Halo: Common Denominator/Prologue

PROLOGUE

It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill -“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

Eleven years before the present time

AUGUST 2542 ASPHODEL MEADOWS, TANTALUS

A shadow moves under the veil of night.

It moves deftly, with marked intent.

With muted urgency and the exacting precision of practiced scholar, it assembles it. The prolonged, elongated sheath. The angular stock. The finely-hewn cartridge. The darkness takes care, it pays a steadied attention, with the tender care of an artist, melding the substrates together, making it unified, whole again.

A light shines, repealing the black dawn. The cone of white drives back the black as it rapidly advances, traversing the landscape. The trespasser’s figure is wide, sweeping, blocky, emitting a putrid ejection of black smoke in its wake, and its figure is draped in a coat of green drab. On its side is stenciled the picture of a warrior eagle, clutching a tassled globe.

The shadow comes alert. Its focus sharpens, concentration coming to a fine point as the interloper continues, penetrating the night with its stabbing ivory beams of light and day.

Text scrolls against a cool, pulsing cyan background. Warm orange and yellow humanoid figures appear against the body of the trespasser, itself pulsing a steady yellow emission.

A conical container jangles, immobilized by inhumane straps to the invader. Transcribed on its surface, in fine print, are letters. 009762-OO.

Ready realization pulses through the shadow. The night grows taut. Death flows freely.

With a single, feline motion the shadow draws the stock of the sniper rifle to its shoulder. With a bounding leap, suddenly, the image of the four warm figures jumps two hundred meters closer. Then, precise etched black lines draw themselves over the picture…

There is a report across the night. It echoes from spacious mountain to foreboding plain.

Two hundred meters below, a human being is sprawled across a windshield. Scarlet blood decorates the shattered glass.

The shadow feels nothing. There is movement, and he draws the killing blade three more times. With a gust of the dusk wind, it sweeps away three more souls, claiming them for its own.

The shadow is not satisfied. With a sweep, it retracts and disassembles its sword, and then with ginger, precise moments, stalks down the face of the low cliff to examine what has transpired. It ensures that its murders were complete, and then sets its hands upon the transcribed container, and it too disappears within the inky black of the shadow.

Five kilometers away, a UNSC D77-TC Pelican Dropship descends, breaking the quilt of the night.

The shadow sets off at a run, melding seamlessly into the black pastel tones of the night.

It is a quiet night.

UNSC BEHIND IN TWILIGHT OUTBOUND VECTOR FROM TANTALUS

In a musky compartment, a man examines the shadow before him. In the dim, decaying light, upon visual inspection, the shadow is tall, the shadow is gaunt. His face is hallow, devoid of expression, as if someone had shaped a face from plastic clay and forgotten to ascribe the human element to that face. His eyes are a placid dark brown, deeply set into the crown of his head, but upon closer examination, are shining with an acute intelligence. His cheeks were low and depressed, and he had a paucity of flesh around his jaw, making it eerily prominent.

The examiner reclines in his chair. His face falls into the insubstantial light, and we too see that his face is weathered, yet his eyes shine with a discomforting intensity.

The examiner’s attention falls away from the figure before him, and is diverted to a sheaf of papers spilled across the table, as well as a particular engraved canister. With a hand, he reaches towards a sheet of paper, peruses it silently, looks up.

“You are Wakes”.

The shadow says nothing.

The examiner leans forward. Stenciled on his breast pocket is the word ACKERSON. A dull silver eagle is pinned to his lapel, confirming his rank as a Colonel. The affiliation pin indicates his allegiance – the UNSC Army.

He glances at a second sheet of paper. The words “Captain E. Jamesson, UNSC Medical Corps” are aligned with a blocky word printed in velvet crimson – TERMINATED.

“Captain Jamesson, UNSC MED CORPS. Found with three fellow soldiers, dead, on a remote road on Tantalus. Cause of death is believed to be a United Rebel Front ambush.”

Ackerson wearily looks up at the light-absorbing shadow before him. “You did kill them, yes? And you retrieved it?”

The shadow remains silent.

Ackerson withdraws a third sheet of paper, and speaks again.

