As a raw recruit, Avery didn't understand why the Insurrection hadn't flared in outer systems such as Cygnus, where colonists were united by shared creed and ethnicity—one of the main reasons for the collapse of Earth's old nation-state system and the rise of the UN as a unifying force. Instead, the fighting had broken out right where the UNSC was best equipped to stop it: Epsilon Eridanus, the most populous and carefully administered system outside of Sol.
With all the resources at its disposal in that system, Avery wondered why the UNSC hadn't been able to pacify the Innies before things got out of hand. FLEETCOM on Reach, Circumstance's universities and courts of justice, the industrial zones of Tribute—couldn't these powerful institutions and engines of economic prosperity have come up with a plan palatable for both sides? As the war dragged on, Avery began to realize all these resources were exactly the problem: in Epsilon Eridanus, the UNSC just had too much to lose.
Avery flinched in reaction to his rising body temperature. But also to the quickening images in his head….
Pockmarked houses whipping past gun slits. An unexpected boom. Bodies strewn around the burning shell of the convoy's lead armored transport. Muzzle flashes from rooftops. A run for cover through the carnage. Ricochets and radio chatter. Phosphorous plumes from ordnance dropped by drones. Women and children running from burning houses, leaving footprints in blood thick as caramel.
Eyes darting behind his lids, Avery remembered his aunt's instructions: Become the man I know you can be.
He struggled to move his doped-up limbs, but the computer increased his dose and kept him down. The nightmarish final act would not be stopped….
A crowded roadside restaurant. A desperate woman surrounded by determined men. The kicking feet of a choking child. A father's lunge and the moment Avery let slip, reducing all to shock and heat that sent his Hornet spinning.
Avery woke and gasped, drawing in a mouthful of the freezing vapor that filled his cryo- tube. Quickly, the computer initiated an emergency purge. Somehow, despite more than three times the recommended amount of sleep-inducers, Avery had overridden the final stages of the thaw. The computer noted the anomaly, carefully withdrew Avery's IV and catheter, and opened the tube's curved, clear plastic lid.
Avery rolled onto an elbow, leaned over the edge of his tube, and coughed—a series of violent, wet heaves. As he caught his breath, he heard the slap of bare feet on the bay's rubberized floor. A moment later a small, square towel appeared in his down-turned field of view.
"I got it," Avery spat. "Back off."
"Zero to jerk in less than five." A man's voice, not much older than Avery. "I've met grunts who are faster. But that's pretty good."
Avery looked up. Like him, the man was nak*d. But his flesh was alarmingly pale. Blond hair was just starting to burr from his recently shaved head—like the first tufts of silk from an ear of corn. The man's chin was long and narrow. When he smiled, his gaunt cheeks puffed mischievously.
"Healy. Petty Officer First Class. Corpsman."
All of which meant Healy was navy—not a marine. But he seemed friendly enough. Avery snatched the towel, wiped his clean-shaven face and chin. "Johnson. Staff Sergeant."
Healy's grin widened. "Well, at least I don't have to salute you."
Avery swung his legs out of the cryo-pod and let his feet settle onto the floor. His head felt swollen—ready to burst. He breathed deep and tried to speed the sensation's passage.
Healy nodded toward a bulkhead door at the other end of the bay. "C'mon, lockers are this way. Don't know what kind of dreams you had. But mine didn't involve sitting around staring at another guy's balls."
Avery and Healy dressed, retrieved their duffels, and reported to Two for Flinching's modest hangar bay. Corvettes were the smallest class of UNSC warships and didn't carry any fighters. In fact, there was hardly enough room in the hangar for one SKT-13 shuttlecraft, a larger version of the bulbous Bumblebee lifeboats standard throughout the fleet.
"Sit down, strap in," the shuttle's pilot barked over his shoulder as Avery and Healy came aboard. "Only reason we're stopped is to offload the two of you."
Avery stowed his bags and slid into one of the SKT's center-facing seats, pulling a U- shaped restraining bar down over his shoulders. The shuttle dropped through an airlock in the hangar floor and accelerated away from the corvette's stern.
"You ever been to Harvest?" Healy shouted over the howl of the shuttle's thrusters.
