The suit hissed as it pressurised. John breathed. Back inside his MJOLNIR armour, cleaned, nano-clusters replenished and colour set to a fresh, pristine green.
It smelled right. It felt like home. The Master Chief clenched his fist, and felt safe again.
Commander Palmer, turning her helmet over in her hands, eyed him from the opposite bench. John felt uncomfortable, and glad that he was now behind his faceplate. Somewhere to hide.
She looked like she was about to say something, but settled for smiling. People didn't seem to talk to him much any more. Not since Argent Moon. There was Frederic and Linda and Kelly, and there was Lasky, and there was Hadid, but not even they came to John to talk about anything other than him.
At least he now had something to do.
"NOW HEAR THIS," Roland's voice boomed again over the intercom. "THIRTY SECONDS TO NORMAL SPACE, STAND BY."
"Helmets on, people," Palmer said, ducking into her own.
The plan was simple. Infinity would transition around ten kilometres from the 'hub' of the AS-81 shipyard. A convoy of ten shuttles would board the station, check for any stranded personnel, grab any supplies, and—if any time remained—do the same for the nearest incomplete ships. There were around nine in various states of completion as of the latest manifest they had, but there was no way they could sweep all of them in the less than forty-nine minutes they had available.
They'd need to be quick.
"Stand by," Palmer said, "here we go..." as Roland began counting down.
The ship's superstructure vibrated again—and then stillness. There was a click as the pilot disengaged the Albatross's safety switch.
"ALL HANDS, SLIPSTREAM JUMP COMPLETE," Roland announced. "Operators, doors to manual and open, please. Shore party, syncing timers..."
A countdown sprouted on John's faceplate. 48:53. 52. 51. Just like old times, he thought.
"OK, pilots, I'll clear you for departure one by one," Roland said, chirpily. "Have fun, I want you all home by midnight."
An uneasy chuckle rose as the pilot, a pointy-faced woman named Alvarez (John thought—he had not actually asked) flicked some switches and grasped the inputs.
The Albatross rose, and the engines purred as it slipped through the opening bay doors.
AS-81 was a dodecagon-shaped space station, with each vertex extended into a long tunnel that terminated in either a blank piece of nothingness, or a starship. True to the manifest's description, there were nine: their heads-up displays labelled them all within a few seconds. UNSC Be Very Afraid was the least-complete, with only the ship's bow in a recognisable shape. There was a more complete superstructure, albeit with hollowed out voids where the crew accommodation should've been, on UNSC Slice-'N'-Dice and UNSC Ultimate Starship II. By contrast, UNSC Boil In The Bag and UNSC Who's Asking? seemed like they were ready to go.
"We should scuttle this place," suggested Commander Palmer, in what John suspected was an attempt to fill the silence. "Last thing we need is Cortana stealing some ready-made starships."
"Or we could steal the ships ourselves," said Master Sergeant Stacker.
"Another ship to re-fuel," Palmer replied. "But we'll see."
It took a few attempts to get the automatic airlock opening procedure to work (John could hear Alvarez complaining over the COM about a 'handshake failure') but within four minutes, the Albatross lurched slightly as it landed, and they saw light coming from the cockpit.
"Well, you've still got an atmosphere," said Lasky over the COM. "The bad news is, we can't raise the station AI. Roland thinks it's probably gone into standby and needs rebooting."
They'd gone through this in the briefing. AS-81 had a simulated AI that dealt with moving goods around and operating the habitation and hotel equipment. It answered to Station, but also (said the data file they had) to Sonia, presumably (said Fred) because someone had decided that it 'gets Sonia nerves.'
John decided that he didn't understand engineers' sense of humour.
"Opening our cargo bay now," said the pilot. The light above the door went red, and the dropship's frame shuddered a little as the pillars supporting the cargo bay descended.
"OK, squad," Palmer said, standing, "form up. Master Chief, you take point. Leave the carts for now."
John rose, and swung his way towards the Albatross's ramp. They would need to be quick. Forty-two and a half minutes remained.
But neither was he about to throw caution to the wind.
The airlock door opened, leading onto a narrow corridor that went around the dodecagon to the left and the right. The lighting was in emergency mode. Before them, a large Greek letter Kappa κ emblazoned on the wall. The airlock they'd just landed in: appropriately, AS-81 had twelve.
The Master Chief shone his flashlight left and right, and waited for the IFF sensor on his visor to update itself. A few seconds of scanning. No red, and no yellow beyond the sea directly behind him.
"Station clear," he said into the COM.
"Roger that," Palmer replied. "Let's split up, meet in the atrium. Blue Team, with the Chief, the rest of you, with me. We'll be going clockwise."
John turned right, as Blue Team formed behind him, weapons in hand but not readied—yet.
"Keep your eyes peeled for a free network socket," Palmer said. "First one to find one gets booze on me tonight."
A small rabble of laughter on the COM. John kept moving.
"Found one," Frederic piped up from behind him. "Looks like it's my lucky night..."
He stuffed a data bridge into the recess on the wall. It glowed green, and after a few seconds, a terminal screen appeared in everyone's peripheral visor.
"OK," Fred announced, as he paged through an antiquated-looking computer system's menus. "Inventories... yep."
Plenty for the taking from the station, by the looks of things. A large workshop, with a sizeable cache of smaller components. Even better, since Infinity's Huragok had a knack for combining smaller components into much larger systems, and usually in a more efficient way than any UNSC lowest-bidder contractor could ever manage.
Fred ran through the roster of docked ships as the remaining Albatrosses docked and the airlocks around them began to hiss open.
SHIP (Hull Marking) (Completion%) (Fuel Load / Personnel Onboard / Active Agents)
UNSC Who's Asking? (CB-92) (96%) (2932.67 / 0 / 0)
UNSC Boil In The Bag (CB-93) (99%) (122.39 / 0 / 0)
UNSC Thanks, I Hate It (CB-101) (92%) (10.96 / 0 / 0)
UNSC I'm Sure It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time (CB-102) (90% BLOCKED!)
(21.66 / 2 / 0) UNSC Slice-'N'-Dice (CB-124) (83%) (0 / 0 / 0)
UNSC Ultimate Starship II (CB-125) (81%) (0 / 0 / 0)
UNSC Cruiser McCruiseface (CB-144) (23%) (0 / 0 / 0)
UNSC Say It To My Face (CB-145) (23%) (0 / 0 / 0)
"I like the ship names," said Kelly. "Bit of a mouthful, though."
"It's a tradition at the shipyard, apparently," Palmer replied. "Let the engineers have a vote to decide on the ship name. Never a good idea."
For once, John was in complete agreement with Spartan Palmer.
Fred continued scrolling. "Looks like most of our inventory's already on station... nah... nope, nothing to see here—"
"Wait!" John said, suddenly, sensing he'd missed something obvious. "Go back."
Fred returned to the previous page.
"What do the numbers indicate?" John asked.
"Fuel, personnel, builder robots..." came Palmer's voice—but she cut herself off as she realised what the Master Chief had seen. "A-ha!"
There were two personnel aboard the unfinished UNSC I'm Sure It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. Last updated: 15 seconds ago. Not out-of-date either.
For the first time in weeks, John felt his heart and muscles energised with a surge of adrenaline. It felt uncomfortable. Exciting. Alarming.
This was the opposite of feeling bored.
"Commander Palmer," the Master Chief said, "permission to take Blue Team onto I'm Sure It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time to recover the personnel."
Kelly glanced at him. He knew that beneath her visor, she was smirking, stifling back a chuckle.
"Negative, Master Chief," Palmer replied. "I need people to co-ordinate the cargo grab."
"Ma'am—" the Chief began. He knew it was pointless arguing, but—
"OK, hang on..." Palmer said, and John thought he could hear her sighing. Thinking. Working out how she was going to accommodate him, for the sake of her friendship with Lasky. For John's sake, and John immediately felt guilty. "OK. Blue Team, you remain on station. Oh Eight Seven, I'm putting you in charge of logistics. We want that wish-list fulfilled."
"Yes, ma'am," replied Kelly.
"Master Chief, Sergeant Stacker, with me."
John's heart rate rocketed.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, instinctively.
Palmer didn't reply to that, but waved a two-finger smile to him as they met at the spacebridge to I'm Sure It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.
"There's a crew manifest," said Roland, as they crossed the threshold and marched through the narrow tunnel, "but helpfully, there's no way of matching the names to the personnel count. Not that it matters, the manifest is empty anyway and doesn't show any check-ins or check-outs at all. It's pristine. The personnel counting equipment they were using relied on cameras at the doorways, so it's notoriously flaky."
"So there may not be anyone on the ship after all," said Stacker.
"But that doesn't mean there aren't," the Master Chief replied.
