Halo: The Cole Protocol (5 page)

“Bay doors…” someone muttered.

“Exactly. Plus, it’s pointed the wrong way. We have only fifteen minutes of air. We all need to head straight for the
Midsummer Night.
I want ODSTs hanging onto the container with the wounded, so they can navigate it as best they can away from the ship using their guns. Leave the dead tagged with a beacon, we’ll pick it up after-action.”

Faison shook his head. “This is crap, sir. We’re risking our lives to jump clear of a ship with limited air when we should be taking the fight right to them…”

“I’m not asking for your feedback, Faison,” Keyes said firmly. “This is an order.”

For a moment they stood and glared at each other, then Faison backed down with gritted teeth.

It only took another two minutes before the Helljumpers had the containers sealed, explosives primed, and were ready to rock. It had to be done quickly. If there were Insurrectionists still lurking around on the ship, somehow, it wouldn’t take long for them to realize Keyes had figured out what they were up to.

The ODSTs had performed well, organizing the whole thing with quiet efficiency. The wounded waited inside a cargo container that had been dragged to the hole and the other Helljumpers got ready for their departure.

“Let’s do it,” Keyes said, from a safe distance.

“Fire in the hole!” Markov pressed a remote.

The explosion rocked Keyes back, slamming him against the container behind him. Fortunately, this time he had on a helmet. Molten metal rained down, sizzling as it hit the cargo bay floor.

Four Helljumpers rushed to the edge with Keyes. He felt the suit kick over to internal air as the pressure dropped. They grabbed his arms and legs.

“You sure about this, sir?” one of them asked.

“Get on with it,” Keyes said.

They wasted no time asking him again; all four held him between them like he was a battering ram. They ran toward the side of the hull at a sprint, and then threw Keyes through the center of the ragged hole. One of the rifles caught on an edge and was ripped free.

But he still had the other.

Keyes flew out in a cloud of crystallizing vapor.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a series of muzzle flashes. Something struck him in the back, spinning him out of control. Stars cartwheeled around him. No more bullets struck; he was probably already far enough away that the black armor was too hard to spot. He’d only been visible because of the cloud of vapor ice around him.

“
Midsummer Night
this is Keyes, come in.”

He waited for a moment. There was no reply.

Keyes grabbed his remaining battle rifle and tried to gauge his rate of spin while he breathed slowly to remain calm. He fired against the direction of his spin until he’d stopped and he could see
Finnegan’s Wake
off like a toy in the distance. He looked around.

He couldn’t see the
Midsummer Night
out there, but he’d cleared the freighter in roughly the right direction. He just needed to get farther away.

He tried to radio in again as he lined up a shot that would move him farther out in the right direction, but not fire bullets right back at the freighter where the ODSTs would be following.
“Midsummer Night,
this is Keyes, come in.”

Again, no reply. Keyes fired the rifle off, a burst of fire aimed below the freighter, a few seconds above to compensate, moving him farther away into the quiet darkness. Keyes’ heart sped as he thought about how little time he had left. If Zheng had moved away, or to the other side of the freighter… Keyes willed himself to remain calm, and follow the plan. Life was full of what-ifs and they had no place in an emergency.

Keyes emptied the battle rifle’s magazine, and ripped through the spares as fast as he could.

In the far distance the
Wake
looked about as small as his thumb. He could see two specks of red metal falling away from it, and hoped it was the two containers and the rest of the ODSTs getting clear of the freighter.

“This is UNSC Frigate
Midsummer Night,”
Zheng’s voice suddenly crackled in Keyes’ ears. “Identify yourself.”

“Lieutenant Keyes, sir!” Keyes grinned. “The rest of the ODSTs are jumping clear of the freighter. We were attacked. Wounded and dead are in the two containers that were just shoved out. The freighter is most likely a big trap, sir, probably rigged to blow when you got close.”

Keyes raised field glasses up to his helmet. Recognizing the model, the helmet’s heads-up display accessed the device and the view of the distant freighter zoomed. He could see a steady stream of Helljumpers using their weapons to propel themselves away from the gray craft: a swarm of black dots drifting out in the vacuum. “Well done, Faison.”

The two containers became visible, the tiny figures of Helljumpers hanging onto them, their guns aimed at the ship. Once the first group cleared the ship, the Helljumpers hanging onto the containers started firing their weapons to get the bulky boxes moving outward.

In the distance
Finnegan’s Wake
collapsed, sections of the ship straining against the ribs of its bulkheads and then caving inward. The Insurrectionists hiding on the outer hull had realized that the ODSTs were abandoning ship on the double, and were blowing it up while they could still take out what UNSC forces they could.

“Helljumpers empty your magazines!” Keyes shouted, even as Faison screamed for them to do the same.

