Outcasts, page 28
“I have told you. The Rift of Eternity will open.”
“And then?”
“The Divine Hand will sweep your enemies from the heavens.”
‘Vadam looked back toward the swarm of suicide craft attacking the Sangheili flotilla. ‘Talot’s heavy corvette and Varo’dai’s destroyer were both taking steady damage now, and the Sword of Harmony’s Banshee screen was nowhere to be seen.
“How will it know which vessels are my enemies?”
“It will know. I believe it assigns a status based on how you perceive them.”
‘Vadam let his gaze slide back to the UNSC stealth cruiser, wondering whether it was possible to destroy such a vessel simply by looking at it—and whether the race to recover the Divine Hand had left any lingering feelings of competition that could result in the vessel’s accidental targeting. “Is this by the nature of what I think?”
‘Lakosee followed ‘Vadam’s gaze and appeared puzzled for a moment, then lifted his head in surprise. Apparently, he had not noticed the stealth cruiser until that moment.
“Ah… I see.” He clacked his mandibles in amusement. “You are worried about destroying the infidel stealth ship.”
“I am. We are allies.”
“Then I hope you are good allies. Because I do not know the answer to your question, Arbiter. The Divine Hand has always targeted human vessels—at least the ones the Worldmaster and I have seen.”
“There have been human vessels you failed to see?” Vale asked.
“Evidently so. You are here inside the tel, are you not?”
There was a pattern, ‘Vadam realized. ‘Kvarosee had not seen Vale’s arrival because UNSC doctrine called for scouts to insert in a stealth craft—usually an Owl—before the main body of the drop. And ‘Lakosee had not noticed the stealth-cruiser mother ship among the star points on the horizon until he saw ‘Vadam looking in its direction.
It reminded ‘Vadam of how the Sanctum’s Hide active camouflage had kept ‘Kvarosee and ‘Lakosee hidden from him until ‘Ra’ashai noticed their blood trail and spoke to the pair. Both instances were textbook examples of the Expectation Effect, a theory put forward by Sangheili cosmo-philosophers—and one that ‘Vadam had employed many times as a fleetmaster. Rooted in the hypothesis that consciousness itself was a quantum phenomenon, the Expectation Effect asserted that it was impossible to perceive an object without knowing either its location or its vector—and that once either value was known, it was impossible not to perceive it.
To ‘Vadam, the theory amounted to what humans referred to as common sense. Observers perceived what they expected to see and missed what they did not. But there could be no denying that the Sanctum had been reacting to his expectation when it showed him the UNSC stealth cruiser. The thing had become entangled with his mind, and now it was as much inside ‘Vadam as he was inside it.
No sooner had ‘Vadam realized this than the dust motes began to fall onto his hands more rapidly. Within a few breaths, both arms were enveloped in great glowing spheres. A cold, crackling energy dropped through his body onto the disk of radiance, and he felt its surface sagging beneath his feet.
Now that he knew how to make the Sanctum show him what he needed to see, ‘Vadam continued to watch the human stealth cruiser. Its fighter screen was long vanquished and its point-defense guns were going down, allowing one suicide craft after another to sneak through to pit its armor or destroy a weapon turret.
But all of those small suicide craft had to be coming from somewhere. ‘Vadam spent a few moments searching for a mother ship that never appeared, wondering if the Oath Warden—or his client—could possibly have the resources to launch such a mass of autonomous attack craft. The carrier would have to be at least the size of a light frigate to hold so many craft, and it would require advanced technology to support them and remain so well hidden from its targets. ‘Vadam had many wealthy Sangheili rivals, but none with those kind of resources.
The attack had to be coming from someone else.
The disk of radiance continued to sag. This was alarming, as there appeared to be no actual floor beneath it, only a bottomless, star-filled void. His companions stepped to the edges, ready to flee through the archways when it finally opened beneath him.
Petrov returned with Iyuska in tow, and they joined the others on the perimeter of the ever-deepening basin. ‘Vadam paid them little attention and shifted his attention toward the Sangheili fleet—
—and saw the sleek, long form of a drekar streaking toward N’ba from its second moon.
