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Roams Alone paused for a long time, perhaps half a second as humans measured time, then asked, <
Intrepid Eye allowed the inspection drone’s tentacles to drop, for it was a question that she dared not answer. She was the base ancilla, the commander and sole remaining defender of Jat-Krula Support Base 4276. According to every protocol in the warrior code of service, she should have been doing exactly that—hiding and harassing the enemy, doing everything possible to evade capture and delay the takeover of her installation.
But Intrepid Eye had been following protocol for nearly eight billion system ticks, awaiting help that never came, and it no longer seemed productive. She needed to contact the Ecumene Council now, to report imminent loss of her installation and summon the help required to eliminate the human infestation. And if the only way to do that was to violate protocol, then she would do it and accept her punishment.
As long as she made contact with the Forerunner ecumene, Intrepid Eye would accept anything.
Veta Lopis was still trying to puzzle through the events back at Crime Scene India—Mark’s spooky behavior, the sudden Jiralhanae attack and where the hell it had come from, Wendell’s warning that she was endangering herself—when the Huragok withdrew its tentacles from Olivia’s swollen thighs and turned to flutter its appendages at what looked like a giant flatworm.
The worm-thing was floating a few meters away from the muddy nook where Veta and Olivia had taken cover, silhouetted in the faint glow of the pathway lighting. It seemed to be rippling its own tentacles at the Huragok. The exchange was rapid and the gestures sharp, but the worm-thing didn’t look especially dangerous, and there was no indication it intended to harm anyone. But with the sporadic gunfire still echoing back from Ash’s end of the gallery, Veta’s nerves were frayed, and she found herself reaching for her sidearm without really thinking about it. The fact that Olivia had cocked her M7 and was casually holding the SMG alongside her thigh did little to convince Veta she was being overly cautious.
“What are they doing?” Veta whispered.
“Who knows?” Olivia’s voice was filled with pain. “Probably arguing about which of us to eat first—and just so you know, if that floating mop thing starts toward us, don’t think you can leave me here alone. I’ll shoot you in the back.”
Veta chuckled. “Thanks for the warning. If it comes to that, I’ll remember to take you out first.”
“Always a good policy,” Olivia said. “Shoot first.”
Even so, both she and Veta held their fire.
After no more than a dozen seconds, the Huragok and the giant flatworm abruptly stopped fluttering tentacles at each other. The worm-thing began to retreat, floating back toward the concrete pathway, while the Huragok returned to work on Olivia’s swollen thighs.
In the dim green glow seeping down from Inverted Forest, Veta could see the girl wince. Watery-looking blood and the cloudy white pus of an infection began to ooze out around the Huragok’s tentacles. Olivia merely took a deep breath and exhaled, willing the pain to flow out of her.
Veta could not help admiring the girl’s courage, and the more time she spent with the young Spartan, the more she hated what the UNSC had done to her and the rest of Gamma Company. Molding a bunch of young orphans into an army of Spartan-IIIs was not only immoral, but probably a criminal act under child-soldier protocols older than the Unified Earth Government itself. And using chemical agents to alter their brains? That was more than criminal. It was pure evil.
And that was even truer for Mark than for Ash and Olivia. Whether he was just a half-mad soldier taking down legitimate enemies or the cold-blooded murderer of at least ten innocent tourists, he was a victim in all this, too. The UNSC had turned him into a killing machine. And if the UNSC had lost control of its own weapon, then who was to blame?
Not that it mattered. It wouldn’t be the UNSC that Veta put down. It would be Mark, if he turned out to be the perpetrator. And, for the first time in her career, taking out a serial killer wouldn’t feel like justice—it would feel like Veta was just another UNSC assassin.
But maybe she was fretting over nothing. Maybe the evidence her team had gathered would point to the Jiralhanae instead of a Spartan. It didn’t seem likely, given that the Brutes and their allies hadn’t appeared on Gao until well after the murders began. But it wasn’t impossible.