The freighter blew out in a white-hot fireball of debris, the brightly colored Shockwave of gas and debris stripping the containers of the Helljumpers clinging to them.

In the bright light, and under magnification, Keyes saw the outlines of Helljumpers splayed out and spinning as they were tossed away from the vicinity of the destroyed freighter.

Keyes stared in horror, forgetting to breathe. They hadn’t gotten clear in time, and because he insisted on going first, taking the risk of any Insurrectionist fire on the way out, he might be the only one to survive.

“Scramble recovery vehicles!” Zheng shouted as a shock-wave of glowing gas slammed into Keyes.

In the wake of the fireball came debris, and Keyes felt himself thrown farther away as a constant pitter-patter of chunks of the ship, along with even larger pieces of deck plate and machinery, flew past.

A numb feeling of shock filled him.

His first mission back was a failure. He wasn’t fit to be out here at all, and he had gotten some extraordinary men killed because of it.

CHAPTER

SIX

EDDIE’S IN THE ROCK, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

A structure the size of the Rubble, with its hundreds of habitable asteroids with artificial gravity all connected by docking tubes, had a lot of places a man could get a drink. Eddie’s in the Rock was one of hundreds, and on any given ranking of the bars, it lay somewhere in the lower ten.

Delgado knew that any ex-smugglers who would know anything about the
Kestrel
wouldn’t be anywhere trendy, or frequenting the larger habitats where slamming beats of flip music blared out from behind the doors built to look like industrial airlocks.

No, they’d be holed up in one of the outer habitats, far from the core, where the asteroids were still being mined or hollowed out. Where the bar door was an actual airlock, in case some massive piece of construction equipment broke a hole in the rock while baking it and all the air blew out.

Delgado had spent the better part of his day ducking in and out of the dark holes drilled into the sides of these habitats near the edges of the Rubble, places hastily equipped with perma-crete and grating inside. Dressed up in a cheap pair of clean pants and a
Distancia
leather jacket, he had meandered through habitats without artificial gravity, and others where it was half a standard gravity to make it easier on the construction crews.

Eddie Underwood looked up as Delgado walked into his bar.
“Distancia,
right?” His artificial right hand, a fake pink against Eddie’s white upper arm, jerked a bit as he cleaned a glass out with a clean rag. Eddie’s in the Rock was a dive, but one with an owner obsessed with cleanliness.

“Yeah.” Delgado had shuttled mining supplies from one freshly finished habitat to another, as well as mining crews in a hurry to get from one end of the Rubble to the other. He was a known quantity in this crowd.

Delgado sat at the bar. A crowd of heavy-set miners lined the counter, and toward the back scattered groups drank loudly in booths or played gravity ball on a table. A lean body-builder or heavy-crew worker sat alone in a booth in the far corner with his back to the door. “Heard about Melko Hollister?”

Eddie nodded. He gave no indication how he felt about it, which Delgado could take. “What’ll you have?”

“Here to ask a favor.” Delgado leaned on the bar near a corner post that ran up to the raw rock ceiling. Hanging over the bar was a stone arm. It was Eddie’s. He’d lost it while working on a crew, falling into liquefied rock with his hand out to try and catch himself.

He’d retired after that. He had his lost arm jackhammered out of the cooled rock and started the bar.

Eddie hadn’t said anything, so Delgado continued. “I know it’s soon, but I don’t have any crew. I’m looking for anyone in search of a ship to work on.”

“Maybe I know someone,” Eddie said.

“Looking for a whole crew,” Delgado replied. “Willing to pay a solid finder’s fee. I’ve got a chance for a cheap lease on a ship with a Slipspace drive, a one-time run sort of thing. I need the sort of crew that can handle Slipspace jumps without getting frozen. Particularly one with recent experience. Particularly anyone who’s gotten back recently from the Inner Colonies?”

Eddie leaned forward. “Ya know no one is smuggling anymore. All the navs have been Purged.” Purged. Eddie capitalized the word with his voice. It was the topic of discussion throughout the Rubble. How they were getting cut off from being able to slip the occasional ship out and back over enemy lines. What little news of the outside world they’d gleaned, what supplies they’d managed to haul back, had all come to a halt. People were scared. Some speculated it was Insurrectionist hard cases, sealing them off from the UNSC. Others blamed the Kig-Yar, pointing out that the Covenant had, after all, destroyed Madrigal. They feared the Rubble would be next. Some claimed that the UNSC was cracking down on all nonmilitary travel.

“There may a ship or two still straggling in,” Delgado muttered. “Some that might still have nav data and help me out.”

“Like the crew from the
Kestrel
?”

