Chapter One:
Hall of the Mountain King
September 27, 2552
Two days to arrival
Tyler Blancett entered the cold metal room and slammed the door behind him. He stared daggars at the red-armored Elite across the table, who had awoken from the sedative that had been released into his cell to find himself securely bound to a metal chair, which was subsequently bolted to the floor. Blancett dragged another chair over to the table and sat down, placing an M6C on the table between them.
"A curious technique, human," the Elite growled. "What do you intend to do with your weapon, beyond inciting my wrath?"
"Hell of a lot of good your 'wrath' will do you tied to that chair," Blancett replied.
"You show great bravery against an unarmed warrior," 'Yerumee said coldly.
Blancett shook off the insult. "What was your mission?"
The Elite remained silent.
"You were picked up not too far away from an archeological dig site," Blancett said. "Did that have anything to do with your mission?"
"I shall tell you nothing."
"Then I ought to kill you right now." Blancett picked up the magnum and aimed it straight at the Elite's forehead. 'Yerumee closed his eyes, waiting for death to take him. It didn't. A moment's hesitation, and Blancett put the gun back down. The Elite smiled smugly as Blancett formulated his next question.
"Who-"
The recording paused, rewinding a few seconds. It paused again, zooming in on the smug look on 'Yerumee's face. Joshua Murdock shook his head as he watched the video of Blancett's attempt at interrogation. Blancett lifted his eyebrow. "What?" he asked defensively.
"The first mistake you made was the bad-ass ploy," Murdock said. "The guy is nearly a meter taller than you. You aren't going to intimidate him. That'll work on the grunts, but not this guy."
"What the hell was I supposed to do?"
"He had you figured out the second you came through the door. The guy's smart, tough, and devout. The frontal approach is off the table, and you'll never get him to spill all. You've got to give him the impression that you know more than you do, but he has to genuinely believe it. He'll try to maneuver around roadblocks that don't exist, and that's when he'll slip something. You've got to out-think him rather than out-muscle him."
"Right. If we can't beat it out of him, why don't we just pump him full of truth serum?"
"We don't know anything about their biochemistry, Blancett. We got a lucky break with the sedative, but pumping him full of sodium pentathol could kill him, and we need him alive for the time being. As is, your interrogation session was worse than a waste. It may make things even harder. Read between the lines, and you gave him more information than he gave you."
"So? He's not leaving this facility alive."
"No, but it'll make him tougher to break."
"That's great, Z-man. When do you plan to go in?"
"With him? Not yet. Put him on ice for a while. He thinks he's beaten you, and he'll be wary. Let him stay in a cell for now. Let him be powerless. His confidence was shaken by being captured. It'll be shaken again."
"Who do you plan to question, then?"
# # # # # # #
Taking a deep breath, Murdock opened the door. He quickly entered the room, alone and unarmed, and closed the titanium door behind him. He pulled a metal chair to the metal table and had a seat, taking a moment to silently regard the Elite minor on the other end of the table. Its green eyes burned with hatred, its blue armor close to black in the dim light of the room.
"You may torture me at your leisure, human, but I shall give you nothing. You could save time by killing me now."
Murdock pretended he didn't hear.
"Mind telling me your name?"
The Elite was obviously closing itself off. Time to break the ice.
"No? For ease of conversation, I'm going to call you Bob. You cool with that, Bob?"
The Elite growled. "My name is Sangheili Minor Ilion 'Hoksatee, Inquisitor of the Covenant, and I shall be addressed as such, human!"
"Now we're getting somewhere, Minor. You prefer name or rank?"
The Elite huffed but its glare softened somewhat.
"You'll get about as much respect as you give, Ilion. You can make this as easy or as hard as you want."
"What, then, do I call you?"
"Any damn thing you like. I, like you, do not exist to the outside world."
"It is but a matter of time before my forces come to my aid, human, and I shall enjoy watching you die."
