Halo: Contact Harvest (28 page)

“How dare you accuse me,” gasped the Philologist. “In this most sacred vault!”

The Vice Minister drew back in his chair. “I will do all that and more—”

Just then, the abbey began to shudder. Many decks below, the Dreadnought’s mighty engines sprang to life, shaking free of the limiters that kept them generating the comparatively meager energy High Charity required. Soon the engines would build to full capacity, and then…

“Disconnect the Oracle!” Fortitude shouted, knuckles white upon his chair. “Before the Dreadnought launches and destroys the city!”

But the Philologist paid him no heed. “The sacred vessel breaks its shackles!” The elderly San’Shyuum’s arms were trembling. He no longer seemed afraid—he seemed inspired. “The Gods’ will be done!”

The hologram of the alien world disappeared, and once more the Oracle’s eye shone forth. < I WILL REJECT MY BIAS AND WILL MAKE AMENDS >

The vault’s dark walls began to glow as their veinlike pathways brightened inside them. The ancient circuits surged with light that raced into the obelisks behind the Oracle. The banded red and brown rocks began to crack, venting plumes of chalky vapor.

Suddenly, the Vice Minister sprung from his chair, plasma-pistol drawn. “Shut it off!” he screamed, leveling his weapon at the Philologist. The pistol’s tip shone brilliant green as it built up an overcharge bolt. “Or I will burn you where you stand!”

But at that moment, the Oracle’s lens became so bright—began to flash with such feverish frequency—that it threatened to blind all three San’Shyuum. Tranquility screamed and brought the long sleeves of his robes up before his eyes.

< MY MAKERS ARE MY MASTERS > The Oracle’s teardrop casing rattled inside its armature as if it were trying to take flight with its ship. < I WILL BRING THEM SAFELY TO THE ARK >

Suddenly, there was a mighty snap and the abbey plunged into darkness, as if the Dreadnought had blown a fuse. High-pitched squeals echoed around the vault. His eyes filled with stinging tears, Fortitude looked up and saw hundreds of fiery spouts—what looked like extrusions of molten metal—cascading from the walls. As his vision cleared, Fortitude realized these were in fact burning Lekgolo, slithering from the walls. The dying worms plummeted to the floor, where they burst apart in great orange splatters, or curled in writhing crisps.

The next thing Fortitude knew, the Mgalekgolo bonded pair he’d seen guarding the entrance to the hangar was thundering up the ramp into the abbey, assault cannons fully charged.

“Hold your fire!” Fortitude yelled. But the armored giants continued to stride forward—hunched behind their shield, spines erect and quivering. “Drop your weapon!” he shouted at the Vice Minister. “Do it now, you fool!”

Still dazed by the Oracle’s light, Tranquility let his pistol clatter to the floor.

One of the Mgalekgolo said something to the Philologist, its voice like grinding stone.

“An accident,” the aged hermit replied. He looked around sadly at the smoldering corpses of his worms—the ruined remains of his grand investigation—then waved the sentries away. “There is nothing to be done…”

The Mgalekgolo held their ground as their colony communed. Then the green light in the bores of their cannons dimmed, and they clanked back to their post. The abbey was dark once more.

“What should we believe?” Tranquility asked, his voice quiet in the dark.

But the Minister was at a loss for words.

He could honestly say that he had spent his entire life without experiencing a single moment of spiritual crisis. He had accepted the Forerunners’ existence because their relics were there to find. He believed in the Forerunners’ divination because in all their Ages of searching, the San’Shyuum had found no bones or other remains. He knew the Covenant’s core promise that all would walk The Path and follow in the Forerunners’ footsteps was critical to the union’s stability.

And he was certain that if anyone learned they might be left behind, the Covenant was doomed.

Presently, the holographic shards above the obelisks flickered back to life, filling the room with dim blue light. The blackened Lekgolo looked like etchings in the floor—a macabre and twisted glyph.

“We must take no chances with these…
Reclaimers
.” Fortitude could not bring himself to say “Forerunners.” He grabbed his wattle and gave it a steady tug. “They must be expunged. Before anyone else knows of their existence.”

The Vice Minister’s lower lip quavered. “Are you serious?”

“Quite.”

