His pack dropped their arms and settled back upon their heels. By now their tabards were soaked with bitter-smelling sweat. One Jiralhanae rolled his shoulders; another scratched a demanding itch—but all waited without complaint for their Chieftain to take his pick of meat.
The Thorn Beast's ample thighs, hulking ribs, or even its stunted forelegs were all popular first choices. But Maccabeus had an unusual, favorite morsel: the smallest of the five thorns that ridged the creature's high-arched back.
Properly cooked (and as the Chieftain worked the thorn back and forth in its socket, he could tell it was), the appendage would pop away from the base of the beast's neck, bringing its muscle-bed with it; a tender ball of meat on a crisp and oily cone—an appetizer and dessert.
But as the Chieftain brought the meatball eagerly to his lips, he felt a rattle on his belt.
Transferring the thorn to his off hand, Maccabeus activated his signal unit.
"Speak," he barked, keeping his anger in check.
"The castaways are aboard," growled Rapid Conversion's security officer, Maccabeus' second-in-command.
"Do they have relics in their possession?"
"I cannot tell."
Maccabeus dipped the thorn into a bowl of sauce at the edge of the platter. "Did you search them?"
"They refuse to leave their pod."
Standing so close to the Thorn Beast, Maccabeus' nostrils were permeated with its scent.
His appetite was piqued, but he wanted to savor his first bite without distraction. "Then perhaps you should remove them."
"The situation is complex." The security officer's tone was both apologetic and excited. "I think, Chieftain, you may wish to assess it for yourself."
If it were any other Jiralhanae, Maccabeus would have given him a roaring reprimand and begun his feast. But the officer was the Chieftain's nephew, and while blood ties offered no immunity from discipline (the Chieftain held all his pack to the same high standards of obedience), Maccabeus knew that if his nephew said the situation in the hangar needed his attention, it did. He pulled his thorn from the dipping bowl, and took as big a bite as he could manage. A third of the meat disappeared into his mouth. The Chieftain didn't bother to chew, just let the marbled flesh slide slowly down his gullet, then wedged the thorn back onto the platter.
"Begin," he barked, striding through his ravenous pack. "But take care you leave my share."
Maccabeus tore off his tabard and tossed it to an Unggoy steward standing beside a second set of steel doors opposite the kitchen. The passage beyond shared none of the feasting hall's traditional craftsmanship. Like those in most every other Covenant vessel, it was all smooth surfaces bathed in soft artificial light. The only difference was there were more obvious imperfections: some of the light-emitting ceiling strips were burned out; holographic door locks flickered; near the end of the passage, coolant dripped from an overhead duct that had gone untended for so long that the greenish liquid had run down the wall and slicked across the floor.
Then Maccabeus reached the gravity lift. It was out of service, but more to the point, it had never been in service—not since he had taken possession of the ship. The lift's circular shaft ran vertically through all of Rapid Conversion's decks, but the circuits that controlled its anti- gravity generators had been removed by the Sangheili, as had circuits for the cruiser's plasma cannon and a host of other advanced systems.
The reason for this wholesale stripping of technology was simple: the Sangheili did not trust the Jiralhanae.
As part of the species' confirmation process, some of the Sangheili Commanders had declared their strong suspicion before the High Council that the Jiralhanae's pack mentality would invariably bring the two species into conflict. Dominant Jiralhanae always fought their way to the top, the Commanders argued, and they didn't believe even the Covenant's rigid hierarchy would be sufficient to moderate their natural urges. Until they proved themselves subservient, whatever peaceful urges they had should be "aggressively encouraged." It was a reasonable argument, and the High Council imposed clear restrictions on the kinds of technology the Jiralhanae could use.
And so, Maccabeus thought, did we set aside out of pride for a higher purpose. Instead of pressing a holo-switch to call an elevator (one of the allowable replacements for the grav-lift), the Chieftain simply turned around and slipped down onto a ladder—one of four evenly spaced around the shaft.
Like the feasting hall's doors and beams, the ladders' construction was relatively crude.
Although the ladders' rungs were worn smooth from frequent use, there were burrs along the rails that indicated a hasty fabrication. There were gaps in the ladders at every deck, but crossing these involved a simple drop or leap, depending on the direction of travel. For the muscular Jiralhanae this wasn't so much an inconvenience as exercise.
