“So.” Osman stretched out in her seat and meshed her hands behind her head. “Ideas, people?”
“Assuming we get to P.I. first,” Devereaux said, “how do six of us seize a ship that size? Not that they’ll have a full crew, and they’ll only be Kig-Yar, but they’re not good odds even for ODSTs.”
BB materialized in the middle of the conversation. “Just let me find a carrier wave and I’ll be in there like a rat up a drainpipe. They don’t have AIs like me. Well, nobody does, because I’m unparalleled magnificence, but once I’m in their systems I’ll smack down any lockout defenses they might have in the computer, paralyze the ship, and vent the atmosphere. It’s hard to fight back when you’re sucking vacuum. And once I’m in, I can drive the tub too. Home in time for tea. Splice the main brace and all that.”
Phillips smiled fondly. “I’m glad you’re on our side, BB.”
“Oh, flatterer.” BB settled on Phillips’s lap. Phillips reached out instinctively and almost patted him like a dog, but it was hard to touch pure light. He looked a bit embarrassed. “You’re lucky I’m a paragon of virtue and that I’ve got a soft spot for you mucky little meatbags.”
“Okay, I like the sound of that.” Osman nodded. “So all we’ve got to do is find P.I. and establish the right kind of comms link.”
“I’ve been trying to place a call, so to speak,” BB said. “But wherever she is, she’s in radio silence. Very wise.”
Mal tossed a crumpled scrap of paper at him. It passed through the hologram and landed in Phillips’s lap. “Well, if it was easy, you wouldn’t need meatbags, would you?” Mal looked to Osman. “Shall we pull Naomi out, ma’am? One-woman army or not, her father’s going to spot her sooner or later.”
“She won’t welcome that.”
“Someone’s got to keep ‘Telcam busy. And deliver his weapons. Can’t leave that to Phyllis, not even if Dev’s holding his hand. Or any other part of his anatomy.”
Phillips scrunched up the paper pellet to bullet hardness and threw it back at Mal. “True.”
“And Parangosky’s sure she wants the ship in one piece?” Mal asked.
“Or at least with repairable damage,” Osman said. “So it’s worth a try.”
“Okay. Because it occurs to me that the easiest way to deal with this is to just sit back and see if Staffan takes the ship and heads for Earth. Planetary defenses should be able to handle one battlecruiser. It’s not like he’s got a fleet.”
“It may well come to that.”
“So do you still want me to deploy to New Tyne, ma’am?”
If it had been up to Mal, he’d have held Naomi back for the arms run for ‘Telcam and never let her near Venezia, no matter how useful she was. She could have inserted into Sydney, Mombasa, or any other big city full of millions of assorted humans, and nobody would have taken much notice of her. But New Tyne was small-town suspicious. For a moment, he wondered if Osman might be using her as bait for her father.
Would she really do that, though? Jesus. I really like the boss as a human being, but she isn’t Parangosky’s chosen one because she does charity work.
Osman looked like she was thinking it over. “Okay. You and Vaz can focus on Staffan Sentzke. And Spenser can keep tabs on Fel. I’ll pull Naomi out to keep an eye on ‘Telcam.” She spread her hands. “I admit it. I screwed up. I should have pulled her out as soon as we knew Sentzke was there, but now that he’s directly involved with the ship, it’s pushing things too far. Just because she’s a Spartan doesn’t mean she’s automatically the best choice for the task. I’m sorry.”
Mal had a lot of faith in Osman, not because she never made mistakes but because she was ready to admit when she had. He could have told her right from the start that she was taking a gamble for all the wrong reasons. Naomi wanted to be in the thick of everything, and seemed to need to show she could put personal issues aside in tight spots. She’d practically insisted on arresting Halsey to prove she hadn’t been too brainwashed into worshipping the old cow to follow ONI’s orders. Now she looked like she was making the same point with her father.
“Fair enough, ma’am.” Naomi and Vaz had only been in New Tyne a few days, so Naomi could be withdrawn without provoking too many questions. “I’ll relieve her. She won’t like it, but it’s not like she won’t have plenty to keep her busy on the Sangheili side.”
