All the little lost boys and girls (Update: 26/5/12)

[Bladed_Crescent]

Hey, it's this story again. Sorry about the delay; I've been sending queries out to agents and working on my Children of Heaven universe/stories as well. Anyways, we'll see if anyone out there remembers this story, yes?

In this chapter: desperation in the present, corruption in the past. Parallel lines never meet, but these are not parallel...

Coming up: betrayals, past and present.

Chapter 55:

If I ever get out of here, Abigail silently vowed as she pounded up the empty tunnel, the screeches of ghouls on her heels, I am going to find every last motherfucker that says bringing knives to a gunfight is stupid and kill each one of those sons-of-bitches.

To be fair though, it wasn’t really knives that were the problem. And whoever had decided that parable was always valid, had never expected to encounter anything like the Turned. They were fast. They shouldn’t be, not with their normal limping, skulking gait. But they could move when they wanted, faster than anything else on two legs that Abigail had ever seen. Plus, the value of normal killshots was... somewhat reduced.

Oh, sure – if you had artillery, flamethrowers, energy weapons and armoured units, then things would be a lot simpler. But if you didn’t, if all you had was small-arms and infantry... if you had to fight these things on anything approaching unfavourable conditions, then you had two options: be fast and lucky or... well, there actually wasn’t any option after that, because it didn’t matter how many you killed. There were always more. Sooner or later your batteries died, your magazines were empty, your armour was broken, your food was gone and then all the luck in the universe couldn’t save you.

Abigail didn’t want to think about how many others had come to the DROP, how many other bands of survivors had fought for days until they too, were worn down, or many of those former survivors she was facing now. She didn’t want those thoughts and she didn’t have time for them. All that mattered right now was surviving long enough for Shannon to do whatever she was doing, to find whatever she was looking for. She has a plan. She has to have a plan.

Something with pincers for hands squawked as it fell, its left leg severed at the hip by Godfrey’s fire. With barely a pause as it hit the ground, it began pulling itself over the deck with those clicking maniples. Something else staggered as Betsy crashed out a burst, but it was one of those damn EVA breeds and the shotgun’s normally flesh-tearing fusillade sparked uselessly against the Turned’s armour. Lutzberg was yelling and firing wildly as he ran, his shots as often as not going wide and those that did hit had little effect. Delphini was rabbiting up the corridor, keeping pace with Four; Shannon pointing something out to her before turning around and firing, blowing the back of a Turned’s skull out as one of the Merkilov’s large bullets punched through its eye socket. The creature moaned and staggered, but Abigail knew that something as trifling as missing the greater portion of its brain was only an inconvenience.

There are only a couple dozen, Abigail thought as one of Louis’ grenades arced over her head and exploded; a frag, it peppered the nearest Turned with shrapnel: shearing limbs, ripping muscle and tearing skin. The injured creatures staggered through their own gore, frothing and screaming in single-minded need, but they shrugged off the wounds, chewing up the distance between them and the ragged band of fleeing survivors.

Not for the first time, Abigail wondered just what it was that the Imperium had made here. She fell back up the hall past Louis and knelt. Jane was last in line now, the trooper’s gun spitting fire in brief bursts. This wasn’t a time to conserve ammo and the Darkknell realized with a thrill of horror that the Ghost was rationing her fire because she didn’t have much left. Shit. Shit, shit shit. One of the Turned rushed Godfrey, only to be sheared in half by the trooper’s disruptor, its thrashing torso smashed beneath the Ghost’s boots.

Abigail blinked. She’s quick.

“G-One!” Shannon ordered. “Fall back now!”

“Acknowledged,” the trooper replied, starting to back up. There was movement further down the corridor and Abigail watched as Unity’s massive head peered around the burning remains of the tram, watching the survivors draw back. It pulled out, slinking through the twitching remains of its kin as they continued to harry the group, torn to pieces by the mercenaries’ fire, but each one got a little closer, each one absorbed more of their dwindling supply of bullets. Leisurely stalking its victims, Unity followed them up the tram tunnel, nudging ruined bits of the other turned towards each other as it did so, ensuring they’d rise faster. Already, the first resurrection was dragging itself to its feet, leaking ichor from a torso still riddled with bullet holes. Its left arm belonged to something else, clawed fingers spasming as flesh and nerves reconnected to one another.

Drool and blood leaked from its mouth as it took lurching steps towards the survivors, testing its torn muscles and ruined ligaments as they knit themselves together.

The Watcher was screaming in her ear, excoriating them to fight or flee – Abigail couldn’t tell which and she blink–clicked his channel off, trusting Shannon to sort out any useful information from the feral’s hysteria. She could hear Emily behind her, shouting.

There was a maintenance hatch on the floor of the tram, its black-on-yellow hazard stripes and red lettering faded from years of neglect and scratched by a great many long, sharp claws. It was one of the tunnels that fed into the byzantine network of cross-tunnels and Jefferies tubes that ran above, beneath and alongside the station’s main corridors. Normally the domain of Turned, but Abigail knew why Shannon had led them there – the claw marks were from Gemma and her ‘sisters’ – like the work shafts in the hydroponics bay, this too should be free of infestation. Barely big enough for the armoured Godfrey to squeeze into, it was too small for Unity to fit through. There was just one problem, summed up by the doctor’s alarmed cry: “They’ve sealed it!” The turnwheel that unlocked the hatch was jammed with a twisted spar of metal that even Shannon was having trouble untangling from the hatch. That simple, casual demonstration of Gemma’s newfound strength was bad enough on its own. That she’d been helping them only minutes earlier...

It hurts to remember, Abigail recalled the petty officer saying. And you weren’t hungry then were you, Mackenzie? Are you hungry now, or is this one of your ‘sisters’ at play?

Abigail wondered where the infected Gemma and her ‘sisters’ had gone, if they had been blown into space, but she couldn’t spare more than a passing thought for the petty officer as she slapped a fresh cartridge into her rifle.

Behind her, Shannon had given up trying to pull the girder out and was using the surgical laser in her built-in medical gear to cut through it, but the thin red beam was intended to cauterize and suture, not burn through metal.

“Hurry, Four,” Abby shouted unnecessarily as she dropped to one knee, forming a firing line with Godfrey and Hernandez. Her disruptor would cleave through the blockage in a second, but she needed a moment to get it into her hand, a moment she didn’t have. Most of the Turned were down, twitching gobbets of meat hauling themselves together, but Unity was still there, still slinking towards them, completely unhurried. It had found them once; it would do so again. The praetorian’s massive head tilted towards the women, three of its eyes watching them. It made a staccato hiss as it evaluated them,

“Get my blade,” Abigail told her Shannon, feeling her partner’s hands free the disruptor from her back, the Darkknell focusing her attention on Unity, the three faces that formed its visage staring back at her. Whoever they’d been, however long they’d fought... it hadn’t been enough. And it didn’t matter. There was nothing human in the creature’s eyes, no trace of Mackenzie’s fear, none of the Mother’s insanity. Kill and eat and kill and eat. That was Unity’s sole drive now.

“Fuck you,” Abigail whispered towards the massive grotesque as she set her carbine down, pulling the anti-material rifle off her back and snapping it out into its full length. “I’ve got something special just for you.” She chambered one of the weapon’s precious few rounds. Armour-penetrating, high explosive. Intended to punch through the armour of heavy troopers and light vehicles alike. A thin killer’s smile wormed onto the Darkknell’s face as she lifted the weapon, zeroing in on her target.

A roar shook the halls, rattling Abigail’s bones inside her armour as the tusked praetorian they’d fought earlier thundered onto the scene. The only trace of its ruination at Godfrey’s hands were the splotches of milky, discoloured flesh that made a patchwork pattern out of its hide. Its massive clawed hands were splayed as it slunk along the deck, its flanks pulsing with its heavy breaths, rancid steam wisping out from its drooling maw. Its muscles twitched in feline anticipation, thick black talons clicking against the deck. tap tap tap

tap tap tap

Unity looked from its kin to the survivors, its lipless mouth somehow managing to grin wider, almost as if it found joy in the situation. It glanced back at its companion, opening its distended jaws and hissing an imperative. The second praetorian screamed and bound forward, thickly muscled arms and legs pounding against the deck as it flew into the waves of gunfire, shrieking from its eroding features. A living engine of destruction, forged from bone and flesh instead of metal and ceramic. It would never stop, never tire, never die.

Lutzberg let out a panicked wail, firing wildly and utterly off-target. Emily was more accurate, her pistol snapping again and again, but the doctor’s shots had no more effect than the petty officer’s fire. In Louis’s hands, Betsy roared, cycling through the ammo drum so fast her barrel began to glow and Godfrey’s cyclic cannon whined as the Ghost spent the last of her ammo in an attempt to kill the charging praetorian. It was almost on them.

Like a gladiator facing a charging lion, she raised her sword.

“Wait,” Shannon told the trooper, watching Abigail. “Wait.”

“Zeroing,” Abigail whispered. It was fast, almost too fast...

...there.

She squeezed the trigger and the crash of the hypersonic round filled the tramway, overpowering every other noise, so loud that the mercenaries’ autosenses overcompensated, momentarily shutting down their audio receptors entirely. The bullet took the charging praetorian in the flank, just behind the forward left shoulder. Intended to tear through light vehicle armour, no amount of flesh and bone could stop it and the round punched through the monster’s body, ripping it in half as it detonated within the Charger’s flesh.

The Turned screamed, an uncomprehending gargling wail as it ruptured, front and back halves skidding across the deck in a tsunami of infected blood and corrupted organs. It coughed, gagging weakly as it struggled to recover from the strike, even its robust nerve net temporarily overloaded as it spasmed and thrashed amidst its own gore. It couldn’t die, but it could be crippled.

Under her helmet, the Darkknell’s lips twitched upwards in the barest of smiles. “Got you.”

Its hindquarters were twitching and wobbling, slipping on its own entrails and gore as a forest of writhing tendrils spasmed out from its torso, seeking to pull itself back together. The praetorian looked up at Abigail from its ruined face – one eye had been burst by the survivors’ fire – and let out a wet, rippling exhalation, all the noise its perforated lungs were capable of creating. Then, it reached one of its massive hands towards her and began to pull itself along the deck, leaving a vast red smear behind it as it began to pick up speed.

Abigail grabbed another anti-armour round and slammed it into the rifle’s breach. She never got the chance to fire it as Unity was suddenly there, smashing her to one side with a secondary arm. The woman rolled with the blow-

-Unity’s tail wrapped around Godfrey’s sword arm and as if the trooper weighed no more than Abigail, it yanked her off her feet and sent her clattering over the ground, right into the other praetorian’s path-

-Lutzberg was sobbing in terror and scrabbling blindly away in panic-

-Emily was screaming, but Abigail couldn’t make out the words as Unity rounded on the petite doctor and its jaws opened, wide enough to engulf Delphini’s head-

-ropes of saliva dribbled from its teeth as it leaned towards Emily and Abigail tried to pull herself up, but she wasn’t fast enough, couldn’t make it there in time-

-and Shannon was in front of Emily, firing into Unity’s gaping maw.

The monster staggered back, shrieking and coughing blood. One of its four arms clutched at its throat as it rasped and gagged, another swinging at Shannon. She was fast, but not fast enough and the Turned’s talons scored across her cuirass. Unity shook off its injuries – what was a shredded brain and massive soft tissue damage to it? – and, open-mouthed, it lunged.

Its jaws gnashed empty air as Shannon pulled Emily down, both women rolling under the enraged creature. Shannon fired into its throat and the underside of its jaw, praying to every god that ever was or would be for it have a weak point, any weak point. Its hands stabbed down in a frenzy of slashing grabs as it tried to seize the women and drag them out from under its body, or simply pull them apart.

Its maw darted down, saliva pattering onto Shannon’s armour as it tried to get its mouth around her head. She grabbed its mouth, forcing its jaws shut. Steam flared from its nostrils as it pounded the ground around her, but the Halo held onto Unity’s mouth, keeping it shut. like any predator, its strongest jaw muscles closed, not opened. It would take enormous strength to hold an old-Earth alligator’s jaws open, but almost anyone could hold the reptile’s mouth shut and so it was with this monstrosity.

The creature bore down on her, its reeking breath overpowering her suit’s filtration systems and she gagged at the stench of it, her arms shaking as it pushed against her, struggling to get its mouth free, jerking its head back and forth, but Shannon desperately clung to its face, refusing to let go. Unity reared back, but still Shannon held tight, digging her fingers into its flesh for purchase but little by little, her grip was loosening.

“Run!” she shouted at Emily, so loud that static blasted from her speakers. “Run!” she screamed again as Unity slammed her against the deck. Emily scrabbled to safety, just barely avoiding the sweep of Unity’s claws, but Shannon couldn’t see to confirm that, she couldn’t look away from the abyss of the monster’s eyes and the rage, the hunger and the fury that formed the void.

I will have you. You are nothing. Better than you have come here. Better than you have died here. Nothing you do will matter. You will feed us, or become one of us. Your victory means nothing. It pushed harder, its maw almost touching her helmet now. You are nothing. It reared back and smashed her against the wall. Shannon cried out in pain and her hands slipped a fraction more.

“No...” Shannon whispered, her eyes tearing as she tried to look away, but it was so close that Unity was all she could see, the malice and intelligence in its eyes, the sense of triumph as it knew she was weakening. Even struggling against her, its limbs still fought against the others in a blind frenzy of slashing blades, forcing them back. None of them could get near her.

They can’t help you. You’re going to die – as you lived. As nothing.

“No.” It came out as a plea, not a challenge.

You are nothing.

You are nothing.

“No!” Shannon screamed, wrenching her hands with a burst of desperate strength. She felt more than heard the crack of the praetorian’s bones and it jerked back so fiercely that she finally lost her grip. Unity shrieked hatefully from its splintered maw, its lower jaw all but torn off. One of its forelegs came crashing down, hard enough to shatter her armour and crush the bones of her chest, but someone grabbed her at the last second and pulled her out of the way. Godfrey.

The trooper lunged forward with her other arm, jabbing her disruptor up into Unity’s torso and the monster screamed again, heaving back off the blade before Jane could eviscerate it. Its broken jaw worked with an ugly crackling sound as it clicked back into place, the bones knitting. There was only the briefest pause in the battle as Unity gathered its bearings, looking from the half-dozen survivors surrounding it, to the steaming hulk of its fellow praetorian, hewn and butchered by Godfrey’s blade but even now twitching and pulsing in the spasms of resurrection. The praetorian’s eyes flicked over to the lurching horde of its lesser kin as, reborn and gabbling in hunger and rage, as they drew closer. Foul blood leaked down its sides from a plethora of wounds, but true its kind, none of them had even slowed it down, while each of the survivors was drenched in sweat, bloodied and bruised, tired and weakened.

