CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE

Reth quickly strode through the hall of one of the Redoubt’s grounded ships. There were ten old decommissioned ships that had been landed around “the Plaza,” with the largest Kig-Yar ship towering over them all from the northeast corner. Docking tubes connected the ships like bridges high over the ground.

And if Reth chose, he could descend into the ground, where every day the Unggoy warrens spread deeper and farther into the warmed rock. The escape pod he had landed in still sat out on the landing pad of the Plaza, crackling and shimmering from the heat of reentry.

He’d lived in fear for several long minutes, convinced that the Sangheili would get the ship running in time to turn around for him, but they hadn’t. The Sangheili had gotten the ship booted up and kept moving along their trajectory, headed for the Rubble.

Reth needed to order the Infinite Spoils away from dock along with all the other Kig-Yar ships, but he was reluctant to do so. Soon the Infinite Spoils would have human Slipspace drives, something the Hierarch hadn’t even granted Reth, but something that all Kig-Yar wanted: a Slipspace ship of their own. But first Reth needed to take the Rubble, and any human ships with the drives, for the Kig-Yar. The humans had been stockpiling the Slipspace drives they’d traded for to install in their own machine: the Exodus Project.

But when the Infinite Spoils got its drives it would mark something new, as long as the Kig-Yar could spirit it out of the Rubble before the Hierarchs heard of it.

Everything was about to change, Reth felt, as he took an elevator up into the tall, grounded ship that was the Kig-Yar refuge inside the Redoubt. There were many, many more guards around now than when the Sangheili had broached it.

He entered his room. The remains of the firefight had been cleaned up, the glass replaced so that he could, once again, look out over the Plaza, and the Redoubt as a whole.

The river of methane on the surface of Metisette rumbled underneath their creation. Its passage turned giant turbines, creating power for the entire complex. The Unggoy thrived here among the mists of methane reclaimed from the rivers and pools.

Shuttles were already descending from the reddened clouds to touch down on Metisette’s surface. Kig-Yar were forming up in the square below the balcony, as well as Unggoy Deacons. All per his command.

Several of his key advisors hustled up behind him. They looked shocked at the wounds all over his body, and his hunched position. Reth paid the stares no mind.

“We have planned for the invasion of the Rubble for a long time,” Reth said, doing his best to straighten up against the twinges of pain the Sangheili had left him.

“Is it time?” they asked.

Reth smiled. “Yes,” he said. “It is time. Send the orders. Gather the Unggoy out onto the Plaza. Give them their harnesses and masks. Prepare for the attack. We will take it all for our own, and once we have that data, we will continue to their homeworld as well.”

The Kig-Yar in the room warbled happily. They had been waiting patiently as the humans developed asteroids that the Kig-Yar considered prime for Kig-Yar nests.

Now they would be rewarded.

“Go,” Reth snapped. “Tend to your functions!”

The Kig-Yar advisors scattered out of the room, bumping into a slew of Unggoy that waited outside.

They were not rocketing into the Rubble just yet. But for all intents and purposes, the invasion had begun.