“Counter-insurgency operations on Tribute, Reach, and Miridem with NAVSPECWEP Six. Graduated summa cum laude from Ahazi University on Reach, double-major, valedictorian of your class from ONI’s Officer Training Program, and then again for the Marine Corps’s Special Warfare School.”

He looks the shadow in the eye. The shadow remains mute.

“Your evaluations from your superiors have always been exceptional. You were commended by your primary instructor from the Special Warfare School to be directly appointed a team leader for NAVSPECWEP Six.”

With a thin-lipped smile, Ackerson looks down at the paper again, and then continues, this time, more interested. “And now…your psychological evaluations. They have a lot of things to say about you. Quiet. Never socialized with your fellow soldiers nor your superiors. But always at the top. Always the best. The best man for the NAVSPECWEP brass. Their right hand. Never asked questions. Always did the job. No matter the cost.”

The shadow looks indifferent. Quite an unusual attitude for a lieutenant, junior grade being complimented by a colonel. Yet, this is no typical lieutenant, junior grade.

Ackerson gestures at the canister. “I’ll admit, Wakes, you’re an interesting character. You’ve helped me out here.”

Wakes tilts his head a fraction of a degree.

The colonel continues, now with a touch of arrogance, “Do you know how many lieutenants I take the time to meet personally, on my personal frigate, Wakes?”

A silence.

“Do you know who I am, Wakes?”

The shadow speaks, and a choir of chthonic creatures utter in chorus. His bleached lips utter, “James Ackerson. The cat’s paw for Section Three.”

Ackerson’s irises infinitesimally contract in disconcert at Wakes’s casual revelation of his true allegiance. He says slowly, keeping his eyes on the shadow, “Very good. Now, do you know why you took a trip on Tartarus today?”

The shadow’s eyes glint. He is more alert. More interested. The abysmal darkness reaches out, and the light of a thousand stars dim with every quiet, deplorable word. “Enough to know that Naval Special Warfare brass wasn’t behind this operation. I had suspected that Section Three was behind this somehow.”

He continues, pressing his advantage. “You yourself are a curious character, Colonel. Why would a line officer of the Office of Naval Intelligence be so interested 009762-OO, a small molecule psychotropic mutagen so repugnant that it was outlawed by the UNSC MED CORPS? A drug that is considered lethal because picomolar concentrations induce animal-like behavior and loss of cognitive and social understanding, transforming those exposed into vegetables useless to society?”

“I know how many lieutenants you meet on your ‘personal frigate’, Colonel. It is not a coincidence, Colonel, that you just happen to be on your personal frigate are over Tantalus, while a UNSC MED CORPS ethics team investigates a massive, highly illegal stockpile of 009762-OO on Tantalus. It is not a coincidence that you arranged for a Navy sniper to kill this MED CORPS team, so that Dr. Catherine Halsey, who has connections all over ONI but not NAVSPECWEP, wouldn’t find out about your dirty work.”

“One would be highly suspicious also about this proximity of illegal 009762-OO to an ONI biomanufacturing plant under the north pole of Tantalus, under control of an unknown ONI officer—”

Ackerson stares at the shadow. “Stop it right there, Wakes. Stop it.”

The shadow stares back.

Colonel Ackerson stares at Wakes. “What do you say about a change in pace for your job?”

7 -  7  -  7 Three years later

JULY 2545 OPERATION: TORPEDO (SPARTAN-III BETA COMPANY)

UNSC ALL UNDER HEAVEN SLIPSPACE EN ROUTE TO 51 PEGASI SYSTEM

And then there were none. A negligent flick of the wrist of a lieutenant, and the next moment, they were gone, lost in the netherworldly folds of extradimensional Slipspace.

The shadow reclines upon a throne of black. Its outline swells and ebbs with every cold breath, and his aura visibly radiates from his depressed figure.

He has left his past behind. The shadow now has a new title. A new station in life. A new purpose for existence.

Most would call him a murderer. A prolific killer that if not for his title and office, he would be tried and found guilty of manslaughter. A much smaller majority would call him a patriot.

