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Court of Darkness (chapter one): Deal with the Devil
Date: 20 July 2006, 2:07 pm

Court of Darkness (chapter one): Deal with the Devil

Hank hadn't been this desperate to blend in since his first day of junior high; but now, as then, he was failing miserably. Sitting among the working poor who frequented Finley's Pub, his expensive, expertly tailored suit stuck out like a diamond on black velvet. But Hank hadn't come to sightsee—nobody came to Tethra for that—but rather to close a lucrative business deal. It had been his intention to arrive, smile, shake hands, sign the contract and go straight back home. After spending a week on this run-down planet, however, he could not leave without satisfying his curiosity.

In his many years of traveling man's small corner of the galaxy, Hank found that he could learn the most about a planet by driving through the streets where people actually lived. House architecture, the presence or absence of parks or playgrounds, and the sort of vehicles that sat in driveways were all telltale signs that spoke as clearly as written history. Of all the worlds he had ever visited, none had spoken to him like Tethra. Its statements were loud, eloquent, striking and ominous—like the work of a great artist. But like so many works of art, Tethra's dark colors formed far more questions than answers. And even though the somber masses that populated this planet frightened him, Hank's curiosity had been piqued well past the point of return. He simply had to know why—and that meant a visit to the local pub.

At first, his questions had been ignored or answered with short, polite lies. A naturally quiet man, Hank would have usually left well enough alone, but nearly an hour of steady drinking had removed his fear and caused his tongue to come alive.

"Listen," he said, slapping his hand down on the bar for emphasis, "Don't you people believe in God? Aren't you all good Catholics?" Finley's fell silent as seventeen pairs of eyes fixed on the man who dared question their faith. The bartender leaned against the fake mahogany tabletop and scowled at the stranger.

"You callin' us heathens, mister?"

"No," Hank laughed, "I'm calling you liars!" He took a swig of his beer, and by the time his cup came back down, every man in the room was standing.

"Liars?" The bartender pulled back his sleeves, revealing two large, muscled arms. "And just what is it we've lied about?"

Hank laughed again. "What haven't you lied about? I've never seen people so afraid to tell the truth!" Several men took a step towards the drunken businessman, but the hulking bartender waved them off.

"You've got ten seconds to explain yourself, little man." He grabbed a handful of Hank's expensive shirt and pulled him halfway across the bar. "And if I were you, I'd make it good."

"Fine, fine," Hank said, waving his right hand dismissively, "I take it back. You're not liars. You're all honest, Bible-believin' Christians. Why else would you paint crucifixes all over your houses and wear them around your necks two and three at a time?" All across the bar looks turned from anger to fear. "And I bet the reason every last person in this city is behind locked doors before sundown is to recite their evening prayers, right? But I'm curious; why would religious folk like yourselves build all your houses without a single window? You tryin' to keep God in or the Devil out?" The bartender let go of the expensive shirt and with a single glance, sent the customers back to their drinks and conversations. He sighed and looked straight into Hank's eyes.

"You really want to know, mister?" The question carried a warning that even a drunk could follow. Nevertheless, Hank nodded, and the bartender told story as he always did: in low, dark whispers. By the time he had finished, Hank had the pale, blank stare of someone who had just seen a ghost.

"My God. And, you really believe that?"

"No," the bartender replied; his expression and tone contradicting his words, "I'm sure it's nothing more than lively imaginations and childish fantasies. After all, fear has a way of playing with people's minds. Can I get you another drink?"

Hank's nearly empty glass had been completely forgotten, though gripped tightly, as he listened to the harrowing tale. He downed the last mouthful of the bitter, black beer and handed it to the barkeep. "Yeah, but I'm gonna need something stronger than that." The big man took the glass and let out a humorless, knowing chuckle.

Yeah buddy, they always do.

A thick hood covered David Sagus' eyes, and they had either stuffed earplugs in his ears, or removed his eardrums while he slept. In this hell, both were equally possible. He hung from the wall by his wrists, which would have been painful if he hadn't lost all feeling in them God knows how many days or weeks before. Unfortunately for him, however, the rest of his body retained the ability to feel pain—and something told him that another hellish session was about to begin. What would it be this time? Electrocution? Burning? Another surgery?

A sharp object sliced into the taught skin above his navel, answering his question and causing his body to convulse in indescribable agony. Strong hands held him still as the instrument cut deeper and deeper. David felt the skin over his stomach being pulled back an instant before mercifully blacking out.

Someone emptied a syringe into his arm, and within seconds the chemical countered the brain's natural defense system and David awoke to a world with a singular reality: pain. Cutting, pulling and ripping continued for endless minutes while he prayed earnestly for death, and cursed his heart for stubbornly refusing to quit. Death was his last hope, but like all other hopes it eluded him in this place. For a moment the surgery stopped and Sagus felt something scratch the skin beside the large abdominal incision—and somehow he knew they were the claws of a rat. He struggled against his captors in vain as the concussive reality hit him like a sledgehammer. Something beyond panic rippled through his brain as someone shoved the struggling animal into his body and began closing his skin over it.

David Sagus woke from the horrible nightmare screaming like a victim in a horror movie. Both hands clutched madly at his stomach as he tried to extract a rat that existed now only in bad dreams and wicked memories. They were memories from the planet Erebus; memories from Hell. Sunlight turned the thin, white curtains over his bedroom window into gold and lit his way as he pulled off his sweat-soaked sheets and stumbled to the bathroom.

As he had for the last several months, he stood motionless in front of the mirror and surveyed the relics of torture. Scars covered his body from head to toe, including a large one on his abdomen. David's pulse began to quicken and both fists clenched until the knuckles turned white. It wasn't the sort of thing you got used to. During recovery, ONI's physicians had offered to remove the souvenirs Thanatos had carved in his flesh, but he had chosen leave them. Without some sort of memorial to the horrors done in that place, Sagus doubted that anyone could accept that it ever happened. Only four men made it off that rock alive, although the first people to lay eyes on David afterward assumed he was dead. He didn't blame then. If he'd seen a six foot two inch man who weighed less than eighty pounds and had empty sockets where his eyes should be, he would've thought the same.

That was six months ago.

Now, he had an excellent new pair of eyes and his body was in better shape than it had ever been. His mind, however, was a different story. During the now legendary events that transpired on the planet Erebus, David had endured more torture than any living man—and that hadn't been the half of his agony. Although he had miraculously come out of the incident with his sanity, the wounds to his mind were deeper and more painful than those to his body; and it now bore scars that no physician could cut away.

A shrill buzz tore him from his thoughts. He walked into the living room to answer the phone and left the mirror behind for another day.

"Hello?"

"Lieutenant Sagus?" David unconsciously stood up straighter as he heard Admiral Robert Denning's voice.

"Yes, sir?"

"I want you in my office in half an hour."

David rubbed his eyes. "Half an hour? Sir, I live at least forty minutes from the base."

"Then you better get a move on, son." Click.

Thirty-two minutes later, the Admiral's secretary ushered Sagus into his large office and closed the door. David, who wore his Navy dress uniform, snapped a crisp salute. The Admiral gestured towards the chair in front of his desk and frowned.

"Where's your Navy Cross, Lieutenant?"

"Home, sir."

"At home?" Denning shook his head disapprovingly. "That award is one of the highest honors the UNSC can bestow upon a soldier. Why isn't it on your uniform?"

How could he respond to such a question? Well, sir, I don't wear it because all I really did was get myself captured and most of my rescuers killed? No, he didn't need a lecture about how it hadn't been his fault from yet another person who hadn't been there.

"I'm sorry, sir. I'll make sure to wear it next time."

Denning nodded and leaned back in his chair. "So, how are you doing?"

What a question. "Fine, sir, thank you." The Admiral flipped through a small stack of papers on his desk, more for show that for information.

"Dr. Lowery seems to agree with you. Says here that you passed a psychological evaluation last week with no real problem."

"Sir," David said, keeping his face as stoic as possible, "it's a matter of record that I've never failed such an examination, and that I took one upon returning from Erebus almost six months ago."

Denning smiled. "Relax, Lieutenant; nobody thinks you're crazy. In fact, the Navy is of the opinion that you're ready for active duty—and not a moment too soon. We've got some trouble brewing in one of our colonies and you're name came up. I'm sure you've heard of the planet Tethra."

"Yes, sir."

"What you may not know is that the UNSC gets nearly seventy-five percent of its equipment from Tethra's factories. About the only thing that they don't have is shipyards, and those are due to come on line within the next six months. Without the materials produced on this planet, the UNSC would be crippled—and apparently that's no secret. A small rebel element led by an ex-soldier named O'Carrol has set up an operation in the system."

"How small an element, sir?"

"We believe it to be nothing more than O'Carrol and ten to twenty men. But," he said with grudging admiration, "this rebel captain is smart. Smart enough to take full advantage of being small and hard to locate. Rather than attack the industry itself, O'Carrol has gone after the people in charge. Consequently, the owners have raised the price of their merchandise and investors are threatening pull their money out of the shipyards. And son, I would have a hard time overstating how badly the UNSC wants those yards up and running."

Sagus was impressed. "That is smart, sir."

"By taking out a few lazy, overpaid execs, O'Carrol may do more damage to the UNSC than the rest of the rebels combined."

"But why send me, sir? I'm not a tracker."

"We got word of this a few weeks ago, and when I asked around for a recommendation, one name came up more than any other: ODST Captain Helljumper. He accepted the assignment and said that he wanted to keep it small; just him and one other person. The Captain gave us two choices: either a Spartan named Lexicus or you. Lexicus has already been assigned to a different operation, and so here we are. I know this falls outside your purview as an ONI officer, but after their debacle on Erebus, they didn't argue when we asked for your services."

Sagus could barely believe what he was hearing. "Sir, with all due respect; the only thing I ever did for Helljumper was get his men killed. That's it. On Erebus, I was nothing more than bait. I didn't do anything to earn this man's trust."

"This man is a Captain, Lieutenant Sagus, and you will address him as such. As for the impression you made on him, Helljumper is a highly decorated soldier with an impeccable record, so if you don't mind, I'll take him at his word."

"And what were Captain Helljumper's words, sir?"

"That you are without a doubt the toughest son of a—" Denning's secretary walked into the room carrying two cups of coffee, and the Admiral immediately softened his words. "That you're the toughest son of a gun he's ever served with. And having went over the details of your work on Erebus and Cradle before that, I would have to agree with him."

Sagus shook his head. "But sir, those soldiers—"

"Those soldiers died doing their duty, Lieutenant, plain and simple. If you want to honor their memories, do yours and help Helljumper take down O'Carrol."

"Sir," David said, intentionally changing the subject, "You said that O'Carrol was ex-military. What branch was he in?"

"He happens to be a she. Her full name is Cairren O'Carrol, and we haven't got a clue where she served. We assume she's ex-military because her tactics are so good. Either she had a different name back then, or she worked in your neck of the woods doing something that nobody wants to take credit for."

"Sir, you're telling me that one woman is causing an entire planet to panic? How tough can she be?"

McLoughlin's pub occupied a small corner lot in downtown Lifford; the second largest industrial city on Tethra. Its four black cinderblock walls and faded red sign sat in the center of the bad side of town. Not that Lifford had any good sides. In the back of the darkened tavern, two men spoke in hushed tones. One nodded, almost smiling while the other talked and glanced at his watch every few seconds.

"It sounds good Tommy, but what am supposed to believe? It always sounds good, and last time we lost three men." Tommy Callahan took a drag on his cigarette and shook his head.

"Sean, I can't predict what's going to happen. I'm not a bleedin' fortuneteller, am I? But I do know this information is solid." He looked nervously at his watch. "And it's got a real short shelf-life, so we'd better get moving."

Sean Flannery shook his head. "I dunno. Things go bust this time and she's gonna be angry." He leaned forward and spoke ominously. "Have you ever seen O'Carrol angry, Tommy?" Callahan looked at his watch again, and this time his eyes got wide.

"You know I've never met her, Sean. Look, it's almost nine o'clock."

"Yeah, almost sundown." Sean smiled. "I guess you'd better hurry up and give me a reason to believe you."

An all-consuming fear crept slowly into Tommy's expression. He hadn't been out past sundown in almost eight years. "I give you my word! Now stop stalling and take me to her!"

"Why can't you just give me the information?"

Tommy's face twisted with impatience. "Don't worry yourself about that, and don't think that I'm bluffing. I either deal with O'Carrol directly or I walk. You used to trust me, you know."

"Yeah, but that was before we got burned." As much as Flannery enjoyed watching Callahan suffer, it really was getting late, and the safe house was on the other side of the city. "Okay, we'll do it your way. But God be my witness, if you're not telling the truth you'll be dealin' with the Devil 'fore the night is through. Are you telling me the truth, Tommy?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go." Sean stood and tossed some money on the table as Tommy took a final drag on his cigarette before snuffing it out in a clover-shaped tray. "If we hurry, we might even make it before dark."

They walked out into the cold dusk air, pulling their windbreakers tight across their bodies. Flannery jumped into a small rust-colored car, grabbed a black hood out of the glove compartment and tossed it to the frightened informant. "Put that on and lay down in the back. And Tommy," he pulled a small automatic out of his jacket and chambered a round. "No peeking."

Twenty-minutes of lying in the backseat was almost more than Callahan could bear. Numerous times he almost peeked—not to see where they were going, but rather to see if it was still light out—but remembered the gun in Sean's hand and decided against it. The car finally came to a stop and he heard the sound of a large, overhead door shutting behind them.

Flannery pulled the hood off his head and Tommy immediately sat up to search for signs of daylight. But all he could see was the inside of a small, windowless garage.

At least there are no windows. "D-did we make it, Sean?"

"Make what?"

"Make it here before sundown."

"Tommy my boy," Sean chuckled with a wry smile, "you don't want to know."

If the garage was small, the building that held it was anything but. They passed through at least a dozen doors before arriving at a room guarded by a short, blonde man in his early twenties. Smiling ear to ear, the man walked up and, to Tommy's surprise, gave Sean a big hug.

"Goodness, I thought they'd gotten you this time for sure!"

"Just runnin' a little late. Is she in a good mood?"

Connor chuckled. "Is she ever in a good mood? Well," he said, turning serious, "let's just say that I'm glad it's not me goin' in there with the stoolie. But what were you expectin' Sean, with the anniversary being tomorrow and all? I hope your friend has somethin' useful for her, because if she doesn't kill one of them well-to-do murderers tomorrow," the wide smile returned to his face, "she might just shoot one of us. Who knows, Sean; she might be in there plannin' your wake." Flannery chuckled and started walking towards the door, but Connor grabbed his shoulder.

"You've already frisked him, then?"

"Oh yeah, thanks." Flannery shoved Tommy against the wall, kicked his legs apart and began to search. "What the—" he exclaimed, as he found something hidden in Tommy's crotch—the place a man puts weapons he doesn't want found. "Connor!"

The guard grabbed a handful of Callahan's hair and yanked it back so hard that it almost turned loose of his skull. A cold, sharp blade pressed painfully against his throat as Sean pulled down his pants with a single yank and a small pistol clanked to the ground. Flannery picked up the weapon and waved it before Tommy's frightened eyes.

"I thought you weren't lying to me!" A ham-sized fist closed around the informant's neck like a vice and pinned him against the wall.

"Sean, please! I wasn't—" Flannery smashed the pistol into Tommy's face with a sickening thud, splitting his lip wide open and knocking out several teeth.

"Don't tell me what you weren't doin'!" Pulling the frightened man so close that their noses almost touched, he spoke through clenched teeth. "Tell O'Carrol."

Callahan coughed, spraying blood and teeth all over the floor as the two men opened the large, white door and tossed him into the room. Trying to focus through the pain, Tommy looked up and saw a red-haired woman sitting on a green couch, looking at what appeared to be a photo album. She sat the album on a small table next to her, stood to her feet—and his heart nearly stopped.

At six-foot three, Sean had towered over Tommy, but the woman who stood before him was nearly a head taller than Sean Flannery. Thin and lanky, she was slightly hunched and had her long, orange hair tied up in a checkered blue bandana. She looked to be in her forties, but her face was wrinkled up in a perpetual scowl that made her age hard to guess. Bright, green eyes glared from her freckled complexion with an almost supernatural intensity. To his relief, they were momentarily fixed on the other two men.

"Finally," she said with a voice that would make a wicked witch envious. "You two gonna stand there all night? Get outta here!"

"Yes, ma'am," Sean said with a reverent nod, and then handed her the gun. It looked like a toy in her huge hands. "Just so you know, he was hiding that in his crotch."

"Fine, now I know! Now get out before I use it on the both of you! Go!"

The underlings scurried out of the room, and Tommy no longer felt relieved.

Cairren O'Carrol looked down with disgust. "Get up!" Momentarily forgetting the pain in his mouth, he jumped to his feet and scurried to the couch like a scolded child. She tossed the small gun into his lap. "Is that yours?" Tommy tried to look up, but found her gaze impossible to endure.

"Yes."

"They sent you to kill me?" she said, as if making the most absurd statement of her life. "What an insult."

"No! I came here to—"

"Pick up the gun!"

"What?"

"Are you deaf?" she roared, "I said pick up the gun!"

Tommy looked up as if facing the gallows. "But I d-didn't want to! They threatened to kill me!"

"You were paid, weren't you?" The terrified informant's lips moved soundlessly. "Then do your job and pick—it—up!"

When it was first put to him, it had seemed like a good deal. They offered him enough money to last a lifetime, and all he had to do was kill a woman. But now Tommy had lost all taste for being an assassin, and even though she stood before him unarmed, he had no doubt that reaching for that gun would be the last thing he ever did.

Grunting with disgust, O'Carrol snatched the weapon from his lap and hurled it across the room and through two layers of drywall. And then, to his amazement, she spoke in a voice that was almost friendly. "I'm told you're a believer, Thomas Callahan. Is that true?"

"A believer?"

"You're one of them that doesn't go out after sundown, right?" He nodded, and for the first time saw a smile form on her face. "Sean!" she yelled, without taking her eyes off Tommy. "Get in here!" It didn't take more than a second.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Is it dark yet?"

Sean looked at his watch. "Well, it's almost nine-thirty, so—"

"I didn't ask for the time! Is it dark or not?"

"Yes, it is."

"I'm guessing he's got some guilt that needs reckoning with," she grabbed Tommy by an arm and tossed him at Sean's feet, "so lock him outside and let him deal with the Devil!" Tommy jumped as if electrocuted.

"No! No!" he screamed as Connor appeared at the door and they began dragging him through the house. "Please! Oh God, No! Stop! Stop!" But they didn't stop, and Tommy dissolved into hysterics; clawing, biting and screeching like an animal. A door opened and he felt cool air hit his face. Strong hands shoved him outside, and as he lay on the cold ground he heard several deadbolts turn.

Since Tethra had no moon, its nights held a darkness that no one on Earth would understand. And although he was in the middle of a city, there were no lights on the streets and no windows to shine a warm glow from within. Tommy could see nothing. Too frightened to move, he sat down on the concrete and tried to calm himself down. After all, he was alive, wasn't he? And after what he had just tried to do, that was something of a miracle. His breathing evened out, and after a few minutes he felt almost protected by the impenetrable blanket of darkness around him.

And then he heard it.

He had heard it before, eight years ago—the last time he had stayed out after dark. But houses had windows then, and he had been able to find his way back. But now—

There it was again, a little closer than before. Tommy's chest seemed to tighten, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Had he been such a bad person? Hadn't he done some good in his life? Sure, he had helped the wealthy during the plague, but hadn't everyone? Did he deserve to die? As if in answer, the sound that had haunted his nightmares for most of a decade came from his right—and this time it was so close that the hair on his neck stood straight up. Why hadn't he picked up the gun? Then, at the very least, he would be dead instead of outside. He felt something rub against his right arm and panic seized his brain. Jumping to his feet, he ran blindly through the darkness—but he didn't get far. As it turned out, Thomas Colin Callahan was guilty after all.

Judging from the screams, in fact, he was very guilty indeed.

C.T. Clown

Court of Darkness (chapter two): Kimberly Joy
Date: 31 August 2006, 4:18 pm

Court of Darkness (chapter two): Kimberly Joy

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will … will …" Rocking back on his knees, Benjamin grunted with frustration and turned to his mother for help.

Sarah gave her eight year-old an encouraging smile. "Say of the Lord."

"Oh, yeah," Ben said, clenching his eyes shut and resting his forehead once again on folded hands. "I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, My God in whom I trust.' Surely He will save me from the fowler's snare …"

As her son continued Psalm 91, Sarah tried to receive comfort from the ancient words. But standing there in the haunting glow of the bedside lamp, she felt only fear. Thankfully, Benjamin had been spared his mother's awful memories and his voice spoke with a confidence that defied the shadows.

"You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness …"

Had he been looking at his mother rather than the back of his eyelids, Benjamin would have thought she was ill. Sarah was ashamed to admit it, but sometimes scripture reminded her of things that she would rather forget.

"That's enough, honey," she said, cutting him off mid-verse. "Better climb into bed." Jumping up like a coiled spring, Ben dove onto his mattress and wrapped the blankets tightly around him.

"That's all true, isn't it mom?"

"Of course it is," Sarah said in soft rebuke, even as she wrestled with her own doubts. "Why would you even ask such a thing?"

"The Bible was written on Earth, right?" His mother nodded. "Well, is he God of just Earth, or Tethra too?"

"He is God over the Earth, Tethra and the entire universe."

A relieved smile stretched across his little face and he began to nod. "Sweet, then I'll sleep without my light on tonight!"

Sarah looked at him with surprise. "And why's that?" Ben laughed.

"Because he's God here too! I want to show mommy that she doesn't have to be afraid of the terror of the night, or stuff that stalks in the darkness or anything!"

"Honey, mommy's not afraid."

"You're afraid of daddy, aren't you?"

Tears began to form in Sarah's eyes and the blood drained from her face. "No, I'm not. Why would I ever be afraid of your father?" With no small reluctance, she switched off the light next to his bed and walked quickly to the doorway.

"Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"If you're not afraid of Daddy, then why are the doors always locked and," he added with jarring innocence, "when he died, why did you bury him wrapped in chains?"

Traveling in a Prowler brought certain advantages that most people, military or not, would never enjoy. The fast, sleek craft was invisible to the UNSC's most advanced equipment, could land almost anywhere without prior clearance, and was not even required to file a flight plan. All added up, it meant unparalleled stealth, and ODST Captain Helljumper was far too practical to let that go to waste. Everything he'd learned about O'Carrol said that she was not to be taken lightly; and since he and Lieutenant Sagus had a meeting with the Chairman of Tethra's Industrial Board of Governors on the same day they landed, the estimated time of their arrival was something that could be obtained with little difficulty. That being the case, he had deliberately arrived four days earlier than expected. If nothing else, it would provide them with an early start.

A cold, horizontal rain greeted them outside the terminal, making David's short wait for a shuttle seem like an eternity. Due to safety concerns, neither man wore his uniform, but something about their black, knee-length, military issue coats screamed "UNSC." Holding his briefcase over his sandy-blonde hair, Sagus looked at Helljumper with amusement. The older man stood straight and steady as a rock, seemingly oblivious to the frigid water running down his face and neck. Someone else might have assumed that such behavior was part and parcel with being an elite soldier, but David had spent over seven years in Naval special operations, and he'd never seen anyone like the man standing next to him.

