by Troy Denning
It didn’t take long. Once the Stolen Faith began to accelerate toward Taram, Veta coughed twice into the TEAMCOM microphone hidden in her shirt collar. Over the next few minutes, the members of her team were herded into the galley, unarmed and no longer wearing their pressure suits. Mark was smirking—but only until Veta flashed him a warning scowl. Her plan depended on giving the Keepers a false sense of security, and that would not happen if her Gammas looked smug.
After a time, a young human woman with a shag haircut entered the galley. She was armored more lightly than most of the boarding party, wearing only torso and groin protection over a blue jumpsuit. She paused at the chieftain’s side to report that the Havoks were secure, then took a seat at the table where Veta and her team were being held.
“You lied.” The woman paused, her eyes flicking from Veta to the rest of the Ferret team as she looked for a reaction. Then she said, “There are only nine Havoks back there.”
“If you know that,” Veta said, “then you found the slipbeacon.”
“I did.” The woman did not offer her name, so Veta took a cue from her haircut and thought of her as Shag. “That was top-notch work, by the way. The power supply looked so much like an interstage that I nearly didn’t bother to look behind it.”
Veta shrugged. “I have a talented crew.” She paused, then asked, “Since you know I’m not bluffing, why don’t we fix this mess now? The sooner I deliver, the less likely my customers are to show up looking for their nukes.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“It seems pretty simple to me,” Mark said. “Let us go, or get hammered by the Banished.”
“And if we let you go, who shows up then?” Shag asked.
“No one,” Ash said. “Why should they?”
Shag flashed a knowing smile. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.” Veta was starting to think the slipbeacon had been concealed a little too well. It required a special brand of expertise to disguise a sophisticated technological device as something else, and anyone with the skill to recognize a bogus interstage was probably smart enough to realize the replacement could have been created by ONI technicians. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“Well, you know the saying,” Shag said. “There’s no honor among thieves.”
“You think we’d sell you out?” Olivia demanded.
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“That’s not fair,” Ash said. “We’re the ones who got double-crossed.”
“After you stole a shipment of Havoks.”
“Okay, there’s that,” Ash replied. “But that’s no reason to call us—”
“You’re selling thermonuclear weapons,” Shag said. “To the Banished.”
“So what’s that to you?” Mark asked. “It’s not like the Keepers and the Banished are at war . . . yet.”
Shag’s expression turned to disdain. “And you wonder why no one trusts a pirate.”
Mark furrowed his brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She’s talking about outcomes, vapebrain,” Olivia said. “She doesn’t like how the nukes will be used.”
“You’re the smart one here, I see,” Shag said. “It’s too bad you’re not in charge. We might have struck a deal that wouldn’t weigh so heavily on your collective conscience.”
“Since when do Keepers care about conscience?” Veta asked. “Every Keeper I’ve met was a murdering zealot.”
“We are warriors of the Great Journey.”
Shag’s sharp tone indicated that she was one of the few humans who had joined the Keepers because she actually believed in the Great Journey, a doctrine of divine destruction that sought to find a long-lost Forerunner weapon called Halo. Once activated, the weapon would cleanse the galaxy of all life, freeing the faithful of their mundane existence so they could join the Forerunners in a higher plane of existence. The doctrine sounded like a death pact gone supernova, but there was no use saying that to Shag. Arguing theology with a True Believer was worse than counterproductive—it made one the enemy.
When Veta did not respond to her declaration, Shag finally filled the silence. “Everything we do is for the transcendence of the worthy.”
“Which makes it okay to let you have the Havoks instead.” Veta couldn’t figure out the woman’s angle, whether she was trying to recruit them or just couldn’t stop herself from spouting dogma. “Because the Keepers will only use them on infidels.”
“We’re more discriminating than that,” Shag said. “Actually, I was thinking the Havoks might be a way to solve our mutual problem—and for you to redeem yourselves.”
“Redeem ourselves?” Olivia asked. “Like on a suicide mission or something?”