His days as a petty Navy sniper are long gone, forgotten, as stray as a stochastic photon fluttering in the quantum realms of Slipspace. He is now far more than that. His placard now states him as an officer of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. He no longer kills with his own hands. He manipulates others to kill for him.

He has graduated from doing wet work on Tantalus to now puppeteering three hundred children to kill on his behalf.

He is seated in the command chair of the carrier UNSC All Under Heaven, a position usually occupied by a one-star rear admiral. Ringed around him are Navy officers of higher rank, of higher decorations. Yet, they all respond docilely to his overtures. They are his, bound to him by his simple will.

For the shadow is now the executor of Colonel James Ackerson. His hand, the projection of his will. His authority and power manifested in a new corporeal form.

The navigations officer reports, humble as to not irk nor perturb his new commanding officer, “Director, the Slipspace navigational solution is deconvoluting. We’re dropping out of Slipspace.”

A phantasm, an analog of a inhumane, hushed smile, warps the shadow’s lips. It was “Director” now, yes. A fitting title for the Chief of Special Operations for the SPARTAN-III Program. He has gone far from being a sharpshooter and a team leader for UNSC Naval Special Warfare.

He had gone far.

The shadow does not acknowledge the navigations officer.

A moment later, a light winks on the master control board of the communications officer. The corresponding lieutenant reports, voice soft, “Director, we’ve established a secure link with forward recon. On comm one for you, sir. Encryption scheme ELYSIANMEADOWS.”

The shadow raises an ethereal wrist to his pale lips. His cantor is cold, controlled, every syllable crisp, precise, with an exacting purpose, each syllable imbued with the firm assurance of authority and command. “ONI Recon Nine-Sixteen, report.”

A once-human voice, rendered anonymous and sterile by the ONI-installed security scrambler software, reciprocates from the wrist communicator, “Director, this is UNSC Grip of Night. We are on station at Lagrange Three and are maintaining position. Engaging recon optics to provide orbital surveillance.”

A rear admiral and a captain, the usual commanders of the All Under Heaven, only can idly stand aside as watch as the shadow enthroned upon the command chair takes command of their warship—a nameless phantom summoned from ONI’s depths, with no name nor history. Wakes simply exists.

A pause, then a beat. A chime sounds on the board of the communications lieutenant, and the officer annotates, “Handshake protocol confirmed. COM socket confirmed. We have video, live, on center.”

The sprawling parabolic plasma display at the fore of the command bridge, the centerpiece of all its electronic equipment, warms from the dark. Emblems are superimposed in white over the black—the UNSC Prowler Corps and the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence—and are replaced by a massive expanse of vivid red and brown hues, with a stormy grey shawl.

There is an electronic flicker, and suddenly, the image jumps back. It is revealed to be a sphere. A colossal globe hanging, suspended by invisible powers, in space, turning its elegant waltz, circumscribing Pegasi Prime, as it has trillions of times since existence’s beginning.

The shadow knows its name. 51 Pegasi B. The crew of the All Under Heaven have been informed that this is merely an unhabited world used for a UNSC training operaton. They obey docilely.

There are dim contusions in the black of space that surrounds 51 Pegasi B. Undercurrents in the plasma monitor, no doubt.

Wakes knows what they are. They are pinches in the spacetime continuum, fluxes in spatiotemporal coordinates—rifts from the visible three-dimensional world to far higher existences that mankind only knew by linear algebra and differential equations.

His eyes skim the right flank of the display. There are arrayed a medley of detection devices—mass spectrometers, gamma ray detectors, gravitometers… His wintered, pale eyes seize one detector. The Cherenkov radiation detector.

There are no emissions. No stray wave of Cherenkov radiation.

The task force is safe.

Three hundred and one undercurrents in the screen are highlighted remotely by the prowler’s sensor crew. Text scrolls underneath. STEALTH ORBITAL INSERTION PODS.

An electronic timer is conjured. It counts the precise milliseconds, seconds, and minutes until the three hundred and one rustling shadows will intersect the parabolic plane of 51 Pegasi B’s surface on their parabolic trajectory.