“Three,” Shannon whispered softly over the comm, still staring into the monster’s eyes. “Burn it.”

Abigail carefully drew an incendiary, thumbing the detonator on. The praetorian’s head shifted as it evaluated its targets. “That’s right,” the Darkknell purred. “Make your choice.” She threw the explosive. Unity saw it, knew what the small metal sphere was and was already moving away, fast despite its size. But not fast enough.

Heat and light flashed through the dark tunnel, flames washing over the monster’s flank. It screamed again, the noise deafening, and again the mercenaries’ autosenses shut down as Lutzberg, Delphini and Hernandez clapped their hands to their ears in an effort to block out the awful noise. Burning, Unity thrashed, shrieking and roaring as the flames licked over its armoured hide. For an instant, the creature’s berserker instincts almost took control and it nearly rounded on its tormentors. Instead, the monster’s mind won out and it turned and fled back down the corridor, aflame and yowling like the damned as it sought some refuge from the fire spreading over its flesh. Abigail hoped it burned.

“That won’t hold it long,” Shannon said, dashing her ‘big sister’s’ hopes. “The air’s still too thin and it’ll find some way to put out of the fire.”

“Stop, drop and roll,” Louis commented dryly as he put a round into another Turned, cratering its patchwork torso. He snickered at his own joke, the sound manic and almost a giggle. They were still coming, but in ones and twos now as they pulled themselves together. “We have an evac plan?”

“Yes,” Shannon answered after a moment. There was something in her voice and Abigail realized what it was as she noticed the limp in the Halo’s step and the stain on her leggings. She knelt back at maintenance hatch, finally cutting through the last lock. “We go down.”

~

She’d had a name once. She remembered that much. Sometimes, she even remembered what it was. She didn’t want to. Remembering it brought back other memories. The sound of her mother’s voice as she sang lullabies. The feel of her father’s hands when he picked her up. Faces. Other names, places. It was worse than the hunger. She’d tear at herself until her skin hung off her flesh in strips and the pain blocked out the memories. She didn’t want to remember. There were words and faces and sounds and smells, knives that cut through her over and over until... until she forgot again.

They’d told her how beautiful she was. What lovely, strong children she’d have. Then they’d stopped telling her. She’d been their hound until they drove her out. Then, she was this.

Tabitha. That had been her name. Blood dripped from her talons as she cut into her palms and she rasped a pained breath out between her teeth.

She was the second youngest sister. The oldest was Kiyomi. Their youngest was called Gemma. Both of them were here. She didn’t know where her other sisters were and the worry gnawed at her. She didn’t count her brothers. She didn’t like them.

Unity ran by, a blur of armour plating and smouldering flames. She watched it go, wincing in sympathy for the praetorian. The creature unsettled even her, but it was family. “Gemma,” she rolled her sibling’s name down her tongue. It felt wrong to use it – she knew Gemma felt the same pain she did, but she needed her newest sibling’s full attention.

The other girl didn’t turn to look at her, but she cocked her head, listening.

“They hurt Unity,” Tabitha hissed.

“I know.”

“They killed Mother.”

“I know.”

“So many lost.”

“I know.”

“Then why?” she all but shrieked. Kiyomi flinched at the sound. She was the smallest of them and she had been Turned barely into her teenage years. She crept forward and nuzzled Tabitha and Gemma in turn, licking each of them and making worried little keens at her sisters’ argument.

Gemma reached out and stroked Kiyomi’s hair, eliciting a purr from the smaller girl. Likewise, Tabitha returned Kiyomi’s nuzzle, though she remained looking at Gemma, awaiting an answer. “Because I know them,” Gemma whispered. “I know where they’ll go.” The woman turned back to the darkened corridor, running her tongue over her teeth. “It’s a Halo. It’s looking for the oasis.”

Tabitha’s lips drew back over her teeth. “High in the pine tree, the little turtledove made a nursery to please her little love.”

“‘Coo’, said the little dove, ‘coo’ said she,” Gemma took up the rhyme, continuing to pet Kiyomi. She smiled at Tabitha and rested her head on her sister’s shoulder. “In the long, shady branches of the dark pine tree.”

~

Then:

“I’m not sure about this.”

“It’s okay Sare,” Dyson’s voice whispered through the comm. “You’re doing fine.”

Jessup’s only response was a sound much like a whimper as she squeezed herself through the tunnel. It was only intended for maintenance bots and emergency venting and she had to drag herself through one hand at a time. She wasn’t claustrophobic, not normally, but scraping through the pipe inch by inch in utter darkness wasn’t really conducive to her mental well-being. She couldn’t see anything at the end of the tunnel, even with the infra-red goggles she was wearing. It might mean there was nothing to worry about, or it might mean that there was a new Lurker breed that didn’t show up on infrared waiting there for her. “How much further?”

“You’re almost there.”

“You’ve been saying that for ten minutes.”

“And if you’d been moving faster, you’d be there already.”

Another little whimper and Sarah stammered an apology. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Just keep going,” Dyson said soothingly. “You’re doing fine. Let me know when you’ve reached the end.”

Without waiting for her reply, he switched the mic over to its mute mode, leaning back in his chair. The scent of perfume washed over him. “She’s almost there,” he said to his visitor.

“Good.”

“You’re sure she’ll be safe?”

“One of my sisters will watch out for her,” his companion whispered, her tone rising and falling in a disturbing singsong. “And we’ll both get what we want.”

“I know we will,” Dyson replied, reaching back to stroke her cheek, the action eliciting a trill of pleasure that rose into a questioning purr. One of her hands slid down his chest, between his legs. “I’ll get what I want?” she chirped.

His right hand slipped into her torn blouse. “And what’s that?”

She circled around him and straddled his lap, her red eyes staring at him with a mixture of need and hunger. Her lips moved, drawing back over her teeth, her tongue licking out. Her clawed hands rested gently against his shoulders. She began to rock back and forth, lifting herself up only enough for him to unfasten his pants. “I want,” she purred softly as he took a hold of her hips and began to guide her movements. “I want to remember this.”

~

“God, I thought the live ones smelled bad.”

“Nine, if you puke on me, I will cut you in ways that will make you useless to a woman. Don’t even think I won’t.”

Louis forced his gorge down, ineffectually covering his mouth with one hand as he sloshed through the effluvia. “Four, no offence, but this was the best plan you could come up with?”

“Unity can’t fit down here,” Shannon replied without looking back at Nine. “The others can’t open the door. If they do, they still can’t spread out and rush us at once.” In the distance, they could hear the clanging as claws and talons beat against the hatch, but it wasn’t something you could force open.

“Yeah, great. But aren’t we headed back towards the garden where you said all these horrible things were being made?”

“This is a waste tunnel,” Shannon confirmed. “For overflow if the main sewage lines ever became blocked up. It’s also intended for maintenance on the pumping systems and tramway.”

“Yeah, I got the ‘waste’ part of it,” Louis said with a grimace as he lifted his boot, clear translucent strings of goo dripping off the sole. “I just want to know our heading.”

“As do I, daughter,” the Watcher’s voice crackled through the comm. “Where are you going? I need to know. I want my locket. It’s what you promised.”

“I know what I promised,” Shannon answered the feral human. He’d called her ‘the daughter’ before. And Rabbit Mask’s reaction to her name... her cheek burned. You shouldn’t have seen that,” her great-gran’s voice ran through her head. You shouldn’t have seen any of it. Promise me Shannie, promise me that you’ll forget. All of it.

I promise. “I promise,” Shannon repeated the words without realizing that she had.

“Four?” Abigail queried.

Shannon blinked. “Sorry, Three. Just talking to myself.”

There was a bit of a giggle over the comm, then a raspy, steadying breath: “Where is the daughter going? Where are you going, Shannon Hayes-Halo?”

The redhaired woman put a steadying hand on the wall as her injured leg trembled, close to buckling. “This tunnel leads to one of the secondary tram lines. Can you get a car there?”

“Yes, yes, of course. It’ll take longer. More obstructions, more side-routes-”

“Just do it,” Shannon interrupted, too tired to argue.

“You’ve done well, daughter of sin. You, the little moth and the other forgotten.”

“They’re not forgotten.”

“They will be,” the Watcher assured her in a brief moment of lucidity. His tone was almost kind. “You will forget them. Their names, their faces, what they meant to you. You’ll only remember pieces and then you’ll wonder what those pieces go to. One by one they’ll fade away... and then you’ll be left. Acheron flows into the Lethe.”

Shannon closed her eyes briefly. I know. Her cheek still burned and somewhere, in the back of her head, she could still hear her great-grandmother’s voice telling her, begging her, to forget.

[LadyTevar]

Damn. The Halo's wounded, they're running out of ammo, and things are looking really damn bleak.

Yet I keep hoping Hayes gets to have a civil chat with her "cousins", hope that being Granddaughter means she gets herself and Abbie out alive.

[Bladed_Crescent]

Damn. The Halo's wounded, they're running out of ammo, and things are looking really damn bleak.

You can't outrun them, you can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually you will weaken. Your reserves will be gone. They are relentless.

However, there is a bright spot - if the "oasis" exists, if it hasn't been corrupted, if they can survive long enough to get to it, then they just might have a chance of getting through this. At least, until [deleted].

Yet I keep hoping Hayes gets to have a civil chat with her "cousins", hope that being Granddaughter means she gets herself and Abbie out alive.

Without giving away too much, that's definitely something I've had planned for a while.

[iborg]

Let's hope the oasis isn't a mirage, then.

[Bladed_Crescent]

Let's hope the oasis isn't a mirage, then.

Would I do something like that?

In this chapter: The mindless hunters have had their turn. Now the clever monsters are closing in.

Coming up: If you make a deal with the devil, is it righteous to honour it... or break it?

Chapter 56:

There had been a battle here. You didn’t need any special senses to know that – the smears of blood, spent shell casings, aroma of Ribbon kill-scent and gunpowder were blatantly obvious to even the most cursory observer.

Cleaner slugs had already oozed out of their crevices, sopping up the spilled blood and pieces of Ribbon flesh too small to regenerate, the sickly many-legged little carrion feeders becoming so bloated from their gorging that they could barely move. There would normally be more scavengers here – insects and other vermin, both infested and not – but these cleaner slugs were the only ones to survive the Old One’s purge. She knelt besides one of the quietly slurping annelids, the creature paying her no mind. If touched, it would spray digestive acid back at its attacker, but was harmless otherwise. Unless it came across you while you were sleeping, injured or otherwise unable to move away.

They’d been something else, long ago. Still feeders of decay and compost, but not infected. Now they were part of the cairn’s cannibalistic ecosystem. The Ribbons poisoned everything they touched. Infesting. Corrupting.

Nothing was safe. Almost nothing.

-they are not our blood-

She picked up a shell casing, letting her helmet’s sensors analyze it, but she already knew what it was. It was from the Old One’s weapon.

She inhaled, feeling a stir of... she didn’t know what. She’d heard the stories of the escape, of the days when they’d taken the cairn, of the Old Ones’ first and only attempt to reclaim it and then... then the New Ones had come. Fools and fortune-hunters, the desperate and the daring. The very few that had found the cairn through luck or skill and the rest – cat’s paws of the Old Ones. For six hundred years, the Old Ones had let others bleed for them, sending ship after ship of pawns into Acheron rather than risking their own lives. They knew what had been created here and as much as they desired it, it frightened them. They would never stop trying, never stop pouring blood and treasure into the cairn until they finally held it and all its secrets in their hands again.

And she, like all her brothers and sisters, would forever be there to honour Father’s request, keeping Umbra and all its horrors out of the hands of treasure-seeking New Ones and covetous Old Ones.

Now one of them was here. She didn’t know what it meant and neither did the lead. He’d been in communication with the mission commander who, in turn, had sent a missive back to Umbra.

She didn’t know what decision would be made – all she knew was that she wanted to slide a blade between the Old One’s ribs, pierce its heart and let it drown in its own blood.

-and won’t you be proud at what we’ve become?-

~

She could hear the distant, muted thuds and clangs of the Turned moving through the halls, vents and maintenance tunnels of the DROP, searching for a way to get to them. Sooner or later, they would find one. The cramped conditions of the spillway would make it impossible for the creatures to swarm over the survivors, but it limited their fields of fire; there was barely enough room for one of them to edge past another and for the power-armoured lieutenant, the fit was even tighter – there was just enough room for Godfrey to squeeze through the tunnel, her helmet and pauldrons scraping against the walls and if she had to turn around, it wouldn’t be easy or quick. Weighted down by their own arsenals, Hernandez and Abigail were having almost as much difficulty as the Ghost.

“You survived Kerrigan’s destruction,” Shannon said in a tired voice.

Godfrey’s head tilted in a fractional nod. “Yes. Colonel Shaw vented the hold, blew my team and your Etas into space. Don’t know how many survived. At least one of yours, another of mine.”

“Someone from Eta’s out there?” Louis asked. “Do you know where they are? Not that you’re not charming company...”

“Lieutenant Calvin Meyers, Eta One,” the Ghost answered. “Hunted him. Nearly had him. Woke up a Leviathan. Fought together. He was infected. Killed him.” shkkt-kzz. As her disruptor came out, the woman stared at the gleaming blade as if enraptured by it. “With this.” She shut the blade off, retracting it into the sheath on her forearm. “Corporal Cynthia Black, Ghost Five. Also survived. Sporadic contact. She’s coming to us.”

Louis pursed his lips. “That was who commed us just before we got to the tram.”

“Yes.” Jane made an indescribable, but extremely unsettling, noise. “I can control her.”

“And who controls you?”

This time, the sound the trooper made was far clearer in intent: halfway between a hiss and a growl and nothing if not aggressive. “I made a promise.”

Louis opened his mouth to argue further, but Shannon cut him off. “That’s enough, both of you. Jane: why does Cynthia need to be controlled?”

“She’s been affected. If she doesn’t listen, if she’s weak, I’ll kill her myself.” There was almost a happy note in Jane’s tone.

“Good to know,” Shannon replied.

“It is,” Jane nodded, oblivious to the corporal’s sarcasm.

