Halo: Evolutions by Eric Nylund

Author:Eric Nylund [Nylund, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780765315731
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2009-08-15T06:00:00+00:00

Another crash, more final, and then the thunder of heavy footsteps. Just around the corner. Okay, boys, time to go.

Lopez shoved MacCraw into the room, catching Percy’s harness and dragging him back in as Smith scanned his hand again and sealed the door.

“Quiet,” Smith murmured. “It may go straight past us.”

Lopez held her breath, and counted rosary beads in her mind, in time to the thumpthump-thumpthump of uneven running, drawing closer, closer, flying right past.

Waited until the sound died away, until it had been silent for some time, before exhaling.

“Your friend is looking for you,” Smith said with a kind of gallows humor, cringing when Lopez raised her hand. He hadn’t earned the right to joke with them.

“Another black bloody box,” she muttered. “What’s the point of a black box you can’t see out of? Masterminds at work.”

“Masterminds at work, sir.”

She ignored the ONI agent. Let him waste energy on sarcasm. “Ready?” A round of nods. “Smith, the door, and keep your mouth shut.”

Whatever had happened in the lab, it was over now.

No lighting, no emergency lighting. Their flashlights bit out pieces of the room, little snippets of chaotic destruction. Glass smashed to hell and back, crunchy on the hard floor. The walls dented, with a sickly green fuzz growing in patches. Benches and cupboards overturned. Blood drying and tacky on the walls and ceiling. She’d become jaded. It didn’t really register as any different from the decor in the rest of the ship. The Mona Lisa had been turned into a vast garbage pit, a nightmare for insurance adjusters.

But: the smell hit like a fist, a shudder and cringe running through them on that first inhale. Where did that smell come from? Lopez had never experienced it before the Mona Lisa. Ever. It combined the bitterness of the inside of a walnut shell with, as far as Lopez could tell, something from way up inside a dog’s ass.

“Geez, Sarge,” MacCraw groaned, as if she were somehow responsible.

“Buck up, Private,” Lopez said. “The rest of us have had to smell your cologne all day.”

He had no answer to that.

As they fanned out, Lopez barking out the usual refrain—secure the doors, don’t let your guard down—she realized this must’ve been ground zero. Whatever Smith had done, whatever he’d really done, it had happened here. The remains of scientific equipment, so broken, so mixed together, resembled the mixed bag of wares available at some infernal flea market. Nothing she could put a name or purpose to.

Outbreak, but not a Covenant outbreak.

But the room was empty, just the aftermath and their trembling shadows, big and bold against the walls. Whatever had been here had moved on.

“The way to the bridge looks clear,” Mahmoud said, coming back to them.

Could it be that easy? No, it couldn’t. But still she told Mahmoud, good work. Sent Percy and Singh to check the other exits. MacCraw stared at a thick growth of green pus on the wall.

“What were you doing here?” Kept her voice low, as if the ghosts of whatever had trashed the lab might hear her otherwise.

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