Halo: The Cole Protocol (8 page)

CHAPTER

TEN

UNSC FRIGATE
MIDSUMMER NIGHT,
OUTER FRINGES, ECTANUS 45 SYSTEM

Keyes walked into the chart room of the
Midsummer Night.
The whole bridge crew sat around the tabletop chart, nodding as he entered. His fellow junior officers were all here: Lieutenant Badia Campbell ran ops, Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Rai Li on weapons, and Lieutenant Dante Kirtley ran communications.

“Heard you got hit pretty hard, Keyes.” Badia Campbell looked up from her notes. The jovial note in her voice sounded slightly forced.

A piece of deck plate had slammed into Keyes while he floated toward the ship, but he had waved on the medics that had been sent to pick him up—he thought the others needed it more. The explosion had killed some twenty Helljumpers. And although the container with the wounded had been badly damaged, it had been recovered, and many survived. Other Helljumpers had been concussed, or suffered internal bleeding and injuries from their proximity to the shockwave.

But more people had made it out than Keyes initially had even hoped for. And many were treating him with a newfound respect, something above and beyond just his rank and his reputation of being well learned.

And that added respect included the bridge crew all around the chart table looking up at him. Keyes hadn’t had much time in the first forty-eight hours to get to know them. They’d all been running around, checking on repairs and trying to figure out why things weren’t working.

But on the bridge all three of his fellow officers had been crisp, together, and on top of things… though Campbell sounded tired and a bit short-tempered with the people reporting to her.

Keyes would’ve been too. Ops was taking the brunt of the work to get things running smoothly.

“Minor head wound,” Keyes said.

Rai Li smiled. “I personally think your skull’s too thick for debris to get through.”

They all laughed, breaking the ice. This was the first time they’d all sat in a room together. They’d been busy with their duties, and then reporting to Zheng, who had been very hands-off so far with the crew, trusting only his officers.

That hadn’t sat well, a lot of nervous crew wondered why Zheng had been given a ship after sacrificing his last one in a suicidal dash. They whispered that he’d been caught sitting in the captain’s chair, staring out at space, crying silently to himself. Everyone tiptoed around the man.

The shakedown problems didn’t leave a lot of time to size each other up. But the
Finnegan’s Wake
incident had now run them through a critical event, and everyone aboard had stopped bickering over petty things. The ship seemed to have pulled together. After the somberness of the past twenty-four hours, it was nice to smile.

“Should have seen Kirtley’s face when Zheng hailed you and you answered. He was knee-deep in his console, upside down, no less, trying to figure out if something had gone wrong with our equipment,” Campbell said.

“Well, we’ve had so little luck on equipment so far.” Kirtley shook his head. “I know we need to refit and build these ships as fast as possible to face the Covenant, but we need to be a little bit more careful about build quality…”

The door opened and Commander Zheng walked in, Major Akio Watanabe close behind. They all stood to attention, but Zheng waved his hand. The exuberant mood the officers had shared died. Even they were beginning to be affected by Zheng’s reputation. They only interacted with him formally, as they were now. It made him hard to gauge. And Keyes’ efforts to talk to the commander had been rebuffed with the hasty excuse of being too busy.

“As you were,” Zheng said.

They sat back down. Except Watanabe, who held onto a small box and continued to stand behind Zheng. If Zheng was standoffish, Keyes thought, then Watanabe here was almost as mysterious, staying in his room alone for most of the trip so far.

“Good to have you back, Lieutenant Keyes,” Zheng said. “We dodged quite a bullet, there. The ship owes you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Keyes ducked his head, somewhat embarrassed at the attention. This was wildly outgoing for Zheng. “What about the captured Innie? Has he talked?”

Everyone turned to Watanabe.

“Well, he has admitted to being an Insurrectionist, yes.” Watanabe looked down, as if in thought. “I haven’t gotten much else out of him.”

Kirtley murmured, “I’d hate to be
that
guy right now.”

