Halo®: Mortal Dictata

by Karen Traviss

  “BB says Vaz isn’t pregnant, ma’am,” Mal said. “So that’s a relief.”

  The med suite couches had integral scanners that did an ER diagnosis and worked out treatment regimes. Anything major meant a transfer to a medical facility or a real-time link with a surgeon for a remote procedure, depending on the condition, but non-life-threatening injuries could usually be dealt with on board. As ONI vessels were usually engaged in covert surveillance for long periods, they had to be.

  Osman had already decided that she’d rather die of whatever ailed her than lay down on one of those robotic couches and have automated needles and tubes shoved in her. It was too much like her memories of being poked and prodded in Halsey’s facility on Reach. She took a closer look at Mal’s battered face, then Vaz’s. An irrational urge to comfort them like children seized her. But they didn’t look in need of comforting, and she knew she would have made a fool of herself working out what she could and couldn’t touch.

  BB’s blue cube emerged from the display panel at the head of the couches, sporting a holographic stethoscope. He was back in morale-boosting mode, then. “No brain injury, no dental injury, no internal damage to major organs. Mal’s nose is broken. Vaz’s cheekbone looks okay on closer inspection. Both have moderate to severe bruising and some lacerations, so it’s a case of reducing the hematoma and applying some basic first aid. I’ll get my secretary to invoice you later. Must dash, or I’ll miss my round of golf.”

  Mal touched the tip of his nose as if he was reassuring himself it was still there. “We’ll be a lot better as soon as Nurse Phyllis finds the right drugs, ma’am.”

  Osman steeled herself. “So did you have to give them anything?” It was as tactful a way as any to ask two men who prided themselves on their toughness whether they’d broken under torture. “I realize Staffan knows about Naomi.”

  Vaz folded his arms across his chest, chin down. Osman couldn’t tell if he was just feeling awkward facing his commanding officer in his boxers, or about to tell her something serious.

  “He wanted to know if she’d been abducted. Whether he was right, ma’am.” Vaz didn’t blink. Maybe he couldn’t. “I told him more than I needed to and offered to tell him more if he released us.”

  That didn’t sound like a disaster to her, not yet anyway. “How much more?”

  “Just that she was abducted, she was alive and well, and that she’d saved me a few times. I didn’t tell him that she’s a Spartan or that she’s on board.” Vaz’s expression was hard to read. He looked like a kid waiting for a smack around the ear, but also a little defiant. “I realize you’ll need to stick me on a charge, ma’am, but I tried to strike a balance between completing the mission and doing what was right.”

  Mal cut in. “He bought us time, Admiral, or we’d be dead by now. Maybe lifting Staffan wasn’t ideal. But we couldn’t leave him where he was.”

  Osman had no idea yet whether this part of the mission was a success or a failure, but she couldn’t think what Mal and Vaz could have done differently, except not get caught. And that was probably more down to whatever had happened to Fel than their own actions. If they’d left Staffan in New Tyne, he’d have moved the ship, been on his guard for further attempts, and everything would be back to square one. But now she had the main key to finding Inquisitor, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Good work,” she said. “I’m sorry it had to be so painful.”

  “So what are you going to do with him?” Vaz asked.

  Osman was fairly certain she didn’t need to plug Staffan into the mains to focus his attention. She had her bargaining chip right here, the one thing he wanted and needed more than anything: Naomi. That was her immediate reflex. As always, the detached ONI reaction was followed immediately by uneasy guilt for defaulting to ruthless bastard mode, and wondering if the right thing done for the wrong reasons was as bad as doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

  He needs to know about his daughter, even if it hurts. She needs to get this out of the way so that she’s not living in a perpetual soap opera when she needs to be focused on missions. I need a way of finding and neutralizing that ship, at very least.

  A win-win was hardly how it felt, but at least everybody could get something of what they needed.

  “I think you got us some leverage, Vaz,” she said. “However Staffan reacts, he’s a hostage we can use.”

  “So we are going to tell him.”

