TOBIAS BUCKELL
This story takes place in July 2558, five years after the Covenant War came to a sudden conclusion (Halo 3 era) and a year after the shocking and deadly attack on Earth by the Forerunner commander known as the Didact (Halo 4).
Dahlia woke from a fever dream filled with the spitting crackle of fire eating the streets and drenched with the glow of Covenant energy weapons in the canopy of her mind’s eye.
“Mom!” she cried out. reaching for the strength of a hand that she felt had been stroking hers just moments before. “Mom!”
The dream faded away as Dahlia rubbed at crusty eyes with trembling hands that felt oddly like they weighed too much. She stood on unsteady legs and looked around. Dim light seeped around the edges of a battened-up storm shutter, and the spitting sound of her chaotic dreams somehow still swept around the room.
Filled with a sudden dread, Dahlia stumbled to her window. Sand seeped through the sunlit cracks. The thick metal shutters flexed under her hands.
There was no fire outside, no energy weapons pouring actinic light down onto them. It was just a sandstorm. Ferocious, though. She’d never seen the shutters rattle and bulge this much. The sand would strip skin from anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped outside.
Dahlia left her room and teetered into the corridor.
“Dad?”
Her mouth was papery, her tongue a solid lump inside. She couldn’t even swallow. And her eyes were still so crusty.
A memory flashed across Dahlia’s mind: her mother pressing a cold cloth to Dahlia’s forehead and crying softly.
“Mom?”
Dahlia paused by the sink in the bathroom and leaned down to take a drink from the tap. Skies, the stale dribble of water tasted so good. She wanted to suck it all right from the tap until the thirst ripping her stomach stopped, but she knew to sip. She’d broken a fever; she didn’t want to make herself nauseous.
When she straightened back up, she turned on a light. It flickered, then filled the bathroom with a soft blue. Dahlia stared at the gaunt ghost in the mirror. Dried blood streaked her cheeks with rusty trails of red tears. She’d bled from her eyes, her nostrils, down her chin.
Dahlia ran to her parents’ room.
They lay together in their bed, emaciated and waxy, but still breathing. Blood stained their pillows, pooled around their necks. Dahlia grabbed a stiff, dried-up washcloth from the side table and dabbed at their faces.
“Mom,” she whispered, but got no response.
For a long moment she sat and listened to their rattling, halting breaths. She held her mother’s hand in hers and squeezed. A few half-hallucinated memories wobbled their way to her. Her mom struggling to give Dahlia a sip of broth. The clammy liquid burning Dahlia’s sinuses as she coughed it back up with blood.
So much blood.
She remembered her dad’s tears. Real, watery tears, as he leaned over her as she fought the raging fever, a medical mask over his mouth. She didn’t ever remember him crying before, not even when they’d been evacuating Abaskun when the Covenant attacked Arcadia for the second time. She’d been just seven years old.
He’d held her close during the evacuation. His mouth had been compressed down into a single, tight line as they rattled around in the back of a Pelican dropship with others fleeing the destruction of the second home they’d built. Dahlia had stared back into the other refugees’ blank and distant eyes as the city burned behind them under the Covenant ships and wondered if she looked just as distant, shocked, and covered in grime and despair.
Dahlia’s hands were shaking again now. It was best not to think about the fires and collapsing buildings. The past would reach up and choke her, render her weak and terrified. It would leave her unable to think as her heart raced and the world imploded until she froze in place, quivering.
She hated that.
Hated that she could feel herself standing on the abyss again as she sat next to her parents, muscles locked in place and her breathing speeding up.
Her parents needed help. Focus on that.
She forced herself to get a cup of water from the bathroom and tried to trickle some of it into her mother’s mouth. It mixed with the blood and dribbled out the sides of her lips. The same for her dad.
Dahlia wet some washcloths and put them on her parents’ foreheads.
She tried to call out for help. Nothing but static on all channels, which made her nervous. The house antenna must have been knocked loose in the storm, she decided.
Dahlia imagined everyone in Sandholm lying in their beds, faces wet with blood, and shivered at the thought.
The front door shook when she checked it. The hiss of sand assaulting the other side was louder here than in her bedroom. This was no storm to walk out into. Nonetheless, she pulled out her goggles and sand gear from the storage container by the door and laid it out. Inner coolant layer, outer sand guard, cape, goggles, head wrap, boots—it was all there. Eventually she’d need to get outside.
Dahlia checked the kitchen and glanced at the calendar. What was the last date she remembered? July 2? She’d been in the fever’s grip almost a week.
Wind screamed and battered the house. Light sand swirled around inside from every crack and open seam in the structure, making her already dry throat itch. Dahlia found a soup packet, warmed and rehydrated it, then ate it slowly over the sink. The food made an instant difference. She felt somewhat buzzed as layers of grogginess peeled back.
She cracked open the first aid kit next to her bed. All the fever reducers were gone. Used up on her. So were the antibiotics. Dahlia closed the kit and walked back to her parents’ room. Again she dabbed at the blood on their cheeks. She set a fresh cloth on their foreheads. She got a pad of paper to record their temperatures on. High, but not scary high. She wrote that down on the pad, next to the time.
That was all she could do for now. She couldn’t call for expert advice or a medical evacuation. She couldn’t go outside to find a doctor, nor for medicine.
So she sat on the floor and listened to her parents gurgle and cough, wheeze and struggle.
She listened to the storm, waiting for a pause, a dip in the wind, or any sign that it was blowing itself out. She was waiting, waiting to head outside so she could bring help to her parents.
She fell asleep as exhaustion burbled up from underneath.
Dahlia woke with a start from a dry, nasty cough in the quiet. The storm had finally abated. Suddenly ashamed and terrified for sleeping, she jumped up, ignoring the wave of dizziness that came with the action. She checked her father. He still breathed, though she felt maybe not as heavily. Her mother’s lips moved soundlessly.
“Mom?” Dahlia leaned over to listen, but could hear nothing. Her mother’s eyes were open, looking past her, past the bunker-like ceiling.
Time was running out.
