Halo: The Cole Protocol (13 page)

CHAPTER

TWENTY

UNSC FRIGATE
MIDSUMMER NIGHT,
OUTER CHARYBDIS IX

Zheng stood on the bridge of the
Midsummer Night,
his hands behind his back. Keyes watched him pace as the screens lit up.

All the bridge crew were on duty, and the junior officers stood at the back, looking on.

“I called you all here to watch this,” Zheng announced, suddenly pausing in place to turn and face them, “because it’s important to remember why we fight.”

Keyes swiveled his chair. Zheng had been averse to talking to the entire ship before this, slightly nervous. Keyes bet that Zheng knew what his reputation was. Or maybe Zheng was still damaged from whatever it was he was dealing with. Either way, he’d kept his distance, even from his own bridge crew. And everyone had been happy to keep their distance from him as well. Until now. Zheng looked animated. Angry. For this he’d asked Kirtley to broadcast his address to the rest of the ship. It was an interesting change.

“Some of you joined because you had no other options, some because you were looking for adventure, and others because of patriotism. And since the first contact at Harvest, many of you out of a desire to fight the Covenant.

“But as days pass, and the dreariness of daily life, cramped in this ship with your fellow sailors mounts, I know it can be easy to forget that we are, first and foremost, a weapon.” Zheng looked out over the officers on deck. “A weapon to strike back against all our enemies. External… or internal. Because if we don’t do our best, this will be a small taste of what is to come.”

Behind Zheng the screens lit up with images broadcast from Charybdis.

Keyes found his eyes drawn to the nearest, a scene from low orbit taken by a satellite. Far below, the sleek, sharklike shape of a Covenant cruiser passed over the patches of land, and as it did so, everything underneath it glowed.

The screen flickered off, jumping to a new scene: a shot from the top of a skyscraper in downtown Scyllion. What looked like shimmering rain fell from the sky, but wherever it touched the city exploded into actinic flame.

Buildings melted, slumping over and then bubbling down into a lavalike mix of asphalt and concrete and shattered glass. The camera wavered as blue haze began to build up near it, and then it melted and static filled the screen.

Another live feed, from far outside the city, showed the blue waterfalls of plasma strike the river, sending up a giant cloud of steam as it was vaporized.

“They’re attacking,” someone said in a shocked voice.

Keyes looked to the screen everyone pointed out, and saw tiny dots rising up to harass the bulbous-nosed Covenant cruisers.

They were about as successful as minnows attacking sharks, Keyes thought. Plasma darted out from the sides of the cruiser over Scyllion, swatting the tiny Charybdis defense fighters out of the sky like annoying insects.

Maybe if they’d been more coordinated, Keyes wondered. Could a force of tiny craft distract a Covenant cruiser long enough for someone to slip something through their defenses?

He realized he was trying to avoid the death and destruction in front of him with academics, and forced himself to continue watching.

One by one the screens turned to static, and Zheng waved at them. “This ship we’re chasing, it looks like it’s going into Covenant territory, and we know it’s Insurrectionist. Working with Covenant. For all we know, they led the Covenant to Charybdis.”

Keyes raised an eyebrow. That was quite an assumption for Zheng to make. If the
Kestrel had
led the Covenant to Charybdis IX, they’d gotten a lot of their fellow Insurrectionists killed here today, not just UNSC.

Innies might be ready to die for their cause, but like this? Keyes thought back to what Jeffries had said about Zheng when they’d first met. Zheng had lost his entire family to the Covenant. Zheng had even been impatient about Watanabe’s mission.

Now Zheng seemed to have been electrified into fiery, angry motion. “There will be a reckoning,” he shouted to the bridge crew. “We will throw ourselves against whoever was responsible for all this.”

And behind Zheng the remaining screens shut down, leaving the last few images of the burned world flickering across everyone’s eyes. Keyes spotted Badia Campbell staring at the screens. She looked queasy.

Zheng turned back to the empty screens, surveying them for a long moment, and then said softly, “That is all.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

COVENANT CRUISER
INFINITE SACRIFICE,
CHARYBDIS IX

The Prophet of Regret watched the surface of Charybdis IX melt from the firepower of his ships with grim satisfaction and heavily lidded eyes.

He shouldn’t have chosen to smoke in his private quarters before coming out, but before attacks like this Regret always found a good smoke calmed his nerves.

Energy rolled over the square buildings that the humans loved to cluster near one another on the ground. That made it all that much easier for the Covenant to destroy them.

Regret grew bored of watching the destruction of the planet, and turned the screen off.

“You are dismissed. Go. Weed out the Heretics. Leave no stone unturned!”