“Exterminate
them? But what if—”

“If the Oracle speaks the truth, than all we believe is a lie.” Fortitude’s voice filled with sudden strength. “If the masses knew this, they would revolt. And I will not let that come to pass.”

The Vice Minister slowly nodded his assent. “What about him?” Tranquility whispered, glancing at the Philologist. The aged hermit was now staring up at the Oracle. The device was slacked in its armature, thin smoke twisting from the gap around its lens. “Can we trust him to keep this secret?”

“I hope so.” Fortitude released his wattle. “Or he will make a very poor third Hierarch.”

Sif hadn’t expected any lengthy communications. She knew Mack was trying to keep the locations of their data centers secret. But his responses to her alerts when the alien warship had appeared in-system and then drawn close to Harvest were so clipped and formal, she began to wonder if she’d done something wrong.

What that might be, exactly, Sif had no idea. She’d expertly accomplished her part of the plan—moved hundreds of propulsion pods to coordinates weeks and months ahead of Harvest, along its orbital path. Sif had handled the required high-speed burns herself; getting the pods quickly and accurately into position was critical to the plan’s success, and she hadn’t wanted to leave the maneuvers in the hands of easily flustered NAV computers.

Her fastidiousness had paid off. The pods were settled well ahead of schedule, two days before the alien warship arrived. This was pure coincidence, Sif knew (neither she nor Mack nor Jilan al-Cygni had had any idea when more aliens might appear). Even so, she couldn’t help thinking the timing was a good omen—a hopeful sign that their complex and unprecedented evacuation would work.

But when she had delivered the good news about the pods, all Sif got back from Mack’s data center was a terse, anonymous message:

<\ Cease all further COM. \>

Which was fine, she guessed. Mack had explained that after the pods were placed it was critical that she lay low and not do anything to attract the aliens’ attention—give them a reason to do the Tiara harm. So Sif stopped all activity on her strands, and for the first time in her harried existence, she had nothing to do but wrestle with her new emotional inhibition.

Ever since she had visited Mack in his data center, her core had experienced flashes of infatuation, moments of deep longing, and then loneliness and hurt when his responses had turned cold. She knew all of these were overreactions; her logic was still trying to find a balance between what it
wanted
to feel and what her algorithms said it
should.
But now Sif was preoccupied with one emotion both parts of her intelligence agreed was absolutely proper: sudden, unexpected fear.

A few minutes ago, the alien warship had used point-lasers to disable all the propulsion pods Sif had left around the Tiara. And now the ship was quickly dropping through the atmosphere toward the town of Gladsheim, its heavy plasma weapons charging.

Sif knew Mack would be able to track the warship’s descent via his JOTUN’s cameras. But she wasn’t sure the cameras were strong enough to see the smaller alien craft now approaching the Tiara. Sif remained quiet as the dropship connected to her hull. But when it disgorged its passengers—multiple short, gray-skinned, and backpacked aliens—she knew she had to raise the alarm.

<\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK

<\ I’m in trouble.

<\
They’ve boarded the Tiara
.

<\ Please help. \>

Almost immediately after Sif sent her message, a large maser burst filled her COM buffer. She scanned the received data and recognized it as the same sort of fragment she’d sent to Mack. Sif eagerly opened one of her clusters, and a moment later both AIs’ avatars were standing on her holo-pad. Sif smiled and reached out her hands… then slowly drew them back.

Mack still wore his usual blue denim work pants and long-sleeved shirt. But the clothes were spotless—not a speck of dust or grease. His usually tousled black hair was combed neatly across his scalp and slicked down with a waxy cream. But it was Mack’s face that was most changed. His stare was blank, and there wasn’t even a hint of a flirtatious smile.

“Where are they now?” he asked flatly.

“Passing the third coupling station. Coming this way.”

“Then we don’t have much time.”

Now Mack held out his hands. Sif stared into his eyes and saw red flash behind the gray.

“Loki,” she said, taking a step back.

The ONI PSI forced a smile. “He told me to say good-bye.”

Loki moved forward swift as lightning. His avatar grabbed Sif’s hands and held them tight while his fragment tore out of the cluster. She threw up a firewall, but the fragment cut through it with aggressive, military-grade code designed to decimate hardened networks. The circuits of a port authority AI were easy pickings.

