Blood Shadow

Blood Shadow

Chapter the Second: Heavy Price Paid

Jan Kennedy stared the captive Elite in the eye and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do now.

She’d been told to deliver a lethal injection to the prisoner, take the body into the woods, and burn it. Everyone knew ONI were a bunch of bastards, and this was just one more example: now that Humans and Elites were allies, ONI didn’t want their new alien buddies to realize that humanity had been experimenting on an Elite for five years in a failed attempt to develop a biological weapon against them. Privately, Jan was surprised ONI didn’t just keep working on that weapon as a form of insurance. Doubtlessly they had other nasty surprises planned in case the alliance ever fell apart.

At any rate, the alien called ‘Coradee had become a liability.

Jan had done some nasty things in her forty-five years in this universe. When she was young, and the death of her parents at the hands of the Insurrectionists was still fresh in her mind, she had rage and grief as a justification. When she was middle-aged, and she watched planet after planet—as well as two husbands, three boyfriends and her cousins—fall to the Covenant, she supplanted rage and grief with desperation. She had come to rely on the fight as a reason to keep living.

Now her war was over, and with it came a reckoning of just what she had done.

Yes, she had helped to save Humanity, but at a cost of much of her soul.

She had perhaps another forty-five years to try to set things right.

The Elite ambassadors to Earth—Usze ‘Taham and N’tho ‘Sraom—had explained to Humanity that the beings which the Humans called Elites had been led astray by their leaders, the Prophets, and ultimately betrayed by them. This knowledge, coupled with the Elites’ invaluable assistance during the Battle of the Omega Halo, had done much to further the Human-Elite alliance. Though many Humans found it impossible to fully forgive the Elites, a majority were willing to try to focus on a better future. There was much rebuilding to do.

Jan Kennedy had hoped to begin her atonement by freeing the Elite which they had called Conrad.

Now he was telling her that he did not want to be free?

“What do you mean?” she asked him.

The Elite looked up at her with an expression that she could only describe as sardonic amusement. “Look at me,” he said. “I am crippled, dishonoured, and shamed. There are scars all over me where you held me defenseless and caused me to bleed without honour. I am missing a hand. I am missing my claws. I am missing all my teeth. My own people will look at me with disgust.”

Jan swallowed. She kept forgetting just how alien the Elites were. Humans welcomed back injured veterans as heroes; apparently Elites shunned them. It did nothing to endear her to the species.

Conrad—Arde ‘Coradee—folded his arms as best he could with one still cuffed to the side of the truck. “You send me home to my death.”

“Your people kill their injured.”

His mandibles curved in what might have been a smirk. “Usually, my people put injured warriors to work as breeders—chained in the keeps to provide the ranking females with fertilized eggs. I would rather die than bow to a female, so perhaps it is fortunate that I am not suited to such a use.”

“Because?” Jan asked with morbid fascination.

He looked down, away, and his words were soft. “What you…your kind…has done to me…I cannot make young any longer.”

She wondered if he was feigning the sorrow in his eyes. She made a note to get a look in the files, to see exactly what they’d done to him. If they’d given him some kind of degenerative disease, it might be kinder for her to kill him.

She also wondered if the damage he spoke of was an official order or just something one of her staff had come up with on his own.

Why the hell should she feel so guilty? The Covenant had killed her family, burned their worlds, committed a campaign of genocide…. She hated them, every one of them!

But it was easy to hate an abstract monster, and much harder to hate a helpless creature that sat in front of her, suffering.

“So,” he said, and his sardonic tone was back as though it had never faltered. “So, I have shamed my name by allowing you to capture me and torment me. I am an embarrassment to all Sangheili, and I have no more use to my people, so I must die. If I am lucky, they will permit me to kill myself. If I am unlucky, they will torture me before they kill me. Perhaps the kindest thing you could do for me, Jan Ken-na-dee, would be to provide me with a weapon so I might kill myself.”

“I don’t think so,” Jan retorted. “I don’t trust you not to try to take me—or someone else—with you.”

He smiled. “You are perceptive, Ken-na-dee.”

By his very words he had admitted that she was right to hate him, and yet…

…and yet…

“So. Kill me,” he said, with a coolness she could not even imagine.

“What am I going to do with you?” she groaned, having failed to think of the possibility that he might not want to go home. She had imagined what she would want in his position, and had utterly failed to grasp the fact that an alien might want something very different from a human being. “I can’t take you back to the USNC and you don’t want to go back to your own people. And I did not…did not…break the law to save you only to fail now!” She glared at him, angry for a reason she did not entirely comprehend. “I will find you a safe haven on this planet, then, and I will make sure you are comfortable. Will you accept that, you stubborn, ungrateful son of a bitch?”

He snorted, bitterly, but she prayed she hadn’t imagined the shine of hope in his eyes.

“I doubt you will find a place on this world that will welcome the likes of me.”

Jan swallowed dryly. She could think of a place.

And if she made the offer, she’d never be rid of Arde ‘Coradee.

But she knew of nowhere else where she could keep an alien in comfortable conditions that guaranteed privacy.

“I’ve accepted a retirement package. Starting next month,” she said, both to give him some background and to stall for some time to think.

The war was over. Yes, humanity would have a lot of work to do, repairing the damage caused by the Covenant during the long years of the war. There were a few planets that had not been entirely glassed; these were capable of being renewed and repopulated, if humanity was up to the task. The military would be turning its efforts towards reconstruction. There were still a few Insurrectionists out there, but the climate was not ripe for rebellion and their supporters were few; most humans recognized a need for unity at this time. So, though soldiers were and would continue to be needed, the military did not need as many personnel as it had required during the war.

