Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (11 page)

Tom and Lucy snapped off simultaneous salutes.

Kurt retuned the salute. "Report."

"The candidates are ready to board, sir," Tom said.

Kurt got up and the three of them walked back down the corridor and into docking cluster Bravo. It was the size of a small canyon with the capacity to cycle a fleet of dropships simultaneously through its massive air-lock system. There was ample space for triage and trams that could whisk an entire company of wounded soldiers to emergency surgical faculties.

Air locks screamed and there was a sudden gust of fresh air. Dozens of bay doors parted and Pelicans rolled into the bay on steam-powered beds.

The Pelicans' rear ramps lowered and the Spartan candidates filed out in orderly rows.

Kurt had briefed them about the procedures. They'd be sedated and injected with chemical cocktails and surgically altered to give them the strength of three normal soldiers, decrease their neural reaction time, and enhance their durability.

It was the final step in their transformation to Spartans.

It was graduation day.

He'd briefed them on the risks, too. He had shown them the archived videos of the results of the bioaugmentation phase of the SPARTAN-II program, how more than half of those candidates had washed out—either dying from the procedure or becoming so badly deformed they couldn't stand.

This would not happen to the SPARTAN-IIIs with the new medical protocols, but Kurt had wanted one final test.

Not one of the 330 candidates had opted out of the program.

Kurt had had to petition Colonel Ackerson for thirty extra slots for this final phase. He simply didn't have it in him to randomly cut thirty—when every last one of them was willing and ready to fight. Ackerson had gladly granted his request.

Kurt stood and saluted as the line of candidates passed him.

They marched by, returning his salute, heads held high, and chests out. On average only twelve years old, they looked closer to fifteen with the sculpted musculature of Olympic

athletes; many had hard-won scars; and all had an ineffable, confident air about them.

They were warriors. Kurt had never felt so proud.

The last candidate lingered, and then halted before him. It was Ash, serial number G099, leader of Team Saber. He was one of the fiercest, smartest, and best leaders in the class. His wavy brown hair was slightly over regulation length, but Kurt was inclined to let it slide, today of all days.

Ash snapped off a precise salute. "Sir, Spartan candidate G099 requesting permission to speak, sir."

"Granted," Kurt said, and finished his protracted salute.

"Sir, I…" Ash's voice cracked.

Many of the boys had problems with their vocal cords, still recovering from the rapidly induced puberty.

"I just wanted to let you know," Ash continued, "what an honor it's been to train under you. Chief Mendez, and Petty Officers Tom and Lucy. If I don't make it today, I wanted you to know that I wouldn't have done anything differently, sir."

"The honor has been mine," Kurt said. He held out his hand.

Ash stared at it a moment, and then he grasped Kurt's hand, clasped it firmly, and they

shook.

"I'll see you on the other side," Kurt said.

Ash nodded and left, catching up to the rest of the candidates.

Tom and Lucy both nodded their approvals.

"They're ready," Kurt whispered. He looked away so he

wouldn't have to meet their gazes. "I hope
we
are. We're taking a hell of a risk."

Kurt, Tom, and Lucy stopped at a staff conference room, now an improvised ONI command and control center. Medical technicians in blue lab coats watched 330 video monitors and bio-sign sets. Tom spoke to one of the techs while Kurt's gaze flicked from monitor to monitor.

He then went down to the open surgical arena. It had four hundred sections—each partitioned by semiopaque plastic curtaining, and each fitting with a sterile-field generator that blazed with its characteristic orange light overhead.

Kurt entered one unit and found SPARTAN-G122, Holly, there.

The partitioned area was crammed full of machines. There were stands with bio monitors. Several intravenous and osmotic patches connected her to a chemo-therapeutic infuser, loaded with a collection of liquid-filled vials that would keep Holly in a semisedated state while it delivered a cocktail of drugs over the next week. There was a crash cart and portable ventilator nearby, as well.

She struggled to rise and salute, but she fell back, her eyelids fluttering closed.

He went to Holly's side and clasped her tiny hand until she settled into a deep sleep.