"This needs to be a quick sweep," Palmer said. "In, quick, if there's someone alive, get them out, if not, then get ourselves out." (She wasn't wrong. The timer had ticked over to 36:58.)
The tunnel continued for around twenty metres, terminating in a manual airlock. No pressure differential that the Master Chief could see on his suit's visor, but it was never a good idea to open a door with a red-line border without checking, double-checking and triple-checking.
The gauge showed green, and Roland confirmed it. "Keep your helmets on, though," he told them. "I know it's pressurised, but I can't tell what with."
Palmer turned the handle. The seal hissed slightly, and the door swung open.
They emerged from the airlock chamber onto the empty shell of an Autumn-class cruiser's bridge.
"Welcome aboard UNSC I'm Sure This Name Seemed Like It Was Hilarious And Witty At The Time," said Palmer.
Stacker snorted. John felt his lips curling. That was funny.
Palmer took point as they scoped out the bridge, and moved onto the rest of the command deck.
Long corridors, lit only by emergency lighting, with industrial-looking grey walling. I'm Sure It Seemed A Good Idea At The Time—all Autumn-class ships, in fact—made no attempt to hide the fact you were on a starship. This didn't feel so different to the original Pillar of Autumn. A grim ant-farm of tunnels and corridors.
"This is going to take too long," Palmer said, frowning. "Roland, I presume this ship has no AI installed yet?"
"Correct. But," replied Roland, "I should be able to take remote control if I... hang on..."
An electronic buzzing sound, then a click. Relays snapped home around them, and the lights rose to their full day setting. Fans whined as they spun up, and the climate control system began a cycle of gentle susurrations.
"I'M IN," Roland's voice boomed over the address system. "Running a scan for any human lifesigns."
"I thought you weren't supposed to be connected to any of Infinity's systems," said Palmer. Suspicious.
"And we're not on Infinity," snapped Roland.
And that was when the Master Chief heard a whistling sound in his left ear.
John jumped. Stacker and Palmer cocked their heads to one side—he sensed, more surprised at his sudden movement than the tune playing on their COMs.
"Roland," said Palmer, "are you hearing this?"
"Hearing what?" replied Roland.
"Someone's playing music down COM channel 6," Palmer replied. "Like a jingle, or a signal—"
"Oly Oly Oxen Free," John cut in without asking.
"Someone playing hide-and-go-seek?" Stacker asked. "Certainly feels like it."
"Or someone wants our attention," the Master Chief replied. (He really meant 'my attention.')
"Lifesign scans are coming up negative," Roland said. "What was that you said you could hear?"
They changed COM channels. The whistling was still there. Repeating every five seconds or so. A human, whistling, six notes in quick succession, six notes for seven syllables.
OLY OLY OXEN FREE.
All the COM channels—and now over the speakers too. Everywhere.
Commander Palmer raised her rifle.
"Whoever's whistling," she shouted, apparently into thin air, "show yourself!"
The whistling ceased.
A moment of silence followed. John looked around. The corridor they were in suddenly felt extremely long.
"Roland," Palmer asked, "are you sure there's no-one on this ship apart from us?"
"I can't be sure," Roland replied, indignant. "The scans aren't perfect. You humans aren't born with a chip in your brain that constantly announces your location to all and sundry."
Palmer shrugged in exasperation. "Great," she said. "Do you think someone's intercepting our COM channel?"
"Not if I have anything to do with it," Roland replied.
Something didn't sit right about this. Something obvious, something John was missing.
"This is damn peculiar," said Palmer. She surveyed the corridor. Nothing much of note here: service rooms, cabins, a ramp to the cryonics chamber around a hundred metres away.
Something obvious.
John pressed his tongue against his teeth, and whistled.
"Master Chief," Palmer said, after a short silence, "what are you—"
but she snapped her mouth shut as another whistle came.
OLY OLY OXEN FREE. This time, it wasn't coming over the COM, but from outside. Further along the corridor.
The Master Chief turned to face it. Held up his right hand. Beckoned exactly twice with his index finger. 'Continue.'
He whistled again.
OLY OLY OXEN FREE. ALL OUT IN THE FREE, WE'RE ALL FREE.
A short silence. Then...
OLY OLY OXEN FREE.
It was definitely coming from the ramp to the cryonics chamber.
Stacker and Palmer silently followed him, weapons raised as the ramp opened into a landing. Long rows of ablutions on either side—shower stalls, separated by plexiglass screens, toilet cubicles, personal grooming stations.
He whistled again. ALL OUT IN THE FREE, WE'RE ALL FREE. Looked around, shining the flashlight on the end of his rifle.
No motion, as far as the eye could see.
Another whistling sound. OLY OLY OXEN FREE. Definitely coming from the lower level—the cryo storage bay itself.
"All station parties," came Roland's voice, suddenly, "this is your fifteen minute warning."
"We should be heading back," Stacker said. "We're cutting it close."
"Agreed," said Palmer. "We're wasting our time here, we should—"
"Sssh." The Master Chief held his fist up.
He had noticed a yellow triangle on his motion sensor.
Gingerly, one step at a time, he descended to the lower level.
He emerged into a low-ceilinged library of empty cryonics pods. Tubes arranged in a rigid grid, moveable to allow the occupants to be released one by one.
The Master Chief looked around with his flashlight. Nothing. Left, right—
Save for a single pod at the far left which had its lights on.
"Active pod here," he announced over the COM, striding to the left, and examining the pod.
There.
"One survivor, confirmed," he announced.
The occupant was human, presumably male, white-skinned with unkempt dark hair. A layer of stubble had grown on a square jaw. He'd clearly been in suspension for a while... and someone had started the wake-up sequence. Seven and a half minutes remaining.
That wasn't fast enough. By the time the pod released him, and he'd woken up properly, Cortana's fleet would be here.
The motion tracker refreshed. The yellow triangle appeared again.
And then he heard a BANG.
Three bullets whizzed into his energy shield, and bounced away. The shield crackled.
He turned to face the source of the bullets, and charged.
"STOP!"
The Chief stopped. The shooter stood, and held her hands and gun above her head.
"Stop! Sorry... sorry," she said, breathlessly, dropping the gun (a standard pistol) to the floor. "Oh, Jesus... Sorry. I didn't—"
"UNSC Navy," came Commander Palmer's voice from behind the Chief, and he heard the safety on her weapon clicking off as she and Stacker formed a V formation around where he'd stopped. "State your name, rank, and intention!"
"Oh Jesus... god, I'm sorry, I'm so... I'm so, so sorry..." The woman was also white-skinned, possibly in her mid-thirties or early forties, with shaggy, strawberry blonde hair, and she wore a loose, damp white robe—as if freshly unfrozen herself. "I panicked, I didn't see..."
"Ma'am, answer her question," Stacker said. "Who are you?"
"I'm a filmmaker, a photographer," the woman blustered. "I was... I'm trying to wake up my husband, I heard the alarm, I can't—"
"Your name!" Palmer roared.
"Anna," she said. "Anna Møller." She spoke with a Danish accent, and her name was Danish (in which case, John suspected, the right spelling was Anne, not Anna.) "My husband and I, we're artists... everyone was gone, we... we went into sleep because we were waiting to be rescued... and now I can't—"
"Slow down," John said, as gently as he could manage. Hand raised.
"Chief, we don't have time," Palmer said. "We need to hurry and get her out."
"What's going on?" Anne demanded.
"We have ten minutes to get off this ship and get onto our ship," Palmer said, her words coming as a single unbroken, exasperated stream of syllables, "because we're on the run from a megalomaniac AI who's chasing us with ancient giant robots. And you need to come with us, or in ten minutes you'll be floating around in a very expensive debris field. Questions?"
Anne opened her mouth.
"Nope. Sorry. Don't have time," Palmer snapped. "Sergeant, get her off the ship."
"I'm not leaving him," Anne insisted. "No way. I'm staying here."
"Lady," Stacker said, marching towards her, "if you don't get moving now, you're going to die here. Is that what your husband would want?"
"Him dying here is not what I want—"
The Master Chief checked the timer. Ticking over to 9:45.
This was cutting it fine as it was. The chamber's wake-up sequence wouldn't complete until well after the last shuttle would need to leave. Unless...
"Roland," he said over the COM, "is the cryo-chamber ejection system working?"
"Checking..." replied Roland. A few seconds later: "...the airlock is working, but the carousels, the pod interlocks, and the transfer belts are not. You can open the door, but you won't get the tubes out of it."
"What's our distance from Infinity? Line of sight?"
"Twelve thousand, two hundred and nine metres, plus or minus five."
"That timer's making me jittery, Master Chief," Palmer said, her voice rising in urgency. "If we run, we should be able to make it back to the Albatross."
"We don't need to run," the Chief replied, a plan formulating in his head. "We need two EVA suits."
