Ace of Spades / High Orbit above Emerald Cove
Lessa hated leaving Emerald Cove, but like Niko and Ram, she was happy to reunite with the captain and Spark and be back on board Ace. After their reunion, and a quick lunch together in the lounge, they’d gone their separate ways while she remained, curled up in one of the ship’s lounge chairs, a commpad on her lap as she scrolled through her options. Excitement and guilt tangled in her chest.
Option one was to keep traveling the stars with her brother and Rion, with Ram, and Spark—her family. The other option was to live a very different life, one she’d dreamed of since she was a young girl eking out a life in the slums of Aleria with Niko.
She’d narrowed her search to two universities: Escada U and Baker-Verding. For kicks, she added the wild-card, never-in-a-million-years University of Edinburgh. The imposing buildings and manicured lawns, the smiling faces of students and teachers caught in frozen moments of educational bliss—none of it seemed real. It was more alien to her than run-ins with Sangheili bounty hunters and Kig-Yar pirates, or living on a ship with an ancient Forerunner AI.
As was so often the case after scrolling through college galleries and guides, her excitement soured. Who the hell was she kidding?
A year after salvaging Spark from Geranos-a, right under the high-and-mighty Office of Naval Intelligence’s nose, and then sneaking through Home Fleet’s defenses to find the Librarian’s imprint on Earth, their faces were still being plastered all over Inner and Outer Colony waypoints and every other media outlet ONI could influence with their lies.
Their names had become synonymous with outlaw, renegade, wanted criminal. Crimes against the UEG, they said. Rewards issued across the colonies.
Ridiculous. All of it.
Still, if she wanted it badly enough, she could change her appearance and get Niko and Spark to work their magic with documents and IDs down to fooling DNA readers and bio scanners. She was one young woman in a galaxy of billions. Hiding in plain sight as a college student would be the easy part.
But, it wasn’t ONI or bounties that worried her; it was making the decision itself, leaving the crew or going to school. After everything Rion had done for her, how could she just take off? See you later, thanks for everything?
It didn’t feel right. But neither did turning her back on her dreams.
With a sigh, she powered off her pad and stared beyond the lounge’s viewscreen, where an arc of Emerald Cove still dominated the bottom corner. She’d never tire of planetary blues and greens. Not when all she had grown up with was dust. Crewing with Rion had allowed her to see so many amazing things. She’d been to Earth. Earth! Colonists lived their whole lives, families went from generation to generation, without ever getting to visit the homeland.
A flash of light caught her eye as Spark appeared over the holopad inlaid in the center of the lounge’s main dining and meeting table. His avatar was an exact copy of the physical armiger construct usually confined to the cargo hold, only this one was scaled down to a little over half a meter tall. Glowing blue eyes and a sleek silver-alloy head turned in her direction, dipping in recognition.
Spark tilted his head suddenly, as though he heard something.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes…,” he answered, rather slowly.
His avatar appeared a little different from the last time she’d seen him, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on any one thing in particular. The first time she’d seen him, he’d been a pile of black alloy parts, pinged and scratched and damaged.
Salvaged from Geranos-a, he’d given them one hell of a surprise when he reassembled in Ace’s hold, hard-light technology pulling the floating parts together into a menacing three-meter-tall Forerunner soldier called an armiger—a deadly sniper variant. An amazing salvage find on its own, but far more extraordinary was what had found refuge inside the damaged armiger shell—the former Halo monitor 343 Guilty Spark.
Over time, he had slowly transformed the armiger’s appearance thanks to the machine cells in the construct’s alloy, which allowed form manipulation. The soldier variant had given way to a sleek, futuristic-looking advanced alien intelligence.
“When are you going to tell them?” he asked. “Have you decided?”
Her mouth opened to deny it, but what was the point? “I thought we all agreed there’d be no snooping.”
He gestured to her commpad. “Snooping takes effort, Lessa. This did not.”
Of all the pompous… “That’s not the good excuse you think it is.” But right now she didn’t have the energy or the heart to lecture him about privacy. “Don’t tell them, okay? I haven’t decided anything yet.” Embarrassment made her turn away. She felt stupid for even considering it. “I’m just… looking, dreaming maybe. I probably won’t ever actually do it.…”
“Why not?”
“Well… because. I wouldn’t want to—”
“Oh, good, you’re both here.” Rion entered the lounge with a brisk step. “Ram and Niko should be in any second.” She got a drink from the dispenser and then focused on Spark. “All set?”
Lessa extracted herself from the cushy chair and moved to the table. “All set for what?”
Niko and Ram entered as Rion answered with a smile and a wink, “New mission.”
Niko’s frazzled appearance gave Rion a good chuckle. His dark hair was sticking out at all angles and hung well past his ears now. Recently he was given to tucking it behind his ears. “Wow. It’s like you weren’t just on the beach for eight days.”
“Hey. This is my normal look.”
“Deranged?”
“Ha ha. This is what hard work and genius looks like.” His gaze briefly shifted to Spark’s avatar. “Well… and that.”
“I know you’ve been working hard. Just remember not to get your hopes up too high—”
“It’s going to work.” Niko glanced back to Spark for support. “Tell her.”
