Halo : Mortal Dictata/Extraits

New Tyne, Venezia: March 2553.

My name is Staffan Sentzke, and I never planned to be a terrorist.

It’s not the kind of life you aspire to. It was simply what I had to become. Terrorism is Earth’s word for it, a moral judgment, as if your warfare’s somehow noble and mine’s cowardly. But it’s just a unit of measurement; nothing more, nothing less. When your enemy is an empire and you’re just a few guys, a handful of little people, then the biggest punch you can land is called terrorism. That’s all you’ve got.

Like I said, it’s a measure of magnitude, not morality. And I’m really particular about measurements. I spent years working in a machine shop in Alstad before Sansar was glassed by the Covenant, and I still like to make things to keep my skills fresh. Here: what do you think of this? It’s a scale replica of an 18th Century Gustavian dining chair—I’m making a dolls’ house for Kerstin. Edvin says I’m spoiling her, but what else is a granddad for?

I’d give anything to be able spoil Naomi again.

There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. She’d be nearly 42 now—well past the age for dolls’ houses, but still my little girl.

Anyway, I need to finish this chair before dinner. It’s so delicate that I use a set of dental drills for the small detail. The upholstery’s the hardest thing, getting the right fabric so that the stripes are to scale, but I can make just about anything. If I can’t make it myself, then I can acquire what I need because I know people who can get me pretty well anything—a scrap of satin brocade, a birch plank, even tiny brass pins.

Or a Sangheili warship. I can get one of those, too.

I think I’ve got one now, but I have to see Sav Fel again today to iron out some details about that. Earth thinks it’s back in business since the Covenant fell, so it won’t be long before it tries to stick its nose in here again. We need to be ready, and what better time to prepare than when the black market is awash with weapons and ships? When empires fall, there’s always a fire sale.

For the moment, though, I’m making dolls’ house furniture, not arming Venezia. The workshop door opens behind me. This is the only place I’d ever sit with my back to the door, but then I know everyone who comes and goes in my own home.

“She’s going to love that,” Edvin says, peering over my shoulder. “Is it a set?”

“I’ve still got to make the matching table.”

“Nice work, Dad. I wish I had your patience.”

Yes, I’m patient. When you have to wait for answers, for revenge, for justice, you can learn to wait as long as it takes.

I was forty when Edvin was born, and Hedda came along two years later. This is my second family and my second homeworld. I had a wife and a daughter on Sansar, but it wasn’t the Covenant that took them from me—it was my own kind. Humans. Maybe it was the colonial government or might have been Earth’s, but it was humans nonetheless.

And that’s how I ended up as a terrorist. That’s your word for it, remember. Not mine. I bet there are UNSC personnel out there right now doing exactly what I’m doing. I’ll use any means necessary, so I can’t object if my enemy does the same thing. Rules of engagement are just cynical games for politicians to play.

“So did you visit your sister today?” I ask. I know what’s coming next.

“Yes, Dad. She sent you some surströmmung. She says it’ll do you good.”

“God Almighty, you’ve not brought it in here, have you?”

“No. Take it easy. I’ve set up a cordon around it.”

“Good. Otherwise I’ll have to have the place fumigated.”

“Mom said you’d say that. Just pretend it was yummy, will you? For Hedda.”

“You can have it. Just take it outside the city limits before you open it.”

I’m not much of a Swede at heart. I don’t even like pickled herring, let alone the fermented kind, and anyway, we don’t have herring on Venezia—just some oily eel-type thing that’s even worse when it’s been turned into surströmmung. Hedda, on the other hand, clings to her diluted heritage more fiercely every year, even though she’s never seen Earth, let alone Sweden. Cultures can get pretty warped in diaspora. They become weird fossilized parodies of themselves that seem to distill their worst features, but I’m afraid Hedda’s like me. She focuses, and then she can’t see anything else to either side. Edvin takes after Laura. He lets everything wash over him.