She reminded him of Kelly when she was this young: full of spunk, and never giving up. He missed Kelly. He had been dead to his fellow SPARTAN-IIs for almost twenty years. He missed all of them.

The chemo-therapeutic infuser hissed, vials rotated into place, micromechanical pumps thumped, and bubbles percolated inside its colored liquids.

It was starting. Kurt remembered when he went through the augmentation. The fevers, the pain—it felt as if his bones were

breaking, like someone had poured napalm into his veins.

Holly shifted. The bio monitors showed a spike in her blood pressure and temperature. Tiny blisters appeared on her arms and she scratched at them. They filled with blood and then quickly smoothed into scabs.

Kurt patted Holly's hand one last time and then went to the infuser and lifted the side panel. Inside were dozens of solution vials. He squinted, reading off their serial numbers.

He spotted "8942-LQ99" inside the infuser. That was the carbide ceramic ossification catalyst to make skeletons virtually unbreakable.

There was "88005-MX77," the fibrofoid muscular protein complex that boosted muscle density.

"88947-OP24" was the number for retina-inversion stabilizer, which boosted color and nighttime vision.

"87556-UD61" was the improved colloidal neural disunifica-tion solution to decrease reaction times.

There were many others: shock reducers, analgesics, antiinflammatories, anticoagulants, and pH buffers.

But Kurt was looking for three vials in particular, ones with different serial numbers— 009927-DG, 009127-PX, and 009762-00—that didn't match any standard medical logistics code.

They were there, bubbling as their contents were drained and mixed with picoliter precision.

He heard footsteps approaching.

Kurt lowered the panel of the infuser and stepped back to Holly's side.

There was rustling of plastic curtains and a medical technical in blue lab coat entered.

"Is there anything you need help with, sir?" the medtech asked. "Anything I can get you?"

"Everything is fine," Kurt lied. He brushed past the man. "I was just leaving."

CHAPTER

ELEVE
N

0210 HOURS, FEBRUARY 20, 2551 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ABOARD UNSC
HOPEFUL,
INTERSTELLAR SPACE, SECTOR K-009

Kurt sat alone in the atrium viewing the candidates' progress on his tablet. He'd spent the last twenty-four hours awake, by their sides, and then caught four hours of sleep. He'd go back to them shortly when they awoke to congratulate the candidates.

Correction: congratulate the
Spartans.

Every last one of them had made it. Kurt wished he could feel relief, but there were too many unknowns.

"Lieutenant Ambrose." A female voice sounded over SHIP-COM. "Report to the bridge immediately."

He got up and marched to the elevator. The doors closed and the elevator rushed through sections of normal and zero gravity; Kurt held fast to the railing.

Kurt and his Project CHRYSANTHEMUM team were supposed to be left alone—orders directly from FLEETCOM brass. So why the summons to the bridge?

The doors opened. A lieutenant commander stood with arms akimbo waiting for him, a woman barely a meter and a quarter with a gray widow's peak.

"Ma'am." Kurt saluted. "Lieutenant Ambrose reporting as ordered. Permission to enter the bridge."

"Granted," she said. "Come with me."

She skirted the edge of the large low-lit room. Not only were its three dozen officers monitoring navigation, weapon,

communication, and drive systems; there were teams controlling structural-stress compensators, tram traffic, water, power-load distributions, and ecoreclamation subsystems. The
Hopeful
was more city space station than ship of the line.

The Lieutenant Commander pressed her palm to the biomet-ric by a side door. It parted, and they both entered.

The room beyond was lined with shelves of gilt antique books. Old globes of Earth and a dozen other worlds had been tastefully set about a koa-wood desk that gleamed like gold under the light of a single brass lamp.

An old man sat in the shadows. "That will be all. Lieutenant Commander," the man said.

He stood and Kurt saw three stars flash on his collar. Kurt re-flexively saluted. "Sir!"

The Lieutenant Commander left, the door closing and locking behind her.

The Vice Admiral walked around Kurt once.

Vice Admiral Ysionris Jeromi was a living legend. He'd taken the
Hopeful, a
ship with

virtually no weapons or armor, into battle three times to save the crews of critically wounded ships.