Maccabeus knew the tank-encumbered Unggoy currently huffing and puffing up the ladders might disagree on this last point. But the shorter creatures were also extremely agile, and as the Chieftain began his descent to the hangar, an Unggoy leapt to another ladder and let him pass.
This sort of flexibility made the ladders more practical than an elevator, which would have limited travel to everyone up or everyone down. But Maccabeus knew the ladders had one more advantage: they tended to keep you humble.
Before taking control of Rapid Conversion, the Chieftain had been obliged to give a Sangheili delegation a tour so they could verify he hadn't repaired any of the proscribed systems. But the delegation had another item on their agenda. Immediately after the two Commanders and their Helios guards had come aboard, they began to call out all the reasons why the cruiser was "no longer worthy of a Sangheili commission." Starting with the size of the hangar bay where the tour began, one Commander emphasized how small the space was—how it could only hold a "handful of craft" and even then "only those of lesser type."
As the list of flaws grew, Maccabeus had nodded in polite agreement, slowly leading the party toward the shaft. The second Commander had boasted that gravity lifts were now ubiquitous on even the smallest Sangheili ships, and the first sniped that only on a vessel such as this—a thing best used for target practice—would one find a device as obsolete as a mechanical lift.
"Indeed," the Sangheili Commander had disdained, delivering the next line in a rehearsed critique. "Given the limitations of its crew, I wonder how long even such a simple system will remain functional."
"You are right, my Lords." Maccabeus had replied, his deep voice earnest. "In truth, the elevator proved so beyond our capabilities that we were forced to remove it."
The Sangheili Commanders had shared a confused glance. But before either of them could ask how Maccabeus intended them to inspect the upper decks, the Chieftain had used his powerful arms to pull himself up onto a ladder, leaving the Sangheili staring dumfounded up the shaft.
In his lifetime, Maccabeus had humbled many foes. But few victories were as satisfying as hearing those pompous Sangheili struggle up and down the ladders. Unlike the Jiralhanae (and all other Covenant bipedal species), Sangheili's knees bent forward not backwards. This unusual hinging didn't impede their motion on the ground, but it made climbing difficult. By the end of their inspection, the Sangheili were exhausted, mortified, and more than happy to have the crippled cruiser and its cunning barbarian of a Shipmaster out of their fleet.
This pleasant memory kept Maccabeus in reasonably good spirits even as he leapt past a passage marked with flashing triangular symbols. These indicated portions of the ship that had fallen into disrepair—in some cases dangerously so—and the Chieftain had been forced to lock them for his crew's own safety.
In this respect, Maccabeus knew, it was the Sangheili who had the last laugh. His crew did have limited technical ability. They had struggled just to keep Rapid Conversion's limited systems from falling apart, and the once-mighty vessel really was nothing more than the Ministry of Tranquility survey tug the Sangheili allowed it to be.
The Chieftain's mood had dampened by the time he reached the bottom of the shaft. But as he swung into the passage that led to the hangar's airlock, his gloom quickly became unease.
There was death in the hangar. Maccabeus could smell it.
When the airlock cycled open, the first thing the Chieftain saw was a scorch mark that stretched the length of the hangar floor. On either side of the mark were the charred carapaces of at least a dozen Yanme'e: large, intelligent insects responsible for Rapid Conversion's upkeep. More of the winged, hard-shelled creatures were perched on the forked hulls of one of the cruiser's four Spirit dropships. The Yanme'e's luminous compound eyes were all locked on the cause of the carnage: a Kig-Yar escape pod that had blasted across the hangar.
The dead insects didn't faze Maccabeus; more than one hundred Yanme'e infested the warmer decks around Rapid Conversion's jump-drive, and while it was true they would not reproduce without a queen, their loss paled in comparison to the pod's other victim: one of the Spirit dropships. The craft's low-slung cockpit had stopped the pod's progress, saving another Spirit beside it. But the pod had severed the cockpit from its two elongated troop bays, crushing it against the far wall to one side of the hangar's flickering energy-field exit.
The Spirit was a total loss. The damage caused by the pod was well beyond the Yanme'e's skills.
Maccabeus' temper flared. A few angry strides later and he was across the hangar to where his nephew stood beside the battered pod. The younger Jiralhanae was like an anvil, heavy and broad. He was covered in wiry, black hair—from the close-cropped Mohawk on his head to the tufts on his wide, two-toed feet. But his coat was already showing flecks of his uncle's more mature silver. If one were to judge by color alone, the youth was marked for greatness.