“And we could do with another dropship, ma’am,” Devereaux said. “You can fly dropships, can’t you? I’m pretty sure Naomi’s qualified too.”
“We can always enlist BB to get us up to speed.” Osman seemed relaxed about it now. “Anyway, Mal and Vaz have some skills. Isn’t that right, Staff? Trained enough to commandeer a Spirit, at least.”
Mal shrugged. The Covenant dropship was still on Criterion, maybe even still airworthy, but it wasn’t a flight he ever wanted to make again. “I’m not saying it was a perfect landing, ma’am. And it did take three of us to do it. Plus it was a case of fly or die, as I recall.”
“Devereaux’s got a point, though. There might come a time when we need to be two places at once, and Stanley’s not a shuttle. Okay, Dev, talk to Bravo-Six and see what they can drop off within reasonable range, and then Adj and Leaks can modify it. Evan—make contact with ‘Telcam and find out where and when he’ll take a weapons drop.”
“He’s still pissed off about us forcibly extracting him from Vadam.”
“Lack of gratitude noted. But you’ve still got something he wants. The translations of the inscriptions at the Ontom temple.”
Phillips beamed. “I’ve never bribed anyone with a bible before. Boy, when I do my lecture tour…”
“When this is ever declassified…”
“Only joking, Admiral.”
“Okay, dismissed. Let’s crack on.”
Mal went down to the hangar deck with Devereaux while Phillips diverted to his listening station. Tart-Cart, the Pelican dropship modded beyond recognition by the two Engineers, sat clamped to the deck. The ship looked the same shape as before, more or less, but she now had a version of Infinity’s top-end slipspace drive with the hull reinforcement to go with it, instant FTL comms, and even more stealth features than ONI had originally fitted. Mal wondered what would happen if he gave the Engineers a shoebox and a pile of scrap metal and told them to go crazy with it. As long as they had enough raw materials, they seemed to be able to build anything out of anything else. There was a fortune to be made there postwar, he decided. Military hardware was probably the least of their uses.
“I’m going to set myself up as a custom vehicle salesman,” he said, hauling himself into Tart-Cart’s crew bay and sitting on the edge of the folded ramp. He could smell the jasmine air freshener. Whatever you asked an Engineer to install, you got it. “Or an upmarket patisserie shop.”
“Kitchen appliances,” Devereaux said. “The coffee tastes more like liquid bliss every time they upgrade the galley machine.”
“See, who needs instruments of death and destruction?”
“We do, actually.” Devereaux climbed in and prodded him with her boot. “You better warn Vaz and Naomi. And arrange an RV point.”
“She’s not going to be happy.”
“I know. She’ll think we think she’s going soft. Just remind her that if ‘Telcam gets stroppy, she’s the only one strong enough to punch him out, so she’s better deployed there.”
“That’s a very persuasive argument. You should be a sergeant, Dev.”
“I am, Staff…”
“Okay, let’s aim for forty-eight hours. That should give them enough time to tie up any loose ends she’s started.” Mal dropped down off the ramp. “Where would you hide a battlecruiser, Dev?”
Devereaux shrugged. “A distant system. A shipyard, among all the other big ships. Or right under everyone’s nose, if I had the stealth kit. Nobody’s spotted Stanley so far, have they? Or Tart-Cart. Which reminds me … Leaks? Are you in there? What do you know about Elite armor?”
The Engineer drifted
out of the cockpit door, rubbing his tentacles together. Mal had no idea what that meant, but it made the creature look like he was wiping his hands on an oily rag, mechanic-style.
“That active camo. The invisible stuff. Can you coat a ship in it?”
It took Mal a moment to work out that he meant Tart-Cart. The translator was a constant source of entertainment.
“I meant big warships.” Devereaux held her hands wide apart like an angler bragging about the one that got away. “Battlecruisers.”
“She’ll give herself away sooner or later,” Mal said. “Someone’s got to go and get her. Someone’s got to open the hatches or ditch gash. There’s always a trail. We’ll find her.”