Avery craned his neck toward the cockpit. "No."
But he had. It was hard to remember exactly when. You didn't age in cryo-sleep, but time passed all the same. Avery figured he'd spent at least as much time asleep as awake since he'd joined the marines. But regardless, he'd only stayed on Harvest long enough to acquire his target, plan the hit, and reduce the number of corrupt CA officials by one. It was his graduation mission from Navy Special Warfare (NavSpecWar) sniper-school. And he'd passed with flying colors.
Avery squinted as the shuttle's interior brightened. Beyond the clear partitions of the cockpit's canopy, Harvest had come into view. Scattered clouds revealed a world where land was much more abundant than sea. A single large continent shone bright tan and green through the world's unpolluted atmosphere.
"First time for me too," Healy said. "Out in the middle of nowhere. But not bad to look at."
Avery just nodded his head. Like most of his missions, his hit on Harvest was classified.
And he had no idea what sort of clearance the Corpsman had.
The shuttle veered toward a metallic glint in the deep blue aurora of Harvest's thermosphere. An orbital structure, Avery realized as they approached—two silver arcs hanging high above the planet. They hadn't been there on his previous visit.
As the shuttle drew closer, Avery saw that the arcs were separated by many thousands of kilometers of golden strands—space elevators that passed through the lower arc and dropped to Harvest's surface. The points at which the elevators bisected the arc were open to vacuum— gaps filled with beamwork that, from a distance, looked like delicate filigree.
"Hang on," the pilot shouted. "We've got traffic."
With short, syncopated bursts of its maneuvering rockets, the shuttle finessed its way through one of many orderly formations of propulsion pods gathered around the orbital. Avery noted that the pods' designers had made no effort to beautify their creations; they were engines, nothing more. Hoses, tanks, wires—most of the pod's constituent parts were fully exposed.
Only their expensive Shaw-Fujikawa drives were shrouded in protective cowlings.
As the shuttle closed on the orbital, it spun 180 degrees and backed into an airlock. After a few clanks and a hiss of air, an indicator light above the shuttle's rear hatch changed from red to green. The pilot gave his passengers a thumbs-up. "Good luck. Watch out for those farmers' daughters." The shuttle detached as soon as Avery and Healy were safely inside the orbital.
"Welcome to the Tiara," a very proper female voice echoed from an unseen PA system. "My name is Sif. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make your transit more comfortable."
Avery unzipped one of his duffel's pockets and removed an olive drab duty-cap. "Just some directions please, ma'am." He slung the hat over the back of his head and tugged it low on his brow.
"Of course," the AI replied. "This airlock leads straight to the median. Take a right and proceed directly to coupling station three. I'll let you know if you take a wrong turn."
Strip lights in the airlock's ceiling brightened as its interior door cycled open. In the cramped ready room the air was heavy and still, but in the unexpectedly open space beyond, the recycled atmosphere seemed less oppressive. It turned out the median was a wide platform suspended in the middle of the tubular orbital by thick metal cables. Avery guessed the Tiara was about four kilometers long and it's interior close to three hundred meters in diameter. Six beveled titanium spars ran the length of the facility. These were equally spaced around the interior of the tube and were connected to one another with smaller beams perforated with oval holes to save weight without sacrificing strength. The floor of the median was covered with a diamond-pattern metal grid that, while perfectly sturdy, gave the impression of walking on air.
"You do a lot of CMT?" Healy asked as they marched toward the number three station.
Avery knew the acronym: Colonial Militia Training, one of the UNSC's more controversial activities. Officially, CMT was all about helping the locals help themselves—training colonists to deal with natural disasters and basic internal security so the marines didn't have to keep too many boots on the ground. Unofficially, it was designed to create paramilitary anti- Insurrectionist forces—though Avery had often wondered if it was really a good idea to give colonials on politically unstable worlds weapons, and train them to use them. In his experience, today's ally was often tomorrow's foe.
"Never." Avery lied again.
"So … what?" Healy continued. "You looking for a change of pace?"
"Something like that."
Healy laughed and shook his head. "Then you must have had one piss-poor billet."
You don't know the half of it. Avery thought.