Watanabe snapped his head up and stared at the two of them. “Mr. Dante Kirtley… do you think I brought aboard a portable torture chamber?”

Kirtley didn’t answer.

“I know we’re the boogeymen,” Watanabe continued. “But don’t be ridiculous. You torture a man, he’ll tell you anything to make it stop. Anything you think you want. He might even, if you’re pushing hard enough, believe whatever that is with all the will that he has left.”

Akio Watanabe unbuttoned the top of his sleeves. He pulled them back to reveal scars running from his wrists all the way up to his elbows. A fast unclip of his odd, high-necked collar revealed horrible scarring around his throat. “If I tortured them, I’d be no better than them.”

He sat down and rebuttoned his uniform slowly.

“I’m sorry,” Kirtley started to say, but Watanabe cut him off.

“If I’m overloyal to the Prowler Corps, and by extension, the UNSC, it is because they rescued me from hell itself. Now, let’s not ever talk about this again.”

“Of course, sir,” Keyes said, eager to get everyone past it. “So no information out of him.”

“Sadly, not much. The Insurrectionists use cell tactics, and the man we captured doesn’t know too much other than the details of this mission. I’m using a mild sedative to relax him, and a lie detector he doesn’t know about. So I’m just chatting with him. With the detector and random conversation for calibration, we may yet learn something, but don’t get too hopeful.”

Rai Li shook her head. “Doesn’t make sense, what they did.”

“Really?” Watanabe cocked his head. “We’ve just ordered that there be no more non-Navy travel. They can’t resupply each other, they have no communications ability. They’re isolated. We’ve incidentally dealt the Insurrectionists all across the colonies a killing blow, as a complete sidenote to the war against the Covenant.”

“We should have done this years ago, then,” Kirtley said.

“What kind of martial civilization would we be where civilians weren’t allowed to travel unless by the military, where all communications between worlds were controlled by us?” Watanabe asked.

“We’d be a functional one, without uprisings. Orderly.” It seemed obvious to Kirtley. Keyes had to admit he agreed somewhat.

“Ah.” Watanabe shrugged. “Maybe. At first. But don’t forget, these Insurrectionists knew what frequency to jam. They have sympathizers in the UNSC, they could be anywhere. It isn’t as simple as killing this or cutting that. People facing an invasion, no matter what we’d like to believe, behave in a variety of different ways. Some ready for battle, some try to bargain, others look to what advantages they can gain in the short term, and old wounds still run deep.”

“In the meantime,” Commander Zheng said, “we need to focus on the next leg of our mission.”

Watanabe held out the box. “And now it is time to unseal our orders. Commander Zheng, your thumbprint please?”

Zheng pressed his thumb against the screen. Then Watanabe did the same.

The pad lit up, and Watanabe handed it over to Zheng, who read it.

“Would you like to brief them, Captain?”

Zheng looked up with a frown. “You know the particulars?”

“I’m the one who suggested this operation.” Watanabe steepled his fingers together. “It’s a situation I’ve been following for a while now. We haven’t had the resources, until I became aware of this ship.”

“Then go ahead, Mr. Watanabe. It’s your show.”

“During my… recovery,” Watanabe started, “I was on loan from the Prowler Corps to the data gathering and analysis section of a certain ONI branch that I’m not at liberty to name. It was there I started coming across reports of Covenant weaponry turning up in civilian hands throughout the colonies.”

“But that isn’t unusual.” Campbell leaned forward. “Marines who’ve tangled with Covenant forces bring them back. They can hock them on the black market.”

Watanabe unfolded his hands and leaned back in his chair. “That’s true. But according to regulations you’re supposed to turn them in to ONI, and not everyone is so… rules bound. With the Cole Protocol being rolled out, you’ll note that bringing a Covenant weapon back to any UNSC installation or Inner Colony location is an act of treason under one of the attached sub-articles. They might not be weapons, but drones, or bombs, or have beacons in them that will let the Covenant map our locations.”