"We could've waited inside, Hell!" Sagus yelled over the howling wind. He had tried to address the legendary ODST as Captain during the two-week trip, but Helljumper would have none of it.

"Son," he replied, his strong voice cutting through the gale like a knife, "I've been inside long enough! This feels good!"

A small white vehicle pulled up and the driver waved them in. Once the door clanked shut, the smallish red-haired man looked them up and down from the other side of a pane of thick glass.

"Where to?"

Curious, David tapped the clear barrier with his fingers. "Is this bulletproof?"

"Where to?" the driver said, wrinkling his stubbled face in annoyance. "I ain't got all day."

Helljumper pulled a map out of his pocket and pressed it against the pane. It's bright colors showed a large, walled community just outside the city. "Take us here."

"The Industrial Palisades?" the driver scoffed. "Forget it. Anybody they'd let near the Palace wouldn't be asking me to take 'em. Why don't you and your friend get the h—"

"Just turn around and drive," Helljumper ordered in a calm yet commanding voice. "I'll handle the rest." The stubble-faced man looked into the eyes of the tall, dark haired gentleman in his back seat and then did the only sane thing.

He turned around and drove.

Blige Edelson tried to appear strong as he listened to the person sitting on the other side of his desk, but it wasn't easy. The man frightened him—and that was not easily done.

"Mr. Chairman," the man said in a smooth, cold voice, "I cannot overstate the fact that this must be handled quietly."

"And I'm sure that it will be. We're expecting two men from the UNSC by the end of—"

The man shook his head. "No, that is exactly what we need to avoid. The UNSC is messy and imprecise. They would use a nuclear bomb to swat a fly."

Edelson sighed. "What would you have me do, Mr. Black? I doubt Admiral Denning would take any advice from me."

"O'Carrol must be stopped, Mr. Chairman, but not by the UNSC. She needs to disappear without so much as a trace." Mr. Black leaned forward and gave Edelson a look that chilled his blood. "She has had, shall we say, unimpeded access to men who carried volatile and dangerous information. Who's to say she didn't get them to talk before she killed them? If so, she would certainly have sense enough to use it as a bargaining chip if captured—and that is an eventuality that I refuse to contemplate. You want to know what to do? Buy us some time by making sure Denning's men get as little help as possible. Better yet, arrange for them to disappear." Mr. Black chuckled. "After all, Lifford is a pretty dangerous city."

"That might not be so easy," the Chairman said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You do know who he's sending, don't you?"

"What do you think would happen to your plush lifestyle if the lid blows off of our past business?" Mr. Black smiled as more sweat formed on Edelson's forehead. "I'm confident you'll do your best."

"Mr. Edelson?" A voice crackled from the phone on his desk. Given the dark subject matter, he welcomed the interruption.

"What is it, Amy?"

"There are two men here, and they insist on seeing you now. They said they were sent by Admiral Denning."

Black stood to his feet. "I'd best get to work. Remember what I said, Mr. Chairman. I don't think a man your age would last long in prison. And even if you did, think of the fun the inmates would have with an ex-fat cat like you."

With his words still hanging in the air, Mr. Black walked out the door. Edelson took a moment to regain his composure and then punched a button on his phone. "You can send them in now."

"Yes, sir.

Walking into the office, Sagus couldn't help but be impressed. The room, which was at least as large as his apartment on Earth, was crafted entirely of walnut. Expensive paintings hung on the walls, and beautiful sculptures adorned solid wood pedestals. Twenty feet above their heads an exquisite carving depicted knights poised for battle outside a towering medieval castle—as if the massive domed ceiling it was carved into wasn't impressive enough.

By contrast, Helljumper walked straight past the luxurious surroundings and took a seat without so much as turning his head. Edelson reached across the table and shook his hand.

"An honor to meet you, Captain." The career ODST smiled slightly.

"Chairman."

"And Lieutenant Sagus, I am glad to see that you've recovered." David shook the man's hand and took a seat next to Helljumper.

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to apologize for showing up so early." He shook his head and chuckled. "Slipspace is about as predictable as a woman."

Edelson smiled. "Believe me, I understand."

"But since we're here, we wanted to get right to it. There's no telling when O'Carrol is going to strike again."

"Indeed," the Chairman said nodding, "Just let me know what I can do to help. Anything at all." To Edelson's surprise, Helljumper immediately pulled a list from his pocket.

"For starters, we're going to need complete background information on the victims, as well as any records you have concerning their deaths."

"Those are matters you'll need to discuss with the civil authorities, gentlemen. I run a company, not a city." Helljumper took a folder out of his coat, removed a sheet of paper and sat it on the Chairman's desk.

"Sir, O'Carrol's actions may eventually compromise the UNSC's ability to prosecute our war against the Covenant. At stake is nothing less than the safety and preservation of the human race. Clearly then, this matter goes beyond civil jurisdiction. Admiral Denning has therefore given us complete authority regarding the apprehension of O'Carrol and, as you can read for yourself just above Denning's signature, you are to act as a liaison between your civil leaders and ourselves. To put it bluntly, you will use your influence and good name to grease the wheels of cooperation."

"Sir," Sagus said, looking at their host with genuine concern, "are you feeling okay? We can do this later if we have to." Blige Newton Edelson, CEO of StellarCorp and Chairman of Tethra's Industrial Board of Governors, took a deep breath and tried to keep his voice from shaking.

"No, I'm fine." He sucked in another lung full of air and managed a weak smile. "I'll make sure that you have full cooperation. I'm afraid that I have a meeting in a few minutes, so if you don't mind, I'll have Amy get everything together for you." Satisfied, the two visitors stood and took turns shaking the Chairman's hand. The moment the door shut behind them, Edelson picked up his phone and dialed a number.

Twenty kilometers away Philip Beerman, Lifford's Chief of Police, put down his crossword puzzle and looked at his beeping receiver. Only two people could call directly into his office, and one of them had left for Earth months ago.

Wonderful. "Hello?"

"Phil?"

Beerman sighed. "What do you need, Blige?"

"Two soldiers arrived this morning from Admiral Denning, and they're here to find O'Carrol."

"'Bout time. I guess you can sleep a little easier now."

"Well," Edelson said nervously, "I'm not so sure about that. I, um, have reason to believe that O'Carrol has information that, should they take her alive, could prove to be damning. Remember that bit of business we did eight years ago?"

Beerman nearly dropped the phone. "Dear God."

"They just left my office, and they should be coming to you soon." Edelson paused, searching for the right words. "We need this problem to go away, Phil. Do you understand what I'm asking, or do I need to spell it out?"

The Chief of Police opened his desk drawer, wrapped five sweaty fingers around a small, black pistol and contemplated his immediate future. At the moment, death seemed like a pretty sweet deal. Mere months before, his marriage had come to an abrupt end when his wife of fourteen years left for Earth in the arms of his best buddy. In the despair that followed, he had been sure that he could sink no lower.

He had obviously been wrong.

Now he faced a difficult choice. He could either bring his life to a brutal end while sitting in the office he had so thoroughly abused, or he could put the gun away and do his best to cover his old sins with fresh, bloody new ones. After deliberating less than a minute, he tossed the pistol back in the drawer and closed it quickly.

"We're damned men, Blige: damned for what we've done, and damned for what we're gonna do."

"Don't speak nonsense. We've done what we've had to—nothing more. Now calm down, do your job, and this is where it will end."

Beerman let out a despairing sigh. "No, this will end in Hell, Blige. It will end in flames."

Sean Flannery sipped a cold cup of coffee as he waited in the alley beside McLoughlin's pub. Downtown Lifford was not a place most people would be caught alone, even in the middle of the day; but then, at six foot-three and nearly two hundred and fifty pounds, Sean wasn't most people. Gusts of up to sixty kilometers per hour blew his shoulder length brown hair into a tangled mess, but the rain had finally stopped, and for that he was thankful. Heck, he was even thankful for the stiff wind: half an hour of standing in the blow had nearly dried his previously soaked clothing. But he was most thankful for the tall, skinny man slowly making his way down the alley towards him. Terrence was their most trusted informant—and from the look on his face, he had just hit the jackpot.

He stopped a few feet away, and leaned against the wall to Sean's right. Under different circumstances, the two old friends would have embraced in friendship. But public meetings were risky enough, and there was no need to advertise that you were conducting business. All the same, the informant couldn't wipe the smile off his skinny face.

"It's good to see you Sean."

Flannery nodded, and tossed his cup into the pub's filthy dumpster. "It's been a while. O'Carrol was beginning to suspect your untimely demise."

"An ugly mate like me?" Terrence scoffed. "They'd take one look at this mug and be overcome with sympathy. It'd be like shivvin' a mental patient, an' no one's got a heart that black."

Sean chuckled. "What've you got, Terry?"

"Oh, Sean, it's good. I'd tell you to sit down if you weren't standing in a bloody puddle." He reached into his coat and pulled out a small envelope. "It's all in here." Flannery grabbed the information and stuck it under his jacket.

"And just what is it?"

If possible, the informant's smile got even wider. "Everything you're gonna need. It seems that a certain someone is finally venturing outside the Palace," he said, using the popular term for the Industrial Palisades.

"Are you gonna tell me who," Sean said sarcastically, "or will I have to beat it out of you?" Terrence gave him the name, and Flannery's mouth dropped open.

"Are you absolutely certain about this?"

The thin man chuckled. "Would I be here if I wasn't?" Sean shook his head slowly as he tried to come to grips with what he'd just been told.

"What's this gonna run us, Terry? Information like that doesn't come cheap." A dark look came over the informant's face.

"I don't want any money. Just make sure that man meets justice." Moments before, the voice had been cheerful, even jubilant. Now it trembled with anger and inconsolable grief.

Flannery turned and looked at Terrence, who now had tears trickling down his face. Throwing caution to the wind, he grabbed his old friend by the shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. "Terry, you have my word. He will meet justice, and with the names of your children still fresh in his ears." Terrence wiped the tears from his face and clasped a hand on Sean's shoulder.

"Then I'll consider myself paid in full."

Something was wrong, and both Helljumper and Sagus knew it. Problem was, neither of them knew what. Their meeting with Phillip Beerman, Lifford's Chief of Police, had gone well enough. Sure, he came off as manic-depressive at best, but judging from the city the man worked in, that was understandable. More importantly, he had given them the name of a likely place to start their search: McLoughlin's pub. Beerman said the tavern was a rebel hangout, and since they were fairly sure that Lifford was O'Carrol's base of operations, they would more than likely find someone with information to sell.

Helljumper parked their car a few blocks from the pub and the two of them approached on foot. One dilapidated building after another lined both sides of the street; each a gutted corpse of a failed business, useful now only as shelter for the homeless. Desperate eyes leered from sidewalks, alleys and doorways. Children were everywhere; climbing out of windows, running in the streets and screaming in their mother's arms. Filthy clothing hung on malnourished frames as they began reaching towards the clean-shaven strangers with hopeful hands and hollow eyes. Blige Edelson's opulent office in the Industrial Palisades might as well have been in a different galaxy.

Turning onto the main street, they could see McLoughlin's just half a block away; and even though it was only six o'clock at night, the small pub was already packed and noisy. Helljumper walked under the faded red sign, pushed through the door—and the place fell dead silent. Thirty unfriendly eyes followed him and Sagus as they walked across the room and sat down in front of the bar. Hostility hung thick as fog, but if the locals were hoping to see fear in the two men's eyes, they were sorely disappointed.

Looking around, Helljumper immediately saw the truth of it: the Chief had set them up. Every man in the room was carrying a weapon, and even though they were standing in the middle of a tavern, there wasn't a drink in sight. Since running away would only get the party started quicker, Helljumper decided to carry on as planned. He turned towards the short, thin bartender and spoke in a clear voice.

"I'm looking for information about Cairren O'Carrol, and I'm willing to pay for it." Rising from the stool he'd been sitting on, the barkeep walked over and stood in front of them.

"Oh, you're willing to pay? Did ya hear that, mates: they're willing to pay! What are ya waitin' for then? Come, sell yer souls to the Devil to help the likes of these filthy UN spies!" Hate burning in his eyes, the bartender leaned forward and spat in Sagus' face. "You can both go to Hell."

Right there, surrounded by enemies, with a stranger's saliva dripping off his nose, David began to realize how much rage he had locked inside. As a prisoner on Erebus, he had suffered more than any living man at the hands of rebels; and as he looked into the smug, smiling face that leered in front of him, the cork finally popped.

Before Helljumper even realized what was happening, David leapt across the bar and grabbed the bartender by the throat. Consumed by white-hot rage forged during months of unspeakable torture, the ex-special forces soldier slammed the man into the wall and pinned him there, feet dangling off the floor. As shocked silence prevailed throughout the pub, Helljumper saw Sagus' free hand sweep towards the twelve-millimeter pistol in the small of his back.

"David!" he yelled to his suicidal partner, as the other fourteen men began reaching for weapons of their own. But Sagus' mind was someplace else—and his hand had just found the handle of his M6C. Helljumper was good—real good—but even he couldn't take on this many men single-handed. On the other side of the counter, David's pistol cleared his belt.

"Lieutenant Sagus!" This time the ODST Captain yelled with such authority that more than one rebel dropped his gun. Finally shaken from his fit of rage, David turned his head.

But it was too late.

Triggers were squeezed and guns thundered as Helljumper dove over the counter and tackled Sagus to the ground. Hot lead smacked into the dry wall above them with dull thumps, spraying chunks of plaster through the room like brittle, white shrapnel. Hell rolled onto his back and yanked out his pistol as three rebels jumped over the bar. With Helljumper calling the tune, flame blossomed from their weapons in a grim dance of light and color that began with gold, and ended in red. Bits of brain and bone exploded into the air and the three rebels tumbled to the floor in a twisted, grotesque heap. Caught in the deadly crossfire, the mouthy bartender swayed back and forth for a moment before adding his corpse to the pile.

With four of his best soldiers lying dead behind the bar, rebel leader Raddy Lang signaled for his men to stop firing and took a moment to assess the situation. The long, solid oak counter ran in an 'L' shape across the front of the pub, with a slight overhang on the back. It provided their enemy with a measure of safety, but staying there too long meant certain death; and if he knew it, he had to assume that they knew it as well.

"You have no chance of fighting your way out of here," he called out in the friendliest voice he could muster. "If you want to live, throw your weapons over the bar, and come out with your hands above your heads!" Of course, he had no intention of letting them go, but lying was easier than fighting.

"You boys ever heard of what happened on Erebus?" a voice suddenly boomed from behind the counter. None of the rebels answered, but everyone knew the story. "Well, fellas, that was us. We fought wild-men, attacked a walled city defended by Turpolev himself, saw Spartans die, and stood unshaken in the presence of a Demon! We've defeated terrors from Hell itself, and mark my words: we will defeat you!"

Raddy Lang, a rebel and ex-Marine who had fought the Covenant and UNSC in more systems than most people could name, was immune to such obvious psychological trickery. The young men standing around him, however, were spellbound.

"It's nothin' but desperate talk," Lang stated calmly. "Pay it no mind. Now start—" But the voice called out again, cutting him off cold.

"You have until the count of five to drop your weapons on the floor and raise your hands in the air! Every man who obeys will get to go home alive; every man who does not will get his brains splattered across the room!" It would have sounded like empty bravado if they hadn't been splattered with brains mere moments before. In the brief silence that followed, Lang was the only rebel able to breathe.

"One!" The word rang out like thunder, echoing off the walls and sending a chill through the ranks. But, to Lang's relief, not one of his men caved.

"Two!" Three pistols clanked loudly to the ground, and the rebel leader was no longer relieved—he was angry.

"Listen to me!" Lang cried out in desperation. "The next man who dares drop his w—"

"Three!" In spite of his threat, more guns fell to the floor; and now the rebels were down to five men. Raddy nearly burst out of his skin.

"Pick up your weapons now, or I'll put you down myself! Do it!" But nobody moved, and even though he would've gladly made good on his promise, there simply wasn't time.

"Four!" Lang steeled his nerves, pointed his gun in the direction of the voice and waited for the final count.

Suddenly, two flaming bottles were tossed at them from behind the counter. With every eye fixed on the deadly projectiles and every mind consumed with the possibility of burning to death, Helljumper and Sagus emerged and quickly made good on their grim promise. Not a single man still holding a weapon lived to hear the bottles, which contained only ginger ale, shatter harmlessly on the hardwood floor. Six terrified, shaking rebels remained in the mini-battlefield; eyes wide as saucers and arms reaching up towards God. Weapons raised and ready, the two UNSC men stepped from behind the counter.

"As I told you a couple of minutes ago," Helljumper said with surprising calm, "I'm looking for information." Grabbing a pale, thin man by the hair, he led him across the room and tossed him on top of the bar. Without taking his eyes off the rebel's face, he placed the barrel of his gun on the man's leg and began circling it above his kneecap. "What's your name, son?" Looking up at one of the heroes of Erebus, the young man almost drew a blank.

"B-Barry."

"Okay Barry, let me explain the rules. I'm going to ask questions, and you're going to answer them." He pressed the gun down hard on the kneecap, and Barry winced in pain. "Do I need to explain what will happen if I don't like your answers?" The rebel shook his head. "Good, then let's talk about a lady named Cairren O'Carrol."

Due to the recent rash of executive assassinations, no fewer than twelve security guards accompanied Blige Edelson whenever he left the Industrial Palisades. Presently, four rode in the car in front of him, four in a car behind and four accompanied him in his limousine. It was quite a show of force, but even so, the rich and powerful man could neither relax nor feel the least bit secure. After all, the others had employed excellent security guards, and look what happened to them. In the end, however, there was little choice. Blige had loose ends that needed tying and lingering evidence that should have been destroyed long ago—and it wasn't the sort of thing you trusted somebody else to do. The Chairman glanced at his wrist and winced. It was already seven o'clock in the evening, and that meant he wouldn't have enough daylight to return to the Palisades.

This just wasn't his day.

The small convoy stopped at the entrance of Edelson Manor while a massive iron gate slowly opened. As they began driving down the long, heavily wooded path to his former home, Blige viewed the grounds with fond memories. Sure, things had become a bit overgrown, but the land was still beautiful, and he missed the quiet of the country. Perhaps he'd move back when O'Carrol was dealt with. Then again, both of his girlfriends did live in town, and that would mean a lot of additional lying to Mrs. Edelson, not to mention a lot more travel. Oh well, he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Emerging from the trees, the cars entered a circular drive that swept in front of the house. Seeing the sprawling mansion for the first time in many months, Blige basked in its stately majesty. Far and away the most luxurious home on the planet, it nevertheless sat completely empty. As they finally came to a stop, the thought troubled him.

Maybe I will move back here. I could always make Jennifer and Maria servants or something.

A guard approached and he lowered his window.

"Systems show no sign of trespassing or tampering, Mr. Chairman."

"Thank you, Mead. Tell the men they can go inside. We'll have to stay the night, so you'll use the servant's wing, with the usual exceptions." The guard nodded and opened Edelson's door.

"Very well sir. Will you require a personal guard tonight?"

"No," he said, obviously annoyed by the question, "I've got some personal business to attend to." Why do you think we didn't bring Jen or Maria, you moron?

A stiff breeze greeted him as he walked across the yard and into the house. Separating from the guards, he headed down a long, dim hallway until he came to his personal elevator. Quickly tapping out the twelve-digit code, he stepped inside and was lifted gently to his gargantuan bedroom on the third floor. Alone—completely alone—for the first time in recent memory, he looked at the room he had spent nearly six months designing, and smiled. He'd made his decision—mistresses or not, he was moving back to this place.

Yeah, I could get used to this again.

A long, powerful arm came out of nowhere and pinned him against the wall by his neck. Attached to the arm was the largest woman he had ever seen—and her expression was as red and fiery as her hair. Several men came from here and there in the room, and their looks were just as unfriendly.

"O-O'Carrol?" he stammered, almost unable to speak. The woman nodded. "Do y-you really think killing me will hurt the UNSC? Tethra's economy won't be hurt by my death." She almost smiled.

"I don't care about the UNSC or your precious economy." Edelson's face twisted in a mix of fear and confusion.

"Then what do you want?"

"Justice, Mr. Chairman. I'm interested in justice." She shoved him onto his oversized bed and looked down with contempt. "Eight years ago, at the height of the Silent Plague, you horded food and money and did nothing while millions suffered."

Blige scoffed. "What exactly was I supposed to have d—"

"But," she said, her eyes dancing with anger, "that isn't why I'm here—and that isn't all you horded." He suddenly understood.

"Vaccines?" At the mention of the word, O'Carrol's four henchmen bristled with fury.

"How many people are in your family, Mr. Edelson? Four, right? You're ignorant wife and two boys?" He nodded. "And how many doses of vaccine did you have?" The Chairman began to squirm.

"Some, n-not many, but some of those vaccine doses w-were faulty. I didn't want to take a chance that—"

"You had twenty-four doses of vaccine, Mr. Edelson." She shook her head in anger, took a deep breath—and then exploded. "Twenty-four! To save three people, you sentenced twenty-one to death!"

"P-please, there's more to this than you under—" With the speed of a striking snake, O'Carrol smashed her fist into Edelson's fat face, shattering bones and almost dislodging his right eye.

"Don't you dare make excuses for the death of our families! How many millions died to save a few fat, spoiled murderers?"

Blige tried to speak, but his jaw would barely respond. Somehow fighting off the pain and fear, he managed to form muffled words.

"Pweeze, hon't hill me. I mow fings yat you hon't. You're right apout the faccines, but hares more, awot more."

O'Carrol thought for a minute and then nodded. "Show me."

On the edge of shock, Blige stumbled across the room and removed a picture from the wall, revealing a safe. He dialed the combination and retrieved an inch thick stack of papers, which he then handed to O'Carrol. She thumbed through the documents for a couple of minutes and then her mouth dropped open. Turning her eyes to the Chairman with something beyond rage, she was about break the man's neck when she remembered their promise to Terrence, their friend and informer.

Like her, he'd lost three girls, but her daughters had been in their teens and early twenties. His were all under five. Sean had promised that Blige Edelson would die with their names in his ears, and she wasn't about to make a liar out of him. She spoke, pausing a few moments between each name.

"Katie Marie. Elizabeth Ann. Kimberly Joy." Tears streamed down Sean's face as he remembered his friend's grief at losing his three girls. He'd never forget the day Terry found Kimberly dead. The little eight-month old baby looked like she was sleeping, and might at any moment open her eyes, smile as only a baby girl can, and drive away her father's tears.

Sean was shaken from his memories by the sound of a neck being snapped. Blige Newton Edelson was dead, but then, so were their loved ones. He and O'Carrol had managed to kill so many of the people they hated, but they had never brought back a single one that they loved. Kimberly Joy was still dead; her body was still cold.

And she would never smile again.

C.T. Clown

Court of Darkness (chapter three): Red Rage
Date: 13 October 2006, 8:33 am

Court of Darkness (chapter three): Red Rage

"Pity is treason"

--Maximilien Robespierre


Only a few minutes before, Jennifer's body had arrived in the trunk of her brother's car; bound by chains and wrapped like a mummy. Even though her death had come as a complete surprise, the body had yet to lose all of its warmth. Anywhere else, such haste would have seemed highly unusual, but to Tethra's numerous funeral homes it had become commonplace. Still, as Fenton Halloway looked into the eyes of the old man sitting in his office, he was reminded of something his father used to say. Fear rushes forward in panic, but grief reaches back in love. It wasn't hard to see which emotion enjoyed the upper hand in this situation.