She quickly pulled on her sand gear, all the while wondering how long it had been since the storm blew itself out. Had she wasted hours? Dahlia wrapped the sand guard around herself, lazily weaved the pattern over the coolant layer, and then yanked the cape on. She grabbed the goggles and head wrap on her way out after unbarring the thick stormproof door.
The hinges ground sand between them. Sunlight beat mercilessly down on Dahlia as she stepped out and shut the door behind her. The main lock should hold in a light storm, even if the door wasn’t barred from the inside. But without her parents to shut it properly, she needed to make sure she was back before another big one hit or it would blow open and fill their home with sand.
Granules of sand still swirled and scurried through the air of the thoroughfare as Dahlia walked across Sandholm’s main street to the closest nearby home: Ellam’s rounded, yurtlike concrete house.
Sandholm lay stretched out along a northeasterly axis under the protection of a rocky bluff, following the banks of what had long ago been a river. This planet, Carrow—Dahlia’s newly adopted home—had once been far lusher, so every oasis or greenspot on Carrow’s main landmass was precious.
Suraka, the big human city out across the desert, had started out as a seed in just such an oasis. The city that the alien Sangheili called Rak had been built along a hidden river on this side of the desert, a place that Dahlia’s people had surveyed and found via Carrow’s old records. They had risked everything to get here in their creaky old ship, only to find an entire Sangheili city had already been built there after the war. The Sangheili had not only destroyed Dahlia’s birth home on Arcadia, they’d stolen the land her parents had hoped to settle on after the war.
So now Dahlia and the people of Sandholm huddled behind the bluff, drilled for water, and struggled to survive.
Dahlia pounded on Ellam’s door, but no one answered. The door was locked firmly from the inside, sand piled up against it in thick drifts.
Dahlia banged on the shutters of each room.
Nothing.
She pulled her head covering up around her mouth and lips against a sudden gust of sharp, sandy wind. She squinted up and down the street and its twenty houses. No one else was out surveying damage in the poststorm haze.
The bad feeling in her stomach wasn’t hunger or thirst anymore, but a slow dread.
Then she saw movement five homes down. Danzer and Pha’s house. She all but ran, the wind feeling like it picked up her cape and let her fly across the hard-pack mud.
Danzer stood in front of a roiling fire. The smoke whipped away from his house and down the street, dancing off to mingle with the fine sand.
“Uncle Danzer?”
He wasn’t really her uncle. He was family in the sense that they had lived together in cramped refugee huts on Mars for three years. They’d become the extended family that Dahlia had lost when Covenant ships appeared in the skies over the Outer Colonies. She’d spent her entire childhood moving inward. From the Outer Colonies to the Inner Colonies, and then eventually to Sol system itself.
And still the aliens had come for them. All the way to the mother world. Relentless in their destruction. Even before the second attack on Arcadia when she was seven, Dahlia had known that aliens were out there destroying human worlds. And for five years after the attack, all she had known was a life of running from the destruction.
Danzer and Pha had held her in their arms when the buildings exploded. Snuck her candy while packed in the holds of freighters running through the depths of space, fleeing the Covenant. Stayed up while Dahlia’s exhausted parents slept and told her they were going somewhere safer, somewhere they could start over again.
And over again.
Her uncles had always told her the best was yet to come. To survive and hold on. Even when her parents could only stare into the distance and wonder what would come next.
“Uncle Danzer!”
He turned now. Dahlia saw the slump in his shoulders and the empty eyes. “Dahlia?” He barely seemed to believe what he saw.
She ran up and hugged him. The dusty embrace left her weak with relief. She wasn’t alone anymore.
Danzer pulled away from her. “You’re alive,” he whispered in a shocked tone.
Dahlia looked over his shoulder at the fire. She remembered when she could bury her face in his chest and sob, but in the past she’d grown inches taller than the stout, square-jawed Danzer with his oddly pale hair.
There was something in the heart of the fire, under the dancing flame.
“Oh no,” she hissed. “Danzer, is that—”
Danzer wiped tears from his cheeks, streaking dirt into mud as he did so. “It was Pha. He died last night.”
She grabbed her uncle’s hand. They stood together and watched Pha burn.
“It’s a viral hemorrhagic fever of some kind,” Danzer said when the fire finally died down. “You were one of the first.”
“Doctor—”
“No. She died in the second wave. Before the communications repeater failed. Before people started bleeding. Pha and I took precautions. But we were already infected, it seems.”
“Then we need to go and fix the repeater. Mom and Dad are still alive. They need help.”
Danzer put a hand on her shoulder. “I can barely walk. The disease left me broken. It was all I could do to get Pha out here. But help me to your house—I will do what I can for your family.”
He looked sadly at her. “Not anymore.”
A bit more attention to dressing, goggles down and head wrap wound tightly, and Dahlia left Sandholm.
The storm’s remains occasionally tugged at her, but she made her way up the rough, sandblasted rock of Signal Hill as quickly as her battered muscles would let her. The illness had left her weak—usually she could skip her way up here to look out on the town and eat lunch.
Dahlia knew something was wrong as soon as she approached the last jumble of rocks. She should have been able to see the repeater from here.
When she scrambled up over the last three meters, she saw the silvered tower of the repeater knocked on its side and slightly down the incline. The wind must have blown it loose, across the ridge. A large boulder, likely dislodged in the process, had fallen on top of the repeater, damaging it beyond repair.
Dahlia sat down on the rocks. She opened a small canteen strapped to her side and pulled her head wrap’s strips aside by her mouth to sip. This was bad, she thought. Very bad. It would be two weeks before traders came by again.
Her parents wouldn’t live that long.
She was packing a large back frame with supplies when Danzer woke up. He’d been asleep on the living room rug, curled around a large floor pillow like a cat.
“Sorry, I was trying to be quiet,” Dahlia said, tying a sleeping bag onto the bottom of the frame. “I know you need your rest.”
Danzer shook his head and struggled to sit up. “I can barely take care of myself. It will take the two of us to care for your mother and father. What are you doing?”
“Neither of us can save them,” Dahlia said. She pulled the pack up on one end and lifted it experimentally. “I need to go for help. For them and whoever else might just be fighting this in their homes.”