"Perhaps you're not hearing me. They don't have a clue where you are. You don't have a clue where you are."
The elite tensed. He had not even thought of it. Was he even on the same planet anymore? He shook himself. This human was proving difficult to intimidate.
"I wonder, human, will you beg for mercy?"
"I wonder, Bob, what will High Charity think of your failure?"
The inexperienced warrior was visibly nervous and puffed up with pointless, uncontrolled anger. It was a combination that would inevitably lead to loss of self-control. He'd break. Maybe not in this session, but he'd break.
"Two words your primitive computers could have dredged from any of a number of communications," he said, trying to stay on top of the conversation.
"Kind of stupid to transmit sensitive data on unencrypted channels, isn't it? You don't know who else might be listening."
"I-" the Elite frowned and lowered its head momentarily, telling Murdock that he was breaking through. "You have no proof," he finally said.
"Bracktanus," Murdock said quietly, flipping a switch under the table.
"You have served only to aggravate things! Had you permitted us to complete our mission, the prophets would again view the Sangheili with favor!" The young Elite had no way of knowing that every word he had just said had been filtered into Keom 'Yerumee's cell. Murdock flicked the switch off again.
"So things are tense at home, huh? The big, bad brutes come stomping along and suddenly things aren't as simple as they used to be."
"Do not underestimate my people, human. We are well-capable of holding our own."
Murdock continued as if he had heard nothing. "So you get ballsy," he said. "You try something that hasn't been done before; something to reverse the trend, set things to rights. Surprise, you get captured ten minutes after your insertion. That was quite the brilliant plan." Murdock flipped the switch again.
"The Council knew nothing of it. Our mission was our own."
The switch went off again. Murdock stood up and paced along the far wall. "Really," he said. "So you planned it from the start. Or, rather, your superior did. Now, whatever could have been so important that he would risk such an operation? What could he have found that would have been so impressive to the prophets?"
"The Holy--" the Elite stopped himself. "I shall say no more."
"I'm going to take a break, then," Murdock said. He turned towards to the door to leave, stopping short. "You're not a good liar, Ilion. Your leadership has no idea that you went on this mission." He turned around, facing the Minor. "They're not going to find you for a long time." He opened the door and left. Moments later, a small dose of ethyl alcohol was released in the air in the room, quickly knocking the Elite minor unconscious.
# # # # # # #
The door chimed and slid open. The on-duty technician in the room turned in surprise from the communications console. "Hey, you don't have authorization to be-"
Murdock stood in front of the man, holding up a data block.
"Wait a minute," the man said. "You're that Section Zero guy, right? Come to make the split-lips talk?"
"Actually, yes."
"Hey, that's great! I saw the session ten minutes ago. You really nailed him to the wall. Oh, I'm Michael Jones, by the way," he said, offering his hand. "You are?"
The interrogator shook it. "Joshua Murdock."
"Internal affairs, that's cool," Jones said. "Anyway, I'm in charge of maintaining communications, in-station, station-to-surface, station-to-slipstream. The facility's only 250 meters underground, but there's some sort of mineral deposit between here and the surface that scrambles radio signals. Magnetite would be my guess. All communications outside the facility have to be carried through fiber-optic lines up the elevator shaft to the surface, so I've got to network the old-fashioned way."
"I noticed that a lot of the computer systems in this facility were out-of-date," Murdock said, "older than the facility itself, actually."
"Oh... yeah. The damn covies are getting better and better at hacking into our networks. We use outdated equipment with more restricted features here so it's harder to hack in. Less open doors you've got to close. We have some new stuff down in the labs, but the newer equipment isn't directly linked to the outside world. That's part of why my job is so important. Keep the bugs out. In case of extreme emergency, I can physically cut the link to the surface or any other part of the base. Benefits of a wired network."
Murdock stuck the data block in the computer and added the recording of the interrogation to his report. "I wanted to ask you something," he said, "I put in my code in at the door, but it didn't work. Second time, it opened. Any clue what's up with that?"