~

Then:

Thorne was waiting for them when they got back. He was trembling with anger, unable to stay still. Sarah looked down at the deck and tried to disappear into Dyson’s shadow. “We’ve been trying to comm you,” Thorne said, very quietly, his twitching fingers hovering close to the butt of his gun.

“Must have turned the radio off,” Dyson said, trying to sound apologetic and not terribly succeeding.

Thorne nodded and patted Dyson on the cheek. “Of course.” His knee came up, hard and fast and took Dyson right in the guts. The air whooshed out of the man’s lungs and he fell to his knees. “You’re lucky you’re such a good tech,” Thorne didn’t bother looking at Sarah – he was still talking to Dyson in that same, even tone of voice. “Even if you can’t keep it in your pants.” His hand came down on the back of Dyson’s head and the other man dropped to the floor. “Otherwise, you might be in for some disciplinary measures.” Punctuating his words, he kicked Dyson in the side, the blow just shy of breaking ribs. “Fortunately, I need you. But I think you need to be motivated. I think you need to understand.” He raised one hand and snapped his fingers.

Two of their fellow survivors appeared out of the shadows and grabbed Sarah, hauling her away from Dyson. She cried out in surprise and tried to break free, but the other men were holding her too tightly. One of them, Adam, had a frightening light in his eyes. Brett was the other and he couldn’t look at her, his jaw clenched so tightly that she could see the muscles bulging through his cheek. “Motivation,” Thorne was saying as he circled around Dyson, scratching at the back of his head as he summoned the rest of their band. “That’s what I think our resident systems analyst needs, don’t you all think? We’re all in this together. Each one of us has a part to play, each one of us has to work together if we’re going to survive. If we get someone who doesn’t want to do that, if we get someone like Vasquez, who tries to do his own thing, then all of us are put at risk. Do any of you want that? Do you want to be just a bunch of rats in a maze, or a group with a purpose, with a chance to survive? When we don’t play by the rules, then that’s when people die, isn’t it?”

No one answered.

“Don’t you think?” Thorne asked Dyson.

Dyson’s jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say. Whatever Thorne was going to do, there was no way to talk him down from it. “If that’s what you think is best,” Dyson said in a low voice.

“That’s right,” Thorne answered, still in that same quiet tone of voice. He sounded so reasonable. “What I think. I’m the one that’s keeping us together. I’m the one that saved us when that corper asshole led us into that slaughter. I’m the one that’s going to keep us alive until help gets here. And we can’t have our people getting distracted, can we?”

There was a knife in his hands, a thin stiletto. He turned towards Sarah, kneeling in front of her. He was smiling, a ghastly upturned slash of his lips. He reached out and stroked her cheek, trailing a finger through her unwashed hair. She flinched away from the touch of his waxy, corpse-like skin. “You’re quite a pretty thing,” he whispered. “So what would make our friend less distracted by you, hmm? Should you be less pretty?” The knife pressed against her cheek, drawing a thin rivulet of blood. “Should you be less proprietary?” Adam mumbled something under his breath, Sarah didn’t hear what it was, but the other man’s tone was ugly and very frightening. “Or maybe,” Thorne’s voice was still low, still soft and even in tone. “Maybe we should let our dear systems analyst know he doesn’t have to sneak off to fuck you.” Thorne’s hand tightened on Sarah’s throat, but when he spoke, it was out of the corner of his mouth, to Dyson.

“What do you think?”

~

The secondary tram station was overgrown. At least, it had been until Shannon had opened this section of the station. Now bare patches of hull showed where the loosest pieces of spread had been ripped away, dangling veinlike tendrils worming weakly back through the fleshy growth. It was already regenerating.

Louis’s hands itched for a flamer, to bathe these infested walls in cleansing fire... a shudder wormed up his back as he thought he saw a glint of silver out of the corner of his eye, but it was just Godfrey. Louis scratched at the back of his head, his scalp raw and sore to the touch as he watched the trooper’s pale form move through the dark of the unlit tram station. To his right, Hutchins and Delphini tied a tourniquet around Hayes’s leg, the petite doctor sliding Shannon’s medical gauntlet on, treating the wound and using the surgical laser to cauterize it. Louis blinked; he hadn’t even realized Hayes had been hurt. Or had he? He wasn’t sure. Thoughts were slipping through his mind like sand through a closed fist. It was hard to focus on anything, at least nothing that he wanted to focus on.

The intercom sputtered and coughed overhead, the station’s dying AI sputtering out a half-dozen useless alerts, personnel calls and damage reports simultaneously, asking for its long-dead maintenance teams to repair it, for its security teams and command staff. He opened his mouth to ask Godfrey something, but forgot was it was as the static suddenly failed and the whispering voices of the stationmind faded. It could have been a child’s voice, female and singsong. It sighed a question to them:

“Can I come with you?”

~

“Yes, yes. That’s it my darling. Wake up. Subsidiary systems rerouting. Primary systems initiating handshake. Yes, I’ve missed you too. Do you have a present for me? Starting safe mode diagnostics. Good girl, very good girl. Primary batteries depleted, secondaries within minimum operating parameters. Wake up. Wake up, all of you. Multiple system queries. They’re courting you too, aren’t they? I’ll send the lads around for you, then. Such a pretty lady to have so many suitors. But darling, honeypot, sweetflower... you’re mine.”

~

Louis scratched at his face – his entire skin was crawling, it seemed like. Bugs under his skin, whispering voices calling to him. Flashes of silver in the corner of his eyes or the glimpse of a burned, rotten figure. You’re not there, Louis said to himself as he stared at the apparition. It was standing in the middle of a hallway, one of the corridors that led into the tram station. You’re not there. You’re not there.

“You left us to die,” the burned man whispered from his half-decomposed lips. “You were supposed to help us.”

“Go away,” Louis whispered. “Go away!” He snarled, shouting it. “Go away!” He realized the rest of the group was staring, but he ignored them. “We didn’t have a choice! We had to! We had to leave! Goddamnit, it wasn’t my fault!”

“You were supposed to help us,” the dead man accused, condemnation in both his good eye and the discoloured, dead one.

“Shut up!” Louis screamed, raising his shotgun. “Shut up and leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

“Nine,” a voice said in his ear, a hand on his shoulder. Three. It was Three.

“You see it,” Louis said, almost pleading, as he looked to his squadmate. “You see it, right? Right, Three?”

“Yeah, Nine.” Abigail’s voice was flat. “I see her.”

Her? Louis looked bank and blinked. Standing where the apparition had been – no, she was further down the corridor – was a thin young woman, dressed in a ragged sleeveless shirt and torn underwear. She was holding her hands behind her back. On her hip was a small pouch, something metallic glinting out from it. She looked almost normal, but as the flashlight on the end of Abby’s carbine swept over her, Louis could see her red eyes gleam back at him, shining like a cat’s.

She made no move to approach, simply cocking her head to one side. “Can I come with you?”

Abigail pulled Louis back from the door. “No.”

The girl remained where she was. “Okay,” she said, almost disappointed. “I’ll come find you later, then.” The young woman’s attention seemed to drift, a dreamy smile on face. “It’s my birthday and we can have a party. I don’t know anyone else here. Do you promise you’ll come? Mother said she’d bake me a cake when she comes back. Father hasn’t come back yet, so she went out to look for him. They’ll be back soon. They said they would. They promised.”

Louis swallowed, his mouth dry. “I’m sure they will. If we see them, we’ll send them to you.”

The smile froze on the young woman’s face. “You’re lying..”

“No, I’m not-”

“Just like they lied,” the girl looked away, biting her lip. “She said she’d come back, but she didn’t. They told me to wait and they’d come back for me, but they didn’t. They said they loved me, but they didn’t. They said we’d be home in time for my birthday. I was going to be seventeen and have all my friends come over. Ben would be there. You’re lying, just like them. Just like them.” Louis swallowed again as the girl stared down at her hands, at the long, black talons her fingers had mutated into. One of Gemma’s ‘sisters’. “They were scared of me,” she said, in a haunted tone of voice. She raised her head; tears were running down her cheeks. “They left me behind. They were scared of me.” Her expression hardened. “You’re scared of me too. You won’t come to my party.”

Louis opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Abigail was silent as well, her finger slowly tightening on her carbine’s trigger.

The girl took a step back, her expression twisting into something feral and dangerous, even as the tears continued to run down her face. “They left me. They said everything would be all right. They lied to me. My parents lied to me,” a long tongue licked over her teeth as she retreated down the corridor. “They’re gone now, but my sisters are still here. I’ll find them. Then we’ll have a party.” With a flash of movement, she was gone.

~

Jacquelyn had been her name. She was older than Tabitha, though not as old as Kiyomi. She was fond of their brothers and often played with them. Tabitha tried to avoid her for just that reason and even Gemma bristled a little at her. Kiyomi whimpered at her sisters’ reactions and nipped both of them, a reminder to behave. She didn’t like it when they fought. Tabitha gave the smaller girl a reassuring nuzzle and Gemma stroked her hair. Jacquelyn crawled towards them on all fours: submissive, but wary.

“They didn’t want to come to my party,” Jacquelyn mewed.

“Six little mice sat down to spin,” Tabitha singsonged. “Pussy passed by and she peeped in. ‘What are you doing, my little men?’ ‘Weaving coats for gentlemen.’ ‘Shall I come in and cut off your threads?’ ‘No, no Mistress Pussy – you’d bite off our heads.’ ‘Oh no I’ll not, I’ll help you to spin.’ ‘That may be so, but you don’t come in.’” She looked over to Gemma and her younger sister shook her head.

“Not yet.”

Tabitha and Jacquelyn both growled and even Kiyomi hissed. Gemma gnashed her teeth at them. The hunger was getting louder, but there was a voice inside her, screaming over and over, but it was faint. She could still hear it, sobbing and crying with words that it hurt to remember, pieces of her life before. She wanted to weep, but she couldn’t make herself. Not now. Now, she wanted to kill. She wanted to feel living meat in her hands and pull it apart, wanted warm, salty blood to pour down her throat and over her skin.

Her muscles tensed painfully, fingers twitching with the need, as her tongue licked over her sharp teeth. “Not yet,” she whispered soothingly. Her sisters didn’t want to wait, but she knew that they should. Cornered prey, cornered prey with firearms. Too dangerous. Inside, the screams grew fainter as the hunger rose, drowning out everything else.

She would cry later. After she’d eaten.

His name was Chin.

blood

And she drooled.

~

They’d gone down through the waste tunnel. Her nose twitched at the smell of decay emanating from the spillway. The other novitiate was covering the tramway against possible threats. Augurs had picked up fleeting contacts. Small, fast and always at the periphery of their scanners. The Evolved were out, and quite distressed. She could smell their kill-scent, thick with agitation and adrenalin. Ribbons themselves were dangerous. Evolved were a threat. It had been too much to hope that they’d been killed in the purge.

The lead cocked his head, waiting for her assessment.

“Pointless,” she said, answering the unspoken question. “Unfavourable terrain. Poor ambush oppurtunities.” She licked her lips. “Communication analysis indicates two-way traffic. Originating source scattered. Not many have access to that kind of blocking technology. Masks aren’t sophisticated enough, Whitefaces even less and Red Hands don’t come into Mask territory.” A beat. “Often.” It was a game, ruling out all the possibilities before she got to the one that she already knew had to be the answer. “Possibly other survivors. Armoured enemy may have more sophisticated communications suites, but the highest probability is the Watcher. He’s always wanted this section opened.” She’d studied the dossiers on the Lost Ones. Mortality rates and the manifestations of the sliver’s... corruption being what they were, it was hard to keep track. Older Lost Ones were always dying, but there were always more Lost to take their place.

“The others will be falling back to rendezvous at one of the secondary tram lines,” she continued, coming to her feet. “We can intercept them there.”

The lead nodded, putting a hand on her shoulder. “There’s been increased communications between Vigil and this section now that the Old One opened it. Do you know why the Watcher has wanted this section open so badly?”

There was a pause. “Recommend we optimize for engaging armour.”

~

“I’ve diverted a car,” the Watcher whispered. “Do you have it? Is it safe? Is it secure?”

Shannon patted the armoured case on her flank. “It’s here,” she confirmed. “Just get that car.” Her leg trembled as she took a step towards the open tunnel. Stop. Stop it, she ordered herself, but it was getting hard to put any weight on the leg at all. She’d lost too much blood. She wanted to just lay down and... stop. To just close her eyes and not have to deal with anything. Not the nightmare her life had turned into, not the lives she was responsible for and not the thoughts that were filling her head, the whispering of voices. It takes pieces.

It hurts to remember.

Blasphemy and reverence. Do you understand?

Abby... hurt them.

She remembered, in perfect clarity, each of those voices as they ran through her head. None of them, not one, was as frightening as the one that spoke in her voice, its whispers and calculations and the writing she saw when she closed her eyes.

I tried to forget. I did. But it’s coming back. In bits and pieces and pieces. I’m afraid, great-gran. I remember what you told me and I’m afraid.

Crouched in front of her, a killer whispered in words she shouldn’t have been able to understand.

This is not your home.

~

Cynthia moved through the shadows like some mythical creature, huge and hulking in her wraith-grey armour. With each step, the trophies hanging from her belt and pauldrons jostled against her armour. Severed heads tied by their hair, their dead eyes staring blindly out at the station around her. She supposed she should get rid of those; not all of them had been infected, but she hadn’t gone against the lieutenant’s orders – she’d collected them fairly, before Godfrey had commed her.

Her fingers twitched, armoured digits flexing. Her gauntlets, once the same colour as the rest of her armour, were now stained red. She liked the look. It reminded her that she wasn’t just another mindless killer. She and the rest of the Ghosts were following the captain’s last orders. They hadn’t been infected by Veers’ treachery. They’d been chosen to contain Primal because he knew he could trust them. G Squad. Godfrey’s Ghosts. When you saw them, you were already dead.

The trooper licked her lips. She was closing on the lieutenant’s position. She risked another brief comm to update the lieutenant and... her... wards. The concept was hard to understand. Cynthia knew that at one time, she’d had a better grasp of the situation, but even the lieutenant’s orders – protect – seemed foreign, alien. The corporal patted her flank, feeling the comforting presence of her trophies there.

It would be good to hunt with Jane again. Together, they’d follow their orders and kill the infected. This could be fun.