It was Danzer and Pha that taught her to reject the past, focus on the present, plan for the future. If you do not live for a future, Pha once told her, it will never come. She was sixteen, but sometimes she wondered if the war hadn’t just thrown her past any childhood and straight into a strange, forged sort of artificial adulthood. The kind where a child would stroke their own parent’s arm and tell them to stop crying because it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad because that’s all the child had ever known.
“We are weak,” Danzer said. “I’ve barely survived this, just like you. You have to be weak as well. And Suraka is three hundred kilometers away.”
Dahlia nodded. “I can’t make Suraka, yes. But I can get to Masov Oasis.” That, she knew, was only seventy kilometers away. Halfway between Sandholm and Rak.
Danzer struggled to his feet. “The oasis? Masov Oasis is Sangheili territory. Aliens.” He hissed that last word with disgust, fear, and hatred. The Sangheili were monsters, the atrocities they’d committed horrendous. Danzer would never forget them and made a point to make sure Dahlia wouldn’t either.
“I know.” Dahlia swallowed, trying to drive the image of reptilian eyes and leathery skin out from her mind. “But I can get there in three days. Dad said there are human smugglers who trade with them. Maybe even our traders. If I can use the comm systems there, I can call Suraka for help. Maybe I can even buy medicine.”
Discard the past, forget the aliens, Dahlia told herself. Think only of the things that you need there.
It wasn’t going to be that easy.
“That is no place for you to be,” Danzer said. “People that close to alien land tend to die. One way or another.”
“You need to help my mom and dad. And you need to rest. I’m going. You know how it is, Danzer. We have to put one foot in front of the other and survive. That’s what we do.”
“There’s an old military surplus Mongoose quad bike in the doctor’s shed,” Danzer finally said. “It’s gassed up. It’ll get you to the oasis in a day.”
A day?! And help for her parents shortly after. Dahlia felt a small explosion of hope. Danzer nodded, recognizing her expression. He wobbled over to the footlocker near the door and tapped a code in. “Your father gave me the unlock pass,” he explained as he opened it. He reached in below the sand equipment, pushed back several towels and bags, and pulled out a heavy rifle.
“I knew Dad had an old rebel weapon held over from before the Covenant,” Dahlia said. “He kept it from me. What do you think I’ll be doing with that?”
“That is an M295 Designated Marksman Rifle, manufactured by Misriah back during the Insurrection, and you’re going to need protection. You’ve got a damn good eye for popping scale lizards. I’ve seen it.”
“I think this is going to be cumbersome,” Dahlia said. Not at all like the comfortable, low-caliber single-shot hunting rifle she preferred for shooting the lizards that dug into their sheds and chewed everything up.
“Semiautomatic.” Danzer handed it to her. “There’s one in every house, under lock. We figured, if the aliens attacked, we needed to be able to fight back.”
Twenty households. As if, Dahlia thought, they could hold off the Sangheili after so many others with better equipment and training had failed. But maybe that was what it had taken for her parents to sleep at night.
Dahlia hefted the large rifle. “I’ll take it.”
I’ll pack it up and never use it, she thought, rewrapping her sleeping bag around it and the two magazines that Danzer gave her.
“Be safe,” he told her at the door. “Just talk to the human traders. Avoid the hinge-heads.”
“I will.”
They hugged, and she stepped outside.
The sound of the storm bars locking in place behind her made Dahlia flinch.
Dahlia found the Mongoose exactly where Danzer said it would be. Fully gassed. A bit beat up, but then they’d been nearly beggars anyway when they’d come to Carrow.
It roared to life under her, and she gunned it down between the buildings, testing the throttle while she was on a flat, straight road. Just five minutes later, grinding up the sand near Signal Hill, she slowed down to ten kilometers per hour.
Usually taking a quad bike into the desert meant ripping up the dunes, tossing a rooster tail of fine sand up into the air. But she couldn’t afford to snap an axle or break a wheel out here. The bike needed to get her all the way the oasis. A missed rock, a plunging gulley—either of those would risk her family.
The ride settled into monotony. Up a hill of sand, check her bearings on the crest, down the other side. Trace the sides of old riverbeds.
She stopped every half hour to wipe the sand that had whipped through the seam between flesh and goggles to irritate her eyes and take a drink of water.
At times she found herself losing against waves of exhaustion. Her eyes would close for a second, then she would jerk back awake, swearing at herself. It would take just a few seconds to have it all come to a tragic end.
“Walking will be even more exhausting, if you haven’t broken your neck,” she berated herself. The fear and adrenaline cleared her vision and forced her to sit upright, keeping her going after her shoulders began to slump.
But eventually she would falter.
There was still sunlight. It would get harder to navigate at night, when she would have to depend on the headlamps. She wanted to squeeze every minute out of the day, as this was the time to drive faster.
But eventually, five and a half hours in and with the gloom of early evening, Dahlia began to slow the Mongoose down. She picked through a boulder field, slowly curving around the looming stones as the sun set.
“That’s it,” Dahlia said as the Mongoose coughed underneath her. She let go of the handlebars and massaged her palms. Leaned back and stretched.
How much longer would it take to get to Masov Oasis across the remaining terrain? Three to four hours by daylight. Five by night? Maybe more.
Dahlia swung her legs over the side to stand up and stretch as she considered what to do next. Her knees buckled under her. She fell to the sand next to the quad bike, her back slapping piping-hot sand lightly layered over a bed of wind-polished rock.
She was far, far more tired than she realized. Hanging on by a thread.
I’m in no condition to push on, she thought. One hour. Recharge, reset, continue.
She’d pulled the Mongoose into the lee side of a rock. If a storm kicked up, she’d be able to huddle between it and the bike for protection.
Dahlia crept over to the back of the bike and untied her sleeping bag. It flopped to the sand, unrolling to reveal the rifle.
At first she tried to pack it away. But she kept fumbling and dropping it. Dahlia finally sighed and pulled the rifle up into the bag with her, out of the sand.
It was hardly an ideal companion. All metal angles and lethal promise, it jabbed her kidney whenever she rolled to the side.
But after three minutes, she wasn’t conscious enough to care either way.
