Halo: Contact Harvest

She noted a fractional lowering of al-Cygni's shoulders, a slight unclenching of her jaw. Far from being surprised, the announcement seemed to settle the woman—as if she'd been expecting the freighter's loss and had been waiting for Sif to relay the news.

"Name and itinerary?" Jilan asked, her fingers reaching for her COM pad.

"This End Up. Mars via Reach."

"There were more than thirty ships on proximate vectors," Jilan mused. She scrolled a finger slowly across the screen—trying to discover useful patterns in Sif's data. "Why that one in particular?"

This End Up's manifest claimed it was carrying a JOTUN prototype. Until Sif's ARGUS delivered its assessment of the expanding cloud of debris, she had no hard evidence this wasn't the case. Checking the data on other nearby freighters, she confirmed most were loaded with consumer goods. Some carried replacement parts for JOTUNs and other farm machinery. But just as Sif was about to mention the JOTUN prototype as the only significant difference between the various cargos, she noticed something else unusual about the freighter.

But then she saw Jilan's lips begin to move, and as protocol demanded, she held her virtual tongue. It was insolent and prideful to cut a human off, her algorithims reminded her. So Sif did her best not to feel miffed as al-Cygni took credit for their shared realization. The woman's green eyes sparkled as she explained: "This End Up was the only ship with a captain. An actual human crew."

CHAPTER SEVEN

HARVEST, JANUARY 16, 2525

As soon as the 1st platoon's recruits had bussed their breakfast trays into the mess hall's sanitizer, Avery led them on their daily march: ten kilometers out and back along the Gladsheim Highway. After two weeks of physical training (PT), they were used to the route—a devastatingly dull path through the flat fields of wheat. But until today they had never done it with full twenty-five kilogram rucksacks. And by the time Epsilon Indi was blazing in the mid- morning sky, the march had become a uniquely punishing ordeal.

This was true for Avery as well, who hadn't gotten any decent exercise since before his trip back home. The long stretches of cryo-sleep from Epsilon Eridanus to Sol and then from Sol to Epsilon Indi had left him with a condition commonly known as "freezer burn." This agonizing sensation, like a bad case of pins and needles, was caused by the breakdown of cryo-sleep pharmaceuticals trapped in muscles and joints, and Avery's case was the worst he'd ever felt—a deep prickling pain in his knees and shoulders brought on by the strenuous march.

Avery winced as he removed his ruck. But it was easy to hide his discomfort from his platoon, because the thirty-six men huddled around the parade-ground flagpole were focused on their own exhaustion. Sweat running down his nose and chin, Avery watched as one of them vomited his jostled breakfast. This started a chain reaction that soon had almost half the platoon heaving loudly onto the gravel.

Jenkins, a younger recruit with rust-colored hair, was doubled over directly in front of Avery. Thin arms resting on his knees, he made a sound that was half cough, half cry. Avery saw a string of spittle stretch toward his poorly tied boots. He's gonna have blisters, Avery frowned, staring at the loose laces. But he also knew Jenkins faced a more immediate and dangerous threat: dehydration.

He pulled a plastic water bottle from his ruck and thrust it into the recruit's shaking hands.

"Drink it slow."

"Yes, Staff Sergeant," Jenkins wheezed. But he didn't move.

"Now, recruit!" Avery barked.

Jenkins straightened—so quickly that the shifting weight of his ruck almost tossed him back on his bony behind. His shrunken cheeks swelled as he unscrewed the bottle and took two big gulps.

"I said slow," Avery tried to keep his anger in check. "Or you're gonna cramp."

Avery knew the colonial militia wasn't the marines, but it was difficult for him to lower his expectations for his recruits' performance. About half of them were members of Harvest's law enforcement and other emergency services, so they were at least mentally prepared for the rigors of basic training. But these men were older as well (some in their late forties or early fifties), and they weren't all in the best of shape.

Things weren't much better with the younger recruits like Jenkins. Most of them had grown up on farms, but because Harvest's JOTUNs did all the hard manual labor, they were just as physically unprepared as their elders to learn the strenuous craft of soldiery.

"Healy!" Avery shouted, pointing to Jenkins' boots. "Got a pair of bad feet!"

