Free Halo: Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten Page B

silence, the computer began the canned narration.
“On behalf of the Colonial Authority, welcome to Harvest—cornucopia of Epsilon Indi!” a male voice enthused. “I’m this world’s ‘agricultural operations artificial intelligence.’ But please, call me Mack.”
The official CA seal warmed onto the screen of Avery’s pad—a looming profile of an iconic eagle in a circle of seventeen bright stars, one for each UNSC world. The eagle’s wing sheltered a group of colonists. Their hopeful eyes were locked on a fleet of sleek colony ships rocketing along the eagle’s upturned beak.
The image bespoke expansion through unity, a message that, in light of the Insurrection, struck Avery as more naive than inspirational.
“For every person on every one of our worlds, Harvest is synonymous with sustenance.” Beneath Mack’s easy drawl, the first uplifting chords of Harvest’s planetary anthem began to play. “But what allows us to produce such a bounty of fresh and wholesome food?”
The narration paused for dramatic effect, and in that moment Harvest’s northern pole rose above the bottom edge of the view-port in the wall opposite Avery’s seat—a patch of ice-less, deep blue sea cupped by a gently curving coast.
“Two words,” Mack continued, answering his own question. “Geography and climate. The Edda supercontinent covers more than two-thirds of Harvest, creating an abundance of arable land. Two low-salinity seas—Hugin in the north and Munin in the south—are the planet’s main source of—”
Healy tapped Avery’s shoulder, and the Staff Sergeant pulled one of his ear-buds. “You want anything?” the Corpsman asked, nodding at a row of food and dispensers beneath the view-port. Avery shook his head: No.
Healy bounded over Avery’s legs, and pulled himself along the seats to the end of the row. There was enough gravity in the Wagon that Healy could perform a controlled fall down a set of stairs, pull himself along the railing and make it to an open social area before the dispensers. But when the corps-man tried to walk, his legs slipped out from under him, and he fell backward onto his outstretched hands. Avery detected a hint of volition in Healy’s buffoonery—as if he were playing for laughs.
If so, it worked. Some of the Tiara’s maintenance techs, sitting in the tiered seats to Avery’s right, clapped and whistled as the Corpsman struggled to regain his footing. Healy shrugged and offered a shy “whatcha gonna do?” smile, then continued toward the dispensers.
Avery frowned. Healy was the kind of soldier he would have liked when he first joined the marines: a joker, a troublemaker—the kind of recruit that actually seemed to enjoy bearing the brunt of a drill instructors’ wrath. But there weren’t many jokers in Avery’s part of the corps. And as much as Avery hated to admit it, he had grown so accustomed to the pervasive grimness of the other NavSpecWar marines fighting the Insurrection that he had a hard time relating to anyone that didn’t share their no-nonsense approach to soldiering.
“Eighty-six percent of Edda is within five hundred meters of sea level,” Mack continued. “In fact, the only really major change in elevation occurs along the Bifrost—what you call an escarpment—that cuts the continent on a diagonal. Have a look. You should be able to see it now, just west of Utgard.”
Avery removed his remaining ear-bud. The view now spoke for itself.
He could just make out the Bifrost’s northeastern tip beneath a skein of cirrus clouds—a bright fall of limestone shale that started in the northern plains just south of the Hugin Sea and cut southwesterly toward the equator. Because of the view-port’s orientation, Avery couldn’t see directly down. But he could imagine the view: a low-slung semicircle of the Tiara’s seven sunlit strands angling toward Utgard.
Many minutes passed, and then the view-port filled with a patchwork of pastoral colors: yellows and greens