Outcasts, page 14
Vale stepped away and heard the whine of small engines coming from the far end of the tel. She turned to see a pair of dust plumes as two Mongooses approached.
“Both of them,” Vale said. “This can’t be good.”
“Could be worse,” Grim Bear said. “At least they’re coming back.”
Vale glanced over at Grim Bear, surprised. Gunnery sergeants were seldom the glass-half-full types… but they weren’t usually nicknamed Mama, either.
“Affirmative,” Vale said. “That is something.”
The Mongooses arrived in a cloud of dust, then a huge corporal dismounted and stepped forward, leaving his MA40 assault rifle and M90 shotgun in their vehicle scabbards. The man’s size was truly impressive. He stood taller than Vale, and had he been wearing Mjolnir, she would have assumed him to be a Spartan. His partner, a lance corporal with S. LEGOWSKI on her nameplate, remained on her vehicle. She had a BR55 in one scabbard, one of the new M305 five-round grenade launchers in the other, an M7 submachine gun mag-clamped across her back, and wisps of blond hair spilling out under her helmet.
Not bothering with formal reporting protocol, Grim Bear waited only until the huge corporal who had dismounted was more or less in front of her, then said, “You’re back early, Golly. What’s the problem?”
The nameplate on his armor said P. BARNES, so Vale was not sure of the nickname’s provenance. Goliath, maybe?
“The crater floor is impassable.” Golly’s voice was deep and rumbling, even through his helmet voicemitter. “It’s like gigoog.”
Gigoog was that brightly colored military dessert, packed with nutrients and vitamins. Halfway between liquid and solid, it was usually oversweetened and served cold—in which case, eating it was like chewing soup. But sometimes it was overspiced and served hot—in which case, drinking it was like gulping wet noodles. An acquired taste, to be sure.
“Gigoog?” Grim Bear echoed. “Explain.”
“Like, it’s all different colors and kind of… quivering. Boggy, except there’s no water. If you try to drive on it, you sink to your axles and just sit there bobbing up and down, spinning your wheels.”
“What about foot travel?” Vale asked.
Golly’s bearing and tone grew instantly more formal. “Ma’am, I sank to my chest pulling the Mongoose out. There’s solid ground under there, but it’s too far down for everyone to keep their heads clear. And drop-offs could be a problem.”
He tipped his helmet toward Grim Bear, who was a bit short for an ODST.
“Understood,” Vale said. The base of the tel was probably ten kilometers around, so even if it was possible to circumnavigate it on foot, wading through the… gigoog could take two standard days. She turned to Fuertes. “Any thoughts, Rosa?”
Fuertes barely looked up. “About what?”
“The crater floor. Is it going to firm up? Is that stuff common on Netherop?”
“No idea. We never saw anything like it when we lived here. Whatever it is, I can’t help you with it.”
“But you would if you could?” Given Fuertes’s unexplained tears and insurrectionist sympathies, Vale had to ask the question. “Right?”
“That is the deal we made. You leave my family alone if I help you… and I want you to leave my family alone.”
“Which I will, regardless of what you do.” Vale wanted more from Fuertes than her grudging cooperation; she wanted Fuertes to volunteer her knowledge and experience freely, because there would be times when her guidance was necessary to ensure Tango Team’s safety, and they wouldn’t even realize it. “Look, we really need your help here, but I’m never going back to Gao just to harass your family. What would that accomplish?”
“How should I know? I don’t understand how the UNSC thinks.” Fuertes turned away.
Grim Bear shrugged. “Then we recon on foot. It won’t be so bad.” She turned to one of the staff sergeants she had been talking to earlier and pointed across the summit to their left. “We’ll spread both squads down the slope and start from there. Slim, take Golly and First Squad and circle the tel clockwise. Marcus, you take Legs and Second Squad and move counterclockwise. I’ll wait here with Spartan Vale and the civilians. If you find an entrance, secure it and send—”
Fuertes turned back around. “You are going to look for an entrance on the sides of the hill?”
“You have a better idea?” Grim Bear turned in place, sweeping her faceplate over the entire summit of the tel. “I don’t see any gates up here. Do you?”