But they both know they had a half-sister who was abducted, and that when she came back she was... different. And then she got sick and died. They know I think the government took her and replaced her with a double. You think I’m crazy? Everyone did. Even me, for a while. But then I started looking and found a few other families out in the colonies who’d lost kids exactly the same way. The kid went missing, came back a little later, a little different, and then went down with multiple organ failure or some metabolic disease.

So either we’re all mad, or something awful was going on long before the Covenant showed up. A few dead kids aren’t even a drop in the ocean considering the billions who’ve died in successive wars. But they’re our kids. Thirty-five years doesn’t even begin to numb the pain. I still need to know what happened to Naomi and why. Before I die, I want to know.

It’s getting late. I really need to finish this and call Sav Fel. It sounds too good to be true, but if he has a warship to sell, he’s come to the right place. Imagine it; he just strolled off with a vessel that can glass entire planets. Would you trust a Kig-Yar crew to look after your battlecruiser? The Sangheili took their eye off the ball.

Never turn your back on someone you’ve screwed over. You might want to make a note of that.

I rub down the tiny legs of the chair with an emery board, then blow off the dust. Now I’ll put on the primer. It’s going to look great when it’s finished.

Edvin laughs to himself. “If your buddies could see you now...”

“Yeah. They say Peter Moritz knits. Real hard case.”

“You want me to go check out that new shipment?”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be finished soon. You’ve got a living to make.”

What, you think terrorists sit around scheming and playing with firearms all day? We’ve got factories to run, food to grow, families to raise. We’re pretty much like you. This is our home. We have a functioning society, and the Covenant never found us. We do okay. Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.

I’ve got time to put a coat of primer on this chair before I leave. This is one of my many regrets: I never did get around to making a doll’s house for Naomi. She really wanted one. I planned to make one when I had more time. She was such a bright, happy kid, always out exploring, always with lots of friends around her, which makes it even harder to understand how nobody saw her being taken.

I want to believe she could still be alive. She might not know that I survived, and that’s why she hasn’t come looking for me, or maybe she doesn’t even know who she really is. They say that happens to kidnapped kids.

But if she’s still out there somewhere, I hope she’s among friends.

There. Finished. It’s a lovely little chair. But now I’ve got to go talk to a buzzard about a warship.

Traduit par Lethal Projekt pour Halo.fr

New Tyne, Venezia : Mars 2553.

Mon nom est Staffan Sentzke, et je n’ai jamais pensé devenir un terroriste.

Ce n’est pas le genre de vie auquel on aspire. C’est simplement ce que je devais devenir. Le terrorisme c’est le nom qui est donné sur Terre, un jugement de valeur, comme si votre combat était brave et le mien couard. Mais c’est uniquement une unité de mesure ; rien de plus, rien de moins. Quand votre ennemi est un empire et que vous n’êtes que quelques-uns, une poignée de petites gens, alors le plus grand coup de poing que vous puissiez asséner est appelé terrorisme.

C’est tout ce que vous avez.

Comme je l’ai dit, c’est une mesure de magnitude, pas de moralité. Et je suis vraiment compétent quand il s’agit de mesure. J’ai travaillé pendant des années dans un atelier à Alstad avant que Sansar ne soit vitrifié par les Covenant, et j’aime toujours faire des choses de mes propres mains pour entretenir mes talents. Là : que pensez-vous de ceci ? C’est une réplique à l’échelle d’une chaise Gustavienne de salle à manger du XVIIIème siècle-Je suis en train de faire une maison de poupée pour Kerstin. Edvin dit que je la gâte, mais à quoi donc servirait un grand-père sinon ?

Je donnerais n’importe quoi pour pouvoir gâter encore Naomi.

Il ne se passe pas un jour sans que je pense à elle. Elle devrait avoir pas loin de 42 ans maintenant-bien trop âgée pour une maison de poupée, mais c’est toujours ma petite fille.

