Shadows of Reach: A Master Chief Story Read online

  Kelly moved to his side and began to take some of the beam’s weight. Ever so slowly, ever so carefully, they began to lower it, dropping into a squat that made John’s knees shake and his Mjolnir’s exoskeleton creak. But the rumble overhead began to subside, then faded to a murmur, and by the time they had fully dropped to their knees, it had fallen eerily silent.

  John stayed there for a moment, trembling and breathing hard as his muscles unbunched themselves, and wondered how long even a bio-augmented body could continue to take this kind of damage before it stopped being able to recover. He wasn’t there yet, but he was beginning to realize that, even for Spartan-IIs, there were limits.

  Finally, his breath returned, and he nodded to Kelly.

  They advanced up the crawlway on their hands and knees. As they passed the collapsed desk, John glanced over to find an eye with no pupil or lashes, watching them again. He looked back for a moment, then instinctively raised a hand and waved.

  The eye closed, then vanished.

  Kelly stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Everything okay back there?”

  “I’m okay. Keep moving, Spartan.” John motioned Kelly forward, toward the cryobins and lockbox. “Take us home.”

  * * *

  At least Fred still had his night-vision system. Sort of. All of those shock rifle hits had knocked out half the integrated systems in his helmet and put a steady hiss in his ears that was either comm feedback or organic tinnitus—he had no idea which. And now it seemed to be playing havoc with the light-gathering mode of his NVS.

  A crescent of gold-sparkling shadow had appeared at the center-top of his faceplate, and it seemed to be sliding slowly downward, spreading out toward the edges as it descended. He still had his infrared mode, a curtain of deep, cool blue beneath the gold shadow, shading a little closer to ice-cold black with every meter he crept forward, so he was determined to give this patrol the full fifteen minutes the Master Chief had authorized.

  Which gave him just two more minutes to lay eyes on the enemy. Even if he couldn’t capture one, he needed to develop at least some idea of what they were up to on Reach. Because whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

  And John was right. The ONI element aboard the Infinity was going to have a thousand questions about what he’d seen. It might be nice to be able to reply with something more than Nothing really, ma’am.

  After ten seconds of sliding his left foot forward, ever-so-carefully nudging aside the pebbles and rocks his sabaton met on the way, Fred finally touched the sound-dampening sole to hard ground. He paused to listen, checking to make certain nothing was creeping up on him, because that was the only way to survive a deep patrol in hostile territory.

  By moving carefully and silently.

  But that gold shadow was still troubling him. He tipped his head back to make sure that it moved when his faceplate did.

  It didn’t. Instead, he found his NVS flooding with gathered light, and realized that there no longer was a top to the tunnel.

  It had become a trench, cut where the mud and debris that had filled the access shaft—and by default buried the galleries of the Forerunner installation—finally sloped down to the floor.

  What Fred was seeing was daylight reflecting onto the ceiling of a chamber so immense it felt like he had walked outside.

  Then a familiar voice spoke from behind him.

  “Hello, Fred.”

  He spun around, automatically bringing his MA40 up into firing position, and found a slender female head peering down over the rim of the trench. Even the dim light reflecting off the chamber ceiling was enough for his NVS to reveal the woman’s face in detail. She had dark brows and dark eyes, a small nose set between high cheeks, and a thin-lipped mouth over a firm jaw, and he recognized her instantly—even with her head shaved on the sides and black hair left long on top.

  “Lopis…?”

  He hadn’t seen Veta Lopis for more than two years—nobody had, and her entire team was listed as MIA, presumed dead. But Fred had worked with Lopis and her Spartan Ferret team before that, usually on missions involving the Keepers of the One Freedom. So he probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see her here. But still—

  “W-what are you doing here?”

  Lopis smiled down at him. “Brought you a present.”

  Her left hand came into view, and she dropped what looked like a small message capsule. When he caught it, she brought her right hand into view. It was holding an M7 submachine gun.

  “You need to go—now! Get out of here!”

  “Huh?”

  She sprayed a burst of rounds into the wall, so close above Fred’s head that it wasn’t entirely clear she’d missed on purpose.