"John," Fenton said with a gentle smile, "I think it's a beautiful choice, but that is a very expensive casket and there are other ways to go about this." The mortician let his words sink in a moment and then, in spite of his efforts to the contrary, spoke with a nervous tone. "Have you considered cremation?"

He shook his head. "No, Jen would never approve."

"I knew Jenny for over twenty years, John, and I'm sure she wouldn't want to be the reason you went bankrupt."

Looking down at the table, the elderly man shook his head again. "No, it ain't right. It just ain't right."

Fenton tried to think of something that would make John understand, but he came up empty. Ever since the Silent Plague burnt out eight years before, death brought more than just grief to the families in this community; it brought an all-consuming fear. Windows were boarded up and the streets were emptied before sundown as everyone hid behind their doors and locks. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, families started asking him to wrap their dead loved ones in chains or lock them away in steel coffins—all due to the absurd belief that the dead came back to life. It was enough to make him walk away from the whole business, except that he loved these people too much leave them in less caring hands.

But it was a load of rubbish, and who would know that better than him? Forty-two of his sixty years had been spent as a mortician, and he was yet to see a body get up and walk away. Sure, there had been strange occurrences since the plague ravaged the planet, but zombies did not even appear on Fenton's list of possible causes. Even so, he had recently spent a small fortune on cremation equipment in an effort to remove the symbol of their fear, if not the silly fear itself. Since cremation meant no body, and no body presumably meant no zombie, it seemed to be the perfect placebo.

But Halloway had underestimated just how deep the terror went. These people had become so fearful of the deceased that they ordered their lives differently to keep from offending them. Thus, they didn't see cremation as the elimination of the body, but rather as another way of angering the dead.

Gently taking the hand of his grief-stricken friend, Fenton decided to give it one last try. "Jenny was a good Catholic, wasn't she?"

"Yes, of course she was."

Halloway smiled. "Did you know that the Church lifted the ban on cremation nearly six centuries ago? I'm quite certain Jen wouldn't call into question hundreds of years of sanctioned doctrine."

John waved his head back and forth, tears forming in his eyes. "But you don't believe that they come back, do you Fenton?"

"You know that I don't."

"But I do, and it's something I can't ignore." John began to weep, and Halloway instantly wished he hadn't pressed the issue. "Do you think I like living this way? I haven't played cards or drank since Maggie died, and now I have to stop smoking that pipe Jenny hated so much."

"I know that, John, but—"

The usually gentle man slammed his fist down on the table, causing the mortician to jump. "Have you ever thought to ask me why I gave those things up?"

"No," he replied, slightly embarrassed, "I guess I haven't."

Fear flickered in the old man's eyes as he began to speak in hushed tones. "Maggie was one of the last to die of the plague, and that was before we started to lock our houses and come in before dark. One night, I returned from the pub to find my door open, and my house filled with a horrible smell." His voice began to tremble. "But I was drunk, so I collapsed on the couch without even bothering to find out why. I w-was," he stammered, "awoken in the middle of the night by a voice."

Halloway was incredulous. "You heard her voice?"

"No, it didn't sound much like her at all. But it sure looked like her, and it was wearing the clothes Maggie was buried in."

This was starting to go in a direction that Fenton wanted to avoid. He smiled and spoke kindly. "But, you said it yourself; you were drunk."

Reaching into his vest pocket, John pulled out a wedding ring—and Halloway nearly fell out of his chair. "But I wasn't drunk when I found this the next morning."

Eight years before, it had been John's wish that Maggie's wedding ring be buried with her—and it had been. Fenton had seen it with his own eyes.

"But how—"

"I just told you how!" He grabbed his ears like a frightened child. "I'll never get that voice out of my head! I'll never forget her words!"

"What did she say?"

"Th-that sh-she died because of the s-sins of men, and that vengeance would c-come." Tears flowed down John's face as he began weeping in earnest. "Don't you understand? She blames me! My drinking, my smoking, my gambling, my sins!"

Halloway reeled as if sucker punched. John was a lot of things, but he was no liar. The idea that he would come in to his office with a fake ring, or for that matter desecrate his wife's grave to get the real one, was even more far-fetched than the dead coming to life.

"John, regardless of what you saw or heard that night, you need to understand something. Maggie loved you as much as any wife ever loved a man, and her death doesn't change that one bit. If she really did whisper in your ear about sins and vengeance, I can assure you that it had nothing to do with your card playing or your pipe." Fenton reached across the desk, grabbed John's left arm and looked him straight in the eye. "Maggie was a good woman, and you were a good husband. She's not coming after you for revenge." John's eyes brightened. It had been so long since he'd heard anything resembling hope that he latched on to Fenton's words like a starving man grasping for bread.

"That may be," he said, wiping tears from his eyes, "But if she wasn't talking about me, who was she talking about?"

Philip Beerman had no illusions concerning his plans for this night. He knew that, contrary to popular depictions, suicide was neither romantic nor courageous. A romantic man would have followed his wife to Earth and fought to win back her affections: a man of courage would own up to his hellish lies, rather than choosing the easy out. In a way, however, suicide fit Phil like a glove. It was a supremely selfish act that would cap off a singularly selfish life.

Without bothering to turn on the light, he walked into his study and sat down behind a beautiful, solid oak desk. He pulled his service automatic out of his coat, and it sat cold and heavy in his sweat moistened hand. His fingers almost slipped as he chambered a round with an echoing, metallic clank. No need for a suicide note: who would read it? He'd never had any children and his wife was back on Earth, living with his best friend. With despair and guilt urging him forward, he released the weapon's safety and pressed the cold, steel barrel against his temple. Closing his eyes tight, he began to squeeze the trigger.

A lead slug exploded from a silenced barrel; searing the darkness with a gout of flame and slamming into Phil's wrist with a sickening thud. Pulverized muscle and bone splattered on Beerman's face, and the would-be suicide weapon fell from a hand that now dangled by two thin tendons. Blood spurted from severed arteries in thick, dark streams as a man emerged from the shadows.

"I thought policemen were supposed to know first aid," he stated coolly. "Just place your good hand under your upper arm and pinch it together beneath the bicep." Holstering his gun, the stranger reached over the desk and pointed. "Right there. That will shut off your brachial artery." Beerman followed the directions, and after a couple of tries, the blood stopped.

"See how easy that was? Now let's get your legs propped up." Walking behind him, the man pulled back his chair and placed Phil's feet on top of the desk. Apparently satisfied with his work, the stranger sat down on the other side of the desk and started dishing out advice like a school nurse.

"Don't look at it and don't think about it. Stare right into my eyes and take slow, deep breathes. That's it, just concentrate on me." After a few moments, Beerman calmed down and his breathing became normal. The stranger seemed pleased. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah," he said with a nod. "But why—"

"Because I can't question you if you're dead or in shock."

"Question me?" the suicidal man laughed. "And what if I don't want to answer?"

A smile snaked across the stranger's face; chilling Beerman to the bone. "You obviously came here to die, but you wanted it to be quick, right? You chose a bullet to the brain, but there are plenty of other ways to check out; many of them slow and unpleasant." He leaned back in his chair and the scary smile was gone, replaced now by a look of genuine understanding. "I know an awful lot about you Philip, and I don't think it will come to that. Who do you really have to protect?"

Phil's gaze fell to the desk. "Nobody. Nobody at all." He wasn't sure what was worse: facing the prospect of torture or having nothing left in his life worth suffering for. Maybe Judas felt this way. He sold his soul for money, and he wasn't worth anything either. He looked at the man, and as their eyes met, he almost smiled. "Who sent you?"

"Mr. Black."

"Never heard of him."

The man chuckled. "Oh, but he's heard of you. Philip Beerman, the hero of Tethra. The man who brought order to an entire planet by offering nothing more than hope."

"I offered lies."

"Yes, but you did it so well. Unfortunately, exploits from the past do not excuse failures of the present. Those two men sent by Admiral Denning weren't taken care of, even though they visited your office today. And, of course, O'Carrol is still alive and kicking as well. You've lost your edge, Phil, and now your tasks fall to me." A cruel grin stretched across his face. "You weren't even able to kill yourself. But don't worry, I'll see to that in a few minutes. First you need to tell me about O'Carrol."

The man's arrogance stirred anger in Beerman, but he dared not show it. For years he had held cowardice with one hand and selfishness with the other; and now, even as he faced certain death, he dared let go of neither. After a few moments, he replied through colorless lips.

"O'Carrol is like the wind: you hear of her being here, then there, but by the time you respond she's gone without a trace."

"You've never even come close?"

Beerman shrugged. "Once. Last month someone called in an anonymous tip. Said he saw a huge red-haired woman walking into a hotel around the corner from the Police station. Seven officers arrived almost immediately and stormed her room." Phil looked at the man hired to kill O'Carrol and smiled. "She slaughtered them with her bare hands."

"What makes you so sure it was her?"

"Well," Phil chuckled, "how many women on this planet could kill seven armed men without firing a shot? Besides, we have the video feed from their helmets."

The man's eyes brightened. "It's here?"

"In the bottom drawer of this desk." Beerman took a deep breath. "Now you know as much about her as I do."

The stranger eased out of the chair and once again palmed his silenced pistol. "You've been cooperative, Chief, so I'll make this quick. You want it in the brain or the chest?"

Phil pulled his legs down from the desk and sat up straight in his chair. "The brain. But first, could you at least tell me who you are?"

Two bullets whispered out of the pistol, slamming into Beerman's forehead and exploding the back of his skull like a firecracker inside a prize-winning tomato.

The man who had killed Colonel Ackerson, Admiral Kraft, and several heads of state, holstered his gun and walked around the desk. He opened the lower drawer, located the disk and placed it inside his black coat. Just before walking out the door, he turned to the late Phillip Beerman and smiled cordially.

"Wiley, Chief. My name's Wiley."

For the last year, anger had been a way of life for O'Carrol; but as she sat in her room poring over the documents she'd taken from Blige Edelson, a deeper, darker rage began to rise. Thus far she had been able to master her indignation, using it as a means to an end without losing touch with her humanity. But Cairren was not made of metal; she was flesh and bone like everyone else—and like everyone else, she had her limits. As she continued to read, each horrible fact stripped away another layer of the person she had been and put in its place a terrible, unflinching resolve. O'Carrol knew that she had attracted the UNSC's attention; but only as an elusive, tactically gifted rebel. Fact was, they had absolutely no idea who they were dealing with.

That was about to change.

She spoke into her COM with quiet urgency. "Sean, grab Connor and meet me in my room immediately."

Nearly half an hour later, O'Carrol finished talking and the two men stared at her in silence; almost unwilling to believe what she had just proposed.

"Cairren," Sean finally said, "I know that you're upset, but this is not our mission. This'll turn people against us, and it might even turn us against ourselves."

Connor nodded. "I'm with Sean. We can make the guilty pay without throwin' in with the Devil."

"After all they've done, you still pity them?" O'Carrol said, shaking her head in disbelief. "I suppose you'd pity a man holding a gun to your head as well."

"No," Connor replied, "but I won't burn the innocent along with the guilty; not while I still hope to have God on my side."

O'Carrol laughed. "Did God protect your family eight years ago?" Her eyes suddenly went cold and her voice dripped with poison. "Can he protect you from me now?"

As he watched the conversation unfold, Sean felt a growing unease. "There's only friends in this room," he said, looking at Cairren with open concern. "Let's not talk of spilling each other's blood, even in jest."

Ignoring his remark, O'Carrol leaned forward and looked at them like a farmer sizing up cattle. "You're both good men. If that weren't so, I'd have never brought you in with me. But you're not here because I need your advice or friendship; you're here as a means to an end. If you ever lose sight of that fact, I'll kill you before you have the chance to betray me." She sat forward, looking back and forth between them. "So then, are you both with me?"

Few things in the universe could put fear into Connor's heart, but as he looked at the woman sitting before him, it took all of his strength to keep from trembling. O'Carrol never spoke empty words; she never resorted to bravado. Connor knew that she would make good on her threats, but he also knew that he could never do what she was asking. Due to the greed and negligence of others, he'd lost a wife and four children during the Silent Plague. He'd joined O'Carrol so that he could fight for justice and thus honor their memories. There was a fine line between justice and revenge, and they had crossed it many times—but this time was different. This time it was nothing short of cold-blooded murder.

That left him but a single option.

Being a sane man, he knew that he stood little or no chance in a fight against O'Carrol. But Irish flowed thick and stubborn in his veins, and for one final time, he felt the thrill of the fight.

Springing to his feet, he snatched the pistol from his belt and fired it at the towering redhead—but she was too quick. Blurring forward, she somersaulted through the air and slammed into Connor's chest with two booted feet. The impact snapped his ribs like pencils and hurled his body violently into the wall. And just like that, the fight was over.

Like a fallen drunk, he tried to get to his feet, but O'Carrol placed her foot on his neck and forced him back to the ground. To Sean's horror, she pulled out her gun and leveled it at Connor's head.

"You still think God 's on your side? Where is he, Connor?" Her eyes danced with fire. "Maybe he keeps company with the wealthy. Maybe he doesn't like you anymore."

The condemned man actually smiled. "And maybe you're runnin' your mouth because you're afraid to pull that trigger." Connor shook his head in disgust. "Have you lost all dignity Cairren? The gun's pointed at me, but you're the one cursin' the Almighty like a fool! If you have any regard for me at all, shut up and be done with it already!"

She chambered a round, and Sean turned his head, unable to bring himself to watch. An instant later, her gun thundered; snuffing out the life of his best friend as if he were no more than a stray dog. With utterly dry eyes, O'Carrol walked back to the couch and sat down.

"How 'bout it, Sean?" she asked flatly—as if Connor's brains weren't littering the floorboards behind him. "You with me?"

Tears rolled down Sean's face as he balled his right hand into a fist and brought it up to his mouth. "Yeah, I'm with you. But Cairren," he said, rage burning in his eyes, "someday you'll answer for Connor's blood. God as my witness, when this is over, I'll put a bullet in you."

"When this is over Sean, you can use my gun to do it."

Wiley watched the video he'd taken from Beerman with an ever-widening smile. It contained footage from the helmets of all seven officers slain by O'Carrol—and it was breathtaking. The first few frames showed a slightly hunched woman who, despite her extreme height, looked unremarkable and even a bit frail. And then, an instant later, she sprang to life, dodging bullets as she fought back; literally killing with each and every blow.

It all made sense now. No wonder ONI wants you gone so badly. You're the one that got away.

He knew who this woman was, and he knew what she had done in the past. In a rare turn of events, Wiley realized that he was going after somebody much more skilled than himself, and that knowledge was more than a bit sobering. Cairren O'Carrol, which he now knew wasn't her real name, had survived assassination attempts from many capable and highly paid men. She was never surprised, never taken off guard and, as far as he knew, never even wounded.

Although Wiley understood that his clients could not risk telling him everything, there were some bits of information that, for him at least, could mean the difference between life and death. Mr. Black had knowingly withheld just such information, and that was something that he could not overlook. ONI officer or not, he would have to make an example of him.

But such niceties would have to wait. For now, he kicked back in his chair and started to watch the video again. He lacked only one thing: popcorn. That salty snack always seemed to make a good movie even better, and its absence was a crying shame.

Because this movie was awesome.

Although most thought them a part of Lifford, the Industrial Pallisades were actually located on a hill just outside the city limits. The large, gated community contained the corporate offices of Tethra's many weapons manufacturers, a park and several towering condominiums where owners and executives lived with their families. Of these opulent condos, Crown Heights was the largest and most—and that was saying something. Since it wasn't even six o'clock in the morning, almost all of its two hundred and ninety-four occupants in its seventy spacious units were sound asleep—including the many children and infants.

A large, black truck belonging to Epic Security was parked in front of the condominium, as it was every night. But unlike usual, there were no security guards inside. No, they were all back at their company's main building; riddled with bullets and far too dead to protect their wealthy clients. No matter. Given the size of the bomb sitting in the back of their truck, there wouldn't have been room for them anyway.

Like nearly everything else in the Pallisades, the massive condo was visible from just about anywhere in Lifford—a fact that brought Sean Flannery little comfort. Sitting on the roof of cheap hotel, he lifted his binoculars and then checked his watch. This was it. In a few moments, it would no longer be a matter of debate, planning, or conjecture: it would be done—and over two hundred men, women and children would be ripped apart as they lay in their beds. Could he actually allow this to happen? He remembered holding his own babies years before. He remembered their wide trusting eyes, and their frail little bodies.

Nausea came over him like a wave, and Sean bent over and spilled the contents of his stomach all over the roof.

What was he? A freedom fighter? A father? A terrorist?

What kind of man could sit back and watch the killing of innocents? Women. Children. Babies.

Using his sleeve, Sean wiped his mouth, raised his binoculars—and began throwing up all over again.

Sagus sipped cold coffee from a thin plastic cup and stared holes into the rotting wall before him. It was nearly six in the morning, yet he hadn't slept a wink all night –and it had nothing to do with the attempt on his life or the dangerous streets outside. For David, the danger lurked inside a twisted maze of memories that he dared not enter and tried his best to ignore. They were memories of Erebus; memories of Hell. What had happened to him on that planet was too horrible for the human mind to grasp; but like the Jewish Holocaust, it cried out for remembrance and memorial, for it was also too horrible to be forgotten.

It was an uneasy paradox, but he had managed to make it work—until his suicidal outburst the previous night. For the first time in his life, he had lost control while on duty, and it had nearly gotten both him and superior officer killed.

Unacceptable. Unforgivable.

He drained the cup and crushed it in a trembling fist. For six months David had told himself that he was sane; that he had escaped the clutches of Stephen Thanatos with his wits more or less intact. Sure, he had become somewhat withdrawn and suffered from recurring nightmares, but that was to be expected. What happened to him several hours ago, however, was not as easily set aside. He had blacked out for almost a full minute as his mind succumbed to a bottomless rage. Of those few moments, all he remembered was holding the bartender by the throat as reason returned in the form of Helljumper's booming voice. But it wasn't the barkeep's face he saw as he awoke; it was the smiling face of his tormentor. It was Thanatos.

For the first time in his life, he understood why people got drunk.

Sitting a few feet away, Helljumper watched the young man's agony silently unfold. And as much as it pained him to do it, he was about to make him feel even worse.

"David?" Sagus turned two sunken, red eyes towards the legendary ODST. "We need to talk about what happened."

Sagus shook his head. "There's no way you'd understand."

"Son, I was on Erebus too."

"You were there by choice. You had a mission, and you accomplished it." David turned his gaze back to the wall. "But I was tricked. I thought I was going Earth. After I landed, they bound my hands and feet, put me in a pitch-black room and left me for days without food or water. I hadn't yet learned to cherish neglect, so when the lights came on and four guys entered, I was relieved. They took turns beating me with large, rubber mallets. I'd pass out from the pain, they'd revive me and then start all over again. They did that for the entire day without asking any questions or making any threats. When it was finally over, they hung me on the wall by my wrists, put a bag over my head and plugged my ears. I'd come to look back on that first day of beatings with a sort of fondness." He chuckled humorlessly. "After that, it started to get bad."

"I have two hundred and thirty-eight scars on my body. Do you have any idea how it feels to have your chest or stomach cut open while you're awake? They'd feed me pieces of my own organs, and I was so hungry that I ate them as if they were steak. Some of it was done to obtain information about the creature I'd been transporting, but most of it was simply for pleasure. Thanatos got a real kick out of seeing people in torment, and I became his special project. But that's all I was: entertainment." Sagus nodded towards Helljumper. "You were there doing your job. I was there because he was bored. I was there because Thanatos wondered if a man could survive a rat chewing its way out of his flesh. I had no choice in it at all. I was helpless, so I had to take it. But when that little rebel spat in my face," David shook his head back and forth as rage twisted his face into a Halloween mask. "I was no longer helpless, and I wasn't about to become someone else's sideshow."

Helljumper took a deep breath, dreading what he was about to do all the more. Sometimes I hate this job. "We need to get you back to Earth, David. I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Sagus said, staring at the floor. "So am I. Maybe the Admiral can still—"

David stopped short as a tremor rattled violently through the building, followed an instant later by what sounded like deep, rolling thunder. Since the there were no windows, both men ran out the door and stared slack jawed at the huge, fiery cloud billowing into the sky over the city. Somehow Helljumper knew that something had just changed. If indeed this was the work of O'Carrol, it was more than another attack on Tethra's industry: it was a message—and it was written it blood.

Halfway across town, a call was placed to The Lifford Daily News, the city's only major newspaper. The voice was angry and female.

"This is Cairren O'Carrol. I take full responsibility for the bombing this morning in the Pallisades, but I accept none of the blame. That belongs to the UNSC, ONI and all the wealthy criminals who have grown rich off our suffering. Decades ago, I was the leader of a group known to you as the Red Rage. It was a guerrilla element used by ONI as a weapon against the human enemies of the UNSC. Well, I am no longer under the oppression of ONI or the UN, but I want them both to know that the Red Rage and its leader have returned. I personally orchestrated the collapse of three powerful rebel governments, and Tethra's week rulers will fare no better. I give them this ultimatum: surrender power and reveal the truth about the Silent Plague or you and your families will die. Anybody unwilling to help me will be seen as a friend to this corrupt government and therefore an enemy. Consider this your only warning. The blast this morning in the Pallisades killed many people, including women and children—and it will only get worse. Whatever happens, do not pity them. They heaped judgment upon themselves with bloody hands, and it is only fitting their innocent suffer their fate as well.

If this message in its entirety is not immediately made available to the people of Tethra, the Daily News will be a pile of bloodied concrete before the day is through."

Of course, some concrete had already been bathed in blood and some innocents had already suffered the fate of the guilty. As Sean Flannery watched the fire he had kindled through the blur of his tears, he had few doubts about his own guilt. O'Carrol talked of pity as if it were treason, but what would they become without it? Would they be any better than those they fought? Would they even be able to tell?

Using a fire escape ladder, Sean climbed down from the hotel's roof and met twp men in the parking lot. He pulled a black automatic out of his coat and chambered a round, and the rest of them followed suit.

"Have you seen them yet?" he asked, glancing over towards a door at the end of the building.

The henchman nodded. "Yeah, they came out for a moment after the explosion. One has light hair, and the other dark, just like they said."

"Remember, she wants them alive. Don't fire your guns unless absolutely necessary." Without a moment's hesitation, Sean walked up to the door and kicked it as hard as he could, and knocking it clean off its hinges.

A blonde man sat on a couch in the middle of the room, and Sean rushed forward and shoved the pistol in his face.

"Where's the other one?" he yelled, as his lackeys began searching the apartment.

A voice answered from behind. "I'm right here," He turned to see a man pointing a gun at his head from just inside a bathroom.

"Heard you were lookin' for O'Carrol," Sean said, as the other two turned and aimed their weapons at the man who had to be Helljumper. "That true?"

If the man was scared by the show of force, he didn't show it. "Yeah, we're looking for her," he replied with unnerving calm. "You here to help us?"

Sean smiled. "If you cooperate. You'll have to give up your weapons and wear a blindfold." At the mention of the blindfold, Sagus bristled.

Helljumper merely shook his head. "I don't think you'd survive trying to put a blindfold on my partner, and if you lay so much as a finger on my gun, you'll be too dead to lead us anywhere." The legendary ODST smiled—and Sean's mouth went dry. "Son, I sure hope you have a plan B."

