Halo: Contact Harvest (36 page)

“Open fire!” Byrne shouted in his throat mic, finishing his roll. As he sprung to his feet and dashed for a berm of sandbags protecting the reactor tower’s security door, Stisen, Habel, Bur-dick, and sixteen other militiamen let loose with their MA5s. The lead vehicle erupted in sparks and tracer fire, and its driver might have died right then and there if the two other vehicles hadn’t boosted toward the complex, swerved off the access road, and smashed right through the chain-link fence, dividing the militiamen’s fire.

“Loki!” Byrne unshouldered his battle rifle. “What’s your status?” He pumped three bursts into one of the trailing vehicles’ engines as it followed the leader counterclockwise around the reactor and out of sight.

Byrne hadn’t heard from the AI since it had fired the mass driver at the alien warship—loosed two shots like point-blank thunder that left Byrne hearing bells despite the plugs he and the militiamen had screwed deep into their ears. The Staff Sergeant knew it took significant power to charge the driver’s coils and pull off two back-to-back shots. During their last briefing with Ponder, Loki had made it clear that after his initial volley, he would need to temporarily go off-line and check the reactor—or risk meltdown the next time the driver fired.

“And what happens,” Byrne had asked, “If a one-two punch isn’t enough to drop their ship?”

“For all our sakes, Staff Sergeant,” the AI had smiled, “you had better hope it is.”

Byrne swept his battle rifle right and fired on the lead vehicle as it completed its circle around the tower. He saw tan fur bristling from breaks in the driver’s armor and recognized the creature as the taller of the gold-armored alien’s escorts from the day they’d met in the botanical gardens.

“Watch yourselves!” Byrne shouted as the alien accomplished a quick banking turn around the halves of the ruined Warthog. Hot metal spikes rattled from two rifles mounted above and behind its wheels, forcing Byrne and the three recruits behind the berm to duck and cover. The spikes split the uppermost row of sandbags and drilled into the tower’s polycrete wall. Some of the rounds splintered against the metal security door, scattering red-hot shrapnel onto the asphalt near Byrne’s boots.

“Stisen!” the Staff Sergeant shouted to his 2/A squad leader, positioned on the first floor roof, directly above the berm. “Get some fire on that bastard!”

But the ornery constable shouted back his own command: “Move, Staff Sergeant! Now!”

And Byrne did—dove sideways ahead of the vehicle’s charging growl, tackling the two nearest recruits out of the way as its bladed wheels burst through the berm, filling the air with sand. The vehicle collided with the security door and smashed it from its frame. By the time Byrne rose to a knee and brought his weapon to bear, the vehicle had reversed and was revving for another go.

“Inside!” Byrne yelled, sprinting for the door. Habel and another recruit named Jepsen made it safely into the tower. But the third, an older recruit named Vallen, didn’t have the speed. The vehicle cut him down an instant before it smashed against the empty door frame. Byrne watched as the recruit disappeared beneath its slashing wheels only to appear a moment later, like wood fed through a chipper—bits of fatigues and body parts tossed skyward, back toward the complex gate.

“Downstairs!” Byrne shouted at Habel and Jepsen, reloading his battle rifle. “Find a choke point!” The two recruits retreated down a narrow hallway to a stairwell that led to the basement levels and Loki’s data center.

Byrne could just see the top of the blue-armored alien’s head behind its vehicle’s engine. He pinged some rounds off the beast’s helmet, and the alien pulled the vehicle away from the door, flinging spikes. Byrne ran zigzag down the hallway. Just as he reached the stairwell, the firing stopped. He whipped around in time to see the tan-haired alien dismount and charge through the smashed-in door.

Byrne fired multiple bursts as the alien rushed toward him down the hallway, hunched over and clawing the polished polycrete with its paws. Byrne’s rounds all hit but they ricocheted off its energy shields.