The signature spat of an energy weapon jerked Dahlia awake. She wiped sweat from her forehead and glanced around, panicked. Nightmares. She was flashing back to the attack on Arcadia, her home world. Memories nine years old etched so deeply into her that they felt like they had happened yesterday. The whine of Covenant weapons that left seven-year-old Dahlia shaking, curled up in a ball next to the wall while her parents tried to shield her as the battle raged outside.
Hunger. Days without food. Walking. Running to make evacuation points.
It wasn’t just sweat wetting her cheeks now.
The distinct sizzle of an alien weapon cut through the night air. Dahlia’s blood ran cold. She hadn’t been dreaming.
Dahlia scrabbled out of her sleeping bag, yanking her rifle free. Three more shots came, from the far side of the boulder field. Dahlia wanted to hide. Her hands shook, the pit of her stomach turning inside out.
But she had to push on. Needed to make sure they didn’t stumble upon her. Bitter experience taught Dahlia to suppress the fear and keep moving.
It may have been night, but in the unoccupied desert, the stars themselves provided light, filling the sky with an entire galaxy’s worth of scattered points and constellations Dahlia still wasn’t accustomed to, even after five years on Carrow. The massive moon’s pitted face filled the air with a silver-green light. She used that light to move from shadowy boulder to shadowy boulder, while still keeping an eye on the Mongoose.
She just needed to figure out where they were, then she could fire up the Mongoose and circle around, get back on a heading for the oasis. She did not want to drive right into what very much sounded like a shootout. She’d learned that much from being a bug caught up in the maelstrom of war before.
Three more shots.
They were echoing around the rocks, confusing her sense of where they came from.
Dahlia climbed up one of the toppled boulders to get a vantage point. She crawled slowly once she got to the tip, lying flat on her stomach and scanning all around. She kept her father’s rifle hugged close in one hand. In a flash it had gone from being a jabby annoyance to the world’s greatest security blanket.
There.
Another shot lit up the night like a lightning bolt. Down on the ground, to the east. Dahlia twisted around to face it. She started to ease back down toward the sand, but then pulled the bulky rifle up so she could use the scope.
She sucked in her breath. An all-too-familiar alien form stood on the sand, advancing toward a fallen figure.
“Sangheili!” Dahlia’s voice shook as she whispered.
The saurian alien was pulling an energy magazine out of its pistol and slapping a new one in. Something lay wrapped in a cloak on the ground by its feet.
Was it human?
The figure on the ground raised a hand as if pleading for mercy. It was too dark and far away to identify its species. Everyone in Sandholm had heard stories of human settlements being attacked—the Sangheili regarded this side of the desert as theirs.
The Sangheili raised the pistol and took aim.
This couldn’t be right, Dahlia thought. Even among the aliens, there was some kind of law, honor. You couldn’t just execute someone right there in the sand.
And if that was a human being lying down on the ground . . .
“Stop!” Dahlia shouted, standing up and aiming the rifle as she hopped to the ground.
The Sangheili pivoted to face her. It cocked its head, eyes showing no emotion as it looked her up and down.
Then it swung the energy pistol toward her.
“No!” Dahlia warned, taking a half step back. “Don’t do it.”
The alien paused, weapon halfway between the figure it was menacing on the ground and Dahlia, not sure where to put its attention.
She started to squeeze the trigger. Go the distance? Kill another living thing? Yet, it was going to be it or her, it seemed. And as part of the Covenant, the Sangheili had killed everything she’d once known.
It snapped its pistol up, moving unnaturally fast.
“Oh shit.” Dahlia pulled the trigger as a blast of heat ripped past her, close enough to singe her cloak. She saw sparks as the bullet from her father’s rifle smacked into the rock just above the alien.
A blue glow lit up the darkness and sank into the Sangheili’s chest as the figure on the ground reacted with similar speed as its foe. The two blades of an energy sword ripped up through the alien’s torso, and either side of the split creature fell to the sand.
Another Sangheili stood up, its backward-jointed legs immediately clear to Dahlia by the light of the energy sword.
It turned toward her, fresh blood smoking as it evaporated off the blades.
“Stop right there!” Dahlia shouted, voice quavering. “I will shoot.”
“I will yield,” it called back to her. It paused and turned off the sword, reholstering it to its waist.
“Just go,” Dahlia said. “Forget I was here.” She shouldn’t have gotten involved. She didn’t know who these creatures were, or what they were doing out here.
Her hands shook. Facing off against one of them out here in the cool desert night felt like a nightmare made real. Don’t come any closer, she prayed. Skies. Stay right there.
Thankfully, the alien did so.
But it did not leave just yet. “I owe you my life. That is an extraordinary debt,” it shouted. “You distracted Ruha here long enough for me to kill him.”
Dahlia lowered her rifle. She wanted to throw up, but swallowed hard and stepped back around the rock. “I don’t care. I’m leaving, now. Do not get in my way.”
Her Mongoose chose that exact moment to explode.
Dahlia staggered back and stared at the flaming wreckage, shocked. She looked down at the slightly charred edge of her cloak, the rock, and the angle toward the Mongoose. The plasma from the energy-pistol shot had just grazed her and the rock, and must have critically damaged the quad bike.
She dropped to her knees. “No, no no,” she whispered. “No. . . .”
This couldn’t be happening.
She leaned back to swear at the stars, then jumped up with her rifle to point it at the Sangheili, who had taken the opportunity to move closer.
“Stay back, Covenant!” she shouted.
“I am not Covenant. The Covenant is dead. It was a lie. I am Sangheili.”
Dahlia raised the rifle. “The Sangheili killed a lot of humans before you figured out it was a lie. Just stay back.” She wasn’t going to give it a pass for attempted genocide, even if some Sangheili had later decided it had been a mistake. Not now. Not ever. The Sangheili, with all the other alien species in the Covenant, had destroyed so much. They didn’t get to just walk away from that. And to add insult to injury, they certainly shouldn’t have been able to settle on any of the human planets in the Outer Colonies. Hell, it probably learned how to communicate with humans just so that it could fight them better during the war.
The alien raised its large hands in a curiously human gesture. Even from this distance, she could tell that it towered over her. The large weapons harness and shielding it wore added to the bulk. It could rip her apart. It had probably ripped people apart before, she thought. Those clawed fingertips . . .