C.T. Clown

Court of Darkness (chapter four): Aimee and the Clown
Date: 3 November 2006, 10:30 am

Court of Darkness (chapter four): Aimee and the Clown

Jarred awake by the blast, people poured from their homes to find smoke rising over the Pallisades like a guilty fog. Sirens blared as the crowd stood silent and still—save for the shivering. Few had taken the time to grab a coat, and their thin pajamas and robes were no match for the cool morning air. Parents who had brought children quickly realized their mistake and covered innocent eyes with trembling hands. Body parts were everywhere: lying in the street, hanging from trees and even jutting out of the wreckage like grotesque props for a low-budget movie.

This was nothing like the evening news.

Amidst the despair and chaos, firefighter Brian Fogarty ran from the rubble cradling a two year-old's blackened body and screaming for a paramedic. The small child convulsed violently, but he held her tight; whispering words of comfort as his tears fell on her bloody face. A moment later, the convulsions stopped, the body relaxed, and the little girl's agony came to an end. Gently lowering her lifeless frame to the pavement, the man pulled off his gloves, held her tiny head in his hands and wept. She had died in agony; writhing in the arms of a complete stranger. It was no way for a two year-old to go; it was no way for anybody to go.

A Protestant minister as well as a firefighter, Brian had seen tragedy from all sides—but this was different. Someone had deliberately blown up the Crown Heights condos; and that someone must have known that the building was full of young children. The government would call this an act of terrorism. Terrorists would call it a necessary sacrifice in their fight for freedom. But as Brian gently closed the eyes of a dead and broken little girl, he knew that both labels rolled far too easily off the tongue. What do you call something that burns children alive, butchers women and makes no effort to discriminate between the guilty and innocent? That was easy: evil.

And he didn't need his seminary education to figure it out.

Several kilometers south in a rundown hotel, the sirens amounted to little more than background noise. Helljumper stood just inside a bathroom door, his weapon leveled at the large man holding a gun to his partner's head. Two additional intruders stood near the far gray wall, pointing their guns at the ODST Captain and acting extremely nervous.

Looking at the one sitting on the couch next to David, Helljumper smiled. "Your men aren't as tough as you," he stated flatly. "They're standing over there wetting their pants and hoping to God that you'll handle this for them."

Although Sean would have liked to dismiss such talk as mere taunting, he knew the ODST spoke the truth. Both of his men were new recruits who, despite their claims to the contrary, had probably never pointed a gun at anything more threatening than an empty can. Seeing the man standing before him, he realized how big a mistake he had made by bringing rookies. In many ways, this confident soldier reminded Sean of O'Carrol—and that gave him more than a little pause. But unlike the men shaking behind him, he knew how to keep his feelings hidden.

Swallowing his doubts, he returned Helljumper's grin and pressed the cold barrel hard into David's temple. "Tough talk will only dig your partner's grave. If you kill me, I'll die holding a dead man."

The ODST shook his head. "That's one heckuva plan 'B', kid." Seeing David's left hand moving slowly towards the knife strapped to his side, Helljumper decided to kick the sarcasm up a notch. "What's plan 'C', suicide? You sure wouldn't be much without O'Carrol looking out for you. I'm kind of surprised she'd send you out alone. You know," he said, his voice dripping with mock concern, "this might be her way of getting rid of you."

In a sudden, fluid movement, David batted the gun away from his head with his right hand and swung a combat knife around with his left—but the big man was too fast. Jumping out of the weapon's path with amazing speed, Sean clamped a powerful hand on Sagus' upper-arm and tossed him violently to the floor.

On the other side of the room, the nervous henchmen tried to find their triggers as Helljumper moved into firing position, found his own trigger with no trouble, squeezed—and his gun jammed. It seemed as if time itself slowed down to watch as the rebel pistols boomed and a bullet slammed into Helljumper's head; splattering blood across the bathroom door like thick red paint and spinning him around in a grotesque about-face. David watched in horror as the legendary ODST's body collapsed to the floor like a dropped marionette.

Sagus tore his eyes away from his fallen friend just as the big man rose from the couch and, flanked by his newly confident lackeys, began moving towards him. Scurrying to his feet, he found himself backing into a corner; once again alone and beyond help—but not helpless. Stopping abruptly as his shoulders touched the converging walls, David gripped his combat knife and, for the second time in less than a day, released the reigns of sanity and succumbed to a horrible, bottomless rage.

Governor Donald Sisson ignored the phone ringing on his big, solid oak desk, leaned back in his chair and tried to relax. After spending the entire morning answering questions and releasing statements to the press, he decided that he had earned a break.

Since Tethra was one of Earth's colonies, it was not ruled by a sovereign government, but rather by a governor under the authority of the UN. Although Don had held that high office for nearly fourteen years, today it was different. It was no secret to him or his superiors back on Earth that the real leaders on Tethra were the industrial owners and executives. They made sure Sisson had a fat bank account and a nice house, and he made sure that policy never got in the way of large profits. It was a fine tradition that had existed uninterrupted for decades.

Until now.

First, he got word that Blige Edelson—the CEO of StellarCorp and the de facto leader of Tethra—had been killed while visiting his old home. Normally, the new Chairman of the Industrial Board of Governors would have inherited his position as "consultant", but half of the men on the shortlist to succeed Edelson had died that morning in the Crown Heights explosion. And, just when he thought it could get no worse, he learned that Lifford Police Chief Philip Beerman had been found dead in his home.

It would be weeks before the Industrial Board appointed new leadership, and until that time he, the Honorable Don Sisson, would have to make honest-to-God decisions for the first time in his career. And given the fact O'Carrol had just declared that Sisson and his entire government were enemies and targets of the rebel resistance, his decisions would have to be good.

Sometimes, life just sucked.

A flustered female aide barged into his office holding a small note as if it were lit dynamite. "Sir, I've been trying to contact you for over an hour."

"I've been busy." She handed him the note—and his face turned pale. "Mr. Black?"

"He's been calling all morning, and he sounds upset. Why weren't you answering—"

"That'll be all, Missy," he said, giving her a stern look. She turned on a heel, and walked out without a word. Looking carefully at the note, he dialed the number and tried to calm himself down.

It rang only once.

"Governor Sisson?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry Mr. Black. I'd have contacted you sooner, but as you can imagine, things are pretty chaotic."

The man on the other line grunted. "I suppose you're feeling vulnerable, sitting in that thin-skinned building in the middle of downtown Lifford. That's O'Carrol's playground, you know." He knew. "I hear you've considered breaking our agreement. For your sake, I hope I've heard wrong."

As Don searched for a reply, his pulse pounded in his ears. "Well, I, um, I was just going over all our options."

"And?"

"A-and," Don stuttered, "I-I don't know. This isn't just some rebel. This is Red Rage and that means O'Carrol is Aimee Peal."

Mr. Black let out a disgusted sigh. "And you think that's news to me? I've known O'Carrol's identity for months, Governor Sisson. This changes nothing."

Hardly able to believe his ears, Don momentarily forgot to be scared. "Changes nothing? Peal overthrew governments that had fortifications and standing armies! Do you honestly think we are prepared to deal with her?" Sisson scoffed. "No, I say we try to open negotiations and consider giving in to at least some of her demands."

"You do? And which demands would those be? Handing over control of a planet brimming with weapons and classified technology to a rebel element? I suspect the UNSC would take a rather dim view of that. Or maybe you were thinking about telling the good people of Tethra that their families died to make you rich." It was Mr. Black's turn to scoff. "Do you think you'd find forgiveness, Governor?"

Don sighed. "No, but I don't want to sit around waiting to die either."

"You won't die. O'Carrol's days are numbered. She won't rush into things. It isn't her style. No, She'll take her own sweet time—and time is something she doesn't have."

Don wanted to laugh, but settled for rolling his eyes. He'd heard predictions of O'Carrol's demise almost daily for the last year, yet she was still very much alive. "You sound pretty sure about that."

"I am. You just keep your head down for a few days, and let me take care of the rest. Oh, and let me make something clear. If you break our agreement for any reason at all, I'll punch your ticket to Hell so fast that you won't have time to say 'oops'. You have a nice day, Governor."

As Mr. Black clicked off his COM, he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He'd met kids with more common sense than the idiot he'd just talked to. But then, middling intelligence was one of the prerequisites for being governor of Tethra, and by that measure at least, Donald Sisson excelled.

Sitting in the back of his limousine in the northwest corner of the Pallisades, Mr. Black watched smoke rising into the air several kilometers to the south. Due to safety concerns, he had avoided the area all morning, but like most intelligence officers, he possessed an almost childlike curiosity—and it was not satisfied with seeing mere smoke. He pressed a button on the cherry wood panel beside him.

"I think it's time we had a closer look at the blast area, Hendricks."

"Very well, Sir." The powerful engine came silently to life and Mr. Black felt a slight lurch as the car was put into gear. But before they'd traveled a meter, the front window shattered and his driver's head exploded; covering the thick glass between them with blood and brain fragments. With no time to think, he dropped to the floor and fumbled for his pistol—and heard his COM begin to beep.

"Hello?"

"Good morning, Mr. Black."

"W-Wiley?" he said, hoping to God that he was wrong. He wasn't.

"Open the door and step out of the car."

The ONI officer actually laughed. "You've lost your mind! Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?"

"I'm dealing with the man filling my crosshairs with his head." The voice was cold as death. "Start moving now or join your driver."

Sitting up slowly, Mr. Black straightened his expertly tailored black suit and exited the car.

"Very good. Now put your hands in your pockets and walk slowly up the street."

As he started moving, he silently cursed the lack of people and traffic. "Son, you just made the biggest mistake of your life."

"It's your mistake that brings us here, Mr. Black. You withheld vital information regarding O'Carrol. Your lack of candor could have gotten me killed."

"That's what this is about?" the ONI officer scoffed. "So? Now the whole planet knows that O'Carrol was the leader of Red Rage. Is Wiley the Great afraid of a woman?" He chuckled, trying to mask his growing dread. "Maybe I overestimated you."

"The planet might know who she is, but I know what she is—and that is what you failed to disclose when I was hired."

"That information was classified."

"Not from me; not when I'm being paid to eliminate her." Wiley paused for several seconds and then spoke as a teacher would to a flippant student. "I don't think you grasp the enormity of your error, Mr. Black. My relationship with my clients is necessarily based on trust. It's what keeps me alive."

"Are you trying to tell me that you're not going to do the job?"

Wiley sighed. "I'll still do the job, but it's going to cost you a lot more than we originally agreed."

These guys are all the same. "Fine. What do you want?"

"An arm or a leg. I'll let you choose which one."

"What?" he asked, as the inside of his mouth turned to cotton.

"It's not that complicated, Mr. Black. It's going cost you either one of your arms or one of your legs."

"Now just wait one minute, you punk! You're working for me!"

"That's right," he replied icily, "I'm working for you, but you screwed up. You broke trust and it's gonna cost you dearly."

Beads of sweat formed on Mr. Black's forehead as he scanned the rooftops and windows all around him and came up empty.

"Choose now, or I'll be forced to choose for you. You're right-handed, correct?" Wiley chuckled. "That's something you ought to take into consideration."

Mr. Black checked the block-long building to his right, but he couldn't see a single entrance. By contrast, the opposite side of the street had plenty of doors and even a few narrow alleyways. Could he make it? Once again, he looked all around for his tormentor, and once again, he found nothing.

"Time's up."

With those awful words still ringing in his ears, the ONI officer tore for the other side of the street like a spooked horse—hoping to get away; to somehow make him miss. This day, however, fate and irony walked hand-in-hand, and such haste would prove wasted. Indeed, Mr. Black had chosen Wiley for one reason and one reason alone: he was the best. He had gone to great expense to hire an assassin who could finish a tough job; an assassin who was relentless; an assassin who didn't miss. As an explosive round slammed into his right shoulder and performed an instant, messy amputation, one thing was made abundantly clear.

He had chosen well.

Smiling never came easy for Benny Gunderman, but as he sat on the couch across from O'Carrol, it was difficult to keep a straight face. After months of taking orders from lesser men who lacked the will and courage to act, he was finally getting his due. Sure, Connor O'Neill had been a nice enough guy, but he didn't mourn his passing. Not only had it come as fair punishment for betrayal, but it had also led to Benny's speedy promotion. And while he might not be as brutish as Sean or as smooth as Connor, he had something that both of them lacked: the will to strike at their enemy without hesitation or remorse.

"Yes," he said nodding, "I think it's brilliant Cairren, but why wait?" Benny finally allowed himself a smile. "Why not give me a few lads and have it done tonight?"

O'Carrol scowled. "Because we're not mindless fools looking for nothing more than bodies and blood, you idiot! Everything we do has its time and purpose." She shook her head and for a moment regretted killing Connor. Only the beep of his leader's COM spared Benny a further dressing down.

"What is it?"

"Sean just came in."

Finally. "Good. I'll be right down."

The towering redhead left the room and Gunderman followed behind like an obedient dog. After going down two flights of stairs and through half a dozen doorways, they entered the large, main floor gathering room.

Sean sat in a soft chair, holding an icepack to his swollen face. In the years she'd known the massive Irishman, O'Carrol had never seen him bruise anything but his knuckles during a fight. The man sitting before her, however, had taken a serious beating.

For the second time in ten minutes, Benny had to fight off a smile.

She didn't even bother to sit down. "You were gone all day! What happened?"

"We had to kill Helljumper," Sean spoke through swollen lips, "but Sagus is in the holding room."

O'Carrol's eyes brightened at the news. She'd never expected them to take the legendary ODST Captain alive in the first place. "That'll do fine, Sean. Where's his body?"

"We had to leave it."

"You what?"

Sean didn't even blink. "You wanted the other guy alive, right? Well, that's what it cost us. After we shot Helljumper, the three of us went after Sagus." He shook his head in disbelief. "I've never seen anything like it. He fought like a crazed animal. If I hadn't rushed Dale to a hospital, we'd have lost him." Flannery's gaze fell to the floor. "Shane didn't make it. I did all I could, but Sagus was just too tough."

"And you didn't go back for the body?" O'Carrol threw her arms up in disgust.

It was the first time Sean Flannery had ever seen her this concerned about an enemy, and part of him enjoyed it. "Why are you so worried about this guy?"

"Because," she hissed, knocking the icepack out of his hand and stooping to get in his face, "Helljumper is somebody you should worry about." She stormed out, leaving both men behind.

Benny picked up the bag of ice, handed it back to his fellow leader and sat down on the couch.

"Thanks." Sean said, realizing that it was the first useful thing he'd ever seen the little rat accomplish. "So I hear you got Connor's position."

Gunderman nodded nervously. Sean Flannery was the biggest man he had ever seen, and Connor O'Neill had been his best friend. "Yeah, she told me a few hours ago."

Sean grunted. "I guess there was no use in waiting until his body got cold. Anyway, there's something I need you to do, and you'll have to hurry to make it back by dark."

"We never avoided the darkness before," the little man said nervously.

While at the hospital, Sean had watched non-stop coverage of the Crown Heights blast. Images of dead children, weeping family members and bewildered orphans were forever etched in his mind. He looked over at the naïve rookie and spoke ominously.

"If you know what's good for you Benny, you'll avoid it now."

With his arms chained to the wall above him and his dangling feet shackled to the floor below, David watched helplessly as a man approached with a long, thin piece of metal in his hands. He was alone today, and that meant he wanted to have some fun—and for Stephen Thanatos, nothing was more fun than somebody else's pain.

"Do you know what this is, David? Hundreds of years ago, they used this to insert probes into a patient's body. But, since it's little more than a hollow tube, you can use it to insert pretty much whatever you can fit inside." The former ONI scientist smiled. "Want to guess what I put in there?"

Like so many other times in the past weeks, Sagus felt the icy grip of fear take hold of his already traumatized body.

"They're known as dermestes maculates, but personally, I think 'flesh eating beetles' paints a more vivid picture, don't you? " David screamed as Thanatos made a hasty incision and plunged the tube into his flesh; injecting the hungry little insects into his abdomen. Skin peeled off his wrists as he pulled against his chains; maddened by the sheer idea of what was happening.

And then the real pain began.

David awoke in an empty white room; alone, disoriented and screaming at the top of his lungs. Both hands were cuffed to the back of the steel chair he sat in, and he didn't have to look to know his legs were bound as well. His heart continued to race as sweat rolled down off his forehead and stung his eyes.

He hated dreams. Stephen Thanatos may have died on Erebus, but he was alive and well in David's nightmares.

A door swung open and he watched with sleepy detachment as a huge red haired woman entered the room. She began looking him over, and it was only then that Sagus realized that he was covered in cuts, bruises and dried blood.

"Are you ONI Lieutenant David Sagus?"

He looked up, but said nothing. Many months before, he had vowed to never answer another question under threat—and David didn't make empty vows.

"Go ahead and be a hero, but if you don't talk, I'll put you through more pain than you could ever imagine."

David couldn't help but laugh. "Then you've got you're work cut out for you, ma'am. The sooner you get started, the better."

Now it was Cairren's turn to smile. This guy's every bit as tough as Sean said. Moving faster than Sagus' eyes could follow, she smashed her fist into the side of his head so hard that his cheek split open. David felt like he'd been hit by a truck, not a woman who had to be in her forties—and then something else hit him just as hard: the truth. He spit out a mouthful of blood and then looked at her as if for the first time.

"Let's try again. Were you sent by ONI?"

"That's quite a question coming from you. You know, I've never met anyone who could move that fast." He smiled. "Well, maybe Chuckles, but I didn't have any eyes at the time so you'll forgive me if I didn't notice." Sagus saw her face change at the mention of the Spartan's name, and his suspicion was confirmed.

He laughed and then looked at her as if sharing an inside joke. "And you asked if I was sent by ONI?"

O'Carrol's face turned red with anger. Grabbing his shirt just above his chest, she ripped it off—and nearly fell over from the shock. Deep, horrible scars were everywhere, covering his torso front and back like some evil work of art.

Sagus chuckled humorlessly. "Kinda hard to find a place to work, isn't it?"

"My God," Cairren said, shaking her head back and forth, "who did this to you?"

"Stephen Thanatos."

O'Carrol's face softened. His pain somehow touched what was left of her humanity, and that reminded her, if for only a moment, that she hadn't always been a monster. "Erebus?"

"Yeah." The cocky smile disappeared. "But at least I made it out alive. Chuckles died saving me, and now Helljumper …"

Tears began filling David's eyes, and O'Carrol saw something familiar in his face—something that made her shudder. His outward expression was a picture of the way she'd felt inside for years—even before the plague. After all this time, she finally found someone who understood—an ONI agent who had been sent to kill her.

"So Chuckles died on Erebus." She stated matter-of-factly, all threat and anger gone from her voice. Like everyone else, she'd heard about the events on that awful planet, but the UNSC never reported Spartan casualties. It just wasn't good for morale.

Cairren turned, and looked at the ground as pictures from her so-called childhood flooded through her brain. Back then, she was Aimee Peal, not a monster named O'Carrol. She'd met Chuckles on the very first day—and that was the last day anybody teased either of them about their bright red hair. It cost him nearly a month of harsh punishment, but he established that he was nobody to be messed with; and that went for his friends as well.

By the time she looked back up at Sagus, she knew she wouldn't torture him. He'd suffered enough, and although she'd become a monster, she still did not derive pleasure from the pain of others. No, he would die quickly—she owed Chuckles that much. Turning around, she pulled a pistol from the small of her pack, chambered a round and aimed it squarely between David's eyes. She began squeezing the trigger—but stopped as the door flew open and Sean ran into the room.

"For the love of God Cairren!" he said, shooting Sagus a harsh look, "Will you stop turning off your COM?" He handed her a small receiver. "It's Benny, and he says he'll only talk to you."

"I though Benny was with you."

"He was," Sean said, suddenly nervous, "but I sent him back for that ODST's body."

O'Carrol lifted the device to her ear. "Hello?"

"Hello, Aimee."

Her blood ran cold as she realized the voice on the COM wasn't Benny's—not by a long shot.

Several kilometers away in a small, rundown hotel, Benny Gunderman looked up at the man holding a combat knife to his throat and wished to God that he had never become a rebel. Bio-foam oozed from a hole in the man's head where his right eye should have been. Combined with the dried blood saturating his hair, he looked as if he were wearing a Halloween costume.

"You started a fight you won't survive, Miss Peal—a fight none of you will survive." Helljumper waited for his words to sink in and then spoke with pure venom. "I'll be seeing you soon."

C.T. Clown

Court of Darkness (chapter five): Kill Switch
Date: 14 December 2006, 4:22 pm

Court of Darkness (chapter five): Kill Switch

Justice. It is often portrayed as a beautiful woman wearing a blindfold and holding scales—but what if that image is all wrong? What if justice is actually terrifyingly ugly and can see everything? What if it doesn't use its rotting hands to hold scales, but rather to tear the guilty apart like a kid pulling the limbs off a grasshopper? And what if it scraped against your house each and every night; whispering your name tonelessly through dead and decaying lips?

What if you lived on Tethra?

It came as only a rumor at first; like a gentle breeze before a hurricane, whispering horror and destruction into the ears of the wary. Among the children, nightmares became epidemic—and only hardened skeptics could ignore their eerie similarities. Sinners settled their business with God, mothers hugged their kids a little longer, and dogs barked day and night at a sinister, invisible foe.

In the spring of 2544, a mysterious plague swept through Tethra and the nightmares became reality. Beginning in the city of Lifford, it struck the poorest neighborhoods first and then spread through the dense, urban environs like flames through dry timber. Cries of mourning filled the air day and night as Death came first for the very young and the arms of countless mothers ached with emptiness. Health officials tried to set up quarantines, but their efforts were confounded by the fact that the plague had no discernible symptoms. About fifteen hours after the contagion entered the body, the brain would abruptly cease functioning and the victim would collapse. No sores, no nausea, no bleeding and no pain: just death.

During the first days of devastation, Tethra descended into chaos as millions took to the streets in a campaign of looting and violence unprecedented in human history. But just when it seemed that anarchy would prevail, Lifford Police Chief Philip Beerman devised a plan that almost single-handedly restored order to the planet.

In a savvy mix of media and muscle, he managed to broadcast a message of reason and calm, while simultaneously placing the planet's meager armed forces in all the right places. Within days the chaos abated, and Beerman was hailed as a hero. The following week, it was he who announced to the masses that, against all odds, they had managed to produce a vaccine. It was he who hammered out the complex distribution plan that would get doses on the street twice as fast as others had thought possible. It seemed that large scale devastation would be averted after all.

But Death had yet to play its hole card.

When Tethra's powerful upper-class saw the Silent Plague invading their plush, secure existence, they became desperate; and in the eyes of a corrupt official, wealth and desperation went together like peas and carrots. Deals were floated, fine print was agreed on, and cash was exchanged—and just like that, a life-saving vaccine became nothing more than an extremely valuable commodity. Philip Beerman, the Hero of Tethra, again took to the airwaves and, utilizing the same confidence and charm that calmed the planet just days before, lied to the impoverished masses. With a trembling voice and compassionate expression, he explained that the vaccine had turned out to be ineffective.

In the end, wealthy families bought at least three vaccinations per person. The poor received nothing.

