Halo: Glasslands (12 page)

Even now that the Prophets had been exposed as liars, though, nobody had attempted to cross the boundary and plow up the grass.

Does it matter? I think not.

By the time Jul got back to his keep, it was long past the midafternoon mealtime. Children raced past him, hissing and squabbling. He grabbed one of the boys by his collar and yanked him to a halt.

“Discipline, Kimal,” he said. He noted that his sons weren’t in the unruly mob.
Good.
“You’re not infants, any of you. I expect better.”

“Sorry, my lord.”

Kimal slunk away. The sober mood spread through the others in a heartbeat. Jul climbed the steps to his own keep and went looking for Raia. He found her in her private chamber, doing the accounts for all the Bekan clan keeps, a time-consuming job that fell to the wife of the elder. It never improved her mood.

“Where have
you
been?” she demanded. “Forze called. He wants to talk to you. And you missed the meal. Is this what it’s going to be like now you’re back from the front? Wandering around wasting your time?”

“I went to see Kaidon ‘Mdama. He’s going to support the Arbiter.” Jul waited for an acid comment but none came. “Did Forze say what he wanted?”

“He said that old man Relon’s going to blow up the holy spire. Seeing as the gods are dead, he didn’t think they’d mind him plowing the land to grow tubers.”

Jul found it odd to hear her talking so disrespectfully about the Forerunners. She’d always been the devout one in the marriage. Perhaps, like others, she was punishing the gods for letting liars and parasites deceive them and exploit them for so long.

“Aren’t you offended by that?” he asked.

Raia considered the question, eyes fixed on the accounts folio, all her jaws clenched.

“It’ll ruin a pretty view,” she said at last.

Jul decided to leave well alone and went to find some leftovers in the kitchens, braving the disapproving snaps and hisses of the older wives who were trying to clean up before the next meal. Raia was right. He was in danger of looking for something to fill his time, just like every other Sangheili warrior who suddenly had no war to fight.

How do I wake my people? How do I galvanize them? The war isn’t over.

He grabbed a couple of slices of roast meat on the way out, stopped to take an
arum
from one of the children in the courtyard, and went off to seek some clarity in the quiet at the top of the old watchtower. From the battlements, he could see right across the valley on a clear day. He lost himself in the
arum
for a while, utterly absorbed in trying every permutation of movement until a distant explosion jerked him out of the puzzle.

He stood up just as a second rumbling boom carried on the afternoon air, leaning on the edge of the stonework to look north. Smoke was rising into the air farther up the valley. When it cleared, Jul realized that the sacred spire was gone.

Relon had been as good as his word. Jul suspected it was another expression of the sense of betrayal, blaming the gods for three millennia of deceit. Gods, after all, should have been able to step in and bring the San’Shyuum to heel. They didn’t: so they were either neglectful gods not worth worshiping, or they didn’t exist at all. It was sobering to be alone in the universe.

Raia didn’t pass comment on it at supper. Jul wondered whether to point it out to her but decided against it. He suspected there would be a rash of this destruction and then the novelty would wear off, and everyone would get on with their lives.

After breakfast the next morning, he went to the armory to see what personal resources he had left. It was all small arms. He couldn’t seize a ship, not even if he added Forze’s armaments and brothers to the raiding party. He would need to assemble a small army to commandeer a frigate from a crew loyal to the Arbiter, and assassinations—perfectly legal challenges to authority, an orderly and honorable way to resolve disputes—required personal weapons. Anything beyond that was dishonorable. It was also designed to stop feuds escalating into civil war.

So how do I find like-minded Sangheili? How do these old laws apply to the situation we find ourselves in now?

He was wondering whether to enlist his keep brothers in the plot when the ground beneath him shook a little. Then he heard three muffled
whumps
more like artillery fire than tree clearance. But the Forerunner spire had already been destroyed; what was Relon doing, pulverizing the rubble? There were quieter ways to do that. Annoyed at the thoughtlessness of his neighbor, Jul stormed outside and activated his comms to call Relon’s keep. The channel was dead.
The old fool.
He’d have to drive over to the keep and ask him to stop this nonsense.

Jul called Gusay to bring the Revenant. “Gusay, where are you?” Jul was in the outer courtyard now, wondering why he could hear the familiar sound of a Spirit dropship in the distance. “Gusay, I need to pay a visit to Relon.”

The comm channel was silent for a moment.

“My lord, Relon’s keep is on fire. It’s been attacked.”

For an insane moment, Jul’s first thought was that the gods had finally chosen to make an appearance. The destruction of the spire had enraged them.
No. That’s superstition to keep you in your place. You know that now.
He was about to reply when the sound of the Spirit’s drives grew a lot louder and the dropship suddenly roared over the keep, heading south. By the time Jul got outside, the Spirit had dwindled to a speck in the distance and a pall of smoke hung in the sky. Relon’s keep had probably been burning for some time, judging by the density and spread. The Revenant whined to a halt at the end of the path and Gusay beckoned him from the open cockpit, looking agitated.

Raia shouted after them from an open window. “What’s happening? Is it Jiralhanae? Humans? How did they get past our defenses?”

“It’s
Sangheili,
my lady,” Gusay called back. “It’s our own.”

Jul sprang into the passenger section. “What do you mean,
our own
?”

“The keep’s been hit by plasma cannon.”

“Impossible.”

“Why? Who would do
that
?”

“No idea, my lord.”

Jul tried to make sense of it as Gusay steered along the line of the highway between the keeps. Other keeps in the area had already responded to the explosions. The Revenant joined a small fleet of vessels and vehicles trying to get close to the burning buildings, and the kaidon’s transports seemed to be everywhere. Nobody could accuse Levu ‘Mdama of not coming to the aid of his client keeps.