He had saved tens of thousands of lives, and almost been court-martialed for it, too.

War needs its heroes, though. The then Admiral had lost and regained stars from his collar, but he had also received the UNSC's highest wartime decoration: the Colonial Cross. Twice.

"I'm not sure who you are," the Vice Admiral said, and his bushy white brows bunched together. "Someone a lot more important than 'Lieutenant Ambrose,' or whatever your name really is."

Kurt knew better than to say anything unless asked a direct question. He stood at attention. The code-word classification of the SPARTAN-III project prevented him from divulging anything, even to a vice admiral, without clearance.

He walked back to his desk, reached into a drawer, and

retrieved a black sphere the size of a grapefruit. "Do you know what this is, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir," Kurt said.

"Slipspace COM probe," he said. "A stationary Shaw-Fujikawa driver launches one of these black 'bullets' into Slipstream space on an ultraprecise trajectory. It rips through the laws of known human physics, and drops back into normal space at some very distant coordinates. Like your own personal carrier pigeon. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Kurt said. "Like a Slipspace science probe. I've seen them launched from Station Archimedes. Or the new ODST drop pod that can be fired from a ship still in Slipspace."

"Nothing like that at all. Lieutenant. Those are just dropped into, and then out of. Slipstream space—more like a turd swirling around in an old-fashioned gravity toilet than precision engineering."

He patted the black sphere. "This beauty actually navigates through Slipspace. Traverses as far and as fast as any UNSC ship. Damn near magical if you appreciate the mathematics. You understand now?"

Kurt wasn't sure what the Admiral was fishing for. He had been asked a direct question, however, so he answered. "If what you have said is accurate, sir, it would revolutionize longdistance communications. Every ship would be fitted with such a device."

"Except for what it costs to a build an ultraprecise Shaw-Fujikawa low-mass launcher," the Vice Admiral replied, "you could build
a fleet
of ships. And for the cost to make one of these little black balls"—he rolled the probe perilously close to the edge of his desk—"you could buy the capital city of some backwater colony. There are only two such launchers. One on Reach and one on Earth."

The Vice Admiral returned to Kurt and his pale blue eyes stared into Kurt's. "This probe arrived fifteen minutes ago," the

Vice Admiral told him, "forty million kilometers from the
Hopeful.
Entry vector matches neither Earth nor Reach as the point of origin. And it's for you."

Kurt had a dozen questions, but dared not raise any of them. He felt like he walked on a razor's edge of secrecy.

The Vice Admiral snorted and moved to the door. "There's protocol for top secrecy on this, so use my office. Lieutenant. Take as much time as you need." He palmed the door and it opened. He paused and added, "If there is any danger to my ship or my patients, I expect to be informed, son. Orders or no."

He left and the door sheathed closed.

Kurt approached the black sphere. There were no obvious controls or displays. Light shed off its surface like water beading off oil.

He touched it and it warmed.

Ice appeared in snowflake patterns and crackled over the Vice Admiral's desk.

Holographic snow drifted through the office and coalesced into a white cloak, chiseled features, glacier eyes, and a cane of crystalline ice: Deep Winter.

"My god," the AI breathed. "And I thought
rear
admirals were long-winded. I thought old Jeromi would never leave."

Deep Winter smoothed his near-skeletal hands over nothing, and a blue sheen permeated the air. "Counterelectronics package online."

"How did you get here?" Kurt asked.

His mind struggled to grasp the ramifications. AIs had large footprints; they needed installations, and massive power sources to fuel their minds. Deep Winter couldn't be here. And how could the AI manage to alter the approach vector from Earth's or Reach's COM launchers?

Deep Winter held up a hand. "Stop. I see your mind in logic lock. Lieutenant. It would, perhaps, help to explain."

"Please," Kurt whispered.

"First," Deep Winter said, "we may only communicate in a limited fashion. I have imprinted a faction of my intellect into the memory matrix of this probe. The process has irreversibly destroyed a portion of the home base processing powers, so please do not waste the precious minutes we have. There is also insufficient remaining power in this probe for a prolonged debate."