The Sangheili zealot blinked, and then bowed in that sinuously graceful Sangheili way. “Your will be done, Hierarch,” he said, and then left to pursue his mission.

Regret sat in the control room, listening to the buzz of the ship’s bridge crew.

The matter of the Kig-Yar smuggling weapons rankled the Prophet. Only the San’Shyuum, the leaders of the Covenant and its pinnacle species, could alter holy technology.

To let other races control technology was a dangerous path. The Covenant’s cohesion was grounded in their shared need for Forerunner technology. It was their unified religion, their political structure, and the hub of all commerce. To pull out one major tenet of the Covenant meant risking the entire thing crumbling. And Regret had not worked the last ten years of his life to watch the Covenant die. He’d helped it face one of its biggest threats, with hardly anyone any the wiser, right before his ascension to Hierarch.

Together, Prophets Regret, Truth, and Mercy had been aboard the massive Forerunner dreadnought that sat in the heart of
High Charity,
powering the entire moving world with just a fraction of its engines’ power.

The dreadnought had come to life as the Oracle at its heart had muttered blasphemous, world-changing accusations at the Prophets. All triggered by the Oracle encountering information about the humans. This machine had accused the Prophets of mistranslating Forerunner documents, and misunderstanding the Great Journey.

It claimed the very tenets of their religion were false.

And then the Oracle had attempted to launch the dreadnought.

They had disconnected it just in time.

In that moment, Regret felt, they had saved the entire Covenant. Without the Halos to search for, the Path to walk, and the worship of the Forerunners who left their mark all over the galaxy, the Covenant would fall apart.

And the Hierarchs would not let that happen.

So they turned that conflict into the annihilation and genocide of the humans. There was no room for negotiation or settlement. Humanity would be the first species they had encountered that they hadn’t tried to absorb into the Covenant, as it was the source of the Oracle’s confusion. Destroy them, and the Covenant would be able to continue Its holy search to follow the Forerunners safely.

Nothing could detract from that. Not even these counterfeit weapons.

Regret didn’t care that they’d been modified. The San’Shyuum happily pilfered Forerunner technology and modified it as they saw fit. What Regret cared about was that the weapons had been modified for humans, and that they’d been tampered with without the Prophet’s approval.

And Regret wouldn’t stand for that—not from the Oracle, or from whoever was making those weapons.

Regret turned the screen back on and looked down on the burning of Charybdis IX and watched.

This was for the good of the Covenant, he told himself.

Regret had only made one major mistake, he told himself. When the humans were first discovered Regret had assumed the world they’d been found on was their homeworld.

But after destroying it, they’d found out that the humans had scattered across many worlds.

It made destroying them all a lot more difficult, tiring, and time-consuming than Regret had anticipated.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

MADRIGAL, 23 LIBRAE

The humans called it 23 Librae. For the Covenant it was no more than a series of coordinates, another star in a long series of stars that Kig-Yar ships scouted out under their Ministry of Tranquility contracts. The Covenant hoped to find Forerunner artifacts in these various systems.

It was in one of these many human places that the Kig-Yar had found signs of a massive wealth of Forerunner artifacts, the Prophets said. They also said that instead of studying them and learning of the glorious truths contained in them about the journey all species could prepare themselves for, the stupid creatures had destroyed them.

Cosmic vandalism, mused Thel, as the two ships skipped out of Slipspace next to the one planet 23 Librae had in its habitable zone: the orbit not too close to the sun where it would boil its atmosphere off, or so far away that it would freeze.

“Start scanning the planet,” Thel ordered his bridge crew. “Engage all sensors. Make the sweep through. Last thing we need is for the Kig-Yar to lay claim, or the Jiralhanae to best the Sangheili in a task personally assigned them by a Hierarch!”

Madrigal.

Retribution’s Thunder
fell into orbit around the planet that had once been inhabited by the humans. Just off to their starboard side the Kig-Yar ship that the Hierarch had assigned to them,
A Psalm Every Day,
accompanied them.

Thel’s lower mandibles twitched. The Kig-Yar Shipmistress had come in too close. They could have collided thanks to her aggressive piloting.

But neither the Kig-Yar nor the Jiralhanae aboard would listen to Thel.

They hadn’t so far. He’d asked them to keep their distance, but they acted as if he were going to cheat them of any discovery, or any chance to get into battle.

Thel felt he would have been better off alone than saddled with
A Psalm Every Day
dogging his every move.

Then again, maybe that was the Hierarch’s way of keeping an eye on him. Thel had a general feeling, from what he knew of politics on
High Charity,
that the Prophet of Regret was very crafty.