Jul stared as Gusay brought the Revenant to a halt. The main keep was just a stump of rubble shrouded in smoke. He knew only too well what a plasma cannon strike looked like. He jumped down from the vehicle and went to walk through the gates, wondering why all the activity seemed to be in the courtyard and not the keep itself. The fire was cracking and hissing, but he could hear no roars of anger or panic. It was only when he turned a corner, gulping in a lungful of acrid smoke as the heat hit his face, that he understood why there was such
silence.

He didn’t take in the group of warriors, wives, and children clustered in the yard. He saw only what they were staring at. A scaffold of sorts had been made from a joist that jutted from the wall, and from it hung two objects that Jul took a few moments to recognize.

It was Relon and his brother, Jalam, both very old warriors, and both dead. Beneath their dangling bodies—what was left of them—were pools and splashes of purple blood. They were so mutilated that it was hard even for a shipmaster like Jul, used to combat and the ugly scenes it left in its wake, to work out exactly what he was looking at, but he couldn’t drag his eyes from the horror even though he was desperate to look away. It took him some moments to realize Levu ‘Mdama was standing next to him, staring in silence too.

A handwritten board hung from cords around Relon’s neck made the situation very clear. The script was stylized and ancient, more like the scrolls of the priests from before the time of the war with the San’Shyuum. But Jul could read it easily enough.

We do not allow blasphemers to live

The gods demand a return to piety

Truth abides

“I thought they were all talk,” Levu said quietly. “It seems that they’ve woken up again. They were everywhere when I was a boy.”

“Who?” Jul couldn’t work out why nobody was ushering the family away from the terrible scene. “How did they manage to do this in a keep? What are they?”

“The
Neru Pe ‘Odosima,
” Levu said. It was an ancient name in a form of Sangheili that was no longer spoken. “Fanatics. Fools.”

Jul recalled the name. “The Servants of the Abiding Truth? But they were
monks
.”

“Well, we let them became warriors, and now they’re dangerous, savage
fools
. And they seem to have stockpiled arms.” The kaidon gestured to his aide to do something about the bodies. “Thun?
Thun!
Get those bodies down from there. Cover them. It’s not decent.”

Jul looked away from the slaughter and that brief lapse of attention let a stray thought cross his mind. He wished it hadn’t, because the sane, responsible elder in him said this was all utterly wrong, cowardly—
dishonorable.
These were just old warriors who’d served Sanghelios and the gods all their lives. But the thought wouldn’t go away.

And there was no better idea to take its place.

If these
Neru Pe ‘Odosima
would butcher venerable old men for blowing up a meaningless ruin, they would surely take on the Arbiter for turning all Sangheili from the gods.

Abiding Truth was an existing network that Jul could draw on. Its followers were clearly willing to break every moral convention on disputes. Jul just had to work out how to organize and discipline them, and then he could bypass the kaidon and anyone else to bring down the Arbiter—and unite Sanghelios against the real threat that would inevitably return.

He would have to do deals with monsters for the greater good. The rules of war had changed.

CHAPTER

FOUR

WHY DO WE BOTHER TO FORCE UNHAPPY COLONY WORLDS TO STAY IN THE UN FOLD? BECAUSE UNSC BUDGETS AND UNSC HEAVY LIFT ENABLED THOSE COLONIES TO EXIST. BECAUSE THE UNSC NEEDS AS MANY SUPPLY BASES IN DEEP SPACE AS IT CAN GET. AND BECAUSE THEY’RE HUMAN—THEY’RE US. IN A GALAXY OF HOSTILE ALIENS, YOU’RE EITHER FOR US, OR YOU’RE THE ENEMY.

(ADMIRAL MARGARET O. PARANGOSKY, CINCONI, TO CAPTAIN SERIN OSMAN)

FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE, ONYX, FOUR HOURS INTO RECONNAISSANCE PATROL: LOCAL DATE NOVEMBER 2552.

The passage ahead of Lucy wasn’t the tunnel it first appeared to be.

It could have changed shape in the second that she’d looked away, or maybe her helmet optics were on the fritz, but the opening was at least six meters high, a black, featureless maw that didn’t appear to have interior walls.

Why make a door that big?

She took a few steps inside, rifle raised, and flicked on the tactical lamp. Her visor flared for a moment.
Nothing.
The cavern swallowed the light and kicked her armor’s reactive coating into mottled black. She glanced down at her boots—now matte black, barely there—and realized she couldn’t see a floor underneath them. It triggered a brief, primal panic. For a moment she was falling. It took a conscious effort to look up and make herself believe that she was on solid ground. She struggled to trust what she could feel rather than what she could see.

“Lucy? Hang on.” It was Tom on the radio. “
Lucy!
Wait, will you?”

Two sets of boots thudded behind her. She hadn’t realized how far into the opening she’d gone. Her helmet’s head-up display showed that Chief Mendez and Tom were following her, the only two icons at close range. Tom’s bio readout showed his pulse was raised. She decided to risk taking her eyes off the passage and turned around.

“What have we got, Lucy?” Tom caught up with her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

Why did he think she wouldn’t be? She waved him away. Something had come down this passage and she couldn’t turn back until she’d found and identified it, and—if necessary—neutralized it. She checked her display for EM or thermal signatures ahead, but there was nothing. The ground was definitely flat and smooth like terrazzo. Now she’d started to trust her proprioception rather than her eyes, she picked up speed and started walking at a pace she thought of as cautious-normal.

“I’m going to fetch Halsey in here to evaluate this,” Mendez said. Lucy kept moving. “Hold it here, Lucy. We’ll secure a perimeter in case whatever it is decides to come back. You hear me, Petty Officer?
Hold it here.
”