Fuertes kept her gaze fixed on Grim Bear. “No, I don’t.”
“Probably because there aren’t any,” Iyuska said. “At least not that we can see.”
“Because this is a tel,” Grim Bear said. “And a tel is a buried city.”
“Most likely several buried cities,” Iyuska clarified. “The layers tend to stack up, which is how you end up with—”
“Mound structures,” Grim Bear finished. “I read your briefing, Professor. What I need to know is how we get inside.”
“By excavating, of course,” Iyuska said. “Very carefully.”
Grim Bear looked to Vale and said nothing.
“We don’t have the manpower for that,” Vale said. “Not anymore.”
“Then you’ll have to call for more,” Iyuska said. “You do understand the implications of what we saw earlier, don’t you?”
“I understand that the tel opened up, then something destroyed forty dropships and nearly killed us,” Vale said. “And that it will finish the job if we don’t move fast.”
“It was a weapon,” Iyuska said. “As far as we know, the Forerunners didn’t use dimensional rifting for weaponry. You see that, don’t you?”
“Maybe. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Forerunners.”
“What came before them, for example. And this is our first chance to truly examine that. But we have to do it right. We have to do a full dig, map our excavations, catalog everything we—”
“All that comes later,” Vale said. “First we secure that weapon. Otherwise, the only digging we’ll be doing is our own graves.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. We’re here, aren’t we?”
“For now.” Vale paused. “Look, I understand how much this means to you—”
“Not just to me. This will revolutionize pre-Forerunner xenoarchaeology and—”
“And it will be your name on the first paper,” Vale said, speaking over Iyuska. “But you’re going to have to write it based on incidental observations, not a full excavation.”
Iyuska went silent… always a worrisome sign during an argument. Vale decided to use the lull to get the mission moving. She turned to Grim Bear.
“You have your orders, Sergeant.” Vale pointed down at the tel. “Get us inside. Use the C-12 if you need to.”
“What’s that?” Iyuska demanded.
“You don’t want to know,” Vale said.
“I see.” Iyuska watched with narrowed eyes as Tango Team’s two squads gathered C-12 satchels and prepared to depart. “I should have known better than to trust a peer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There’s nothing more vicious than academic jealousy.”
“Now you’re just being crazy. I’m not in academia—I’m a Spartan.”
“But you’re also a xenoanthropologist who missed her calling. Maybe you see this as your path back into the field, a chance to make a big name for yourself.”
“The last thing I want is a big name. It would make some very powerful superiors very unhappy.” Vale turned away, desperate to end the argument, and found Fuertes chuckling at them. “What?”
“Nothing. Just enjoying the show.”
Vale realized she had allowed Iyuska to goad her into making a spectacle. She took a long breath. “Show’s over.”
“Too bad,” Fuertes said. “In that case, maybe I should tell you I thought of something.”
“Maybe you should. That’s why we hired you.”
“I have an idea of where to search for an entrance.”
Vale looked to Grim Bear. “Maybe you’d better hold your squads, Mama.”
“I thought maybe.” Grim Bear nodded at her sergeants. “I hope we can make this fast, Spartan Vale. I usually like to make the plan before we unload.”
“Me too.”
Vale turned back to Fuertes and found Iyuska already between them.
“Well?” Iyuska asked.
Fuertes looked past Iyuska to Vale.
“Go ahead,” Vale said. “We’re on the same team.”
Fuertes raised a doubtful brow, but replied to Iyuska, “You’re right about one thing: there’s probably a whole stack of old cities buried under this hill. But they’re upside down. The cities on Netherop were built underground. The oldest ones are near the surface, the youngest are deeper down. And this tel? It’s crushed waste rock, dumped on top of the old cities.”
Iyuska asked, “Are you saying the original inhabitants lived in their mines?”
“That’s right. We didn’t understand that completely when we lived here. But when we moved to Gao and started to take work in their mines, what we had seen here began to make more sense.”