The trooper paused, checking her sensors. She was picking up trace energy readings – thermal and radiation. No threat to her and even an unprotected human would need several minutes have any ill effects at all. She couldn’t localize the source, though. It was the station’s damned hull – it blocked reliable comms, prevented accurate sensor readings. Unless you had access to the security nets, you were always half-blind.

With a mental shrug, the trooper continued on her way, though she kept an extra attentive eye on her scanners

~

Back in his lair, the Watcher scrubbed a layer of dust and grease off another of his many security monitors, trying to get a better look at what he was seeing, but to no avail.

“Leaking,” he mumbled to himself, tapping a yellowed fingernail against the screen. “You’re leaking all over the place. But what are you? Where are you going? You’re not one of mine.” He had nothing to investigate this anomaly other than the few ancient, degraded cameras that he could patch into.

Even worse, every few seconds his access to that part of the station would drop entirely, both as a result of the long separation and degraded secondary connections and as a result of the children. Not his. Never them. He hated them, hated that they had prevented him from taking what was his for so long, hated their ability to open his doors, tap into his cameras and manipulate his systems whenever they felt like it. He’d kept them out of his most vital networks, but they just had to beckon and Vigil spread herself open for them, allowing them in. That wasn’t right.

She belonged to him. He needed her. He looked after her.

She was his.

And soon, he’d be able to make them understand that. But first, he needed to deal with this.

He opened a comm channel

~

“The tram is coming,” the Watcher rasped, taking a moment to noisily gulp down a drink. “There aren’t many cars left. Be gentle with this one.”

“Understood,” Shannon answered. “How long until it arrives?”

“Until it gets there,” the Watcher snapped. “Just sit tight, you and the little moth both. Then we’ll settle all debts.”

Shannon switched back to the squad’s frequency. “Car’s en route. No ETA.”

“This is when we dance?” Abigail asked, tapping her fingers against the side of her carbine. She was watching Shannon and had been for some time. She knew her ‘little sister’ was hurt worse than she was letting on.

Shannon nodded. “It’s what he didn’t say.”

“Which was?” Lutzberg asked irritably. The petty officer was squatted on the floor, his head hung between his knees, his empty pistol still clutched in one hand. “Share the joke, Halo.”

Abigail turned towards him, her movements languid and predatory. Shannon put a hand on her ‘big sister’s’ shoulder. “He didn’t mention his ‘lads’,” she said by way of explanation.

“What?”

Emily snorted, checking her pistols and picking absently at dried flakes of gore on her vambraces. “The MacGuffin we were sent for is valuable. We’re the only people who can return it and we’re under attack. Figure the rest out yourself.”

Shannon arched an eyebrow at that, but she didn’t comment. Instead her attention was drawn by the silence. It had gotten very quiet all of a sudden. The intercom still spat nonsense and static, machine noises and stuttering status reports, but the cries of the regenerating Turned had softened, grown more distant. By chance, she happened to be staring down the corridor when it appeared. Indistinct, as if the edges of its form were fading into smoke, it was still solid enough that she could identify it as one of the enemy soldiers.

It saw her, but made no move to attack. It watched her for a moment and then its ephemeral form began to dissolve into the ghosting effect of bent light. Just as it faded completely away, there was a brief, dim flash of colour from where its eyes would be. A sickly yellow-green colour, their blank, Cheshire gaze stared at Shannon until they too vanished. Then, there was only the darkness.

“Clever,” Shannon said, withdrawing back into cover. You like to play with your food. She checked her pistol’s clip, taking quick stock of her remaining ammunition. “Artemis,” she said to the rest of the survivors. “Prepare for incoming fire.”

This is not your home.

“No,” she said, just softly enough that no one else heard. “But I’ll make it mine if I have to.”

[Manthor]

Hungry. So so....hungry. hunger grows Masterrrr! Blades shaped like crescents. Flesh,succulent and juicy. I likes the taste Masterrrr! When can I play with them? When can I eats their marrow? Pretty girl has nice bone structure. Bonezzz....so nice and...crunchy. When can we playas with New Ones?

OOC: nice story. Look forward to more. Definitely something to follow and definitely something to keep in my library once it comes out as a book.

[Swindle1984]

[u63r]

It's the oddest thing, but my notification (for the version in the "Cleaned Up" forum), hasn't been sent since June 9th, as I found yesterday.

On the other hand, that means I get to read three months of updates in one go.

[Dass.Kapital]

*Shivers...as they wait for more*

[guest]

I finally caught up with the story, and I must say that it is excellent.


As far as I can tell, the most dangerous thing on DROP 47 isn't the ferals, the turned, unity, the 'lost boys and girls', or even the sliver. It's the halo medic.

If these 'children' are smart, they will give her and her friends a working spacecraft and send them on their merry little way, they'll live longer.

Also, I get the feeling that the mole from Hadley Wright is Emily,just a hunch though.

[Bladed_Crescent]

Heh; I'd intended to have the new chapter up by now (last week truth be told), but September's new game releases have taken ahold of me... I hope to have it done over the weekend. In the meantime, I appear to have neglected to answer some comments.

Hungry. So so....hungry. hunger grows Masterrrr! Blades shaped like crescents. Flesh,succulent and juicy. I likes the taste Masterrrr! When can I play with them? When can I eats their marrow? Pretty girl has nice bone structure. Bonezzz....so nice and...crunchy. When can we playas with New Ones?

Do not speak that way! Do not use those words! They are watching, always watching. The eyes in the dark will hear you. They will find you. You do not use their words! You do not interfere in their hunts, unless you have a sudden need to become another of their bloody markers! They will take the kill... and we will take what's left.

Image

Exactly so.

On the other hand, that means I get to read three months of updates in one go.

Which probably amounts to like 2, 3 chapters...

*Shivers...as they wait for more*

When you are cold,
when you lie bleeding,
when you are Turning,
when you are dreaming,

never call out,
never even sigh,
what hears you and answers,
won't be I, it won't be I

shiver in fear,
huddle with your kin,
but if you cry out,
you'll not see dawn again

I finally caught up with the story, and I must say that it is excellent.

Thank you.

As far as I can tell, the most dangerous thing on DROP 47 isn't the ferals, the turned, unity, the 'lost boys and girls', or even the sliver. It's the halo medic.

[/quote]

Ah heh heh heh... I guess we'll see...

[Bladed_Crescent]

Ugh. So a couple days turned into... [checks calendar], holy shit - three weeks? Sorry 'bout that. Anyways, the next couple chapters should be up faster; I've got the next one almost done and the one after that already plotted out. So... yeah.

Anyways, if anyone's still out there, here's the much-belated Chapter 57.

In this chapter: like a corpse in a shallow grave, some secrets don't stay buried

Coming up: the origin of language.

Chapter 57:

Primal’s people had been trained mercenaries but for the most part, their fire had been wild and uncontrolled, filling the air with bullets and deadly through sheer volume. Neurological degradation, the primacy of atavism, loss of fine motor control... the cause was academic, but the effect was the same. Men and women who prided themselves on being able to shoot the wings off a fly were no better than a ragged mob. The ferals were much the same – a few had a semblance of marksmanship, but the rest had no inclination, patience, or ability to take careful, aimed shots. Those battles had been chaotic, a bloody scrum of screaming, shooting psychotics.

The difference between those firefights and this could not have been more drastic. There was no noise save for 47’s own background rumble, there was no horde of maddened psychopaths rushing forward, heedless of risk. There was only the lie of the dark, empty corridors and the gibbering incoherence of Abigail’s motion tracker as each of its sensor nodes desperately searched for a hard return, each of them failing as the station’s own superstructure and the attackers’ countermeasures stymied them. Signals jumped and flared as the motion tracker’s simple analysis unit tried to make sense of the partial detections, aberrant thermal images and scattered EM signatures.

Shannon leaned against the wall beside the door, her pistol raised. Personal cloaking technology... the Imperium had been experimenting with it; the Coalition had tried to do the same, but neither of them had gotten it to work. Outfitting cloaks on war droids had likewise led to a long string of failures, the rapid build-up of heat and radiation fatal to both organics and delicate circuitry.

Even today, the only star nation to use personal cloaks regularly was the Prophet’s Demense: the Grand Caliph’s suicide-soldiers, the ‘Unseen Martyrs’, named with good cause; personal cloaks were more lethal to the user than anyone else. Depending on the quality of the cloak and the physiology of the user, you might survive twelve hours of use. In reality, most died after 3-4 hours of exposure to a personal cloaking field... and that was cumulative, not consecutive.

Whoever their attackers were, they’d either overcome that rather drastic design flaw... or were so far gone that they didn’t care. Shannon let her lips twitch in a tiny, secret smile. With the latter, she was lying to herself. Everything about them so far indicated a superior technological base. Weapons and concepts that had been theoretical to the Imperium were finding practical use on DROP 47.

the fabricator engine what is it building what is it building

Something about this station was twisted and grotesque. She could feel it in the walls, in the air. In the itch at the back of her head and the burning in her cheek, in the words she shouldn’t say and should have forgotten.

I promise great-gran. I’ll forget. I promise.

Secrets long buried, unearthed like corpses and dragged from their graves... Shannon shook off the morbid thought and looked over at Abigail; her partner gave a minute shake of her head as she tried to get her motion sensor working. “No good, Four. Nothing to lock on to.”

“But they’re out there!” Armin whimpered softly. “They’re going to kill us. You don’t know! You don’t know what they’ve done!”

“We made out all right in the last encounter,” Shannon pointed out, but it was false bravado at best. That one soldier had nearly killed them both.

Then, in the distance, something cried out. It wasn’t the sound of the Turned. It was too different, too... structured. Shannon felt her fingers tighten painfully on her pistol’s grip, her heart suddenly pounding in her ears. She wanted to run, to run and find a hole to bury herself in and never ever come out. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. Her breath caught in her throat...

No.

No! She slammed a fist against the bulkhead.

...and slowly, the fear faded away.

You are clever, she thought as her rational mind asserted itself. “I know what you’re doing.”

...for their age, they display an abnormally acute understanding of human psychology...

Infrasound. They were using infrasound.

modified, not pure infrasound, it’s targeted to human nervous systems, using the pitch and tone of the audible vocalization to reinforce the effect, they’re playing with us

They’re playing with us.

“I know what you’re doing,” she repeated to herself, forcing her heart to beat slower, her breathing to even out. She looked over at her comrades. They were feeling it too. Louis had gone paler then normal, fresh perspiration running down his face. Armin was all but curled up, whimpering. Abby was shivering slightly, the small twitches of her limbs betraying her fear. There was nothing from Jane; maybe the trooper was simply too far gone to feel what the others were feeling, or perhaps her suit simply obscured any sign of it.

Shannon placed a hand on Emily’s shoulder. Like her, the doctor was feeling that instinctive terror. “It’s okay,” she said. “Emily. Look at me. Look at me.” The doctor’s head snapped over to Shannon. Her pupils were dilated, staring into the mercenary’s visor. “Listen to me,” Shannon said, aloud so that everyone could hear her, but she never looked away from Emily, keeping her voice steady. “They’re using sound to stimulate a fear response. It’s not real. Shake it off. Shake it off. We’ve been through worse. Shake it off, mercs.”

Abigail twitched, stilled. “Confirmed.” Her voice was even, the killer’s monotone. Louis took a moment longer, but he managed to pull himself out of it. Emily, still pale, nodded weakly at Shannon. She reached out to Armin; he flinched away from her touch. “We’re all going to die,” he said, over and over. “They’re going to hunt us down and kills us one by one and hang our bodies on the wall, they’re going to kill us...”

In two strides, Jane was at the petty officer’s side. With a soft growl of artificial muscles, she grabbed Lutzberg and lifted him off the ground.

shkkt-kzz

Her disruptor sprung to life, the blade inches from his chin. She made neither threat nor comment, watching as the man’s attention fixated on the crackling blade, so close that tiny crackles of energy arced from the disruptor to his skin. She wanted him to see it, to feel it before she gutted him. He whimpered in her grip, smelling of fear and soiled clothes. Her lips drew back over her teeth in disgust. Weak.

“Put him down,” Shannon ordered Godfrey. She didn’t stand; she didn’t think she could, not without her leg threatening to buckle. “Put him down now.”

“He’s weak,” Godfrey said; though from her lips it was low and mellifluous, the words came through her helm in a harsh metal grate.

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t care either way. But he’s one of my people, understand? His life is worth something. I won’t have him hurt. Put him down. Put. Him. Down.” She forced every bit of iron she could into those words, challenging the trooper for Armin’s life.

The trooper’s helmet turned to regard Shannon. The corporal stared up at the lieutenant, trying to fathom what was going through Godfrey’s mind, what kind of fevered thoughts were racing through the trooper’s skull. A single breath exhaled through the vents on the trooper’s mask. Not quite a hiss, but a noise of consideration. Finally, she sheathed her blade, setting Armin back down. “Further orders, corporal?”

Shannon could hear Godfrey’s smile at her rank and with a thrill of genuine fear, she realized just how close the Ghost was to the kind of madness that had taken the rest of Primal’s people. She remembered the berserkers’ own fear as the Ghosts came for them, an armoured trooper bludgeoning a twitching body again the hull until it was a broken, dripping sack of meat...

she can kill us all

“We have incoming,” she reminded Godfrey, keep her voice as steady as she could. If she hesitated, if she seemed weak... none of them were a match for the Ghost at close quarters. “Stay down and be ready to repel them if they break through.”

Jane nodded. “If they want to, they will.” A beat. “We never managed to kill one.”

Shannon edged back into place. “We’ll work on that.” The hunting cries were echoing through the corridors, shifting in tone, making it impossible to tell where they were coming from. At least one was flanking them, Shannon was positive about that. She put Godfrey and Abby watching the tram station’s second door and the tunnel, while she and Louis stayed at the forward tunnel. It had gone quiet. Shannon licked her lips. They’d wait now, a few moments. Enough to let the anticipation build, to let fear and uncertainty take hold.

It’s what I’d do. She quashed that thought as quickly as it formed, switching to a different mental tack. I bet you’ve got blacklight.

“Nine,” she caught Louis’s attention. “Flashbang.”

The helmet-less merc nodded, pulling a grenade from his bandolier. He popped the catch off, thumb holding the det-key down. “Ready.”

She held up a hand, listening to an internal clock. “Now.”

The grenade rattled along the deck as it bounced down the hallway. There was the soft scrabbling of armoured feet moving to cover followed by the flash and thunderclap. Something screamed, high-pitched and agonized.

wrong, that’s wrong

“Yes!” Louis all but lunged around the corner, ready to unload into whatever luckless foe had been incapacitated.

