Halo: The Cole Protocol (14 page)

“The humans are not likely to go anywhere as are we. He will report whatever his feeble mind can concoct when he reaches
High Charity
.”

“They get the glory for reporting this structure and the humans hiding here,” Zhar concluded with frustration.

“Cursed cowards,” hissed Jora.

“The Spirits are approaching to attack!”

“Where are their boarding craft?”

“They are hanging back.”

In the distance, the outer hull shook and shivered as Spirits flew up and down the length of the ship, strafing it.

Thel broke the arm off his chair in frustration. “Those who wish to escape the ship may do so now.”

It was a rhetorical statement. But it did serve one purpose: to weed out any dishonorable Sangheili who might falter by your side.

Thel pressed his mouth parts firm against each other as they waited in silence for a handful of dishonorable crew to desert. Maybe they were serfs who had risen far enough to work simple duties aboard the ship, or Sangheili who’d managed to hide their lack of real blood.

He waited for that, and for the Kig-Yar to get bolder and try to board the ship.

One of the screens showed Sangheili trying to escape aboard Spirits from inside
Retribution’s Thunder’s
hold, and the Kig-Yar-run ships fell on them en masse, overwhelming them. Plasma ripped out and filled the space around the ship, and it wasn’t long before the cowardly died in the vacuum at the hands of traitorous Kig-Yar.

A fitting fate, Thel thought. “Fire the empty escape pods,” he ordered.

They watched those get destroyed, and it strengthened their resolve to fight. To run was to die.

Now the Kig-Yar felt that they could risk boarding, with what seemed like most of the crew of the ship gone.

Thel waited. Waited until Kig-Yar swarmed the hull and trooped through the heart of his ship, and then gave the order.

Explosions ripped through the interior, section by section. The smooth, bulbous lines of his ship flexed and twisted, and fire gushed out from in between the cracks, roiling up through the corridors.

The air in the bridge heated up, and then rushed out. Thel found himself panting for air that no longer existed, and then a secondary explosion turned the cockpit inside out.

Thel hurtled through the air and struck a bulkhead.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

HESIOD, 23 LIBRAE

The
Kestrel
was a svelte smuggler of a ship, more engine than cargo bay. Even then, civilian engine technology didn’t hold a candle to what the
Midsummer Night
had at its heart.

The
Midsummer Night
had been shadowing the
Kestrel
for almost a week. UNSC sensor buoys had been put on high alert on the edges of the system, and caught the
Kestrel
preparing for its jump into Slipspace. These were the same sensor buoys that had detected the inbound Covenant.

Dmitri Zheng had thrown the
Midsummer Night
on a ripping course out to follow it. Badia Campbell at ops reported nervously that the ship’s reactor was struggling to keep up.

But the ship had been shaken out. No more pipes blew, or components failed. She’d gotten up to speed, closing in on the Insurrectionist ship like a shark slipping up from the depths on its prey.

On their way out, they’d all continued to watch broadcasts from sensor posts scattered throughout the system of the Covenant ships moving over Charybdis IX, glassing the surface.

The mood onboard had remained somber and determined. The crew had been itching to fight, and now had to turn tail and run.

No one liked it.

But they had a mission, and they’d all had friends and family fall to the Covenant. Despite Zheng’s anger, many had gotten used to the dull pain of human loss. Casualties mounted; they had for years. It had become a part of life for many.

Now they were deep behind Covenant lines, hopping through what had once been the Outer Colonies, sticking close behind the
Kestrel
as it seemed to randomly jump into Slipstream space.

“We’re close,” Keyes announced. The last three jumps the
Kestrel
had taken made a line on the star charts that Keyes could use.

Assuming that the jumps continued in their pattern, Keyes had run the charts. He posted the result to the bridge crew’s screens.

Zheng took a look and frowned. “You think they’re headed to Madrigal? That planet was glassed by the Covenant.”

“It could be where they make their drops,” Keyes suggested. He paused as his sensors showed the smuggler making another jump.

He was right. The last several Slipspace jumps took them to the outer edge of the system, and then the
Kestrel
began curving its way in-system.

The
Midsummer Night
followed, invisible and silent. They coasted with the
Kestrel
all the way into the depths of the system.

“It isn’t Madrigal,” Keyes announced several shifts later, reviewing the navigation data left by a junior officer.

“Then what is it?” Zheng asked. “Where are they headed?”