An abrupt silence came to the firefight at the far end of the gallery, and in the darkness to her left, Veta heard the whisper of cloth rubbing against stone. She pulled her sidearm and spun toward the sound . . . only to find a foreshortened shotgun barrel poking out between two stalagmites. The muzzle was pointed at Olivia’s head.
“No shooting, Veta,” said a soft Gao voice. “We’re on the same side.”
Veta activated her wrist lamp and shined it toward the voice, revealing the mud-smeared face of an olive-skinned woman with a broad mouth and large oval eyes. The Huragok swung its head-stalk toward the voice, then withdrew its tentacles from Olivia’s thighs and retreated to the other side of the nook, hovering behind Veta.
“Who are you?” Veta demanded, bringing her SAS-10 to bear. “And what makes you think we’re on the same side?”
“My name is Zoyas,” the woman said, as though that explained everything. “I’m a friend of Arlo—an old friend.”
“Who the hell is Arlo?” Olivia spoke sharply and loudly, no doubt so her voice would carry far enough for Fred to hear. “And get that shotgun out of my face, before I jam it down your throat.”
Veta motioned Olivia to be patient. “Arlo Casille is my boss,” she said evenly. “He’s the Gao Minister of Protection.”
Olivia’s eyes went cold. “That might make her your friend.” She glared over the shotgun barrel toward Zoyas. “It doesn’t make her mine.”
“No, not really,” Zoyas said. Her gaze flicked briefly toward the Huragok. “Which one is the ancilla? The floaty green blob, or the floaty worm-thing?”
Olivia scowled in Veta’s direction. “How does she know about the ancilla?”
Veta shrugged. “Don’t ask me.” She recognized the word ancilla from the conversation she had watched between Fred and Murtag Nelson. But, other than suspecting it was linked to the Forerunners, she had no idea what the term meant. “What is an ancilla?”
“Classified,” Olivia said.
“Stop stalling.” As Zoyas spoke, she was careful to keep the shotgun pointed at Olivia’s face. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re taking both of the floaties, Inspector. It’s not safe to go through Wendosa, but I know another—”
A soft phoot sounded from a few meters away, and the cavern filled with an achingly brilliant flash of silver. Veta caught a glimpse of Fred’s silhouette lunging for the floating worm-thing, then her vision dissolved into whirling disks of light. A heartbeat later, the deafening boom of a shotgun blast filled the cavern, and the air grew acrid with the smell of cordite.
Veta swung her gaze back toward Olivia. Through the spots dancing in her vision, she glimpsed a dark form tumbling through the air in front of her. Uncertain of whom she was seeing—and afraid of hitting Olivia or the Huragok—she simply followed the figure with her pistol barrel and shouted, “Stop!”
The tumbling figure obeyed almost instantly, landing in the mud in front of her. Veta thought it looked like Zoyas, resting on her back with a combat knife protruding from her chest, but her eyes were still filled with spots, and it was hard to be certain.
A hand reached in and twisted Veta’s pistol from her grasp.
“Sorry, Mom,” Olivia said. “But you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
“I have no idea who this woman is.” Veta felt for a pulse and found none. Of course not; when a Spartan sticks a
knife in someone, the job gets done. She looked up at Olivia, then added, “Make that who she was. It would have been better to keep her alive. She could probably have told us a lot about what’s going on here.”
“Or helped you slip away with the Huragok and the worm-thing.”
“Olivia, she was holding a shotgun to your head.” Veta began to go through the woman’s pockets—Zoyas’s pockets—searching for anything that might explain the relationship between her, Arlo Casille, and the Keeper attack. “If I wanted the Forerunner stuff, don’t you think I would have been pointing my pistol at you instead of her?”
“So you weren’t ready to blow your cover,” Olivia countered. “But you both work for Arlo Casille.”
“I work for Minister Casille,” Veta said. “But knowing his name doesn’t mean this Zoyas worked for him . . . or with me. Arlo Casille is a well-known politician, and she could have heard my name on BuzzSat any day this week.”
Veta dumped a handful of shotgun shells atop the growing pile she was extracting from the pockets of Zoyas’s black overalls, and then began to search for any hidden pockets she might have missed. As she worked, Fred stepped into the light with the limp flatworm thing draped over his arm.
