“Why are they waiting?” she asked. “The Arbiter can’t possibly have more than a thousand troops in there. He’s under attack yet nobody has come to his aid. ‘Telcam attracts more supporters by the hour. You have at least one ship that could destroy the entire keep. Just do it. End it.”
“This is politics.” Forze landed and shut down the drives. “And ‘Telcam is devout. I suspect he wants to hear the Arbiter recant his heresy before he kil s him. You don’t understand these things.”
“Do you?”
“Not always. But I know what I believe in.”
“Not the gods.”
“Perhaps not, but I do believe in restoring a strong Sanghelios that doesn’t need to sign peace treaties.”
“But ‘Telcam doesn’t even want the Arbiter’s power. Who wil rule, Forze? When we cut off the flawed head that we have, what do we put in its place? Anarchy? Confusion? Lesser leaders? Puppets?”
“A kaidon wil step up. Someone always does.” Forze sounded convinced. “It’s better to cut out the source of an infection than to let it poison the whole body while we wait for a cure.”
Raia snorted to herself. Yes, it was typical. Warriors were brought up to refuse medical aid as a mark of shame, the fools. She stil saw no honor in that, even if it instil ed endurance. There was far more virtue in surviving to fight back. She was sure she knew which path the humans would choose.
Humans … She had started the season with no real knowledge of the creatures beyond the occasional stories that Jul told her and the evidence of her own eyes—that they’d spread throughout the galaxy, settling on hundreds of worlds that had not been theirs in her forebears’ day. Now she’d seen them face to face, and they confused her. They landed on her world with no visible fear or reverence. They were even given assistance. Forze had been told to rescue one of them, and even help them with repairs. This wasn’t the future she wanted for her children.
What game was ‘Telcam playing? He was devout. Why didn’t he just kil every human he met? What was this favor he had to repay?
As soon as she climbed out of the Phantom and walked through the lines, something in the air stung her eyes and she could taste dust in her mouth. Bursts of fire and the occasional short-lived barrage from gun turrets were fol owed by long silences. It left her with the impression of a group of children throwing stones at a hermit’s shelter, wary of entering but trying to provoke him into coming out. But these were warriors. They’d fought a war for decades, a real war of destruction, and they hadn’t lost their courage now.
‘Telcam was standing some distance behind the front barrier, arms at his sides, staring at the keep as if he was calculating something. Buran, the shipmaster who seemed to be his lieutenant, paced up and down a few meters away. Now Raia could see what was creating the smoke. There wasn’t a single tree or bush left intact in the space between the rebels and the wal s of the keep. It was a forest of smoldering charcoal. She couldn’t tel if the area had been cleared deliberately or if it was simply random destruction from the slow but steady assault on the keep. Astonishingly, most of the front wal s were stil standing. There were gaping holes in the stonework so big that if she stood in a certain position she could look straight through to the courtyard, but she couldn’t see how much damage had been done inside.
‘Telcam didn’t seem to notice her for a moment. Then he turned around.
“My lady, you shouldn’t be here.” He was polite but angry, lips drawn back just a little over his fangs. She was no longer someone he needed to placate. “Go back to Shipmaster Forze. Better stil , go home. I promise you that I’l keep looking for your husband.”
“Why do you tolerate the humans?”
“What?”
“What benefit are they to us? Why do you owe them favors?”
He clenched his jaws. That question had unsettled him for some reason. “Politics,” he said.
It seemed to be the universal answer to tel her to mind her own business. She didn’t plan to argue the point with him. She would stay here because turning back would feel like she’d given up her search far too easily and too soon. It made no sense, because Jul could have been anywhere and she had no more reason to believe he was in Vadam than on Qikost, but she simply knew she couldn’t go home and carry on as before.
“I stil fail to understand the role of humans in this,” Raia said.
“It’s a complex situation because humans are devious creatures. They have a ship in orbit, and I have no idea what it plans to do, if anything.”
“Then destroy it. I know we have few working ships, but surely we can destroy one human vessel.”