“That’ll have a chilling effect on the pawn shops near military bases,” Li said.

A strained smile quirked on Watanabe’s lips. “One imagines. However, I’m not talking about the usual levels of black market collectibles. Until the Cole Protocol was put in place, we saw a
dramatic
increase in Covenant weaponry flooding the market. My fellow analysts and I came to believe that somewhere out there, Insurrectionists or other parties may actually be trading with the Covenant. Or, alternatively, they are being co-opted by the Covenant somehow, instead of merely being destroyed.”

The ONI agent stood up and tapped the chart table. A hologram of a plasma pistol appeared. “A shipping container was found in a routine board-and-search late last week on its way to Charybdis IX. It contained three thousand fully charged plasma pistols on board, and a thousand plasma rifles.”

“Enough to arm a significant number of Insurrectionists,” Kirtley said. He folded his arms.

“Correct,” Watanabe said. “Now, this was a slow freighter, and ONI agents from Charybdis IX intercepted it well before it got to the planet. It had another week of travel yet to get to orbit. Our orders are to head out to Charybdis IX and meet with ONI agents there. We’re going to find out who’s receiving these guns, where they come from, and why the Covenant is acting in a whole new manner with this gunrunning.”

They all sat in silence, digesting the mission. Commander Zheng stood up. “Well, it sounds like this is going to lead us to Insurrectionists. And I don’t know about you all, but I’m ready to repay them for what they just did.”

“Yessir,” they all chorused. Except Badia, who glanced down at the floor and closed her eyes. Keyes wondered if she was thinking about all the dead from the last engagement.

“Then let’s get to it. Keyes, lay us on a course straight for Charybdis IX .. . after our random jump, of course.” Zheng leaned back, watching them all with calculating eyes.

“Of course, sir.” Keyes looked around at the bridge crew as they stood up. They were on their way to forming a comfortable team in a surprisingly short time.

And judging by the tiny smile Zheng had on his lips, he felt the same way. Maybe Keyes had read his standoffishness wrong; maybe Zheng was just eager to get back to the fight. No matter which, it was still a good thing to see a ship’s crew coming together.

Keyes had a feeling it would be important. Insurrectionists and Covenant working together left a very bad taste in his mouth.

They’d need to be at their fighting best on this ship in the days ahead.

But whatever Zheng may have had in mind, Keyes noticed that the other officers seemed eager to get out of the chartroom and back to their duties, at a safe remove from the Commander.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

UNSC FRIGATE
MIDSUMMER NIGHT,
CHARYBDIS IX

Keyes moved down the corridor quickly, crewmen snapping to attention as he passed. He had just laid them into a geosynchronous orbit over Charybdis IX, right above the capital city of Scyllion. A Pelican was being prepped to take Akio Watanabe dirt side. Things were moving along.

He paused at a corridor. The hanger bay would be
this
way.

He was still getting a feel for the frigate: adding to the ship’s speed meant reconfiguring the normal layout of a ship of this class.

“Lieutenant Keyes,” buzzed a frantic voice in his earpiece. “We need you at sickbay, now. It’s Jeffries.”

Keyes turned around, then turned around again. Medical no longer lay at the heart of the ship, but farther off to the starboard.

Keyes broke out of his fast walk into a half jog. If Jeffries died, he’d never forgive himself for asking for his transfer.

“Lieutenant!”

It was Faison. He stepped out of the corner of a junction from behind a bulkhead.

“Yes?”

Five Helljumpers tackled Keyes from the side.

He went down, shocked. Then self-defense training kicked in. Keyes fought his way free of the hands holding his legs and kicked the nearest Helljumper in the head.

The kick sent the man down, but not before another behind Keyes put him in a chokehold.

Sputtering, Keyes managed to swing and dish out a black eye. He ripped free of their holds again, but three more Helljumpers joined the fray.

They came with duct tape.

Keyes found himself being trussed up and dragged into a nearby storage room, the door locked behind them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.

