Outcasts, page 3
“I am still waiting to learn what this human is doing here on Sanghelios,” ‘Vadam said. “And why you are hunting her.”
“I have already told you. I am hunting her because she broke her word.”
“If you want my help, you will have to be more forthcoming. And if you expect to leave Vadam Keep alive, you will waste no more of my time.”
“I will reveal as much as I am permitted to. If that is a waste of your time…” ‘Ayomuu spread his hands. “You are welcome to try, but I will be leaving Vadam Keep in a manner of my own choosing.”
‘Vadam’s only reply was to drop his gaze to ‘Ayomuu’s weaponless belt.
‘Ayomuu’s eyes glimmered in amusement for an instant, then he said, “The human’s special area of study is protogenic civilizations.”
“Meaning?”
“Before the Forerunners. The xenoarchaeologist has been using the UNSC’s Military Survey of Uninhabited Planets to identify targets to investigate.”
‘Taham and ‘Baoth both tipped their heads at this news, and ‘Vadam had the same thought: if she had access to a military survey, she was no ordinary academic. “She is ONI then?”
“When there still was an ONI, perhaps,” ‘Ayomuu said. “But no longer. If she were an ONI operative, she would not need my client to finance her expedition to N’ba.”
“Perhaps,” ‘Vadam said. The Office of Naval Intelligence was nothing if not resourceful, and he had reason to believe the Tyrant’s rise had not destroyed them completely. They were deep in hiding somewhere, licking their wounds and searching for a way to counterattack. And tricking a gullible Sangheili kaidon into financing their operation was exactly the kind of subterfuge they might use to conceal their plan. “Tell me more about this N’ba.”
“It is a marginally survivable world in the Out Sectors; it is called Netherop by the humans. It drew the xenoarchaeologist’s interest because there was a small surface battle there early in the War of Annihilation, and the UNSC’s after-action account referred to an ancient roadway, a buried city, and sophisticated vehicles that utilized legs instead of wheels. That drew the xenoarchaeologist’s interest, and she deemed it a good candidate for an exploratory expedition. Unfortunately for her, her funding vanished when the Tyrant imposed her will.”
“So your client offered his support,” ‘Vadam surmised.
“He has a deep interest in xenoarchaeology. He knows this human’s work, and he believes she will recast the field’s understanding of protogenic civilization. All he wants is to play a small part in her success.”
“Perhaps that is what he told you,” ‘Vadam said. “But we both know there is another reason. I have never heard of someone contracting an Oath Warden to force a research grant on an explorer.”
“Oh, she has already taken my client’s funds. It is her part of the agreement I am here to enforce. She is to give my client first choice of any artifacts she recovers.”
“After she reaches N’ba?” ‘Vadam clarified. “Which she has not yet done?”
“That is so.”
“Then you are premature. She cannot give your client what she has not yet recovered.”
“True, but there are allowances for clear intent,” ‘Ayomuu said. “And she made her intent clear when she failed to rendezvous with my client and came here, to Vadam.”
“Where was she to be instead?”
“If I told you that, you would know who my client is. Which I am not free to reveal.”
“Then I am not seeing how this concerns me,” ‘Vadam said. “Usze and Kola will see you to the gate.”
The two warriors stepped forward, flanking the Oath Warden to either side, and extended their arms toward the door.
‘Ayomuu clacked his mandibles in frustration. “Perhaps if I were to mention who she has come to see—”
“Olympia Vale?” guessed ‘Vadam. “Spartan Olympia Vale—the only human in Vadam an Oath Warden would fear.”
“It is more the aftermath I fear than the human.” ‘Ayomuu continued to ignore ‘Taham’s and ‘Baoth’s outstretched arms and exhaled slowly. “I can reveal this much. My client began to grow suspicious of Iyuska’s intentions—”
“Who is this Iyuska?”
“Keely Iyuska,” ‘Ayomuu said. “That is the human target’s name. She is a junior lecturer of xenoarchaeology at the University of Edinburgh on Earth. After agreeing to my client’s terms for her expedition, Iyuska discovered an ancient account suggesting the N’ba civilization had been attacked by a Forerunner Guardian.”