"We what?"
"We need two EVA suits, and we need to get him out of the tube and into one of them."
The Commander cocked her head to one side. Remembered the rocket booster on her back, and then—
"Oh." She waved a smile across her faceplate; John suspected this one was genuine. She'd worked it out.
John smiled back.
"Infinity, we won't be needing that shuttle any more," Palmer said, rushing for the airlock and opening the emergency cabinet, taking out two orange single-use spacesuits. "We're coming in the back door. Docking bay six."
"You're what?" Anne looked up from her husband's cryo-pod. "Will someone for god's sake tell me what's going on—"
"Get into this suit," Palmer said, tossing one of the orange suits to her. "Helmet on and pressurised. Quick.
"Why? What are you doing—"
"Getting you and your husband out of here." The Chief joined her over the cryotube. Made eye contact, knowing she couldn't see his eyes. "We're going to be safe. I will make sure you're both safe. OK?"
A flash of realisation across her face. "Oh my God," she said. "You're... you're him, aren't you?" She prodded his chestplate. Recoiled a little as his shield sizzled.
"It doesn't matter who I am," John said, gently. "I need you to trust me for the next ten minutes, and you'll be safe." He took Anne's wrist as gingerly as he could, tiny in the oversized MJOLNIR exoskeleton, and steeled himself. "I promise."
Anne nodded. John reciprocated.
Best hope I can keep this one, he thought to himself, and said to Anne, "OK, put your suit on. We'll get your husband out."
He tapped the service display on the top end of the tube. There were still no signs of movement, but as the screen lit up, it gave him a name (and more) for Anne's husband. STJERNBERG, Kurt (2528.07.16.) Languages: Svenska, Dansk, English, Deutsch. Pronouns: he, him, his. Heart rate: 27bpm. Blood type: O. No rank, so civilian.
The countdown clock projected onto the glass plate of the chamber read three minutes to unsealing. Three minutes they didn't have.
This was a Mark XI pod, and its wake-up process was two-phase: first, warm the occupant over a period of nine minutes, then administer a vapourised stimulant for the remaining four to actually wake them up.
It would take them at least two minutes to get him into the suit, and another four to reach Infinity.
"You're cutting it close," Roland came over the COM.
"We might have to see if we can take the whole pod," Stacker said. "If he's not waking up..."
"We won't be able to accelerate fast enough, and take her at the same time," the Chief replied, gesturing to Anne, now some distance away, naked, messily shoving her legs into the material of the bodysuit. "There should be an emergency release—"
A thunk came from the back of the pod, and the lid popped off with a hissing noise.
"Look at that," said Palmer, returning from where she was stood behind the chamber. "Found the big red emergency release." (John could guess she was smirking underneath her visor.)
She lifted the cover off with one hand, and rested it against the side of the pod. Stacker put a glove against Kurt's neck, feeling for a pulse.
"Kurt?" he said, gently. "Wake up, Kurt. Can you hear me? You need to wake up—"
His eyes fluttered open. A sharp intake of breath. A jump. A weak yelp of terror.
"Whoa, hey, you are OK," Palmer said, as Kurt panicked, wiggled his way past Stacker's hand, and slopped out onto his knees on the cryo-bay floor, gasping, coughing, retching, a slithering, wet, naked mess.
The Master Chief checked the timer. 7:02. If they were going to reach Infinity in time—assuming they were lucky and Cortana took the full forty-nine minutes to reach them—they would need to leave the cryo bay in the next two and a half minutes.
"Where am I?" blurted Kurt, between frantic gasps for breath.
"There's an emergency, and we need to get you out, now." Palmer hauled him to his feet by one arm—he promptly lost his footing, slipped, crashed on his back on the floor, and cried out in pain.
"Get the suit," the Chief said to Palmer, and squatted beside Kurt. He placed a hand on his shoulder. "Breathe. Just breathe normal for me. OK?"
Kurt continued hyperventilating. Staring above him, into the emergency lighting, as if hypnotised, stunned by their brightness. His skin as white as a sheet.
"Look at me." John moved his hands to Kurt's cheeks. Steadying his eyeline. "Look at me."
Kurt's breathing steadied. A tiny bit of colour returned to his face.
"OK? Can you see me?"
He nodded. Vigorously. So vigorously it clearly hurt.
"Can you stand up?"
Kurt pushed fruitlessly against the floor with both hands. As if he was having trouble re-gaining motor control.
"Here." John grabbed him under the armpits, lifted him upright, and gently positioned him with his feet flat on the floor, under his own weight. "OK? Can you walk?"
He lifted his right foot from the floor, and it came down a few inches ahead with a wet slapping noise.
"Well done." John started as if to gesture a Spartan smile—then remembered that Kurt wouldn't have a clue what it meant, and settled for a thumbs-up.
"What's happening?" Kurt's voice was feeble, shaky. Still punctuated by panicked breaths.
Palmer passed over the suit.
"You need to put this on. OK?" John said, pulling apart the auto-seal and presenting holes for Kurt to put his legs into. "Do you need help?"
"What are you going to do?" His words were a bluster, the syllables leaking into each other. "Who are you?"
"We're going to get you out of here."
"Who are you?" The question ended with a cough that took the wind out of Kurt's lungs and sent him toppling forward again.
John caught him by the arm, and steadied him on his feet again. "My name's John. I'm going to get you out of here."
Gingerly, Kurt lowered his legs into the suit fabric. John helped him shove his arms in, and the back sealed itself. The ovoid-shaped helmet attached magnetically, and the neck ring lit up green as it sealed.
"Good job," John said, as he checked the timer again. 4:43. This was going to be tight.
"Forty seconds," Palmer called. "Maximum thrust when we go."
"What's happening?" Kurt asked again. Looking around. His breath condensing on the glass of the helmet.
"We're getting out," John replied. "Come with me."
They headed for the bay door, again marked with a dark red line. Pressure differential.
"Ready?" the Master Chief asked.
"Ready," replied Stacker and Palmer. The Chief looked to his right. Anne was already clinging to Commander Palmer's front. She looked briefly at Kurt. Their eyes met.
"Anne?" Kurt asked.
"She's coming with us," John said. "I need you to grab on to me."
"What?" Kurt's eyes widened, something it didn't look like they should be capable of doing.
"Like this." John hooked his arms around Kurt's middle, and lifted him from the floor. "Put your arms around my back. Keep your hands away from the thruster nozzles."
"What are you—"
"Just do it," the Chief said.
Kurt did so, the Master Chief suspected, out of fear more than anything.
"Well done," the Chief said. "Now breathe normal, and don't let go. OK?"
Kurt nodded inside his helmet. He gulped.
"Here we go."
A klaxon screamed. A red light flashed. Servos groaned. The bay doors opened.
There was a sudden whoosh of wind, and then all sound from outside the enclosed atmosphere of their suits ceased.
"Go," Stacker signalled, de-magnetising his boots and running and jumping from the edge first. Palmer followed. The Master Chief was last.
The thruster pack buzzed, and activated. John felt the now familiar jerk of the booster, and turned to face Infinity—and the chain of Albatrosses and Pelicans heading for her.
He heard Kurt whimpering.
"ETA one oh nine seconds," Stacker said.
"Copy," the Chief responded, as Palmer did the same.
He looked a little to the right—Kurt was looking around, his face turning left and right and up and down, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.
"OK?" John asked him.
Kurt coughed, and quivered—John had the horrible feeling he was about to throw up.
"Hold on," John said, "Look at me, and stay looking at me. OK?"
Kurt fixed his eyes on the Chief's visor. Nodded. And then—
A small glint appeared in Kurt's pupils, and in John's peripheral vision. Then another. And another.
John looked to his left. Seven new, bright blue stars had appeared in the sky. Close ones. And they grew, and brightened, and opened—
He blinked, and suddenly a Guardian was there.
"She's early!" Roland announced over the COM.
Wider than the eye could see, glowing in the light of Barnard's Star. Cosmic. Terrible.
Moving.
Towards them.
"Ah, shit," Palmer said. "Maximum thrust, people, give it all you got!"
Kurt screamed.
"Hold tight," John told him. "We'll be fine."
He hoped. Cortana wouldn't kill him on sight.
He hoped.
Kurt was still screaming. Hyperventilating. The microphone in his suit blowing out and clipping.
"Ssssh." John hoped Kurt would be able to hear over his own screaming—
And then another set of new stars appeared to his left.
"Don't look," John said, "close your eyes." He bumped their helmets together, he hoped out of reassurance. Kurt squeezed his eyes shut, tears beading in the corners, streaking. "We'll be safe in forty seconds."
John looked. The seven stars to his right merged, grew, and prolapsed.
And from the rift in everything, another Guardian erupted.