“Shite!” Byrne cursed. He vaulted the stairwell railing and landed one flight below. As the alien unleashed a salvo of spikes above him, Byrne jumped down a second flight to the basement floor. He took off down a low corridor and the alien crashed down behind him. The Staff Sergeant wouldn’t have made it very far if Habel and Jepsen hadn’t been waiting at a four-way junction, just in front of Loki’s data center.

The two militiamen opened fire around the corners of their branching hallways as Byrne sprinted past. Shot-for-shot, their MA5s weren’t as powerful as Byrne’s battle rifle. But what their weapons lacked in muzzle velocity they made up for in rate of fire. With both recruits firing full automatic, the alien’s energy shields began to falter; cyan plasma vented from its joints as the armor struggled to stay charged. But instead of retreating up the stairwell, the alien marched slowly forward, spewing spikes.

One caught Jepsen in the neck, and he went down in a gurgling spray. Another struck Habel in the hip, shattering the bones. Byrne caught the second recruit as he fell, wrapped an arm across his chest and fired his battle rifle one-handed. The alien drilled two more spikes into Habel’s chest—one straight through Byrne’s bicep. The Staff Sergeant grunted, dropped his rifle, and staggered back to the data center’s door.

“Watch yourself!” Loki announced through Byrne’s helmet speaker as the door slid open. But Byrne was already leaning back toward what he thought would be a solid surface, and couldn’t shift his balance. He caught his boot heel on the threshold and toppled backward as the two halves of the door slid shut, trapping the blue-armored alien on the other side.

“Been a little busy,” the AI said by way of apology. “The containers are on the strands.”

Byrne laid Habel gently on the floor. But he barely had enough time to take in his surroundings—a fluorescent-lit machine room filled with vertical pipes and cables, leading down to the reactor chamber a few floors below—before the alien was roaring and hammering at the door.

“And the warship?”

“Down for the count.”

Byrne drew his M6 pistol from a holster in the side of his assault vest. His bicep was torn and burned. He would have to fire off-handed. “No wonder he’s so pissed.”

Just then, the data-center door slid open—its two halves pushed apart by the blades of the alien’s spike rifle. The creature worked its weapon back and forth, widening the gap until there was enough room for it to jam in its paws and pry the door apart. Moving back toward the data center proper—an isolated metal container in a much larger, dim-lit room—Byrne fired through the gap at what he guessed was head height. The alien roared and drew back one of its paws.

The Staff Sergeant enjoyed a rush of triumph, thinking he might finally have taken down its shields. But a moment later, he saw something long and heavy tumble end over end through the gap: a barbed club, longer than his arm. Byrne rolled sideways to let the thing sail past, and it stuck into the data center wall. The Staff Sergeant noticed thin black smoke wafting from the club’s spiked head. “Aw, hell,” he growled a split second before the grenade detonated, flinging fire and shrapnel.

Fortunately for the Staff Sergeant, the grenade’s blast was narrow and directional. But this wasn’t so good for Loki. As Byrne rose to a knee, clutching his bleeding bicep, he saw a ragged hole in the data center’s wall. Inside, he could see the AI’s racked arrays were a burning mess.

Before Byrne could call out to Loki, the blue-armored alien had shouldered through the door. The Staff Sergeant raised his M6 and squeezed off a few rounds. But then the alien had him around the shoulders.

Byrne was a big man. But the alien was a meter taller and outweighed him by half a metric ton. It bent Byrne over and hustled him headfirst into the data center’s wall, just beside the hole. If the Staff Sergeant hadn’t been wearing his helmet, his skull would have shattered. Instead, the impact only knocked him unconscious. The next thing Byrne knew, the alien had him by the wrists and was dragging him, belly-up, back into the raging fire-fight outside the tower.