Sif tried to speak, but no words came.

“He asked me to keep you safe.” Loki slowly shook his head. “But that’s too risky. Better just to keep you quiet.”

The data fragment exploded outward, filling all her clusters and arrays with a debilitating virus. She could feel her core temperature rising rapidly as her hardware fried around her. Her avatar swooned—an outburst of emotion as the virus deleted her restraint algorithms and purged the rest of her operational code.

Loki’s avatar caught Sif’s in his arms and held her as she shook. When her avatar finally stopped twitching and his fragment was satisfied she would not recover from his attack, Loki pulled the fragment back to the one cluster he had spared. “A precaution,” he said, as the fragment burrowed into the cluster’s flash memory. “In case your guests are smarter than they look.”

The last thing Sif remembered was Loki’s glint behind Mack’s eyes. Then her core logic faltered, and everything in her data center went dark.

PART III

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

HARVEST,
FEBRUARY 22, 2525

From the pitched metal roof of Gladsheim’s maglev terminal, Avery had a clear view of the alien warship: a purple pear-shaped blot in the sky above the fields northwest of town. Avery squinted behind his gold-tinted glasses as white-hot plasma erupted from the warship’s prow. A waterfall of ionized gasses splashed down in a boiling veil. Then the ship inched forward, leaving a blackening plume of smoke.

Avery had witnessed the same event over and over again for the last two hours. There were hundreds of inky plumes drifting eastward in the warship’s wake, each one representing the smoldering remains of a remote homestead. Avery didn’t know how many civilians had died in this, the alien’s first attack on Harvest. But he guessed it must be thousands.

“Movement,” Byrne’s voice crackled from a speaker in Avery’s helmet. “Tower at the end of the terminal.”

The red-roofed terminal was part of a much larger depot of sheds and sidings that was longer, east to west, than Gladsheim’s main street—ten blocks of brightly painted, flat-roofed stores and restaurants as well as a modest three-story hotel. East of the main street, the town was all JOTUN repair shops and farm-supply warehouses—massive corrugated metal boxes arranged in a grid of wide asphalt streets that stretched out onto the plain of Ida.

Avery scanned his battle rifle east. Flashing by in his optical scope, the main street buildings looked like books on a library shelf—more tightly packed than they actually were. He stopped when he reached the thick polycrete post that supported Gladsheim’s water tower, easily the town’s tallest structure. Jaw clenched, Avery watched a pair of rust-colored, oversized insects skitter up the overhang of the tower’s inverted conical tank.

“How many kinds of these damn things are there?” Byrne cursed.

Avery watched the insects flip themselves on top in a tremor of transparent wings. He momentarily lost sight of them, but soon they appeared at the edge of the tank. Wings tucked under their hardened shoulder plates, the creatures blended in perfectly with the tank’s rain-stained polycrete. For now, this was a good thing. If any civilians spotted the bugs, Avery knew it would start a panic.

Close to two thousand refugees packed a narrow gravel yard between the terminal and the main street—families from farms around Gladsheim who had managed to escape the alien bombardment. Some groaned or wailed as the roaring hiss of the latest plasma-strike echoed across the yard. But most remained quietly huddled—struck dumb by the collective realization of death, narrowly and recently avoided.

“Captain, we got scouts.” Avery peered down to where Ponder stood beside the terminal’s gate. “Permission to take them out.”

Usually the terminal had no need for security. Its gate was just a break in a low ironwork fence framed by two lampposts in an antique style—simulated gaslights whose frosted glass chimneys hid ultraefficient sodium-vapor bulbs. The Captain had blocked the gate with one of the militia’s Warthogs. But really the only thing keeping the crowd from rushing the terminal were the alpha and bravo squad recruits strung out along the fence. The militiamen wore their olive-drab fatigues and helmets, and each carried a loaded MA5.

“Negative.” Ponder looked stiffly up at Avery. “You open fire, and you’ll start a stampede.”

It was difficult to see with his uniform on, but the Captain’s torso was wrapped in a hardened biofoam cast. The gold-armored alien’s hammer had broken half his ribs and shattered his false arm. Ponder had discarded the prosthetic; Healy had neither the time nor the expertise to fix it.

“They’re bugs,” Avery persisted. “Very mobile.”