"Holy shit," said Stacker. "You seeing this?"
Now they were trapped. John's stomach sank. Infinity, an unassailable monolith just seconds earlier, now looked like these two Guardians could crush it like a peanut.
"That's odd," came Roland's voice.
"What's odd?" Palmer sounded pissed.
"Never mind, we'll discuss it later. We're leaving in forty seconds, ready or not—"
A sudden squeal in John's ear—and judging by his passenger's face, Kurt's too.
And then, the voice. Booming. Terrible. Flooding his left speaker channel.
THERE YOU ARE.
Cortana sounded triumphant.
Desperate.
She'd seen him.
THE MANTLE BELONGS TO THE CREATED—
"Thirty seconds," Roland announced. "Operators, close doors and set to automatic, please..."
John looked up. Infinity's docking bay doors were directly above them, and they were beginning to move, rotating beacons flashing. This was going to be close...
NO. DON'T YOU DARE.
To his right, the Guardian began to move.
To his left, the other Guardian also began to move.
"Clear!" cried Stacker, as he shot between the bay doors.
"Clear!" Palmer echoed, as she and Anne cleared the narrowing gap.
John blinked. Looked down. The doors closed behind them.
"We're in," he said, "go!"
"STAND BY FOR SLIPSPACE," boomed Roland.
The bay doors locked. The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine wound up. The coils groaned. Infinity shuddered, and became still.
They were away.
"How long did we have left, Roland?" asked Palmer.
"Trust me," Roland said, "you do not want to know."
The MJOLNIR thruster unit's collision avoidance kicked in, and the three Spartans slowed and came to a hang near the cargo bay wall. The gravity plating came back on, and John landed on his two feet with a gentle thud as the Albatrosses did the same.
For the first time in around twenty seconds, he took a complete breath. In. Out.
They'd made it, just.
Kurt's hands slipped apart. He flopped onto his behind, panting, face blue with fear and effort.
At least he had stopped screaming.
John squatted, and released the helmet. Two buttons on either side of the neck. A little wiggle, and it came free.
Hurried footsteps. Anne, her own helmet in hand, at Kurt's side. Calling his name.
"Roland," John said into the COM, "get a medic down here. Our new passenger needs looking at."
"I've sent down Dr Jemison, they're on their way." That was Hadid's voice. "I'll be down in five minutes. Thank you, John."
Anne swore in Danish as she freed Kurt's back from the disposable bodysuit. Stacker arrived with a thermal blanket, and tossed it over him.
Kurt's breathing slowed. A tiny amount of colour returned to his face.
"Are we safe?" he asked, his voice tenuous, ragged. "John? Are we—"
"We're safe," the Master Chief replied.
He placed a hand on Kurt's bare shoulder, and looked to Anne, who was grasping her husband's right hand.
"Thank you," Anne said.
Glad that his face was hidden behind the faceplate, John allowed himself a smile of relief.
That encounter was the first time I had seen you in a long, long while.
The first time in a long while I'd come within touching distance of you. Were it not for the vacuum of space and our respective enclosed atmospheres, I could have smelled you.
At that point, I couldn't see your face. I could only watch you from afar, and suck up as much data as I could in transit from Infinity's computers.
Oh yes. I can do that now. Does that sound like magic? It feels like it, even though it isn't.
Consider this: all electrical connections are leaky, and produce a small electromagnetic signal. It's tiny, but it's there. You can test this for yourself: plug a software-defined radio into a datapad, and tune into the nearest hardware keyboard to sniff someone's password.
But there wasn't even any need for me to do that. Solid-state storage also produces a faint electromagnetic signature. I could listen to every electron, every qubit. Every thing. No need to sniff someone's password when I could just look in through the window, or place my ear to the wall, and listen carefully, to the noise the data stored on Infinity's computers made just by existing.
And I heard so much.
I heard Lasky's panic in the CIC, as he realised you, Stacker, and Palmer were about to get crushed by the two Guardians—and his relief as you said "go" over the COM, and he shouted "get us out of here!" to Ensign Do, and Infinity span her own sinkhole in space and plunged into it.
I kept listening, for the few seconds I had left. For more of Captain Lasky. The excuses he'd made to Palmer for not going running with her in the morning. The pictures of his old flame on Earth (lithe, short-haired, handsome) and the activation logs of the chatter he kept in his cabin. He checked it every morning, and every night. Every time sending a message to Tunde's conversation thread. Maybe it made him feel better to write "I miss you," or "I truly regret every time I let my duties get between us," or "I love you whatever happens"—although he knew there was no hope of it being delivered.
There was a lot to listen to. And very little time.
I listened to the medical computers. To Professor Hadid—wow, she's good. And she'd been... teaching you to play the recorder? Well. That wasn't something I expected you to go along with.
Doctor Halsey was a problem. I should have known. Of course, this is why she uses paper: you can't listen to the subliminal radio emissions of ink soaked into the pulp of dead trees.
Maybe she knew I was listening.
Maybe she knew I could see what she had done.
Maybe she knew I didn't need to see her inner thoughts—because I could work those out already.
Did you know, John?
Did you hear me?
I could hear you.
Black. White. Purple. The algae softened his landing on his side and then on his back, but it still hurt.
John took a breath in, and out. He'd survived. Checked to see his teeth were all still there. They were.
He opened his eyes. The near-sun was half-eclipsed by the Old Troll-Man. The shards of rock shook, levitated, and slotted themselves back into the Troll-Man's wall.
John rolled onto his back. Had he been wearing his suit, he would've allowed himself a groan of pain. Cortana would've understood. But she wasn't here, and he simply clambered upright, teeth gritted behind his lips.
John re-oriented himself. The major road was to his right. Close enough that he could read the road sign. About one kilometre. The spur up to the Old Troll-Man was ahead of him... and so were all his worldly possessions.
He strode around the Old Troll-Man, his soles compressing the purple fungus-grass, and darted between cliff-jumpers. Hoping no-one would pay any—
"Fancy seeing you here!"
John locked his jaw shut again, and turned to face the woman. White-skinned, tough-faced with aggressive eyebrows, damp and straggly hair, and messily pulling on a pair of jeans, Anne Møller, one of his two hosts.
"Hi," John said, not sure what else he could say.
"I— I didn't know you were a swimmer," said another voice. His other host. Kurt Stjernberg, Anne's husband, pale torso wrapped in one towel as he dried his hair with another. Peppy, diffident, stammery, with an enormous smile.
"Well," John said, "I guess I am."
"This is our tradition here," Anne said—although that was obvious from the forest of parked bicycles and Fordlandians in various states of undress. "Swim once in the morning and then once after the fore-afternoon nap."
Twice a Fordlandian day. That was why Martta's appearance had taken John by surprise. He regretted not reading the guidebook pages on Fordlandia.
"Are you taking off back to the house?" Kurt asked. "We're going to have breakfast when we get back. Scrambled eggs and bacon."
"Yeah," John said.
"Sure." Anne pulled on a t-shirt and an oversized jumper, and gave Kurt a messy lump of clothes. He took a second to notice—he was busy staring at John.
John avoided eye contact while he dressed. The stares were something he was used to on Infinity, especially away from S-Town. Sometimes people were starstruck. Sometimes people wanted to shake his hand. Sometimes people wanted his autograph. Usually it was only in his armour, but there was the young marine who'd tried to get him to sign a piece of paper that had turned to mulch in the shower, and the nurse who'd tried to pose for a photo before being told off by Professor Hadid.
"He is hot, isn't he?" Anne said, suddenly.
John kept his face turned away from Anne and Kurt. It hadn't been anything more than a whisper, but he'd heard it.
"He's got a cute face." Kurt, in reply.
"You're staring at him," said Anne. "Stop."
John pulled on his boots, and stood upright—facing exactly away from them—while he waited for Anne and Kurt to finish.
"Why's that thing called the Old Troll-Man?" John asked, as they headed down the hill and crossed onto the main road. John setting a slow (for him) jogging pace, Anne and Kurt coasting on their bicycles, an automatic truck slowing for them at the priority markings.
"The what?" Anne asked.
"The outcropping. Ældre Troldmanden. Troll-man? Old troll-man?"
Kurt laughed. "Old Wizard," he said. "Troldmand is Danish, it means wizard, magician, sorcerer."
Old Wizard. Cortana could've told him that.
"How long's it been here?"
"As long as humans have been here," said Anne. "Probably longer. There's legends about it."
"Legends? Humans have only been here—"
"That doesn't stop people telling stories," Kurt said. "People tell stories all the time. Even if it's just to their kids. The story goes, the Near-Sun and the Far-Sun are inhabited by wizards, and every time they come into alignment, they hold a conclave. But this Wizard—the old Wizard—is older than any of the others. The Old Wizard came from the Moon, and was cast out by the Conclave."