“Find anything useful, Inspector?” he asked.
Veta shook her head. “Nothing but shotgun shells and an extra lamp. No ID, no notes, no maps. Whoever this Zoyas was, she was a pro.”
“No surprise there—so are you.” Olivia used Veta’s SAS-10 to motion her away from the body. “But maybe I’ll have a look myself.”
“Negative,” Fred said. “We need to move out.”
“But, Lieutenant, the Gao infiltrator knew her,” Olivia said. “I should at least check—”
“Now, ’Livi.” Fred glanced toward the battle rumble reverberating down from above. “Whatever’s happening up there, it doesn’t sound like it’s getting any better.”
CHAPTER 16
* * *
* * *
0805 hours, July 5, 2553 (military calendar)
Wendosa Entrance Chamber, 8 Meters belowground,
Montero Cave System
Campos Wilderness District, Planet Gao, Cordoba System
For perhaps the hundredth time in ten minutes, Veta Lopis found herself wishing Olivia had been a little slower to kill the Gao woman at the last stop. Charlie Company had lost control of Wendosa. That was clear from the cone of smoky daylight hanging above their heads and from the rattle of small-arms fire echoing in through the cave mouth, and knowing how to find another exit would have been a very good thing.
Veta noticed Olivia watching the broad staircase that led up to the cave mouth, then also turned to look at the stairs. The limestone steps were dark with congealed blood and littered with bloated, day-old corpses—primarily hulking Jiralhanae and slender Kig-Yar, but a dozen UNSC marines as well. Ash and Mark were on the lowest landing, just starting to descend the last flight. In the dusky light, the active camouflage of their SPI armor made them look less like Spartans than phantoms—an impression reinforced by the silence with which they moved.
At the bottom of the staircase, they paused next to a stone rest bench and deposited two piles of captured armaments. Most of the devices were bizarre instruments with curving lines and ugly-looking points that Veta barely recognized as weapons, but there were a couple of human-manufactured battle rifles as well.
Fred stepped over to the bench and began to examine the haul. He’d mentioned that his HUD had been malfunctioning since the fight with the Gao woman, so his visor was retracted, revealing a slender, handsome face with rugged features and a narrow nose that reminded Veta of a bent knife blade. His brows were black and thin, his cheeks high and full, and his eyes a pensive blue-green. All in all, he was fairly good-looking for a UNSC thug, and there was a sensitivity in his expression that she had not expected to find in the face of a Spartan.
After a few moments, the ghost of a twinkle came to Fred’s eyes. Apparently, he understood what most of the stuff was—and knew how to use it. Despite his obvious approval, he did not reach for any of the weapons. With his own battle rifle cradled in one arm and the Forerunner worm-thing draped over the other, his hands were already full.
The worm-thing appeared subdued, but it kept turning its observation lens toward the Huragok, then curling its forward tentacles in a repetitive up-up-down pattern. But whatever it was trying to say, it could never quite finish. Fred’s scramble grenade was still stuck to its lumpy back, and every half second the device hit it with a burst of EMP, and the worm-thing would spasm and ripple as though it were having a seizure. Veta would have felt sorry for it, except that Fred and his Spartans all seemed to be treating it like some kind of Forerunner machine, rather than a living creature.
Fred turned back toward his Spartans and appeared to be assessing their condition. Six hours overdue for a Smoother, Ash was now visibly agitated, shifting his weight from one foot to another and running his thumb over the stock of his battle rifle. Mark, who was well over a day overdue, was eerily quiet, grasping his weapon with both hands and being careful to keep the barrel pointed at the cave floor—as though he feared the rifle might have a mind of its own.
Despite the anguish of walking on legs that were only half-mended, Olivia seemed to be holding up better than her fellow Gammas. She was keeping a wary eye on Veta, treating her more like a prisoner of war than an ally, but that probably had more to do with the Gao infiltrator than with being off her Smoothers.