Quoi qu’il en soit, je dois finir cette chaise avant le repas. C’est tellement délicat que j’utilise un kit de perceuse dentaire pour les petits détails. Le plus compliqué, c’est le capitonnage, trouver le bon mode de fabrication pour que les rayures aient la bonne taille, mais je peux peaufiner presque tout. Si je n’arrive pas à le faire moi-même, je peux obtenir ce dont j’ai besoin car je connais des gens qui peuvent m’avoir à peu près tout-une pièce de brocade en satin, une planche en bouleau, et même une petite épingle en cuivre.

Ou un vaisseau de guerre Sangheili. Je peux aussi en avoir un.

Maintenant je pense que j’en ai un, mais je dois encore voir Sav Fel aujourd’hui pour éclaircir quelques détails à ce sujet. La Terre pense qu’elle est de retour aux affaires depuis la chute des Covenant, donc il ne se passera pas longtemps avant qu’elle s’intéresse de nouveau à ici. Nous devons être prêt, et quel meilleur moment pour le faire que lorsque le marché noir est inondé d’armes et de vaisseaux ? Quand l’empire tombe, il y a toujours des soldes extrêmes.

Même si, pour le moment, je fabrique des meubles pour maison de poupée et que je n’arme pas Venezia. La porte du magasin s’ouvre derrière. C’est le seul endroit au monde où je peux m’asseoir dos à une porte, mais c’est parce que je connais tous ceux qui vont et viennent chez moi.

« Elle va adorer ça, » dit Edvin, regardant par-dessus mon épaule. « C’est un ensemble ? »

« Je dois encore faire la table correspondante. »

« Beau travail, Papa. J’aimerais avoir ta patience. »

Oui, je suis patient. Quand on doit attendre pour des réponses, pour une vengeance, pour la justice, on peut apprendre à attendre aussi longtemps qu’il le faut.

J’avais 40 ans quand Edwin est né, et Hedda est arrivée 2 ans plus tard. C’est ma seconde famille et mon second foyer. J’avais une femme et une fille sur Sansar, mais ce n’est pas les Covenant qui me les ont pris-ce fut ma propre race. Les humains. Peut-être le gouvernement colonial ou la Terre, mais ce fut les humains quoi qu’il en soit.

Et c’est comme ça que j’ai tourné terroriste. C’est votre mot pour ça, rappelez-vous. Pas le mien. Je parie qu’il y a du personnel UNSC dehors, qui fait exactement la même chose que moi, là dehors. Les règles de l’engagement sont juste des jeux cyniques pour les politiciens.

« As-tu rendu visite à ta sœur ? » demandais-je. Je sais ce qui va suivre.

« Oui Papa. Elle t’a fait quelques surströmmung. Elle a dit que ça te plairait. »

« Dieu Tout-Puissant, tu ne les as pas amenés ici, n’est-ce pas ? »

« Non. Ne t’inquiète pas. J’ai mis un cordon autour. »

« Bien. Sinon tout aurait empesté ici. »

« Maman savait que tu dirais ça. Fait juste semblant d’avoir adoré, d’accord ? Pour Hedda. »

« C’est d’accord. Amène-les loin de la ville avant de les ouvrir. »

Je ne me sens pas vraiment Suédois de Cœur. Je n’aime même pas le hareng saur, sans parler du fermenté, et de toute façon nous n’avons pas de hareng sur Venezia-juste quelques sortes d’anguilles huileuses qui sont encore pire une fois cuisinées en surströmmung. Hedda, elle, s’accroche à son patrimoine qui se dilue un peu plus chaque année, même si elle n’a jamais vu la Terre et encore moins la Suède. Les cultures sont déformées au gré des diasporas. Elles deviennent des caricatures fossilisées d’elles-mêmes et ne distillent que leurs pires caractéristiques, mais j’ai peur qu’Hedda soit comme moi. Elle se focalise, et ne peut plus voir tout ce qu’il y a autour. Edvin ressemble à Laura. Il encaisse tout.