  “We’ve kicked this around for ages. Rightly or wrongly, he crossed our path, he won’t quit, and there’s the chance we might turn him if the biggest thing in his life is resolved. Even if we can never put it right.”

  Was that an answer or an excuse? She wasn’t sure herself. Phillips emerged from another compartment, clutching a box of aero-injectors, single-dose tubes, and dressings.

  “Okay, this is the stuff,” he said. “Lay flat, gents, and don’t move.”

  All Phillips had to do was apply the gel dressings on top of the bruises and leave them in place for twenty minutes while the automated couch directed the right energy wavelength for the depth of damage. Osman wondered if Adj and Leaks would be any use as corpsmen, seeing as they attempted to repair small wounds anyway. Maybe that was just a little too creepy right now, though. She left Mal and Vaz lying on the couches looking like they were having some bizarre beauty treatment, and went to see Staffan. Devereaux was waiting at the end of the passage.

  “Need me to stand by, ma’am?” she asked. “You shouldn’t interrogate a detainee without some backup on hand. Even if he’s getting on a bit.”

  She was right. Osman nodded. “I think I’ll take him to the bridge. There’s not a lot he can do. We’re all armed. BB? Position check, please.”

  BB popped up in front of her. “You ruined my putt, Admiral. Okay, Adj and Leaks are in the hangar, pimping Bogof. Spenser … he’s fallen asleep in the wardroom. Naomi … in the armor bay, doing maintenance her suit doesn’t need.”

  “Okay, stand her by to come up to the bridge.” No, that wasn’t right. “Ask her if she wants to meet her father. If she doesn’t, I won’t make her.”

  Naomi would do it anyway. Osman knew. She didn’t feel good about knowing that she knew.

  When she unlocked the cell and walked in, Staffan looked her up and down. “You want the battlecruiser, don’t you?” he said.

  Osman nodded. “I’ve got orders.”

  “Your kind always has.”

  “What’s my kind, Staffan?” Osman motioned to him to hold out his hands and removed the cuffs. That wasn’t procedure, either. She knew it was poor tactics to start a negotiation with a concession, but she felt this would all go better without the cruder psychological pressure. “Navy? Earth? Authority?”

  “ONI,” he said. “You’re not that secret. And it’s on your badge.”

  “Let’s go sit on the bridge. Might as well be comfortable.”

  He walked along the passage behind Osman with Devereaux at his back. “If you know where the ship is, why not just turn up and nuke her?”

  “She used to belong to one of the Arbiter’s crew,” Osman said, sidestepping the issue of ventral beams. “So I’d really like to rummage through her data. If you think the Sangheili have kissed and made up with humans, they haven’t. I’m trying to head off another war. The next one might affect Venezia whether you think you’re neutral or not.”

  “Oh, you could have just called me and asked,” Staffan said. “And who said we’d be neutral?”

  He sat down on one of the bench seats to one side of the bridge and gazed out of the viewscreen. There wasn’t much of a view in slipspace, just an unbroken lightless void, but maybe he didn’t want to look at Osman. Devereaux settled between him and the doors. Osman turned one of the nav console seats to face him. He wasn’t relaxed, but it wasn’t the nervous dread of a man who didn’t know what his interrogator was going to do next. It was a man consumed by the what-ifs that were boiling inside his own head.

  “So,” O
sman said. “What’s next?”

  Staffan shrugged. “If you kill me, would you mind telling my family? You don’t even have to say who you are. Just let them know so they don’t spend their lives trying to find me. You probably know who they are and where to find them.”

  If he’d calculated that shot to penetrate, he’d succeeded. He might also have meant it literally, of course. Osman saw a flat plain with little moral high ground for either of them. If anything, Staffan’s boots were in shallower shit.

  “One day it’ll all come out,” she said. Because I’ll be CINCONI, and I’ll see that it does if Parangosky doesn’t get to give evidence to the defense committee. “But yes, your daughter’s alive. She was abducted and replaced. And I’m very, very sorry about the pain you were put through twice.”

  “Three times,” Staffan said quietly. “Don’t forget my first wife. Naomi’s mother. And you’re not sorry at all.”