It seemed a lifetime ago that they’d discovered the debris field of Etran Harborage and salvaged the site’s fragmented ancilla. Shortly after, ONI had swooped in, taking the ancilla they’d dubbed “Little Bit” as well as the projections he’d created on possible trajectories the Spirit of Fire might have taken after destroying the shield world. They’d lost most of their bank accounts, warehouses, Niko’s research, data, and prototypes, and two decades of Rion’s work searching for the Spirit of Fire.
Later on, they’d met with ONI in the town of Port Joy under rather dramatic circumstances and managed to get a few things returned, among them a data chip with Little Bit’s projections. Not the originals, as desired, but copies. After cleaning the chip of ONI surveillance, it was put on the back burner until a few months ago, when they’d begun exploring the potential paths the Spirit of Fire might have taken.
It was a near-impossible task that turned up very little, so Spark began digging deeper into the projections, hoping to create new paths based on Little Bit’s work… and he found a strange subcode in the chip’s crystal matrix. One that suggested the fragmented ancilla had inadvertently sublayered traces of his own framework like puzzle pieces hidden within thousands of calculations.
And so began Spark and Niko’s joint effort to liberate Little Bit’s code from the chip without damaging the projections.
It was painstaking. They’d been at it for months.
“The probability grows,” Spark answered. “I cannot say if what we liberate will be viable, but we are nearly finished with that part of the procedure. We must remember the effort is entirely experimental.”
ONI had only returned a portion of what they’d taken from Niko, which had been a demoralizing blow for an imaginative mind like his. If resurrecting Little Bit’s fragmented code fueled his creative drive and kept him happy, then Rion had no qualms with their side project.
Ram was the last one to saunter into the lounge, and Rion couldn’t help but smile. “Now there’s a person who’s just been on vacation.” He’d gotten a nice tan on top of his already rich olive complexion. Keeping her eyes on him, she reached over and slapped the coffee dispenser panel.
Ram ignored her and waited intently for his coffee, his unbound hair falling into his face. “Why does it always work for you?” he mumbled irritably.
“Because she loves me.”
Ram wordlessly fixed the necessary wake-up beverage to his liking, then dragged out a chair and slid into it with the ease of a lazy cat, stretching out his forearms. She’d always been friends with the gruff salvage captain from Komoya—been rivals too, depending on the salvage—but his time crewing on the Ace of Spades had turned a mild friendship into something lasting and true. He’d become family.
“Glad to see everyone back on board,” Rion began. And that was the truth. After the disastrous family reunion on Sonata, it felt good to be among those who would never let her down.
“You’re coming next time,” Lessa said. “The beach was amazing.”
“Next time for sure.” Rion extracted the Librarian’s key from her pocket and set it on the table. “For now though we’re going to see what this beauty unlocks.”
All eyes went to the key. Lessa picked it up. “You figured out what it means?”
“Thanks to you, yes,” Spark said. “The symbol revealed when you touched the key belongs to Halo Installation 07.”
“No way.” Niko sat up straight, eyes as big as plates. “We’re going to a Halo? An actual Halo?” He looked around, hopeful, nearly bouncing in his chair as Spark replied in the affirmative.
“Wait,” Lessa cut in, ever the thoughtful one. “But wasn’t that where you said you—”
“Where I lost my body and became a machine,” Spark answered. “That is correct. You may call it Zeta Halo.”
Trying to determine the expression on a face made of metal and light was an exercise in futility, but after a year together, Rion had picked up on a few telltale gestures and tics—the way he moved his head, held his shoulders… For now, however, it seemed he was keeping his feelings on this Zeta Halo close to his chest.
Only a few years had gone by since this ancient being had regained his human memories. Learning a thousand centuries had passed and everyone you’d ever known, cared about, loved, and hated was gone forever would take time to reconcile. Where Spark stood mentally was anyone’s guess, and traveling to Zeta Halo might either be a big mistake or give him the closure he deserved.
Rion stayed mum to allow the crew the opportunity to digest the idea. The news didn’t seem to faze Ram at all; he was more interested in his coffee while Lessa gently rolled the key around in her hand, tracing the symbols. “So strange this is a key.… Do you know what it opens?”
“The Cartographer on Zeta Halo will tell us. It will read the key’s coordinates and likely point the way to the proper location on the ring.”
Ram perked up. “Cartographers are mapmakers.” His interest didn’t surprise Rion; he had a fascination with maps and star points—as evident in the constellation tattoos covering his skin.
“Precisely. The Cartographer can generate a navigable map containing the unrestricted and complete blueprint of Zeta Halo in current time. It maintains an unbroken record of the ring’s history in its entirety.”
Niko, meanwhile, sat back and put his hands behind his head. “All I want to know is, when do we leave?”
Humor tugged at Rion’s mouth and her heart filled with fondness. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the excitement of the hunt, the anticipation of the unknown. It had been a while since they’d sat around the table with an eye toward a real, tangible score.
After their last venture, which had garnered them an upgraded ship, a highly advanced AI, and a criminal record of galactic proportions, Rion thought their options were endless as a result. The galaxy was at their fingertips.
Then reality had set in. A fast ship and credits to burn, yes, but an outlaw was an outlaw—all the contacts she’d cultivated over the years were under surveillance, and if she put them at risk now, they wouldn’t be there later when things, hopefully, finally blew over.
Either way, the months they’d spent tracking the Spirit of Fire had been exhausting and overwhelmingly disappointing. They all needed a big change. And this was it.
“Spark,” she said with a grin. “Set a course for Zeta Halo.”
It was good to be back in the game.