“Your vehicle is destroyed,” it observed.
“No shit.” It wasn’t the walking that worried Dahlia now. She’d drag herself across and through anything to make that call for help. But the fact was that her water and food were burning in the remains of the Mongoose. She could only survive so long out here.
Dahlia looked at the alien. That gray skin, so extra sallow in the moonlight. It made her shudder. The sheen of a murderous species, she thought.
But she had to steel herself. For the sake of her parents.
“How did you get all the way out here?” she asked. “Do you have a vehicle?”
“I do.” The Sangheili pointed off into the night. Dahlia could see something near one of the rocks, all distinctly curved. A Spectre. She recognized the craft, though this one had no gunner’s turret like the ones she’d seen as a child. “There’s an oasis, Masov Oasis, nearly twenty kilometers from here. I need to get there.”
“That might be a bad idea.” The sleek head twisted as it said that, registering some sort of disapproval. The four mandibles that made up its lower jaw clacked. “You should stay away from Masov. It is not a good place for your kind. It is controlled by those loyal to Thars, and Thars does not like humans.”
Dahlia’s lip curled. “I’ll decide where I can and can’t go.” Her kind had been supplanted here in the desert enough as it was.
“It is a complicated time,” the Sangheili said. “Why do you need to go to the oasis? What is it you seek?”
“There are human traders there with working communications. Look, you said you owed me a debt.”
“That is true.” The Sangheili mulled it over for a moment. “Because of that, I will take you to where you wish. I am Jat—”
“I don’t care,” Dahlia interrupted. She kept her rifle up across her chest as she walked sideways toward the Spectre, watching the Sangheili closely. She had to look up at it.
Jat climbed into the cockpit. “The human traders you are looking for . . . they may not be at the trading post anymore.”
“I need to call for help,” Dahlia said. “My parents are sick.”
Jat sat still for a moment, then looked back at her. “You must be a credit to your bloodline,” he finally said.
“Let’s go,” Dahlia urged, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice.
The Covenant craft made good time, rapidly eating up the kilometers. Unlike the Mongoose, it floated just above the ground, skipping over tire-shredding rocks and cracks in the ground.
Dahlia said nothing, content to cradle her rifle and watch the world slip by as she tried not to think about her parents lying in their beds. Jat also remained quiet, focused on flying the Spectre.
Masov Oasis finally appeared, an island of light in the dim desert. And then it began to grow. Buildings took shape: tall spires among the trees, domes scattered among a handful of streets. Bright white facades lit by floodlights.
It was a glowing paradise of bubbling fountains, clean little buildings, and carefully maintained gardens. Serene and peaceful in the late night. Dahlia had been expecting dirty, sandy tents, and rundown trader posts.
Jat slowed and the Spectre slunk down to a halt.
“We are here,” he announced. He pointed a thick finger toward a square, metallic two-floored building that stood out among the rounded Sangheili buildings. “The human traders gather there.”
Dahlia hopped out of the Spectre. At the top of the building was a recognizable antenna array. She paused for a second, then turned to Jat. “Thank you.” The words sounded strange to her, like someone else was saying them.
She was thanking one of them.
“Stay close to the humans,” Jat told her. “The rise of Thars means few allies for your kind these days. Do your business, then leave this oasis quickly.”
Dahlia was already crossing the street and leaving him behind.
An automatic door hissed open as she approached the squat compound. Dahlia stepped into the dark.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
Lights snapped on, dazzling her. Dahlia blinked, holding her hand up to shield her eyes as they adjusted.
“Hello?”
Two silhouettes moved toward her.
They walked all wrong. Back legs . . . backward jointed. Sangheili!
They jammed the ends of wicked, long Covenant carbines into her face. One of them shouted something indecipherable and pointed angrily at her rifle. In any language, the message was clear. Dahlia dropped the weapon. The one on her left picked it up, inspected it, then shouted at her again.
“I’m here to talk to the humans. I need to call for help. That’s all,” Dahlia said.
“You go,” said the Sangheili on the right, the words almost indecipherable as they came through the mandibles. “Go with us. Now.”
Dahlia shook her head. “No, no. I need help. Help. Medical help.” She looked at both Sangheili, who glanced at each other blankly with those large, impassive eyes.
“Now. Go!”
“I need to call out!” Dahlia mimicked holding a receiver up to her mouth and ear. “Help.”
The two Sangheili fell upon her. Dahlia struggled, but they towered over her, and their grips were viselike.
They dragged her down the street and into one of the smooth, dome-shaped houses with no windows farther into the oasis. They pulled her along, as easily as someone pulling a recalcitrant child, and forced her into a cell at the end of a small corridor that ran down the middle of the building. Dahlia expected a wall of energy or an iridescent forcefield instead of the thick metal door barred shut behind her.
A man and a woman with sunburned skin and deeply wrinkled faces regarded her. “Who are you?” they asked, puzzled.
“You’re the traders, from the oasis?” Dahlia asked.
“Paul des Hommes,” the man on the left said. His weathered face crinkled and he scratched a wispy, reddish beard.
“Greta.” This one had silver hair tied back in braids and wore a ragged, oil-stained jumpsuit. “I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?”
“I’m from Sandholm,” Dahlia said. “They’re sick, everyone there is sick, and a storm knocked out our repeater. We need a doctor. We need help.”
“You’re all dependent on a repeater? Can’t your communicators reach the satellites?” Greta asked.
“We don’t have much in the way of extras,” Dahlia said. “We were lucky to get to Carrow in the first place. We’d hoped to farm the land around the river, but when we got there, the Sangheili had already arrived and built their holds to create Rak. We couldn’t even use this oasis. So we live out in the desert.”
“Times are tight,” Paul agreed heavily.
“What’s happening here?” Dahlia asked. “I need to get help for Sandholm. Quickly.”
Greta shrugged. “They burst into the depot last night and rounded us all up. Stanley put up a fight. They killed him.”
Paul grunted, looked down at the thick, planked floor. Greta squeezed his shoulder and grimaced.
She continued. “Things have been getting tense. Jesmith got attacked by some desert Sangheili. They’ve been grumbling about his homestead, saying it’s in Sangheili land holdings. Rumor is that a couple other human places got hit last month.”