Jones looked deadpanned for a moment, then grinned. "Oh... that. The system can be a little glitchy, especially when Quincy gets busy."
"You mean the facility's smart AI?"
"The same. Hey, I suppose you haven't met him-"
Murdock's vision flared as if the image were suddenly distorted through a thousand prisms. The room seemed to undulate as the fractured image in front of him melded back together in a matter of seconds. Completely disoriented and with a sick feeling in his stomach, he grabbed the nearest swivel chair and sat down so as not to fall over. Michael Jones did the same. The two men took a moment to regain their equilibrium before Murdock asked the obvious.
"What the hell just happened?"
"I don't know."
"Well, we better find out."
"Right," Jones said. He held his forehead and began typing at a console, frequently missing keys. The disorientation hadn't yet passed.
Murdock stood up and stumbled out of the room. The meandering corridor was plated with Titanium-A alloy and made hollow clang sounds as he walked over parts of the floor. He kept a hand on the wall to maintain his balance until he shook off the weakness in his legs. Shaking his head, he continued towards the lift that would take him down another two levels. A side door opened as he passed and Laura Conners stepped out, disoriented.
"Any idea what that was?" she asked.
"No clue," he replied, "I'm headed to 'G' deck to find out."
She nodded, turned, and re-entered the room, picking up a dropped tray of rations. There was coffee all over her papers now. Terrific. She would have to have Quincy print out another hard copy of her report. She gathered the wet papers and dropped them in the recycler. After wiping up the mess, she eyed the camera above her computer monitor.
"Quincy, could you get me another copy?"
She paused.
"Quincy?"
# # # # # # #
Sangheili Major Keom 'Yerumee rubbed his eyes. His head ached as if he had been clubbed. The room had come together again, but apparently he had not been alone in his vision. His apprentice was shaking his head in attempts to clear it of the disorientation, and the two Unggoy he could see were clutching their eyes and groaning audibly.
What treachery was this?
'Yerumee looked around. He could see nobody else. Perhaps the Kig-Yar scout had retreated to some corner of his cell, but it was reasonable to assume that all were afflicted with the same symptoms. He looked for the hundredth time at the lifeless metal walls that enclosed him. For the first time, the guard was nowhere to be seen. The smell of electricity was gone. All that now held him in this primitive cage was a grid of metal bars... perhaps he could weaken them.
'Yerumee grabbed two of the bars and pressed against them, steadily increasing the pressure. They did not move, but a low metallic groan could be heard. His apprentice looked up with a start. 'Yerumee interpreted the reaction and let go of the bars. An angry-looking human walked over and pointed an M90 shotgun straight at the Elite's forehead.
"Try that again, you split-chinned bastard, and I'll blow your fucking head off!"
The red-armored Elite made a low growl and sat motionless on the floor of its cell. Tyler Blancett backed away from the cell towards the end of the corridor. At the end of the room there was a slightly elevated platform with a console at the top. He safed the M90 and leaned it on the wall, typing for a few seconds at the console. The lights above the cells turned from yellow to red as a hearty-yet-nonfatal dose of electricity began coursing through the bars again. Tyler shook his head and placed the M90 back on the rack on the wall. Whatever had just happened must have played hell with the computers, too. He sat down in a metal chair. Someone would come by sooner or later to tell him what had just happened.
# # # # # # #
A low chime sounded. Jones looked at his watch. Nine seconds later, it chimed again. Jones cursed under his breath and shot up, running across the room. He pushed an alternate code on the keypad of the door to the room and waited a few seconds. The entire room was silently whisked one deck further down before the door opened. Jones stepped into the closet-sized room where the corridor should have been and sat at the metal swivel chair bolted to the deck. He opened the safety plate covering a numerical keypad and, carefully and deliberately, typed in a four-digit code. The chimes stopped. He watched as the display on his watch counted back up, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. His work here was done for now.