‘Telcam snapped his jaws. “At sunset,” he said, “you’l see that’s going to be a very difficult task. Now, please go somewhere safer. Take cover.”
Raia walked away but made a point of not heading back toward Forze. She didn’t want to be seen to obey ‘Telcam like some groveling Unggoy.
She could hear rumbling noises—the sound of large ships, the sound she was beginning to recognize—but she couldn’t see where they were coming from, and turned around in a ful circle to spot whatever was making it. Then it started: triumphant shouts picked up across the camp, first in ones and twos and then they merged into a wave of sound that swept past her toward the forest at their backs.
“‘Rduan’s coming!”
“It’s ‘Rduan!”
Raia blocked the path of the first warrior she saw when she turned around. She seized his arm. “Who’s ‘Rduan?”
“That’s ‘Rduan,” he said, pointing behind her. “Shipmaster ‘Rduan. Or perhaps I should say that’s Defender of Faith. ”
Raia looked around and stil couldn’t see anything, but the sound of drives was louder now, reaching deeper inside her body. The forest in the distance grew darker. Then she saw it: just a nose at first, a dul silver curve, and then a warship slid slowly over the tops of the trees. Its shadow advanced toward the keep to hang like an eclipse over the camp. The cheering died down and was replaced by a buzz of voices, then the field fel silent, even the plasma fire that had been snapping back and forth between the two positions. Everyone was now facing the shattered wal s.
‘Telcam, about fifty meters away, leaped up onto the roof of a vehicle. He must have been using a communications device, because Raia could suddenly hear his voice from points al around her, from vessels and warriors alike.
“Thel ‘Vadam, you can hear me,” he boomed, arms spread. “I know you can. Surrender. Surrender now, and we’l spare the rest of Vadam.
Come out now and show your cowardly face to the faithful, you blasphemer.”
Raia accepted that she knew less about the Arbiter than those who’d served with him, but she was sure that a commander who’d survived so many battles—political and military—wasn’t simply cowering in his chamber and hoping his enemy would go away. Where were his ships? Where were his al ies?
‘Telcam was stil standing on the vehicle, pistol in one hand, defying the Arbiter’s forces to take a shot. If the Arbiter made any reply, then only ‘Telcam heard him.
Raia looked away from the keep for a moment, glancing up at the underside of Defender of Faith’s hul . What had happened to the fleet of hundreds of ships? Many had been destroyed in the Great Schism, some had simply broken down and awaited repairs, but most remained somewhere, seized by kaidons with their own agendas, idling in keeps ready to settle pettier scores.
“Is this it?” she asked, addressing nobody in particular. “One ship? A handful when we had so many?”
Nobody answered. An elderly warrior covered in scars and missing a couple of fangs stood with his pistol raised in his left hand, thumping his fist slowly against his chest plate in a steady rhythm as if he was singing inside his head and trying to keep time.
“This is a proper war.” He didn’t look at her. “The way we used to fight when we faced equal foes, warrior to warrior. Face to face. Not the kind of war we fought against humans. ”
‘Telcam was stil waiting for the Arbiter. A couple of artil ery masters near the front seemed to be tired of waiting and fired a few rounds, taking out more of the front wal in a shower of stone fragments. There was no fire returned from the keep, though, and no sign of the Arbiter. Raia wondered if anyone would have been able to see him even if he’d walked out to present himself to them.
“I am waiting, blasphemer,” ‘Telcam roared. “Show yourself. Face me.”
There were a few seconds of silence, restless and fascinating, and even Raia was caught up in the reined-back urge to rush the wal s. She realized she was gripping her pistol tightly, just as the males were. Then a trail of white light shot up out of the grounds of the keep with a deafening crack and struck the ship’s hul , sending plasma dancing over the metal. Smal fragments rained down, glittering in the sunlight, some fal ing so close to Raia that they hissed in the air around her, but Defender of Faith held position. A second bolt of energy licked out at the ship, then a third.
‘Telcam had his answer. The Arbiter had spoken.
“Take Vadam,” ‘Telcam shouted. “Take the keep. And then we shal wipe this state from the map, every last stone.”