Iyuska’s face screwed into an expression of doubt, and Vale understood why. Subterranean cities were not unheard of in the Orion Arm of the galaxy, and a handful appeared to have been lost mining civilizations established by burrowing species at the low end of the technological scale, Tier 6 Industrial, at most Tier 5 Atomic. But whatever had opened that dimensional rift and destroyed Vale’s landing force had been far more advanced—probably Tier 1, or even Tier 0.
“This doesn’t make a lot of sense, Rosa,” Vale said. “Technology like the weapon that attacked us is usually associated with a spacefaring species. And spacefaring species tend to live on the surface, where they can see the stars. Not underground.”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” Fuertes said. “I only know the warrens where we lived, and none of those were surrounded by craters.”
“But?” Vale asked.
Fuertes grabbed a handful of dust and held it close to her nose. “But this smells just like the dirt we found outside their old metal mines.” She let it run through her fingers, then pointed down the center of the mound. “If I were you, I’d probe for haulage shafts along the middle of the hill. You find one, you’ll have a straight drop down to the processing chambers.”
Vale held a handful of dust in her palm and called for a chemical analysis. Her HUD display showed a lot of silicon and metallic sulfides, especially copper and iron. And nothing was growing on the tel, which could be due to contaminated ground… or Netherop’s blistering heat.
“Thank you,” Vale said, speaking to Fuertes. “I think you just earned your consultant’s fee.”
“I don’t need your thanks. Just send the performance bonus to my village.”
Vale smiled inside her helmet. They hadn’t actually negotiated a performance bonus, but she nodded. “Sure, I can do that.” Vale turned to Grim Bear. “Let’s make a probe line. Have your people use their entrenching tools to sound the ground. Dig up any depressions, or anything that sounds hollow.”
“And be careful,” Fuertes suggested. “The way this stuff crusts over in the wind, we could be standing above a shaft right now.”
Vale thought of her Mjolnir armor’s four-hundred-kilogram mass and couldn’t help glancing down.
* * *
A gift of the Ancients, the holographic image floating ahead showed eighteen humans arranging themselves in a line across the exterior of the Sanctum Overmound. All but two were fully armored, and it appeared they were led by a demon Spartan in red Mjolnir armor. To hold them at bay, Tam ‘Lakosee had only himself, Worldmaster Nizat ‘Kvarosee, and the five huffing, poorly disciplined warriors following them up the passage. How such a tired and forlorn unit would keep the infidels from seizing the Sanctum, he did not know.
But they would. The gods demanded it of them.
The Worldmaster paused in the center of the Overmound, no doubt debating whether they should turn left to flank the humans or continue straight to come up behind them. Both options required driving a tunnel through five hundred paces of broken rock packed with tailings dust, but that would be no obstacle. As the unit traveled forward, a well-lit passage would simply open ahead of it, the floors cushioned by an invisible pad and the walls and ceiling held in place by transparent energy fields. It was but another of the Sanctum’s many wonders, a miracle of the gods that no mortal could ever hope to understand.
“Let us turn left and flank the enemy,” Tam said. “We will end up attacking from a rear oblique, and the humans will find that more confusing.”
Attacking from behind would bring more fire to bear quickly, but it would also require a steeper climb—and Tam’s companions were already gasping for breath. By the time the Defenders of the Sanctum reached the surface and recovered enough to launch an attack, the invaders would be in front of them anyway. That was what happened to warriors who spent less time in the training arena than in their own cells, escaping into the Dream Lives the Sanctum provided to relieve their boredom.
‘Kvarosee considered Tam’s suggestion, then turned left and said, “Confusion is good. It is all the gods have allowed us, so it will be enough to prevail.”
“It is certainly the best option left to us.”
Tam was thinking not only of their warriors’ poor condition, but of their lack of discipline, which had robbed the Defenders of their only transport. Upon learning that three Phantom dropships were inserting on a trajectory that would bring them down nearby, four warriors had taken the Sanctum’s last Dust Runner to meet their presumed rescuers. Unfortunately, a UNSC insertion force had appeared soon afterward, and the four warriors had barely managed to return before ‘Kvarosee opened the Rift of Eternity.