“And now that she knows why the civilization vanished, she no longer wishes to journey to N’ba?”
“Not at all. The N’ba civilization survived, at least for a time. It was the Guardian that perished.”
It took ‘Vadam a moment to grasp the implications of what he was hearing. Guardians were—as far as ‘Vadam or anyone else knew—practically invincible to any force wielded by a contemporary military. Yet some lost protogenic civilization had found a way to destroy one?
It seemed too incredible to believe. And ‘Vadam wouldn’t have believed it, had the armigers not been out in such force. But they were everywhere in the Valley now, mounting checkpoints and deploying heavy weapons more suited to battle than policing, filling the air with Aethra stalker craft and razing entire tenement islands on the mere suspicion that their quarry was inside. The Tyrant feared the human xenoarchaeologist for a reason—and that reason was most likely something she knew.
Now it all made sense—of course ‘Ayomuu’s client wanted first pick of any artifacts that Iyuska recovered. Any kaidon capable of challenging the Tyrant’s Guardians would become savior of the species—and the one leader capable of uniting the Sangheili into a true Concert of Worlds.
And of course Iyuska wanted that key information to go to her fellow humans instead. Any species capable of unshackling itself from the Guardians would become the unrivaled masters of the galaxy, free to dictate terms to its allies and to claim any world it wished from its rivals. The Sangheili were generally on good terms with the humans now… but that was in no small part because the two species had collectively been weakened so that it was dangerous for them both not to be. How might that change if the humans learned how to stop the Guardians first?
It would depend on which humans the knowledge empowered… and Thel ‘Vadam understood just enough about ONI to realize the odds did not favor his chosen allies.
“I am beginning to see your point, Oath Warden.” ‘Vadam motioned ‘Ayomuu toward a lounging bench in the center of the conversation area. “Please sit. We should make some plans.”
CHAPTER 3
The Aethra stalker craft had been circling over the eastern edge of the New Harbor all evening, climbing high over the inky waters before wheeling around to dive back into the curving lanes of the Young Borough in Vadam Valley. The tenement spires and merchant houses there were new, erected around the flooded crater left by a magnetic accelerator cannon strike from the UNSC Infinity—a MAC attack that had broken Avu Med ‘Telcam’s assault on Vadam Keep six years ago.
The sight of so many sickle-shaped fliers sweeping between glass towers made Olympia Vale think of her native Luyten, where, as a young girl on family camping trips in the Hoodoo Gorges, she had enjoyed watching scaly nightgyrs dart through rocky canyons in search of prey. But the Aethras were not harmless winged lizards gorging on blood mots, nor did their arrival bring relief from a yearly plague of fever-spreading thumb birds. The Aethras were Cortana’s reconnaissance craft, and whatever they were searching for, it likely involved Arbiter Thel ‘Vadam’s failure to reply to Vale’s recent messages. She had sent several over the last four hours, asking about the force of armigers spreading across Vadam, and he had not answered any.
Vale knew from her own sources that the Sangheili High Gathering that day had been a rough one—just not this rough. From her balcony in the Villa of Long Views, it looked as though the armigers were trying to crush some sort of uprising before it started to gather momentum. But whether that implied a rebellion against Cortana or a coup attempt against the Arbiter remained unclear.
Given the steady stream of vehicles that had departed Vadam Keep over the last several hours and the lack of response from the Arbiter, the idea of a coup attempt was starting to seem the likeliest possibility. But until Vale had confirmation, she could only watch, wait, and continue checking with her network of informants—who, at the moment, seemed annoyingly uninformed.
The purple ray of an impulse engine flared to life forty kilometers in the distance, near Vadam Harbor, then curled toward the sky. A moment later, four more craft launched from separate locations around the Valley. It took only a heartbeat to realize all the launches had occurred near facilities controlled by the Arbiter himself: the Council House, the Vadam Dockyards in the New Harbor, the Arbiter’s base on Dalkesu Sea, and Vadam Keep.