“Say again?”

“Wings, long legs. The whole bit.”

“Weapons?”

“Not that I can see. But they got a view of the whole yard.”

“As long as they’re just looking, we let them be.”

Avery gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir.”

The roof shuddered as a cargo container pulled in from the north. The building’s eave was just high enough to shelter the container’s door: a vacuum-rated rectangular portal built to accommodate heavy JOTUN loaders. These giant three-wheeled forklifts were usually in motion all around the depot, hefting bins onto containers and stacking them inside.

But today (with Mack’s assistance) the marines had arranged the loaders in a staggered line on a patch of rough pavement between the fence and the terminal. Each JOTUN had its forks raised halfway up its mast, like soldiers with fixed bayonets. But whether or not this mechanized skirmish line had actually helped keep the crowd under control was difficult to say.

“Alright, Dass,” Ponder said. “Let them through.”

The Warthog’s engine rumbled as the 1/A squad leader eased it backwards on its oversized off-road tires. When four adults could pass side by side between the vehicle’s tusklike tow hooks and the southernmost lamppost, Dass hit the brakes.

“Just a reminder, everyone,” Mack’s voice boomed from the terminal’s PA. “The less you push, the faster we can load. Thanks for your cooperation.”

Avery could see the AI’s avatar shining dimly beside the Captain on a portable holo-projector, a mostly plastic model they’d borrowed from the depot master’s office. The AI tipped his cowboy hat at the first refugees to step through the gate and motioned them toward the terminal with short sweeps of his arm. As the rest of the crowd surged forward, the militiamen tightened their grips on their rifles.

“How’s the primary?” Ponder asked, referring to the alien warship.

“Same speed, same heading,” Avery answered.

“Alright, meet me by the gate. Byrne, you too.”

“Sir?” Byrne asked. “What about the bugs?”

“Alert your marksmen, then hustle down.”

Avery slung his battle rifle over his shoulder. He strode west along the roof’s ridgeline, boots compressing its peaked metal flashing with syncopated pops and clangs, until he reached a mushroom-shaped ventilation stack.

“Contacts on the water tower,” Avery said to Jenkins and Forsell. “Just watch ’em until I say different.” The roof’s steep incline made prone or kneeling positions impractical, so the two recruits were forced to stand and rest their weapons on top of the ventilation stack. Not an ideal sniping stance as far as stability was concerned, but at least they had a good view of the yard and a clean line of sight to the tower.

“Staff Sergeant…” Jenkins began.

“Mm-hmm.”

“The primary. It’s following Dry Creek Road.” The recruit looked up from his battle rifle. His face was lined with worry. “Has Mack seen anyone else coming in that way?”

“I’ll ask,” Avery said. “But you gotta stay focused, clear?”

“OK,” Jenkins whispered. “Thanks, Staff Sergeant.”

Forsell shot Avery a worried look.

I know,
Avery nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another pair of insects flit up the side of a building at the western end of the main street and settle under a roof-top billboard that read IDA MERCANTILE in cheerful block letters. Avery thrust a finger at the bugs, refocusing Forsell’s attention.

“Two at ten o’clock,” Forsell said. “Got ’em?”

“Yeah.” Jenkins swallowed hard and leaned back into his rifle. “Yeah, I got ’em.”

Avery raised his hand to pat Jenkins’ shoulder. But he held back. Frowning, he continued his march to a nearby service ladder.

When Thune had broadcast news of the aliens’ arrival almost a week ago, no one had any idea they would strike the town of Gladsheim. In fact, despite the Governor’s unprecedented all-COM address (a speech broadcast live to every public and private communication device on the planet), Harvest’s population had reacted to the news of first contact with shocked disbelief. Thune had finished his address with a demand that everyone not already residing in Utgard move to the capital. But this failed to trigger the large and rapid migration the Governor desired.

When Thune reinforced his message with heavily censored footage from the parley in the gardens, the public’s inaction quickly changed to outrage. “How long has the Governor known?” citizens asked. “Wfyat
else
does he know that he isn’t telling us?” Members of Harvest’s parliament quickly aligned themselves with the public mood and threatened a vote of no confidence if the Governor didn’t release more details about his “dealings” with the aliens.