Byrne’s helmet was gone, as were both his weapons. The alien had torn off his assault vest with a single, vicious swipe of its paw; there were bloody clawmarks down the center of his olive-drab shirt and his chest stung and throbbed. He tried to get his feet under him and break free of the alien’s grip. But the creature simply turned at the waist, and smashed a giant fist into Byrne’s face, breaking his nose and cheekbone. As the Staff Sergeant’s head rolled between his shoulders, the alien hauled him over the sandbag berm in plain view of the recruits on the tower.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Stisen yelled. “You’ll hit the Staff Sergeant!”

Byrne tried to shout: “No!”—tell Stisen to drop the tan-haired alien and him both—but his jaw was dislocated, and his order came out like angry cough.

The alien picked Byrne up and drove him roughly to his knees. It pulled its spike rifle from its belt and drew the crescent blades across his shoulder. The blades were bent and chipped from being wedged into the data center door, and the Staff Sergeant roared—a throaty blast of air past his flapping jaw—as they grated across his clavicle. The alien barked something that would have been incomprehensible if it hadn’t pulled the blades from Byrne’s shoulder and placed them against his neck:
Surrender, or he dies!

Don’t any of you do it!
Byrne cursed. But before his recruits could lay down their weapons and disappoint, a sudden chorus of approaching engines echoed off the tower.

In his current state, Byrne had difficulty comprehending the sheer numbers of his rescuers: the ten gargantuan combines backed by phalanxes of gondolas that came rolling over the eastern ridge, the squadrons of dusters that darkened the western sky. But the sight of the approaching JOTUN army stunned the blue-armored alien, and it pulled its weapon from Byrne’s neck. When it did, all the recruits on the tower opened fire.

The massive brute fell backward, gouting dark red blood, leaving Byrne to topple forward. By the time the Staff Sergeant rolled over on his back, the militiamen had shot one of the other armored aliens from his vehicle and the third was boosting back to the complex gate, retreating toward Utgard and its warship.

It didn’t get very far. Two JOTUN dusters dove from a circling wedge and slammed into the alien’s vehicle with all the accuracy of guided missiles. The vehicle exploded in an orange fireball tinged with purple smoke, leaving a deep crater. Its jagged wheels came loose, and they rolled forward a good distance down the road before wobbling apart and veering off into the wheat.

“Nice and easy!” Stisen grimaced as he, Burdick, and two other recruits grabbed Byrne by his arms and legs and carried him to an approaching gondola. The machine lowered its spill-ramp, releasing a load of JOTUN all-in-ones.

“Where are they going?” Burdick asked as the spidery JOTUNs skittered toward the tower.

“Who cares,” Stisen grunted as they hefted Byrne up the ramp.
“We’re
getting the hell back into town.”

The recruits propped Byrne up at the back of the gondola. Squinting his eyes against the pain that filled him head to toe, Byrne saw the all-in-ones scramble up the tower and began work in the maser antennae. Before Byrne could even begin to wonder why, the mass driver’s gimble angled up from the western wheat, only to come to a clanging stop against the raised header of a JOTUN combine.

The two gargantuan machines wrestled for the better part of a minute—the JOTUN rising up on its huge tires like a rutting stag—until the gimble relaxed with a defeated, pneumatic hiss, lowering the combine to the ground. But the JOTUN kept its header pressed down against the gimble and left its engine running, just in case it again needed to put the mass driver in its place.

By then all the recruits were aboard the gondola. It raised its spill-ramp, maxed power to its electric engine, and headed for the Utgard highway. After that, all Byrne could see was sky.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Dadab hunched behind a bright blue barrel, plasma pistol clutched in his hardened fist. He could feel the metal projectiles from the aliens’ weapons plink through the barrel’s plastic walls and bury themselves in the yellow foam inside. Of the sixteen Unggoy that had managed to retreat back to Dadab’s side of the middlemost junction—the side opposite the control-room—only four remained: himself, Bapap, and two others named Fup and Humnum.