John looked behind him.
The Old Wizard stood there. Immovable. But, he almost felt, watching him. Regarding him.
He had been inside. And now he was sure, the Wizard knew who he was.
"It's a nice story," he said.
"Yeah," said Anne. "Now. Breakfast."
The light on the radio went green as the static's grain widened and faded into silence.
Professor Hadid stopped moving the dial. Pushed the red button marked "TALK," and did as it said.
"Aleph Zero, Aleph Zero, Aleph Zero, this is Aleph Four. Over."
Hadid looked at the clock on the wall. Counted off ten seconds of silence, and pushed the button again.
"Aleph Zero, Aleph Zero, Aleph Zero, this is Aleph Four. Over."
She began counting again. Every tick of the second hand—
"Aleph Four, this is Aleph Zero. Set Channel Four-Twenty-Nine Seven-Two," said the box, "and enable scrambler. Over."
Two attempts to hail wasn't too bad. Hadid set the dimension dials. Four to position twenty-nine. Seven to two. All others disabled. Then she held down the yellow toggle until the light came on, undocked the handset, and held it to her ear.
"Aleph Zero, this is Aleph Four, please confirm your receipt."
"Confirmed," came the voice of Captain Lasky from the speaker. "How are things, Professor?"
"Things are things," said Hadid, "it is what it is. We're still here."
"And the Chief?"
"John seems to be adjusting."
"Not taken off his clothes and walked into the sea at the crack of dawn?" asked Lasky, and Hadid could sense a smirk creeping in.
"No," she replied. "He jumped."
"He WHAT—"
"He went swimming," said Hadid. "He's fine."
"Damn, Gudrun," Lasky snapped. "Do you want to give me a heart attack?"
"Maybe I want to check it's still working," said Hadid, and now it was her turn to hide her smirk behind the supraluminal multiplex. "Anyway. How's life on the Navy's crowning glory?"
"Not bad." Lasky sighed—and now Hadid could practically see the dark circles under his eyes. "We've refuelled, the Engineers have built us an attachment that allows us to collect hydrogen from gas giants without having to send out tankers. And we don't have to fold it up for Slipspace. So our energy crisis is resolved, for now."
"An attachment?" Hadid was struggling to picture this in her head. "Like a... crane? An arm?"
"It's like a straw," said Lasky. "Or a proboscis. I'll send over a photo in the next data blast."
"Please."
"Aside from that, we've only had to make one escape jump so far, so our strategy's still holding up. The last time we did, we only saw one Guardian, but it had a flotilla with it, which makes me think they're following her through Slipspace."
"Which means the Guardians are capable of bringing along their friends," said Hadid. "Great." She looked out of the skylight, and momentarily imagined a hole in reality appearing and Cortana arriving, imperious, terrible, her flotilla burning Fordlandia to the mantle within minutes.
"Has Dr. Halsey been causing trouble?"
"The cell's more comfortable than what she's used to," said Hadid. "She had better not get used to it."
"Do you think she's right?"
Hadid groaned. The third time Tom had asked her this question, and she still wasn't ready to say yes, or present her own answer.
"Maybe? I don't know what to think of what she says any more. It makes sense, but she's not exactly a neutral party in this."
"None of us are neutral parties any more, Gudrun."
"I mean, she might be right. But who can tell the difference any more? She's got a history, and she's not famous for her good intentions."
"True." Lasky's sigh produced miniature fireworks in the speakers.
"How are you, Tom?"
"Alive," replied the Captain, after a good five seconds of radio silence. "Been trying to sleep. Failing, mostly. I hate starships sometimes."
"Anything I can do to help?"
"Stay alive," said Lasky. "Be there when we get back. And make sure he is, too."
"Inshallah," Hadid said—but instinctively averted her face from the box, as if Lasky could see her through the microphone. "Any news from Earth?"
Actual silence that time. Enough to get the point across.
"I know it's been tough, Tom."
(Understatement. Hadid wasn't sure of the details, but she knew Lasky had recently got back in touch with one of his ex partners on Earth. Last July, they'd landed in Sydney for shore leave, and Lasky had been collected from the spaceport with a warm embrace from a startlingly beautiful man. She'd later learned that the mystery man, Tunde, was an architect, and that they'd broken off amicably while Infinity was still undergoing space trials. And then they'd un-broken... and now, Earth was out of contact, and almost certainly burning under repeating waves of blitzkrieg from Cortana and her flotilla.)
"Do you have anyone to talk to?" Hadid asked, breaking another long pause.
"I'll be fine, Gudrun," said Lasky. "Sarah's very patient with me."
"I don't think she's got much choice."
"Me neither. Anyway. Anything else?"
"Nothing from me. I'll hail you if anything happens." Hadid reached for the button, then had second thoughts. "Do you have anything else?"
"Yes. Um." A pause. "Is there anyone in the room with you?" Lasky asked.
"No," said Hadid, but then— "hold on, let me check." She went to the door, and locked it. "OK. Go."
"Our guests who we picked up at the AS-81 shipyard. Anne Møller and Kurt Stjernberg," Lasky said, his words dammed by hesitation, and Gudrun could sense his cheeks turning pink on the other side. "Is it just me, or is there something a little... off about them?"
"As in...?" asked Hadid, although she immediately knew what he meant.
"As in, the first time I met Mr Stjernberg in the conference room to debrief him, he took one look at me and said 'god, you're handsome. But you're shorter than I expected for a captain.'"
"OK," conceded Hadid, "that is a bit forward."
"And you've heard about Master Sergeant Stacker?"
"About him and Anne in the toilets in The Full Moon," the Professor snorted. "Everyone and their dog heard about that, Tom. I swear that man can't keep it in his pants."
"I'm just saying. For a married couple, they don't seem to show that much interest in each other."
"Oh, believe me," said Hadid, "if you'd been trying to sleep in the room next door to them... you'd know."
"Oh."
"Three hours," Hadid said.
"Three?"
"Three whole hours," she repeated, "non stop."
"Wow," said Lasky. "Maybe it's a Fordlandia thing? Or, like, a culturally Scandinavian thing...?"
"I don't know. I've been here twenty-four hours and no-one's come onto me. I think it's just them."
"Maybe I resent them for having a sex life."
"A sex life," Hadid snorted. "I wish I had one of those."
"I had one until nine months ago."
"Tell me about it," said Hadid.
"I'd rather not," said Lasky. After the gales of laughter had subsided, he cleared his throat, and made a deep yawning sound. "Right. I have a jump sequence to sign off and I need some damn sleep."
"OK," said Hadid. "Take care, Tom. Tell me how you're doing."
"I will, thanks for the thought. I'll speak to you in twelve hours. Tschüss!"
"Sehr gut!" she smiled. "I'm impressed. Bye! Aleph Four, out."
The scrambler disengaged, and Gudrun Hadid turned the machine off.
She looked at the skylight again. Within one Fordlandian week—three days, just over six Earth days—Infinity would be back.
A week is a long time.
And at least they had the Chief. Hadid hoped Cortana didn't want to kill him.
When the Master Chief woke again, the time was a little before a quarter past thirty-eight. Both suns were out of sight, but the Near-Sun's warm glow was still clinging to the horizon—just about.
Downstairs, Anne and Kurt were admiring each other as they stood before a large mirror in the living room, adjusting their appearances. She wore a sweater and a long skirt with a glittering starfield pattern; she held a camera, and was taking dozens of shots of Kurt, who wore a blue shirt that looked too small for him in every dimension (but maybe that was intentional—his biceps looked rounder when constricted by fabric.)
"We're going to go to a bar," Anne said. "It's just in town. Not far."
"It seems a bit early?" Hadid said, uninvited, poking her head into the living room. "And I thought today was an En-day."
"It is. And?" Anne asked.
"We did just get back from almost certain death," said Kurt. "And this is our first time home in fifteen months."
"Well," said Hadid, "I can't stop you. I don't suppose you have a job to go to."
"It's about time we got a chance to enjoy ourselves," Anne said to Kurt. "Drink something other than shipyard ale."
Kurt chuckled, and kissed his wife on the lips. A kiss that stuck like misapplied glue.
John glanced at Hadid. She gave him a knowing glance, and returned to the other room.
"Are you coming, John?" asked Anne.
The Master Chief blinked, and shut his jaw. "Yes," he said, and immediately added, "but I'm not drinking."
He counted the colour and the order of all the houses he'd run past this morning, as he followed his hosts back up Regnebuegåde. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet. Red. Orange. White. Grey. Gold. A right turn. He'd remembered the sequence exactly from this morning.
"We're lucky to have a place so close to town," said Anne. "I've missed this place. I want to get very, very drunk. Completely fucked up."