  “Go, Demon!” She jumped up, yelling at the top of her lungs, and fired another salvo at his feet. “BEGONE!”

  Fred started running back the way he came. Whatever situation he’d just stumbled into, he wasn’t going to do Lopis any good by sticking around and asking a bunch of dumb questions. Right?

  He checked the object in his hand and saw that he wasn’t imagining things. It really was a message capsule.

  He had no idea what the hell had just happened, but he also wasn’t worried anymore about what he was going to tell ONI.

  * * *

  A wise dokab never showed impatience. So when the first muffled sputter of gunfire sounded behind him, deep inside the Forerunners’ sacred transport installation, Castor was not pacing or gnashing his tusks, nor showing any other sign of how eager he was for the portal to open. He and his Keepers would be on their way to the Ark soon enough, and he had waited so long to begin the Great Journey already that he well knew how to hide his eagerness.

  When those first gunshots came, he was standing outside the transport installation on a landing terrace that his Keepers had cleared of a small landslide, staring out over an immense cloistered vale surrounded by nine high peaks. The Missing Mountain—whose slopes rose behind him nearly to the talus basin where the Keepers had begun their excavations—would have been the tenth. But so deep was the vale that it hardly mattered. Even here, nearly three thousand meters below the collar of the shaft that the Keepers had worked so hard to find, the floor of the vale was lost in the fog of great distance.

  When a second burst of gunfire resounded, Escharum and many of the others waiting with Castor grew wary and stared back into the holy transport installation. But Castor had confidence in the Faithful who had volunteered to watch the tunnel. The four humans had been sent to him by the Oracle, and if it grew necessary to collapse the tunnel to keep the demon Spartans from defiling such a sacred site, they would do it in a breath.

  Besides, it was clear to him that the portal was finally preparing to open. He had been waiting for nearly three human hours, since his Keepers finally tunneled into a large square enclosure with high walls and no ceiling.

  The floor had been studded with dimly lit obelisk structures that reminded him of grave markers, arranged in an enigmatic pattern whose purpose was known only to the ancient Forerunners, and as they explored, they had discovered a number of systems rooms, walkways, and platforms serving functions as mysterious as that of the obelisks.

  Finally, they had reached an activation pylon whose role Castor had recognized at once, and he had known immediately that they were in a sacred transport installation serving the portal for which they had been searching so long. After taking a few minutes to familiarize himself with the location, he had commanded one of his human followers to place a hand inside the activation pylon.

  Almost immediately, a bright blue holographic image had ignited just above the pylon, and through the adjacent wall of hard light windows, he had watched a thousand-meter focusing tower rise from the depths of the cloistered vale outside the enclosure. Ten hidden generator stations—one near the base of each of the surrounding mountains—had begun to feed it divine rays, and a column of sacred radiance had shot out of the tower top, a thousand meters into the sky, and coalesced into a crack
ling vortex of portal-assembling energy.

  And there it had hung ever since, a roiling maelstrom of lightning filled with wind and dust and rain and occasionally even fire-hail. Escharum had mockingly suggested that Castor had offended his gods by having a human servant engage the activation pylon instead of doing it himself. Castor had allowed him to think what he would. The old daskalo understood nothing of the Faith. Humans had a special affinity to holy technology, and several times Castor had seen one activate a Forerunner artifact that his Kig-Yar scavengers and Sangheili priests had proclaimed worthless.

  Now the maelstrom was visibly growing, expanding across the sky into a vortex large enough to hold several cruisers lined up bow-to-stern.

  A third burst of gunfire sounded, quickly joined by three more. Castor was not concerned. If he heard the thump of the blamex going off, then perhaps he would send someone. But the four Faithful who had volunteered to watch the tunnel? They were among his most courageous and reliable Keepers, even if they were only humans.

  Escharum, however, placed no such conviction in humans. The war chief barked an order, and Castor saw him wave half of his personal guard back into the installation to investigate.

  Predictable… but a more reserved reaction than Castor had hoped for. Perhaps Escharum was as wary of the Keepers as he was of the demon Spartans.