00:02:17

7 - 7 - 7

A demon stands on hallowed ground. It is stout, hunched, squalid. Its skin is a hellish grey, its mouth full of knife-like teeth, but together, its disproportionate features make it more comical than any sort of predator or warrior. The demon is not native to 51 Pegasi B. It wears a tangerine-rimmed environmental suit that perfuses it with methane. 51 Pegasi B’s own atmosphere is of carbon dioxide and krypton, its sands of magnesium and iron. The demon hails from a methane giant yonder away, orbiting one of the burning stars in 51 Pegasi B’s twilight sky.

Behind it is a sprawling metropolis that pollutes 51 Pegasi B’s severe beauty, a massive citadel of rising purple heights and cyan lights. It too is foreign—an invader. Bulbous metallic creatures stride amongst its balustrades, and amethyst winged birds of prey knife above it. 51 Pegasi B’s black-grey specters of clouds loom above it.

The demon’s poor eyes turn towards the cloudcast sky, searching for something lost in the hazes. Perhaps tonight when night falls the monster will see its distant home again, shining bright against the black of space.

It cants its ugly, putrid head, cocks it in curiosity. There are other things falling. New bright lights.

But it wasn’t night yet.

7 - 7 - 7

Upon the UNSC All Under Heaven’s bridge, the feverish activity reached its epileptic peak. Navy officers were steadying the vessel in the event for an emergency low-orbit extraction. Ackerson’s hand-picked staff of ONI officers also usurp the bridge, triple-checking orbital trajectories and atmospheric angles, confirming callsigns and radio frequencies, activating COM recorders.

In the center, the shadow beats, pulses with a smoldering intensity.

Three hundred and one comets birth in 51 Pegasi B’s atmosphere as the full strike force of three hundred UNSC SPARTAN-III commandoes and one STARS tactical satellite enter the exosphere, and become enshrouded with scalding shells of red and orange—heating up on re-entry.

The UNSC Grip of Night, observing the artificial phenomenon, activates directional jammers, blocking Covenant communications and sky-turned sensors.

Within pods sent straight for a one-way trip to hell, three hundred children think their final thoughts. They are thirteen, fourteen. Boys and girls. Yet they lay down their lives for humanity. They will burn and die to give Earth a few more hours. A few more days. Each one would die to give humanity even another minute of survival.

Their pods angle, correcting their trajectory, homing towards the Covenant tritium refinery. They burn the color of arterial blood.

A crimson light winks on Wakes’s wrist communicator. His eyebrows angle subtly. This was an incoming alpha-priority transmission.

“Director, this is Grip of Night. Do you copy?”

“Affirmative, Recon. Go ahead.”

The voice of the prowler commander is urgent, choked with surprise and heartbreaking desperation. “We just did an overhead thermal overview of 51 Pegasi B. We need to abort the mission immediately.”

The shadow stills. His eyes burn with fury. His voice is cold, more hyperborean than the aurora’s winds.

“Come again. You’re breaking up.”

The prowler commander insists, wild, raging plea in his voice. “There are thermal contacts, in the clouds! Seven CCS-class battle cruisers, medium tonnage. Hundreds of Seraph-type interceptors.” The Navy and ONI personnel freeze in their duties, as if caught in petrifying amber.

Seven battle cruisers were enough to outgun a whole UNSC battle group, and a hundred interceptors could raze a well-defended city.

Three hundred SPARTAN-IIIs were planned to insert on 51 Pegasi B and infiltrate and destroy the Covenant refinery. They were to proceed on foot, without vehicular assets and without large numbers of heavy weapons. The plan was to travel light, hit hard, and extract quietly.

Seven battle cruisers and two wings of Seraphs would burn them alive. As the child commandoes charged, they would be scythed. Glassed. Burned alive by plasma from the skies. They had no chance to survive, nonetheless even fight back. Even with a whole UNSC fleet supporting the SPARTAN-IIIs, the Covenant would outgun them. Now, the SPARTAN-IIIs would have to fight through enough combined firepower to glass a whole hemisphere—

The ONI attaché, a full captain, seizes Wakes’s skeletal arm.

“Director, we need to abort. Now. Code Omega Three.”

Omega Three was the fallback code. To retreat. To save their lives from a whole task force of Covenant cruisers hovering above the refinery.