Betrayed and abandoned, Tethra's working class was devastated, losing a staggering seventy percent of their population. By the time the virus burned itself out, bodies of men, women and children were piled in the streets like rotting sandbags, five and six layers high. But where the poor saw only death and sorrow, the rich saw a business opportunity. Mass graves were dug outside the cities and—for a modest fee—grief-stricken survivors could have their loved ones plowed under without memory or marker. However, as the warm, soft soil opened wide to embrace the fallen millions, there was something that the rich did not know and the guilty had completely overlooked. Something that could not die, would not forgive and had no concept of mercy or compassion.

Can a vendetta be born in a grave? Deep within the pitch black of Tethra's moonless nights, the court of darkness answers through decaying lips and toneless whispers. Listen closely: does it whisper your name?

Waves of pain coursed through Helljumper's head with every heartbeat; blurring his vision and nearly causing him to pass out. After closing the channel to O'Carrol, he let the COM fall to the floor and glared at the little man before him with his remaining eye. Pressing the combat knife hard against the pale skin on the rebel's neck, he spoke in a deep, angry growl.

"There's a lot of blood in here. Is Sagus dead?" Darkness lurked outside the hotel room's open door with pregnant menace, and Benny Gunderman began to get a very bad feeling.

"No," the rebel said, shaking his head as much as the razor-sharp blade allowed, "He's with O'Carrol. He's alive."

Helljumper had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth, but he had no doubt David could have survived. Men simply didn't come any tougher than Sagus. "Take me to him."

"Now?" The rebel shook his head in terror. "No! We c-can't go in the dark!"

The ODST pulled the knife away from the rebel's neck, slipped it into it's sheath and palmed his pistol. "I guess we'll have to use a flashlight. Now lead the way."

Benny looked at the disfigured man in front of him, and then at the blackness outside the door—and his brain decided that panic was the only rational choice. Adrenaline flowed into his veins, his heart raced and his mouth became so dry that his tongue refused to work. But his legs worked just fine, and moving faster than at any other time in his life, he ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Minus an eye and nearly out of his mind with pain, the ODST made the transition from impatience to wrath almost instantly. He smashed his black boot into the door, busting the jam into splinters and nearly tearing it from its hinges. The whimpering rebel cowered in the bathtub; hugging his knees like a grade schooler in a tornado drill.

Grabbing the man's collar, Helljumper lifted him out of the tub and hurled him into the living room. The rebel jumped to his feet—but the ODST was waiting, and the same boot that splintered the bathroom door collided with Gunderman's chest, knocking him backwards into the front door. Benny collapsed like a dropped doll, and his head smacked the floor between the slightly opened door and the jam—and in the silent instant that followed, he heard it.

Somewhere in the inky black darkness outside, boards creaked as something drew closer. A putrid odor assaulted his nose and a voice—a whisper—unlike he had ever heard hissed in his ear.

Benneeee Gundermaaan. Benneeee Gundermaaan.

As terror's icy fingers clawed at his sanity, something began pushing against the other side of the door and reality became a living, hissing nightmare. Embracing panic with every fiber of his being, he jumped to his feet, slammed the door and ran toward Helljumper like a child running to his mommy after a bad dream.

Of course, the hardened ODST was not the rebel's mother. Benny's mom was far too loving to shatter her son's cheekbone with the barrel of a UNSC issue M6C. And although Mrs. Gunderman believed in discipline, she would never have gone as far as severing both of her son's Achilles tendons or torturing him for information. No, Helljumper was definitely not Benny's mother—but compared to the punishment that waited just outside the door, the ODST's actions were downright maternal.

A marathon of dark, soured dreams finally came to an end, and sleepy eyes opened to a white ceiling. Where was he? An attempt to look around the room brought only pain as his head tugged against tight, immobilizing straps. His legs and left arm would not budge either, but for some reason his right arm had been left completely unfettered. Moving slowly, he lifted his free hand and probed his aching head for injury but came up empty—completely empty. No matter how much he searched and grasped, he couldn't locate his head, his shoulder or even the bed he was on. It was as if his right arm existed in a completely different dimension.

And then Mr. Black remembered.

A door opened and a man approached wearing a surgical mask. "Good morning. I'm Doctor Richardson." The mask wrinkled slightly as the mouth beneath it smiled. "Glad to see you're awake."

"My right arm is gone, isn't it?"

The man nodded slowly. "I'm afraid so. I apologize for the restraints, but frankly, patients who wake to missing limbs often panic and cause themselves even greater harm."

Mr. Black grunted, and the simple action caused his head to throb. "I need to get out of here. Is there a guard posted at the door?"

"A guard?" The doctor's forehead wrinkled. "Are you in some sort of trouble, sir?"

Mr. Black's eyes opened a bit wider. "Doesn't the Governor know that I'm here?"

"Sir," the doctor said, speaking as if addressing a mental patient, "you were brought in here by a good Samaritan who found you bleeding in the street. You were carrying no identification."

The ONI spook shut his eyes and sighed. "Is my shoulder closed up?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then let me off this table."

"Sir, I'm afraid that isn't possible until—"

"Let me go!" Mr. Black yelled, pulling against his restraints. "Let me out of here now!"

Dr. Richardson pulled an injection gun out of his pocket and emptied it into the patient's arm. "That should relax you for a while." Warmth flowed over Mr. Black's body like a liquid blanket. Muscles relaxed, eyelids shut halfway, and thoughts became peaceful.

"Don't be embarrassed. I've yet to see a patient who didn't freak out from a lost or mangled limb." The doctor pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed. "Losing an arm or leg alters your existence. You've lost something that's been with you your entire life and you'll go through the same stages of grief as a man who's lost a wife or a child."

Mr. Black heard the words, but they echoed as if in a tunnel. "What did you gib me?"

"You mean the drug? Oh, it's just something to help you calm down. So, how long have you been on Tethra?"

Some faint, distant voice warned him not to answer, but to Mr. Black, that seemed the height of silliness. After all, he was asked a question; why not answer? "I been here 'bout fwee weeks."

"If you don't mind me asking, what is your name?"

"T. Stephen Bwack." Mr. Black giggled. Answering questions was fun.

Richardson nodded pleasantly. "And what does the 'T' stand for?"

"Taywor." He smiled. "I nebber did wike dat name. Too much wike habbing two wast names, you know?"

"I bet. So, Stephen, what is your current rank within the Office of Naval Intelligence?"

"Colonel." His voice was dreamy and drunk. "And I can't go no higher. I've done too many tings dey want to keep quiet." Mr. Black chuckled. "But dey tol' me to do'em! Don't make sense to me."

"No, it doesn't. Didn't ONI implant some sort of location device in every Spartan?"

Taylor Stephen Black laughed out loud and turned playful eyes toward the man beside him. "You're Wiwey, aren't you?"

Wiley laughed in return. "You didn't answer my question, Stephen. Is their such a device?"

"Yeah. Id's just a beacon."

"Then why haven't you used it to locate O'Carrol?"

The patient chuckled. "Because of da UNSC. Dey'd see da beacon too, an' den dey might take her awive an' ask her tings."

Paydirt. "And that would be bad?"

If he hadn't been restrained, Mr. Black would have doubled over with mirth. "Of course! She knows tings dat weeb done; tings dat would make da UNSC upset."

"Things that happened when she was leading Red Rage?"

The head restraint squeaked as the drugged man tried to nod. "Yeah, awot of stuff den, bud we also tink she knows aboud da Siwent Pwague." Mr. Black paused and looked up at Wiley like a child about to spill a juicy secret. "We starded id on purpose! It wud ONI's pwague!"

The assassin's mouth dropped open. "On purpose? Why did you do that?"

He listened in stunned silence as ONI Colonel T. Stephen Black wove a tale so disturbing and improbable that, under any other circumstances, he would have assumed it to be a lie. When the spook finally finished, Wiley stepped away from the bed and began wrestling with a strange and unfamiliar emotion: outrage. More than a decade of killing for money had numbed his conscience and created the emotional callousness that came part and parcel with his line of work. Still, he had his limits—and they were spelled out clearly to every client. He wouldn't kill children under any circumstances, and was very picky when it came to eliminating women. He was, nevertheless, a stone cold assassin who could kill a man during dinner without suffering indigestion.

But this was different. Millions of men women and children had been wiped out—all because of a decision made by some suit-wearing demon in an air conditioned office light years away from the eventual consequences. It was more than mere murder: it was an atrocity.

With a silent, fluid motion, he pulled a pistol from the small of his back and released the safety. Lifting it slowly, he leveled the gun at Mr. Black's worthless head and considered ending their tenuous financial relationship with a cheap lead slug. For what seemed like an hour, he stood with sweat dripping down his face as he tried to force himself to administer justice and, for once in his life, kill for something more valuable than money. In the end, however, he took his finger off the trigger and lowered the weapon. Try as he may, he could not bring himself to kill a client—even one who kept historical company with the likes of Stalin and Hitler. Wiley loved what he did, and assassins who killed their employers invariably found themselves unemployed.

Again, he came up beside the bed and, with great difficulty, spoke in a friendly voice. "Stephen, how do you activate a Spartan's locater beacon?"

"Aw you need id a UNSC COM an' da wight code, an' den evwy Spartan awound you will show up for fwee hours. Da UNSC don't know da code, bud dey will come to a Spartan beacon wike kids come to a ice cweam twuck. Did you know dat onwy fwee people in da whole gawaxy know dat code?" Sunshine flowed through Mr. Black's soul. Now the famous assassin would know how important he was—and it all came from answering questions. "Wanna make it four people? You wan' me to tell you da code too?" He nearly burst with sweet, satisfying self-importance. Why hadn't he done this sort of thing before?

Wiley pulled a pad and pen out of his pocket. "Sure. Who knows, it might come in handy." The drugged man spoke, and the assassin took notes—and instantly wished he had used a serum that caused less slurring. It was like getting ten minutes worth of technical jargon out of a drunken Elmer Fudd.

"And that's it? Just type that into a COM?"

Mr. Black smiled. "Yeah. Oh, an' did you know da UNSC wud after you, cuz dey are."

Wiley looked up from his notes. "No, I didn't know that."

"Yeah, an I tink dey know dat you're here, bud dat's just a guess. You went too far, you know."

"Too far?"

"Kilwing Ackerson an dat Admawal." He began to giggle. "Dey made you a pwirority!"

While the spook was still giggling, the assassin pulled out another injection gun and emptied it into his remaining arm. Within moments he was unconscious, and Wiley walked out of the simulated hospital room with mixed feelings. In a few hours, he would drop the ONI officer off at a real hospital where he would awake with little or no memory of their conversation. If he remembered anything, it would be the few words they had spoken before receiving the first drug: that he had been dropped off by a good Samaritan, had no ID, and had been tended to by a Dr. Richardson.

And, of course, all of those things would be true—more or less.

Bleary-eyed and still hurting from his fight with Sagus, Sean Flannery sat on a chair in O'Carrol's room and struggled to keep his eyes open. It wasn't easy. Over nine hours had passed since the mysterious call from Helljumper, and Cairren had yet to speak a word. For his part, Sean wanted nothing more than a nice soft bed—but even though she didn't want to talk, she didn't want him to leave or sleep either. The huge Irishman didn't know what to make of it. Either the ODST Captain was more trouble than he had guessed, or Cairren was starting to act like an honest-to-God woman. At the moment, he didn't know which he dreaded more.

Couch springs squeaked as O'Carrol shifted her weight slightly and turned towards Sean. "I was his student." The words were spoken with a soft vulnerability that they seemed completely out of place on her lips.

Flannery sat up a little straighter and rubbed his eyes. Finally. "Helljumper's student?"

She nodded. "Red Rage was his idea. It was a way for the UNSC to bring down rebel governments without getting their hands dirty. He handpicked me to lead it, and then spent two years teaching me how to make an ONI operation look like a grassroots uprising. It was sheer brilliance."

"Two years?"

"I was his only student the entire time." O'Carrol took a deep breath. "I swear he knew more than the AI's that taught me growing up. I was learning how to lead a popular army, and even though there wasn't much emphasis on singular combat, he still set aside at least an hour a day for us to go against each other. He said it was to keep me sharp, but I think he was looking for a challenge."

Sean chuckled. "A normal man against a Spartan?"

"There was nothing 'normal' about Helljumper. And it wasn't a boxing match, so my speed and strength were only an advantage if I survived long enough to get my hands on him." Cairren's eyes sparkled. "I wasn't used to losing, and beating him each day became an obsession. We went head to head hundreds of times."

"Then I can't see why you're so worried. After two years, you should know the man inside and out." Flannery leaned forward. "And don't forget that he's badly wounded."

"You've never seen anyone like that ODST. Out of all the times I faced him, I never saw a single discernible pattern. His tactics were impossible to predict with any assurance." She sighed. "So you've got it all backwards, Sean. The fact that I fought Helljumper helps him, not me. He learned how I'd react in just about every situation, and I learned that I was tactically outclassed."

Sean shook his head. Here he was, looking into the eyes of a person he had vowed to kill—the woman who had murdered his best friend—and by some ugly twist of fate, it was his job to cheer her up. And for what? A cause that he found harder to believe in with each passing hour. He looked at the floor and sighed. I'll just sort it all out later.

"You underestimate yourself, Cairren. You've got an entire planet looking for you, and you're makin' them out to be fools."

"They are fools, Sean, but Helljumper isn't. I told you I faced him hundreds times. Do you know how many times I won? Once. It was two o'clock in the morning and his night vision goggles failed. Other than that, I rarely even came close."

"So, what are we gonna do? There's no doubt that Benny told him where we are, and we can't do the emergency evac because of a single man; not after all the time and hardware we sunk into it."

To Sean's surprise, O'Carrol smiled. "We're not going anywhere. Unlike the past, this isn't a one-on-one exercise. We have him grossly outnumbered and we also have his partner—and that ODST would never even consider leaving him behind." She stood to her feet. "I once asked Helljumper how to defeat an enemy of superior knowledge and skill, and his reply was so simple that I was surprised I hadn't thought of it myself. He said to give them someone or something else to fight, and then attack while their 'superior skills' are focused elsewhere." Cairren snatched her twelve millimeter automatic off the table and ejected the clip. "We just place something between him and his partner, and wait for the fireworks."

Moaning painfully, Sean stood to his feet and looked at his leader with a wry smile. "Any chance he's gonna fall for that?"

"No," she said, chuckling humorlessly and thumbing bullets into the silver clip, "not a chance in Hell."

"Sir, I request permission to go back in."

Captain Vance sneered, but not too much: unlike most junior officers, this kid had grit. "Negative, Lieutenant. If that suture pops, you'll be tripping over your own guts just in time to get your brains blown out. Besides, I got nobody to send in with you."

"I don't want anyone goin' in with me, and with all due respect, I'm not leaving Hawkes and Bizzard with those rebels."

The officer bristled. "Soldier, you'll do whatever I tell you to do, and I'm tellin' you to stay put!" Vance looked up at the planet's small moon as short bursts of gunfire echoed through the darkened forest. "We got beat, kid, plain and simple."

"Only because they surprised us." The young man's eyes lit up like fire. "That won't happen again, Sir. Not to me."

"So," Vance said mockingly, "you're just going to walk right in there badly injured, grab our men and waltz out?"

"No, Sir. First I'm gonna kill every filthy one of them rebels. After that, I guess I'll do whatever I please."

Helljumper woke to an excruciating headache and the fresh realization that he no longer had a right eye. Bio-foam had managed to keep the wound closed, but the damaged tissue was beginning to swell, and with the swelling came distracting pain. Beautiful, numbing relief was a mere injection away—but the ODST knew he couldn't do it. Any drug strong enough to put a dent in his agony would also render him useless as a soldier.

The bullet had apparently entered through the right eye socket and exited out the side of his head at the temple. Helljumper was encouraged by the fact that, given the point of entry, the bullet had taken a path of minimal damage. Nevertheless, the extent of his injuries remained unknown; and in his present situation, ignorance was far more troubling than pain. He seemed to have normal control of his body the night before, but that brought little assurance. Head injuries were notoriously unpredictable, and Helljumper knew that even a little swelling could be enough to cause serious brain damage.

Swinging his legs off the sofa, he stood—and it seemed that the room swayed beneath him. After a few moments, however, his balance returned and he took a moment to silently thank God. From this point on, every ability he retained was a gift.

The ODST walked into the bathroom to check on his captive. Benny lay asleep in the tub with his mouth taped shut and both Achilles tendons sliced. Helljumper was not a cruel man, but faced with the possibility of blacking out at any time, he had to make sure that Benny never had the option of running away or attacking him. Besides, these animals had beaten and captured his partner: for all he cared, they could rot in Hell.

"Hey," he said, waking the rebel with a nudge, "I'm gonna be leaving you here. If the information you gave me is good, I'll be back for you. But if you lied to me, I guess this is goodbye. I'm leaving the front door open, and when night falls, those things will come right in to get you." Helljumper winced as the pain in his head nearly caused him to black out. "Benny, this is your last chance. Did you tell me the truth?"

Eyes wide with terror, the rebel nodded his head forcefully.

"Good. Of course, if something unfortunate should happen to me, you'll be on your own." The ODST walked to the bathroom door, looked back and somehow managed a smile. "Wish me luck."

A thousand things could go wrong, and nobody knew that better than him. If the events of his secretive life ever made their way into a book, the casual reader would no doubt consider him a daredevil or gambler; a rogue James Bond figure who had luck as his genie and made things up as he went along. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Yes, Wiley's career demanded that he take risks, but he was more cardsharp than gambler, and found that stacked decks, marked cards and the occasional bottom deal were more efficient and predictable than dumb luck.

This time, however, there were more variables than he could possibly control. Once he activated O'Carrol's beacon, he would have very little time before troops arrived from the small UNSC base outside of Lifford. He usually planned his movements down to the second, but when it came to predicting the response time of the UNSC soldiers, he might just as well have thrown darts at a clock. Everything appeared to be working against him.

But appearances can be deceiving.

Fact was, Wiley didn't care when the UNSC showed up; he was just glad they were coming. Going after O'Carrol alone would have meant months of posing as a rebel and moving deeper into her network so that he could get close enough for the kill—and that was time that neither he nor his client could afford to spend. Merely knowing where she lived meant little since she was too smart to expose herself and too well guarded to attack. No, he needed a third, unexpected party to flush his prey out into the open and create enough chaos for him to complete his job undetected.

The assassin took one last look at the ninety-eight character activation code he'd just typed and smiled. Thank God for the UNSC.

He pushed the button on his COM and looked intently at the map of Lifford on his data pad. A moment later the code worked its magic—and Wiley's mouth dropped open in shock as not one, but two beacons began to blink: one five klicks south and the other two klicks east. And then, in that horrible moment that defied all of his contingency planning, he remembered what Mr. Black said earlier that day. How he had gotten the UNSC's attention by killing Ackerson and Kraft: how they had made his elimination a priority.

The nearest beacon suddenly stopped blinking—and the stone-cold assassin began to get a very bad feeling.

Few Spartans were aware that ONI had placed beacons inside of them during augmentation, and of those few, only one had a kill-switch. The big man looked at the remaining light on his data pad and quickly gathered his gear. He'd been told that Wiley was good—even downright magical—but he hadn't believed it until now. Good thing the Admiral was paranoid.

Whether the signal had been activated by ONI to help the assassin they'd hired or Wiley had acquired it on his own was purely academic. After weeks of waiting, the Spartan finally knew exactly where his target would be. And even though most of the galaxy knew that Wiley was good, ask any of the thousands of ghosts on Erebus and they'd grudgingly tell you:

Lexicus was the best.

C.T. Clown

Court of Darkness (chapter six): Halls of the Damned
Date: 16 February 2007, 4:02 am

Court of Darkness (chapter six): Halls of the Damned

Mikaela looked down at the lifeless animal and wiped her beautiful, tear-streaked face with the palm of her hand. Even though she was only ten years old the little girl knew something that her parents would never understand: Puff was not a mere dog who existed to bark at strangers and empty his food dish twice a day. No, this dark brown mixture of a dozen breeds—who was just big enough to wrestle and just small enough to carry—was the most fun and interesting person she had ever met.

Puff had been her companion and protector in all of her numerous forays into magical lands and kingdoms. It was he who defeated nine trolls at the gates of Neverwall and chased away the Great Cat of Androsia. In fact, if it hadn't been for his wizardry just ten days before in the land of Wolvrin, Mikaela may never have become a Wolvrinian Princess. A mere dog? Nothing could be more absurd. He was a knight in seven royal courts, king over the free dogs of Bowserland, and revered as a prophet in Quasimutt. And even though he was three years older than her, Puff was Mikaela's best friend in all the world. But there he lay, cold and stiff at the bottom of a shallow grave without even a cardboard box to shield him from the dirt.

"He'll be cold, mom. Can't we bury him indoors, like they do kings?"

Her mother bent down and held her tear-swollen face. "Bury him? Honey, Puff's not really in that hole."

"He's not?" Mikaela's large eyes opened wide. "Then where is he?"

The woman leaned forward and whispered into her little girl's ear. "He's in Bowserland, Neverwall, Wolverin and of course guarding the borders of Androsia. That cat's still on the loose, right?"

Mikaela looked at her mother as if for the first time. "Yes, and Puff vowed that he wouldn't taste death until the Great Cat was destroyed!"

"See?" her mother said with a smile. "And you know he would never break a promise."

The little girl grinned from ear to ear, and then whispered excitedly. "Mom, you knew?"

"Of course I did. But let's not mention it to daddy. I don't think he'd understand."

The humble funeral continued but thanks to a mother's wisdom, with more hope and less tears. As her father shoveled dirt into the shallow hole, Mikaela ran to her room and scoured half a dozen kingdoms in search of Puff. She finally found him in the king's court of Androsia where, after witnessing the joyous reunion, the Queen declared a national day of celebration.

Nearly a week later, Mikaela stood in her farm's small chicken house, handing out feed and telling tales of her magical travels. After food and story were finally exhausted, she stepped out into the overcast morning and began heading for the house when she heard something behind their small red barn—the place they'd buried Puff. Fueled by childish curiosity, she ran behind the building and what she saw made her mouth drop open. Muffled sounds, both like and unlike a dog's bark emanated from the ground as dirt undulated and stirred above the still-fresh grave.

It was a miracle!

Even as Mikaela ran toward the house to tell her mom, she knew that she would never tell her dad. He was a great guy, but mom was right; he simply wouldn't understand.

A short man burst through the door holding the sort of small data-pad preferred by techies, and O'Carrol stood to her feet in surprise.

"Barry, you'd better have a good reas—"

"There's a homing beacon going off in this house!" he yelled without looking up from the screen. "It started broadcasting a couple minutes ago, and we're shining like a strobe!"

O'Carrol's green eyes flashed. "A beacon? Set off by somebody here?"

"No way to tell," Barry replied, staring at the readout and moving around the room. "It's military grade, so it could have been activated from deep orbit or next door." With calculated haste, he walked in clumsy, shrinking circles; seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was bumping into every piece of furniture in the room. "We're gonna have the UNSC bunking with us in ten minutes—shorter if they're the one's who set it off. I'm pretty sure the signal's coming from somewhere in this—" He stopped cold as his data pad collided with O'Carrol's left side and began beeping excitedly. He punched a few buttons, stared at the screen for a moment, and then looked into the rebel leader's eyes.

"Oh my God."

