by the left arm, meaning the ensign was holding on to a robotic prosthetic. Halsey’s natural limb had been amputated a year and a half earlier, after she was wounded during an ONI assassination attempt ordered after Halsey dared to think for herself one time too many. She tried not to take the maiming personally. Over the decades, her relationship with ONI had grown rather complicated.

  The prosthetic, which had been installed courtesy of the UNSC after she returned to warn them of the Cortana situation, utilized the latest military-grade robotic technology. In many ways, it was superior to the arm it had replaced—but it had no feeling, so Halsey didn’t realize her escort had grabbed it until forward momentum was converted to angular, and she found herself whirling around to come nose-to-nose with the scowling ensign.

  “Ma’am,” Teslenko said, “you’re not even authorized to be on the bridge during a combat action.”

  “Are you authorized to stop me?” Halsey asked. When Teslenko lowered her carefully plucked brows in uncertainty, Halsey twisted her arm free of the ensign’s grasp. “I didn’t think so.”

  Halsey stepped backward and spun around, then began weaving her way toward Sarah Palmer’s looming figure. Teslenko followed a second behind her, calling out, but it was too late. Halsey was already carving a path through the huddle of officers toward Captain Lasky. A tall man with short-cropped brown hair, Lasky had square shoulders and a similarly shaped face that seemed utterly appropriate to his strong moral compass.

  Palmer saw Halsey first and rolled her eyes in exasperation. Halsey smiled and raised her prosthetic arm in greeting. It had been Palmer—acting on orders from ONI’s commander-in-chief—who had made the shot during the unsuccessful assassination attempt. Halsey delighted in every available opportunity to remind the Spartan-IV of her failure.

  Palmer’s expression returned to neutral, and she spoke to Lasky so quietly that Halsey had to resort to reading lips.

  “Incoming,” Palmer remarked. “Halsey.”

  Lasky’s chin dropped, but before he could reply, Ensign Teslenko’s voice sounded from somewhere behind Palmer.

  “My apologies, Captain. I told Dr. Halsey she wasn’t allowed on the bridge during a combat action.”

  “Not quite.” Halsey came to a stop directly behind Lasky, looking past Palmer’s back toward Teslenko. “You said I wasn’t authorized. There’s a difference, Ensign.”

  Lasky nodded to the young officer. “It’s okay, Ensign. You’re dismissed.”

  “Very good, Captain,” Teslenko said. She shot Halsey a dark look, then departed.

  Before Lasky could completely face her, Halsey edged toward the bank of sensor consoles, squeezing between the captain and a balding, jowly lieutenant commander wearing a sensor-systems badge on his breast pocket. She didn’t know the lieutenant commander by sight, but his name tape read MEOQUANEE. This must be Tag Meoquanee, then—Infinity’s sensor supervisor.

  As Lasky adjusted to her new location, Halsey took the opportunity to peer over an operator’s shoulder at the sensor console Lasky and the others had been studying. The two-dimensional display showed an image of Reach’s dual moons hanging above the right side of the world, ringed Csodaszarvas trailing a little behind its knobby counterpart Turul and just crossing the edge of the disk. To the left of the two moons, there were five sets of data lines that Halsey recognized as mass, temperature, and magnetometer readings. They were leading vector arrows down toward the planet, and each vector arrow represented a moving object—no doubt a hostile ship.

  Halsey did not bother to ask how five hostile ships had gone undetected until now. It was fairly easy to spot a spacecraft with an active propulsion tail, especially if it was also emitting a lot of electromagnetic radiation. Usually, it was even possible to detect a vessel drifting quietly hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, with all nonessential systems powered down. But when a ship was hiding inside an atmosphere as thick as Csodaszarvas’s, or remaining concealed under the rim of a deep crater like those found on Turul, discovering it was a matter of luck more than skill.

  “That’s why we’re behind schedule?” she asked. “A few Banished corvettes?”

  “Destroyers,” Palmer said. “Three of them are heavy destroyers. And one of them is a karve.”

  “I don’t care if they’re heavy cruisers,” Halsey said. The karve was a Banished vessel designed explicitl
y for siege and invasion operations, so the Banished were clearly determined to recapture New Mohács. “We can’t allow them to delay the insertion. If you don’t relieve New Mohács, Blue Team is stuck. And if Blue Team doesn’t reach CASTLE Base—”

  “I know how important it is for Blue Team to reach CASTLE Base,” Lasky interrupted. “What I don’t know is whether those vessels have supraluminal comm capability—or the ability to activate a relay satellite that does.”

  “And you’re waiting to find out?” Halsey asked. “That’s hardly wise.”

  “We’re waiting until we know we’ve spotted all of them,” Lasky replied. “If we miss one and it transmits a supraluminal message, we’d have to leave before Blue Team has time to achieve their objective.”

  “Whatever that may be,” Palmer added icily, looking over Lasky.

  There was a lot of negativity in Palmer’s voice, and no wonder. She hadn’t been informed of Blue Team’s mission on Reach, and probably resented having to make a full-scale hot drop just to free them up to continue it. But Halsey had no intention of trying to win Palmer’s support. The Spartan-IV was a by-the-book soldier who had proven several times over that she would rather obey every rule in the Uniform Code of Military Justice than stray even a little to save humanity.

  Had Palmer known the contents of the cryobins Blue Team was tasked with recovering, she would have arrested Halsey on the spot.

  In fact, Halsey had only hinted at the nature of the contents to the captain—though he undoubtedly had his suspicions. When committing gross violations of Unified Interstellar Law, she had always found it wise to involve others to the minimum extent possible. There was a tendency to lose fewer friends that way.

  A sixth vector line appeared on the console, emerging from Csodaszarvas’s atmosphere and passing beneath its rings. It took a moment for the data lines to appear in front of it, and then the operator craned his neck to look over his shoulder at Lasky.