The median doglegged left, and as Avery passed a long window, he peered out at the station —one of the filigreed gaps he'd seen on approach. Two rectangular openings had been cut in the top and bottom of the orbital's hull, leaving the upper and lower spars exposed. Through these spars ran the Tiara's number-three elevator strand.
Avery watched as two back-to-back cargo containers rose into view, filling the station. It was hard to see through the window, but he caught a glimpse of two propulsion pods maneuvering toward the tops of the containers. Once the pods were attached, the containers raised clear of the Tiara. Then they reversed the polarity of their unifying magnets and the two newly made freighters drifted apart. Start to finish, the operation took less than thirty seconds.
Healy whistled. "Pretty slick."
Avery didn't disagree. The containers were massive. The coordination required to make them move in concert—not just on this strand but on all seven of the Tiara's elevators at once— was truly impressive.
"One more right then look for the gantry airlock," Sif said. The passage leading around the station was narrower than the orbital's main thoroughfare, and Sif's voice sounded very close.
"You're just in time for the shift change."
Outside the airlock were a dozen of the orbital's maintenance technicians, clad in white overalls with blue stripes down their arms and legs. Despite Healy's nonstop grin, the techs glanced uneasily at the two unexpected soldiers. Avery was glad the Welcome Wagon, a smaller container primarily used to transport large numbers of migrant colonists from ship to surface, rose quickly into the station; he wasn't up for more awkward conversation.
An alarm chimed and the airlock door slid open. Avery and Healy followed the techs through a flexible gantry that stretched like an accordion to the Wagon. Once inside, they dropped their duffels into a storage bin beneath a section of seats—one of three steep tiers built against the Wagon's four walls. The open wall directly opposite the two soldiers' chosen tier was filled with a tall rectangular view port.
"All settled? Good." Sif spoke through speakers in Avery's chair as he clipped himself into the high-backed seat's five-point harness. There was artificial gravity on the orbital, but once the Wagon departed it would be in free fall. "I hope you enjoy your stay."
"Oh, I'll make sure he does." Healy cracked an impish smile.
The alarm chimed a second time, the Wagon's airlock sealed, and Avery began his descent.
As one small part of Sif's mind monitored the downward progress of Avery's Wagon, another manifested on her data-center's holo-projector.
"Let me start by saying, Ms. al-Cygni, how grateful I am that you chose to conduct this audit in person. "I trust you had a pleasant journey?"
Sif's avatar wore an ankle-length sleeveless gown of interwoven sunset hues. The dress highlighted her golden hair—tucked smartly behind her ears—which fell in waves to the middle of her back. Her bare arms flexed slightly outward from her h*ps and this, combined with her long neck and elevated chin, gave the impression of a doll-sized ballerina ready to rise on the points of her toes.
"Productive," Jilan al-Cygni replied. "I decided not to cryo." The woman sat on a low bench before the projector, wearing the unremarkable attire of a UNSC middle manager: a brown pantsuit, a few shades darker than her skin. The garnet glint of the DCS insignia on her high collar complemented her burgundy lipstick—the one flourish in her otherwise subdued appearance. "These days, transit's really the only time I have to catch up."
Al-Cygni's melodic accent was subtle, but Sif cross-referenced her arrays and decided the woman was likely born on New Jerusalem—one of two colonized worlds in the Cygnus system. Through micro-cameras embedded in the walls of her data center, Sif watched as the woman put a hand to the back of her head, checking the pins that kept her long, black hair bound up in a tight twist.
"I imagine the Eridanus embargo is all-consuming," Sif said, making sure to widen her avatar's eyes sympathetically.
"My caseload has tripled in the last eighteen months." AlCygni sighed. "And frankly, arms smuggling isn't my area of expertise."
Sif put a hand to her chest. "Well, I'm sorry for piling more on your plate. I'll keep my testimony as brief as possible—skip the risk analysis of Madrigal's maintenance protocols, and jump directly to the—"
"Actually," al-Cygni interrupted, "I'm expecting another party."
Sif raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I didn't realize."
"A last minute decision. Thought I might save some time, combining his audit with yours."
Sif felt her data-pathways warm. His? But before she could protest … <\\> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK >> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF <\ Sorry to barge in. It was her idea, I promise.