With no time remaining to ascend the long path that traversed up the steep slopes of the lower Overmound, the group had abandoned their ride on the crater floor and scrambled to safety. The Dust Runner had been destroyed when ‘Kvarosee unleashed the Wave of Wrath, using the Divine Hand to sweep the human dropships from the sky. Now the Defenders of the Sanctum had no choice but to enter battle on foot, rather than riding a ten-legged transport armed with a microwave cannon.
The humans in the floating vision slowly drifted ahead and to the left, so that Tam and his companions were looking at the enemy line from the rear oblique. The figure anchoring the near end had descended the slope far enough that his boots were at shoulder level. It was hardly an accurate indication of their relative positions, but it did suggest that if the Sangheili continued to push forward, their self-creating passage would soon break through the Overmound to the surface.
Tam held a hand out to the side, signaling the column behind him to stop, then said, “Perhaps we should hold here for a time, Worldmaster. If we allow the enemy to continue its advance, our firing angle will be better.”
“Very wise,” ‘Kvarosee said. Like the rest of the Sangheili, he wore a close-fitting skinsuit of a shimmering cloth-like material they called Sanctum’s Hide. As tough as graphene and as light as air, the armor was self-repairing and self-cleaning, and it grew on them while they slept. About the only thing it did not do was provide an energy shield or enhance their physical attributes—which was most unfortunate, under the current circumstances. “The infidels will die on the Overmound and never even know we were there.”
“That is my hope.”
Tam did not add and my expectation, because it was not. But had he admitted that their warriors needed time to rest before leaping into battle, ‘Kvarosee would have overruled him and insisted on attacking immediately. Over the years, the environment inside the Sanctum had grown ever more accommodating. Whenever one of its Defenders walked through a passage, the walls began to glow with the same golden light as a Sanghelios dawn. The temperature and humidity levels adjusted themselves as though the Sanctum had actual seasons, and hydroponic gardens appeared deep underground, supplying food that was sometimes familiar and sometimes strange, but always delicious and nutritious. As a result, the Worldmaster had come to believe that he could shape his circumstances merely by wishing for what he desired. But with a squad of human soldiers and their Spartan leader trying to find their way inside the Sanctum, Tam did not think it wise to test the limits of his master’s strategy.
As they waited, a heavy warrior named Meduz ‘Ra’ashai tipped his head to one side, then pointed at the holograph. “Before we engage, we should give thought to where they came from.”
“All we need give thought to is what the gods require of us,” ‘Kvarosee said. “There are times when we must do more than simply enjoy their favor. We must earn it.”
“Which we cannot accomplish by slipping the enemy’s snare over our own heads.” ‘Ra’ashai’s tone was sharp and disrespectful, but Tam pretended not to hear. ‘Ra’ashai was a Silent Shadow blademaster who had been sent to N’ba to punish ‘Kvarosee for stealing a holy artifact called a Luminal Beacon. ‘Ra’ashai permitted ‘Kvarosee to live only because, like most Defenders, he considered being marooned here a fate worse than death. “Those humans up there came from a stealth craft that snuck down while we were busy destroying the other forty dropships.”
“It was not you who destroyed the insertion force,” ‘Kvarosee said. “It was I… wielding the Divine Hand.”
“And Blademaster ‘Ra’ashai is not suggesting otherwise,” Tam said quickly. “He is only pointing out that the humans sacrificed a great many dropships to draw our attention away from their stealth craft. This may be another trap—one designed to trick us into opening the Sanctum when we should have remained barricaded inside.”
“How do we know that remaining barricaded is even possible?” asked Klemas ‘Teodoree. A fleet ranger who had lost a leg in combat, he had nearly died of dehydration before Tam and ‘Kvarosee found him lying among the Covenant corpses on one of the first battle sites. Within months of arriving at the Sanctum, he had reclaimed his warrior’s honor by miraculously growing a prosthetic replacement from a nacreous material resembling his Sanctum’s Hide armor. “If these humans could escape the Worldmaster’s attention and evade his attack, they may be able to breach the Sanctum itself. Perhaps we should use the Divine Hand again and let the Wave of Wrath eliminate them for us.”