“No one dead until yesterday,” Paul said. “Until then, I thought it was just Sangheili getting hot under the collar. Memories of the conflict. Tension about Suraka boiling over. They’ve always been sensitive about a human city getting resettled just on the other side of the sand.”
“Three months, hardly any business,” Greta said. “Sangheili have been turning their noses up. We used to be a focal point. Used to talk to the Surakan higher-ups about how things were going here; they saw it as a success. Sangheili and human, trading together. Each of us with a city on the planet here in the Joint Occupation Zone. Very touchy-feely, new way forward. The governments love that crap.”
Dahlia shook her head. Joint Occupation Zone. She hated that name. Carrow had been one of the Outer Colonies. A place human hands built, carved out of the dangerous desert with the city of Suraka.
She wanted to resist that name. Badly.
“What are they going to do? Send us to Suraka?” Dahlia asked hopefully.
“You mean forced resettlement?” Greta sat down on the floor, back against the side wall. “Maybe. Something changed, I can tell you that. New leadership, new Sangheili government back in their city. I haven’t been to Rak in six months. Sangheili there are telling me stay away. So whatever all this is, it’s coming from there. We had nothing but good relationships with everyone here—”
An explosion shook the room. Dahlia dropped to the floor and instinctively put her hands over her head.
More explosions, the shockwaves pulsing through the floor.
Then came the chatter of gunfire.
Not Covenant weapons, Dahlia thought. Those were bullets smacking into buildings.
“It’s a rescue!” Dahlia shouted.
Greta looked at Paul, who shook his head. “No one knows we’re here,” Greta said.
Dahlia stared at them both. “But those are guns. Our guns.”
“This is bad,” Paul mumbled. “No matter which way you twist this around to look at it, something bad is happening.”
A scream carried across the early morning air outside. An alien scream. Dahlia could feel the fear inside of it. It was universal.
The loud crack of a single shot silenced it.
The walls seemed to crowd in on her, the roof dropping in. Dahlia started taking deep breaths, but that didn’t stop her heart from hammering ever faster.
Two Sangheili shoved the door open. They pointed large energy pistols at their captives and gestured toward the corridor. Slung under their shoulders were human rifles. Dahlia felt horror sweep over her.
They’d been outside killing their own.
“No,” Greta said.
Paul stepped forward. “Not like this.”
One of the Sangheili roared and stepped inside. It grabbed Paul’s throat and dragged him out. Greta screamed and followed. “Stop it, you bastards!”
A sharp smack to her shoulder with the pistol got Dahlia moving down the corridor toward the door outside, although she could barely remember how to step forward. She’d gone deep inside of herself, her mind doing its best to leave this world.
Numbly, she let herself get shoved down the corridor, past more empty cells that lined it. “Please,” she finally said softly. “Please.”
She would run when they got to the door. She wouldn’t wait for them to kill her. She’d known, somehow, that this was coming. All the fleeing, all the new starts, just delayed the inevitable.
The Covenant might not exist anymore, but it almost killed her when she was a child. Now it was going to finally finish the job.
And she’d always prepared for this, somewhere deep inside.
She would run.
They would shoot her—one couldn’t outrun that sharp bolt of energy. But she would run just the same.
A piece of the corridor shifted, light playing across it all wrong as a bump of disturbed air moved toward the Sangheili aggressors.
At the last second, the two aliens sensed something: a creak in the floorboards beneath them, the shifting sound of heavy material. They spun around just as the familiar blue glow of an energy sword flashed to life.
It swung up, slicing an energy pistol in half before it could fire. Paul and Greta stumbled off down the corridor and toward the door leading outside. The other Sangheili punched at the invisible form, unable to get its weapon up to aim. Energy fluoresced and danced as armored fists struck, revealing the shape of another Sangheili.
The adaptive camouflage spattered out, and Jat swept forward, jamming the sword deep into the other Sangheili’s face.
Then, casually, Jat took the pistol from the dying Sangheili before he swung quickly around to behead its companion.
“Stay right there.” Greta had pulled one of the captured rifles free.
Jat looked at her. “Do not fire that,” he said softly. “Or the rest of the death squad in other buildings will hear it and come for us.”
They followed Jat out, waiting a moment as he made sure the streets were clear, then skirted around behind the Sangheili detention building. Greta and Paul looked at Jat’s Spectre, waiting for them. “We have transportation of our own. We just need to get to the trading depot,” Paul said.
They’d each taken a rifle. They didn’t trust Jat, Dahlia could tell, even if they’d been grateful for being released.
“You should come with us,” Greta told Dahlia.
Dahlia hesitated. But then Jat stepped forward. “I owe her the debt of my life. She gave it back to me.”
Paul nodded slowly. “Hell of a new pet, kid,” he said. “Good luck.”
They weren’t going to argue. They slipped off into the dark. For a second, Dahlia panicked. The only humans here had just left her. And they knew the oasis better than she did. Better than Jat anyway.
Jat slipped into the Spectre. “We leave. Now. Before our enemies get back to this part of Masov Oasis.”
“Why is this happening?” Dahlia asked. She looked up at the communications equipment, the firelight of burning Sangheili buildings reflecting off it in the predawn.
“I’ve been shadowing the death squad for many days now,” Jat explained as the Spectre slid slowly along the back street. “They follow Thars.”
He said that as if it were explanation enough. “Who is this Thars anyway?” Dahlia asked in a loud whisper.
“The enemy you should fear. One of my kind who thinks humans are . . .”
“Inferior?”
“Worms,” Jat said, edging around a building. He was aiming for the flat expanse of sand beyond. Just a few hundred meters to go.
“And I’m presuming you don’t follow Thars?”
“I lost everything I ever knew when my world was destroyed. I chose to follow Rojka ‘Kaasan to this world, when we assembled a fleet and fled to a new beginning six years ago. I helped him found Rak. We mourned the Covenant, everything we lost, and what was taken from us.”
Even Dahlia had heard of Rojka. Usually as a near epithet from her family and friends in Sandholm. The evil Sangheili who had taken the promised land from them. Thief. Squatter. Interloper.
