"The siding is just ahead." Mack announced, as if nothing particularly exciting had just happened. "I'd stop the container, but the primary target just increased its speed by a factor of three."
As the Warthog hit a barren patch of soil between two vineyard plots, Avery steered south and raced toward a polycrete platform. He could see the container sliding in from the west, moving at a decent clip, flanked by a pair of dusters. Mack must have been watching the Warthog from the JOTUNs' cameras—adjusting the container's speed as necessary—because Avery hit the platform's loading ramp at exactly the right moment to sail up into the container's open door, past Ponder, Healy and a handful of recruits. The Warthog slammed down onto the container's metal flooring and skidded to a stop.
"Healy!" Avery yelled, jumping down from his seat. "We got wounded!"
But the Corpsman was already sprinting to the Warthog, followed closely by Jenkins and Forsell.
Jenkins pulled up short, and stared at the rescued civilian with anger and confusion. "Where are the rest?"
"He's it," Byrne said, pulling the unconscious man from his seat and easing him to the floor.
Healy looked at the man's burns and shook his head. Then he removed an antiseptic bandage from his med kit and draped it over the man's charred chest.
Jenkins shot Avery a desperate look. "We gotta go back!"
Avery dismounted. "No."
"What the do you mean, no?" Jenkins cried.
"Watch yourself," Byrne growled, rising to his feet.
Avery shot Byrne an angry look: Let me handle this. "The warship's heading straight for town." He strode to Jenkins around the Warthog's crumpled hood. "We go back and we're all dead."
"What about my family?!" Jenkins shouted, spittle flying from his lips.
Avery reached for Jenkins' shoulder, and this time he did make contact. But Jenkins shoved his hand away.
For a moment the Staff Sergeant and his recruit stared at one another. Jenkins' fists were clenched and trembling. Avery thought about all the harsh things he might have said to bring the insubordinate recruit back into line. He knew none of them would work as well as the truth.
"They're gone. I'm sorry."
Tears welling in his eyes, Jenkins turned and slumped to the back of the container. There he took an elevator platform up to a thick metal door—one that would lead to a control cabin if the container ever managed another climb up Harvest's elevators to become a space-faring freighter. As the container sped across the Ida, Jenkins peered through the door's thick porthole and watched the alien warship cast its shadow over Gladsheim. He wept as the plasma spilled down.
The fires from Gladsheim's fertilizer warehouses would burn brighter than Epsilon Indi as it set. The melting frames of its gutted buildings would glow until the star rose the following day.
Eventually, Avery would follow Jenkins up the lift and guide the grief-stricken recruit back to his militia brothers. But for now, he simply stared as Healy tended to Gladsheim's last evacuee.
As the Corpsman covered wounds he didn't have the skill to heal, it struck Avery that today's losses were just the beginning. And worse: that if corralling the people of Harvest into Utgard was the extent of Lt. Commander's al-Cygni's evacuation plan, then he had done nothing more for this man—or any of the refugees—than delay their inevitable doom.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RELIQUARY, HIGH ORBIT
The alien orbital was much more spacious than Dadab had expected. Even though its interior was dark and very cold, he could feel the space around him soar—extend out and up to a curved double hull that was the orbital's only barrier against the vacuum. Pale blue light from the stackable energy cores he and the other Unggoy had brought from Rapid Conversion illuminated six silver spars that ran the length of the facility. The spars were cross-braced with beams, thicker than Dadab was tall.
The Jiralhanae had determined the orbital was part of a lifting system the aliens used to move cargo to and from the surface. On Maccabeus' orders, the Unggoy had established outposts at its seven cable junctions—gaps in its hull for the golden wires that stretched up from the planet's surface, through the orbital, and on to another silver arc much farther above.
Dadab wasn't entirely clear why the Chieftain was so keen to garrison the facility after ignoring it for so many cycles; if anything dangerous came up the cables, Rapid Conversion could vaporize it long before it reached the orbital. But he hadn't pressed for clarification.
Something was brewing on the Jiralhanae ship—an odd tension between Maccabeus and his pack. Until things got back to normal, Dadab was more than happy to leave the cruiser.
