The Secret Story of Dustin Echoes

Chapter 5 - Interlude

            The roar of the Blackdagger’s engines gradually intensified, until it grew to a high-pitched scream. Yet the human and the Elite in the front of the ship could not hear the engines, and to them it appeared they were barely moving. The planet before them loomed huge and ominous, but it was actually quite a good distance away. It was a large planet, and its size in their eyes was increasing very slowly… very, very slowly. Behind their ship, unseen, a rippling portal, a tear in the fabric of space, opened before the Covenant Cruiser Relentless Inquisitor as it made its carefully-calculated slipspace jump. Dustin and Rebas were startled, but only slightly, since they had been expecting it, when the Inquisitor suddenly appeared, almost out of nowhere, above the atmosphere of the large, grey-brown planet.

            Dustin, who had jumped up slightly, settled back down in his seat, “Well, there they go.”

            Rebas turned to look Dustin in the eyes, for the human had removed his Orbital Drop Shock Trooper outfit.

            “Urgas is on that ship,” he said very calmly, “I know it. He will find your humans, if they are there, and he will kill them all if he does.”

            Dustin nodded and sarcastically replied, “Thanks for the information.”

            “How long before we reach the planet?” Rebas asked to no one in particular… which meant he was asking Diana.

            The AI unit’s voice flowed from the speakers with a reply, “I’m pushing the Dagger to its top speed… but it will still be several hours before we make it planet-side. I wish we could just make a slipspace jump like the Covenant, but we can’t… We don’t have the technology to do so. So unless you know the secret behind their pinpoint calculations and are willing to share it with us… we’ll just have to fly there like this. And I don’t know what we’ll be able to do when we get there.”

            “I’m an observer,” Dustin replied, “and a gatherer of information. If we can’t find and rescue the humans, we’ll at least try to get the Index. And if we can’t get that, then all we can get is away… to tell the others. Just like usual.”

            Rebas nodded very slowly and did not turn to look at Dustin as he replied, “And what about me?”

            Dustin sat for a long moment without reply. He had thought about it before, but only briefly, and now the problem presented itself to him fully. Just what would he do with Rebas Noiproks, this treacherous Elite, once their time together was at an end? He knew his duty; he should put Rebas back in the cryo-tube and seal it up. He should carry the Elite back to ONI for inspection, interrogation, perhaps even torture, at the hands of the humans. He knew Intelligence wouldn’t listen to him; they wouldn’t care if he treated this sentient being as he would treat a human. To them he would still be an alien, the enemy, and there was no telling what they would do to him. He would probably never be seen again. But what else could Dustin do with the Elite? Rebas had no friends… only enemies.

            “I don’t know,” Dustin answered at last, “What do you think?”

            “I was thinking… that you would turn me over to your kind,” replied the Elite in his deep, low voice, “I do not know what they would do to me, but I can guess well enough. Your kind and mine… are not truly that different.”

            “But we are different than both our kinds,” Dustin replied, “We’re both rebels of a sort… Would you like to hear my story?”

            “It appears we have time,” Rebas replied, “And you have heard my story, so let me hear yours.”

            “Very well,” Dustin replied, and then he was silent a moment as he cleared his thoughts before continuing, “I never wanted to be in the war. I believed in the cause, in protecting Earth from the Covenant who wanted to destroy it, but I was afraid. I didn’t want to fight, simply because I was a coward. When they came to get me, to take me off to fight, you know… I fled. I joined a group of rebels that had also refused to fight, and we hid together. Then one day a UNSC officer came through, a high-ranking commander in our armed forces. He didn’t come with an army to rout us out; he came to ask our help. He gave a great speech that I’ll never forget, and I went back with him. I joined up. Afterward, when they started training me, I thought myself a fool. But this commander had heard of my unique skills, and he recommended me to the Office of Naval Intelligence. They passed me and several others through a series of intense tests, some physical, some mental, and some just questions about our backgrounds. I actually lied on a lot of the questions, but I think I fooled them well enough… because they gave me the job. This great job, I thought at the time…”

            For a moment, Dustin fell silent. Diana’s hologram had appeared on the ship’s control panel, and now she sat staring at him, her holographic face full of interest. She had heard the story before, but she was especially attentive now for some reason.