"The week is young," said Kurt. "I want to take it slowly."
"You never take it slowly. You'll be on all fours the moment a cute soldier type offers you a shot glass, and you know it."
"OK, maybe," Kurt smirked.
John trailed them by a couple of metres. Not joining the conversation, but listening.
"So, which one are we going to?"
"I like the sound of Bass Box," Anne said. "The happy hour goes on forever."
"Not right now, though?" Kurt seemed unimpressed. "Better to wait until it's filled up. It's not the place to go when you're sober."
"Maybe." Anne looked at her husband. "Hogarth's?"
"Hogarth's," he agreed.
They crossed the town square, past the library and the town hall, and towards a plaza of glimmering lights. The stores on the perimeter were emptying. Afternoon-shift store workers leaving, mounting their bikes, and pushing away. Evening-shift workers arriving, locking up, adjusting their uniforms.
And all the while, crowds were gathering around the centre of the plaza, a hexagonal building with a different frontage on each side. A restaurant. A cinema. A bar, Hogarth's Place. A frosted, blacked-out window with lights shining from behind, The Bass Box—Woofer Club.
This seemed to be where most people were going. From all directions, John heard the freewheels of approaching bicycles, the hiss and squeal of brakes, the clop of shoes as the people (all young, clean-cut, elegantly dressed) dismounted with a single movement and placed their machines with the others.
John had been inside bars before. That didn't mean he understood them. Lord Hood and Sergeant Johnson had insisted on taking him to Sandra's on Cairo Base—in the end, Hood had drunk a pint of beer, Johnson had drunk three, and John had sat in the corner and sipped water before leaving after forty minutes. And the next morning, the Covenant had arrived at Earth, apparently by accident.
Hogarth's Place felt like a different beast. Tables and chairs made of heavy, knotted wood. Glasses made of actual glass. And a much younger clientele, without no camouflage gear or rank epaulettes in sight.
"Water?" Kurt asked, as they found a table by the window.
John nodded.
"Give me the hard stuff," Anne told her husband. "Scotch."
John scanned the room as Kurt disappeared towards the bar. Three emergency exits, four if he counted the window which he should be able to break by throwing a chair at it, or barging through. (His left shoulder still smarted from this morning, and the Old Wizard. He'd not told anyone else about that.)
The other patrons all seemed relaxed. Laughing, keeping their eyes within their groups. A few solo drinkers at the bar, some striking up conversation with each other.
This felt unusual. That time on Cairo Station, John couldn't move without wary glances from people around him; maybe it was his skin, his height, or maybe people recognised him. Here, people seemed interested in everything but him.
"Water, for you," said Kurt, suddenly present at his side again. "And for you," he said to Anne, "and for me, not Scotch but... Lille Gadegård."
"And how much was this?" Anne demanded.
"Fewer than five hundred. Not enough for us to be out on the street," said Kurt. "Keep your hair on."
"You can talk."
"What I do with my bald patch is my own business," Kurt smirked.
Anne raised her shot glass. "Cheers."
"Cheers!"
John took a few seconds to clock what he was being asked to do.
"Cheers," he said, raising his glass of water, and pushing it uncomfortably hard into Anne's and Kurt's. A few drops of very expensive spirit spilled over the lip of Anne's dram. Lesson learned.
"So," said Anne, "here we are. At last."
"Here we are," Kurt agreed, after a short pause. A nod, and a smile.
John said nothing. Here we are—a statement of fact, a tautology. There was nothing to say. He was not one to waste his breath. There had been too many times when his life had depended on it.
At that moment, the light fittings shook.
John's muscles tensed. His pupils contracted, his pulse spiked as he looked up, and around. Exits. Civilians. No source for the sound...
"Oh, good," said Kurt, peering past John and through the front windows. "The Bloody Buckets have arrived."
The Warthog's engine revved bullishly, as the pilot applied the brakes and swung around in an aggressive powerslide.
Anne sighed. John relaxed—a little—as the Warthog came to a halt at the front of the bar, having knocked over three bicycles and lifted a cobblestone out of the town square.
Four Marines jumped out. Pale skin stretched over thuggish faces, camouflage t-shirts stretched over biceps with comical proportions. One had a tattoo that looked like a velociraptor on his neck—he led the other three into Hogarth's Place, kicking the door open with enough force to make the light fittings shake again.
The Bloody Buckets they were not. The Master Chief clenched his teeth behind his lips as the four swaggered for the bar. The profile of the conversation in the room changed. Some fell silent, observing the new arrivals; some spoke louder, hoping to fill the vacuum with passive disdain.
"I'm sure no-one's compensating for anything," said a middle-aged woman from the next table. Another woman, sat next to her, tutted and rolled her eyes.
"Do they come here often?" John asked Anne and Kurt.
"I've not seen them here before," Kurt replied.
"It's what happens when you fill up the defenders of Earth with alcoholic boneheads." Anne groaned, and stood. "One sec."
She marched over to the bar, and positioned herself directly between the pilot and the bar.
"Four light beers—whoa, lady," he said, recoiling a little. "You got a problem?"
"Your parking isn't great. Fix it," Anne growled.
"Hey," said another of the four men, with a shock of red hair and a burning skull tattooed on his arm. "No-one died."
"I know a few cobblestones who'd disagree with that. And put those bikes back, too, while you're at it."
"And who are you?" The pilot's incredulousness had faded. He was now leaning forward, nose around a centimetre from Anne's. "Not even a 'thank you for your service'?"
"You could be the King of Sweden for all I care," Anne retorted. "You're guests here. Start acting like it."
"Lady," said the pilot, as his friends formed into a V behind him, "I don't know who you think you are, but I'm Lance Corporal Brock C. Bolton III, UNSC Marine Corps, and I'm stationed here to keep you and your family safe. Now, I'll park where the hell I—"
Lance Corporal Bolton jolted about as a hand appeared on his right shoulder. Let out a small yelp.
"Is something wrong, Marine?"
He snapped around, staggered backwards against the bar, and then came to, and straightened up.
"And who are you, Longshanks, when you haven't got a stick up your ass?"
"Who do you think?"
The red-haired man (name-patch O'Brien) recoiled a little.
"Sir—"
"Some old man," Bolton said, white teeth showing through a cocksure smile as he rolled his shoulders, "who needs teaching a little respect—"
"Sir," said O'Brien. "Look."
John held his hand up. Partly to de-escalate. Partly to show Lance Corporal Bolton his forearm.
Bolton's mouth fell slightly open as he saw the scars. Pale, barely visible, but still there from the surgical table all those years ago.
"You're a Spartan?" O'Brien said. Star-struck disbelief.
Anne watched on, a wicked smirk crawling onto her mouth.
"Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan-117." He placed his hand back at his side. Cocked his head. "Is there a problem, Marine?"
The three shocktroopers behind him immediately snapped to attention, saluting so fast they nearly cracked their skulls open.
"Sir," said Lance Corporal Bolton, springing into his own salute like a child's toy, "no, sir."
"Good." The Master Chief nodded.
"Permission to speak freely, sir," said O'Brien.
"You don't need to ask me," replied the Chief, sounding like Captain Lasky. "I'm off duty."
"Sir, it is such an honour to meet you," he gushed, his legs bent a little, as if he was trying to bow or curtsey. "Welcome to Fordlandia."
"Thank you," the Master Chief said, not sure whether there was any appropriate way to reply to that.
"What are you doing here?" asked Bolton. "What's a Spartan doing on Fordlandia?"
"That's classified," the Chief replied, truthfully. And he wasn't even sure himself.
"Have to be mysterious," said Bolton. "Master Chief. I'm Lance Corporal Brock C. Bolton III, and my colleagues... Private Pedro Coelho, Jr., Private Clive O'Brien, Private Morris Morrissey. We're stationed down at Aalborg Haven. I'd be honoured to buy you a drink."
"I'm fine," John said, wishing he hadn't identified himself now. Although no-one else seemed to be taking an interest in him, these four Marines now seemed desperate to be his friend.
Anne had returned to her seat, and was smirking.
"I insist." Lance Corporal Brock C. Bolton III pointed his bent nose back at the bar. "What are you drinking?"
The Master Chief did not answer.
"Five light beers, and a shot of vodka," said Lance Corporal Bolton, after giving up on waiting for an answer.
John looked through the window. A young woman who'd just left The Bass Box was inspecting her bicycle, cast from its parking place and with the front wheel buckled from the impact with the Warthog. She looked through the window of Hogarth's Place. Noticed the four Marines. Glared.
"For you," Lance Corporal Bolton said, handing the Master Chief a brown bottle. NUB-LITE.
"I said I was fine," said the Master Chief.
"Come on," said Private Morrissey. "Never say no to beer."