He whirled toward ‘Ayomuu. “The Banished, Oath Warden?! They are your client?!”
“The Banished?” ‘Ayomuu seemed as surprised as ‘Vadam was. “What are they doing here? My client is a Sangheili…” He let the sentence trail off as the obvious explanation occurred to him.
Vale finished it for him. “Front. Your client is a front for the Banished.”
“No… I…” For once, Crei ‘Ayomuu seemed at a loss for words. “Impossible. I would never…”
“You nuktl!” ‘Vadam snarled at ‘Ayomuu, debating whether to execute the Oath Warden himself right then and there, or let Vale have the honor. “If they recover the Divine Hand—”
“That will only happen if you allow it.” ‘Lakosee raised his arms over his head and made a pushing motion. “The Divine Hand does not care who your enemies are, only that they are enemies.”
‘Vadam realized that in his anger, he had allowed his hands to drop toward his weapons. He raised his arms again and turned toward Vale. The disk of radiance had sagged so much that it was more of a well now than a basin, and he found himself looking up past her feet to see her faceplate.
“We cannot trust this pilgot,” he said. “If the Oath Warden attempts anything—”
“It will be the last thing he ever tries,” Vale assured ‘Vadam. “But I think we have bigger problems than a Banished drekar.”
“Of course. The Banished travel in packs. Where there is a drekar, there are karves.”
“That too.” Vale pointed toward what remained of the Sangheili flotilla. “But I was thinking of the drone swarms.”
“What of them?”
“The Banished didn’t launch them. There are far too many. A drekar couldn’t hold them all. And autonomous attack craft? It’s not their style anyway. The Banished like to do the killing themselves.”
As Vale spoke, a large delta-winged darkness appeared above the remnants of the Sangheili fleet, blotting out the sparse veil of dust motes that had not yet dropped onto ‘Vadam’s hands. At least three times the size of his own Sword of Harmony, the ship had a distinctive segmented hull bound together by an indiscernible energy field.
“That’s Forerunner!” Iyuska exclaimed.
“Forerunner?” ‘Lakosee seemed stunned. “The Ancients? They have—”
‘Vadam did not hear the rest. He had dropped through the disk of radiance and stood now on a bead of luminescence barely as large as his feet. The emptiness around him burned with a blinding glow, and he found himself lost in its brilliance for an instant… a unit… an entire cycle… as this brilliance gathered itself into stars, and those stars into clusters, and those clusters into galaxies, and he felt the inconceivable power of their combustion surging into him, rising up through his arms and into his fingertips.
He fixed his gaze on the dark dome above, concentrating his attention on the Forerunner mother ship and the drekar… and before the energy left his fingertips, something heavy slammed into his flank and drove him off the bead of luminescence and sent him tumbling down into the white, blinding void.
“—deliver us!” ‘Lakosee’s voice cried.
As ‘Vadam plunged deeper into the bright well of emptiness, he saw that ‘Lakosee was dropping alongside him… his arms also raised toward the dome, his mandibles snapping toward ‘Vadam’s elbows.
“Apostate! I… will not… betray…”
‘Vadam spun his torso around, bringing his foot up and landing a front-thrust kick that sent them flying away from each other. He continued holding his arms up, and blinding bolts of energy began to erupt from his fingertips. The pain was fiery and flesh splitting. It burned down his arms and through his body into his legs, until the whirling galaxies flung their own arms away and withered into black holes so hot and massive that they devoured the white luminescence around him. And still ‘Vadam kept falling, plunging into the dark, eternal emptiness, the hulls of his enemies breaking apart and plummeting down behind him in a rain of orange shards, roaring and booming and trailing long tails of smoke and flame.
CHAPTER 21
The brilliance disintegrated into a billion motes of shining nanodust. As Olympia Vale’s mind reassembled itself and she recalled where she was… inside a rotunda deep in the Sanctum of a protogenic tel in a crater on a planet called Netherop… she realized the motes were slowly drifting upward to become stars beneath a boundless, dark dome. But a few—if thousands could be called a few—were showering down trailing tails of smoke and flame.