            Dustin went on, “Now I’m not sure if it’s so great. At first, I saw the Dagger and I thought, ‘Wow, what I wouldn’t give just to be able to fly that thing through space.’ I thought I could watch the battles without participating, without endangering myself so much, and I would still be helping my people in the war effort. It seemed to be the perfect job…”

            “But slowly, your courage began to return to you, didn’t it?” Diana said.

            Dustin Echoes nodded, “Yes… I saw too many losing battles. I saw too many humans mercilessly slaughtered. I even watched as some colonies were destroyed without warning… and I wanted to help them. I wanted to fight, even if I risked my life doing so. I didn’t want to just sit by and watch while the human race got annihilated! … And then there were the long, lonely flights. I’m always alone, always by myself in this ship. ONI had a reason for not assigning me a partner, but I can’t even remember what it was now…” at this thought, Dustin’s eyes took on a distant look, and he said, “Space is a lonely place. ‘O Rebas… this soul hath been, alone on a wide, wide sea… So lonely ‘twas, that God himself scarce seemed there to be.’”

            Diana looked at him, her large eyes glowing as she replied, “And we did speak only to break the silence of the sea…”

            Dustin looked down at her and smiled, “Yes. My only friend and companion, though quite a good one, has been Diana on these long journeys.”

            “Dustin, there’s something I have to tell you,” Diana said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, but letting emotion slip into her voice, “I… looked up the name of this woman that the Monitor called the Reclaimer. She… she…”

            Dustin looked down at her hologram with worry in his eyes. She was looking away from him now in the hologram, and he sat staring at the tiny bow and quiver of arrows on her back. AI, even Smart AI like Diana, were not supposed to show this much emotion… that he knew. It was unusual. He swallowed hard.

            “Stay with me, Diana,” he whispered, “Don’t die on me now!”

            “She’s me, Dustin!” Diana blurted out, “I was generated from her mind! From a flash-clone… Sarah Morrison also works for ONI, and she made me to give to you. To give to the Watcher.”

            Dustin could only stare at her. He knew how Smart AI were created; they were scanned… downloaded from human brains. But the humans who underwent the procedure always died in the process. This was why Smart AI were so rare. The complexity of the human brain could not be copied in any other way, and even when it was, it was too much for the computer to handle for very long. That’s why Smart AI were so short-lived. This woman, Sarah Morrison, had scanned a flash-clone, a short-lived copy of herself, to create Diana. Cortana herself had been created in the same way.

            “Well… I don’t know what to say, Diana,” Dustin replied, gazing out at the dead world and the Covenant Cruiser floating eerily above its surface, “She might be dead by now.”

            “Forget about it, Dustin,” Diana said. She turned to look at him for a brief second, and then her hologram flickered away, “I won’t let it interfere with our mission.”

            Dustin nodded, “Then neither will I.”

            “There they are!” shouted Dordap the Grunt, “There’s a ship on the planet surface…  a human ship!”

            Urgas Konoproksee, once again seated in the bridge of his vessel, pressed a few holographic buttons that caused the image Dordap was viewing to appear floating before his own eyes.

            “Ah yes,” Urgas said, “A Long Sword I believe it is called. A human fighter and bomber craft.”

            “Such a simple and ugly ship,” grunted Thanatos from the level below, “But it appears your suspicion was correct, Urgas. Your brother and that human were most certainly headed here. But how did they know…?”

            “It does not matter now. The humans are there, and so is the Index. That is your bit,” Urgas said, “And Rebas Noiproks will soon be arriving there. That… is my bit.”

            Thanatos rose from his seat, “Then we go to the surface now!”

            “Yes,” Urgas said, “Dordap, ready the same group you were in command of last time. And no more failures, or it will mean your life!”

            “Y-yes! Sir, yes, sir!” Dordap squeaked nervously.

            “Prepare my Phantom,” Urgas said, “We leave at once!”

            The stars whirled overhead, and Dustin watched them as he lay there in his ship. It seemed like the war with the Covenant was the tensest war he had ever fought in… or rather, not fought in. Earth built up its forces, just waiting and wondering where the Covenant was going to strike. They never had any way of knowing. That was why ONI always sent him to fly alongside, though a good distance off from, war fleets sent to Covenant battles that were already underway. He never sat and waited for one to happen.

            Until today.