...their capability for treachery and deceit should not be underestimated. They love to play games...

They’re playing with us.

“No, get back-!” Shannon shouted, reaching for him.

He flinched at the last second. That was the only thing that saved his life.

A spike of metal twice as long as a man’s finger and almost as thick sliced across Hernandez’s face, punching into the far wall of the tram tunnel. Blood sprayed from the wound and the mercenary fell back, clutching at his lacerated temple and screaming. Shannon fired blind, emptying her entire clip down the hall as she pulled Louis over to her. Less than an inch more to the right and it would have gone into his skull. As it was now... it had just caught the corner of his left eye and sliced into it.

He was trying to clutch at his ruined face. Shannon pulled his hand away, trying to hold Nine still. His biosigns spiked, echoing the agony the man was feeling. “Abby!” she shouted,

cold compress, I don’t have one, severe damage to the sclera, can’t tell if the cornea’s been nicked, he can’t take any more blood loss, hate you I’m going to kill all of you, possibility of poison, Louis why didn’t you wear the damn helmet

Shannon dug into her kit bag, pulling out an aged package of sterile cloths. She touched one carefully to Louis’ temple, careful not to press on his eye. Intermittent muzzle flashes cast brief pulses of light as Abigail fired up the open hall, her fusillade achieving little, but provoking another bolt, this one sparking off the diving mercenary’s pauldron.

Abby didn’t need to ask; she’d helped Shannon enough to know what her role was. She straddled Louis, holding his arms down as Shannon scanned the wound, stifling a curse under her breath. Louis was going to lose that eye. If she’d had her full field kit, if she could get him to a proper medical facility – even the abandoned hospital where she’d fixed his first injury – then she might have been able to save it. She had none of those things. All she did have was her surgical laser to close the wound on his scalp, painkillers to ease his agony and a sterile cloth to cover the wound. I’m sorry, she thought, glancing up at Abigail. Shannon gave a tiny shake of her head.

And still, only silence from their adversaries. Shannon didn’t know how many there were, but she’d have set up a sniper to watch another’s advance, timing the assault to coincide with the flankers’ attack, forcing the defenders to split their attention at the time when they needed it most.

In the distance of the tram tunnel, she could see a faint point of light. A car was coming.

Just a few more minutes. That was all they needed. “Three,” she rasped, reloading her pistol. “Flare.”

Abigail nodded, pulling a long-burn flare from Louis’ bandolier and snapping it on. Covered by Shannon, she hurled it up the hallway, filling the corridor with crackling red light.

Louis was quiet now, the aged painkillers taking effect. Under his eyepiece, his pupil was dilated, his breathing steadying out. No trace of adverse reaction. “My... eye...” he croaked, reaching up and finding the cloth over it.

“I’m sorry, Nine. I don’t think I can save it.”

He nodded. “‘S okay, Four. Shoulda gone with that helmet. ‘sides,” he laughed weakly. “I look more like him now. Only no burns...” Hernandez pulled himself into a sitting position, grabbing for Betsy. “I can fight,” he whispered. “I can fight. Let’s... let’s do this.”

Shannon didn’t say anything, and she felt the flush of shame at her silence. Louis wasn’t in any shape to fight, but they didn’t have the luxury of letting him recover. She could only nod, letting him scramble into cover next to her as a mixture of slugs and energy fire ripped through the open doorway, scything back and forth. Suppressive fire. “Grenade!” she shouted in warning, seconds before the round cartridge bounced through the doorframe. “Three, go high.”

Abigail obeyed, whipping out of cover, spraying return fire back at their unseen attackers as Shannon kicked the explosive back up the hall. Both women ducked back as it detonated, a wash of heat and fire roiling through the open door. Risking the hidden sniper, Shannon glanced out, catching a glimpse of heat-haze motion. She fired; the enemy soldier’s armour wasn’t penetrated, but she saw the sudden shift in nothingness and knew she’d staggered it, firing again and hearing a heavy thud as her invisible foe toppled to the deck.

She ducked back into cover just as another of those wicked spikes sliced through the air. She could hear the faint scraping as the sniper dragged its fallen comrade back into cover, imagined the sudden flurry of comm activity between this group and their flankers. They’d switch positions; the one she’d shot would take overwatch and the sniper would advance now. There was no sound of footsteps, but the soldier was coming all the same.

The Ghost unsheathed her disruptor. “To my last breath,” she said, the words almost a prayer.

~

“No no no. No no no.” So close.

So close. They were so close.

Three against six, and the six had no chance. Braver men, better armed women, machines and monsters had all stood their ground against the eyes in the dark, and none had ever walked away. “Hayes,” the Watcher whispered hoarsely, hatefully. The name was poison on his tongue. “Because of you. All dead, everyone dead. Because of you. I hope you see this. I hope she’s yours. I hope you can hear the screams as your children murder each other.”

The Watcher paused, lifting a dented cup to his lips and finding it empty. He sighed, setting the mug back on his desk. “Well,” he whispered into silence as he watched the screens. “Saves me the trouble.”

~

Then:

Dyson found Sarah in the dark, knees drawn up to her chest. She was in their ‘love nest’, a long-forgotten cul-de-sac off one of the main ventilation tunnels that fed into North arm’s Atmospheric Processor. She wasn’t crying, at least not right now. He knelt beside her. “You shouldn’t have run off. I can’t look out for you if you’re going to hare off like this. I was only just able to get away, anyways.” He reached out with water bottle. “Here. Have something to drink.”

She didn’t answer him, didn’t move to accept the water.

Dyson sighed, taking a gulp from the bottle himself. It was lukewarm and tasted of algae. “I’m sorry for what happened. There wasn’t any choice. You know that. He wanted to make an example.”

For a long moment, he thought she was going to sulk and give him the silent treatment, but finally she nodded, the gesture barely perceptible. “He’s... he’s...”

“Lost the plot,” Dyson said. “Thorne can’t keep us safe. He’s completely bugged. First Vasquez and now you – the others are seeing that now. Whitham’s not scared of him and we can use him. Without his toys, Thorne’s just the asshole with the biggest club and that’s not going to help him for long.”

“Dyson.”

“This is going to work, Sare. It will. Thorne’s lost the plot and after that show, after what he had done to you, his biggest supporters are backing away. We have him. You get it? He’s fucked himself.”

“Dyson.”

“We’ve got the support. We’ve got the guns. We’ve got his damned ‘toys’. We’ve got every damned thing.”

“Dyson.”

“What? What is it, Sare?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, okay. Let’s get you back to camp and get you something.”

“No, Dyson. I’m hungry.” She looked up at him. Her eyes, puffy from her earlier tears, were bloodshot. No, not just bloodshot – the sclera were red.

“Oh.” Dyson stood up, pulling away from Sarah. He straightened his tunic. “I guess it had to happen.”

“What? What’s happening?” Fear coloured her voice, ugly and rough: “What’s happening? What’s happening to me?”

Dyson wouldn’t even look at her now. “I have to go, Sare. I can’t be seen here with you, not when you’re... like this. Don’t come back to camp, either. I can’t protect you. If the others saw you like this... don’t come back. I’ll see if I can leave some food out for you, but...”

“Like what? What’s happening? What is this?” Sarah begged, reaching out for him with a shaking hand. Her skin was flushed and splotchy with the beginning pyrogenic reaction of an immune system fighting its own body. “Dyson, please... what’s happening to me?”

He shook off her touch and stepped away from her, pausing at the hatch of their favourite cubbyhole. He looked over his shoulder at her, and when he spoke, he sounded almost kind. “You’ve caught the bug.”

~

The other novitiate was bruised, but his pride was more injured than his body. She hadn’t fared much better in her first conflict with the prey either though. But that was why they came to the cairn. To learn. To study. In that respect, this was an excellent oppurtunity.

-rip open their bellies and pull ropes of fat, glistening entrails out-

The Old One was no killer, not like its comrades, but that didn’t mean it lacked for capability or will. Its reaction to the grenade was impressive, worthy of her kind. Her nostrils flared as she opened the vents on her helm wider, taking the prey’s scent: sweat, blood and metal mingled with the burning aroma of the gleaming flare. She looked down at her hands, their heat-haze shimmer standing out against the billowing smoke. Still shrouded, but the ghosting distortion of her movements were no longer concealed by the darkness. There was the chance that her movements would be lost in the smoke, but moving through it would give her away.

-hate hunt kill-

On her augur, she was tracking the lead’s position; he was almost there, but he was alone. There were others headed to their location, but Vigil was relaying the incoming car’s progress; it would be here before their reinforcements. The waiting game favoured the prey. She needed to force their hand, break their defences. Another grenade would scatter them, but they’d be expecting that.

-disrupt, delay, destroy-

“Provide cover,” she whispered to her fellow novitiate. “I will advance.” Whatever the cost, the Old One could not be allowed to escape.

My life for my brothers. My life for my sisters.

This was going to hurt.

~

It was their friend from the garden. Shannon didn’t know how she knew this – she couldn’t even see their attacker fully, but she knew all the same.

Amidst a vicious salvo of cover fire, she leapt into their midst. A hollow silhouette, all ghosting shimmers and distorted light, she moved like fire sliding through oil, the blurred outline of her form betrayed by the gleam of her weapons. There was a flash of plasma, so bright and hot it overwhelmed the cooling systems in Shannon’s armour and temporarily blinded her and then the enemy was among them, a wicked scythe in her hand, the air itself screaming as the disruptor field rent through it in slashing blows, acrid shrieks filling the terminal as blade met blade, Godfrey and Abigail both turning against the unseen enemy, both kept at bay by the flickering strikes of the changeling’s weapon, both pressing in to deny the soldier the chance to use her firearms. And she was letting them, feinting towards the screaming Lutzberg or Emily, but letting herself be drawn back to battling Abby and Jane, when she could easily kill one of the civilians.

She was distracting them. Maybe for the shooter to get a clean shot, or for the flankers to come in. Abigail went sprawling as a roundhouse kick connected with her temple; she rolled with the blow, keeping it from staving in the side of her helmet (and possibly her head), but she was down, at least for a few seconds.

The soldier went down to one knee as Jane slammed her disruptor down in a blurring overhead arc, powered by every erg of muscle – real and synthetic – in her body and armour, a roar of fury bellowing from the trooper’s helm. The blow would have crumpled any other armoured opponent, shattering bones or hewing apart any lesser foe, but somehow the enemy only buckled rather than broke. Godfrey strained, forcing her blade down towards the enemy’s head...

..and she was no longer there, slipping out of their locked blades and leaping back, drawing an ugly, baroque pistol that thrummed softly with energy, levelling it at Godfrey’s head-

-the brood mother’s torso vanished in a flash of vapour-

-but she wasn’t the only one that could move that fast. The distraction wouldn’t have been long enough for any normal soldier, any normal human... but Halos had never been normal. Ignoring the weakness in her leg, Shannon grabbed the enemy soldier, hearing a hiss of surprise rasp through its respirators.

In an instant, she’d be thrown off, but that instant was all she needed.

i can hurt you

One arm wrapped around the soldier’s head, a pins-and-needles sensation shivering through Shannon’s skin as her armour touched the enemy’s cloaking field, and the other had a knife, driving it through the thin bodyglove between pelvic plate and cuirass, burying it to the hilt in viscera. An elbow slammed into Shannon’s own breastplate, knocking her back. The soldier didn’t scream in feigned agony, but Shannon could hear a sudden, sharp inhalation, saw the distorted shimmer of the hilt as a cloaked hand moved over it, saw the unnaturally bright red blood drip down the handle.

carries more haemoglobin, more oxygen carried and bound

This time, the soldier only just dodged Jane’s beheading slash, feinting back with a sudden dearth of her former grace, almost staggering. Her fist connected with Shannon’s head, snapping the corporal’s head around and dropping her to the deck. Shannon heard the soldier’s soft, ragged shiver of breath as combat drugs and painkillers flooded her system, overriding the pain of the injury, its cloak rippling as Emily fired at it, forcing it back out the open doorway.

almost here, the tram’s almost here

“Don’t follow it,” Shannon gasped. “The sniper. Watch the other door.”

Abby was the first to react. Louis had been watching the battle between the enemy soldier and his fellow mercenaries. He didn’t notice the sudden flicker of movement behind him. It was only when Armin made a whimper of terror that he knew anything was wrong. “Nine... don’t... move,” Three whispered, raising her carbine.

shkkt-kzz

The snap and crackle of an activating disruptor came from behind. Slowly Louis turned around and agony flared through his skull as his injured eye followed the movement of his good one, drawn to the flickering arcs of energy that danced between a twin-bladed sword. Looking up to where its head should be, he saw a pale blue flash of light from where the creature’s eyes might be located. His mouth was suddenly very dry.

It hadn’t killed him yet. That was the only thought pounding through his head. It hadn’t killed him yet. A simple twitch of its arm and it would drive that blade through his armour like it was nothing. And that, he knew, Four couldn’t fix.

But it hadn’t killed him yet.

Louis thought he saw a slight shimmer effect as it looked over the assembled mercenaries. Even this close to it, he could still barely see the outline of its form through the cloak, but if it was bothered by the weapons levelled at it, it didn’t show it. Then, it spoke. A liquid purr of nonsense syllables in some unknown language.

Four, though... he saw her stiffen, saw the gun in her hand waver. A moment passed and then another... and she answered it.

She answered it.

The thing holding Louis went very still. He felt sweat running down his forehead, dripping into his good eye. The stillness couldn’t have lasted more than a second, perhaps two, but it seemed to last so long, so very-

-and then it shot Hayes in the head.

[LadyTevar]

Please tell me that Hayes had her helmet on.

[Bladed_Crescent]

Please tell me that Hayes had her helmet on.

Well, it's dark in the tram station and she was using her blacklight vision, her HUD and comm and we didn't see her take it off, so that's a pretty safe assumption... as is the fact that their armour isn't enormously effective against these weapons...

In this chapter: the downward spiral continues

Coming up: a sanguine salvation

Chapter 58:

Then:

This was treason.

Everett was too honest with himself to think otherwise. He could rationalize it with lots of pretty words, but it boiled down to an act of treason. Halo had willingly joined the Terran Imperium. As a citizen of Halo and thus, a citizen of the Imperium, he was bound by their laws, his oaths and pledges of allegiance. What he was doing violated all three. But he had to do it.

Someone had to know. Someone had to remember.

~

Aleksandra was bored.