“If only you could be trusted,” Shag said. “But nothing so dramatic. Just give me the arming codes. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“And what do we get out of it?” Veta was relieved not to hear the woman mention the nukes’ tritium booster cylinders. The ones in the warheads were fakes—a precaution to prevent the weapons from falling into the wrong hands—and the real ones were aboard the Silent Joe with Blue Team. “The Stolen Faith and safe passage out of the system?”
“Nice try,” Shag replied. “But even if I could sell it to the dokab, I’ve made my feelings clear about letting you loose knowing the location of Salvation Base.”
“So what’s your offer?” Mark asked.
“Your lives.” Shag ran her gaze around the table, then flashed Mark a tight smile. “Unless I decide you’re ONI, of course. If you’re ONI, Castor is just going to rip the codes right out of you with his bare hands.”
CHAPTER 8
* * *
* * *
1445 hours, December 13, 2553 (military calendar)
Salvation Base
Moon Taram, Pydoryn Planetary System, Shaps System
The gravity on Taram felt surprisingly strong for a moon—perhaps 90 percent standard, though Veta was not enough of a world-hopper to be confident in her estimate. An industrial hum droned somewhere off to her left, and even through the fabric of her black hood, the spaceport air smelled faintly of oil and solvent.
Shag—the Keeper weapons technician—grabbed Veta’s elbow and steered her onto the Stolen Faith’s boarding ramp. “Let’s go.”
Veta’s foot dropped farther than expected. With her eyes covered and her hands zip-cuffed behind her back, she lost her balance and fell to a knee.
“Look, I gave you the arming codes,” Veta said. Surrendering the codes had been an easy decision, since it preserved her team’s cover and the Havoks couldn’t be detonated without the real tritium cylinders anyway. “You saw the status indicators turn green. Do we really need hoods and restraints?”
“For now,” Shag said. She pulled Veta back to her feet. “We still have security concerns.”
Veta refused to continue down the ramp. “I thought we had a deal.”
“The deal was for your lives,” the chieftain said. Veta heard him behind her, at the top of the boarding ramp with the rest of her team. “You are alive.”
“Move it.” Shag started Veta down the ramp again, then added quietly, “Don’t give him an excuse. He’s still boiling mad about all the Faithbringers he lost during the boarding action.”
“I don’t think I’m worried,” Veta said. She turned her head to be sure her voice was audible behind her. “He’s kind of an idiot.”
“I will ask Dokab Castor for the honor of guarding your cells,” the chieftain retorted. “My pack will use you to play tossers.”
Before Veta could reply, a boot scuffed the top of the boarding ramp, and a foot came down hard.
“Sorry, Neema,” Ash said, addressing Olivia by her cover name. “Couldn’t see.”
“No problem, Chikey,” Olivia cooed. She sounded so close to Ash she could have been standing in his boots—probably because she was feeling for the remote detonator in his shirt. With his hands zip-cuffed behind his back, there was
no way he could reach it himself, and the Ferrets needed to blow the ostanalus canisters the moment they cleared the Stolen Faith. “I’ve got you.”
“Save it for later, will you?” Mark was just locating himself for the rest of the team, letting them know he was a couple of steps behind Ash and ready for action. “Nobody needs to hear you two flirt.”
Veta descended another step, then she heard a muffled crump deep inside the Stolen Faith. The canisters had been blown.
She turned square toward Shag and drove hard, and they both toppled over the side of the ramp. It was a long way down, made worse by the fact that she couldn’t see anything. Veta landed atop Shag’s shoulder, then felt a crunching pain in her chest.
Shag cried out and tried to roll free, but Veta was already slipping her knees into a restraining straddle. She slammed her brow down in a head-butt and struck something flat—a temple, she thought—and the cry became a groan. Veta brought her head down repeatedly, striking with the upper part of forehead so she wouldn’t injure herself, and stopped only when her target softened and her hood grew heavy with blood.
