But Thel bowed his head. "I thank you for your gift of troops and ships," he said out loud. And he thought secretly to himself: I do not have to use them on this mission, they can simply come along and watch true warriors do their duty.
He had just recently become a shipmaster, something he'd longed to attain ever since he'd stood on the stone walls of his keep and looked up at the stars and wondered what amazing things might be waiting for him up there. Now, with another ship and more troops under his command, the dream of becoming a fleetmaster seemed within reach.
With a promotion like this, Thel would need to send a message home to the keep elders. He would have more wives brought to the keep. It was time for Thel to create more alliances on the homeworld. It was time to expand the rooms, and father more children to pack the common rooms. The line of Vadam would be continued in strength.
The keep's poet would add a line to the family saga, celebrating Thel's furthering in rank. Thel would be the most renowned Vadam yet.
The Prophet of Regret waved his hand. "Come with me, Shipmaster."
Thel loped behind the antigravity throne that Regret drove across the room to a massive wall-sized projection of the planet they'd come to orbit.
"They left only three ships to protect it," Regret mused. "You know why we fight these creatures?"
"They committed a grievous sin," Thel said. "They destroyed Forerunner artifacts."
He shivered as he said that.
The Forerunners had left traces of the time they spent in the galaxy scattered across worlds and in space. These mighty demigods of the galaxy had been the forefathers of all the Covenant knew, and they'd just... disappeared.
But they'd left clues as to where they'd gone. A Holy Journey, to another plane of existence, using the technology of the Halos.
So the Prophets taught, and the Covenant existed for finding the Halos, and following the Forerunners on their holy path.
But these humans, they'd found Forerunner artifacts, and instead of venerating them like all other species, they had destroyed them.
Thel vibrated with religious rage. For that, the humans would pay
"It is important their heresy and desecration be punished," Regret said. "So anything that distracts us from this holy duty, that itself, is unholy. And must be stopped. Like these blasphemous weapons."
"I understand, Hierarch," Thel said. "I will stop at nothing."
Regret sighed. It spoke into its chair to the fleet commanders throughout. "Destroy this planet, and all on its surface."
On the screen, plasma roiled and grew on the sides of the Covenant cruisers as the ships prepared to rain fire down upon the world the humans called Charybdis IX.
Chapter TWENTY
UNSC FRIGATE
MIDSUMMER NIGHT,
OUTER CHARYBDIS IX
Zheng stood on the bridge of the
Midsummer Night, his hands behind his back. Keyes watched him pace as the screens lit up.
All the bridge crew were on duty, and the junior officers stood at the back, looking on.
"I called you all here to watch this," Zheng announced, suddenly pausing in place to turn and face them, "because it's important to remember why we fight."
Keyes swiveled his chair. Zheng had been averse to talking to the entire ship before this, slightly nervous. Keyes bet that Zheng knew what his
reputation was. Or maybe Zheng was still damaged from whatever it was he was dealing with. Either way, he'd kept his distance, even from his own bridge crew. And everyone had been happy to keep their distance from him as well. Until now. Zheng looked animated. Angry. For this he'd asked
Kirtley to broadcast his address to the rest of the ship. It was an interesting change.
"Some of you joined because you had no other options, some because you were looking for adventure, and others because of patriotism. And since the first contact at Harvest, many of you out of a desire to fight the Covenant.
"But as days pass, and the dreariness of daily life, cramped in this ship with your fellow sailors mounts, I know it can be easy to forget that we are, first and foremost, a weapon." Zheng looked out over the officers on deck. "A weapon to strike back against all our enemies. External... or internal. Because if we don't do our best, this will be a small taste of what is to come."
Behind Zheng the screens lit up with images broadcast from Charybdis.
Keyes found his eyes drawn to the nearest, a scene from low orbit taken by a satellite. Far below, the sleek, sharklike shape of a Covenant cruiser passed over the patches of land, and as it did so, everything underneath it glowed.
The screen flickered off, jumping to a new scene: a shot from the top of a skyscraper in downtown Scyllion. What looked like shimmering rain fell from the sky, but wherever it touched the city exploded into actinic flame.
Buildings melted, slumping over and then bubbling down into a lava-like mix of asphalt and concrete and shattered glass. The camera wavered as blue haze began to build up near it, and then it melted and static filled the screen.
Another live feed, from far outside the city, showed the blue waterfalls of plasma strike the river, sending up a giant cloud of steam as it was vaporized.
"They're attacking," someone said in a shocked voice.
Keyes looked to the screen everyone pointed out, and saw tiny dots rising up to harass the bulbous-nosed Covenant cruisers.
They were about as successful as minnows attacking sharks, Keyes thought. Plasma darted out from the sides of the cruiser over Scyllion, swatting the tiny Charybdis defense fighters out of the sky like annoying insects.
Maybe if they'd been more coordinated, Keyes wondered. Could a force of tiny craft distract a Covenant cruiser long enough for someone to slip
something through their defenses?
He realized he was trying to avoid the death and destruction in front of him with academics, and forced himself to continue watching.
One by one the screens turned to static, and Zheng waved at them. "This ship we're chasing, it looks like it's going into
Covenant territory, and we know it's Insurrectionist. Working with Covenant. For all we know, they led the Covenant to Charybdis."
Keyes raised an eyebrow. That was quite an assumption for Zheng to make. If the
Kestrel had led the Covenant to Charybdis IX, they'd gotten a lot of their fellow Insurrectionists killed here today, not just UNSC.
Innies might be ready to die for their cause, but like this? Keyes thought back to what Jeffries had said about Zheng when they'd first met. Zheng had lost his entire family to the Covenant. Zheng had even been impatient about Watanabe's mission.
Now Zheng seemed to have been electrified into fiery, angry motion. "There will be a reckoning," he shouted to the bridge crew. "We will throw ourselves against whoever was responsible for all this."
And behind Zheng the remaining screens shut down, leaving the last few images of the burned world flickering across everyone's eyes. Keyes spotted Badia Campbell staring at the screens. She looked queasy.
Zheng turned back to the empty screens, surveying them for a long moment, and then said softly, "That is all."
Chapter TWENTY-ONE
COVENANT CRUISER