Though judging by this mess, Maccabeus growled to himself, he still has much to learn.
"I am sorry to have disturbed the feast, Uncle."
"My meat will keep, Tartarus." The Chieftain glared at his nephew. "My patience will not.
What is it you would have me see?"
Tartarus barked an order to the tenth and final member of Maccabeus' pack, a dun-colored monster by the name of Vorenus who stood directly beside the pod. Vorenus raised a fist and rapped loudly on the pod's topside hatch. A moment passed, there was the muffled sound of pneumatics as the hatch unlatched, and then the masked face of an Unggoy popped into view.
"Is your companion well?" Tartarus asked.
"It is better," Dadab replied.
The Chieftain's mutton chops bristled. Did he detect a hint of obstinacy in the Unggoy's voice? The creatures were hardly known for their courage. But then he noticed the Unggoy wore a Deacon's orange tunic. Not a lofty rank, but it did mark the creature as an official Ministry representative.
"Then bring it out," Tartarus growled. A lesser Jiralhanae would have torn the uppity Unggoy limb from limb. But Maccabeus smelled more excitement than anger in his nephew's scent.
Jiralhanae exhibited their emotions via stark shifts in pungent pheromones. And while Tartarus would learn to control these shifts as he grew older, he couldn't help but telegraph that there was something thrilling inside the pod. But the Chieftain had no idea just how thrilling until the Deacon, now standing with its stumpy feet astride the hatch, reached down into the pod and gently raised the Huragok into view.
It was an article of faith that the Prophets were uniquely qualified to handle the Forerunners' holy relics—that the San'Shyuum, more than any other Covenant species, possessed the intelligence required to create practical technologies from the relics' complex designs. But while it was blasphemy to admit it, everyone in the Covenant knew that the Prophets' efforts were greatly aided by the Huragok. The creatures had an uncanny understanding of Forerunner objects, Maccabeus knew. And they could fix almost anything they touched. … The Chieftain loosed a laugh so unexpectedly hearty that it caused the Yanme'e to take flight and disappear into the hangar's exposed ductwork. Of all the Sangheili's restrictions, not letting a Huragok join his crew had been the most crippling. But now here one was. And although it would be a serious crime to let the creature fix intentionally disabled systems, not even the Sangheili could complain if it made necessary repairs.
"An auspicious start to our hunt, Tartarus!" The Chieftain clapped a paw onto his nephew's shoulder and gave him a joyful shake. "Come! Back to the beast while it still has flesh for us to choose!" Maccabeus turned to Dadab, who was now carefully handing the Huragok to Vorenus.
"And if not," the Chieftain boomed in the same cordial tone, "then our new Deacon shall bless a second platter!"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HARVEST, FEBRUARY 9, 2525
Avery lay on his belly, surrounded by ripening wheat. The green stalks were so tall and the kernels so plump that a day of blazing sun had failed to reach the ground. The clumped topsoil felt cool through his fatigues. Avery had traded his usual duty cap for a boonie: a soft, wide- brimmed hat with a strip of canvas sewn loosely around the crown. Earlier in the day, he'd woven wheat stalks into the strip, and even though the stalks were now bent and frayed—as long as Avery stayed low—he was well camouflaged.
Rifle-bag dragging along behind him, Avery had crawled almost three kilometers from his parked Warthog to Harvest's reactor complex. Along the way, he'd crested a long, low rise that Lt. Commander alCygni had told him was actually the buried mass driver. If she hadn't, Avery would never have known. To keep the device hidden from alien eyes, Mack's JOTUNs had topped the rise with squares of soil and living wheat dug from other fields.
All told, the crawl took Avery more than two hours. But he had been focused on stealth, not speed. In fact, in the last ten minutes he hadn't moved at all; his liveliest aspect was the reflection of the rustling wheat in his gold-tinted shooters glasses.
These had been part of the cache of equipment and weapons the Lt. Commander had given to the marines. Like the BR55 battle rifle Avery carried in his drag bag, the glasses were a prototype—a piece of hardware fresh from an ONI research lab. Refocusing his gaze, Avery checked a COM link in the upper corner of the glasses' left lens where a tiny HUD confirmed his exact position on Harvest, a little less than five hundred meters west of the complex.