The shadow’s heart does not race—instead, his onyx heart is silent, still, and his words are meticulous. Nothing has changed.

“Captain, I am the Director of Special Operations for the SPARTAN-III program. Must I have Security remove you from the bridge?”

Gross words of treason and insubordination from a lieutenant two pay grades lower than the officer he is addressing. Yet, the captain is still. His eyes shine with desperation, his voice is husky.

“Director, we spent a decade training and arming these children—we can’t just throw away their lives hopelessly against a Covenant armada…”

The shadow turns away.

The prowler commander pleads. “Sir, there’s still time before they hit dirt. They can re-direct the pods towards the Black Cat extraction vectors. We can still save them.”

The All Under Heaven’s navigational lieutenant looks up. “Director, I can jump in now and prepare to receive the Black Cats.”

The shadow’s voice is controlled, an oasis of calm.

“Negative. Navigations, maintain our current station in deep space. We stay here.”

Wakes raises the wrist communicator. “This is All Under Heaven to Beta Company. Execute TORPEDO. Repeat, execute TORPEDO.”

The three hundred pods continue on their vectors to hell towards the Covenant city and the fleet of cruisers. Three hundred pods carry three hundred children to their certain death under the guns of Covenant warships.

Three hundred children are silent as their pods knife through the atmosphere, bringing them to their inevitable deaths. They do not know that there are seven Covenant cruisers hovering over the refinery. They have kindling hopes that each can fight, survive, win, and escape with their lives.

Three hundred beating hearts. Three hundred shining, precious lives.

Three hundred pods intersect with 51 Pegasi B’s surface. Three hundred children roll out of pods, jump upon unsuspecting Covenant sentries. Nine die as their pods crash upon spires of the refinery, or land into the ocean or deep ravines.

Two hundred and ninety-one continue forward under a storm of plasma and energy. They dart as if felines, advancing from cover to cover. They strike aggressively, each glancing touch killing another Covenant warrior.

The three hundred and first pod unveils a stealthed satellite that reaches geosynchronous orbit. It comes live, and begins to coordinate the children, using them as a verifiable typhoon of scything blades, each slash a crippling blow upon the Covenant defenders. The Covenant is pressed back, and for all their ferocity, their genocidal, murderous intent, and their advanced arms and shields, are being systematically digested by fighting children.

Suddenly, the sky darkens. Winged birds of prey angle from the downcast sky, their talons surges of plasma, their claws beams of killing light. They dive again and again, relentless in their malice, each pass claiming another human life.

A flood of children slow and turn. Grey pillars of smoke turn towards the sky and Seraph interceptors are destroyed. The torrent turns again, focused upon the hostile metropolis before them. The children surge forward, driven by refined hatred—to kill those who had killed their friends, who had burned humanity. Beams of plasma strike them but are incapable of deflecting their focused fury.

SPARTAN-IIIs kill Covenant—dismembering arms and legs, blowing out brains, dancing with energy swords, each motion severing helmeted heads. They are invincible. Indomitable. Adamantine.

And unaware of seven Covenant warships with warming engines overhead.

Hunters stagger backwards, Elites writhe in death throes, Jackals and Grunts are swept away as if passing thoughts.

Seven CCS-class battlecruisers dive from the clouds. Swarms of Seraph interceptors follow closely.

The SPARTAN-III field commander—the shadow remembers his name—Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-B216—screams over the tactical channel. That a Covenant fleet is approaching. That they must run. Flee for their lives. Live to fight another day.

“Omega Three. Abort! Abort!”

SPARTAN-IIIs pause in their killing dances, frozen in a single frame of motion and light.

The shadow speaks again, and with every syllable of his clipped voice, fiery stars dim and die, and nebulae fade into the black of interstellar space. His darkness reaches out from the All Under Heaven, and 51 Pegasi B and the rest of the whole of the galaxy resonates with his dark, bassoon note.

“Belay that. Continue operations. Execute Operation: TORPEDO.”

Lines of plasma detach from the cruisers. SPARTAN-IIIs charge forward on Wakes’s order.

A hundred SPARTAN-IIIs are vaporized. Then another hundred.