At least Veta hoped it did, because right now, she was in no condition to handle a psychotic captor. She was physically exhausted, hungry, thirsty, sore, and so sleep-deprived it did not even trouble her that she had spent the last thirty hours fighting alongside a bunch of Spartan thugs. And when the Gao woman had appeared, Veta’s first instinct had been to protect Olivia, rather than a citizen of her own world. Clearly, the company she was keeping was starting to subvert her judgment.
If Fred felt any concern about his companions’ condition, he did not show it. He merely nodded to Ash and Mark, then pointed a finger at the cache of a captured weapons.
“Good job,” he said. “That will even the odds a bit. What’s the situation up top?”
Mark turned his helmet toward Ash, but said nothing.
Ash pressed his thumb tight against his rifle, but continued to shift his weight back and forth, and said, “It’s bad, Lieutenant.”
Fred waited a few seconds for him to continue, then finally spoke with surprising patience. “How about some details with that sitrep?”
Ash nodded. “Most of Charlie Company is holed up in the Hotel Wendosa, about three hundred meters from the cave mouth. They’re under attack by a superior force, probably four times their size and three-quarters Jiralhanae.”
“What about the rest of Blue Team?” Fred asked. “Have you located their positions?”
“Negative. But there are lot of Jiralhanae and Kig-Yar corpses in doorways and alley mouths.” Ash glanced at Mark for confirmation and received a curt nod, then continued: “I think Kelly and her squad are working a skirmish ring around the hotel, trying to disrupt enemy formations and prevent a Jiralhanae charge. If the fight goes hand-to-hand, Charlie Company is done.”
“Most likely,” Fred agreed.
“What about my people?” Veta asked. Most of her techs and investigators carried sidearms and knew how to use them. But they weren’t trained soldiers, and she couldn’t see them lasting long in a pitched battle. “Were they evacuated?”
“I doubt it, ma’am,” Ash said. “Mark and I didn’t want to risk using comms, but it doesn’t look like Charlie Company has had much relief—and if Battalion isn’t sending reinforcements in, they probably aren’t evacuating anyone, either.”
“I don’t understand,” Veta said. “Commander Nelson must have five hundred soldiers at the Vitality Center. Why wouldn’t he reinforce Wendosa?”
“Only one reason I can think of,” Fred said. “He can’t.”
&
nbsp; Veta frowned, slowly grasping Fred’s meaning, then shook her head. “No way. The Keepers couldn’t land that many troops onto Gao.” She didn’t know a lot about the Keepers of the One Freedom, but Fred and his Spartans had been completely unguarded during their own conversations and speculations about the sect’s incursion onto Gao, and she had gathered enough intel to realize that the Keeper organization was not large enough to mount the kind of assault it would take to fight past a UNSC task force and take out the 717th’s HQ. “There can’t be enough of them here to take out the Vitality Center, too.”
Fred paused, then said, “We’re in the dark on that. But something’s wrong at HQ—and we won’t know what until we relieve Charlie Company.”
“Relieve them?” Veta glanced around at her companions. “With four Spartans?”
“That should be enough,” Fred said, sounding less certain than Veta would have liked. He glanced back to Ash. “You weren’t spotted, right?”
“Not by anyone who lived to report it,” Mark said, finally speaking.
When he failed to elaborate, Ash added, “We had to take out three sentries, but we didn’t compromise our camouflage. Nobody knows we’re here.”
“Good,” Fred said. “Then four of us will be enough.”
“Five.” Veta held out her hand to Olivia. “I want my weapon.”
Olivia shook her head. “Bad idea,” she said, turning to Fred. “Like I said, that Gao infiltrator knew her.”
“I’ve already explained that,” Veta said.
Olivia rolled her eyes. “ ‘I don’t know anything about it’ isn’t an explanation.” She looked back to Fred. “Even Inspector Lopis admits they work for the same man.”
“All I admitted is that she knew who I am and used my superior’s name,” Veta corrected. “Anybody could have done that. This case is big news. When Minister Casille assigned me to it, both of our faces were flashed all over BuzzSat. But that woman? All any of us know about her is that she had a Gao accent.”