Halo: Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten

and browns—an enlarging grid of fields crisscrossed with silver lines. Avery correctly assumed these were part of a maglev train system—seven main lines heading out from depots at the base of each of the elevators, dividing into smaller branchlines like veins in a leaf.
The Wagon’s computer came back over the PA to alert its passengers to return to their seats for deceleration into Utgard. But the technicians continued drinking beer from the dispensers with Healy as the first of the capital’s buildings rose into view. The skyline wasn’t spectacular—there were only a few dozen towers, none more than twenty stories high. But the buildings were all modern glass-shrouded designs, evidence that Harvest had come a long way since Avery’s last visit. When he’d made his hit, the city wasn’t much more than a few blocks of polycrete pre-fabs, and the whole colony had a population of fifty, maybe sixty thousand residents. Checking his COM pad one more time before putting it away, he learned that the number had grown to a little more than three hundred thousand.
Suddenly, the buildings disappeared and the Wagon darkened as it dropped into the number-three strand’s anchor—a ponderous polycrete monolith connected to a vast warehouse where dozens of cargo containers waited to ascend. Avery waited for the techs to clear the Wagon then joined Healy at the luggage bin. They retrieved their duffels and emerged from the anchor’s passenger terminal, eyes blinking in Epsilon Indi’s afternoon light.
“Ag-worlds,” Healy grumbled. “Always hotter than shit.”
Utgard’s thick equatorial air had instantly maxed the wicking properties of their uniforms. The fabric clung to the smalls of their backs as the two soldiers tromped west down a flagstone ramp to a broad, tree-lined boulevard. A white and green sedan taxi idled against the boulevard’s curb. The stripe of holo-tape across its passenger-side door flashed the simple message: TRANSPORT: JOHNSON, HEALY.
“Open up!” Healy hollered, banging a fist on the taxi’s roof. The vehicle raised its gull-wing doors and popped its trunk. Bags stowed, Avery settled in the driver’s seat and Healy took shotgun. Fans hummed inside the dashboard, and a frigid blast attacked the humid air.
“Hello,” the sedan chirped as it pulled into the boulevard’s sparse traffic. “I have been instructed to take you to…” There was a pause as it prepared a concatenated response: “Colonial. Militia. Garrison. Gladsheim Highway. Exit twenty-nine. Is that correct?”
Healy licked the sweat from his upper lip. He’d managed to drink a decent amount of beer during the wagon’s descent, and his words came out a little slurred.
“Yeah, but we need to make a stop. One thirteen Nobel Avenue.”
“Confirmed. One thir—”
“Belay that!” Avery barked. “Continue preconfirmed route!”
The sedan slowed, momentarily confused, then turned left down a boulevard that bordered the northern edge of a long, grassy park—Utgard’s central mall.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“One of the techs told me about a place with really friendly ladies. And I figured before we—”
Avery cut Healy short. “Car, I’m driving.”
“Do you assume all liability for—”
“Yes! And give me a map.”
A compact steering wheel unfolded from a compartment in the dash. Avery clamped it tight with both hands.
“Manual control confirmed,” the sedan replied. “Please drive safely.”
As Avery thumbed a pressure pad in the wheel that linked to the sedan’s accelerator, a ghostly grid of the surrounding streets appeared on the inner surface of the windshield. Avery instantly memorized the route.
“Kill the map. And lower the goddamn AC.”
The fans slowed and the humidity began to slink forward, cowed but not beaten.
“Look, Johnson.” Healy sighed, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “You’re new to this, so let me explain. There are only a couple reasons to do CMT. First, it’s very hard to