  Or perhaps Castor was flattering himself.

  “His concern amuses you, Dokab?” asked ‘Gadogai. The Sangheili had been sticking especially close to Castor since they entered the transport installation—at Escharum’s command, no doubt. “Then you are learning.”

  “You are a worthy teacher,” Castor replied. “For one who has no faith.”

  The cacophony of gunfire was replaced by the sizzle of shock rifles and the thump-hiss of ravagers. The commander of Castor’s own escort, Feodruz, caught his eye from across the terrace, then glanced toward the interior of the installation.

  Castor shook his head.

  “You refuse to defend a holy site?” ‘Gadogai asked.

  “There is more than one way to reach it.” Castor pointed skyward, where the storm continued to intensify as the portal grew larger. “And the demon Spartans are masters of deception and diversion.”

  “As are all great warriors,” ‘Gadogai said. “You included.”

  “You do me more honor than I deserve,” Castor said. “I am but a humble traveler on the Great Journey.”

  “Humble is not the term I would use,” ‘Gadogai said. “But I have enjoyed our journey together.”

  Castor looked down and was surprised to see the Sangheili holding his hand out, palm up, in a gesture of friendship. Such a development troubled him far more than the bursts of gunfire.

  “You expect our paths to part?”

  ‘Gadogai continued to hold his hand out. “And you do not?”

  “Perhaps so.” Castor reached down and—carefully—laid his palm atop the Sangheili’s. “I should not expect you to take this journey with me, when you have no faith.”

  “You should not.”

  ‘Gadogai continued to hold his hand under Castor’s. It was a symbolic act of trust borrowed from Covenant history, as it would be easier for Castor to drop his hand and clamp ‘Gadogai’s wrist than it would be for ‘Gadogai to lift his own and do the reverse. Typically reserved for Sangheili, the gesture was such a rarity that Castor was taken aback that ‘Gadogai had even offered it.

  Across the terrace behind ‘Gadogai, Castor saw his four Faithful humans emerging from the transport temple and starting toward the small cluster of Kig-Yar and Unggoy waiting to board the transport to the Ark. The human leader saw Castor watching, and gave a small nod.

  Castor dropped his gaze back to ‘Gadogai, then moved his own hand to the inferior position. “You are always welcome with the Keepers, if you wish to join us—”

  “On your quest to the divine beyond? I think not.” ‘Gadogai withdrew his hand, then clacked his mandibles twice. “But I thank you for the offer.”

  A peal of thunder shook the terrace, then a blast of wind nearly knocked them both from their feet, forks of static dancing across Castor’s armor and ‘Gadogai’s tabard. Castor looked up to find the flat-bottomed dome of a Banished Lich sliding from a looming hole in the sky, tendrils of nebula gas still swirling from its hull.

  ‘Gadogai stepped away from Castor, placing himself out of arm’s reach—yet still within striking range of the energy sword hanging from his belt. Castor pretended not to notice and eyed the transport installation, where Escharum had turned away from the wall of hard-light windows and was peering up into the stormy sky. When the Lich began to descend toward the center of the wind-blasted terrace, Escharum motioned to the ten guards he had kept with him, then lumbered forward to meet it.

  Before doing the same, Castor looked across the terrace to Feodruz and motioned toward the landing spot. Feodruz tapped a fist to his breast, then began to form the thirty unarmored Jiralhanae behind him into two ranks. It pleased Castor to see Orsun’s son among them. Always one to fight with more courage than wisdom, Krelis had nearly perished over the canyon the humans called Black Iron Gorge, barely managing to land his damaged Seraph and climb from the cockpit before the craft was consumed by a plasma overload.

  Castor started across the terrace, not acknowledging the cluster of Kig-Yar, Unggoy, and humans behind him. If Escharum had spoken the truth about who would be arriving with the Lich, it was better that they stayed out of the way until the time came to board. The Kig-Yar and Unggoy, Atriox could tolerate.

  The humans, though, Castor would be forced to sacrifice.