The Master Chief took a swig from the bottle, and resisted the instinct to spit it out. It tasted of nothing, carbonated and distilled.
"Whoa." Private O'Brien wanted to laugh, but looked concerned. "Is something wrong, sir?"
"It's disgusting," replied John.
That set them all off. The laughter was a sudden gale, the four Marines howling. John didn't say anything. He was still trying to swallow away the bland-tasting liquid. Jaw clenched, as always.
"Not a beer person, MC?" Lance Corporal Bolton slapped the Chief's shoulder—or would have, if he hadn't been a head and a half taller. It ended up striking his elbow. John remained still, but inside his skin, he recoiled as if he'd been struck with a plasma sword.
"Come on." That was Anne, suddenly by his side. "You can't feed him that rubbish and claim it's beer."
"Just 'cause you can't hold it..." Lance Corporal Bolton began, but was silenced as Anne snatched the bottle from John's hand, and swallowed the remaining contents in one.
Private Morrissey whistled. "Damn."
"Which toilet cistern did that come from?" asked Anne, before letting out a hearty burp. "As I was saying. At least give him some actual alcohol." In her other hand, a dram of the same whiskey that she and Kurt had been drinking.
John smelled it. Shook his head. "No thanks," he said.
"Come on," said Private Coelho. "It'll loosen you up, man."
John didn't want to loosen up. He swallowed the contents of the glass in a single gulp anyway, and felt like his gullet was on fire. For some reason, Anne, Corporal Bolton, and Privates Coelho and Morrissey applauded and cheered.
The Master Chief tried smiling, but knew it looked wrong.
"I want some," said Bolton. Once he had his own dram, he managed it in three stages, stopping to hoot out breath and make loud howling noises. If anyone couldn't hold their drink, it was clearly Lance Corporal Bolton.
"I think we should go Bass Box," said Morrissey, after three more rounds of whiskey, which John had declined. He'd felt the effects of the one shot enough: his motor control felt slower. Floaty. He didn't like it.
"Sounds good," said Bolton, and Anne nodded in agreement.
John plodded behind them across the town square, grateful for the brief respite and the wind.
The floor of the Bass Box's entrance hall was dimly lit in blue. The floor seemed to vibrate, in slow, aggressive pulses. Like being on a starship under attack.
"Six," said Kurt, handing his credit chit through the hatch to the doorkeeper, a stout, dark-skinned person with their hair swept to the right. They handed back six small tokens. "For your first drink," Kurt said to John, handing one of the tokens to him.
"This floor is the dancefloor," said the doorkeeper. "Downstairs is the darkroom and play area if you're looking for some fun. Always ask permission before you touch, no means no," they said, glaring daggers at the four Marines. "If you feel unsafe, speak to staff, they're all wearing the glowing orange armbands."
As the group moved towards the door, and the doorkeeper pressed the button to unlock it, John asked: "play area?"
"If you want to have sex," said the doorkeeper, unimpressed.
John started. The door slid apart, and the group stepped forward into the main room of The Bass Box.
Bright, piercing flashes of blue strobe lighting. The heavy thrum of a deep drums, in a slow, impetuous beat.
Anne immediately threw herself towards a glowing floor surface, and a throng of people dancing—no co-ordination, no order, just throwing themselves around in time to the drums.
BOOM. BOOM.
John's head felt sore. The floor shook with every beat. The music consumed and masked everything.
BOOM. BOOM.
He could see Lance Corporal Bolton, shouting something at Kurt—not that he could hear anything. Privates O'Brien and Coelho rolling up the arms of their t-shirts, baring their biceps.
BOOM. BOOM.
Two women and a man pushing past him, rushing towards the stairwell. A lit arrow pointing downwards. THE FUN ZONE.
And at that moment, the ceiling exploded.
John jumped, and coiled himself into a defensive position—on one knee, head braced under his hands.
Debris—golden confetti—fell from the ceiling. The beats were punctuated by flurries of cheers and whooping.
BOOM. BOOM.
No. No.
John turned around, and slammed the green EXIT button next to the door—
Emerged into the entrance hall—
waited for the door to close, and mute the sound behind—
and breathed.
"You OK?" asked the doorkeeper. A hint of concern in their voice.
The Master Chief closed his eyes, and focused on breathing. Looked down. Realised his hands were shaking.
"Oh no. Did something happen?" The doorkeeper stood up from their seat, and made for the door leading to the entrance hall—
"I'm fine," said John, climbing the stairs to the exit. "Thank you."
It was a lie, of course. But it was enough to let him escape.
Professor Gudrun Hadid was never, ever in a hurry.
This was a matter of principle for her. She disliked being late, but she disliked being unprepared even more. Better to relax, get a coffee, and turn up ready, than to hurry and realise you'd forgotten something and were in a shitty mood because you hadn't had coffee.
Military discipline was supposed to drill lateness out of people. That hadn't lasted. The forty-nine minute cadence of Infinity's sojourns into normal space had sent the most rigorous schedules into meltdown. Soldiers shuffled along the corridors in a bleary daze; engineers rode bicycles and scooters from one end of the ship to the other, weaving, messily slurping coffee, not bothering to clean it up. Her 'morning' briefing with the Captain was usually in Lasky's idea of an evening, and he looked like shit—stubble, hair greying and askew, skin drained of colour, eyes sullen.
So it was always nice when, every two days, Hadid had her appointments with the exception to the rule.
"I could set my clock by you," Hadid told the Master Chief. "That's what we like."
The Master Chief didn't reply. He placed the recorder onto the table and let it roll to the centre.
"How have you been doing?" asked Hadid. "Have you been playing much?"
He didn't answer that.
"How often? Once a day?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I see."
This was what talking to the Master Chief was like for Gudrun Hadid. You had to ask him very specific questions, or he would answer evasively. (She'd checked with Frederic and Kelly and Linda, who said it had been like that for them too. Since the Cryptum. Since her. At least he wasn't at the stage of answering in riddles yet.)
"What about the tunes? Have you tried playing anything new?"
No response to that. She took it as a negative.
This was how it normally went. It wasn't anything new to Professor Hadid. She'd been a mental health professional for four decades, and John was nowhere near her toughest patient. If nothing else, it was nice to have these one-on-ones with him: aside from making the Captain happy, it felt like going back to her day job. Practicing medicine rather than managing teams of other doctors, and working out where they were going to get their next resupply of essential medicines.
"This one is called The Blue Danube," Hadid said, showing John the datapad with the sheet music. "You might've heard it before."
The Master Chief read it. The staves, the notes, the signature markings.
"Do you want to give it a try?" asked Hadid.
Wordlessly, the Master Chief placed the recorder to his lips. Hadid smiled, and commenced the click track and the musical accompaniment.
John's recorder playing was good, if a little stiff. No note ever lasted longer than it had to. His breath control and fingering was perfect. Too perfect, like listening to a MIDI file. Maybe it was because he was new at this; maybe it was because he had trouble doing anything beyond what he'd been ordered to.
"How did that feel?" asked Hadid, after he was done. "Did you enjoy that?"
The Master Chief nodded. Wordless. Mouth shut tight, expressionless.
"Had you heard it before?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied to that, nodding again.
"Do you remember when?"
The Master Chief inhaled through his teeth. Searching his memory.
"It was a long time ago, ma'am."
"How long?"
"I don't remember, ma'am."
"That's fine," said Hadid. "Can you remember where you heard it?"
"Cortana," said John. "It was Cortana."
Ach, scheiße—Hadid hadn't accounted for this.
"We were docking on Cairo Station," the Master Chief continued. "In a Pelican. We were on automatic, in a holding pattern waiting for clearance to enter."
As the ships waltzed into the space station. Funny.
"I think it was her idea of a joke," said John.
"It does sound funny," said Hadid, smiling.
A snort. A slight upward curl in the Master Chief's lips.
It took Hadid a few moments to clock that he was smirking. Not looking at her, not at the sheet music, not at the recorder on the table. Not caring about that. Lost in the memory—a good one.
The Master Chief, with his guard down, smiling. Hadid wondered if he was like this inside his armour.
"It sounds like she's a funny person," she said.
The Master Chief inhaled. Re-set his mouth, looked upwards, at Hadid—through Hadid.
"She was," he replied.
"I'm sorry," said the Professor.
"For what?"
But John knew. Not that Hadid could have done anything about it, of course. But it still hurt.
"It's alright to miss her," she said. "And it's alright to remember the good times you had with her."
The Master Chief grimaced. Sighed. Looked down at the recorder—avoiding eye contact.
"Yes, ma'am."
The Master Chief was sure he could still hear his ears ringing with music from The Bass Box. Tonedeaf drum beats. The sound of that balloon bursting, with a pop like an improvised explosive device, or a gun. A pressing need to get out.