“Rojka,” Jat continued, “believes that Sangheili and humans can live together on this world. That all Sangheili and humans have to learn this. Or we will all die.”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Dahlia said. “Not now.”
Jat grunted. “This evil here today will ring through the world, yes. Our species will plunge toward war if Thars gets his way. It is my hope to get word back to Rojka and stop it.”
“And can you stop what your kind will think when they see what looks like happened here?” Dahlia asked.
“I have to try,” Jat said.
A shout in Sangheili. Energy struck the ground nearby.
“We are discovered,” Jat proclaimed and slammed the Spectre up to full speed. Dahlia turned to look behind them.
Sangheili filed out into the street, shouting and firing at the Spectre.
“We have the lead,” Jat said. “But I had hoped to get away without notice.”
Some of the Sangheili were now racing for craft of their own.
Before long, they were all tearing through the desert in the early morning sunrise, fine sand kicking up into the air behind them.
The wind buffeted the Spectre, sand whipping at them. Dahlia hunched down and gritted her teeth.
After some time, Jat finally shouted back at her, “We will not be able to outrun them or shoot back! Rojka had the turrets ripped off. We used them for civilian transport. Thars has been trying to remilitarize all the ground equipment.”
Dahlia turned and squinted through the sand cloud they’d kicked up. Four Spectres with turrets, each carrying two heavily armed Sangheili, were just a kilometer away.
A blast of plasma hit the Spectre, splashing Dahlia’s cloak with a faint mist of burning metal that scorched her skin. She could tell that something important had been hit, as the vehicle began to wobble and scrape sand.
Jat swung the Spectre in an arc toward a dip in the horizon.
Seconds later, they burst over a ridge and Dahlia’s stomach flip-flopped as they fell toward a steep hill. Their Spectre kicked up gravel as it slammed down and bounced, almost throwing Dahlia out. Jat forced it into another turn, dodging a large boulder.
They screamed down into a canyon, sliding around as Jat fought with an increasingly unresponsive set of controls. Smoke trailed them, the engine inside failing with a loud screech and the familiar whine suddenly cutting out.
The Spectre glided in silence.
Behind them, one of the chase vehicles struck the boulder Jat had barely missed and disappeared in a spectacular explosion.
They slid to a stop.
Jat jumped out. “There are six left,” he said, pulling a large silver case free from underneath the ruined Spectre. “These are not great odds.”
“What do we do?” Dahlia asked. There was nowhere to run. The remaining Sangheili paused on the ridge, some of them peering quickly over the edge to see the whereabouts of Jat and Dahlia and how to safely get down to them.
Jat opened the case and retrieved a large rifle with a fat, wedge-shaped barrel. The chevron-shaped stock hung low under Jat’s grip, making it look almost upside down to her eyes. “It is time for them to discover my trade skill.”
Dahlia recognized the weapon. A particle beam rifle, generally used by Covenant snipers. She’d seen the bodies left on streets after that loud snap-whine of energy fried them.
“There are more than six,” Dahlia pointed at the ridge. “I see two or three more sand plumes.”
“I concur that we are well outnumbered.” Jat reached to his belt and handed her the energy pistol he had taken from one of her captors. “We are making our last stand. It is the only option we have left.”
One of the death squad’s Spectres jumped the ridge and slid down toward the bottom of the gulley.
“I can’t,” Dahlia whispered. “I can’t do this. What about my parents? What about your people? You were going to warn them.”
“You can run,” Jat said casually, as if it wouldn’t bother him. “You saved my life, and you have paid your debt. But I tell you: they will hunt us down. They cannot have any witnesses left alive. Together, our weapons united, we can fight with honor.”
Jat ignored the Spectre crabbing its way toward them on the floor of the canyon. He aimed farther away, calmly tracking something with the massive rifle. Energy lanced out through the air. A Spectre spun out of control as a driver slumped forward and died. There was bellowing from the Sangheili suddenly trapped in the back as it flew over the edge and exploded against rocks.
“When I waited for you in the corridor, when those guards marched you out, I had time to observe you. I do not know much about humans, but I think you were ready to attempt an escape. You were not going to let them kill you easily, am I correct?”
“Yes. I was going to run,” Dahlia said, as Jat fired up at the ridge, killing more Sangheili scurrying along it to get a position on them. What about the Spectre right down here with us? she wondered in a panic.
“We are not animals to the slaughter—you and I,” Jat rumbled. “We are warriors, survivors. We make a stand. Our memories—we will make our lineages proud, human. We will make this sand drink our enemy’s blood.”
Plasma fire hit Jat’s broken Spectre, shaking it. The two of them dropped behind it for cover. Dahlia looked down at the bulky alien pistol. She could feel her pulse racing and the world narrowing around her. The droning sound of the approaching Spectre filled her world.
“Focus,” Jat said to her, large pale alien eyes regarding her as he realized something was wrong with her. “There are worse ways to die than on your own terms. Breathe in every extra moment you are given to be free. Think that earlier this day you were certainly dead, and now you are not.”
He broke out of his crouch and yanked the rifle up to fire at the approaching Spectre.
Dahlia glanced around the front of the craft in time to see the death squad Sangheili diving clear of their vehicle. The air filled with more plasma bolts as Sangheili on the ridge opened fire, no longer worried about hitting their own.
“Look up!” Dahlia shouted at Jat.
Two more Sangheili were scooting along above them up on the ridge, trying to move down so that the Spectre could no longer shield them.
Jat swung the rifle up and fired. No aiming, but he got the result he wanted. The would-be attackers ducked back from the edge of the rock.
Plasma fire from the Sangheili who’d dived clear of their exploding Spectre splashed the nearby rock now that Jat was distracted.
Dahlia took a deep breath, then leaned around and fired the pistol. The plasma struck far to the right of the aliens ducking from rock to rock toward them.
She corrected and peppered the nearby rocks with fire, keeping them behind cover.
“They’re getting closer,” Dahlia said, voice breaking slightly.
“As they will,” Jat grumbled. “Ready yourself.”
He fired again at the lip of the rock, then twisted to sit the rifle on the Spectre’s chassis. Sighted. A Sangheili head popped up and Jat fired.