She was strapped into the Testing Chair With The Three Scratchmarks On The Left Arm. There were sensors on her temples and the back of her head to monitor her cortical and neurophysiological reactions, and there were electrodes on her chest for the electrocardiogram to see if her heart rate changed. Though the room was soundproof, she knew that there were others – not just her siblings, but humans too – similarly outfitted. From what she’d overheard, Black had found a way to stimulate the sliver and wanted to see what the short-term effects were.

-he wants to know if we’ll go insane-

She wondered if the humans were screaming. They often did. The worst affected screamed and shrieked, thrashing in their restraints as they were carried into the testing rooms, begging and cursing, pleading for help or calling out to it.

Humans... the word sounded odd, even in her own mind; there was her and her siblings and there was them. The thought of any specific descriptor had never occurred to her, but she’d overheard other researchers saying that she and her siblings weren’t human, not really, so maybe she was supposed to use it to describe them? But what word described her, Katjusha and the others? What did they call themselves? They were just... them.

With one claw, the girl tapped a cadence on the arm of the chair. tap-tap-tap-tap Pause. tap-tap-tap-tap Over and over again, knowing that it bothered the researchers in the room with her, but knowing they’d endure it, since if they yelled or did anything to that resulted in a change to her ‘resting state’, Black would not be happy. Keeping Black happy seemed to be important. They said that Black was acting oddly, ‘even for him’. They said it quietly, in whispers and sideways glances. In the beating of their hearts and flush of adrenalin when he was nearby.

They said a lot of things in front of Aleksandra and her siblings. Father’s researchers knew better; they were more guarded in what they let slip, but these were Black’s people. Most of them thought of her and her siblings as animals, despite the reports that were circulated – an impression that they enjoyed playing to.

-don’t speak. don’t understand. hiss and growl, snap and bite-

When you were an animal, nobody cared how they acted in front of you.

-learn and study-

tap-tap-tap-tap

Aleksandra could see the tension in one man’s shoulders as he kept his attention very intently focused on one of the many displays, his back to her. She stared at him, ignoring the others in the room, still clicking her talon against the stainless steel of the chair. She could hear the pound of his heart, the rasp of his breath and all but hear the sole thought pounding over and over in his brain as he tried to ignore her: stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

tap-tap-tap-tap

His knuckles clenched, turning white and Aleksandra felt her lips twitch slightly. This one was close. With a little more effort, she might just push him over the edge.

tap-tap-tap-tap

~

“Personal notes on test sequence Ceres.

“Subject 14 expired at 1317 station time. This marks the failure of 12 consecutive attempts to find a cure to R-series infection. General Jung is pushing for more human trials, but we’re running low on subjects to fill that need. Animal testing will only get us so far and I’d prefer to limit the R-type’s oppurtunities for genetic recombination and mutation, especially in light of Sanskrit Atoll.

“The attempt to slow pathogenesis did work... to an extent. We know from experience that even a few stray cells will lead to a full-blown infection – it just takes longer. The R-types’ development and expression of infective organs and phages leads to a substantially accelerated process. I wonder if they’ll develop ‘infector’ body forms? We already have ample evidence of polymorphic expression. Hmm. Something to look forward to.

“Subject 14 did show a surprising resistance to the infection. My earlier hopes about bone marrow transplants from the I-series show that there is something there... but the implanted tissues attack the host just as aggressively as the R-series, causing massive autoimmune shock as the I-type cells attack the host organs, triggering an equal response from the host’s own immune system. Any attempt to mediate this reaction with immunosuppression allows the R-series pathogens to spread even faster.

“If there some way that we could convince the transplanted tissues not to attack the new host, we’d be making some headway, but every attempt has failed. The MHCs are too – hah – smart. Even the normal microbial tricks of using host MHCs to fool antigen-presenting cells only works for so long. Sooner or later a damn T or NK cell comes by and realizes that the tissue isn’t actually ‘self’ and then we go straight to microbial total war, which the host always loses. Sometimes I wish the I project’s original designers had been a little less gifted, but I can’t complain too much. Not when that’s what they were aiming for and given the billions poured into that project, we’d better see those kinds of results! I worked it out once – each of Everett’s ‘kids’ cost Earth more than a battle carrier. Hrrm.

“Even when implanted with mature R-series tissues, I-series individuals only experience the first two stages of R-series pathogenesis. The reaction is severe, but limited. Only the earliest product lines showed any susceptibility to the infection; the I-4s and beyond were completely immune. Fever, swelling of joints, nausea and disorientation – as with fully human hosts, the symptoms vary in intensity and duration, but the averages in the I-series are much lower than in exposed humans. There’s no progression to stage 3. R-type tissues are broken down, free-living phages are eradicated and any attempting to survive via lysogenesis have their host cells destroyed. There is, literally, nowhere for the R-series to hide within an I-7’s body. I just wish we could replicate that resistance, but it’s looking like it’s inextricably linked to their physiology. It’s like... trying to have the spandrels without the arches.

“I suppose it’s... theoretically comforting in a way to know that there’s somebody on this station who can never get infected by the R-type. If, God forbid, there’s ever a large-scale breach in this section that security can’t contain... Heh. I’m not sure I’d ever want to give them guns, though.

“Well, that’s Everett’s bailiwick. He knows what he’s doing. Incidents are down and his little pets are more cooperative than usual.

“Hmm. Norman had an idea about improving the specificity of our nanokillers, but I’m not so sure it’s worth using up any of our few remaining test subjects. Every time I stare this thing down, it reminds me of cancer, at least on pre-space Earth. They had to use, uh... chemotherapy to attack it, which didn’t so much kill the cancerous cells as it killed everything, starting a race to see whether it was the cancer that died first or the patient. That’s what this is like. The only things that kill the R-series – and you have to kill it early, before it’s mature enough to cause a Lazarus event – also kill the host. And even then, in about 30% of cases, the R-type just goes into remission and starts playing in the dead tissues. That is why incineration of the bodies of infected or potentially infected is mandatory. Before we figured that one out, we had a full-blown infestation in the God-damn morgue!

“My staff is pushing for another purge of the infected subjects, but General Jung insists that I hold onto the most developed specimens for now. We’ve got them sequestered in section R-3 right now, but I don’t want to squeeze too many in there, especially with the locust effect. Jung says it’s just going to be temporary, though. I think he’s pushing for another field test, probably wants to use Black’s damn sliver too. Well, at least it’ll get it off the station.

“Fuck. I need to sleep. I’ve been running on caffeine for too damn long. I know Justin says the filters are up and the screens are working, but if that were enough, we wouldn’t have the damn F research division. Well, I’m no good to anyone if I burn out, but I just don’t want to have that dream again.

“Vigil, end log and save.”

“Understood, Director Constanza.”

~

Lunch with Gundis had become something of a tradition for Everett; the station’s security chief was pleasant enough company and provided a conversational lifeline of sorts to someone outside Hayes’ world of scientists, researchers and reports. Everett was just finishing off his second yogurt while Alvadotter was on her third trout, the latest victim of the Ferskt’s hyped-up metabolism. As she took a deep drink from her water, Gundis popped back one of her hormone pills, the ones that kept her genetically-augmented aggression in check.

So far, the conversation had been light and pleasant; Gundis had finished Upon My Soul, the latest book Everett had leant her and they were discussing the merits of Halo literature. There was something weighing on the security chief’s mind, though. Everett was just about to ask, when Gundis set her fork down. “Everett.”

Hayes arched an eyebrow. This was serious – she usually called him ‘Ev’, a shortening of his name that irritated him more than it should have. “Yes?”

“You spend more time with the scientists and lab geeks than I do,” she began. “Have you... noticed anything odd about any of them?”

“Odd how?” he asked innocently, taking a small scoop out of his yoghurt.

The Ferskt narrowed her eyes. “I think you know. And I think you know who.”

Justin, of course. Gundis had voiced her suspicions of the man before and Everett wasn’t prepared to say that her fears were unfounded. Black had become more eccentric, ever since the sliver had been used for its...’field test’. Nothing that had affected his work, certainly. “I’ve heard... rumblings,” he said carefully. “Nothing overtly alarming.”

“Hmm,” Gundis said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard rumblings too, Everett. Normally I’d agree with you, but we both know how quickly ‘nothing overt’ changes on this station. My holding cells are filled with people who weren’t ‘overtly alarming’... until they were.”

“I understand-”

“Do you?” Gundis snapped. “I have a first lieutenant whose every performance evaluation said he was rock-steady under pressure, a rising star. That man put a subordinate’s eyes out with a screwdriver, trying to ‘make her see’. I have an engineering chief petty officer who attempted to set off an IED during his shift. I have a medical technician who attempted to perform experimental – and unnecessary – surgery on her wife. Those are the ones that try to hurt other people – the medical wards are overflowing with failed suicide attempts and self-mutilations. We’re running out of room. Even Black doesn’t have enough space for everyone to be ‘observed and treated’.”

Everett winced. “I know.”

Alvadotter nodded. “I know you do, but I’m getting awful sick and tired of being blown off by higher-ups who tell me to ‘handle it’. I am handling it. 47’s always had more than its fair share of Section 8s and when someone goes buggy, we bundle them up and send them home. But now, because of this security alert from Earth, we can’t do that. Not in the numbers we need. And ever since Chang brought that fucking... thing onto the station, things have only gotten worse. More cases of the bug, faster, spreading like a damn disease. We’re sitting on a powder keg.”

I know, Everett agreed silently.

“I’ve tried talking to Black myself, but he doesn’t have time for anyone as lowly as the station’s head of security,” a hardness entered Alvadotter’s voice. “And I don’t think he’s all that worried about ‘treatment’ any longer, Everett. He’s going off the deep end.”

“How do you know?” The question wasn’t a challenge. It was quiet, touched with dread at the thought of the answer.

“I’m a Ferskt, remember?” Gundis tapped the bottle of pills. “We’re born to madness, live with it all our lives. Our instincts tell us to kill every second of every day. The whispering of voices you can’t quite hear, telling you things that you know are wrong... but you know are right. I’ve seen other Ferskts lose it, Ev. They become nothing but engines of meat and bone and gristle, screaming and frothing. I’ve seen the look in their eyes the instant before it happens, a glimmer of naked terror that just... fades away as they lose the fight. The last time I spoke to Black, I saw it in his eyes.”

“The fear?”

Gundis shook her head. “No, Ev. No fear. None at all.”

Everett nodded, his mouth suddenly dry. He emptied his glass of orange juice, looking around. The cafeteria was starting to fill up with the lunch rush; it wasn’t the place to hold this conversation. “I understand your concerns, chief. I promise I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

He stood to go and as he did so, Alvadotter caught his arm. “Look into his eyes,” she insisted.

Quietly, so that only she could hear him, he replied: “I have.”

~

Their language skills were improving. Aleksandra and Katjusha still had difficulty putting their thoughts into words, but they continued practicing. In addition to English, he’d even taught them some Ar’neki, one of the many languages that Halo children frequently developed and used amongst their select group of friends. ‘Ar’neki’ was a nonsense word, chosen because it sounded good. In his defence though, he’d been seven when he’d come up with it. To his surprise, they’d incorporated the word into their language. Ar’neki. The ‘secret gift’. He’d received more than one inquiry or outright complaint over teaching them something as ‘useless’ as a Halo child language, but he’d defended it on the grounds that it both built trust with them and it didn’t matter what they learned; it was a fact of neurophysiology that the more you knew, the more connections you formed, the more ideas you had. Granted, much of the same voices also expressed concern over the current generation’s intelligence, but the Imperium didn’t want mindless slaves. They could have gene-bred a dozen generations of vat-grown dullards for less than a tenth of the time and money that had been spent on the I-series so far and although there were still calls to do just that, it wouldn’t happen before a ‘functional product’ was deployed.

The Imperium needed them, needed them more than Black and his damned sliver, more than Constanza and the horrors she kept in her lab. He’d asked for and, grudgingly, gotten them limited access to Vigil and the station’s datanets. Their hunger for knowledge was rapacious. He had a pile of drawings on his desk; attempted imitations of famous artworks, sketches of animals or machines that caught their attention. And, what was frankly alarming, maps of the station – at least the parts they’d been to, all drawn from memory. There were pages hand-written notes as well, some in English, others in Ar’neki. Some were just little stories or poems, others were letters to him, some were diary entries. Others were records of their interactions with the staff; some of the physical descriptions read like a hitman’s analysis. Each day they learned more. They didn’t know – not fully – what their purpose was, but after Justin’s latest battery of tests, formal training would start soon and they’d learn precisely why they were created. Everett took a steadying breath. He didn’t fear that day. He feared the day, the week, the month or year after it. When they’d learned enough. He wasn’t even sure he was afraid of them. No, he was afraid for them.

When he closed his eyes, he could see their faces. Aleksandra, Katjusha, Nikolai, Andrei... he knew all their names, not just their ID numbers.

They’d been born as laboratory animals and only through his efforts had they been upgraded to ‘slaves’. Each previous generation had had to be destroyed. Hundreds of... yes, children. Too violent, too unpredictable. Of no use to an increasingly desperate Earth. The Coalition was pushing in, system by bloody system, drowning the Imperium in sheer numbers and what was, truly, an insane devotion to accept losses. They would win, or they would die to the last. The same went for Earth: victory or death. Star systems had been destroyed, entire planets wiped out, hundreds of thousands of starships broken and burned. Sin Eater. Everett suppressed a shudder at the thought of that monstrosity. He’d known Halo supplied the Imperium with researchers – he was one of them, after all – weapons designs, shipyards, factories and industrial capabilities, but he’d never thought his people were capable of... that. It didn’t matter that no Halo had served aboard it. Halo minds thought of it and Halo hands built it. There was talk of building a second, a more refined version. The thought of it sickened him. One was bad enough, but if Halo – if the Imperium – should be able to build more of those vessels... he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, either.

Sighing, he picked up one of the notes and read it. Already, they’d started to change the Ar’neki script, adding in their own symbols, changing letters. They learned very quickly, adapted even faster. Just like...

Well. Like Halos. There was a cosmic irony in that.

Everett leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. I wonder, he mused. What they’ll create, given enough time. He doubted they’d ever get that chance, though. Earth would use them up as it did everything else. Just as it would do with Umbra.