UNSC INFINITY: TWO HUNDRED KILOMETERS ABOVE SANGHELIOS Andrew Del Rio walked slowly around the chart table, studying a three-dimensional scan of Vadam so finely detailed that it could have been an architect’s plan.
“If only we’d had this thirty years ago,” he said, “it would have changed the course of the war.”
Vaz was standing close enough to the captain to wonder if the guy was talking to him or simply thinking aloud, so he just grunted to cover both possibilities. The chart was lidar imaging combined with real-time data from a dozen other sensor systems, including the hul and orbital cameras.
The image changed continuously as the laser arrays rescanned the terrain and fed back ultra-accurate measurements that were as good as a live schematic of a ten-klick section of the battlefield. Vaz could see the slopes of the mountain, the keep itself, and even the damage to the wal s.
He could also see the Sangheili ship lurking nearby. It looked like a smal destroyer.
Hood, Parangosky, the XO, and a dozen officers clustered around the chart with their eyes fixed on the image like it was a roulette table about to cough up a fortune. Vaz glanced at Phil ips, stil in armor and clutching his helmet and plasma pistol, and walked over to the other side of the bridge to join him. They were kil ing time while the Huragok repaired Tart-Cart. Vaz wished they’d stayed down in the hangar.
Phil ips leaned in close to him. “You know,” he whispered, “from the way Parangosky looks at Del Rio, I’m waiting for her to shoot out this real y long lizard tongue and suck out his brain.”
“That’d be a ticket-only show.”
“Why haven’t we got chart technology like that?”
Vaz checked where Devereaux was. He could almost see the cogs grinding in her brain as she watched from the comms station. We need some of that. It was written al over her. Then she got up, nodded at Naomi, and the two of them left the bridge.
“I think we’re going to get it,” Vaz said. “Dev’s got her shopping face on. I’d bet she’s going to put in another request to the Huragok.”
“Tart-Cart’s going to be quite a gin palace when they’re finished.”
Vaz checked his watch again. If the Huragok could dismantle and rebuild armor in under a minute, there was no tel ing what they’d managed to do to the dropship in the last couple of hours. He’d never worried too much about technology beyond his understanding because his job usual y came down to a few basics that hadn’t changed in centuries: to shoot before the other guy got a chance to shoot him, and hope that his weapon didn’t jam. This distant, technical, detached kind of warfare was a Navy thing, and marine or not, he was stil infantry. He went head to head with the enemy on the ground. He was a last-resort, personal kind of war delivered right to the doorstep.
And if this high-tech stuff had been the answer to everything, the UNSC would never have needed ODSTs.
Or Spartans. In the end, it’s always down to flesh and blood.
There was no sound accompanying the image on the chart table, just the occasional background buzz of Sangheili voice traffic, but he could see the big artil ery pieces inside the keep and scattered among ‘Telcam’s forces. If Del Rio magnified the image, Vaz could even detect the recoil as gun fired. Another hit on the keep’s wal s threw up a blur that settled to show a big hole, something he might have struggled to get a clear view of on the ground. But up here, Del Rio had a battlefield image that gave him detail without the clutter, something he might never get from a helmet cam.
Del Rio looked up at Phil ips. “I can’t tel if this is al they can muster or if they’re back to feudal warfare. You know, a few kaidons slug it out and everyone else just locks their doors and waits for it to finish.”
“It’s both, Captain.” Phil ips switched instantly from amazed kid to the master of his subject: hinge-heads. It was funny to watch the transformation.
“They’re stil groping for a command structure, but they’ve selectively bred themselves for fighting. So in a year from now, I think they could be pretty organized again.”
“You probably know more about the way they think than any of us. What’s this ‘Telcam up to?”
Phil ips batted away the question without a twitch. “I think that’s one for Admiral Parangosky. But he did stop me from getting kil ed, I suppose, so I’d buy him a beer.”
Vaz started wondering how a creature with four jaws would drink a glass of beer, but a sudden burst of light on the chart table distracted him.