The Helljumpers surrounded the furious Keyes, who was then raised up onto a table with a solid thump. Faison walked over and viewed the results. He nodded. “Good.”

“Hoo-ah,” they replied.

“Lieutenant Jacob Keyes.” Faison leaned over and looked him in the eyes. “Do you know how many Navy brass have pulled rank on me in the middle of combat action?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Faison.”

The Helljumper smiled. “None, Mr. Keyes. At least, none that have lived.”

Keyes knew that the Helljumpers regarded themselves as tougher, more willing to fight, than regular marines or Navy men. They were certainly far crazier.

Faison pointed at one of the men. “Chesnik, do it.”

A buzzing sound came from Keyes’ right. One of the Helljumpers whipped out a huge Bowie knife—and cut the sleeve off Keyes’ uniform. A smarting pain shot up his shoulder. He twisted to look. Chesnick was holding a portable tattoo machine, a long metal penlike tool with an ink reservoir on the end. Chesnick leaned in and pressed the needle into Keyes’ arm and started etching a careful swoop.

Keyes stopped struggling, leaning back as the needle continued its smarting journey over his arm. “You’re all crazy,” he said. “Guess I won’t have to court-martial you, though.” He took a deep breath.

“Well, aren’t we lucky,” Chesnick replied, and then leaned back. “Done.”

Faison pulled out a huge knife of his own from an ankle sheath. It had the words “Bug-Hunter” traced on the blade. He sliced the duct tape off.

“You’d make a hell of a marine, Keyes,” Faison said. “You saved a lot of our asses out there.”

Keyes shook his head. “Should have seen it coming earlier.”

“No,” Faison said. “Anyone else would have stood there and let us do our job, and we’d all be dead. We owe you, Keyes. You ever need a favor from a Helljumper, no matter where, you just roll up your sleeve and ask.”

They opened the door, and it seemed like half the ship’s Helljumpers were waiting in the corridor.

“You’re not bad for an officer,” said Markov, just outside the door. “But if you ever take my armor again, it’s your ass.”

“By the way, next time, try not to scream so much,” another Helljumper shouted while laughing.

The center of the corridor became a gauntlet, with Helljumpers pushing Keyes on through all the way down the line, many of them slapping the newly inked tattoo and laughing as he winced.

At the end of the line Akio Watanabe waited stiffly.

“If you don’t mind, Lieutenant Keyes, now that you’re done playing with your new friends, I have a favor to ask.”

Keyes had a wide grin on his face from the relief that the Helljumpers weren’t actually going to kill him and a bit of pride from their actions. “Of course, Major Watanabe. What is it?”

“I’d like you to come dirt side with me. There are not a lot of people I implicitly trust. The nature of the job, you know. Judging by your actions, you seem like a man I could trust with my life, implicitly. I would count most of the bridge crew as trustworthy, given my research on them, but to be honest, Mr. Keyes, I think they just plain don’t like me. How that would play into a split second’s hesitation to back me up in a dangerous situation, I’m not sure…”

“You’re a cynical man, Major.” Keyes did not like Watanabe’s judgment of his fellow officers. A force was only as good as the man next to him. It was who you fought for, when it came down to it, but that bond started with a fundamental trust. A trust that Watanabe did not have.

“Comes with the job.” Watanabe’s smile wasn’t so much a smile, but bared teeth. “Will you come anyway?”

Keyes nodded stiffly. “If those are your orders, of course.”

Watanabe grabbed Keyes’ arm and looked at the lettering. “The ODST tattoo. They must really like you. You know what it means?”

“No.” Keyes shook his head, pulling his arm back. Watanabe kept his grip on the arm. It was surprisingly tight.

“The kanji stand for ‘bastard’, or ‘bad ass’, depending on who you talk to. Lieutenant?”

“Yes?”

Watanabe let go of Keyes’ arm. “Make sure you visit the ship’s armory before we leave.”