The scientist took a deep breath. Umbra. It was everything. He’d heard that in whispers, and it was true. The Imperium’s technological advantage was almost enough to offset the Coalition’s numbers. If Earth had had a few more years... if they’d waited a bit longer before launching their war of conquest or the rest of the galaxy had remained mired in their own petty problems, then the Imperium’s dominance would have been absolute. Without the ‘Founding Three’, Earth’s fleets would be cutting a swath through the galaxy, snapping up all the small colonial powers, star nations and federations in their path while the rest continued on with their own petty agendas and conflicts. Now, though – the Imperium couldn’t hope to match the Coalition’s numbers. Their only chance lay in technological superiority – and such marvellous horrors they’d unveiled.

Disassembler swarms. Weaponized singularities. Slip-point bleeds. Planetcrackers and starkillers.

Sin Eater.

And, if the research on DROP 47 paid off, none of those would compare to what Umbra could give them. And the cost was so very small, you see. A relative handful of lives. A race created, enslaved and then when its usefulness was ended... euthanized. That was the price of Earth’s ascension. Of Earth’s survival.

And who am I to say no to that? To stand against it?

He realized his grip was threatening to tear the paper in his hands and he gently set it down. Everett took a breath, finding his center. For an instant, everything was quiet again and the scratching in the walls was gone. Who am I? he asked of the silence. I am Everett Hayes, a Halo. I am a person who believes that anyone who buys something with innocent blood doesn’t deserve to have it. He smoothed the note out, and scanned it into the file that, should anyone ever find it, would see him executed as a traitor.

As he moved on to the next sheet of paper, another thought wormed into the researcher’s mind, another reason. Another rationale. Another justification.

And I’m trying to wash the blood off my own hands. He pushed that thought aside and returned to his work, trying to drown out the sounds of the mice in the walls and, when he closed his eyes, trying to banish the faces of the people who trusted him.

[The Vortex Empire]

Damn you, you cold-hearted master of suspense! Hayes gets shot in the head, and we have to wait TWO chapters to find out what happened?! Christ, you're more evil than Unity!

[Bladed_Crescent]

Damn you, you cold-hearted master of suspense! Hayes gets shot in the head, and we have to wait TWO chapters to find out what happened?! Christ, you're more evil than Unity!

Well, it was only going to be one chapter, but then you said two and I got to thinking - why not two? Remember, folks - if you're miffed about having to wait until next chapter to find out what happens in the here and now, Vortex Empire is the man to talk to.

In this chapter: shadows of the past

Coming up: what Cadmus planted in the ground

Chapter 59:

Then:

“Faster.”

“It’s close to the red line now. It’s already beyond baseline.”

“Make it faster.”

“Okay. Escalating to level twelve now.”

The machine swung another blow, this one moving so quickly that to an observer, it didn’t seem to move so much as twitch, its gloved fists lashing out with hammer blows that would leave any heavyweight boxer bruised and sore for days on end and were perfectly capable of killing slower and less durable opponents. Shaped like a bulky prize-fighter itself, the Gladiator training drone was squat and wide across the shoulders, its naked endoskeleton padded to prevent broken fingers, knees, feet and any other extremities that were thrown at it, imbedded sensors measuring the force and speed of its attackers’ assault, analyzing fighting styles and compensating with different offensive and defensive manuevers, all designed to throw an opponent off stride and let the machine close in to deal out a severe pummelling.

And it was giving ground.

Daniel Barrett, Artemis recruiter, stood outside the ring, circling it and watching with an expression equal parts awe, curiousity and avarice as he watched the fight. On his left arm, he wore the drone’s remote, one thumb poised over the kill switch. The Gladiator series were expensive training models and their capabilities, intelligence and responsiveness could be modified for each opponent to take into account the many and varied abilities, physiologies and modifications of any potential human partner. He’d seen this very machine dump a Kalissi ‘upgrade’ (which was more polite than ‘cyborg’) on his ass. His smile widened as the Gladiator took another step back, its artificial mind running through every strategy, tactic and fighting style available to it and coming up empty.

It had never fought a Halo before.

It would counter soon of course – that was what it did. But that it hadn’t immediately come up with a strategy, had allowed itself to pushed back – that was what impressed the mercenary.

Daniel continued to circle the ring, his eyes on the machine’s opponent. She was clad in a skintight spandex outfight that would provoke quite a few lascivious imaginings from any number of men and women throughout the galaxy, but it wasn’t those thoughts that were occupying his mind at the moment. His attention was still focused on her body, but there was very little lustful intent behind his appraisal. He watched how she moved. Light on her feet, but hesitant. There was awkwardness there, an uncertainty behind each blow, as if she were unused to fighting, even against a training robot. Fair to say, I expect.

But she was fast. The holodisplay on his vambrace was tied into the Gladiator’s sensor net; he could see the force behind each punch and each kick and he stifled a wince at thinking of those blows ever impacting mere human flesh and bone. However, her entire style could be summed up as ‘amateurish’. There was potential there and the thought of honing it made Barrett practically salivate at the thought, but right now she was relying on speed and strength and it wouldn’t be long before... ah. There.

The Gladiator blocked the next blow and hammered its opponent hard in the gut. As she staggered back, winded, the machine advanced, raining punches down in a flurry of motion too fast for Daniel’s eyes to track. Only some of them got through, but that was more than enough. With the thud of a body hitting the floor, the fight was over.

“Yield?” Daniel asked.

“Yield,” the fighter in the ring confirmed.

Barrett dutifully took the Gladiator out of fight mode. The machine knelt down, the sensor strip in its eyes evaluating its opponent and checking for injury. It reached out one gloved hand to help her up, pulling her back to her feet. That done, it trundled off the mat, unlacing its gloves to await its after-fight inspection.

Daniel waited until the young woman – barely more than a girl, if he wanted to be honest – stepped out of the ring. Her hair, the colour of arterial blood, was soaked with sweat and plastered to her slightly dusky skin. Her chest rose and fell with heavy breathing, her cheeks flushed with exertion, but her eyes... her eyes wanted more. Excitement and embarrassment shone in them in equal measures and, exhausted, she still managed a smile. “I thought I did well.”

“You did,” he agreed. “Your fighting style leaves a lot to be desired, but we can work on that. Even still, you threw poor Spartacus around quite a bit. It wasn’t until I red-lined his reactions that he was able to give some back.”

“Faster,” the girl panted, still smiling, accepting a water bottle from Barrett.

“Faster worked,” Daniel agreed. “Normally I’m the only he goes up against. I’ll make a note of what settings we need to give a Halo a proper workout.”

Her grin only widened. “Did I pass?”

Daniel snorted. “We’ll see. Get yourself cleaned up; I think we’re done for the today. Tomorrow I want to dig a little deeper into your educational background.”

The hint of a frown touched her lips this time. “Another day of this? I thought all I’d have to do is sign on the dotted line.”

He smiled at her. Not unkindly, but there was still a touch of patronization in it. “What can I say? A lot of merc companies just require their hirelings to know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of, but Artemis is a bit more discriminating.”

She didn’t say anything, just watched him through those pale green eyes, didn’t call him out on his lie. Not audibly, at any rate. “And,” he sighed, giving in, “If we did that, your government would raise ten kinds of hell. It’s part of our charter to operate on Halo. Any potential recruits must be given ‘fair and due time to consider and evaluate their commitment to employment with Artemis Private Security Services before said employment can be considered valid and binding’.”

“I know,” she pointed out. “But there’s never been any firm time limit set for that ‘fair and due evaluation’ process.”

“Still, I’d prefer to err on the side of caution. Besides, it’ll give me time to go through your credentials a bit more.”

Her frown deepened, but she nodded anyways and climbed out of the ring, heading off to the showers. Daniel watched her go, looking back into the ring. Now I know you can fight, he said to himself. But I have to wonder if you can ever kill?

~

Dinner was a strained affair. “So,” Ingrid Hayes said to her daughter. “What lethal skills did that man teach you today?”

It was always that man. Not ‘Mr. Barrett’, not ‘the mercenary’ not ‘the Artemis recruiter’. Just... ‘that man’. “None, mother,” Shannon answered without looking up. “We did some exercises and he wants to know more about my linguistic skills. He thinks I might have some potential as a code-breaker or encryption specialist.”

“Your aunt is good with languages,” Ingrid said. “She’s working as a cultural liaison officer with ExoVentures.”

“I know, mother.”

“They’ve recently discovered a pre-Exodus colony. The farthest one discovered from Earth. No one knows how they made it that far. Almost completely reverted to barbarism. She developed the rosetta for all twenty of their languages and dialects. The project lead says she was instrumental in establishing relations with the population.”

“I know, mother.”

“But that’s probably not nearly as important as working on comm codes for some mercenary company.”

Shannon gritted her teeth. “I’d rather work for the Halo military, but we don’t have one.”

“Of course not,” Ingrid said, her tone turning icy. Shannon’s younger brother and her father remained silent, deeply fascinated by their food. They had their own opinions to offer on Shannon’s decision, and had done so on many occasions, but neither wanted to put themselves into the philosophical No Man’s Land between mother and daughter. “We’re Halos. We’ve moved beyond that sort of thing.”

Shannon set her fork down, her jaw tightening. “Sin Eater.”

Ingrid looked up, an angry flash in her eyes. “That was six hundred years ago, Shannon. It was another time. And no Halo served aboard it. We’ve put that behind us.”

“The rest of the galaxy hasn’t. They remember who built that ship, who designed it and what it did. They remember the shipyards where Imperial ships were upgraded into even more potent killing machines. They remember everything we’re capable of. Not killing, no. But anyone who wants to can come to us and as long as it’s an interesting enough puzzle, we’ll build a weapon for them, saying our hands are clean as long as we’re not the ones using it.”

“It was another time,” Ingrid replied frostily, though a touch of heat was entering her voice.

“Then’s what’s changed?” Shannon demanded. “We’re still here. We still build ships, design weapons.”

“We create vaccines,” her mother answered, her cheeks reddening with genuine anger. “We answer questions that no one else even thinks to ask. Physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, music and art. There isn’t a job or field of research in the galaxy that hasn’t benefited from a Halo’s work. We’ve uplifted planets, ended wars, stopped plagues and ended disease. We’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe, we’ve brought culture, literacy and life to dozens of worlds. Millions – billions – of lives have been saved because of us.”

“And the whole galaxy is still afraid of us,” Shannon said softly. “The last bastion of Imperial technology. The faded remnants of unified government sit over our heads, the ‘joint protectorate mission’ to prevent us from being ‘exploited’ by anyone else. To make sure no one else gets to use us to create horrors. To make sure we don’t do it ourselves. As long as the whole galaxy will protect us, will fight and die and bleed to the last for us, then we don’t need a military, do we? Other people die for our gifts, but we don’t. We don’t conquer other systems. We just crush them economically because they can’t compete with our industrial or technological edge. We don’t enslave anyone, because they line up to offer everything to us. Halo has never wanted, never had to fight for anything. We have always had everything. We’re paradise. A safe harbour amidst a thousand nations each trying to tear the others apart. We never, ever get our hands dirty.” She took another bite out of her supper. “Maybe it’s time one of us did.”

~

If Daniel was honest with himself, he’d be happier if Shannon had finished her university courses before signing up, since she was specializing in differential medicine, biochemistry and a half-dozen other fields that he couldn’t even get his head around. She had more than enough skill to be a medic or corpsman, but the thought of putting her in a front-line squad made his stomach do unpleasant things. If Artemis’s first Halo recruit got injured or, God forbid, killed in action, the Old Man would probably visit the unit commander in question to personally skin them alive. But there was no talking her out of it. He’d tried to nudge her towards completing her courses and then joining up, or working and studying in one of the mercenary company’s research divisions, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

He wasn’t too sure about the wisdom of the decision, but he also wasn’t going to push too hard, since he could end up driving her away entirely. Chances were she’d get one taste of action and go sprinting into the nearest lab. Not her fault, really. Halos didn’t fight, no matter how much this one wanted to prove a point.

~

Her bags were packed. Everything she needed for her new life squeezed into a pair of duffel bags. Clothes, toiletries, datapads, some ‘scrolls. Her hair was tied back in a severe ponytail. Her parents were waiting downstairs for her as the cab idled outside. Daniel was outside too; he’d been told he wasn’t welcome in the house. Instead, he was leaning against the taxi’s side, waiting patiently, though there was still some nervousness in his body language. She almost laughed at the thought. She was the one about to take the final steps on a new life and he looked more like a fretful groom than some hard-bitten mercenary recruiter.

Shannon let the blinds fall back into place.

They’d made up a word for her, the neighbourhood children. In their own language, of course. They shouted it whenever they saw her, ever since her decision had become known. Dal’yesh. ‘The Halo Who Fights.’ It wouldn’t have bothered her so much if it hadn’t caught on. If the adults, if her friends – her own family – hadn’t started using it. Two syllables that meant nothing... until they did. ‘Dal’yesh!’ the children shouted, over and over, half excited and proud, half spiteful and angry. ‘Dal’yesh’, the older Halos whispered behind her back or cursed it to her face. Two syllables.

Her hands balled into fists and she was struck by the sudden urge to smash something, anything within reach. “No,” she said, under her breath. “We don’t fight.” We just build weapons for those who do. We study, we research, we design. But we never use what we’ve created ourselves, no that would be barbaric. We just cluck our tongues and shake our heads when somebody uses what we’ve made at how uncivilized the rest of the galaxy is.

She stared at herself in the mirror. Daniel had given her an Artemis tunic and she was wearing it now, an image of the goddess herself, bow in hand, emblazoned on the left breast, an arrow notched and ready to fly. Shannon traced the crest’s outline idly, looking back at her image in the mirror. Her family was waiting for her downstairs. Her mother and father, her brother, her grandparents, her great-grandmother. They’d all try to get her to reconsider one last time. They’d fail. Shannon took a steadying breath and closed her eyes. This is what I want, she told herself. This is what I want. I want to do something, be something more. I don’t know if this will get me there... “But I won’t know if I stay here,” she said to herself, looking around one last time. She picked up her bags and headed downstairs.

~

“Hey, new girl.”

Shannon looked up at the voice. There was a woman standing in the door to the squadroom. Tall, with shoulder-length dark blonde tied into cornrows. Her eyes were a light shade of blue. Her unit patch indicated she was a private in Beta Squad. Even though she’d washed recently, she smelled like a machine, with the trace odour of oil, engine grease and lubricant hanging off her. Hardware tech. And she was a Darkknell.

Her nametag read HUTCHINS, A.