Yes, this one probably didn’t just outright trust Thel, but wanted some verification.
A Psalm Every Day
was here to monitor him.

Fair enough.

“Nothing there,” Jora grumbled from his station as initial results from the systematic scans began to scroll through the holographic display. “It is as we left it, Shipmaster. There are no signs of activity. Our quarry could not have come from here.”

The entire surface of the human planet had been destroyed. Melted with plasma.

Zhar grunted. “Their structures have deep roots. Is it possible they survived deep underground?”

Thel shook his head. “I participated there.” Thel considered it briefly. “I personally saw to the destruction of their warrens in the capitol. I doubt it will become useful again in this Age. You may tell the Jiralhanae they may check the capitol for spoils… with my leave. Meanwhile, send a probe to finish the sweep, then let us move on.”

“To where?” Jora asked. He threw the words out almost like a challenge.

Thel eyed Jora. “This is a
system.
There is more than one place to hide. These are Kig-Yar we are dealing with, remember.”

Zhar frowned. “Asteroids?”

Thel smiled. Zhar, ever the analytical. Hardheaded, but a hard thinker. He knew that the Kig-Yar, after leaving their homeworld, had chosen to settle out among the asteroids of their home system. It was what had made them so hard for the Prophets to ferret out while battling them when the Kig-Yar had initially resisted joining the Covenant. “Yes. We will seed the asteroid belt with sensor buoys. We will leave no stone unturned.”

Zhar nodded. “It will be done.”

Thel leaned over. “Veer, would you do me the…” his voice dripped with sarcasm, “…honor of contacting
A Psalm Every Day
?”

Veer nodded, and the three-dimensional image of Pellius appeared in front of Thel. The Jiralhanae stood eye-to-eye with Thel. Behind the giant, furred chieftain sat the Kig-Yar Ship-mistress, Chur ’R-Mut, her lanky arms draped over her chair’s arms. He grinned his needle-sharp grin and the quills on his head twitched.

Pellius curled his lip slightly. “What do you want? We’re preparing to land and search the destroyed capital city.”

“You will not find anything there,” Thel said, and explained what he’d already told his bridge crew.

The Jiralhanae chieftan looked disappointed. For a second. “You still search, though?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” And then the image faded away.

“Jiralhanae,” spat Saal from his weapons console. “Uncivil and untrustworthy.”

“So they are,” Thel agreed. “The Prophets in their inscrutable wisdom have assigned them to us. They are here to stay. Zhar move us out.”

Without seeding the system with navigation buoys the ship’s own long-range scanners weren’t good enough to root out a hiding enemy. Unless something was moving around.

To catch sneaking ships, they’d need to lay some traps.

Thel settled into his chair, getting ready for the Slipspace hop they’d have to make to the asteroid belt, when Veer straightened in his chair.

“Shipmaster,” Veer hissed. “Our long range instruments are detecting multiple signals. They are not even trying to hide!”

Thel hid his excitement before them. “Where?”

“The gas giant.”

Not where he’d been expecting. But nonetheless, they had something!

“Take us there,” Thel ordered.

Retribution’s Thunder
poked a hole through space and time as the ship made the sudden leap from Madrigal to a trailing orbit just behind 23 Librae’s sole gas giant.

This was a great location Thel thought. Gas giants tended to have small rocky clusters both in front of their orbit and behind them—it was a natural place to hove his ship to and spy on whatever was going on near the gas giant.

Retribution’s Thunder’s
screens lit up with contact symbols. Alarms wailed as the crew scrambled for damage control and fire stations, and Thel realized he hadn’t been the only one with that particular idea.

“Situation?” Thel barked.

“They are everywhere!” a Sangheili shouted from the deck. “We are surrounded.”

Thel whipped around at the outburst to look at the unnamed and slightly unnerved Sangheili. “Get off my bridge!” Thel turned to Saal. “Take his console. What do we face—numbers and weapons strength?”

“My honor, Shipmaster,” Saal replied quickly.

Thel watched the shamed Sangheili slink off the bridge, disgusted that someone so incompetent could end up on
his
bridge.

“Human contacts,” Saal reported. “But they do not appear to be warships. And they are not moving to engage.”

“Tell Pellius to hold his fire and follow our lead.” Thel stood up and walked toward the screens, a long shipmaster’s cloak pulling off the chair with him. His ancestors had worn thick, doarmir-fur cloaks like this at sea to stay warm and dry on long voyages.

Thel had made his by hand during a long recuperation in the Vadam Keep after a training accident the family had tried to hide. Thel remembered the shame of seeing his own blood spilled on the sand of the training ring in the courtyard, due to his own mistake. He recalled the faintness and the tall snowcapped mountains that rose above Vadam Keep as he pitched to his side.