Keyes had astronomy data up on his screen with possible paths of the
Kestrel
mapped out. “There’s a gas giant, farther out. It’s called Hesiod.”

They followed the
Kestrel
as it fell into an orbit trailing far, far behind the gas giant, but slowly catching up to it.

“There we go,” Keyes said, upping the magnification on the view ahead of them.

“Asteroids?” Zheng said.

“Trojan asteroids,” Keyes said. “Most gas giants have asteroids sitting just ahead and behind their orbit in stable L4 and L5 positions.”

“Makes a good hideout,” Rai Li spoke up from weapons. “The rebels at Eridani used the asteroid belt there and it made it hard to hunt them down.”

The
Kestrel
slowed as it slipped into the cloud of rock.

There was something wrong, Keyes thought. Dirtsiders heard the term “asteroid field” and thought of a large collection of rocks floating near each other.

The truth was that asteroids lay millions of miles from each other. A slow-moving ship could thread through them easily enough on their way through a system.

But
this
collection of asteroids looked just like a layperson’s idea of an asteroid field. Hundreds of asteroids had been moved within a mile of each other.

Keyes magnified the image even more, putting it up on a wall screen the whole bridge could look at. The hundreds of irregularly shaped rocks jumped into view.

“Looks like some of them are built up,” Dante Kirtley said. “Plus, I’m starting to get a lot of direct-line comms chatter. They’re trying to keep it focused and quiet, but I’m hearing it. Looks like we got ourselves an Insurrectionist hiding hole. And behind Covenant lines, no less.”

But something glinted between them. Keyes upped the magnification even further, and everyone on the bridge gasped.

The glints were long, silver lines. As Keyes jumped the magnification up again, the gossamer lines resolved themselves into tubes.

“They’re all connected,” Li said. “With docking tubes.”

“If each of those asteroids is fully inhabited, this isn’t just an Insurrectionist hiding hole,” Zheng said. “It’s a floating metropolis… behind enemy lines.”

They coasted in closer, staring at the spectacle of an asteroid field towed in closer, connected together, and hollowed out. Ships moved in between the rocks, and occasionally a burst of flame from a guidance rocket adjusted an asteroid, presumably so that it didn’t break one of the tubes.

“Freeze that,” Li suddenly snapped. Keyes stopped the drift on the image. “Zoom.”

He saw it too, now.

“Is that a Jackal ship?” Kirtley asked.

“That’s Jackal,” Li confirmed. She tapped her console and put a window up next to their live image of a Jackal ship taken from the combat camera of a Navy ship. Unlike the usual Covenant-made ships, the Jackal-made ships looked like last-minute scrap yard projects—girders, rockets, and capsules haphazardly joined together around a core unit. These ships were not made to even kiss an atmosphere, but remain in space.

Zheng cracked his knuckles and stared at the screen. “Bring the crew up to ready, ops. Weapons, unlock missiles and arm a nuke. Comms, make sure you’re scanning and getting everything that’s going on.”

Li, Kirtley, Keyes, and Campbell got to work.

“Lieutenant Campbell, set up preparations to destroy our navigation charts, as per the Cole Protocol.”

Campbell paused, considered something, and then spoke up. “Sir, does it make sense? The
Kestrel
obviously has charts, and I’d bet other ships in this … complex have charts as well. We’re not making it any harder for Covenant here to find charts, are we?”

Zheng looked at the screen. “You’re right, Lieutenant. That thing out there, that’s just one giant Cole Protocol violation, isn’t it? But orders are orders. Ready the purge. Just in case.”

“Yessir.”

“Okay, Keyes, bring her in nice and easy. We just want to swing nearby, nice and quiet, and see what intel we can pick up to bring back with us. But if things get hairy, be ready to get us the hell out.”

“Aye, sir,” Keyes responded. Then he spotted movement. “They have patrols, it looks like. Moving around the perimeter.”

“Let’s see how stealthy this frigate really is, Keyes.” Zheng leaned forward in his chair.

The
Midsummer Night
moved closer to the tangle of docking tubes, asteroids, ships, dust, and debris trailing the massive orb of Hesiod.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

PINEAPPLE HABITAT, THE RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

Thel ‘Vadamee and his bridge crew sat on the far end of a large cell. It was a crude thing: a hole dug out of the rocky interior wall of a hollowed out asteroid, with bars of metal over the front, some of which were hinged.

Thel had seen medieval keeps with similarly built jails back on Sanghelios. In museums.