That fucking wharf rat, overheard words played themselves over in Shannon’s head, tone and voices captured perfectly by her eidetic memory. Darkknell trash.

Bar-hopping whore.

Psycho, they’re all crazy like she is.

Did you see what she did back on Eidolon?

I’d love to have her on her back.

I bet she gives great head.

Shannon blinked, clearing away the sudden rush of voices in her head. She refused to let anyone else tell her what someone was worth. “Hutchins, right?”

The other woman nodded. “Abigail Hutchins, at your service. I hear you’ve been assigned to Delta Company. St. Cloud’s looking for a place to put you.”

Shannon nodded. “That’s right.” I can’t wait until Hutchins finds out where they’re putting the Halo.

Why’s that?

She’s a Darkknell. Hayes is a Halo. You think someone who grew up in Port Royal will have any time for a pampered little braintrust? There’s going to be fur flying when those two meet. I just want a ringside seat when it happens. Shannon didn’t feel cornered, though. The other woman’s body language wasn’t confrontational and the way she spoke... it was unnerving, but not frightening or threatening.

Hutchins was silent for a moment, watching Shannon with her pale blue eyes, like a wild animal looking for weakness. “Beta took some hits last op,” she said. “We could use a medic who does more than faint at the sight of blood.” She looked at the Halo questioningly.

Shannon straightened. She wasn’t an overly tall woman and Hutchins had an inch or two on her. “I can do that.”

The Darkknell’s lips twitched in an aborted smile. “Sure about that? Beta gets in it – up to our knees.”

“I’m sure.”

Hutchins stayed silent a moment longer, still evaluating the red-haired woman. “I’m Beta’s tech, so you’d be partnered with me. If you want in on the squad, I can let our sergeant know and she can kick it up to St. Cloud.”

“Thank you. I’d be grateful if you did. I know he’s having some... difficulties figuring out where to put me.”

Abigail snorted. “That’s putting it mildly. Truth is, I don’t think he’ll be all that happier with my input.”

Shannon bit her lip, then took a gamble: “I’ve heard you like to cause trouble.”

Abigail stopped short, about to snap at Shannon when she realized the statement was free of accusation or condescension. “I guess my reputation precedes me,” she said instead, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“At least from the survivors. But I hear there’s not too many once you’re finished...”

Hutchins arched an eyebrow. “Battlefield, bed or bars?”

“Mostly the first two. I think having no survivors in a bar would make it hard to get the next round.”

“That’s true,” Hutchins chuckled and Shannon smiled lopsidedly, realizing she liked Abigail. “I think you’re starting to grow on me, rook. Okay, I’ll talk to Ellie Mae.” She turned to go, pausing in the doorway as a question suddenly occurred to her. “You didn’t even hesitate, even when I said I’d be your partner. It doesn’t bother you?”

“That you’re a Darkknell?”

Abigail nodded.

“No. You seem like good people.”

Abigail laughed again. “Oh, you really are new here. I’ll see what I can do to fix that mistaken impression.”

Shannon watched the other woman go. “I don’t think you will,” she said, so quietly that Abigail had no chance of overhearing her. But I’ll see if I change your mind.

~

“Four, get back- damnit, Four!”

Abby and Sergeant Donowitz were screaming at her as she ran through the cratered, muddy field, but she ignored their shouts. All around her, the mortars were falling, the high-pitched keen of the descending shells ending only when they hit the ground and erupted in columns of dirt, fire and blizzards of shrapnel. The blast wave of one knocked her down, face-first into the blood and mud of the churned soil, her hands scrabbling for purchase as she pulled herself back to her feet.

I won’t leave him.

Behind her, she could hear the crash of weapons as Beta fired over the lip of their trench, spraying the enemy positions with fire, forcing the rebel snipers and gunners down. Shannon’s heart was pounding in her ears as she ran, low and quick, picking her way through the field of razor wire, entrenchments and the burned and butchered corpses of Artemis troops. The guerrillas weren’t supposed to have anything more than small arms, but somehow they’d gotten their hands on military-grade antipersonnel mortars, turning Artemis’ push on their regional command post into a slaughter.

The shells whined down, moving back from the Artemis positions towards her as fire-control teams tried to zero in on her.

He’d begged them not to leave him, to come back. He didn’t know he’d already been abandoned, left for dead in the opening moments of the barrage.

She was getting close; somehow, over the sounds of the pounding artillery and her own beating heart, she could hear him. Even with their armour’s autosenses, no one else in Beta had been able to pick out the plaintive cries of the wounded man from their position, but none of them were Halos. Before she’d even thought about it, she’d been out of the trench and running, her squad’s shouts chasing her all the way. There was a glint of movement from the enemy line and she zagged abruptly, a sniper’s shot missing by inches. He was tracking her and she forced herself to reach for her own pistol, but the crack of Nine’s rifle ended the threat.

He was calling out for his mother.

She skidded into a crater; Beta Five, Andrew Fumere was there. His armour was perforated in a dozen places by shrapnel and one of his legs was a bloody mess. He saw her and shook his head. “Iss jus’ you?” he slurred. “No. Y’shouldn’ta come. Not fer me. Yer gonna die too.”

“No,” Shannon said, giving him a shot of stimulants and painkillers. “You’re not dying. No one’s dying.” His spine was intact, but he’d lost a lot of blood. Moving him was going to hurt, but she couldn’t stay here. Within seconds the gunners would know where she was and seconds after that, the next mortar round would come down. She grabbed Fumere and hefted him onto her shoulders. Even with the painkillers, he screamed in agony as the movement jarred the shrapnel in his body.

And she ran.

No one’s dying.

~

“Let her go.”

“No! No fucking way, you’re letting me walk out of here or I swear to the Nine Suns, I will cut her throat to the bone!” The pirate’s eyes were dilated; not just with fear, but with narcotic use. His breath smelled of black lotus and alcohol and his hands shook. The hostage – a young woman taken from one of the Insiders’ shipping raids and enslaved by the cartel – whimpered in his grip, terrified. The scent of ozone, gunpowder and blood filled the slaver’s halls, the occasional shot or scream echoing up as the Artemis strike team finished their purge. “Just let me go, just with this one. You can have the rest. Just this one and... and maybe a couple others. I just want my cut, my fair share. That’s all. I just want what’s mine. The rest are yours. I just want my cut.”

“Not going to happen,” Abigail said softly. The Darkknell was standing next to Shannon, her right hand dripping blood and hanging at her side, her left holding an ugly, serrated knife. Her visor was cracked and through it, Shannon could see her squadmate watching the pirate. Her breathing was slow and even, a she-wolf staring down her next meal. She didn’t even seem to realize she was injured, or care if she did.

The slave made a desperate almost animalistic whimper. Shannon forced herself to ignore the girl, keeping her attention on the pirate. “I told you to let her go.”

“Fuck you! What are you going to do, shoot me? Yeah, right! I know who you are – you’re that Halo Artemis likes to trot around with. That-that gun isn’t even loaded, I bet. You’re not going to shoot me. You don’t have it in you. None of you Halos do. Tell that bitch with the knife to let me pass. You can have the ship and everything on it, okay? I get to keep this one. She’s mine, so I-I get to keep her, or you’ll get to see what her insides look out! I’ll do it!”

“No,” Shannon said, with a bravado she didn’t feel. “You’re not going to hurt her. You’re not walking out of here and you’re not taking the girl with you. Artemis was hired to stop your cartel’s predations and to capture or kill every Insider that enters Delmontan space.”

“What the fuck do you care?!” the pirate exploded, hysteria tinting his voice. “You’re a merc! You think you-you-you have some kind of, what, honour? You think Artemis is any better than any of the other scum out there that sells themselves? You think you’re any better then me?”

“Yes. And you’re going to let the girl go, or I will shoot you,” Shannon answered. “You’re much bigger than your hostage. I have plenty of oppurtunities to put a bullet in you without hitting her.” Her mouth was dry as she forced each word out in a careful, clinical monotone. “I could shoot you through the eye. The bullet would pulverise the eye itself, punch through the socket and enter your brain. You’d be dead almost instantly, but the sudden flurry of synaptic activity from your damaged motor neurons might cause your knife hand to spasm. I don’t want that.

“I could shoot you in the throat. The bullet would rip through the major blood vessels and sever your spinal cord. It would take you longer to die – about three heartbearts if I hit the carotid artery properly and several seconds if I didn’t – but destroying your nerve cord would prevent you from hurting her. The knife would drop almost instantly from your hands. You’d try to clutch your throat to keep the blood from pouring out, but with your spinal cord so severely damaged or severed outright, you wouldn’t be able to move. You’d be trapped in your own body until your bled out. That’s assuming the hydraulic shock of the bullet didn’t draw the blood out of your brain causing immediate unconsciousness, of course.

“I could aim for your leg and open the femoral artery. That would take you even longer to die and psychologically, you’d be gripped by a sudden burst of pain and panic that would cause you to drop the knife and clutch at your leg in a makeshift tourniquet, but you’d be dead within a minute unless I saved your life... and if you had enough presence of mind to cut the girl’s throat before you fell, I wouldn’t even try to save you...” The pirate’s eyes twitched between the two women watching him and Shannon continued on, seemingly unhurried. “If you attempted to throw your hostage at us and make a run for it, I’d catch her and Beta Three here,” Shannon gestured to Abigail. “Would open you up with that knife. That would probably be the worst way to die. She has a particular grudge with slavers.

“On the other hand,” she let her voice lighten, putting a note of consideration into it and hoping it sounded as calm as she was hoping it did. “If you surrendered, you’d definitely make it off the ship alive. Delmont has promised a fair trial to all captured pirates. If you turned state’s evidence, you’d certainly avoid the death penalty and maybe even go into witness protection – far, far away from your former colleagues. It’s up to you. You can make your stand and end it all here, or you can put the knife down and earn a second chance. I honestly don’t want to see anybody die today that doesn’t have to. That includes you. Put the knife down and we’ll get you to Delmont. That’s your way out. You can survive this. All you have to do is let her go. Let her go and you’ll get out of this, I promise.”

The pirate wavered unsteadily on his feet, his drug-addled brain trying to process all of that information. Shannon’s breath caught in her throat and she forced herself to hold the gun steady, refusing to let the adrenalin rushing through her make her limbs shake. Her hands felt numb, her trigger finger as if it were stone. Despite what she’d said, she didn’t know if she could make herself shoot. He licked his lips. “A second chance?” he whispered, sweat dripping into his eyes.

Shannon nodded. “A second chance.”

The knife clattered to the ground. With a sob, his hostage rushed away – Shannon caught her, holding her closely. “It’s all right,” she told the girl. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

Two members of Delta squad came to take the pirate away and additional medical staff arrived for the ex-slave. Abigail waved off their attentions, preferring to let Shannon examine her injury. “Christ, Shannie,” the Darkknell said. “I think that guy was just about shitting himself.” She hesitated a moment, wincing as the medic applied an antiobiotic cream to her lacerated palm. “I don’t think I would have been able to talk him down. I don’t know if I’d have wanted to. Not after what that sick fuck was doing to that poor girl, what his friends have been doing. She shook her head. “I would’ve shot him. Even with the girl, I would have dropped him and watched him bleed out.”

“I know,” Shannon said without condemnation.

“Were you going to shoot him? If he’d killed that girl in front of you just for spite... could you have shot him?”

Shannon didn’t – couldn’t – look up at her squadmate. When she spoke, it was very quiet. Her cheeks were burning with a mixture of shame and relief. “I don’t know, Abby,” she said. “ I don’t know. And I don’t know that I ever want to find out.”

[Mr. Coffee]

I like the back story on Shannon, I really do...

But that shit is keeping us from finding out what happens next. Gt the story going.

[Dass.Kapital]

*Shivers* Yess...

More is good...

[Ryan Thunder]

What is so terrible about Sin Eater? Was it powered by the living sacrifice of defiled kittens?

[Bladed_Crescent]

like the back story on Shannon, I really do...

But that shit is keeping us from finding out what happens next. Gt the story going.

hehehe!

Hopefully the next chapter should be up within a week and, yes, it will be a "present time" chapter. I hope to hit a couple threads in it, Cynthia's arrival being one of them. Ah heh heh heh.

*Shivers* Yess...

More is good...

"More is good, all is better." - 242nd Rule of Acquisition

What is so terrible about Sin Eater? Was it powered by the living sacrifice of defiled kittens?

Heh. I've been wondering when someone would ask that. To understand why, even six hundred years later, people are still scared of Sin Eater, think of it like this:

Pick a space opera franchise, any one you like. Let's say Star Wars.

Now, imagine one of the most powerful ships in that universe. A Super Star Destroyer.

Picture another one. And another. And another, until you have an entire fleet of them.

Now. Imagine that fleet burning. Vessels holed and ruined by weapons fire, cratered by missiles or seared by energy cannon, others literally torn apart as if by an angry child's hands, still others are folded in on themselves like abstract paintings, some have been pounded into air-bleeding wrecks, some are nothing more than expanding clouds of dust and gas. Now, imagine all of that devastation, all of that carnage and death has been caused by one ship. Just one.

That is Sin Eater, and that is why even six centuries hence, its name still invokes terror and revulsion. A monumental achievement of science and engineering, the crown jewel of shipbuilding...

And Earth said unto Halo, "Make me a weapon, one that will win me a war. One that will extinguish stars and drown planets. Make me a weapon that will cause its victims' ancestors to cry out in horror and their descendants to weep in fear. Forge it in blood and steel and give it life. Do this for me and we shall be safe forever."

And Halo bowed and whispered, "That I can surely do."
-The Catechism of the Final War, Andrei Kopolov

[Themightytom]

What is so terrible about Sin Eater? Was it powered by the living sacrifice of defiled kittens?

It was the command ship of Bank Of America.

Nice updates Blade, somehow I missed the last three!

[bilateralrope]

Shannon seems to be one of the few sane things to come out of Drop 47. And she went back.

[phred]

Well, it was only going to be one chapter, but then you said two and I got to thinking - why not two? Remember, folks - if you're miffed about having to wait until next chapter to find out what happens in the here and now, Vortex Empire is the man to talk to.

Thanks Vortex

Honestly though, any update is a good update. maybe you can do a Voyage of the Sin Eater next... on second thought, it probably wouldn't be as fun. Carry on!

[The Vortex Empire]

I'm sorry! Please don't hurt me!

[LadyTevar]

Shannon seems to be one of the few sane things to come out of Drop 47. And she went back.

She didn't come out. Her Grandfather went in and never came back.