He went back to his cabin and started selecting the clothes, kit, and wallet litter that would make him look like a bloke who’d finally had enough of the UNSC and didn’t plan to wait to be discharged.
If he thought about the Sentzke family hard enough, he suspected he might convince even himself that it was true.
NEW TYNE, VENEZIA
Naomi took the news that she’d been retasked without so much as a blink. It was a bad sign. Vaz had noticed signs of a thaw in her, but the freeze was back.
“You had doubts about all this yourself,” Vaz said. “Remember?”
“I thought I’d be too conspicuous. Still, I have my orders.” She glanced down at herself as if the civilian clothes were getting on her nerves. “Someone’s got to deal with ‘Telcam. Phillips can’t handle that on his own.”
Vaz tapped his watch, trying to change the subject. “We’ve still got time to establish our presence in the bars. When someone starts looking for a crew, UNSC deserters will be part of the scenery and we’ll have all the right contacts. Mal can walk in later, and it’ll all look fine, like there’s a few of us trying to lie low.”
“What makes you think my father will recruit a crew?”
Vaz scratched the scar on his jaw. “Look, we don’t know if your dad’s involved in any of this yet.”
“Don’t humor me. What else would he be doing with Fel?”
“Okay, if he’s bought himself a battlecruiser, it’s for humans. He’ll want as many humans in the crew as he can get, not Kig-Yar, because he’s not stupid. They don’t do causes. He’ll want people who are committed.”
“Kig-Yar know a lot more about crewing Covenant ships than we do.”
“But it’s not their war. Venezia wants arms to attack Earth—or to defend Venezia, if they think the UNSC’s going to resume counter-insurgency operations.”
“You think we might?” She seemed to think he was humoring her. But they were both standing there, living proof that the UNSC hadn’t forgotten the colonial insurgency at all and was taking steps to preempt a renewal of it—which was also what might start it again anyway. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, as wars usually were. “Really?”
“Look, we’re making judgments based on what we know, not what he knows. We think this is some payback for abducting you, because we know what happened. He doesn’t even know you’re still alive. I think he’s more worried about Earth attacking New Tyne, and he’s got enough reason to contribute a battlecruiser to the cause. Remember that Venezia minded its own business for years. The only thing that kicked it all off again was Ariadne showing up and asking for emergency help.”
Naomi had now pulled down the shutters completely. She looked right through him, eyes dead and bloodless. Vaz was upset to think he could be shut out so easily, so quickly, but she’d probably had to learn to do that to cope with what had happened to her. He tried to make allowances.
“Well, there’s no point speculating,” she said. “Let’s go out and do the deserter act. Put ourselves about a bit.”
It was a very un-Naomi thing to say, a measure of her anxiety. Vaz wondered why he’d ever believed that Spartans were immune to the things that affected everyone else.
They’re human. Whatever extras they’ve got, however messed up their systems are, however indoctrinated they’ve been—they’re human. Just better at hiding it.
He secured the house and they drove off to look for bars on Spenser’s list. New Tyne was a very small town, a place where people knew each other by sight if not by name, and they noticed newcomers sooner rather than later. Vaz headed toward the center of town and pointed out a brick-fronted, single-story building with two wide windows obscured by security mesh. The sign read STAVROS MIDDLE EAST ASIAN CUISINE AND BAR.
Naomi made a huh noise. “I hope his cooking’s better than his geography.”
“Spenser says the place is popular with Kig-Yar.” A couple of men were standing outside, talking. When the door opened, Vaz could see tables and a long bar inside. “And I admit I have no idea what they serve in there that could be of interest to buzzards, except doner kebab.”
They were both on unknown territory, then. Naomi had been fighting aliens for more than twenty-five years but Vaz was sure she’d never encountered them in a social environment any more than he had. They were supposed to be recent deserters, though, so complete ignorance was a tidy fit for their cover story.
Twenty-five years. Damn, she was already on the front line when I was a kid.