The system's bright star hung at high noon over Lifford, but few ventured outside to enjoy its brilliance. It was Sunday, everybody's day off, and that meant packed churches and empty streets. Tethra had been a devout community even before the Silent Plague, but in the pain and devastation that followed, attendance at Sunday services exploded. Neighborhoods that had once been fractured pulled together to deal with their loss, and churches that had been little more than social clubs became living, breathing communities. As a result, Sunday meetings—which took place in schools, houses and even a few taverns—became all-day affairs that usually began with a communal breakfast and concluded with a communal supper.

What was good for the Lord, however, was bad for the taxi service and nearly an hour of aimless driving had made Lowden Caffrey a bit queasy. He had just decided to park and listen to the radio when he noticed a man up the street waving his arms. A smile curled across his face as he gunned his engine, performed a perfect u-turn and came to a stop directly in front of his first Sunday fare in nearly a month.

But as the customer slid into the backseat, the cabby's smile vanished. The man had nothing but foam protruding out of his right eye socket and looked just plain mean. Lowden opened a small door in the bulletproof panel between them to get a better look, and found himself staring down the barrel of a large automatic. The wounded man leaned forward and pressed the gun into the driver's neck.

"Take me to the airport and make it fast." The voice was rough and unfriendly.

"M-Metro airport?"

"I thought there was only one?"

"No," the driver replied, doing his best to sound helpful, "There's Lifford Municipal. It's just a few blocks away."

The man in black thought for a moment. "Does they have small craft?"

Lowden nodded. "'Bout all they got."

"Then that'll do fine."

Although the official name of the small UNSC base was Bart Kurchwild Station, the one hundred and seventy-six soldiers who manned the facility simply called it The Wild; and given the name's inherent irony, they seldom said it without a smile. Nothing ever happened at "The Wild."

Well, almost never.

The base, which had been named for the UNSC Major who led the first wave of colonization back in 2388, had been mobilized only once in its sixty-four years. During the chaos that followed the outbreak of the Silent Plague, its soldiers acted as glorified riot police and took their orders from a crooked politician. Other than that stark episode, they had been little more than outsiders—and that was no accident.

Unlike Reach, the UNSC's other major weapon producing colony, Tethra was an industrial rather than military culture; and the difference in their accepted values was striking. Where vigilance, order and discipline ruled the one, expedience, manipulation and greed ruled the other. Where one had a heavy military presence in an effort to bring security, the other had a nominal military presence in order to promote profitability. Bluntly speaking, the UNSC did not know or care what happened on Tethra, so long as they delivered a steady supply of military hardware on time and for the right price.

Thus, The Wild became a dumping ground, albeit a small one, for the dregs of the armed forces. Indeed, it was not uncommon for soldiers suffering from severe mental trauma to be sent to Tethra to convalesce while the UNSC mulled over the possibility of admitting them into a comparatively expensive psychiatric facility. And if the troubled individuals didn't commit suicide or murder they were, as often as not, left at The Wild for the balance of their enlistment. Such heartless conduct was not the norm within the UNSC, but then the norm never seemed to apply on Tethra. Sure, it was a grim bit of business, but it was also expedient, manipulative and a credit to the bottom line; and on this planet, that was virtuous as Hell—idiomatically and literally.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and Major Kevin Purves, commanding officer at the Wild, had just flipped over his second consecutive ace. After four dead-end games, it seemed his luck had finally turned. Solitaire, however, was always unpredictable, and he dared not get cocky. Besides, right now he needed kings worse than aces. Without taking his gaze off the cards, Kevin took a large bite of his tuna-cheddar sandwich and then noticed something that made his eyes go wide.

Oh my God! I can move the seven over here and—he flipped another card over—a king!

A firm knock on the door interrupted his little coup and he looked up with annoyance. "I'm on lunch!" he yelled, almost choking on a large chunk of tuna. "Leave a message with Sandie."

Captain John Moretti shook his head in disgust. "My apologies, sir. I tried to call, but—"

"I took it off the hook, Captain, because I wanted to eat in peace. Now talk to Sandie or come back in an hour."

"She's not out here, Major, and this is a matter of some urgency." He wanted to add "you moron" but decided against it. Even though he had chosen to return to his home planet and serve at The Wild, his future in the UNSC still looked bright. No sense jeopardizing his career just to insult the incompetent fool who happened to be his boss. "We've picked up a Spartan homing beacon."

"Yeah, so?"

Moretti could hardly believe his ears. "If you remember, sir, O'Carrol is actually Aimee Peal." He waited for the Major to put things together himself, but got only silence. "Peal is a Spartan," you moron!

Inside the office, Purves looked longingly at his so-far-so-good round of solitaire and sighed. "Very well, come in." Captain Moretti walked through the door, glanced blankly at the food and cards covering his superior's desk, and sat down.

"Sir, that beacon is coming from the center of Lifford. If it's O'Carrol, and at this point we have to assume it is, then we'd better move fast. We can get all three Pelicans there within ten minutes. They're being readied as we speak."

The Major shook his head and spoke with disdain. "Keep your pants on, son. I know you're just dying to play soldier, but this is my base, and if you don't mind, I'll make the decisions." Purves smiled and stared silently at his inferior.

"Sir, with all due respect, you need to decide now."

The Major turned over another card—an ace—and leaned back in his chair. "Okay Captain, here's my decision. I'll lead the Pelicans into the city and have Lieutenant Spencer follow with a ground assault team." He placed a two of spades on the corresponding ace, flipped over another card and smiled with delight. "You must be good luck, Moretti. Another king."

"Sir," John said, ignoring the stupidity, "If Spence is leading the vehicles, am I to fly in with you?"

Purves shook his head. "No, you can stay here and watch the base."

"But sir—"

"You're too eager to be a hero and that'll only end up getting men killed." To John's disbelief, the Major turned over another card, placed a three of hearts on a four of spades and then studied the results like a General sizing up a battlefield.

"Sir, what are you doing?"

Once again, his commanding officer chuckled. "Why don't you go tell Spence to get his men ready."

The Captain pursed his lips and stood. "And when should I tell him you'll be along, sir?" He spit the last word out like a piece of spoiled meat.

"I don't know," Purves replied, looking down at the cards, "I'm probably about half done. How long could a game of solitaire take?"

Sean followed O'Carrol down steps and through hallways while the considerably smaller techie tried his best to keep up. The towering woman barked orders to her second in command as she ran.

"Start the evac Sean, and don't wait for me!" They passed through a large room, and then started down another flight of stairs. "Have everyone report on the COM once they're clear and meet at the safe-house in four hours. And for God's sake, leave the weapons and ammo behind!"

"I know," Sean replied as he whipped around a blind corner and nearly trampled a fellow rebel. "Don't you think I've been listening for the last year?" They burst into the small first aid room, nearly tearing the door from its hinges.

"Just see it gets done!" O'Carrol laid down on an examining table as Barry ran into the next room to get the doctor.

Sean took two steps toward the doorway and turned. "What do you want me to do with Sagus?"

Cairren shuffled her feet, which hung half a meter off the end of the table, and uncharacteristically averted her gaze. "Kill him."

Barry entered the room followed by an elderly man as Flannery disappeared into the hallway. Doctor Van Mock approached the table, looked down at the fiery redhead with his usual stoicism and waved a small device back and forth across her left shoulder. He looked at a screen on the wall behind the table and grimaced—if only slightly.

"It's fused to the lining of your lung about nine centimeters below your left shoulder, and it's centered in your body almost perfectly. To do it right, I'd need a couple of hours and a trained nurse."

"Then do it wrong," O'Carrol replied with impatience.

"But Cairren, you don't underst—"

She grabbed Van Mock's neck with her huge left hand and pulled him so close that their noses touched. "You've got five minutes doc, so stop talking and start cutting!"

At first he'd worried about slipping into a suitable position in broad daylight, but since it was Sunday in a city with perfect church attendance and zero windows, he had encountered no problems. Heck, maybe he'd been wrong; maybe church wasn't useless after all.

The UNSC, however, was a different story. It had been nearly fifteen minutes since he activated the beacon, and even though they had to know the signal led to O'Carrol, the UNSC was nowhere in sight.

And then he saw it. Finally. Off in the distance, barely visible against the white and gray clouds, an aircraft headed straight towards the hide out. Lifting his binoculars slowly, he located the craft—and cursed under his breath. It wasn't a Pelican as he had hoped, but rather a small private vessel.

Normally the assassin enjoyed being alone with his thoughts before a job, but today it was downright dangerous. His interrogation of Mr. Black yielded many sick and disturbing facts concerning Tethra's future; and with facts came responsibility. As an assassin, Wiley could live with the knowledge that he had caused or allowed an individual's death; but what about the deaths of millions? Was he an honest-to-God monster like Mr. Black or would he end up swallowing the business end of his automatic and gladly pulling the trigger? And if he couldn't live with it, what was he supposed to do? Sure, he was skilled, but he hadn't survived this long by overestimating himself. The odds weren't long, they were impossible.

Trying desperately to calm his mind, he replaced his binoculars and swept the surrounding area with careful eyes. A glance down at his data pad confirmed that the beacon was still broadcasting and had not moved significantly. Once again, he looked up at the house—and this he couldn't look away. The craft he'd written off moments before was dropping out of the sky like a rock—and heading straight for O'Carrol's roof.

Even though he'd taken a terrific beating in order to capture Sagus alive, Sean couldn't help but respect him. Using a poisonous mix of skill and madness, the ONI spook killed one of his men, put the other in critical condition and came within a hair's breadth of defeating him as well. It was quite a display, especially when one considered that the mere sight of Big Sean Flannery was enough to make a sane individual dismiss any notion of fighting. But Sagus had stood his ground and fought bravely.

Flannery rushed up two flights of stairs and entered the long hallway that led to the holding room. He didn't relish the idea of shooting a man while he was chained to a chair, but this wasn't a movie and he didn't have the time to make it feel honorable. At least he had a chance. Those kids I blew up in the condo didn't even have th—

The building shook and the floor jumped beneath Sean's feet; slamming his head into the wall and dropping him like a two hundred and fifty pound sack of grain.

Thrown to the ground by what seemed like an earthquake, Todd Levinson took a moment to get his bearings and started to get up—only to be knocked down again by an explosion above his head. Charred chunks of wood and plaster rained down around him and when he finally opened his eyes he saw a shadowy figure approach, back-lit by the newly exposed sun. The shadow yanked Todd to his feet and shoved a large pistol under his chin.

"Where's David Sagus?" It was the voice of certain death.

"A couple floors down." As the rebel's eyes adjusted to the bright light, he saw that his attacker was missing an eye. Helljumper.

"Take me."

Stumbling out the door and down the steps, Todd prayed that he'd run into someone, but the hallway was deserted and all too quickly they were standing outside the holding room.

"Is this it?" As soon as the rebel nodded, Helljumper planted a boot on the small of his back and kicked him forward so hard that the door tore free of its hinges and the rebel hit the ground dead.

David's head lifted in surprise as the ODST rushed in and grabbed the keys off the desk.

"Hell?" he said, shaking sleep from his head. "My God, your eye."

Helljumper bent down to unlock the chains binding Sagus' feet. "Lucky for me the UNSC's got a killer health plan." As he moved behind the chair to free his hands, David watched in horror as a large man appeared in the doorway.

"No!"

Sagus' scream caused the ODST to look up—too late. Flame blossomed from Sean's pistol and a bullet slammed into Helljumper's left shoulder with a wet smack! Falling backward from the impact, his head hit the ground with a roar of pain and the gun flew from his hand.

Sean rushed around the chair, but Helljumper rolled left, jumped to his feet and flung his combat knife at the Irishman; sinking it three inches into his right shoulder. The ODST kicked the gun out of Sean's hand and followed with a vicious left to the Adam's Apple.

But the big man barely flinched.

With the huge knife jutting out of his shoulder like a Halloween decoration, Sean curled his right hand into a massive fist and—moving faster than seemed possible for a man his size—landed a crushing blow to Helljumper's head; felling the legendary soldier like a dropped doll.

David's desperate fingers finally bent enough to turn the key Helljumper left in the lock, and with the care of a surgeon he silently lowered his chains.

Pulling the knife from his shoulder without so much as a wince, Sean approached his foe's motionless body and raised the bloodied weapon. Sagus rose behind him; the solid steel chair in his strong, angry hands.

Time stopped, warmth fled and even the lights seemed to dim as Rage painted its masterwork on the face of the young ONI analyst. Strength that could not be measured in terms of muscle and bone swung the heavy steel object with smooth, vicious grace; striking the rebel on the hip and with such force that he crashed into a wall three meters away.

David dropped the chair and knelt to examine Helljumper. His pulse was shallow and the swelling in his brain caused the bio-foam plug in his eye socket to bulge grotesquely. Sagus was not a doctor, but that didn't mean he couldn't see what was happening.

The man before him was dying, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

No living man could identify the assassin known as "Wiley" and Lexicus suspected that if the dead were suddenly able to speak, they would come up empty as well. Thus, even though the UNSC had spent nearly ten years trying to dispose of the gifted killer, they had never found so much as a fingerprint.

And then, six months before, they caught their first break. After the poisoning death of Admiral Thomas Kraft on one of Earths military installations, the UNSC discovered images of a man talking and eating with the doomed officer during the final minutes of his life. And even though the man—who was almost certainly Wiley—had made sure that the cameras never got a good look at his face, they had managed to record something far more useful: his voice. Like the fingerprint, the human voice is unique to each individual, but it is much harder to hide than a print and far easier to track. All the UNSC had to do was add the voice to filters already in place and see where it led.

Four months after they began their search, it led them to ONI. Colonel T. Stephen Black, who spearheaded some of the clandestine agency's most secretive operations, hired Wiley to eliminate O'Carrol. Less than three days later, Admiral Denning sent Lexicus to eliminate Wiley. As the unarmored Spartan moved quickly towards the blip on his data pad, he knew that the odds were still stacked against him. Even though he carried a device that would identify and locate even a whisper from the assassin as far out as five hundred meters, there was no guarantee that Wiley would find the need to talk—and without that he had nothing.

Passing through empty streets lined with rundown houses and abandoned storefronts, he felt a growing sense of pity and dread for the planet. Tethra had a cursed, morbid stench about it that reminded him of Erebus. Thankfully, a familiar sound interrupted his depressing line of thought, and he looked up to see three Pelicans headed in his direction.

Finally.

Wiley watched with satisfaction as the Pelicans circled overhead. Moments later, four APC's roared onto the street and soldiers began to spill out. The assassin punched a button on his COM and listened.

"Roger, sir, that's the building. Seems to have a small craft on top."

"Yeah, looks like a crash." The man chuckled. "This ain't O'Carrol's day."

"No, sir."

"All right, Spence, I want every house on the street emptied. Dodge and Tyler, just hold your ships steady until then. I'll let her know we're here."

Wiley covered his ears as one of the Pelicans hovered close to the building and at least fifteen soldiers zip-lined down and surrounded the huge house. A voice boomed from the speaker.

"This is UNSC Major Kevin Purves and I am speaking to anyone in residence at 6145 South Karona. I repeat: anyone in residence at 6145 South Karona, you are ordered to leave the building with your hands behind your head!"

As the order went out once more, Wiley watched as soldiers escorted people from homes up and down the street. They all seemed more than willing to go. The Major, on the other hand, was getting no cooperation whatsoever.

"This is your last warning! If you do not leave 6145 South Karona immediately, you will be detained by force!"

After seeing the shoddy zip-lining and clumsy footwork of the soldiers thus far, Wiley had to smile at the use of the word 'force'. If push came to shove, these guys would get shoved badly. Once again, the COM came alive.

"She ain't gonna come out, sir."

"Don't you think I know that, Lieutenant?" Wiley smiled at the lack of professionalism. "Okay, Dodge, Tyler, turn'em loose."

The other two Pelicans came in close, and thirty or so additional soldiers zip-lined down—and it came as little surprise that two of them managed to break bones in the process. A door was blown open—again, injuring one of the inept soldiers—and they poured into the building. After waiting for the Pelicans to back off a sufficient distance, Wiley tousled his authentic UNSC uniform and ran towards the house as clumsily as he knew how.

With Helljumper draped over his left shoulder and a smoking twelve-millimeter automatic in his right hand, David paused just long enough to slap in fresh clip. He'd gone through several hallways and down three sets of stairs in search of an exit, but all that lay behind him were windowless rooms and four rebels unfortunate enough to get in his way. Moving cautiously, he walked through the next doorway—and nearly jumped out of his skin when the door across the room exploded into a thousand pieces and Marines poured into the house.

"Lower your weapon!" a nervous soldier yelled as somebody outside screamed for a medic. "Do it now!"

Sagus let the gun fall to the floor and spoke in a calm voice. "Sergeant, my name is David Sagus and I'm a Lieutenant in the Office of Naval Intelligence. I was O'Carrol's prisoner."

The Marine narrowed his eyes and lifted his weapon a little higher. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

David was incredulous. "Use the standard UNSC identification procedure, soldier."

At an obvious loss, the Sergeant glanced at the men around him and then moved on. "Who's the man on your shoulder?"

"ODST Captain Helljumper."

Again, the soldier's eyes narrowed. "Helljumper? The Helljumper? The one who fought on Erebus?"

Sagus nodded and lowered his friend gingerly to the ground. "And he needs medical attention immediately."

"Now I remember who you are!" The Sergeant suddenly brightened. "You're that ONI guy who got tortured! Wow! My wife's never gonna believe that I actually met—"

Without warning, David snatched the weapon hanging lazily from the fool's hand and shoved the barrel under his chin. "Get him a medic now or I'll splatter what little brains you've got all over the ceiling."

For the poorly trained soldiers looking on, things were getting more complicated with each passing second. For the Sergeant, however, the way forward had never been more obvious. He took a deep breath and screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Medic! Mehhhh-diiiic!"

Sagus tossed the man his gun and spoke with an authority that compelled armed men to obey. "One of O'Carrol's leaders is lying unconscious in the room they were holding me in. Take your men up there and secure him."

"Yes, sir," the man said as he wiped two fingers under his chin to check for blood. "How do we get there?"

David's reply chilled the air. "Just follow the bodies."

Major Purves looked at the building one hundred meters below and spoke with impatience. "Corporal, have you located O'Carrol yet?"

"Negative, sir. Her beacon is holding strong, but we keep running into dead ends. This place is a danged maze."

"How close are you?"

"We're coming up on a door now, sir. This could be it." Background noise filled the COM as a door was kicked open and UNSC issue boots pounded the floor like a small stampede. After nearly a minute, the Major heard a disappointed sigh. "Sir, we've found the beacon but, um ..."

"But what soldier?"

"It's in a bowl of what appears to be blood and human tissue." He sighed again. "O'Carrol's nowhere in sight."

"Hold your position, Corporal. Neighborhood evac is complete, and I'm sending Spence's team in there to assist."

"Roger that."

A man ran through the doorway, took one look at Sagus and stopped dead.

"You the medic?" David asked, lifting nothing but his eyes.

"Yes, sir!" the man said, kneeling quickly and fumbling through his bag. "Staff Sergeant Charles E. Bolles." He looked down at the ODST and shook his head. "Dang."

"What is it?"

"Well," the man said apologetically, "I just don't see how this guy's still breathing. I mean, given the head injury alone ... he must be tougher than a ten mile hike through a forest fire wearing nothin' but—"

"I already know how tough he is, Sergeant!" Something seemed to break inside the ONI officer. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder and the tough facade melted. "Please, just help him."

Charles Bolles nodded. "We're gonna hafta get him outta here and to someplace more secure. Grab his legs; I think I know just the spot."

"Yes, sir! Staff Sergeant Charles E. Bolles."

Lexicus watched a map appear on his instrument's small read-out as Wiley's voice played like music in his ear. Patience had paid off, and at long last he could put a face to the assassin's voice and, even more importantly, a few cheap bullets in the assassin's head. After checking his six, the Spartan palmed his pistol and slowly emerged from cover.

O'Carrol looked at the techie and then back down at the floor. "How many soldiers are in there now?"

"I show seventy-seven, and that's gotta be most of 'em."

She took a deep breath and tapped her COM. "Gary, has Sean Flannery radioed in yet?"

"Negative, ma'am."

O'Carrol dropped her head and focused on the rotting plank floor beneath her. But for this, everything had gone as planned. The UNSC had even been kind enough to personally evacuate them from the houses. What could have stopped a man like Sean between leaving her and getting out?

"Cairren," the techie said with trepidation, knowing his life might hinge on his choice of words, "I like Sean as much as you, but we don't have much time. Once they find the tunnels they're gonna tuck tail and run. We've spent the last year prepar—"

"I know, Barry." The infamous rebel leader ran a hand through her thick red hair and searched for a logical reason to delay the order. She had planned on accomplishing two things before embracing death: exacting revenge on those who killed her family, and asking Sean's forgiveness for killing Connor right in front of him. And if she lived more than a minute past completing the latter, it would be too long.

Forgive me, Sean ... for everything. Cairren turned a tortured face towards the techie and nodded. "Do it."

The fake medic came to a stop in a patch of overgrown grass between two buildings on the opposite side of the street.

"Let's put him down here." Bending at the knees, Wiley lowered the ODST to the grass and deftly retrieved his pistol from the small of his back. By the time he had straightened up, it was pointed at the ONI officer's brain. "David Sagus?" he asked, using his real voice for the first time. "Look at me David."

Rounding the back of O'Carrol's building at inhuman speed, Lexicus saw the scene in the alley—and moved even faster. Sagus lifted his head; Lexicus lifted his gun; Wiley lifted his eyes ... and the world disappeared in thunder and flame.

Major Purves watched in horror as O'Carrol's building exploded with such force that the concussion nearly knocked his ship out of the sky. The other two Pelicans, which had been hovering much closer to the building, were gone. Debris clanked off the ship's window as he turned to the Pilot seated beside him.

"Get us outta here!"

"Yes, s—" A three ton piece of steel crashed through cockpit glass; bringing one offensive and two military careers to a decisive end.

The blast blew Lexicus off his feet and slammed him into the brick wall just inside the alley. After a moment of disorientation, he jumped up and turned towards the assassin—only to discover that he no longer held his pistol. In that stark and hopeless moment, Lexicus took in the entire scene.

Unhurt and pointing his gun at the Spartan's head, Wiley appeared almost inhuman; standing straight and still as a statue while flaming debris crashed to the ground all around. Helljumper lay dying, sprawled unconscious in the grass at the assassin's feet with foam bulging out of an ugly head-wound. Sagus knelt beside the ODST with surprise and sorrow, looking like he'd just been sucker-punched by God.

Without a hint of emotion in his cold blue eyes, Wiley held his weapon steady and glanced back and forth between ONI agent and Spartan. After a long moment, he steeled his nerve and spoke four explosive words.

"I need your help."

As darkness descended on Lifford that evening, every door was shut and every lock was turned—except one.

Benny Gunderman lay tied up in the hotel bathtub, watching the clock mark off the last minutes before sundown and bemoaning the inequities of life. How could God be so unfair? He'd done everything the ODST had asked, and yet he was still bound, crippled and helpless; like some sick offering to the gods of night. Why did the darkness even speak his name? What had he done to deserve such a fate?

Sure, he'd helped blow up that condo in the Pallisades and a lot of innocent women and children had died; but such sacrifice was necessary to shake the rich from their false security. Tragic as it was, it helped bring about change. If that was murder, then some of the greatest men in history had—

Benny heard hinges squeak on the front door and his blood turned to ice. A second later the light clicked off, plunging him into complete darkness. Panic seized his guts and he pulled against the ropes with all his might.