  The Lich landed at last, and Feodruz rushed to line up his unarmored warriors to either side of the boarding ramp. Unlike Castor himself, who wore full power armor and carried a single mangler on his belt, they carried no weapons at all and wore only wind-whipped tabards bearing the blue and gold of the Keepers of the One Freedom.

  As the ramp descended, Feodruz barked an order, and the Keepers on both sides took a knee and bowed their heads. Castor went to the end of the line opposite Feodruz and did likewise. ‘Gadogai came to Castor’s side and, still taking care to remain just beyond arm’s length, stood at Sangheili attention.

  “No armor and no weapons?” he remarked over the howling wind. “Bold.”

  “You assume too much.”

  “I doubt it.”

  The ramp slid down, and Banished warriors began to descend its length in a mob, staggering against the wind and shaking their heads at the kneeling Keepers. One of the first was a ragged-looking Sangheili whose bulging eyes gave him a crazed appearance.

  “That is Jato ‘Ratum,” ‘Gadogai said. “The only survivor of an unprovoked artillery attack. Have a care—he can be short-tempered.”

  Castor said nothing.

  Next came a powerful-looking Jiralhanae in full battle armor. He briefly viewed the kneeling Keepers with what seemed to be mild contempt, then gnashed his tusks and promptly ignored them.

  “Balkarus,” ‘Gadogai said. “A competent captain.”

  Another Jiralhanae followed, staring in open disbelief and disgust at the Keepers alongside the ramp.

  “Zeretus, whom they call Scourgemaker,” ‘Gadogai said. “Ruthless and terrible. Kills for sport—particularly humans.”

  “Enough!” Castor called out, perhaps more loudly than was required to make himself heard over the wind. “I care not who they are.”

  “You should,” ‘Gadogai said. “It is always wise to know your enemies.”

  “They are not my enemies.”

  “Not at the moment,” the blademaster said. “But they will be.”

  They waited in silence as the rest of the passengers disembarked. Without exception, each arrival went to pay his respects to Escharum. If there were any battle sounds inside the transport installation, they were inaudible over the wind and rumble caused by the open portal. After exchanging a few words with the war chief, the newcomers quickly went inside to reinfor
ce the guards who had been sent to meet any possible Spartan assault.

  Although Castor had originally believed the demons were on Reach to destroy the portal before he could find it, he could see now that they had been a gift from the Oracle, sent to lead him to the portal without realizing her true purpose. And even if they knew of the portal’s existence, they were too busy chasing the Oracle’s bait to attack it, or they would have done so by now. But he was glad to see that the mere possibility was having the desired effect.

  At last Atriox himself appeared in the hatch, a huge Jiralhanae in dark-gray power armor. Bare-browed and long-bearded, he had a square face with a flattened nose and a broad mouth that stretched into a wide smile when he saw Escharum waiting on the terrace below. Paying Castor and his kneeling Keepers absolutely no attention, he pounded down the ramp and across the terrace to greet his daskalo.

  Castor waited until Atriox was standing in front of Escharum, deep in conversation—either receiving reports on what had occurred in his absence, or issuing new commands—before nodding to Feodruz. Then, as his unarmored Keepers climbed the ramp into the Lich, Castor rose and placed himself between them and ‘Gadogai.

  “They could be going to unload cargo,” Castor said.

  ‘Gadogai’s mandibles opened halfway. “A worthy try,” he said. “But we both know they are not.”

  He tried to step around Castor, who immediately blocked him, his hand on his mangler. ‘Gadogai glanced at the weapon and snorted in derision.

  “Do not make me do this,” the Sangheili said. His gaze shifted toward the crowd of Castor’s other Faithful, who were racing to the Lich, the Kig-Yar and Unggoy carrying all the weapons and armor that the Jiralhanae Keepers had not been wearing. “You know I cannot let them board.”

  “I will not make you do anything,” Castor replied. He just needed to keep ‘Gadogai’s attention focused on him for a little bit longer—even if it meant seeing exactly how good the Sangheili was with that energy blade hanging from his belt. “But you cannot stop them from boarding. By the time you kill me, the ramp will be closed.”