The barrels were arranged in a half-circle two deep, facing away from the junction. Dadab had urged Flim to construct a similar barricade near the control room, but he hadn’t checked the other Unggoy’s work. By the time the Deacon’s group had muscled their own barrels from storage platforms protruding from the walkway, the aliens’ booby-trapped containers were already rising into the orbital.

Of course the Deacon had no idea the containers were rigged—that the hapless Unggoy who entered the junctions’ umbilicals would be blown to pieces. In the first moments of the aliens’ attack, almost half of the orbital’s sixty Unggoy were killed or wounded. The Deacon ordered all the survivors to fall back, and it was a wise decision. The two remaining containers held something even worse than explosives: well-armed alien soldiers, eager for a vengeful fight.

The walkway shook as another pair of the large containers passed quickly through the orbital and continued upwards along the cables. Dadab hadn’t bothered to keep track of how many of the boxes had ascended, but he guessed it was close to a hundred. And unless he had misunderstood
Lighter Than Some,
the Deacon knew exactly what they held: the planet’s population—the Jiralhanae’s prey.

As the containers’ rumble faded, the aliens’ fire intensified. Dadab was no warrior, but he correctly assumed this meant they were about to charge.

“Get ready!” He yelled to Bapap.

The other Unggoy looked forlornly at his plasma pistol’s battery meter, a holographic swirl above the weapon’s grip. “Not have many shots.”

“Then make sure they’re good!” Dadab tightened his grip on his own pistol and prepared to spring up behind the barrels. But as he tried to rise, he found that he was stuck to the floor.

Unbeknownst to Dadab, the aliens’ bullets had ruptured the barrel at his back, and some of the sticky foam had leaked out and adhered to the bottom of his tank, gluing him to the walkway. At first he cursed his bad luck. But then he witnessed Bapap’s fate and realized just how fortunate he had been.

Green energy building between his pistol’s charging poles, Bapap stood up into a wall of flying metal. The stout Unggoy’s neck and shoulders exploded in bright blue blood, and he crumpled to the walkway. Bapap’s trigger finger spasmed as he fell, unleashing a pair of wild shots that splashed against the orbital’s hull. Dadab watched as the bubbling holes quickly filled with the same reactive foam that had just saved his life.

Then Dadab felt vibrations in the walkway: the tramp of the aliens’ heavy boots as they approached the barrel barricade from the third junction. He knew he needed to move or die. But he wasn’t willing to leave Bapap. He was his Deacon. He would stand by him until the end.

Dadab took a deep breath, filling his mask with methane—enough for a handful of shallow breaths. Then he pulled his supply lines from his glued-down tank, slipped out of its harness and crawled to Bapap’s shivering form.

“You will be all right,” the Deacon said.

“Will I take Journey?” Bapap mumbled, blood oozing from his mask’s circular vents.

“Of course.” Dadab took his comrade’s spiny fist in his own. “All true believers walk The Path.”

Suddenly, Humnum and Fup rose up, brandishing their pink, explosive shards. Neither Unggoy had been part of Dadab’s study group. They were large, quiet, and had deep scars in their chitinous skin—evidence of a rough-and-tumble habitat upbringing. Likely the two Unggoy had seen their share of fights and had decided to end their lives on their feet with cutlasses raised. That or they were preparing to flee. But they didn’t get a chance either way.

Dadab heard the aliens’ weapons clatter and both Unggoy fell—Humnum with a tattered chest and Fup with half his head. The rounds that shattered Fup’s skull had also penetrated his tank. Shimmering trails of methane followed him to the floor… directly onto Humnum’s upraised cutlass. Dadab had a moment to curl into a ball before the shard exploded, igniting the methane trails. Then Fup’s tank blew to pieces, spewing metal fragments into Dadab and the first alien to turn the corner of the barrel barricade.