He’d woken up with a horrific headache pounding the side of his temple where he’d struck the bulkhead. Not an honorable battle wound, or a way to end a fight, Thel thought miserably as he looked out through the bars.

The Kig-Yar had combed the remains of the ship, carrion sniffers that they were, and found the bridge crew alive. The rest of the crew had fought to the death, destroying the ship in the process.

Thel sincerely wished they’d just left him for dead on his destroyed ship. But the Kig-Yar had some plan in mind for them, using the Sangheili as hostages.

Jora crept his way over. “I am beyond shame, my shipmaster.”

Thel had been told Jora rushed the Kig-Yar with no weapon, and they’d shot him several times in the leg. Now Jora was dragging the useless limb behind him on the cell floor.

“I have snapped one of the legs off those useless cots made for humans.”

He handed it to Thel, who tested the sharp end with a finger. Jora had worked hard to get the long piece of metal sharp.

“Please,” Jora begged. “I have no honor left. I am crippled. I cannot face my keep.”

If the Sangheili masters found out that they’d been captured by a lesser race like the Kig-Yar, or that they’d failed so horribly in a
holy
mission handed to them directly by a Hierarch, there would be dire consequences.

Jora’s entire bloodline could be killed off. They’d hunt down his nephews and behead them. The genetic proclivities of failures, the planetary heads of Sangheilios thought, could not be allowed to continue on.

But if Jora did the right thing, and killed himself before the Kig-Yar could get any use out of him, or further sully his name and by extension, his line . . . well, his keep might fall in stature, but at least the line could try to struggle back up from its loss of honor.

“Please,” Jora whispered. “You have been like a cousin to me. Please do me one last favor. I have not the strength to do it myself.”

“Come and kneel,” Thel said.

The other zealots in the cell faced away. It was embarrassing to see that Jora could not even dispatch himself, but needed the hand of another.

But Thel remembered how Jora had thrown himself against the Kig-Yar. That had to count for something, he thought, as he stepped behind Jora.

“May the Great Journey await you, may your enemies writhe in hell, and your line continue forward, and gain honor,” Thel said to his boldest fighter.

And then he slammed the spike into the back of Jora’s head.

Jora slowly toppled forward with a sigh.

“May your scattered body go,” Veer murmured, turning back around, “beyond the limits of your mind….”

“Beyond the limits of our worlds,” Saal said the next line of the death benediction.

“To the places our ancestors dream and sang of,” Zhar sang.

“And the Prophets speak of,” Thel finished. The survivors clasped forearms. “You all remain alive—why?”

“We want to study how to destroy the humans hiding here,” Saal said. “The Kig-Yar spoke of ransoming us to our keeps. But Thel, you are kaidon of your keep now. Would you pay for one of your own captured like this?”

Thel snorted. “I would sooner bleed on the ground than do it. You know this.”

“Exactly,” Zhar said. Thel could see his tactical mind working. This was good. Set Zhar on a problem and he was like a warrior—he’d tussle with it to his last breath.

Saal laughed. “The Kig-Yar are idiots who pay no attention to us. They should have known to kill us where we lay; no Sangheili in his right mind would pay a ransom. That is a Kig-Yar game.”

Zhar turned to him. “And that is how we will destroy them. They are too far away to find this out so quickly. And our suspicions were right; we have heard Kig-Yar say as much. The Jiralhanae who betrayed us are returning with the Shipmistress to
High Charity
where they can claim this find for themselves.”

“And find favor with the Prophets,” Veer said. “But how is it that we’re in a human cell
here
?”

Thel understood what he was getting at. “The prophets will not like it.”

“Humans and Kig-Yar, working together,” Veer mused. “There were humans here talking to the Kig-Yar who dragged us in.”

“They called the one human Bonifacio,” Saal said. “You could smell his fear of us in the air.”

“All we need to do is get out of this cell,” Zhar said.

Saal walked over to Jora’s body and pulled the spike free from his head. “I have yet to see anything spying on us. This all looks like it was recently welded together on short notice to contain us.”

Thel snorted in appreciation. “Roll Jora’s body onto a cot and cover it. Eventually they will want to know why he doesn’t move. Make sure the covers they gave us drape over where the metal leg used to be.”

They had a weapon now. And a plan. Of sorts.

Four Sangheili free would be a force to reckon with.

And Thel did not, one way or another, intend to be recaptured.

Now all they needed was an opportunity.