He batted her hand away. The gesture was more censorious than the artificial voice sounded. “Please no. ”
Halsey stared at the back of her hand for a moment as if she couldn’t believe a Huragok would rap her knuckles. They might have been passive and nonpartisan, but they obviously had their limits when it came to interfering with Forerunner technology. Lucy could only look at Prone in mute apology.
“That damn thing smacked me,” Halsey said.
Mendez caught her elbow and steered her away. Lucy watched Prone, who seemed to be noting al this and probably deciding that Mendez was the good guy who’d stop Halsey bul ying him. Or maybe he’d just formed a bad opinion of the entire human species. It was hard to tel .
“Diplomacy, Doctor,” Mendez said. “Try it.”
But Halsey wasn’t taking any notice. She was completely fixated on that damn slipspace navigation and the need to let ONI know that she had it.
She seemed to be thinking aloud now, because she certainly wasn’t asking anyone for an opinion, least of al the Chief.
“Once we get a signal out, then we’l need to take those Engineers with us,” she said. “They’re a unique resource. Huragok descended from the original strain created by the Forerunners. Imagine what we can extract from them.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. And imagine how much we’re pissing them off.”
“They’re just organic computers. They’re like AIs.”
“Maybe, but you say they’ve waited a hundred thousand years? Wel , then we can afford to spend a couple of days sweet-talking them. That’s just a few weeks outside.”
“Planets fal to the Covenant in weeks. In days. ”
“Al I’m saying is that this isn’t working, so try another tack.”
Halsey reached out for the control panel again, one hand on her sidearm. It was visible in her pocket. Lucy readied herself to move in if the woman did anything stupid.
“So what happens if I access this? Are you going to stop me?” Halsey took a step toward Prone and he backed away. “I don’t want to harm you.
I just want to call my damn office. ”
Prone recoiled and Refil Needed moved in as if he was trying to defend him. Lucy wanted to yel at Halsey to shut up and leave them alone, but the woman kept forcing Prone back, herding him into that corner, demanding things from him, and Lucy could see him starting to cower and fold his tentacles closer to his body. He was scared. She knew what it felt like to want to lash out and just make the noise and the pain and the fear stop.
Just leave him alone.
Lucy was a little shorter than Halsey but she knew she was a lot stronger. She grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back a few paces, her attention stil on that sidearm. She could have done a lot worse. But Halsey just shrugged her off without even looking back at her and took another step forward.
“Prone, I think I know how to operate this, so if you don’t—”
And that was when Lucy snapped.
She grabbed Halsey by the shoulder again, spun her around and threw a punch that sent a shock wave right up her arm. Halsey hit the ground with a loud crack. Someone grabbed Lucy from behind, but the switch had been thrown and she didn’t know how to turn it off. The fury shut out al sound: her lungs froze and her skul was bursting. She fought to break free and get at Halsey, this focus of al that was threatening and bul ying in her world, but she couldn’t.
If she didn’t let it al out right now, she’d col apse.
“No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”
The sound of her own voice after al those years was shockingly alien, so weird that she almost didn’t recognize it. It took every scrap of breath and energy she had left. She couldn’t say another word.
“Wel , goddamn…” Mendez said. “Goddamn. ”
UNSC PORT STANLEY, SOMEWHERE OFF SANGHELIOS: FEBRUARY 2553.
As too many UNSC personnel had found out the hard way, it was pretty hard to kil a Sangheili.
The shipmaster they’d brought on board stil looked battered and some of his teeth were broken, but he was alert and alive. Osman leaned on the door frame of the brig and waited for him to start pounding at the door again. He hadn’t touched the food placed in the security hatch. That didn’t surprise her.
So who are you, then?
According to the nav computer in his shuttle, he’d come from Mdama, and his last few trips had been to Ontom. Working out his name was going to take a little longer. Phil ips watched him, eyes bright with fascination.
“Here’s the hard bit,” Osman said. “Do I tel ‘Telcam that we’ve nabbed him, or not?”