The family had a recently promoted shipmaster in their bloodline, and they had been loath to lose that particular honor. They’d secretly called for a doctor in the night and held Thel down by his limbs as he was operated on.

Thel kept the cloak as a reminder to himself that he could make grave mistakes when he let his guard down.

Mistakes like letting an inexperienced minor Sangheili aboard the bridge who panicked at the thought of being surrounded by human warships.

“Make sure that coward gets his rations revoked,” Thel said to Veer, letting his mind dwell on that particular incident now that he knew the ship was not in danger. “Maybe with a hunger in his belly he will find the hunger in his soul that he needs to be a real warrior.”

“A well thought-out solution, shipmaster,” Veer said, and leaned over to send out the command.

“Saal, report.” Thel gathered the cloak around. Be sharp, he reminded himself. Keep your mind open, and think sideways instead of walking forward into a pit-trap.

“I… I have to show you,” Saal said.

A complex set of scans appeared on the screens. Thel narrowed his eyes, then opened his mandibles in shock. “These are all asteroids,” he said. “They are all connected.”

There were hundreds of connected worldlets.

“This is unlike anything I have ever seen the humans do,” Thel said out loud. “There was nothing like it when the human world here was destroyed.”

“Perhaps they built it after that?” Zhar suggested. He looked intrigued by the scans. “You have to admit, that demonstrates some strong blood on their part, to remain here and build after the Prophets ordered them destroyed.”

“Strong indeed,” Thel agreed.

“But it does them little good ultimately,” Jora said. “Their blasphemy still cannot stand, and they must all still die.”

“What bothers me,” Thel grumbled, “is that they have gone this long unnoticed.”

“I think I know why,” Zhar said. He tapped his console, and before the bridge crew the long-distance image of a Kig-Yar freighter appeared.

It was docked against one of the many asteroids in the superstructure.

A human structure.

“What new treachery is this?” Thel hissed. The Kig-Yar, pirates and scum, worked under contracts given out by the ministries. They were hardly loyal fighters; they had little nobility. But they usually remained in line due to the dual methods of Unggoy Deacons aboard their ships, as well as the contracts and payments the Prophets offered them.

Thel could hardly believe what he saw.

“Brace for impact!” Saal warned, just as the
Retribution’s Thunder
shivered, throwing Thel from his feet against a pillar.

So the humans had found them and were attacking, Thel thought as he sprang for his shipmaster’s throne.

The second impact stabbed through the heart of Thel’s ship, a violent, metal-boiling line of light that just missed the bridge. But this wasn’t human. Humans employed kinetic or explosive ordnance, not plasma.

A Psalm Every Day was preparing a second volley. It was very obvious that the plasma salvo was from another Covenant vessel.

Their own escort.

“Traitors!” Thel seethed. “Evasive maneuvers!”

“I have a firing solution,” Jora yelled, turning to Thel. “Permission to fire, Shipmaster?”

“Fire at will! Saal tactical Slipspace, now!”

But getting past the shock of being fired upon by their own escort had cost them critical seconds. Even as
Retribution’s Thunder
fired back, another salvo of blue plasma ripped through the heart of Thel’s ship.

He could feel some of the engines firing, but they had been too slow. Sangheili double hearts could take far more acceleration than Jiralhanae or Kig-Yar, but the incredible random high-speed evasive maneuvers Thel had braced himself for didn’t come.

“Status,” Thel snapped.

He did not like the returning reports. They were venting precious air into space. The number of casualties was rising. Long range communications were down. Life support was failing. The last volley had taken their core engines offline, and their ability to generate plasma had gone with it. While most of their sensors were still operational, they could go nowhere and do nothing.

Pellius appeared in hologram before Thel. The Jiralhanae looked pleased with himself, his large teeth bared. “A mighty shipmaster Sangheili, helpless before me. I shall savor this moment for the rest of my life.”

Thel stared at Pellius and wondered where the Kig-Yar ship-mistress had gone. She was nowhere to be seen on the bridge. “It will be a short life.”

“Not as short as yours. Good-bye, Shipmaster.” Pellius faded away.

“He has released boarding craft and Spirits!” Saal reported.

“They will not have the
Retributions’ Thunder,”
Thel said, staring at the spot Pellius had faded from. “Alert the crew. Get in protective gear and draw the boarders in deep. Rig every section to explode. We will leave nothing to salvage!”

“Shipmaster! A Psalm Every Day has engaged their slipspace drive!” Zhar said. “They’re leaving!”

“Leaving?” Jora growled.