Dadab heard guttural screaming as the alien reacted to its wounds. The Deacon was in agony as well—from the flying metal as well as his aching lungs; he’d spent almost all his mask’s methane speaking to Bapap. Despite the pain and building panic, he managed to stay still. And when the other aliens thrust their weapons around the barrels, scanning for survivors, Dadab and Bapap appeared as corpses, one curled beside the other.

Drawing the shallowest breath he could, the Deacon listened to the aliens try and calm their wounded comrade. Exhaling, he considered his bleak choices: die of asphyxiation or go down shooting. He still had his plasma pistol. But he wouldn’t be able to move without drawing the aliens’ fire. And frankly, he didn’t see much point. Those around him were dead or dying, and he assumed Flim’s outpost would soon suffer a similar fate now that the aliens could press in from both sides. The Deacon closed his eyes and prepared to join Bapap on The Path, when a volley of molten spikes whizzed past the barrels, dropping two more aliens where they stood.

The Deacon’s senses faded with his methane. His beady eyes began to swim with bright stars. He thought he heard the buzz of Yanme’s wings and the surprised shouts of the aliens as they retreated toward the control center. Then he passed out.

“Breathe,” a deep voice echoed in Dadab’s ear.

He woke a few seconds later, just in time to see a Jiralhanae’s hairy paws finish connecting his mask’s supply lines to Humnum’s tank. “Where is the Huragok?”

“Around. The bend,” the Deacon gasped. For a moment he thought Maccabeus was his savior. But as his vision cleared, he realized it was Tartarus, now wearing the Chieftain’s golden armor. Dadab knew exactly what this meant. “Inside the control room,
Chieftain
.”

Tartarus ripped Humnum’s lifeless body from his tank, and held its harness open for Dadab. “Show me.”

“But the wounded…” Dadab said weakly, sliding into the bloody straps.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Tartarus pumped a single glowing spike into the center of Bapap’s chest. The Unggoy jerked once and was still.

“
Rapid Conversion
is disabled—the victim of an alien trap.” Tartarus leveled his weapon at Dadab. “They tricked us with information only one of us could give.”

Dadab looked up from Bapap’s corpse, more stunned than frightened.

“You can live long enough to explain the extent of your betrayal. Or you will die here like the others.” Tartarus jerked his weapon toward the control center, commanding Dadab to run. And he did, Tartarus following close behind, the
Fist of Rukt
clanking loudly against his armor.

As Dadab rounded the junction, he found himself in the middle of a raging firefight.

It turned out that Flim had made multiple barricades: one around the control room’s pried-open door, and another farther down the central walkway. Flim, Tukduk, Guff, and a few others still held the nearest line of barrels, but the aliens pressing from the far end of the orbital had taken the latter. Between the two lines were many Unggoy bodies.

Dadab saw the aliens who had stormed his barrels heading toward the far barricade, trading fire with Flim and the others near the control center. One of the aliens fell, downed by a plasma-burst to the back. The Deacon saw Guff leap from cover to finish the job, only to be cut down by an alien with black skin who leapt over the far line of barrels. This alien lifted the wounded soldier by an arm, and hauled him back to the barrels while laying down cover fire for the last of his retreating comrades.

Tartarus brandished his hammer and charged into the fray. The Yanme’e were already engaged; at least two dozen of the insects swarmed toward the alien’s barricade, flitting from one walkway support cable to the next. But not all the Yanme’e were focused on the aliens. Dadab watched in horror as a trio of the creatures wriggled through the gap in the control room door. Ignoring stray rounds from the aliens’ weapons meant for Tartarus, as well as a surprised look from Flim as he rushed past, Dadab sped after the three Yanme’e, already knowing he was too late.

The insects had shown
Lighter Than Some
no mercy. The Huragok had usurped their position once, and they were determined not to let it happen again. By the time Dadab was through the door, his dearest friend was ribbons—reduced to strips of pink flesh dangling from the Yanme’e's hooked fore-limbs. The noise of the battle outside the control room ringing in his ears, the Deacon stared at the dissipating cloud of methane and other gasses from
Lighter Than Some
’s lacerated sacs. One of the Huragok’s severed tentacles was sunk deep into a gap in the centermost tower’s protective paneling. The Yanme’e skittered over one another in an effort to pull the limb loose, but it was firmly rooted—its cilia tightly bonded to the alien circuits.