Jan, being older, had been given an option to retire. She had taken it.

Jan was still trying to think about what to do with her impending retirement. She had considered joining the commissionaires, or perhaps expanding her background in communications to help with the reconstruction efforts.

But the fact remained, her retirement pay coupled with her inheritances would be enough to live on if she lived simply and modestly. As the last surviving member of her family—and her second husband’s family, and her third husband’s family—she was independently wealthy.

Perhaps she should use that wealth to issue an apology to someone her people had wronged.

All these years she had believed that humanity had done nothing, would never do anything, to warrant the vicious and unprovoked attacks of the Covenant. Now, though, she had the irrational idea that the Covenant leaders had looked into the soul of humanity and found it lacking. It was hard to discount this thought when the evidence of such lack was written all over Arde ‘Coradee’s body.

The Elite was still watching her.

“I have a cabin not too far away. Up in the mountains.” It had been left to her by her second husband, and she’d been staying there on her days off despite the long commute, because it offered her more privacy than a room on the base. “You could live there.”

“With you?”

She wasn’t sure if he would consider a positive response to be good or bad. She felt as though she ought to be keeping an eye on him, in case he needed any help due to his disabilities—and to make sure he wasn’t attacking human beings or doing anything else to harm the inhabitants of Earth.

Of course, she couldn’t just quit her job right away to watch him. And she couldn’t guard him 24/7, not when she was the only other person there. She’d have to sleep sometime, have to go to town for food, and during those times she would have to trust him…

Did she need to live with him?

Jan sighed. Practically, she might be able to afford a comfortable early retirement to the cabin, but she wouldn’t be able to afford to keep two houses as well as keeping herself and ‘Coradee comfortable for the rest of their natural lives.

He was still watching her and she realized that brutal honesty might be her best approach.

“I can’t afford two homes, Conr…’Coradee. You can live with me and behave yourself, or I can call Usze ‘Taham and give you a one way ticket to Sanghelios and you can take your chances when you get there. Your call.”

‘Coradee tilted his head, blinking his large eyes. “You are offering me asylum in youe keep—in your very home?”

Good God, she hadn’t thought this through. Her mind raced as she tried to imagine, and head off, all the possible problems with this insane plan. “Not if you threaten harm to any of our people. Or break our laws. Or otherwise cause trouble. Nobody can know you’re up there…”

His clawless left hand stroked his toothless mouth thoughtfully. “You are demanding I give up any vengeance.”

“Yes.”

“Vengeance that is rightfully mine.”

“What do you want from me?” Jan exploded, sick with guilt and fear and anger. “I can’t put ONI on trial. I’m not even sure what they did to you was a crime. Our laws about prisoners of war don’t apply to non-humans and even if they did, I don’t think…”

‘Coradee sniffed the air. “Your laws would not call it a crime. But you do.”

Her eyes widened. “How can you…”

“I can smell your guilt.”

Oh, God. Five years watching him, and she’d had no idea he could read her emotions from her scent.

She stared at him in horror.

He sat for a moment, closing his eyes, and then he said one single word.

“Agreed.”

Jan gawked at him, because the longer he’d been silent, the more sure she’d been that he would say no. And she had been relieved. She had been grateful that no, she wouldn’t have to share her life with one of the aliens she hated, no, she wouldn’t have to sacrifice her money and her privacy and her time to keep him, no, she wouldn’t be reminded every day of the brutality that she had helped her kind inflict on him.

And then he had said yes.

Jan stood rooted to the spot, feeling as though she’d been called before the Lord Almighty to account for her sins. And a simple “I’m sorry” had not absolved them, nor had a single act of charity. Jan Kennedy had been sentenced to spend the rest of her life in sacrifice to attone for what she’d done to a Sangheili named Arde ‘Coradee.

Jan felt sick all over again.

She tried to tell herself that just because she didn’t want to live with the alien didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. She doubted ‘Coradee had wanted to be sitting here with her, minus several body parts. She had a job to do, and she would do it.

So she unlocked the chain that fastened Arde to the wall of the truck, and opened the cab door for him. He squeezed himself uncomfortably into the passenger seat, struggling to find a position that was comfortable for his strange knees.

As Jan headed the truck towards her cabin, she began explaining to the Elite everything he needed to know to keep himself warm and comfortable and entertained while she was finishing up her contract.

Good God, how would she entertain him? She told him about movies and books and the Internet, though she passed on video games—the popular computer games usually required two hands on the controllers. She promised to show him how the devices worked, and once he found something he liked, she would help him get more to keep himself busy. Somehow, though, Jan doubted that turning the Sangheili into a TV junkie was going to give the alien a sense of satisfaction with what had become of his life.

She tried to tell herself that for now, it would be good enough to simply keep him comfortable. Making him happy could take a little longer.

Still, Jan Kennedy couldn’t help but feel that she’d just been condemned to a life-long punishment in the company of Arde ‘Coradee. She tried to tell herself that she did not believe in threefold karma or a vengeful, punishing God. And yet, living with ‘Coradee seemed a fitting sentence considering what she had done.

Of course, if that were true…if ill deeds were really paid back three times over…

She shot a brief glance at Arde ‘Coradee’s devastated profile and wondered what unspeakable sins the Sangheili must have committed to deserve what had happened to him.