Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [85]
Sudden movement to Two’s right drew the barrel of her AR in that direction, but when she saw Hopalong clambering out of the hole she lowered her rifle. He hop-flew in shallow, graceless parabolas toward the underbelly of the Beacon. She looked in that direction and saw that the Yanme’e had stopped working. Instead, they swarmed across the machine’s surface in a single glittering curtain. Unnervingly, every one of their amber, half-egg eyes seemed to be fixated on the approaching Hopalong with burning intensity.
Much to her shock, as soon as the Hunter spotted Hopalong too, he swiveled around and lumbered after him, completely forgetting all about Black-Two. He stopped once to aim and fire a concussive green stream at the Drone, but Hopalong managed to get just enough altitude on his membranous wings to levitate out of the way.
It was then that she spotted the smoky cube in Hopalong’s claws, the one she had left behind in the tunnel.
It all clicked instantly in her mind at just that moment.
Unmutual.
Incapable of Socialization.
Dead Drones and eggs.
A jolt of fear electrified Black-Two’s spine. She found herself running after the Hunter, who continued to fire and miss at Hopalong. She dropped to one knee and let off an AR burst at the Drone, but the gun was spent. Cursing, she snapped in a fresh clip as fast as she could.
Hopalong was far enough away that Two couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the cube in his claws flashed as his digits flew across the device’s multichromatic controls.
She could see glittering crystalline flashes as, one by one, the collars fell off the necks of the Drones waiting patiently on the Beacon.
The Hunter fired again, and missed again.
“Black-One, this is Black-Two, please come in immediately, Black-One . . .”
“Black-One here. I don’t have time to chat. I’ve got a Hunter with a fuel rod cannon with my name on it pinning me down—”
“We’re about to have much bigger problems, Chief. If anyone’s placed their packs I say we evac our asses ASAP.”
“What? Why? What do you see?”
At that moment the last few collars fell off the Drones’ necks.
“We’ve been tricked,” Two said, desperation creeping into her voice. “This is no ordinary collection of Drones—they haven’t been ‘enslaved’ here—”
When the Hunter turned around and started running away, the bottom of Two’s stomach fell out.
“This is a penal colony!” Two shouted.
Like an explosive cloud of shrapnel, the Drones launched themselves off the Beacon toward Black-Two in a spinning, chittering horde, each mass murderer of their fellow Yanme’e and killer of their young and defiler of their hives clicking and whining out the same word, over and over again, the only Yanme’e word Two had understood as Hopalong had repeated it so urgently back in the penthouse:
“FREEDOM.”
THREE
_____________
Black-Two’s motion sensor became subsumed with red dot after red dot until it looked like someone had cut her cheek open and the blood was seeping over the display, drowning it in crimson.
The cloud of Yanme’e slammed into the Hunter and in the blink of an eye he was covered in dozens of them. He let off an emerald swath from his assault cannon that dismembered any Drones in the path of the blast, but others instantly choked the gap closed. Together, the buggers lifted the Mgalekgolo high in the air. The barrel of the assault cannon was still recharging a flickering green when they ripped the Hunter’s limbs and head from its body. The ropy, eellike worms that comprised the creature’s true “self” cascaded like grain from a silo out of the ruptured shell. The Drones unthinkingly swooped down on the worms before they hit the ground and tore them into bright orange-red chunks with their claws and mandibles.
Two caught only a few glimpses of this over her shoulder, for almost as immediately the Yanme’e launched themselves in her direction. She turned and sprinted in the direction of the Beacon’s antigrav