The dead alien body slumped forward over the rock.
One of them roared with rage to see yet another of their own die. Jat ducked back as a barrage of fire struck his vehicle. Dahlia clutched her knees, shivering.
So much. Too much.
With yet another bellow, three of the Sangheili charged. Dahlia could hear their footsteps pounding the ground as they advanced.
Dahlia forced herself to lean around and fire blindly, finding the target only after she’d started pulling the trigger. She hit one of them in the leg and it tumbled forward, losing its footing. Jat swung, aimed, but the two other Sangheili jumped over the Spectre.
Struggling to spin as quickly, Dahlia tried to engage, but they darted forward just as Jat leaped at them with a war cry. His energy sword was out in an instant, his rifle left behind.
The other two Sangheili had their swords out in kind.
A three-sided duel began, swords hissing and crackling as they struck one another with remarkable speed.
Dahlia scrabbled up, looking for the third Sangheili she’d wounded. Something struck her on the shoulder. She spun, her breath knocked out of her, and landed against the Spectre. The impact caused her to hit her head and bounce off, the world fracturing into a series of images.
She saw the wounded Sangheili limping around the Spectre and raising its carbine to aim at the dueling Sangheili, their swords whirling around each other as Jat fought for his life. The two Sangheili still up above on the ridge leaped into the air, barreling down toward them.
“Jat . . .” She tried to warn him, but what could he do?
Her pistol had been thrown clear. Dahlia tried to crawl for it, but the wounded Sangheili already figured that out. Towering above her, it thudded over and kicked the weapon away.
Dahlia slumped to the ground and looked up.
Her left shoulder was on fire. The shot had come from the nearby Sangheili and burned through her. Pure adrenaline had stopped her from initially feeling it, but now the pain made her vision dance.
Dahlia struggled to stand, but her attacker kicked her back down and unsheathed its own energy sword. It seemed to be relishing the moment of conquest. Taking its time to look at her, mandibles opening in a roar as the sword lifted.
She’d feared this moment her entire life. Woke to nightmares of the aliens and their inhuman eyes and backward-jointed legs kicking in a door to kill her just like this.
“Do it,” Dahlia whispered. “You’ve been the boogeyman in my life for long enough. I’m ready. I’m not scared of you!”
Behind it, Dahlia saw Jat finally fall, the hilt of his sword clattering to the ground. Four Sangheili surrounded him, triumphant.
Jat looked over. “We made them bleed,” he said to her, spreading his arms. “So then, they bleed!”
The entire canyon erupted in gunfire.
Human gunfire, Dahlia fuzzily thought.
Dozens of bullets ripped through the Sangheili standing over her in a split second, destroying the once-massive creature and filling the air with a mist of blood. The gunfire shifted across the desert floor and stitched through the other Sangheili trying to run for cover, chewing them apart.
Jat twisted up and stopped moving.
The gunfire ceased, and over it, Dahlia could hear the whine of turbines. She saw the hunched-forward shape of a Pelican transport dropping slowly down into the gulley.
Beige-uniformed soldiers jumped clear of its ramp, battle rifles up to their shoulders as they fanned out to examine the Spectres and alien bodies.
Dahlia somehow managed to stand up, her unharmed arm in the air.
Paul and Greta ducked as they ran around the Pelican’s wings, the engines kicking up their cloaks.
“You,” Dahlia said, mouth dry. She ran toward them, wincing with the pain that flared through her shoulder at each step. “How?”
“We may be traders, but we also feed information back to the Carrow militia,” Greta said. “Keep an eye on the ground for them. Once we got back to the depot, we called for help. Met them out in the desert for a pickup. When we saw all the smoke here, we came to have a look.”
Dahlia could have hugged them.
“Live one!” shouted a militia man.
Dahlia spun around as fast as her damaged shoulder would let her. “It’s Jat! Don’t—”
A single shot cracked through the air and Jat slumped forward to the ground.
Dahlia screamed and ran forward. She grabbed the Sangheili’s head with her good arm, cradling it. “Jat.”
But he only stared off into emptiness.
“He . . . he saved me. He wasn’t one of them!” Dahlia raged at the soldiers standing around her now. “You killed him!”
The strangers in their beige uniforms said nothing, their sand-bitten faces empty at the sight of what had once been their enemy dead on the sand.
“He was my friend,” Dahlia said.
“The Sangheili aren’t our friends,” one of them finally said, grabbing her elbow. “You’d know that if you lived in the Outer Colonies before coming here. You’d have seen what they did. They think this is their world. They’ll find out who it really belongs to soon enough.”
They dragged her off to the Pelican, where Paul and Greta tried to talk to her.
But Dahlia didn’t have any more words left.
Dahlia’s father woke first, responding to the heavy antivirals and fluids the militia medic had hooked both her parents up to. He blinked at his daughter, who was sitting down in full desert gear at the foot of their bed, a new militia rifle on her lap. Her shoulder was bandaged, and the skin on her face chapped from the desert sun.
“Dahlia?”
She stood up with a smile, a tiny bit of relief coursing through her to hear him say her name. She crossed over to his side of the bed and gave his forehead a kiss. “Dad.”
He hugged her. Then looked at the long dagger on her hip and back to the rifle. “What’s all this? You carry weapons now?”
“I do,” Dahlia replied. “I have to. Mom hasn’t woken yet. You’re too weak to travel. You need to rest and recover. So I’m ready for anything that comes here to Sandholm.”
Her father appeared heartbroken. “And do you think you can hold off the Sangheili by yourself?”
“No. I have no doubts I’d die quickly,” Dahlia flatly said. Her dad flinched at her honesty. “But they say there’s an envoy being sent from the Unified Earth Government. Maybe it won’t come to that.”
They could both tell she didn’t believe that.
Dahlia wiped her mother’s forehead, then stood up and looked out of their window. Out toward Signal Hill, the rocks, and the desert beyond. “But a friend of mine taught me that I should die on my own terms, not someone else’s. So if they come for us, Dad . . . I will make them bleed and pay a price.”
Everything had changed. Everything will collapse into blood and fire once again, she thought.
But the difference this time was that there would be no more cowering in the corner for her. Dahlia wasn’t scared anymore.