Vaz parked close to the building for a quick exit if needed and stopped to look at the menu in the window. The dishes seemed to cover everything east of the Balkans. Maybe Stavros wasn’t so navigationally challenged after all.
Naomi scanned the menu, unmoved. “Mal advised me to stay away from pies and anything involving re-formed meat.”
“He’s from Wolverhampton. Take his advice.” He opened the door and walked in, trying to pitch his confidence at the right level—not too aggressive, but not too nervous either. Noise and smells hit him. “Cross between a swimming pool and a chicken shed. And garlic. Good sign.”
Everyone glanced their way to check who’d walked in. It was quite an education. Vaz had often wondered how Kig-Yar drank with those long beaklike muzzles. He’d had a mental image of them dipping their beaks into the liquid and tipping their heads back like ducks. And that was exactly what some were doing. Most, though, had opted to drink straight from bottles.
It was hard to tell what they were drinking. For all he knew, alcohol might have been toxic to them. But it seemed like a human social activity the Kig-Yar had adopted to oil the wheels of commerce.
“I know this sounds weird,” Naomi said, leaning on the bar, “but have you noticed we’ve never fought any species with proper lips capable of forming a tight seal?”
She seemed relaxed again. Vaz put a couple of bills on the counter. “Well, there’s Grunts. They can pucker up. Kind of.”
The bartender, a woman who looked even older than Parangosky, zeroed in on them like a missile. “What can I get you kids?”
Vaz indicated the Kig-Yar with a jerk of his head. “What are they drinking?”
“You don’t want that.” She pulled a face. “It’s sugars and fats, basically. Not liquor. They’ve got funny digestions.”
“Okay, two beers and a plate of mezze to share, then.” There was a bowl of bagged snacks on the counter. “And some of these for starters.”
The old woman opened a couple of bottles and put them in front of Vaz with two unbreakable glasses. “You’re new. What brings you here?”
“A pressing need to avoid the UNSC.”
“Looking for work?”
“When the money runs out.”
“Engineers?”
“No. But we’re combat-trained.”
“Pity,” the old woman said. “Lot of demand for engineers. And pilots.”
Vaz took his beer and Naomi followed him to a table by the window. A guy standing at the bar looked her over for a moment, then turned away sharply. Vaz wasn’t sure if it was because she reminded the guy of her father or because Vaz had shot him a hands-off look without even thinking about it.
She’d obviously noticed. “How am I supposed to deal with that?” she whispered, taking Vaz’s lead and putting her elbows on the table. “Leering.”
Vaz took a pull at his beer. “Avoid eye contact and don’t smile. Carry on looking like you’d rip his head off for a bet. It obviously worked.”
“I’m reassured.”
A group of Kig-Yar at a table on the far side of the room were having a loud debate in a weird mix of Sangheili, English, and something that was probably a Kig-Yar dialect from the pre-Covenant days. Phillips would have been fascinated. One of them was stabbing a claw at his companion, quills raised. Vaz was waiting to see a fight break out, but Kig-Yar always came across as shrill and argumentative whatever the topic. Vaz opened the packet of unidentified snacks and crunched loudly on one. Whatever the snack was made from, it must have scored a nine on the Mohs scale. He was sure he’d broken a tooth. He left the bag on the table between them.
Naomi tried one while she watched the Kig-Yar. “Ow.”
“Yeah, Mal would love these. Have you seen what he eats? Those disgusting rendered pigskin things.”
“How long do we give this?”
“A couple of hours. You’ve never killed time in a bar, have you?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“You realize this is the first conversation I’ve had in months that BB hasn’t been able to overhear?”
They just looked at each other. They could now say anything they wanted, but Vaz couldn’t think of a single thing that he’d been dying to say without BB overhearing. He automatically censored everything he said anyway, always expecting to be recorded or overheard, whether via a helmet link, the radio net, or simply under the unsleeping vigilance of a ship’s AI. Now he was in a bar where the customers would probably put a round through his head if they knew what he was. He had to be careful what he said here, too.
Halo®: Mortal Dictata Page 8