Soft, scratchy footsteps—first one and then many—moved slowly through the living room. A horrid smell assaulted his nose ... and then he heard it.

"Benneeee Gundermaaan. Benneeee Gundermaaan."

Flesh peeled off his wrists like wet paper as he pulled against his restraints with all the savagery of a bear caught in a trap. His eyes strained to see in the pitch black, but saw nothing.

"Benneeee Gundermaaan!"

The damning words were spoken right next to his ear. Benny shrieked in horror and his mind searched desperately for a place to hide. Something cold and foreign touched his arm, then his leg—and then everywhere. As it turned out, the darkness was not interested in Benny's theories of right and wrong. It didn't take time to debate his reasons and rationalizations for targeting the innocent. No matter. As the rebel's limbs were snapped like toothpicks and cruelly twisted from his body, he was far too busy screaming to discuss ethics.

And cries that soon ended in the land of the living had only begun to echo through the halls of the damned.

C.T. Clown

Court of Darkness (chapter seven): Unnatural
Date: 19 April 2007, 10:24 pm

Court of Darkness (chapter seven): Unnatural

September 23, 2538; Aonia City (Planet Metioche).

Immune to the swift death descending on the humans around them, the flowers flourished in neglect; mocking their caregivers' grim fate with each colorful bloom. At least, it seemed that way to Andy. As he walked home through the corpse-strewn streets of Aonia at dusk, a warm misty rain made his t-shirt cling to his skin. Andy no longer stopped to see if the red, swollen bodies he stepped over and around were people he knew, and he'd long since tuned out the incessant cries of mourning. For two and a half months, every day had dawned a nightmare, and with each passing sunset his former life passed further away. Emotions that had once been at the surface were pushed down so far into his psyche that he'd become convinced he would never experience them again.

He was wrong.

Fear's icy fingers tickled his spine as he neared his small home and saw his older brother Tommy on the front porch. When their eyes met, Andy suddenly forgot how to breathe. He bolted for the house, but his brother stood to block his way.

"Don't go in there, Andy," he said, fighting back tears. "Beth's all but gone, and I don't wanna lose you too."

Shoving his brother aside, Andy ran through the door and into a wall of forgotten emotions. Beth, his beloved wife of eight months, lay on the couch before him. Her red skin flashed like fire against the white sofa and she was swollen to twice her normal size. Only her long blond hair, tangled and forgotten beneath her fevered head, remained unchanged. As he looked at his dying and disfigured lover, each breath became a conscious physical effort and his chest felt heavy and immovable.

"Honey?" he said, kneeling beside her and taking her ballooned right hand in his. Warm tears filled his eyes and began flowing down his face. "Can you hear me?" Beth's eyes opened—and they were as red as her skin.

"You're wrong about the flowers," she said in a painful, raspy whisper.

"The flowers?"

Beth somehow managed to smile. "They're not mocking us, honey. They're a blessing from God."

Andy's mouth dropped open. "H-how did you know about that?"

"I heard you on the way home." She squeezed his hand. "And I'm glad you noticed my hair." Red tears welled in her eyes. "I'm not all gone."

He shook his head in confusion. "You heard my thoughts?"

"Uh huh," she replied softly. "And you ... you thought my sister was cute." Her face twisted in agony as a violent convulsion shook through her traumatized body. She tried to speak but her head fell limp and her once eloquent lips produced only the sound of escaping air. Bethany Marie Navré was gone.

For some reason Andy had never feared for Beth's life. Although he had mouthed the words eight months before, it had never occurred to him that death might actually part them; or that her voice and touch could ever disappear completely. After two and a half months of disease and ruin, Andy thought he'd become familiar with death, but he now realized he'd been nothing more than a tourist. For weeks he'd thought that Death's horror lived in the reeking corpse-strewn streets of Aonia, but now he knew the awful truth. Death plunged its stinger into the living, not the dead. The tragedy was not in the streets, but in the lonely houses of those left behind.

Andy's brother walked in and stood by the door, afraid to come a step closer. He took a long, hard drag on his cigarette and shook his head as he blew out the smoke.

"I don't know. I scoffed at those weird stories goin' around same as you, but this here," he said, pointing at Beth's body with his cigarette, "has got me spooked." Andy continued to stare at his wife; too numb to respond to the crass statement. Tommy flicked ash into a flowerpot next to the door and spoke in a trembling voice. "Beth freakin' told me what I was thinkin'. She knew that me and Rona just had a fight." He looked nervously out the window and sucked in smoke as if his life depended on it. "That's unnatural."

Squeezing his lover's hand for the last time, Andy whispered a truth that was as obvious to him now as his own existence. "Death is unnatural, Tommy." He ran his hand through Beth's hair, kissed her crimson cheek and then gently closed her eyes. "That's why it feels so wrong."

By the time the virus concluded its reign of terror, it had killed every man, woman and child it infected: a staggering ninety percent of the population. When scientists were unable to determine the plague's original host, Metioche was permanently quarantined; making it the only planet in the history of mankind to be claimed by a virus. With help from the UNSC, the survivors were evacuated and the system abandoned. But Death can not be dammed up like a river and not all plagues are spread by blood and wind.

Two years later, a Harvard student made the virtually unknown plague the subject of a doctoral dissertation and, given the phenomena exhibited by its victims as they neared death, dubbed it, "The Seer's Virus." Although the paper drew scorn from both students and faculty, it caught the attention of an ambitious ONI Colonel named Stephen Black who, after pulling the appropriate strings, sent a team of scientists to conduct research on the doomed planet.

After two grisly months of grave digging and dissection, they sent back a report so incredible that neither its highly technical nature nor its dispassionate tone could keep it from reading like science fiction. Although the bodies of the victims had wasted away, the brain and spinal cord were in perfect condition and surrounded by a thin protective membrane. And, in a development that caused one of the scientist to suffer a mild coronary episode, they discovered that the brains were still active. Indeed, every time one of the researchers moved or spoke, the brains would react—even if it was behind closed doors hundreds of meters away.

ONI knew they'd struck gold; now they had to find a way to mine it.

It was a tall order, but after three years of tinkering, thousands of dead primates and several viral mutations, ONI's Biological Research Division finally had something to show Colonel Black. As of yet, only chimpanzees had been tested, but the results were undeniably spectacular. Aside from a modest boost in red blood cell production, they had managed to eliminate the harmful effects of the virus without diminishing the considerable mental augmentation. The chimps could react to one another through walls and respond to their trainer's commands—whether spoken or thought—from several kilometers away. The ONI Colonel was so impressed that, against the advice of the researchers, he had two prisoners sent over that same day for human tests.

Although the men showed no symptoms of the original virus, they nevertheless dropped dead fifteen hours after infection. When Colonel Black was told it would take years to generate a mutation that worked on humans, he began looking for a shortcut—and found it.

Following the appearance of the Covenant in 2525, ONI rewrote its rules and bylaws to reflect the growing threat. It was during that dark and desperate time that the concept of Utilis Mors, was added. It stipulated that human lives could be sacrificed on a large or small scale if the outcome was beneficial to the preservation of our existence. Mr. Black knew that large scale "testing" on human subjects would provide the best chance for a beneficial mutation. With a little luck, they could move the implementation date up years or even decades. Given the startling potential of the project, he had little trouble getting the brass to agree that it met the criteria for Utilis Mors. All that remained was choosing a planet with a large enough population and—since the military establishment at large would never condone ONI's course of action—a nominal UNSC presence.

Tethra was perfect.

In the Spring of 2544, the virus was unleashed on Lifford; Tethra's poorest and most densely populated city. Over the next few months, millions died in what came to be called the Silent Plague. Results were good at first, with the virus showing a tendency for quick mutations, but given the fact that it killed every person it infected, the plague burned out before significant progress was made. Thus, it was sent back to the Biological Research Division while the clandestine agency crossed its fingers and covered its tracks. Slaughtering millions of people drew enormous attention, and even under the rationalization of Utilis Mors, it wasn't something that could be done often. Yes, Mr. Black would be allowed to give it another try, but he would have to wait a full eight years.

Seven years and three hundred sixty-four days later, Colonel Black walked out of Tethra's largest hospital and slid into the back of a waiting limousine. An elaborate bouquet of bandages adorned the stump where his right arm used to be, and he required a steady diet of morphine to dull the pain. No matter. Tomorrow was his big day and neither Cairren O'Carrol nor an amputation-by-sniper-rifle was going to keep him from his front row seat.

Since they couldn't trust hospitals, ONI Lieutenant David Sagus had all but given Helljumper up for dead. Wiley, however, proved to be a highly skilled medic—if not a formally trained physician—and after three hours and several close-calls, he managed to stabilize the unconscious ODST.

When the assassin finally shut off the bedroom light and entered the living area of Lexicus' apartment, he found Sagus and the Spartan sitting with pistols drawn on opposite ends of an old brown sofa.

"How is he?" David asked, his eyes as cold as the steel in his hand.

Wiley's gaze was no less frigid. "He's in a coma, but his vitals are good."

"Thank you. Now spread your legs and place both hands on your head." Sagus stood, shoved his weapon into the small of his back and searched the mysterious killer, finding only a small combat knife. After tossing it across the room, he palmed his pistol and returned to the couch.

"I've been ordered to kill you," Lexicus said in a tired voice, "And I fully intend to carry out that order."

Wiley looked back and forth between the two men, more irritated than frightened. "I could've shot you both."

"Then you should've," the Spartan replied flatly. "I came to kill, not to bargain." The big man paused for a moment and then smiled. "Why did you risk your life to ask for help?"

Wiley grunted. "It'll take a while to explain."

"That's all right," Lexicus said, nodding towards his gun, "I'll let you know if I get bored."

It had been a long, busy day and though he hated to admit it, he was glad to see the last person walk out the door. Pastor Brian Fogarty usually enjoyed spending time with members of his small Protestant congregation, but the events of the last few days had drained his energy and emotions to such an extent that he could barely sleep. Brian was a firefighter as well as a minister, and ever since the terrorist attack on the condominium in the Pallisades, all he could see were the mangled bodies he carried out of the wreckage, and all he could feel was anger—and that was no way for a man of God to live.

Earlier in the day, he had tried sharing his feelings with a friend, but all it got him was a canned smile and a short lecture on how he ought to forgive the terrorists and pray for their salvation. From a strictly theological standpoint, the advice was fine, but the flippancy with which it was offered made him even more upset. Such a thing was easy to say when you hadn't watched a terrified two year-old girl writhe in agony before dying in your arms. When his friend then asked how he thought Jesus would respond, Brian answered without hesitation.

Jesus would have been furious.

Loosening his tie, he fell down on his comfortable couch and tried to think about something—anything—else. Comforted by the welcome silence, his mind began to drift when a soft knock on his front door brought him back to his ugly reality. Rising from the sofa with a scowl, he swung the door open—and his mouth dropped open. Laying face-down on his porch was the largest man he had ever seen; and if the bruises and dried blood were any indication, he'd taken a horrendous beating.

Sean Flannery lifted unfocused eyes, raised an arm towards the blur standing before him and passed out before uttering a word.

It took more than an hour, and even though Wiley's tone was emotionless and detached, his audience was spellbound. With their guns set aside and forgotten, both Sagus and the legendary Spartan felt as if they were back on Erebus.

Lexicus rubbed his right eye and sighed. "Where is the virus now?"

"It arrives tomorrow morning," Wiley replied, "And thanks to O'Carrol, it will be heavily guarded. According to Mr. Black, there'll be a couple dozen Marines and at least one Spartan."

"What about the rich?" Sagus said, leaning forward to stretch out his stiff neck. "If this plague spreads like you say, what's to keep them from getting it?"

"The Industrial Counsel learned its lesson eight years ago," Wiley said with a smirk. "This time they've stockpiled vaccines in advance."

Lexicus shook his head. "I don't get it. Why would somebody like you even care?" The Spartan's eyes narrowed. "Is somebody paying you to do this?"

"No," Wiley replied, showing a rare hint of genuine emotion. "What do I have to gain? Breaking my contract with ONI means that I lose my compensation and gain a powerful and determined enemy." He dropped his gaze to the floor and spoke in a low voice. "I'm not a monster. Killing one person isn't like killing millions."

Exploding forward so fast that Wiley didn't have time to flinch, Lexicus grabbed the assassin by the neck and slammed him violently to the floor. The Spartan shoved the barrel of his automatic into Wiley's temple and spoke through gritted teeth.

"I guess that depends on which side of the gun you're on, 'cause whether you get killed alone or go out with a crowd, you're just as dead." Sagus jumped from the couch, fished what looked like a marble-sized ball-bearing out of his pocket and shoved it into Wiley's mouth. "Swallow it!" Lexicus yelled, pressing the gun painfully into the man's flesh. "Swallow it or I'll blow your head off!" After a moment of defiance, the killer gave in and let the object slide down his throat. Lex stared at the wall clock for forty-five seconds and then turned the assassin loose.

Wiley backed away, his eyes pure poison. "What was that?"

"An explosive tracking device," Lexicus replied coolly, "And it's attached to the lining of your stomach. If you try to run or do something naughty, either one of us," he pointed back and forth between himself and Sagus, "can push a button and blow you in half. If you're a good boy, when this is over I'll type in the deactivation code and it will release and ride out of your body. If I don't deactivate it, the device will detonate on its own in one week."

Wiley sat down on the couch and unconsciously placed a hand on his stomach. "But then if something happens to you, I'll die whether I keep my word or not."

"What's that?" Lexicus looked at him like a father scolding a child. "Killing 'one person' suddenly has significance for you?"

Ever since hearing the first details about the SPARTAN program, Wiley had imagined big, programmed soldiers who had all but lost the ability to think for themselves. But sitting in that room with a bruised neck and a bomb in his stomach, he realized that he'd made too many assumptions—and it had cost him dearly.

He looked at Lexicus and smiled bitterly. "You guys aren't just wind-up soldiers after all."

"No," the Spartan replied, "But keep it under your hat. That's one rumor I like to encourage."

"Sir," Governor Don Sisson said with more than his usual humility, "do you think you should be out of bed? You lost your arm."

Glaring at the moron sitting on the other side of the desk, Mr. Black wished to God that he was healthy enough to throw a punch. "Really, Don?" he barked with as much sarcasm as he could muster. "Thanks for telling me." He adjusted the bandages around his stump and mashed a button that supposedly sent more painkillers into his veins. "I need to know how many policemen you'll have working tomorrow."

"Policemen?" The Governor wiped sweat from his brow. "For the delivery? I thought that was being handled by the military?"

"Only the escort. I need your men to keep the route clear between the airport and the Pallisades. It's nothing more than they'd do for a parade."

"Oh," Sisson replied, nodding repeatedly, "So you're driving it in. Makes sense, I guess, unless word gets out, and then you'll be—"

"Just answer the question!" A sharp pain shot through the ONI Colonel's shoulder, and he pressed the pain button again. "How many policemen do you have?"

"Well, sir, as you know O'Carrol threatened to target anyone assisting the government, and that means cops if it means anyone, so it really isn't a surprise that—"

"God help me, Don, if you don't give me an answer, I'll—"

"I'm guessing maybe ten or fifteen." Governor Sisson replied, employing the thin voice used by underlings in bad movies.

"What?" Mr. Black pulled a prescription bottle out of his jacket, dumped several pills into his hand and swallowed them without benefit of water. "Where are the rest?"

"Well, they were, uh, scared of O'Carrol." Sisson looked down at his desk calendar and shrugged. "So they quit."

Once again, the Colonel adjusted the bandages on his stump. "Okay, then you'll need to contact Major Purves and tell him to—"

"But sir, Purves is dead and most of his men with him. You were briefed earlier at the hospital."

The pain button squeaked like a dog's chew toy.

"You had me briefed at the hospital?" In an effort to calm down, he took his eyes off Sisson and fixed his gaze on a stapler sitting in front of him. "You authorized the sharing of delicate and confidential information out loud in a public place to a man so bombed out on morphine that he didn't know his own name?"

Don Sisson prayed for the right words, but God wasn't listening. The fact that the best reply might be to say nothing at all never even occurred to him, so he spoke the only thing that came to his mind. "Yes."

Throwing aside both caution and sanity, Mr. Black jumped across the table and began pounding the Governor's face with his remaining hand. And although he feared that his rash, drug induced action would result in even worse agony, his worries proved unfounded. As it turned out, mashing Don Sisson's face did more for his pain than mashing the morphine button.

And it was twice as much fun.

Sean Flannery woke with a start to find himself lying on a couch in an unfamiliar house. There were no windows, but he somehow knew that the sun had long since set, and that realization sent a chill through his body. Everything about the room seemed wrong, and a vague eeriness gnawed at his mind like a whispered curse. A single light fought to illuminate the room, but it seemed in retreat; steadily giving way to the creeping darkness. Frozen like a frightened child, he looked around the room without daring to move his head—and suddenly heard a noise that made his mouth go dry. Outside in the black, moonless night, something scraped against the house; starting at the wall behind him and moving towards the door. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dampened his clothes as he stared at the front entrance. Then he heard it again; one long, grotesque scrape marched across the wall ... followed by many, many more. Sean listened in horror as the macabre crowd gathering outside the door lifted a chant of indistinct whispers; their dead voices droning tonelessly like carolers from Hell.

A scream choked in Sean's throat as darkness flowed inside through the crack under the door and engulfed the room's small lamp like a wave dousing a flame. Now feet shuffled and scraped inside, and the whispering was no longer indistinct.

"Seannn Flaaaaaaannereeee. Chiiild killerrrr. Muuuurdererrr."

As the rotting ghouls came towards him cloaked in utter darkness and chanting the awful truth, a familiar voice suddenly broke from the others—and Sean's heart all but stopped beating. It was the voice of his dead daughter.

"Daaaddeee, you tore children to pieces."

"Honey," he sobbed, reaching out to her, but finding only darkness, "I was only trying to—"

"You slaughtered them like animals, and now I'm going to slaughter you."

Small, icy hands closed around his neck like steel, vengefully choking out his life—but he didn't fight back. His crimes were real, and the sentence was just. Death pressed in hard upon him, and he embraced it like a long lost child.

"Breathe!" a voice screamed, cutting through blackness like a ray of light. An invisible hand slapped his face, and a voice boomed in his ear. "Wake up! Breathe!" The cold hands released his throat and the whispering darkness retreated. Sean took in a deep, sorrowful breath and slowly opened his tear-stained eyes.

Brian Fogarty smiled with relief. "Praise the Lord. You were already turning blue when I came in."

Sean wiped his eyes and glanced around the room. Light seemed to radiate from every corner of the house, and he was not on a couch, but rather a big comfortable bed. It was a dream? He sat up, causing every muscle in his body to scream in pain.

"There was no little girl in here?" the big Irishman stammered.

Brian chuckled. "A little girl? No. Should there be?"

Sean shook his head and the last remnants of the nightmare floated away like smoke. "I guess not," he replied sadly, steadying himself as the blood drained from his head. "My name's Sean."

"I'm Brian Fogarty." The man grabbed a chair and sat down next to the bed. "Looks like you ran into some trouble."

Sean looked up for the first time, and his haunted eyes caused his host to shudder. "I need to speak to a priest right away."

"I might not be a priest, but I'm a Protestant minister with over seven years of seminary under my belt. And," he added with a smile, "I am unmarried. Is that close enough?"

Was it? Although Sean had been raised in the Catholic church, he'd never been that interested in religion. This was the sort of question he would've asked his wife—and the very thought of that saintly woman laid his horrible deeds open and bare. Tears began to fill the Irishman's eyes once again.

"I did something awful." Emotions brought to the surface by his dream now erupted like a volcano, and the massive Irishman began to weep. "What have I done?" Sean sobbed, his body shaking with every syllable, "I'm damned and I'll never see them again!"

Brian spoke softly. "Whatever you've done, Sean, you're not damned. Do you think Jesus went to the cross in vain? Your sins were nailed there right next to mine."

"No," he replied between sobs, "Not this."

"Do you want to tell me what you did? Sometimes just saying it can help."

Sean looked up at the minister like a man staring into Hell's fiery abyss. "I slaughtered women and children and babies. I blew them to pieces while they slept."

Brian yanked his hand off Sean's shoulder as images of mangled kids and charred bodies flooded back into his brain. "You bombed the Crown Heights Condominiums?" He asked, his face twisted in revulsion. "That was you?" As the big man nodded and dropped his head to the floor in uncontrollable weeping, Brian backed away with clenched fists. Ugly thoughts shot through his mind—thoughts no man of God should entertain—as Sean continued to dissolve at his feet.

"God made Hell for monsters like me. I don't deserve anything else." Sean's entire body convulsed in the most violent display of grief that Brian had ever seen. "I want to touch my wife's face!" The huge man slammed his fist to the floor, tearing skin and cracking floorboards. "I want to hold my little girl! I want to talk with my son! And now I'll never see them again!"

"Sean," Brian said, kneeling down and grasping his shoulder once again, "That's not true. What you did was horrible. I saw it with my own eyes. I pulled kids out of the rubble, and watched them," his voice broke, "and watched them die in my arms. So you see, I do know. It was monstrous. But Jesus died for the 'monstrous' sins too."

Lying there on the floor of a stranger, bruised, broken and without hope, Sean somehow believed what he heard—and peace flowed over his body like a warm blanket. And although his sins seemed even worse than they had a moment before, he knew he'd been forgiven. It didn't seem fair, but it certainly felt right. He looked up at the minister with a mix of surprise and relief.

"I don't deserve this."

Brian let out a deep sigh. "I know. Thank the Lord," Brian replied with more honesty than his guest realized, "not me." The pastor stood to his feet and regarded Sean gravely. "You realize that you still need to face justice. If there was any sincerity in what you said, you'll turn yourself in to the authorities." Anger flashed on Brian's face, if only for a instant. "The victims' families deserve at least that much."

"The authorities?" Sean stood painfully to his feet. "Our leaders are nothing but filthy murderers. They have no right to judge me. "

"What are you talking about?"

The big man sighed. "Sit down, Brian, and prepare to get very upset."

The delivery and its uniformed escort arrived at Lifford Metropolitan Airport shortly after dawn. With crisp military efficiency the soldiers loaded the vehicles and started for the Pallisades in a convoy of light-armored transports, guarded intermittently by Warthogs equipped with M41 LAAGs. None of them—Spartan, Marine or ODST—knew what they were transporting, but that didn't matter. They had promised Colonel Black that they'd take whatever-it-was from here to there, and God help anyone who tried to make liars out of them.

ODST Sergeant Mike Williamson would never admit it, but he was downright unnerved by the Spartan sitting next to him. The big, white-armored behemoth had barely spoken since they'd left Australia the week prior, but Williamson had nevertheless decided that this government created, genetically enhanced super-soldier was colder than deep space—and even less forgiving.

Glancing out the window, he was surprised to see that the police cruisers blocking the major crossroads were completely devoid of policemen. Why they hadn't simply flown the package directly to its destination was a mystery to him and the rest of his squad, but nobody fussed about it. Fact was, they seldom agreed with plans and strategies of the higher-ups. It was as much a part of military life as carrying a gun, and you either got used to it or washed out. His buddy's voice crackled in his helmet.

"How far to the Pallisades, Mikey?"

"'Bout Fifteen kilometers. Now quit talkin' to me and mind your gun. Remember, this is Peal's city." A huge, gauntleted hand rapped his helmet painfully.