Dadab filled with rage. As the insects continued their gruesome tug of war, the Deacon raised his pistol and let them have it.

The closest Yanme’e's triangular head was boiled away before the others’ antennae were up. Dadab burned the second as it attempted to take flight and roasted the third as it buzzed for cover behind the arc of towers. The dying flutter of the insects’ wings against their shells sounded like shrill screams. But the Deacon felt no pity as he stalked into the control room’s pit, pistol steaming by his side.

Near the holo-projector he saw a glistening pile of offal: the spilled remains of
Lighter Than Some.
He felt his gorge rise in his throat, and he looked up. It was then that he noticed the small representation of an alien on the projector. Thinking it was just a picture, Dadab was surprised when the alien removed its wide-brimmed hat and glared at him with fiery eyes. But the Deacon was dumbfounded when the representation raised its hand and signed: <
I Am Oracle, you, obey. >

Dadab might have dropped his pistol and prostrated himself before the projector, but at that very moment, the image began to change. The alien’s red eyes flickered gray. Its pristine garments began to flutter, accumulating dirt—as if it had been hit by some invisible maelstrom of dust. Then its arms began to tremble, and though it grasped its own wrist to try and keep its hand from signing, it very clearly flexed: <
Liar!
> <
Liar!
> <
Liar!
>

Without warning, the orbital lurched. Dadab fell back onto his triangular tank and rolled sideways into the smoldering carapace of one of the Yanme’e. Kicking away from the sticky shell, Dadab caught something with his heel: the central tower’s missing protective panel. He pulled the panel from the charred yellow gore and wiped it with his hand. On the bare metal of its interior surface was an etching of the Oracle’s sacred glyph—shallow, delicate lines, obviously the work of
Lighter Than Some.

The Deacon looked back at the projector. <
Who, liar?
> he asked.

But the image of the alien gave no answer except to keep flashing its manic accusation. Dadab had no idea that he was watching the destruction of Loki’s fragment—its forced extraction by the JOTUN all-in-ones that had assaulted the reactor tower’s maser.

The Deacon only knew that whatever intelligence resided in the towers had preyed on
Lighter Than Some
’s peace-loving naiveté—convinced the Huragok to divulge the sacred glyph, and unknowingly help it set a trap for the Jiralhanae. Why it would reveal its deceptive nature now, Dadab had no idea. But he also didn’t care.

The Deacon tasted the mineral tang of blood in his mouth and realized his sharp teeth had bitten into his lower lip. He rose to his feet and swept his pistol across the towers, pulsing its trigger. The image of the alien warped and sputtered above the projector, like the flame of one of the Jiralhanae’s oil lamps. Then it collapsed to a mote of light that faded as Dadab’s pistol cooled.

As the Deacon surveyed the dead Yanme’e and the towers’ burning circuits, he knew there was still one accessory to

Lighter than Some
’s murder who yet lived—one whose death might accomplish what his friend had so desperately desired: an end to all this violence. Sliding through the control room’s door, Dadab checked his pistol’s charge. There was enough for one more shot. He vowed to make it good.

“What just happened?” Avery yelled as the Tiara’s large support beams groaned and the walkway bucked beneath him.

“Number seven strand,” Jilan replied, still breathless from the fight. “It’s gone.”

Avery fired his M7 at one of the insects as it leapt from a nearby support cable. The creature lost a wing and half its limbs, and crashed to the walkway behind a trio of barrels to Avery’s right that For sell shared with Jenkins. “What do you mean,
gone?”
Avery shouted as Forsell finished the insect with a burst from his MA5.