In two seconds, two hundred children die.

Aboard the UNSC All Under Heaven and the UNSC Grip of Night, UNSC crewmen freeze in their tracks. Horrified. Their hearts reel. They have seen Covenant warships burn UNSC colonies time and time again, and now, they have done it to two hundred childen.

The shadow is still.

A few dozen are left. Seraphs circle and kill all but eight with superheated plasma. Elite Special Operations hunter-killers close and kill half.

Four are left fleeing into the core of the refinery. Away from the mass, plasma-hewn grave of two hundred and ninety five of their former friends, now as insubstantial as the mist over 51 Pegasi B’s deuterium oceans.

One turns to hold his ground, and is eviscerated by chrysanthemum glassine shards.

Three SPARTAN-IIIs reach their destination—a warm, glowing nexus of fire. The intersection of the refinery’s plasma conduits. Its beating heart.

Covenant Special Operations soldiers slow. Venturing into the core is certain death. Yet, the SPARTAN-IIIs suffer their fate, uncaring as the superheated atmosphere within the core burns their insubstantial armor plating, and exotic ionizing radiations splay at their flesh, inducing double-strand breaks in their DNA with every particle.

The three survivors set plastic charges—C12 shaped targets—onto the conduits of the core even as battalions of Covenant soldiers array outside, preparing to penetrate the plasma facility. A stray wave of radiation ignites one of the charges. One of the children vanishes in a globe of nuclear fire.

One child—Lucy—runs in Min’s direction. Tom’s gloved hand is a vice clamp upon her shoulder. They can not go to find their vaporized comrade. They must survive.

The shadow’s eyes stare piercingly at the images transmitted over TEAMCOM. Trying to understand Lucy’s sympathy. Her misplaced care. This is a war. Recounting lives can wait for later.

Two lone children flee from the core as Covenant shock troopers invade. They flee to the cliffs, away from the persecutors. A Black Cat awaits them. An alcove. It is a stealthed extraction craft that will take them to low orbit, from which they will commence a micro-Slipspace jump to the All Under Heaven’s position to leave this cursed system.

Nuclear fire blossoms. A combined twenty megaton thermonuclear blast ignites trillions of liters of supercompressed plasma, and a new star is birthed in the cradle of 51 Pegasi B’s surface.

As Lucy collapses, mind affixed upon the image of cruisers in the clouds and two hundred children burning brightly as she falls unconscious from shock, Tom drags her lithe figure into the inviting yellow sodium light from the interior of the Black Cat. He drags her, his eyes turned towards a glassed plain where two hundred ninety eight children fell and a million Covenant soldiers died.

He drags her, unaware of the shadow lurking in the system’s periphery that had sent his friends to their deaths. Whose eight words had destroyed Beta Company forever.

Belay that. Continue operations. Execute Operation: TORPEDO.

Tom would never forget those words. His eyes burn with fury as tears stream unchecked over his ashen cheeks. He clasps Lucy’s hand fiercely as his throat is raw with mixed anger and hurt.

The Black Cat ascends into the stars. A pinch in space, and then it is safe within the hangar bays of the UNSC All Under Heaven. UNSC medics enter the craft to find Tom, crying in quiet, still clasping Lucy’s tender hand as the girl’s dreams are filled by plasma and death.

Aboard the bridge, the shadow burns with the fierce pride of victory. He has won. A Covenant refinery fifty light-years from Earth has been destroyed. A Covenant fleet docked in the atmosphere neutralized. Covenant supply lines are now tripled in length. The Covenant war machine has taken a crippling blow.

The shadow has saved a hundred colony worlds, a trillion human lives. He is a hero.

Victory and sacrifice.

In the medical bay of the UNSC All Under Heaven, Tom’s tears run in rills over his ashen hands as he grips Lucy’s petite hands tighter. Tom grips his last fellow survivor harder, in pain. He will never forget today, upon 51 Pegasi B’s plasma-scarred, weathered plains. He will remember eight words and two hundred ninety-eight deaths. He will remember plasma from the heavens. He will remember sacrifice and death because of the shadow. The shadow’s eight words.