            He wondered now why ONI had sent him to this backwater world. He looked out the window at the glittering ocean on the planet’s surface, with the clouds drifting over it, casting shadows on the waves. The surface of the planet was mostly desert, with most of the planets having been imported there by human settlers. To look at a planet from space was what Dustin had always wanted as a boy. Now he saw it far too often, and whenever he did, he always thought of what the planets looked like… after the Covenant were finished with them. And now, as he stared out at the planet before him, he wondered what would happen to it. ONI must have sent him to this planet for a reason. The planet was called Troy, one of Earth’s colony worlds, and human-inhabited cities dotted its surface. There was a small UNSC military base there, but nothing large. And they had only sent him to sit, wait, and record what he saw. They did not say why. They rarely did.

            It was then that it happened. He noticed the ripples tearing through the stars in the distance even before Diana detected them and warned him. He sat and stared in wonder and horror. Surely, he hoped, it was a UNSC fleet. But he knew in his heart that it was not… and his heart proved to be right. Like drops of purple rain, swarms of Seraph fighters poured out of the storm, followed by larger Covenant war vessels, long bluish ships of immense size. Dustin glanced from them to the planet and back again in rapid succession, not believing his eyes. What was going on? Why weren’t the humans fighting back?

            He nearly leapt out of his seat when the first Covenant plasma cannons started charging. Row after row of them, all along the sides of the gargantuan alien ships, began to light up. As the lights intensified, Dustin imagined he was staring at some strange underwater creatures with glowing lines on their bodies. The Covenant ships looked frighteningly organic from a distance. He was a good distance off from the fleet where he was, but he was close enough to see the surface of Troy still glittering in naïve, pristine beauty below. He would get to watch the whole show, but this time, there would be no fight before hand.

            Then he saw it. One by one, the Covenant plasma cannons fired, sending beam after beam of glowing energy flowing slowly down toward the planet’s atmosphere like a deadly rain of fire. Dustin could only sit and stare. He did not even take records of the events. He knew Diana would do it without his orders, and one thing was certain anyway… he would never forget what he saw. He watched as the Covenant cruisers systematically bombarded the planet’s entire inhabited surface from orbit, completely obliterating all life. The sand and stone on the planet’s surface would melt under the superheated blasts, Dustin knew, and turn to glass. Cold, lifeless, reflective glass. Dustin could not stop them. No one even tried to stop them. But they had known. They would not have sent Dustin Echoes, the silent spy, the Watcher, to this backwater colony if they had not known something. There was no doubt about it; ONI had known beforehand that the Covenant were going to glass Troy.

            And they had not done anything to stop it.

            “Dustin?” Diana said suddenly.

            “Huh?” he asked dumbly, looking down at her.

            “It’s time to get up, Dustin… Wake up…”

            Dustin Echoes opened his eyes. He yawned, stretched, and blinked. Then he lay back and breathed a heavy sigh.

            “Thinking about something again?” Diana asked.

            “You read me like a book, Diana,” he replied with a half-hearted smile. It was true, he often thought of his past experiences. On a whim, he said another bit of poetry: “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who toil for gold… The Arctic trails have their secret tales that make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen strange sights, but the worst I was forced to ‘enjoy’… Was out in a place in colony space, when the Covenant glassed Troy.”

            “Changed that one a bit, didn’t you?” Diana said, “You sure know your poetry, Dustin Echoes.”

            “That’s one thing about my job,” Dustin said with a mirthless laugh, “It gives you plenty of time to read…”

            “Well,” said Rebas Noiproks, still sitting beside him, “the Covenant do not appear to be glassing this world.”

            Dustin was startled when the Elite spoke, for he had almost forgotten he was there. He turned and stared at the Elite for a moment, trying to convince himself that he was not still dreaming, as the memories of the previous day’s events came back to him.

             “Don’t your kind ever sleep?” Dustin asked.

            Rebas only huffed. Perhaps it was a laugh; Dustin was not sure.

             “So the Covvies aren’t going to do it the easy way,” Dustin went on, “I guess that means we still have a chance.”

             “I think we might,” Diana said as they drew ever closer to the planet, “I detect only two ships landed planet-side: A Longsword fighter, and a Covenant Phantom.”

             “Just one Covenant Phantom?” Rebas asked thoughtfully.

             “Confirmed,” Diana replied.

            Dustin grinned, “Well, I guess that just about evens the odds. Okay, people, look alive and get ready for a fight… We’re going in!”