Getting aboard the orbital had been something of a challenge. Naturally, none of its airlocks were sized to fit a Spirit dropship, and in the end, the Jiralhanae had made their way inside the same way the Kig-Yar had boarded the alien freighters: by burning through its hull with a resupply umbilical. This had actually been Dadab's suggestion, and the seeming originality of his plan had bristled Tartarus' fur.
When the security officer pressed Dadab to explain how he had arrived at such an ingenious solution, the Deacon attributed the idea to Lighter Than Some. This was mainly to avoid dredging up self-incriminating details of his time aboard the Kig-Yar privateer, but Dadab also hoped to boost the Huragok's flagging esteem. Lighter Than Some still had not finished repairing the damaged Spirit, and its lack of progress was trying Tartarus' patience.
When Dadab had bid his friend good-bye before departing for the orbital, the Huragok had signed that it was almost finished with its work. But to the Deacon's eyes—at least from the outside—the Spirit looked as broken as ever.
It turned out that inserting the umbilical was more challenging than Dadab had imagined.
Unlike the alien freighters, the orbital's double hull was filled with some sort of reactive material—spongy yellow foam designed to instantly fill holes made by micrometeorites and other space-born debris. But eventually the umbilical's penetrator tip had burned its way through. Tartarus and Vorenus were first to leap through the shimmering energy barrier down onto the orbital's central walkway with spike rifles drawn.
To Dadab's surprise, the two Jiralhanae barely stayed long enough to sniff the air inside—to verify the facility was as devoid of life as Rapid Conversion's scans suggested. With a brusque command to keep signal traffic to a minimum, Tartarus and Vorenus departed, leaving Dadab to guide sixty terrified Unggoy through the pitch-black interior. The Deacon ordered the energy cores lit and they set off, hefting methane recharge stations and other luminous equipment.
Tartarus had issued Dadab a plasma pistol and, even though the Deacon had no intention of firing the weapon, he had kept it clipped to his harness to mollify the temperamental security officer. This choice had an unexpected benefit: on its lowest power setting, the pistol made a fine torch—a brilliant emerald leading a procession of lesser gems. Soon all the Unggoy were settled, eight or nine at each cable junction.
So far they had spent almost three sleep-cycles away from the Jiralhanae cruiser. Dadab had made it a habit to traverse the facility at least twice a cycle and check in on each encampment.
After he'd made a few trips back and forth, he didn't even bother to power-on his pistol. The walkway was straight (except where it angled around the junctions) and lined with ample railings. And the cheerful, blue light of each encampment's clustered energy cores made it easy to navigate from one to the other.
But Dadab's confidence—the pleasure he felt making his rounds—sprang from a deeper source. In an odd way, his cycles aboard the alien orbital reminded him of the happiest period of his life: the time he had spent in the Ministry of Tranquility's seminary.
The dormitory he had shared with the other Unggoy Deacons-in-training was a warren of low-lit cells deep in the base of the Ministry's tower in High Charity. They had spent many of the holy city's artificial nights gathered around energy cores, suckling from communal food nipples and assisting each other in the memorization of glyphs and scripture. As crowded as the dormitory was, Dadab remembered the camaraderie of those days with great fondness. He had hoped his new alien cloister might have a similar unifying effect on Rapid Conversion's Unggoy. But the vast majority of them still showed little enthusiasm for his religious instruction.
"Would none of you care to visit High Charity?" the Deacon asked.
The eight Unggoy guarding one of the orbital's centermost junctions sat close together, hardened hands raised toward a heating coil plugged into one of the cores. The pinkish plasma wavering inside the coil cast an eerie glow, revealing dark pairs of eyes that seemed eager for the Deacon to quickly make his point and move on to the next encampment.
"On our return, I will gladly sponsor a pilgrimage." It was a generous offer, but the other Unggoy said nothing. Dadab sighed inside his mask.
It was a commonly held belief amongst all true believers that everyone should see High Charity at least once in their lifetime. The problem was, the San'Shyuum's holy city was constantly in motion, and the vast distances between the various Covenant fleets and habitats made travel prohibitively expensive for the faith's less prosperous adherents. Even so, Dadab was shocked that these Unggoy lacked even the desire to make the journey.
"The sacred vessel alone is worth the effort." Dadab used his stubby fingers to trace the Forerunner Dreadnought's triangular shape in midair. "It is an awe-inspiring sight. Especially from the lower districts."