By the sound of it, the rest of her team was bringing the fight to a close. A spiker sizzled and a big body landed with a hollow boom; then a strangled growl ended in a wet thwack. Veta rolled off Shag and pressed her head to the ground, then began to worm backward in an effort to drag off her hood.
A hand grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to her feet.
“I hope this blood isn’t yours,” Olivia said.
“Me too,” Veta said, only half-unhooded. “Are we secure?”
“Of course.” Olivia slipped a blade between Veta’s still-bound wrists and began to cut the zip cuffs. “There were only five of them, and it looks like we landed in a quiet area. Nobody close, and nobody paying attention to us.”
“What about the rest of the boarding party?”
“No signs they’re attempting to evacuate,” Olivia said. “I think the ostanalus got them.”
“Probably, but keep an eye out.”
The zip cuffs separated, and Veta pulled her hood the rest of the way off. She did a quick survey of the surrounding area and saw no immediate trouble—in fact, the Stolen Faith seemed to be sitting off by itself—but a more thorough assessment would have to wait until the landing zone had been secured. She was standing beneath the vessel’s chin, on a translucent green pavement that seemed equal parts glass and light. Shag lay to the right, her temple smashed and one eye dangling from its socket.
Veta would probably get a knot on her own head soon, but would be fine otherwise. If there was one thing ONI combat instructors taught their undercover operatives, it was how to win a fight without injuring oneself. But the nightmares that were bound to come later—well, it was better to be alive and dealing with them than to be dead and resting in peace.
To the left, a pair of Kig-Yar guards were sprawled next to the ramp, their necks folded sideways around a crimp the size of a boot heel.
A dead Jiralhanae was half-visible in the mouth of the Stolen Faith’s cargo hold, his enormous bi-clawed feet hanging out over the boarding ramp. The chieftain lay beneath the Stolen Faith’s belly, a mound of flesh the size of a Mongoose ATV. He had been opened from hip to armpit, and Ash was standing over him with a gory spike rifle. Mark was kneeling on the far side, going through the cargo pouches on the chieftain’s belt.
The wrists of both Gammas showed welts from snapping their zip cuffs. As much as Veta hated what the SPARTAN-III program had done to them, she had to admit their physical enhancements could come in handy. As long as the smoothers were working and their brain chemistry was in balance, it was kind of reassuring to know that the more stressful the fight, the faster, stronger, and more ferocious they would become.
As long as the smoothers were working. She had seen on Gao how precarious a Gamma’s hold on reality could be when he ran out of meds, and issuing orders to a Spartan-III in the throes of a psychotic break was not a task she cared to undertake. It had been tricky enough for Fred-104, who’d had the armor and size of a Spartan-II to put behind his commands. Veta preferred to rely on prevention, which was why she insisted that her team be given the longer-lasting, subcutaneous inserts—even if they did require a minor operation each time they needed to be changed out.
Veta gestured at the dead Keepers. “Let’s secure those bodies and close up the ship.”
“Strip the weapons first,” Mark said. He removed a Jiralhanae-size pistol from the chieftain’s equipment belt. Known informally as a mauler, the revolver had a ferocious-looking blade beneath the trigger housing and was loaded with superheated bolts that fragmented like buckshot when fired. Mark spun the cylinder to make sure it was carrying a full load of five bolts, then looked up and finally seemed to realize he sounded like he was the one giving orders. “Just a suggestion, of course . . . but we’re going to need weapons.”
Veta glanced at the collection of corpses lying beneath the Stolen Faith. “You three are weapons,” she said. “But point taken. I’ll search. Ash will keep watch. You and ’Livi stow the bodies.”
The Gammas responded simultaneously. “Affirmative.”
“And stay out of the cargo hold,” Veta added. “No taking chances with the ostanalus.”
The trio exchanged looks of exasperation, and Olivia said, “Yeah, Mom. We kind of figured.”