Very few Sangheili had been taken alive, and those had been too close to death to be much use to ONI, but this one would be very useful indeed.
“Nabbed, ” Phil ips said. “What a sweet old-fashioned word. There was a time when people cal ed this rendition. I suppose you want me to have another chat with him when he’s calmed down a bit. If he calms down.”
“Wel , you’re the only one on board who can look him in the eye and not want to spit in it. And you’re supposed to be the greatest living expert on hinge-heads.”
“Sooner or later, someone’s going to notice he’s missing and start talking about it.”
Osman just looked at him and raised an eyebrow eloquently. It was very easy to put Phil ips in his place. She didn’t real y mean to, because he’d far exceeded her expectations, from his wil ingness to muck in with the rest of the crew to his complete indifference to how much danger he was in.
But he had to remember that he wasn’t here to explore the rich variety of Sangheili culture. He was here to help ONI kil the bastards.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I keep forgetting that you were raised in the intel igence community. Sil y me.”
It was a very charming way of describing a Spartan’s unnatural, frequently painful life. She wondered whether Naomi had confided in any of the others about the news Osman had broken to her. Osman was keeping an eye on Vaz as a barometer of Naomi’s reaction, because he was slightly easier to read and he seemed pretty protective toward her. So far, he was stil giving her occasional baffled looks that suggested she hadn’t said anything yet.
Maybe she was having difficulty finding the words to explain that Halsey had kidnapped her, replaced her with a short-lived clone, and left her parents to grieve over a dead child that wasn’t her, while she was being subjected to what any civilized society would have described as immoral experiments. She knew she’d been taken away from her family. She just hadn’t known what had happened to them after that. And I still haven’t told her the full story, have I? She needs to read her file, to see it for herself. It would be a lot to come to terms with at her time of life.
The fact that the Spartan-I s had fulfil ed their promise and turned the course of the war didn’t make it al better, not at al .
“That’s okay, Evan,” Osman said. “I wasn’t a natural-born spy. Had you had my training, I shudder to think how dangerous you would have become.”
Phil ips looked as if he wasn’t sure whether that was a compliment or an insult, but she meant it as professional admiration. He just had that mind-set. He seemed to real y enjoy the role, whereas she’d just grown used to it and did it to the best of her ability.
Vaz and Mal joined the staring committee. The Sangheili couldn’t see them through the monitor plate.
“I could have sold tickets,” Mal said. “I tel you, it was like watching a train crash into the buffers. Permission to break out the beer, ma’am, and stand Naomi a drink?”
“Absolutely, Staff. You two didn’t do so badly either.”
“So what’s Parangosky going to do with him, then?” Vaz asked. “Although I suppose it depends on who he is.”
“At least we know he’s probably from a Mdama keep.” Phil ips looked at his watch. “I’m betting he’l be late cal ing in already, so I’l do a little bit of eavesdropping and see who’s pacing up and down waiting to tel him his dinner’s in the dog.”
The Sangheili was now sitting on the bench against the bulkhead, head bowed and massive four-fingered hands clasped in his lap as if he was praying. He might have been meditating—or shaping up for another ranting session.
“Wel , either he’s batting for the Arbiter, or else he’s some disenchanted random guy who got involved with ‘Telcam and started to worry where al that shiny kit was coming from,” Mal said. “Maybe Adj and BB can extract some data from his armor.”
BB materialized next to them, not the usual featureless blue box but sporting a bright red bow tied as if he was a gift. Vaz frowned at him.
“I didn’t know you could do other colors, BB,” he said. “What’s the bow for? Got a date?”
“Oh, I can do the ful spectrum.” BB cycled the bow through the rainbow before settling back on red again. “It’s the Admiral’s birthday. And this is another thoughtful present for her. So I’m a double act with the Adj now, am I? Wel , so be it. He’s got more manual dexterity than me.”
“Seriously, BB, can we get an identity out of his armor?” Osman asked. “There’s nothing in his helmet systems to identify him. We know where he’s been, but not his name.”