"That makes three!" the Corpsman shot back. He was handing out water bottles to a pair of paunchy, middle-aged recruits with sunburned faces. "Dass and Abel are so fat, I think they wore right through their socks." The corpsman had raised his voice loud enough for the whole platoon to hear, and a few of the men who hadn't lost their breakfasts (and their sense of humor along with it) chuckled quietly at Healy's inane accusation.

Avery scowled. He couldn't decide what made him more upset: the fact that Healy insisted on clowning around, ruining the no-nonsense mood he was trying to set; or that the corpsman already knew every recruit's name while Avery still had to check the name tape on the chest pockets of their olive-drab fatigue shirts.

"You got the energy to talk? You got the energy to walk!" Avery snapped. "Get some water.

Suck it down. All I want to hear is the sound of hydration. Which—to be clear—sounds like ab- so-lutely nothing at all!"

Immediately, thirty-six clear plastic bottles tipped skyward. Jenkins was especially eager to keep his sore feet where they were and guzzled his water at an alarming rate. Avery watched the recruit's oversized Adam's apple bob up and down like a yoyo on a very short string. The kid can't even follow an order about drinking properly.

The sound of voices on the garrison drive announced the return of Byrne and 2nd platoon.

Avery could hear them calling cadence—shouting a Marine Corps marching chant. Byrne bellowed each line and his recruits repeated: When I die please bury me deep!

Place an MA5 down by my feet!

Don't cry for me, don't shed no tear!

Just pack my box with PT gear!

'Cuz one early morning 'bout zero-five!

The ground will rumble, there'll be lightning in the sky!

Don't you worry, don't come undone!

It's just my ghost on a PT run!

As 2nd platoon crested the top of the drive and shuffled into the parade ground, the screen door to Captain Ponder's quarters swung open. As usual, the Captain had chosen not to wear his prosthetic; the sleeve of his fatigue shirt was once again pinned neatly to his side.

"Atten-shun!" Avery barked.

Ponder gave 1st platoon a chance to straighten up, and 2nd platoon time to come to a gasping stop. Then he asked in a loud but friendly voice: "You men enjoy your stroll?"

"Sir, yes sir," the recruits answered with varied enthusiasm.

Ponder turned to Byrne. "They don't sound too sure, Staff Sergeant."

"No, they don't," Byrne snarled.

"Maybe ten klicks wasn't long enough for them to make up their minds …"

"I'd be happy to run them again, Captain."

"Well, let me make sure." Ponder put his fist on his hip and shouted: "I say again, did you all enjoy your stroll?"

All seventy-two recruits shouted at once. "Sir, yes sir!"

"Do it again tomorrow?"

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Now I definitely heard that! At ease!" As the recruits got back to aching, Ponder waved Avery over. "How was their pace?"

"Not bad, considering their load."

"What's the plan for this afternoon?"

"Thought I might take them out to the range."

Ponder nodded his head approvingly. "About time we let them punch a few targets. But you'll need to hand them off to Byrne. We've got a date."

"Sir?"

"Solstice Celebration. Utgard. Governor of this fine planet extended an invitation to me and one of my Staff Sergeants." The Captain jutted his chin toward Byrne, currently unleashing a string of expletives at a terrified recruit who had just made the mistake of losing his breakfast directly on the Staff Sergeant's boots. "It's a formal affair. Ladies in long dresses, that sort of thing." Ponder smiled at Avery. "I have a feeling you'll be a better fit."

"Roger that." The last thing Avery wanted to do was field questions about the Insurrection from a bunch of boozy politicians, but as he watched Byrne order the recruit to start doing push-ups directly over his vomit-covered boots, he had to admit: the Captain was probably right.

And besides, there were questions Avery wanted to ask Ponder—first and foremost, why he and Byrne had been transferred to Harvest. Since the night of their fight in the barracks, the two Staff Sergeants hadn't exactly been on speaking terms, so Avery had gotten no information from Byrne. During the ride to Utgard, he hoped the Captain could explain why the UNSC had seen fit to transfer two TREBUCHET team-leaders—take them off the frontline of the Insurrection.

Avery had a strong suspicion that he wasn't going to like Ponder's answer.

"Party starts at zero six-thirty." The Captain turned back to his quarters. "Clean yourself up, meet me at the motor pool ASAP."

Avery snapped a hasty salute, then strode back to his recruits. "Forsell, Wick, Andersen, Jenkins!" he boomed, reading their names from his COM pad. Four sets of shoulders set a little straighter. "Says here none of you have ever handled a weapon. Is that correct?"