Olivia and Mark each took one of the chieftain’s arms and dragged him out of a pool of purplish blood. Anyone coming near the Stolen Faith would undoubtedly notice the carnage and the streaks leading toward the boarding ramp, but removing the bodies would at least reduce the likelihood of the bloodshed being noticed from a distance. Veta searched the rest of the dead, collecting not only an assortment of small arms, but Shag’s datapad, several chronometers, and three Keeper comm headsets. The process took only a minute, but Mark and Olivia were tossing the last Kig-Yar onto the ramp even as she removed his chest holster and plasma pistol.
Olivia pressed a control pad on the hull, and the boarding ramp’s servomotors began to whine and growl beneath the extra load. Veta feared she’d have to send someone to carry the bodies into the hold; then Mark stepped to the end of the ramp and began to lift. The servomotors settled into a purr, and the ramp rose so rapidly that Olivia had to dodge back and forth beneath it, jumping up to push arms and legs back into place as the corpses slid into the cargo hold.
Finally, the ramp thumped shut.
Veta exhaled in relief, then distributed the weapons and knelt with Ash behind the Stolen Faith’s nose strut. The spaceport sat in the bottom of what appeared to be a huge, sheer-walled crater. The expanse of green pavement stretched more than a kilometer to a ring of yellow cliffs that encircled the entire facility. Overhead, there was no sign of an energy barrier or any other atmospheric containment device, only a mauve radiance cast by the swirling gas bands of the planet Pydoryn.
The Stolen Faith had landed in a quiet area to one side of the spaceport, close enough to the cliff that Veta could see its vitreous surface was permeated by tiers of artificial grottoes. Half a kilometer to her left sat a fleet of light attack vessels, scattered in front of a provisioning station. To the right, the cliff wall was only seventy meters away, with a single unmarked REAP-X “Turaco” standing on three struts in front of it.
Veta was relieved to see that the Turaco’s boarding ramp was raised and its dorsal cannon turret pointed at its own tail, but she didn’t know what to make of its presence. With a bulbous flight deck and an ovoid body tapering to tail packed with long-range sensor packages, Turacos were a new style of experimental reconnaissance boat that the UNSC had begun testing only a couple of months before. Like most other vessels developed by ONI’s Reverse Engineering and Prototyping-Xenotechnology department, REAP-X Turacos were top-secret test craft with a production run measured in the dozens, so it was hard to believe the Keepers had already captured one.
Veta turned to Ash. “Threat assessment?”
“Still nothing i
mmediate.”
“Good,” Veta said. “Any attention from that Turaco?”
“Negative. It looks buttoned up.” Ash gestured to the left, toward the fleet of attack vessels a half kilometer away. “I’d say that provisioning apron is our most likely source of a chance discovery.”
The apron was bustling with service carts and maintenance crews, but the workers appeared so focused on their tasks—and on avoiding accidents—that no one seemed to be looking the Stolen Faith’s direction. Veta estimated about fifty vessels ranging in size from gunboats to corvettes, and it appeared obvious that the little fleet was being prepared for launch.
“Seems like the Keepers bought your story about the Banished coming,” Mark said, coming up beside Veta. “Nice bluff.”
“Except for one thing,” Olivia said, also joining them. “Their dokab thinks we’re captured pirates, and he’s expecting Shag to bring us to him real soon.”
“And when we don’t show up,” Ash said, “it’ll take him about two minutes to guess our mission.”
“Affirmative.” Mark checked the battery pack in the plasma pistol Veta had taken off one of the Kig-Yar, then said, “We’re going to need more firepower—a lot more.”
“Slow down,” Veta said. “First, we need a plan.”
Mark frowned. “We don’t have time to start planning,” he said. “I say we find the Tuwas, grab them, and get out before the Keepers have a chance to react. Our plans have a way of going sideways lately.”
“Maybe,” Veta admitted. “But sideways is better than backwards—or dead.”
She checked the datapad she had recovered from Shag and saw that the time was only 1447. The Stolen Faith had emerged from slipspace around 0800, which was when the slipbeacon would have transmitted its tracking signal, and Blue Team’s jump from Venezia would take about twelve hours total.