Clearly, the armiger deployment had something to do with the Arbiter. Orchestrating a closely coordinated launch from so many different locations would have been tricky even with electronic communications—and ‘Vadam would never have used such vulnerable methods and risked Cortana’s eavesdropping. The ground vehicles streaming out of his keep all evening had probably been a mixture of decoys and transports carrying coded messages and key personnel to the launch sites.
But… why?
It wasn’t like the Arbiter to flee a coup attempt. He was too proud and tenacious. And any military assets he hoped to call in from off-world would be destroyed by Cortana’s orbital control forces. So, he had to be trying to get something—or someone—away from Sanghelios.
Vale raised her binoculars and turned toward Kolaar Manufactorum—the one major ‘Vadam-controlled facility from which she hadn’t seen a launch.
It took only moments to find the restricted-access hangar, a massive cavern at the rear of the development enclave. The energy barrier at its mouth had already been reactivated, but a small parade of service vehicles carried Sangheili technicians back toward the Manufactorum’s maintenance domes. Obviously something had just departed the restricted hangar—and since Vale hadn’t actually seen anything launch from the Manufactorum area, she had a pretty good idea what.
She opened a comm channel to one of her contacts in the Manufactorum’s development cadre. “Ellie, I wanted to check on that toy you’ve been assembling.”
Ellie Gracio was a human special-materials engineer helping Kolaar Manufactorum develop a stealth version of the Mikpramu-pattern Phantom for the Swords of Sanghelios, and “the toy” was one of a hundred informal terms they used for the prototype to confuse eavesdropping AIs. Whether it was wise to share human dropship stealth technology with the Swords was way above Vale’s pay grade, but she understood Admiral Hood’s reasoning. Anything the UNSC could do to bolster the Arbiter and strengthen his ties to humanity made a new war with the Sangheili less likely. And if having an intimate familiarity with the craft’s design gave the UNSC an advantage it could use later, say if a war did erupt… so much the better.
“Is it available to see tomorrow?” Vale continued.
“Hard to say,” Ellie replied. “One of the hatchlings might be giving it a whirl. Could be hard to find tomorrow.”
Vale forced an understanding laugh. “I can imagine. Do you know which one took off with it?”
“Afraid not. You know how they are here. They don’t tell me anything until they want me to put it back together.”
“Isn’t that the way? Do me a favor and see if you can find out who has it. Maybe they’ll let me have a look at it.”
“I’ll ask around. But like I said, no one tells me anything. I’ll be in touch.”
Ellie closed the channel, leaving Vale more puzzled than ever about the night’s events. The five observable launches had been distractions, designed to draw attention away from the Manufactorum’s stealth-prototype activation.
The tactic seemed to be working. Vale could see orange darts of heat shimmer—no doubt Cortana’s Phaeton fighter craft—climbing through the atmosphere at hypersonic velocity. They were converging on the efflux trails of the five craft that had launched a few minutes earlier, and the Aethra stalkers were swarming around the facilities from which they had departed.
But no Aethras were swirling around the Kolaar Manufactorum, and no Phaetons were approaching the unseen form of the stealth prototype. Whatever the Arbiter had been trying to sneak off Sanghelios, he had succeeded.
And without informing Vale about it.
As the putative head of an interstellar confederation with a formal, yet still fragile alliance with the UNSC, the Arbiter had no obligation whatsoever to report his movements to the resident Spartan. But he was usually careful to keep her informed of events that concerned her or the UNSC, and he would certainly expect her to be alarmed by Cortana’s deployments in Vadam Valley—especially given what had happened to Doisac three days ago.
Yet, he still had not replied to her messages seeking a situation briefing.
Not even Keepmaster ‘Quvadamii or one of ‘Vadam’s escorts had responded on the Arbiter’s behalf… and that could only mean he was hiding something. A less principled ally would simply have lied. But not ‘Vadam. He valued honor above all, and he would not stain it by deceiving a valued collaborator like Vale.
On the other hand, he wasn’t stupid. Thel ‘Vadam put the interests of the Sangheili and Sanghelios first, which meant he viewed his alliance with the UNSC—and even his friendships with the Master Chief and Admiral Hood—as serving those interests. So, if he was shutting Vale out, it was entirely possible that he was involved with something that pitted those interests against humanity’s… or because he had finally discovered the UNSC could not always be trusted.