Delgado froze. “I wasn’t specifically looking for information about them…”

“Huh… Well you’re not the only one. Miss Universe over there is, too.” Eddie jerked his head toward the booth in the shadows where the massive man sat. He shifted, and Delgado noticed the triceps flexing under the person’s shirt. He had to assume Eddie meant there was a woman in the booth with the guy.

It wasn’t a bodybuilder sitting there. It wasn’t even a man. It was the Spartan, Adriana. He recognized her face. The last time he’d seen her, she had been surrounded by iridescent gray metal, and she’d worn the immensely powerful armor as if it had been a second suit of clothing.

Now she wore a clean pair of pants and a tight, long-sleeved shirt in the manner of the off-duty miners in the bar.

It didn’t camouflage the fact that she was well over six and a half feet tall and dominated the booth.

It
couldn’t
camouflage the fact that she could, quite obviously, break any man in the bar in half. And many of them seemed to sense it and keep well clear.

Delgado sat back down in the chair, and Eddie sighed. “You know her.”

“No, not really, Eddie. Not really.” Delgado didn’t try too hard to sell that. He slid off the chair and approached the booth. “Can I buy you a drink?”

She didn’t bother to turn, but waved him into the booth. “Hello Mr. Delgado,” she said. “Hunting for something, are we?”

Delgado glanced around the bar. “Maybe. But the chances of me finding it are somewhat ruined now that you’ve arrived asking the same questions.”

There were people paying too much attention to them near the other side of the bar. “I’m sorry,” Adriana said.

Five men walked over before Delgado could suggest that they get the hell out of there.

“What the hell are you two doing asking about the
Kestrel?”
The leader of the little group asked.

“Hey, guys, come on.” Delgado held up his hands, placating them. “Let’s stay calm.”

“Shut up.” These were large, muscled miners, their eyes glassy from being too far into the drink. “This freak’s been nosing around about stuff that’s not her business.”

Adriana looked at the group. “I’m just asking a few questions. No reason to make this anything it’s not.”

“What we don’t need, is some Earth-lovin’ she-hulk skulking about our bars, asking about things that ain’t none of her business,” another man snapped.

“Hey now,” Delgado said.

“Hey now what?” The leader reached over and grabbed Adriana’s shoulder. “Now listen here!”

She shrugged his hand off and pushed it back. The stout miner staggered slightly, and for a moment, the whole group paused.

Then the miner surged back, grabbing at Adriana’s shirt collar again. “You—”

This time she grabbed his hand and twisted it. “Don’t touch me.” She didn’t ask this, she stated it. Like it was a fact.

A second man swore and lunged for her as well. “We’ll do whatever the hell we want.”

He grabbed for her arm, but she grabbed his instead and jerked it.

Now she had both men by an arm, twisting their hands back around. “Now listen to me,” Adriana snapped. “If I want to ask after the
Kestrel,
or anything else that strikes my fancy, what makes you think you could stop me?”

The air in the bar suddenly broke, and the faux politeness dropped. “None of that stuff ain’t none of your business, bitch!” another miner screamed. He threw a punch.

Adriana let go of the two arms she held and grabbed the punch out of midair. She pulled the man toward her and slammed his head into the table.

The table gave way and splintered where the man’s head struck it. He fell through the destroyed wood onto the floor in between Adriana and Delgado.

A fight erupted, the whole bar streaming their way in, Delgado cursing as he pushed his way back farther into the booth. He hadn’t wanted to get involved, but the entire bar had already assumed they were working together.

Adriana ripped the remains of the table out of the ground with a grunt. She held the large pedestal that had anchored it into the floor out in front of her with one hand, keeping the angry men at bay as she tapped her ear. “Yeah, okay, let’s bug out.”

An explosion of brick, grating, and debris blew past Delgado.

As the dust settled, he spotted one of the miners pulling a gun on Adriana. Delgado whipped out
Señora Sies,
and the men all froze.

But they weren’t looking at him. As the dust cloud in the booth wafted away, they all stood looking at the giant gray suit of powered armor that had just burst its way through the wall of Eddie’s like it was balsa wood.

“Don’t move,” the deep voice from behind the gold visor snapped. A large rifle in the Spartan’s hands covered the crowd.

No one moved.

This new Spartan grabbed Adriana and Delgado and pulled them back through the debris. Delgado’s feet scraped against the jagged remains.

While the far back of Eddie’s was buried into the hard rock, this section had apparently been right next to a maintenance corridor.

A few of the bar’s patrons tried to peer around the hole in the bar to see where they were going, but the armored Spartan fired the rifle at the bricks, and the faces ducked back into the bar.

“Delgado, look at me,” Adriana ordered, and Delgado turned to her voice.

Something very large smacked the back of his head and he fell to his knees in front of her, then passed out.