"My cousin live in districts," mumbled Bapap. He was the only Unggoy from Dadab's original, twenty-member study-group in this particular encampment. An unusually large Unggoy name Flim shot Bapap a nasty look, and Dadab's only eager pupil did his best to disappear into his harness.
Flim sat on a pile of equipment boxes and supplies. Deep, oozing pits in his chitinous skin indicated a prolonged struggle with barnacles, a common affliction with Unggoy who worked the foul bilges of large habitats. Dadab knew it wasn't wise to cross an Unggoy tough enough to survive that hellish occupation. But he continued as if ignorant of Flim's disapproval.
"Oh? Which district?"
Bapap didn't meet the Deacon's gaze. "I … do not know."
"What's your cousin's name?" Dadab persisted. "We might have met." The chances of that were one in a million, but he was eager to keep the conversational spark alive. All the encampments were beginning to devolve into fiefdoms, and Dadab was eager to reverse the trend—Unggoy like Flim were harming his ministry, making it impossible to uplift his flock.
"Yayap, son of Pum," Bapap said nervously. "Of Balaho's blasted scablands."
Unggoy didn't have surnames. Instead they formally identified themselves by the names and birthplaces of favorite patriarchs. Dadab knew this Pum could have been anyone; Bapap's uncle or great-great-grandfather or some mythical paterfamilias his ancestors revered. Balaho was the name of the Unggoy homeworld, but Dadab wasn't familiar with the district Bapap had mentioned. Even so, he persevered.
"Does he work for a ministry?"
"He serves the Sangheili."
"As a soldier?"
"A sentry."
"He must be very brave."
"Or stupid," Flim grumbled, extracting a food packet from his pile. "Like Yull." He jabbed a length of tubing into the packet, screwed the other end onto a nipple protruding from his mask, and began to suckle sludge. The other Unggoy hunched closer to the heating coil.
The Deacon knew very little about the Jiralhanae's first descent to the alien planet—the parley in the gardens. He had spent the whole mission on Rapid Conversion's bridge, minding the Luminary. But Dadab knew Bapap had been part of the Unggoy contingent, as had most of his study group. Thanks in part to the Deacon's ministrations, these were Rapid Conversion's most confident and reliable Unggoy, and Maccabeus had asked for them specifically.
Tragically, one of the group, Yull, had not returned. And when Dadab had asked why, Bapap and the others wouldn't say. Eventually Dadab screwed up enough courage to confront Maccabeus in Rapid Conversion's feasting hall.
"He was disobedient, and Tartarus killed him," the Chieftain had replied with shocking candor. "Your pupils have learned nothing, Deacon. Nothing that makes them useful to me now."
It was a stinging indictment, one that hurt Dadab deeply. "I am sorry, Chieftain. What else would you have me do?" But the Chieftain had simply stared down at the hall's mosaic, his silver-tufted arms clasped tightly behind his back.
Maccabeus hadn't said much of anything to anyone since he had received the Ministry's clipped response to his jubilant confirmation of the reliquary and the Oracle. After an awkward silence, broken only by the sizzling snaps of the oil lamps, Dadab had bowed and turned to go.
"Which is the greater sin," Maccabeus asked after Dadab had taken a handful of backward steps, "disobedience or desecration?"
"I suppose it would depend on the circumstances," the Deacon took a deep breath. The valves in his mask clicked as he carefully chose his words. "The punishments for those who knowingly defy the Prophets are severe. But so too the penalties for harming holy relics."
"The Prophets." Maccabeus' words fell flat—a period on some unspoken thought.
"Chieftain. Is there nothing I can do?" Dadab had begun to think this was not a theoretical discussion, and that Maccabeus was in a real crisis. But the Chieftain's only answer was to dismiss Dadab with a slow, backhand sweep of his paw.
As Dadab had slunk out of the hall, he saw the Chieftain step toward the ring in the mosaic that represented the Age of Doubt: a band of black opals, each stone flecked red and orange and blue. Dadab had expected the Chieftain to raise his arms in a prayer pose, or show some other deference to a symbol he usually treated with reverence. But the Chieftain simply brushed the ring with one of his large, two-toed feet, as if he were wiping off a smudge.
Not long after this, Maccabeus had ordered the Unggoy to the orbital.