Mais ils savent tous deux qu'ils avaient une demi-sœur qui a été enlevé, et que, quand elle est revenue, elle était ... différente. Et puis elle est tombée malade et est morte. Ils savent que je pense que le gouvernement l’a pris et remplacée par un double. Vous pensez que je suis fou ? Tout le monde l'est. Même moi, pendant un certain temps. Mais ensuite, j'ai commencé à chercher et j'ai trouvé d’autres familles, dans les colonies, qui avaient perdu des enfants de la même façon. L’enfant disparait, revient un peu plus tard, un peu différent, puis décède de défaillance multiviscérale ou de maladie du métabolisme.

Alors, soit nous sommes tous fous, ou quelque chose de terrible se tramait bien avant que les Covenant apparaissent. Quelques enfants morts ne sont même pas goutte dans l'océan compte tenu des milliards de personnes qui ont sont mortes dans les guerres successives. Mais ce sont nos enfants. Trente-cinq ans n’ont pas suffi pour commencer à soulager ma douleur. J'ai encore besoin de savoir ce qui est arrivé à Naomi et pourquoi. Avant de mourir, je veux savoir.

Il se fait tard. J'ai besoin de finir cela et contacter Sav Fel. Cela semble trop beau pour être vrai, mais s'il a un navire de guerre à vendre, il est venu au bon endroit. Imaginez, il vient se promener avec un navire qui peut vitrifier des planètes entières. Feriez-vous confiance une équipe Kig-Yar pour s'occuper de votre croiseur de bataille ? Les Elites ont préféré faire comme si de rien n’était.

Ne jamais tourner le dos à quelqu'un que vous avez entourloupé. Vous devriez peut-être prendre note de cela.

Je frotte les petits pieds de la chaise avec une lime d'émeri, puis je souffle la poussière. Maintenant, je vais mettre l'amorce. Ça sera réussi une fois terminé.

Edvin rit. «Si vos copains pouvaient vous voir maintenant ... »

« Oui. Ils diraient que Peter Monitz tricote. Ça serait dur. »

« Tu veux que j’aille vérifier le nouvel envoi ? »

« Non, c’est bon. J’aurais bientôt fini. Tu as des choses à faire. »

Quoi, vous pensez que les terroristes sont assis en cercle à comploter et jouer avec des armes à feu toute la journée? Nous avons des usines à faire tourner, de la nourriture à faire pousser, des familles à élever. Nous sommes un peu comme vous. C'est notre maison. Nous avons une société qui fonctionne, et les Covenant ne nous ont jamais trouvés. Nous vivons bien. Laissez-nous tranquilles, et nous ferons de même.

J'ai le temps de mettre une couche d'apprêt sur cette chaise avant de partir. C'est un de mes nombreux regrets : je n'ai jamais eu le temps de faire une maison de poupée pour Naomi. Elle en voulait vraiment une. J'avais prévu d’en faire une lorsque j'aurais plus de temps. Elle était tellement radieuse, une enfant heureuse, toujours en train d'explorer, avec toujours beaucoup d'amis autour d'elle, ce qui rend encore plus difficile à comprendre comment personne n'a vu son enlèvement.

Je veux croire qu’elle est toujours vivante. Elle pourrait ne pas savoir que j'ai survécu, et c'est pourquoi elle n'est pas venue me chercher, ou peut-être qu'elle ne sait même pas qui elle est vraiment. Ils disent que c’est ce qui se passe pour les enfants enlevés.

Mais si elle est toujours là, quelque part, j’espère qu’elle est entourée d’amis.

Ca y est. C’est terminé. C’est une belle petite chaise. Mais maintenant je dois aller parler à une buse d’un navire de guerre.

ONI SPEC OPS AI BLACK- BOX (BBX- 8995- 1) RECORDING 4/5/2553 PARTITION SECURITY FAILSAFE ACTIVATED

I don't actually need to record any of this, but my memory isn't what it was.