  There’d never been SOPs for a situation like this. No Spartan had ever been reunited with their parents, and no Spartan had ever been in Osman’s position. She tried to trust her gut again. If she’d been smart enough to get Halsey’s attention in a big galaxy, then some innate intelligence would guide her.

  “Oh, I am.” She made sure she was looking into Staffan’s face, taking in every twitch and blink. “I was abducted too. Same age. Naomi and I were trained together. Have you heard of Spartans? UNSC Spartans, I mean. God knows there was enough PR about them.”

  Staffan stared back at her. “Spartans. Special forces.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re telling me my girl was taken to become a Spartan?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many others?”

  “I can’t tell you the numbers for opsec reasons, but there weren’t many. Not into three figures.”

  “Remo,” he said suddenly. It made no sense. But he looked up at the deckhead for a moment, then swallowed a few times. “Assuming this is the truth, this was Earth picking kids it wanted to train from childhood, and just taking them. And … cloning? Replacing them with clones?”

  “Yes. Illegal cloning.”

  “And you say I’m the threat to society.” He shook his head. “Did ONI plan for them to die, too? Or was that just another unintended consequence? You people love that phrase.”

  “I don’t really know,” Osman said, wishing she had Halsey here right now so that she could force her to explain herself to him. “But you’re right. We’re not half as smart as we think we are.”

  Osman thought he was taking it pretty well, but he was probably still too overwhelmed to make enough sense of it to be angry.

  “All for a few extra troops?” he asked.

  “It was an ugly time. Staffan, I’m going to tell you everything I can, but you won’t like it.”

  “That’s what Vaz said.”

  “Well, he’s right. I went through Spartan training until my teens. Then I had to drop out because it nearly killed me.” She wasn’t sure whether it was better to dump everything on him at once or drip-feed it and risk stoking him into a much more slow-burning rage. “Naomi completed the program and she’s been a frontline commando for the best part of thirty years.”

  Staffan looked past Osman for a moment. She could almost read his mind. He was recalling dates, things that had made him suspicious, news items, and all kinds of detail that had collected in his memory for decades and was now beginning to fit together to make shocking sense. He ran one hand slowly over his face in a washing motion.

  “Remo,” he said. “Andy Remo’s son. They lived on Herschel. Did you take him too?”

  “BB, records please,” Osman said. She couldn’t recall them all. “Check Remo.”

  BB appeared above the console. “Yes, Artie Remo. Arthur.” He moved across to Staffan, who stared at him, frowning. “Where’s Andrew Remo now? He dropped off the databases some years ago.”

  “He’s dead,” Staffan said, then seemed to shake himself to make sense of talking to a blue box of light. “What about Artie? I promised Andy I’d find him.”

  “Arthur was killed in action, sir. I’m sorry.”

  Osman noted the sir. That wasn’t like BB at all. Staffan’s eyes followed the blue cube as he drifted away. “That’s some computer interface, Admiral.”

  “BB’s not a computer. He’s an artificial intelligence. A person, effectively.”

  Staffan didn’t say anything else. He kept rubbing his face while he stared out the viewscreen as if none of this was here around him. Osman just watched. She’d never dealt with a prisoner like this before.

  “You disgusting bastards,” he said at last. “You scum. You lying filth. What did we ever do to you? What did our kids do to deserve that?”

  It wasn’t a raging outburst. It was just weary bewilderment that humans could use one another so brutally. And he hadn’t even heard the worst details yet. Osman wanted to protest that it wasn’t her fault, and remind him that she’d been a victim just like his daughter, but she was ONI now, nearly CINCONI, and so far she’d done nothing to put it right.

  I could have done things differently.

  It was the same as her guilt about her family. She was exceptional, Spartan-exceptional, not a regular human being who could do no better than take what life dished out to her. She could have changed everything. She hadn’t.

  Filth. Scum. Disgusting bastards. Me.

  Staffan didn’t say another word for more than an hour. Osman left him where he sat and wandered around the bridge, waiting for him to give in and ask questions, but he didn’t. BB popped up again.