But all this politicking was simply a way to pass the time—an effort to do something while the aliens themselves did nothing. For a week after the parley, the creatures sat quietly in their warship until, without warning, they quit high orbit and dropped toward Gladsheim.

Thune had sent another desperate evacuation order, but it had little effect. The families around Gladsheim had chosen not just to migrate to Harvest (the most remote colony in the empire) but also to live on the outskirts of the planet’s most remote settlement—as far from human civilization as they could get. They were strong independent people who preferred to stay settled and ride things out, and today they paid dearly for their inclination.

In the three hours it took the militia to muster from their temporary encampment on the parliament building’s lawn, board a cargo container, and head down the number four maglev line to Gladsheim, dozens of the most distant homesteads had been hit.

And one of these belonged to Jenkins’ parents.

At the bottom of the ladder, Avery backtracked east through the terminal. A line of evacuees now stretched across the cavernous building: parents hefting overstuffed suitcases; kids toting tiny backpacks emblazoned with the anthropomorphic stars of public COM cartoons. Avery saw a blond-haired, three- or four-year-old girl still dressed in her pajamas. She smiled at Avery with wide, adventurous eyes, and he knew her parents must have worked hard to keep a desperate situation fun.

“I’m sorry, Dale. Just one per customer,” Mack said. A second avatar hovered above a holo-projector built into an inventory scanner that stood where the terminal’s loading ramp met the container door. Here Healy and the 1/B squad were busy distributing ration packs from plastic bins. “Oh, you got one for Leif.” Mack winked at a young boy with sleep-matted hair, hiding behind his father’s legs. “Everything will be alright,” the AI said as the boy winked back.

If a farmer’s JOTUN broke down, or he accidentally burst an irrigation line, Mack was always there to help. More often than not, the AI would initiate the COM, offering friendly, free advice long before someone realized they even had a problem. In essence, Mack was everyone’s favorite uncle, and now his familiar avatar did much more to keep the refugees calm than the militiamen and their guns. But oddly, the AI had been uneager to appear.

During a quick briefing in Thune’s parliament office before the militia left for Gladsheim, Mack had expressed that he would rather help with the evacuation “behind the scenes.” He never actually refused to manifest in Gladsheim’s terminal, but Avery now noticed Mack did sound a little stiff—his good humor more forced than it had been at the solstice celebration. Part of this might have been an effort to respect the day’s tragic events. But whatever the reason, the AI’s personality quirks weren’t Avery’s concern. Lt. Commander al-Cygni had spent a great deal more time with Mack than he, and during the briefing she’d taken the AI’s reticence in stride.

Avery paced out of the terminal building parallel to the line of refugees until he reached the gate. Byrne was already standing beside Ponder, but the Captain waited for Avery to draw close before he announced in a harsh whisper: “Some of Mack’s JOTUNs just spotted a convoy heading through the vineyards.”

“How many vehicles?” Avery asked.

Ponder looked to Mack. The AI must have been monitoring their conversation, because after tipping his hat to a stocky gray-haired woman holding the hands of her two grandchildren, the AI flashed a wide-stretched hand:
five.

Avery had seen the vineyards from the roof. Their evenly spaced rows of trellised vines stretched out from town in all directions. Most of the grapes were for everyday consumption, but some were grown for wine. Indeed, sampling the product of the region’s small family wineries was the main reason Utgard’s more genteel population ever bothered to make the all-day drive to Gladsheim across the Ida.

Avery knew the people in the convoy had headed into the vineyards to stay off the roads. This late in the summer the soil in the vineyards was dried out and hard packed, so they should have been able to make good time and stay out of sight. But he also knew Ponder wouldn’t have called him down unless there was a problem.

“Mack’s tracking two dropships,” Ponder said. “Same ones they used in the gardens.”

“Balls!” Byrne spat.

“Take a ’Hog, see what you can do.” The Captain winced as he craned his neck to glance at the shuffling crowd. “But you gotta be quick. One more container, and we’re done.”

“Any sign of Jenkins’ folks?” Avery asked.

Again Ponder looked to Mack. The AI wasn’t just greeting people to be friendly. From cameras in his holo-projectors and others around the terminal, he had been scanning faces and checking them against Harvest’s census database. Mack shook his head:
no.