Vale lived in dread of the day that the Arbiter finally learned the truth about the Sangheili civil war: that his near overthrow by the Servants of the Abiding Truth had been abetted by ONI as part of a campaign to keep the Sangheili weak after the Covenant War. And she had waking nightmares about the stealth-Phantom project. One of the human engineers was almost certainly an ONI agent trying to slip an exploitable flaw into the design, and Vale knew ‘Vadam would hold her personally responsible if the saboteur was ever discovered. She just didn’t see why either betrayal would trigger a reaction from Cortana’s forces.
A small pop sounded in front of Vale, and she looked down to find she had been squeezing the balustrade so hard that the klastone had cracked. She hated uncertainty. None of her sources could explain the armiger deployment, and going down into the Valley to conduct her own investigation was out of the question. The Arbiter’s relationship with the UNSC had already undermined his influence with many of the other kaidons. If his human liaison started “looking for answers” during Cortana’s policing action, he would likely lose the support of the rest.
Until she knew more, Vale could only watch and wait, and it made her feel helpless. Worse, it made her feel incompetent. She might be dressed in a civilian tunic and trousers at the moment, but she was a Spartan-IV super-soldier, occasional ONI operative, and the highest-ranking human diplomat here on Sanghelios. It was her duty to safeguard the other UNSC personnel posted on this alien world, which was historically hostile to her species no matter how close of an ally she was to one of its key leaders. But with Cortana’s eavesdroppers likely monitoring every comm message she sent, even a simple READY ALERT could cause a sequence of responses and counterresponses that would quickly escalate from cache openings and weapon retrievals to file wipes, hardware demolition, and a full-scale evacuation.
None of that was something good operatives would put into motion because of what they didn’t know.
Vale lifted her binoculars to make another sweep of the Valley and felt a familiar knot of regret forming in her stomach. As a member of Fireteam Osiris, she had been one of the four Spartan-IVs assigned to hunt down John-117 and Blue Team when they went AWOL in the early stages of the Cortana Event. The directive had been lawful, and it would have taken a diviner to see that obeying the order would delay Blue Team just enough to prevent them from stopping Cortana. But most of the time, Vale felt it had been a mistake to accept the assignment. Osiris should have known better than to doubt the Master Chief’s instincts and left Blue Team to pursue her unharassed. They still might not have been able to stop her from releasing the Guardians… but they would have had a lot better chance.
Or, perhaps Cortana would have escaped with Blue Team as she’d planned, and it was simply luck that Spartan Locke had managed to prevent her from trapping four of humanity’s greatest heroes in a Cryptum for the next ten thousand years.
After a moment, Vale spotted the dark sickle of a single Aethra floating up the mountain. It was moving so slowly she wouldn’t have noticed it, had it not been so low that it was momentarily silhouetted by the driving lamps of a Worik land-skimmer.
The Villa of Long Views was hardly the only residence accessed by the switchbacking road that climbed the side of Kolaar Mountain. But the longer Vale watched, the more convinced she grew that the Worik was coming to her house. First, the armiger deployment had suppressed all nonessential traffic, so the driver was on an important task. Second, the Aethra following it was flying without running lights, dodging out of sight whenever the vehicle rounded a hairpin curve, so it was clearly on a covert surveillance mission. Third, the Arbiter had been taking stringent precautions to prevent eavesdroppers from learning of his plans, so if he was going to reply to Vale’s inquiries, he would probably do so via personal messenger.
Vale spent the next five minutes watching the vehicle climb the ladder of curves that separated the stately villa district from the valley below. The sight evoked a growing sense of dread, perhaps because it reminded her of her last family camping trip to Hoodoo Gorges. Her mother, Nerina Vale, was a recently promoted captain in UNSC signals intelligence who had just been reassigned to High Command in Sydney, Australia, on Earth. Her father, Caleb Vale, was a slipspace-drive technician who refused to work on military vessels because he was a devoted pacifist, and he spent the entire time trying to persuade Nerina to decline the assignment.