  “Dropping out of slip in five minutes, Admiral,” he said. “Mal and Vaz are on their way up here. Phillips is keeping an eye on Spenser.”

  Osman sat in her command chair, more focused on what would be waiting at the coordinates than deceleration. “Okay, everyone. Stand by.”

  The air in Port Stanley shivered slightly. Stars burst from the blackness like frozen fireworks as the ship dropped out of slipspace, and Osman’s head swam for a few nauseous seconds. She jumped up to look at the tactical display that formed instantly above the chart table. Mal and Devereaux joined her. Vaz stayed within arm’s reach of Staffan.

  “One vessel at the coordinates, but it’s not a CCS-class battlecruiser,” BB said.

  Osman studied the display. A grid of the local sector showed the single transponder of an unidentified vessel. Staffan didn’t move.

  “We’ve got the right coordinates, haven’t we?” She asked BB.

  “Yes. I think that’s a Covenant missionary ship. You know who used to crew those, don’t you? Kig-Yar.”

  “Are we close enough to get eyes on?”

  “Wait one.”

  Osman turned to look out on space as Stanley rotated. Yes, she could see it. They were weird-looking ships even by Covenant standards, irregular and distorted, no two quite the same. This one was just sitting there.

  “So what are we looking at, BB?”

  “I’d say that’s Chol Von, but why she’s waiting and why there’s no—whoa, stand by. She’s spooling up to jump. Look at those energy signatures. Backing off now.”

  Stanley’s drives ramped up to maximum in under two seconds and she withdrew at top sub-light speed. A white disc of light suddenly expanded a short distance ahead of the missionary ship’s bow. Then the ship vanished in a burst of energy.

  There was nothing out there now, and no sign of Pious Inquisitor at all. Osman walked across to stand over Staffan.

  “Where’s the ship?”

  Staffan looked at the bulkhead clock showing Alpha Time—New Tyne time—as if he was calculating. “She’s called Naomi now.”

  “You moved her already.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “So who’s got her? The Kig-Yar?”

  “No. I’m the only one who can get in. No good trying to beat any codes out of me, either. It’s the Huragok, you see. Sinks. He responds to me and nobody else. If he doesn’t get a call from me to
say that I’m okay, he’s got orders to make sure nobody boards or seizes the ship.”

  Mal looked at Osman. “He did make regular calls every eight hours, ma’am.” Then he frowned at the clock. “But you’re not due to call in until just after seven, are you, Staffan?”

  Staffan sat watching the clock for a long time before he said anything.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Something else must have triggered Sinks to move the ship. And if it wasn’t you trying to board her, then it was the Kig-Yar.”

  “Chol Von,” Osman said. “The Sangheili hired her.”

  Staffan nodded. “That explains the other ship.”

  “Okay, do you know where Sinks might have taken … Naomi?”

  “Nice diplomatic touch, Admiral.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  Now it began. This was where the whole thing had been leading for thirty-five years. Osman was reaping Halsey’s whirlwind. “And what’s going to make you tell us where she is?”

  “I think you know my price,” Staffan said. “Or part of it. I want to see my daughter. And if this is all bullshit and you can’t deliver, then we kind of have an impasse, don’t we?”

  As far as Osman knew, Staffan had no idea that Naomi was on board. Osman could play the shock card and see what fell out.

  “BB,” she said. “Do the honors, will you?”

  She’d asked Naomi if it was okay. The Spartan had said yes. It was hard to tell why she’d agreed to it, but Osman hadn’t put any conscious pressure on her. While they waited, Osman caught the expression on Mal’s face, and then on Vaz’s, and there was doubt. Devereaux gave away nothing at all.

  But you wanted to do the right thing. You wanted to repair some of the damage that Halsey did and give this poor bastard some closure. And now we are, for some mixed-up and partly selfish reasons, but we’re doing it.

  Eventually the doors opened and Naomi walked onto the bridge in her fatigues. Osman wasn’t sure where to look first. She found herself transfixed by Staffan.