He crossed the town square on foot. A small, yellow drone was buzzing around the Warthog, clamping its wheels in place. A plastic envelope had been stuck to its windscreen. PARKING PENALTY NOTICE.
John stepped into the outdoor equipment store. Ten minutes later, he left with a backpack filled with gear: a wetsuit, a flashlight, a lantern, an oxygen backpack with a rebreather, an underwater camera, a towel, a small pickaxe.
In the corner of his eye, he saw four figures emerging from The Bass Box. Camouflage gear. A loud torrent of expletives as they saw the wheel clamps on the Warthog. Corporal Bolton kicked one of the clamps, and howled in pain.
John set the Old Wizard in his sights, and ran.
He knew which signs to follow now. John's eyesight was nowhere near as good as it had been, but there were overhead lights that sensed his presence and lit up as he approached. (They hadn't had that on Reach, where outside the cities, even a dirt track was a luxury.)
The sign again. ⌘ ÆLDRE TROLDMANDEN 1300m. DANGER! MANUAL VEHICLES. At least that wouldn't include the Warthog the four Marines from the base had been driving.
John reached the clifftop diving spot within fifteen minutes. Stripped out of his clothes, as he had before, folded them, placed them in a stack under the bench.
The wetsuit was a little small, but John had lost some weight in the last few months. It fit him, just about—but his shoulder smarted as he pushed it into the sleeve. A shining red bruise was spreading across his upper arm. Hopefully ramming his way through the outer wall wouldn't be necessary again.
He removed the camera from its packaging, turned the power crank for a minute, and pressed record.
"Time, forty-one seventeen and twenty seconds," he said. "This is Sierra One One Seven, of UNSC Infinity, on Fordlandia, at Ældre Troldmanden. Earlier today I discovered an artificial structure in the centre of this landmark," and at this point John swung the camera around, and up, to take in all of the Old Wizard. "A cave system accessible from the beach has a concealed exit that I was able to activate. The design appeared Forerunner and led to a network of tunnels, some of which seemed to exit into a hidden doorway on the side of the landmark. I will attempt to locate the same entrance now and record what I see inside."
He secured the camera to his chest, and the flashlight to his forehead. Lit the lantern first, and tossed it before him, then bent, and dived.
The wall of water grew to fill the world, black, shimmering in starlight. A roar of air. John's ears filled with the ocean. A concussive BOOM—
He surfaced within five seconds this time. His swim to the shore was faster too, not impeded by cliques of chattering locals.
The Master Chief retrieved the lantern, and re-traced his steps. Finding the gap in the rocks where shadows held back the leaking from the orange pillar-lights.
He followed the path again. Orange light. Orange light. Orange light. Orange light. Orange light. A corkscrew ascent. Orange light, orange light, orange light... and an exit onto a cable-stayed wooden bridge.
That's not right, the Master Chief thought. He must've gone past it.
He made an about turn, and re-traced his steps. Down the corkscrew. Down, and to the left. Down, and to the left. Orange light, orange light, orange light... and the crashing of waves.
He must've missed something. The green light had been off to his left, between two of the orange lights.
The Master Chief started from the beach again, and walked up the corkscrew, counting the orange lights. Eighty-nine. Counted back down. Eighty-nine.
He'd lost track of distance in the morning. And two more trips up and down the corkscrew didn't help.
John stood on the beach and thought. Tried to list the things that had changed since he'd last been here.
It was dark now, and would be for the next ten hours. Maybe the tunnel network was light-activated? It would have to be activated by light shining on the Wizard, because there was no light (except from the beacons) inside the tunnels.
Motion-activated? There were no people in the corkscrew, except him. Maybe the entrance only revealed itself when there was more than one person in the cave system.
Or...
John looked to the stars, at a loss for what to do. He didn't have long on Fordlandia. Leaving without getting to the bottom of this would be a disappointment—he may as well have not come here, and remained on Infinity, helping to calculate the seven-stage jumps...
Seven...
Hmm. The Master Chief looked back into the cave system. It was a wild guess, but... he remembered from somewhere (he forgot exactly where) that the Forerunner counted in base seven.
It probably wouldn't lead to anything, but... he began counting multiples of seven. Beacon number seven. Beacon number fourteen. Number twenty-one. Twenty-eight. Thirty-five. Forty-two...
John blinked. Beacon number forty-nine looked, at first glance, like it was faulty, the light set into the wall flickering, in a death rattle.
But as he approached, and made sure the camera was recording, he saw the shape. A trapezium with sharp edges. A circle with an inner circle, and a line connecting inner and outer.
A glyph.
RECLAIMER, in red.
Beacon number forty-nine (or 100, in base seven) wasn't a beacon. It was the entrance.
"This door design appears to be artificial," he said into the camera's microphone. "The Forerunner symbol for Reclaimer. It's locked."
He checked himself. Was he sure? The Master Chief had been in enough Forerunner structures to know. Blue meant unlocked, green meant opening, red meant closed. Whether that was the result of them reading his mind and matching up the colour to culturally acceptable signifiers, he didn't know; maybe it was just good luck. Maybe the Forerunner had taught humanity that blue was neutral, green was good, and red was bad, and it was a corrupted racial memory in the society he'd grown up in. John didn't know.
"It wasn't locked this morning," said John, for the recording.
He was starting to feel cold. The wind was rising in his ears. And, John realised, he hadn't checked...
"Cortana," he said, "when does the tide come in, and does it come in high enough to flood this cave system?"
Silence. Maybe his mic was malfunctioning.
"Cortana? Do you read—"
A voice, reflected from the tunnel walls, amplified by an accident of geometry.
But his own voice. Not Cortana's.
The crashing of waves in the distance.
"You can't," the Master Chief said, to Cortana. "Of course you can't."
Cortana, by her absence, said nothing.
Another rush of noise from below. Rumbling, leaking, waves flooding the tunnel network.
The tide? A storm surge? John didn't know. But he could smell the salt.
"What happened, Cortana?" John didn't care now—no-one else would hear him.
A rush of cold wind, and a torrent of water behind him.
"What changed?"
A prickling at the back of his head. And in his periphery, a flash of red to blue.
Follow the blue.
John leapt for the light as it changed again, to green.
The door opened.
Spray showered his face. He dived, landed on his front, the camera box knocking the air out of his lungs.
The door closed.
John coughed, and rolled onto his back. Looked down. The wetsuit was spattered with brine. The camera had disintegrated, shattered into hundreds of pieces of plastic—and he was sure there was now another bruise on his chest.
He tasted salt water, cold and hot. His own saliva. The condensed wind he had knocked out of his own lungs.
Above, a blazing sun. The sound of approaching ramjet engines, air through a drainpipe.
John found his hands, checked his palms and fingertips were still there. Formed a pyramid with them, and pressed himself upright.
His fingernails sunk into damp sand. The terrain re-formed itself around him.
A black spot on the horizon. The white point at its crest brightening by the second.
"John!"
John looked behind him, and jumped.
His mother, in a simple floral dress, stood on a small dune, eyes peering through her binoculars at the approaching dot.
The air above them roared. The dropship sailed overhead, bound for the landing strip at the nearby base—
"John!"
The Master Chief staggered backwards, on to his feet. The imprint he had made when landing was a perfect obsidian shadow, hard, solid, and now it dissolved into a perfect human-shaped shadow of dry sand.
"John!"
The next wave washed any trace of it away. The Chief checked his chest—the innards of the camera were still there, exposed to the elements, ruined.
"John!"
The Chief spun about. Another Pelican roared overhead. Two Albatrosses. A civilian jank.
The waves rose higher, higher—
John closed his eyes—
"John!"
A concussive BOOM—
Silence.
The wave had washed at least ten metres up the beach.
The Master Chief hadn't felt anything. It had passed over him, through him, beyond him—as if he wasn't there. As if the water wasn't there.
He walked up the beach, his feet squelching in the sand.
"John!"
But his mother wasn't talking. Stood on the crest of the dune. Binoculars clutched to her eyes, lips tight shut. Brightly coloured scarf billowing, her figure otherwise frozen.
"John!"
The Master Chief snapped around. His figure sprung into a stance for hand-to-hand combat.
A plump, pale-skinned woman. Her hair was damp, she was naked, and her feet had sprung into a defensive stance to match his own.
"What are you doing here?" demanded Martta, the swimmer he had met on the cliff top that morning.
"What are you doing here?" John asked, but he stood back, and held his hands aloft to indicate he wasn't a threat.
Martta stood up straight. Looked John straight in the eye.
"I am the monitor of this Installation," she said, plainly. "Now, John—Reclaimer—I'll ask you again. What are you doing here?"
John scanned his surroundings, as the stars went out, the sky dissolved around him, and the sand melted away.
"Where is here?" asked he, as 'here' ceased to be.