Ship pieces, burning up in Netherop’s thick mesosphere.
Ships, she recalled, that had once been a Banished drekar, a Forerunner harrier, and a bunch of weapon-ships. ‘Vadam had used the Divine Hand to take them out—she had seen him do it, about a millisecond before her mind exploded.
And she had seen ‘Lakosee, infuriated that a Forerunner vessel was being attacked, jumping into the well to use the Divine Hand to destroy ‘Vadam’s stacked-hull frigate, the Sword of Harmony. Then Vale recalled her own vessel, Hidden Point. Heart sinking, stomach clenching, she located Netherop’s three moons along the dome’s centerline. The first moon had just dipped beneath the horizon, but the floor inside the rotunda of the Inner Sanctum—if it actually had a floor—was transparent. She saw a cascade of fiery debris flying inward, toward the heart of the chamber, as it fell from orbit. Debris that used to be a UNSC stealth cruiser.
The cruiser she had arrived in, Hidden Point.
But several motes were arcing back toward the surface of the first moon. They couldn’t be escape pods because those inserted automatically on the nearest habitable body—and in the Ephyra system, only Netherop was even remotely habitable. Its moons were not.
As Vale focused on the arcing motes, they began to clarify and grow larger. She had seen the same thing happen to dozens of other motes almost as soon as she and ‘Vadam entered the Inner Sanctum, so she was unsurprised. She continued to watch them, and soon the motes had resolved into a flight of five D81-LRT Condors.
Hidden Point had carried ten Condors. They were technically long-range dropships used to insert special forces on low-profile missions, usually where it was impractical—or unwise—to send a larger vessel. But Stoppage had used them most often to transfer crew and equipment over interstellar distances. If Vale could make contact with them, she would have a way to get everyone home—along with the Divine Hand, if she could figure out a way to transport it.
If she even wanted to. Vale was beginning to have real doubts about taking the weapon back with her. It was just too damn terrifying… the last thing she wanted to do was turn Earth into a new Netherop. Would that truly be the only way they could defeat Cortana?
Unfortunately, given the comms blackout that had followed the previous use of the weapon, the Condor pilots might well assume that everyone on the surface of the planet was dead. And even if they didn’t, they couldn’t wait around long. The Banished had lost a drekar, but as the Arbiter had said, where there was a drekar, there were usually several karves nearby.
More importantly, there had been one group of weapon-ships attacking the Sangheili flotilla and a second group hitting Hidden Point—and only one harrier. Where was the second harrier?
Vale feared… no, she knew… it was already in slipspace, on its way to the nearest listening station to report. How long it would be before Created reinforcements began to arrive, she could only guess. But it would be soon. They would be using Forerunner slipspace technology, which was incredibly fast, and Cortana was obviously monitoring the situation on Netherop. So, maybe an hour for the harrier to enter slipspace and transit to the station, two hours to marshal the first reinforcements, another hour for them to enter slipspace and transit to Netherop.
Four hours, with luck.
If Vale and her companions had not departed the planet by then, they would probably die on it. The first of Cortana’s reinforcements would arrive and either kill them outright or keep them trapped as ever larger forces arrived. Even the Divine Hand wouldn’t save them—if they dared use it—since Cortana had all the assets she needed to turn Netherop into a prison world by simply blockading the entire Ephyra system.
They had to be gone in four hours, or risk staying here forever. It was that simple.
Vale initiated a running countdown on her HUD, then turned to gather her companions. ‘Vadam and ‘Lakosee lay in the center of the translucent disk of light. They were unconscious and quivering, their fingertips still glowing and white. She hadn’t seen what they did after ‘Lakosee jumped into the rift with ‘Vadam—the Divine Hand had been glowing too brightly by then. But given the view above, it appeared that ‘Vadam had destroyed the Banished drekar, the Forerunner harrier, and the weapon-ships. And ‘Lakosee had taken vengeance by eliminating the Sangheili flotilla and Hidden Point.