He walked out of the claustrophobically small room and the door sealed. The room silently moved back up one level as Michael went back to his station and set to repairing communications in the station. They would have one hell of a story to tell once they linked with the surface again.
# # # # # # #
Laura Conners rebooted her terminal and looked at the latest data from the probes. A number of slipspace probes were positioned around Coral, almost beyond its gravity well. Their purpose was to burrow into slipspace at regular intervals, gather data, and transmit that data to ONI when they returned. If they returned. Due to "eddies" they encountered in Shaw-Fujikawa space, the probes almost never exited within a thousand miles of where they entered, and sometimes they didn't come back at all. This was rare, however. Typically, it would only happen if there was a nearby solar event, such as a particularly strong solar flare at the time of the dive. She stared at the feedback from the probes. Two probes had gone missing simultaneously.
Odd, she thought. The other probes picked up a large mass in slipspace, amorphous, almost fluidlike in its appearance. A dark smudge on the readout. She could make out no geometry, and the mass was too small to be a Covenant ship. It was probably just an asteroid. She would have to report it nonetheless, at least once the facility was up and running again.
# # # # # # #
Yuji Miyagi looked frantically from one console to another. They were a blur of amber and red lights. He closed his eyes for a moment then blinked repeatedly, clearing his vision. He scanned one console in front of him. The light he was looking for was still green. Yuji hung his head back and let out a sigh of relief before calmly going about resetting the equipment in the laboratory. The facility was still safe for the time being, just a matter of clean-up.
Joshua Murdock appeared on the monitor showing the corridor outside the facility central monitoring station. The retinal, fingerprint, voice, and password he gave checked out, so Yuji buzzed open the door.
"Everyone's pretty confused, Miyagi," Murdock said, "any idea what just happened?"
"The system rebooted. There might have been an air pressure anomaly that caused the visual phenomenon, but I haven't run an environment scan yet. Hang on."
Yuji typed briefly. "No, the sensors shorted out for a couple of seconds. No record, but I'm not seeing any barometric fluctuations either. Those would be there if EM had to manipulate the air."
"Heard anything from Darcy yet?"
"Communications were blacked out, but she's up on 'B' deck. Let's take a look."
The monitor flashed. The image came back to show a woman in a lab coat lying motionless on the floor, a dark pool around her head.
"Shit," Murdock said, "shit!"
"Comm is still down," Yuji said, "you've got to go! Go!"
Murdock was already out the door. He ran down the corridor to the lift, his footsteps echoing as he ran. He punched the button and the airtight elevator doors sealed. Eight infuriatingly slow seconds later, the elevator doors opened to reveal 'B' deck. Murdock pushed through them and punched in the keycode to Darcy's laboratory. It didn't open.
"Quincy," he shouted, "Quincy, are you there?"
A pause.
"Yes," a cold voice said.
"I need you to open this door. Several key systems are offline. My code doesn't work, and Darcy's bleeding badly."
"Authorization," the AI said.
"Greig," he said impatiently.
"Password confirmed. Lieutenant Joshua Murdock, serial number 3233804I-0343, voiceprint confirmed. Emergency entrance authorization granted. Please refrain from handling unknown objects in the laboratory."
The door slid open. Murdock ran in and kneeled next to Darcy, checking for a pulse. There was none. Murdock swore under his breath. She had hit her right temple on the corner of the steel table as she fell over, and opened the vein. There was nothing they could do. Murdock wiped his hands on his pants and stood up, shaking his head. His glance passed over the tabletop--and froze.
"What the hell?"
There was a fist-sized crystal on the table, a geometrically perfect polyhedron that glowed a faint green and was covered in unusual glyphs. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Section Zero had believed for some time that Ackerson was up to something in this facility, and now he knew they were right. Yuji Miyagi and Michael Jones arrived to the room a moment later to see Murdock inspecting the crystal and looked at each other uneasily. Murdock turned to face them.
"Anyone care to explain this?"