"Save the chatting for later," the Spartan said in a cold, soulless voice. "And if you announce our position over the COM again, I'll kill you myself."

Dressed in his finest UNSC uniform, Wiley sat in the patrol car he'd borrowed from the city and inspected his equipment. Lexicus lay atop the three story building next to him, wearing his jet black MJOLNIR armor and peering through high powered binoculars.

"They're coming," the Spartan reported over the COM, "But it's not five vehicles like you said."

"How many are there?"

Lexicus looked at the seemingly endless line of Warthogs and personnel carriers and chuckled humorlessly. "I stopped counting at fifty."

"That means hundreds of soldiers." Wiley closed his eyes and silently scolded himself. It had never occurred to him that some of Mr. Black's slurred testimony might be inaccurate—and given the ONI Colonel's physical trauma and heavily medicated brain, such an oversight was unforgivable.

Silence filled the COM for thirty long seconds. "Consider this mission broken and head back to Sagus. You two are gonna have to come up with another plan, and fast. I'll buy you as much time as I can." To the Spartan's surprise, Wiley laughed out loud.

"No, if you go in, I go in with you. As long as that bomb's in my stomach, we're partners."

The Spartan smiled beneath his helmet. "You sure killing for free won't affect your aim?"

"Watch your words, Lexicus." Wiley's voice was cold as ice.

"You always this touchy?"

The assassin fed bullets into a clip and smirked. "Just remember who you're dealing with."

"Sagus?"

David took a swig of cold coffee and tapped his COM. "Sagus here."

"Wiley was wrong about the number of soldiers," Lexicus reported gravely." We probably won't do much more than slow them down."

David sighed and rubbed his forehead. "You're attacking anyway?"

"What choice do we have? If this convoy gets inside the Pallisades intact, it's all over. I guess we should've thought up a plan B."

An idea shot into David's head—and it made him wince. "Hold out as long as you can. There might be a way out of this."

Fifteen minutes later, Sagus walked into McLoughlin's Pub; alone, unarmed and with both hands in the air. Mouth's dropped open, guns were pulled and several men stood to their feet. Before them stood the man who had killed and maimed their friends earlier in the week—and this time he didn't have his scary friend.

"My name is David Sagus, and I need to see Cairren O'Carrol. She's put a big price on my head. Anyone want to collect?" Something slammed into the back of his skull, his legs gave way and he tumbled to the floor. A moment before he passed out, someone pulled a black bag over his head and tied it tightly around his neck.

"Tell me," the assassin said, peering through his high-powered scope and studying the approaching convoy, "How did you take on a hundred thousand soldiers on Erebus and live to tell?"

Lexicus grunted. "I was angry."

"You angry now?"

The massive Spartan dropped his binoculars, grabbed his shotgun and chambered an eight-gauge round. "I've been angry since I was six years old. Let's move!"

C.T. Clown

Court of Darkness (chapter eight): Pray for Sunrise
Date: 6 June 2008, 5:47 am

Court of Darkness (chapter eight): Pray for Sunrise


She hadn't wanted to fight. In fact, as she sat on one of the small wooden benches that lined the all-purpose recreational field, combat was the furthest thing from her mind. All she could think about were her clothes—or the lack thereof. Due to her fair complexion, Aimee hadn't owned a pair of shorts since she was a baby. It was her mother's way of protecting the gangly six year-old from ridicule. But now her mom was gone forever and none of the grown-ups at the SPARTAN training facility cared about Aimee's insecurities. Thus she sat alone, her long red hair hanging over her face and her eyes staring at the countless freckles dotting her ghostly white legs.

A smiling boy approached, and Aimee wished to God she could disappear.

"Take a look at that!" he said with a chuckle. "You're a freak! You look like you're dead!" He kicked Aimee's leg, and she pulled it back in pain as tears began filling her eyes. She looked around in desperation and was surprised to see several adult trainers watching them—and doing absolutely nothing.

The boy grabbed a handful of her hair and smiled mischievously. "This can't be real, 'cause nothin's this red! I bet you're a clown with a wig!" He yanked her head back and stared into her frightened eyes. "You a clown?" he asked with a toothy smile. "Want me to pull this dumb wig off?"

"Got a problem with red hair," a voice taunted from behind, "or just clowns?" The bully spun his head and saw what looked like the girl's twin brother, except this boy looked downright mean.

And little wonder.

Unlike the other kids recruited for the elite program, Michael "Chuckles" Gàirì hadn't grown up in a family but rather a rundown, understaffed orphanage. For him, fighting was a way of life—a way of life he'd learned to enjoy.

"Wow," the bully sneered, "you're ugly as her!"

Chuckles smiled, revealing two rows of jagged, neglected teeth. "I think she's pretty. Let go of her hair and say you're sorry."

"Aimee," the boy said, pulling her hair back even harder, "I'm not sorry at all."

Without warning, Chuckles exploded forward, crashing into the boy like a small freight train and carrying him to the ground with a jarring thud. The bully tried to get up, but a freckled fist smashed into his nose, knocking him back to the ground and blinding him with blood and pain. Planting a knee on the boy's chest, Chuckles pounded his face over and over, until finally he felt the hands of an adult trainer grab his shoulder and begin to pull him up.

"He's had enough, trainee!"

Fighting like an animal, Chuckles pulled free of the trainers, grabbed the bully by the hair and looked him straight in the eye. "Tell her you're sorry!"

"I said that's enough!" the trainer yelled, pulling the red headed orphan backward by his ankles. But Chuckles refused to let go.

"Tell her!"

After one last look at the freckled demon above him, the bully spit out a mouthful of blood and turned towards a now wide-eyed Aimee. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

As two grown-ups began dragging Chuckles away, six year-old Aimee Peel brushed the hair out of her eyes and gazed at his smiling face with amazement. He had red hair and freckles just like her, but nobody mocked him; nobody called him a freak—and now she knew why. She saw it in the bully's eyes the moment Chuckles attacked.

Fear.

Aimee's mother had taught her that changes in a person's actions always began with changes in their beliefs, but now she knew that fear could also be used to dictate behavior. Even with two adult trainers present, Chuckles had used it to make the bully say something that he didn't even believe. For all of her short life, fear of mockery had caused Aimee to hide her freckled white legs. But now, in a moment of perfect clarity, she realized that fear—horrible, paralyzing, mind-numbing fear—was a two way street.

As Chuckles and the trainers disappeared into a nearby building, the bully sat up in the grass and wiped blood from his mangled lips. "I'm gonna get you for this," he said with a hateful glare, "and there won't be any trainers around to stop me!"

Ever since she could remember, Aimee had endured mocking and ridicule without resistance or retaliation. Never again.

As she rose and walked around the back of the bench, anger exploded to the surface like an erupting volcano; contorting her freckled face with rage. She kicked the boy's chest with surprising force, knocking him backwards and expelling all the air from his lungs. An instant later she landed on his stomach and pinned his arms to the ground with her knees. Cradling the would-be-bully's head in her large hands, Aimee placed a thumb over each of his eyes and pushed down cruelly.

"I swear to God," she hissed with unfiltered hatred, "if you ever look at me again, I'll pop your eyes like grapes!" A trainer jumped to his feet and ran towards them as she pressed her thumbs down even harder. The bully's mouth to opened in a silent, breathless scream. "And then my white skin won't bother you, will it?"

As the boy whimpered his reply, a large man yanked Aimee to her feet and began to yell—but she barely noticed. Against all expectations, she'd found a friend and protector in the middle of this stern, joyless camp.

Fear.

And even at her tender age, it was love at first sight.

Thirty-five years later ...

An angry red sun rose slowly behind Lifford's buildings, painting the light-armored military convoy in blinding streaks of blood. Robert Valting gripped his M41 LAAG and swept his gaze back and forth across the street; silently thanking God that the UNSC hadn't gone cheap on visors. Empty streets loomed before him, but Rob derived no comfort from the calm surroundings. Aimee Peel was active in this city and that was more than enough to make your hair stand on end—whether you were a seasoned ODST or fresh out of boot.

"Donny, everything clear in the back?" he asked through his COM, suddenly desperate to hear something besides his own heavy breathing.

"Nah," his buddy scoffed, "We're gettin' hammered, but we thought we'd keep it to ourselves. How 'bout you?"

For the first time since getting in the back of the Warthog, Rob smiled. "Same up here. Now it don't feel half as spec—" The driver's head disappeared with a sickening wet smack, and thick gore splashed into his visor. In that instant of calm before either panic or reason had time to seize the reins of his mind, Rob stood straight as a statue and simply lifted his right hand to wipe away the blood.

It found nothing but sizzling red air.

Something blurred into the street from the left, slamming into the second vehicle like a missile. Bulletproof glass exploded as the light armor buckled and the car flew fifteen meters and crashed into a gray, windowless apartment building. As the dark blur recovered its balance and turned to face the convoy, the M41 LAAG on the nearest Warthog thundered, belching bullets and flame into the cool morning air.

Several cars away, Sergeant Tim Van Heusen could hardly believe his eyes. "Senior Chief!" he yelled into his COM as a machine gun roared to life mere inches from his helmet.

"Go ahead, Sergeant."

An APC exploded near the front of the convoy and Van Heusen felt the ground tremble as chunks of burning metal clanked off his windshield. "We're under attack, sir!" he yelled.

"No kidding," Senior Chief Simjanes replied coolly. "Estimated strength?"

"Only one, sir, but it's a Spartan!"

"You sure about that, Sergeant?"

Tim watched the massive assailant grab the vehicle in front of him by the bumper and flip it end over end—straight towards him. Reflexively scooping up his battle rifle, he dove out of the Warthog and rolled clear as metal crunched and squealed behind him. He looked up in time to see the enemy somersault over the wreck and land on the roof of the next car—all but destroying it with his massive MJOLNIR boots. "Yeah!" Van Heusen screamed, "I'm sure! He looks just like you, except he's jet black!"

Nearly one hundred meters behind, Senior Chief Simjanes leaned forward and peered out the windshield with a new sense of urgency. Only four Spartan II's had been issued black armor, and three of them were dead. As the convoy stopped completely and soldiers poured into the street, ugly warnings sounded in Simjanes' mind. Vehicles halted; men scared and confused; soldiers and ammo stretched thin as wire. He'd seen these tactics before—and he knew what came next.

"Sergeant Finley!" he barked, shoving the driver's shoulder, "Get us out of here now!"

No less than four soldiers crouched between the personnel carrier and the next car, and the driver had no doubt that there were an equal number behind. "Sir, what about the m—"

To the surprise and horror of the two soldiers sitting next to him, Simjanes yanked out his M6D pistol and pressed it hard into Finley's temple. "Move!"

"Oh no." Wiley lowered his sniper rifle and lifted his binoculars. "I think the package is making a run for it."

Spinning away from a machine gun burst, Lexicus dropped a Warthog's gunner with an eight-gauge blast and dove behind a smoldering wreck. He shoved shells into his shotgun as bullets whistled past his helmet. "What and where?"

"APC, center of convoy. It's the only thing moving."

"Roger that!"

Sergeant Dwayne Finley slammed into the vehicle behind him once again, trying in vain to ignore the screams as human bones crunched beneath his tires. He shifted into drive, spun the steering wheel left and the APC finally swung out of the convoy and sped down a side street. Fighting back nausea, Finley checked the rearview camera—and all but pushed the gas pedal through the floor.

"Holy Mother of G—"

"Weapons ready and brace for impact!" Simjanes yelled, silently cursing the driver's lack of nerve. As the black form grew larger on the screen, he took inventory. Four clips, three frags and a pistol.

It wouldn't be enough.

Something heavy landed on the roof and Finley grabbed the steering wheel like a dropped baby. Simjanes slid into the front, kicked the passenger door off its hinges with an armored boot and turned to Finley.

"Don't stop, don't slow down!" Leaning his MJOLNIR visor unnervingly close, he spoke in a voice that made hardened men tremble. "No matter what!"

Bound hand and foot, Sagus grimaced beneath his shroud as they dragged him up two flights of stairs, with his knees smacking each and every hardwood step. They passed through several doors—opened more with David's head than anything else—before their strong hands opened, dropping the weary prisoner to the floor.

"Who is it?" He recognized O'Carrol's voice.

"Says he's one of the UNSC men who tore up McLoughlin's the other night."

"Sagus?" She yanked the shroud from his head and looked down, her face burning with anger. "Where's Sean?"

David's voice was cold and flat. "Probably dead."

"You killed him?"

"Maybe. I left him unconscious and bleeding on the floor. More likely it was the explosion that did it." Sagus raised his head, meeting O'Carrol's gaze with calm, fearless eyes. "In that case, I guess you killed him."

Cairren's face turned to stone, even as the words painfully hit their mark. "Why are you here?"

"I need your help. ONI's back on Tethra, and they're going to try it again."

The towering redhead curled her lips into a snarl and her green eyes flashed at David with a rage that mirrored his own. "Try what again?"

Lifford's dreary buildings rushed by ever faster as Simjanes grabbed the inside lip of the accelerating APC's roof and swung out like a gymnast on the high bar. On his knees and caught off guard by the bold move, Lexicus snatched the shotgun from his back and jumped to his feet, just as Simjanes landed squarely on the roof a mere two meters away. He squeezed the trigger, but the APC squealed through a right turn, throwing him into the mounted fifty cal and making his shot go wide. Hunched against the large gun, Lexicus tried to swing the eight-gauge out, but Simjanes slammed into his chest like a missile. Since the city had no windows, only Wiley watched as the two armored giants flew off the vehicle's roof and landed on the cracked, filthy asphalt of downtown Lifford.

Simjanes bounced several times before rolling sideways and finally coming to a facedown halt. Footsteps approached, he reached for his pistol—and all but blacked out as a MJOLNIR boot crashed into his helmet. Immediacy melted away and the fading sound of the APC swirled together with the metallic clank of a shotgun chambering a round.

Lexicus jammed the barrel into the prone Spartan's neck and took a deep breath as the morning sun painted his profile on the warming pavement.

"Order that APC to stop."

Simjanes managed a weak chuckle. "From hero of Erebus to traitorous rebel in less than six months."

"Do it now," Lexicus ordered, applying pressure on the shotgun barrel for emphasis.

"And you were Ackerson's lackey before that," Simjanes replied, ignoring the command. His massive frame shook with laughter. "What are you gonna do next, join the Covenant?"

"Lexicus," Wiley's voice crackled in his helmet, "Whatever you're doing, you've got less than a minute to wrap it up. 'Bout a dozen vehicles from that convoy are headed your way."

"Roger that." With the virus gone and his time nearly up, he shook his head in frustration and began to squeeze the trigger. But even as the roar of engines grew steadily louder behind him, he relaxed his finger.

"They didn't tell you what you were bringing here, did they Sim? When ONI sent us to Erebus, they sent us to die. What'd they send you here for?" A shot whistled by his head, followed by another, and an instant later he disappeared into the labyrinth of dull gray buildings.

Taking in the scene through his high-powered scope, Wiley cursed in anger as Simjanes stood to his feet. "You didn't kill him," the assassin stated matter-of-factly.

"Killing him gets us nothing. The virus got away, so I had to take a chance. You'll have to trust me on this."

Wiley scoffed silently and closed the COM. Trust him? Had he gone mad? He didn't trust him or Sagus. That sort of idiocy could get a man killed. He made the mistake of letting his guard down once, and now he had a bomb on the lining of his stomach. And, for the first time since he'd become an assassin, there were two people walking around who knew him by sight.

What had he gotten himself into?

Not much shook him. Even having his arm blown off had done little more than force him to work a little slower. But this was different. This had rattled him to his core.

He'd assured himself that it was nothing more than the side effects of his pain medication. Didn't it say right on the box that it could cause both visual and auditory hallucinations? The deep bruise on his remaining arm was real enough, but surely there was a rational explanation for it.

That's what he kept telling himself, but it didn't to take the chill out of his bones.

Until the previous night, he had avoided venturing out after dark. Not because he believed the ridiculous stories spread by the locals, but because of how truly dark Tethra's nights were. With no moon, no streetlights and no windows to shine light from houses, the darkness hung like a great black blanket, and proved difficult to dispel. But a little after midnight the blue box holding his pain medication announced it was almost empty with an irritating beep—and the refills were in the back of his limousine.

Outside.

Since he knew the concierge would sooner take his own life than open or even unlock the front door at night, he had no choice but do it himself. He turned the five deadbolts, twisted the knob and walked out. But just beyond the small patch of cement illuminated by the open door, someone—or something—had been waiting.

He'd never forget the touch: coarse, dry and powerful. He'd never forget the voices: thin, dark and inhuman. Most of all, he'd never forget the words.

Taaaaylorrrrrr Steeeeeeephennnnnn Blaaaaaack. Murrrrrderrrrrerrrr. Taaaaylorrrrrr Steeeeeeephennnnnn Blaaaaaack. Murrrrrderrrrrerrrr.

Somewhere in the inky blackness a hand closed around his arm and squeezed like a vice—even as the steady chant of his name and title continued. Yanking away with all his strength, he somehow tore loose and ran for the light. And then, stumbling backwards into the bright doorway, he saw it. No more than four and a half feet tall, long blond hair, light gray skin. A child. No expression, strange eyes, wearing a filthy and tattered burial gown. It darted into the light for only an instant, and then disappeared just as fast. But the chanting grew louder, as more and more thin, dead voices joined in. He heard it after closing the door. He heard it after returning to his room. He even heard it as he earnestly prayed for sunrise.

Of course, the unseen crowd's chant was more than just a name or title; it was a verdict. Taylor Stephen Black was a murderer, and his punishment had only just begun.

Moments after passing through the massive gates at the entrance of the Palisades, Simjanes' Warthog slowed to a stop before an ornate five-story building. He glanced at the three soldiers accompanying him and turned to the driver. "Wait out here. This shouldn't take long."

"Yes, sir."

The Spartan climbed the polished marble steps decorating the front of the decidedly non-military facility, and entered through one of the fifty or so windowless silver doors. An attractive receptionist looked up from a solid walnut desk and managed a frightened smile.

"Can I help you?"

"I need to see Colonel T. Stephen Black."

The smile disappeared entirely. "And your name is?"

"Senior Chief Simjanes."

"Take the elevator all the way up, first office on the right. He's expecting you."

To his surprise, the top floor was an honest-to-goodness no frills office—albeit an empty one—and nothing like the marble and walnut laden foyer. A plain steel and plastic receptionists desk sat vacant in front of an open door. Inside, a large man talked on the phone and Simjanes was surprised to see that he was missing an arm. And if the bandages and intravenous tubes were any indication, he'd lost it recently.

"Don't do anything until I arrive. Shouldn't be long," he said, pausing to push a squeaky red button on the small blue 'painkiller' box the doctor had taped to his chest. "Make sure you're ready, 'cause I'm not waiting for anything." He looked up and waved Simjanes into the room. "No, keep the Governor away, or I might kill the imbecile myself."

He clicked the phone off and smiled wearily. "Please, take a seat."

"Colonel," the Spartan said, ignoring the invitation to destroy a cheap plastic chair, "I hope the package arrived intact."

"Yes, yes it did, thanks in no small part to you I understand." Mr. Black grimaced and then pushed the red button on his chest once again, sending more painkillers into his veins.

"What were we transporting, sir?"

The Colonel smiled politely. "I'm afraid that's classified."

"Sir, I have reason to believe that it may pose a threat to me and my men."

"You do? And why's that?"

Simjanes stood silent. What could he say? That a Spartan-turned-rebel suggested the possibility while kicking his butt in the street?

"Well?"

"I have my reasons."

"If that's all," Mr. Black said derisively, "I'll let you return to your duties." The big Spartan stood motionless.

"You have any men up here, Colonel? Any bodyguards? Marines? Anyone?" Even by Mr. Black's standards, the voice was cold. "No, you're here all alone: one arm, a pain button and a rank." The big Spartan chuckled humorlessly. "Vulnerable as you are, that sort of surprises me. If you were in danger, or passed out from all those drugs, how long would take for anyone to respond? Would they even know, or would they just find your body a day or so later?" Simjanes let the question hang in the air. As the seconds ticked slowly by, the pain button squeaked like a tortured rat.

"What were we transporting, sir?"

An amused smile crept across the Colonel's face. "One question at a time, Senior Chief." The faint sound of heavy boots on stair steps grew in their ears until it became like thunder. A door burst open a few meters past the elevator and well armed Marines clamored through it and made a beeline for Mr. Black's office.

"You wanted to know how long it would take for someone to respond if I were in danger?" the ONI officer asked as no fewer than fifty soldiers took up positions in and around the small room and leveled their weapons at the white armored giant. "Less than a minute."

"Sir," a soldier asked, peering over the scope of his assault rifle, "is everything okay?"

Mr. Black looked up at Simjanes with contempt. "Any more questions, Senior Chief?"

"No, sir."

"Barry!" O'Carrol yelled, as she rushed through her new facilities with David Sagus in tow. The techie tried to walk, type and listen all at once. "Raise north and south Lifford, and tell Johnny to give the recruiters guns!"

"Can they mention the—"

"They can say anything that'll get us more men! Failing that, make sure they're willing to collect'em at gunpoint!" Stopping in front of a large door, she grabbed Barry's shoulder and raised two long fingers into a "V" in front of his eyes. "They've got two hours, no more, and then we meet at city hall. We'll arm'em when they arrive."

"But there could be thousands of people," Sagus said, speaking for the first time. "That's a lot of guns."

O'Carrol opened a large door, switched on the light—and Sagus nearly repeated himself. The expansive room was filled from floor to ceiling with UNSC weapon crates.

"Barry, tell Mike to get everyone he can spare down here on weapons detail. She turned to David. "When will Lexicus arrive?"

"Maybe half an hour. He's meeting Wiley back at the apartment and then heading over."

O'Carrol shook her head in disbelief. "You and Lexicus were fools to let that man live."

"He'll do as he's told," Sagus said, knowing that either he or Lexicus could detonate the bomb in Wiley's stomach from anywhere on the planet.

Cairren chuckled humorlessly. "Unless he slips your leash."

"He won't."

He'd planned on breaking into the pharmacy, but was pleasantly surprised to find it already open. A few minutes later, he sat in the stall of a filthy public bathroom, trying to build up his nerve. This little stunt could kill him, but not doing it was nothing short of suicide. After one final deep breath, Wiley dumped all thirty naproxen tablets into his mouth and washed them down with spring water. Kneeling next to the toilet, he broke the safety seal on the powerful emetic he had just purchased and twisted off the cap. All he could do now was wait.

After about three minutes he felt a small ache in the pit of his stomach; a burning that grew in size and intensity with every passing moment. He doubled over onto the dirty floor, crying out in pain as his stomach convulsed and burned as if he'd swallowed molten lava. Summoning all of his resolve, he counted to ten slowly and, when he could bear the pain no more, dumped the flavorless emetic down his throat.

This time he didn't have to wait.

Blood and bile erupted from his mouth as he vomited over and over, until he wondered whether he'd ever take another breath. And finally, when he felt that he'd happily die hugging the toilet, he heard something beautiful: the sound of metal striking porcelain. Wiping tears from his eyes, he fished the tiny bomb out of the bowl and quickly stuffed it into his pocket. The vomiting continued for nearly ten minutes, but he didn't care. The bomb was gone and he was free. Free to help the people of Tethra. Free to go his way afterwards. Free to kill Lexicus. Free to kill Sagus.

Once again, life was good.

C.T. Clown

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