Vale thought about killing ‘Lakosee on the spot. He was a proven and persistent threat. Before she yielded to the temptation, however, Varo’dai knelt between him and the Arbiter, ‘Vadam’s helmet and vambraces cradled under one arm, her energy sword grasped in her free hand. Deciding it was better to let the Sangheili deal with their own problems, Vale turned to deal with hers… and found Iyuska raising her hands toward the dome overhead. Hands with bags over them.
“Keely!” Vale snapped. “What are you doing?!”
Iyuska barely glanced over. “Collecting samples, obviously. These might not be the same kind of nanomachines as in the rest of the tel.”
“Nanomachines?” ‘Ayomuu started across the translucent disk toward Iyuska. “Now, that is interesting.”
Vale quickly put herself between them.
“Not on your life, Oath Warden.” She pointed him toward the same archway through which they had entered. “And I do mean on your life.”
“Threats, Spartan Vale?” ‘Ayomuu stopped advancing, but did not back away. “That is rather naive, do you not think?”
“I think we don’t have time to waste on your games.” The countdown on her HUD read 3:58:04. “The Banished didn’t come to Netherop with just one drekar. There’s a larger force preparing to insert, so unless you were faking your surprise about who your contract is really with, I doubt you want to be here when the rest of their flotilla arrives. And neither do I. Wait outside.”
‘Ayomuu’s gaze slid toward Iyuska, but Vale was too well drilled in distraction techniques to take her eyes off him. She simply stepped past Varo’dai and the kaidon’s two slowly recovering charges and started toward the Oath Warden.
He allowed his gaze to linger on Iyuska for a moment longer, then showed his palms in surrender. “As you wish. We can discuss this matter later.”
He took a single step backward and instantly seemed a thousand meters away, standing in front of an archway. Vale watched until he vanished through the exit, then turned to ask Petrov to go keep an eye on him.
The commander was holding the two sample bags that Iyuska had collected and sealed. Iyuska herself was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Keely?”
Petrov dropped her eyes to the translucent disk beneath their feet. “She said something about the energy condenser. Well, whispered really. While you were busy with the Oath Warden.”
“As in vacuum-energy condenser?”
“She didn’t say vacuum. She just said it was what made the Divine Hand work.”
“Really.”
Vale dropped to her knees and pressed her faceplate to the light, cupping her hands around the edges. At first, she could see nothing but the milky luminescence of the disk itself. But she tried a couple of polarizing filters and soon found one that eliminated the glow completely.
Iyuska was indeed under them, crab-walking down a basin wall toward a large, shimmering bead directly beneath the center of the disk. Perhaps a half meter in diameter and a quarter meter high, the bead was filled with brightly colored occlusions that seemed to flash through its interior at random, constantly shifting angles and locations.
Without looking up, Vale asked, “How did she even get down there?”
“Very quickly. She just handed me the sample bags and kneeled at the edge of the disk, then sort of… flip-dived.”
Iyuska reached the bead, then leaned over it, examining its shimmering surface and dictating notes into her datapad. Vale wasn’t quite sure what to think of what she was seeing. On the one hand, she had come to Netherop determined to capture the Guardian-killing weapon her friend had discovered… the so-called Divine Hand. But after seeing how it worked, Vale had begun to wonder if they could actually leave with it—even if they wanted to.
Yet here Iyuska was, calmly proceeding as though she had known all along how to recover the artifact. There was a slim possibility she had… but Vale thought it far more likely that her old friend was just figuring things out on the fly.
As Vale watched, Iyuska put her datapad away and looked up, then began to make waving motions.
Without taking her faceplate away from the light, Vale said, “I think she wants us to move.”
Before anyone could do it, Iyuska bent over the bead and grabbed it with both hands. The surface shimmered and distorted like a drop of liquid, and Vale thought it might simply burst. When it didn’t, Iyuska began to twist it back and forth.
“I think we’d better do it.”
Vale rocked back on her heels and saw ‘Lakosee and Petrov stepping off the light pool and arriving at separate archways. ‘Vadam and Varo’dai were either slower or more wary, simply retreating to the edge and waiting as Vale rose. The Arbiter once again wore his vambraces and helmet.