“It’s going to mean interfacing with him physical y.”
Mal was watching the Sangheili intently. “Otherwise known as a punch in the mouth, ma’am.”
“I real y did mean interface,” BB said. “I doubt there’s anything in the body armor systems, but we could send in Adj to make sure.”
“As long as Cap’n Hinge-head doesn’t do him any damage.”
Osman felt she was saddling tigers again. “Phil ips asked him nicely, but he wasn’t very forthcoming.”
She reflected on the sheer incongruity of talking to a floating box tied up with a red shiny bow about the finer detail of processing abductees. I was one once. I haven’t learned any pity, have I? She checked her watch to see how long she had until the next sitrep to Parangosky.
“Okay,” she said. “Better get Naomi standing by in case he tries to make a run for it. He knows she can drop him.”
“You can’t intimidate a Sangheili, Captain,” Phil ips said. “He’d rather die in battle.”
“I’m betting he’d rather escape in one piece to complete whatever his mission was, actual y.” She turned to Mal. “But get his cooperation any way you can, Staff.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mal held up a sphere about fifteen centimeters across, grained and polished like some dense wood. “And we found this when we disarmed him. Not sure what it is, but it’s not scanning as ordnance.”
“I think it’s a puzzle,” Phil ips said. He held his hand out for it. “It’s cal ed an arum. I’ve never actual y seen one before.”
Phil ips took it in both hands and fiddled with it, making it rattle. It was a large thing for a human’s hand, but it would have been no more than a toy in a Sangheili’s grip. As Phil ips twisted it, Osman could see that it was made up of interconnecting rings and spheres, almost like some wooden puzzles she’d seen in museums on Earth.
“They give these to children to teach them discipline,” Phil ips said. “You have to line up the components so that the stone at the center fal s out.
Interesting that he stil carries one.”
Vaz shrugged, not taking his eyes off the Sangheili. “Maybe it’s a present for his kids.”
“I doubt it. They’re never supposed to find out who their fathers are.”
“Yeah, I come from a neighborhood like that, too,” Mal said. “Never knew who my dad was, either.”
“I meant he wouldn’t hand out presents because they raise them in a communal kibbutz-type environment so that they start life on an equal social footing.”
“Maybe Vaz can get somewhere with him, then. Discuss the glorious history of the soviets and beetroot-based economies.”
Vaz didn’t blink. The two marines tormented each other mercilessly, a sure sign of an old friendship. “Don’t forget you lease your piddling little island from us. As a Russian taxpayer, I own you.”
“Wel , you got a bargain, then. Okay, now we’ve got this bugger, what are we going to get out of him?”
Did the Sangheili have a wife and kids, a mother and father, a family now worrying where he was and whether anything terrible had happened to him? Osman had to assume he did. She resisted succumbing to humanization. When she started seeing Sangheili as mommies and daddies and fine upstanding family folk, then it became harder to do what she had to. She couldn’t recal hinge-heads ever debating whether to spare humans on the basis that they had families who would miss them. They just incinerated planets and relished their hand-to-hand slaughter. Another little gem of Parangosky’s wisdom came back to her: learn to think like the enemy, but understand the ways they’re unlike you.
It was an intel ectual exercise, nothing she could real y feel in the pit of her stomach, and she wondered if that was how Halsey saw the Spartans —something she understood from the DNA level upward, but didn’t find any compassionate human kinship with until too late in the day.
Her Spartans. She always referred to us as hers.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have let Naomi read her journal. But would she have believed me otherwise?
Naomi came down the passage toward them, stil in her armor and carrying what Osman liked to cal a cattle prod. It didn’t get a lot of use, but she’d been assured that it worked on al large species. “You wanted me, ma’am?”
“I’m going to put Adj in the cel and see if he can extract any data from the body armor,” Osman said. “It used to be his job, after al . Just stop the hinge-head damaging him while he does it, because if push comes to shove, I’d rather have the Huragok in one piece.”
