• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Look,” he said. “I’m just the medical officer. I don’t—didn’t—set policy. I just stitched and bandaged, that’s all.”

Poor pitiful you.

“In this . . . expansive . . . medical bay of yours.”

Smith’s mouth formed a line like a flat EKG. “I’m not here to help any Covenant bastards. Just us. Just us humans.” Had he rehearsed that, too? Sitting in his sealed room, listening to the screams of people dying?

Yet, even if he had rehearsed it, Smith had touched a nerve. Lopez couldn’t hold his gaze. She’d had relatives on Reach. Close ones. No longer. Had seen in Smith, for a moment, all the anger, grief, and bitterness that had driven her to take her command, every combat mission, and to give up her life to UNSC. The same she’d seen in each of her soldiers. It was always us against them. Always.

Balanced against that: taking prisoners. That left a sour taste in her mouth. Leave none alive.

Did he really think she was going to let down her guard? She hadn’t let down her guard in twenty-seven years. “Tell me about the Covenant prisoners, Smith.”

Smith, exasperated: “For intelligence. Research and development. Know your enemy. It’s a war. You know that—you’re a soldier, right? I don’t know, I’m just the medical officer.”

Her fingers flexed. The memory of John Doe’s hand. “Research and development, huh?”

He held his hands out as if he had a peace offering for her, but there was only air. “I’m just the medical officer.” An echo. A shield.

“What’s the Mona Lisa doing here?”

Frustration on Smith’s face. “Where’s here? I’ve been in this room since the outbreak. It’s a black box, nothing in or out. I have no idea where we are. Where are we?”

“Why don’t you tell me the last place you were, then, and I’ll tell you if you’re still there?”

That got Mahmoud’s and MacCraw’s attention. That gave Smith pause.

“In chess, they call that ‘check,’ ” Mahmoud muttered.

Gears and wheels were turning in Smith’s head. Lopez could see them.

“Didn’t you come here to rescue us?” Smith said. “Am I under arrest or something?” Face gone completely blank.

So you’re going to play it that way. Well, she had time to play, too. All the way up until they got to the bridge.

Countered with: “You would have access codes to the bridge, right?”

Smith nodded reluctantly.

And, finally, she did relent. She might not like him, but that didn’t make him the enemy. “We’re off of a planet called Threshold and we’ve got Covenant loose on a ship capable of making a slipspace jump. We’re following the Cole Protocol. We need to get to the bridge and take out the nav system. I hope the bridge isn’t locked down, but if it is . . .”

Smith had blanched as soon as she said Cole Protocol. “No. No, no, we need to get off the ship. You came here somehow, a Pelican? We need to get off the ship.”

Knew instinctively Burgundy would hate this guy as much as she did. “Sorry, but that’s not an option. You’re coming with us.”

“No, no—”

“Please,” she added, with another dazzling smile.

>Burgundy 1445 hours

At least Marines got to go out and do something, even if “something” meant getting into trouble. Not long after the last communication with the Red Horse, Lopez and her crew had dropped off the radio, their clichéd bravado and lame jokes slowly swallowed by static and interference. She thought she’d heard a crackle of contact from Benti, but that’d been snuffed out immediately.

Burgundy worked her way through a pack of gum. Her jaw ached something fierce. A book lay unattended on her lap. She’d tried reading, but couldn’t stop checking the cameras, and had given up after she’d read the same paragraph for twenty minutes.

There wasn’t anything to see. Just the barricades in the shadows. Once, she thought she’d glimpsed a silhouette with two heads, one head pale and veiny, which was a pretty ridiculous thing to think you’d seen. Nothing came out of the darkness to confirm that glimpse, so she’d put it down to nerves.

Her aft running lights were still on, so with the cameras she could still see about ten meters past the Pelican’s rear. She’d thought