"Yes, Staff Sergeant." The recruits' replies were halting, embarrassed. Some of the older militiamen, constables who were used to carrying small-caliber sidearms for their work, snickered at the recruits inexperience.

"Won't be so funny when they're standing behind you in a firefight," Avery growled.

The constables' laughter quickly died.

Avery motioned for Jenkins and the others to gather round. "The Captain and I have an appointment in town. So Staff Sergeant Byrne's going to get you all snapped in."

The recruits looked blankly at one another, confused by Avery's shorthand.

"He's gonna teach you how to shoot," Avery clarified. "Try not to shoot each other."

An hour later, he was behind the wheel of a Warthog, speeding east on the Gladsheim highway with Captain Ponder in the passenger seat beside him. With Epsilon Indi beating down directly overhead, Avery was unusually glad of the vehicle's stripped-down design. In a war zone, the Warthog's lack of roof and doors made it a dangerous ride. But when the only enemy you faced was the sweaty cling of a navy-blue dress uniform, its open-air passenger compartment was an absolute blessing.

To help keep themselves cool, both men had removed their navy-blue dress coats and rolled their shirtsleeves to their elbows. Ponder opted to keep his false arm covered; Avery guessed because the prosthetic's titanium joints would get uncomfortably warm in the direct sunlight.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Captain reach up and scratch his shoulder, massaging the nano-fiber junction where the circuits met the man.

For some time Avery and Ponder sat in silence and watched the wheat fields around the garrison give way to vast peach and apple orchards. Avery wasn't sure how best to break the ice. He didn't just want to come out and ask: "Why am I here?" He guessed there was a good reason why the Captain was keeping the information secret and suspected it would take a little more finesse to draw his answer out. So he started with something simple.

"Sir. If you don't mind me asking, what happened to your arm?

"M-EDF 9/21/1," Ponder replied, raising his voice above the Warthog's roar. "You familiar with the unit?"

Avery automatically parsed the code: ninth marine expeditionary force, twenty-first division, 1st battalion. It was one of the many units serving in Epsilon Eridanus.

"Yes, sir. Hard-ass grunts."

"That they were." The Captain reached two of his pros-thetic's metal fingers into his shirt pocket and retrieved a Sweet William cigar. "I used to be their CO."

Avery tightened his grip on the steering wheel as a hauler blew by in the opposite direction.

"What sort of action did you see?" He did his best to keep a casual tone. But if what Ponder said was true, that meant he was a critical part of the UNSC's fight against the Insurrection— that his presence on Harvest was just as odd as Avery and Byrne's.

"Let's not beat around the bush, Staff Sergeant. TRE-BUCHET. It's in your file. Byrne's too. And I've spent the last two weeks wondering the exact same thing." The Captain bit the tip off his cigar. "Why would the Corps send two of its meanest sons-of-bitches way out here?"

"I was hoping you might shed some light on that, sir."

"Hell if I know." Ponder removed a silver lighter with a hinged top from his pants pocket, cracked it open, and began stoking his cigar. "FLEETCOM hasn't been all that free with information …" he said between puffs. Then, snapping the lighter shut: "Since they gave me a demotion."

Something clicked in Avery's head. Of course, he thought, the CO of a Marine battalion would be at least a Lt. Colonel—two pay grades higher than Ponder's current Captain rank. But Avery had no idea what this meant with respect to the larger question. If anything, Ponder's revelation made things even more confusing. "Demotion, sir?" he asked, treading water.

"I lost my arm," Ponder began, "in Elysium City, Eridanus II." He put one of his boots up on the dash. "This was back in 'thirteen. Watts and his gang were just starting to show their teeth."

Colonel Robert Watts—or "that bastard" to most UNSC personnel—was a Marine Corps officer born and raised in Epsilon Eridanus who had defected to the Insurrectionist's side early in the war. He and the group of turncoats he commanded were one of TREBUCHET's priority targets. So far, no one had gotten a decent shot at him, though Avery had once come close.

"We were hoping to capture Watts' second in command," Ponder continued, taking a long drag on his cigar. "Admirals at FLEETCOM wanted my battalion to go in strong—plenty of armor and air support. Intimidate the locals into giving the guy up without a fight. But the town was still fifty-fifty. Not everyone was on the Innies' side, and I thought a little restraint might help win some hearts and minds."