Let me put that another way. I recognize its potential fallibility after that unpleasant business of reintegrating my damaged fragment. Not that I misremember, lie to myself, or acquire false memories like humans do. I might have missing segments and damaged clusters, but what I actually recall is real, and it doesn't change or get overwritten. So, reminder to self: memory gaps hurt, a preview of death by rampancy. Second reminder to self: yes, I'm reminding myself to remind myself, because Mal says the best way to stop worrying about your inevitable demise is to dwell on it morbidly until you're so bored that you forget it.

Anyway, I'm securing this data so that it can't be retrieved by hostiles if I find myself in the same pickle again. My name is Black-Box, generally called BB: I work for Captain Serin Osman of ONI, who would have been a Spartan- II now if the program hadn't nearly killed her, and I serve with her personal black ops unit, Kilo-Five-Sangheili cultural expert Professor Evan Phillips; ODST Marines Staff Sergeant Mal Geffen; Corporal Vasily Beloi; and Sergeant Lian Devereaux; and a Spartan- II, Naomi-010. We also have two Huragok on board, Requires Adjustment, aka Adj, and Leaks Repaired, known as Leaks. We've been covertly supplying arms to the Sangheili rebels to keep a civil war with the Arbiter on a steady simmer, because all the time they're busy killing each other, they're not regrouping to kill humans. They're a tad disorganized since the collapse of the Covenant-job jobbed, as Mal would say-and the rebels have misplaced a battlecruiser. Like everything else, it'll end up in the wrong hands unless we go and retrieve it. Or blow it up. I'm easy.

There's also the added complication of Naomi's father showing up on Venezia. I suppose it was inevitable that the ugly past of the SPARTAN program would come back to bite us one day. Vaz and Naomi are on Venezia now, undercover. This will not end well.

But now I have to go bake a cake. I just need to enlist some organics. Meatbags have their uses. They have hands.

And, I admit, some of them are my friends.

RECORDING ENDS ALSTAD, SANSAR, OUTER COLONIES: SEPTEMBER 10, 2517

"Honey, where's Naomi?"

Staffan Sentzke hung up his jacket and looked for his daughter's satchel and coat on the hook halfway up the wall, set as high as a six- year- old could reach. If the bus hadn't dropped her off yet, he still had time to sneak the box into his workshop. It was five days to her birthday. She was already keeping an eye on everything he did with the unblinking vigilance of a security guard. Lena wandered into the hall, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. "Music practice, remember," she said. "She won't be back until five."

"You think she's a bit young for all these extra classes?"

"If you think she's old enough to go to school on her own . . ."

"Okay. You win that round."

"So did you get it?"

"Yeah." Staffan put the box on the kitchen table, pleased with himself both for finding such a uniquely Naomi kind of gift and for the overtime he'd had to work to buy it. It was a mini planetarium the size of a table lamp. "I bet she can name all the stars. You can get different discs to show the northern and southern hemispheres. Even views from other planets."

Lena opened the box and lifted out the projector. "At least she won't think it's the doll's house before she opens it." She had to move the toaster to plug the lamp into the wall socket. "Too small."

"You think she'll be disappointed?"

Lena flicked the switch. Sansar's night sky came to life in the kitchen as constellations began tracking slowly across the walls and ceiling. Naomi would love it. She could leave the projector running all night if she wanted to. It was a grown- up kind of night- light for a smart little girl who was sometimes still afraid of the dark.

"No, she'll forget all about the doll's house as soon as she sees it," Lena said. A slow smile spread across her face as her gaze flickered from star to star. "It's pretty magical, isn't it?"

"You can change the colors." Staffan turned a dial on the side. "Look. There's even a rainbow setting. And you can zoom in on individual stars and planets. Look." He pressed a key and a blue- green planetary disc sprang out of the heavens. "Just like landing on Reach."

"Okay, let's wrap it and put it away before she gets home."

Staffan rummaged in the kitchen drawers for scissors and tape, and noticed that the collection of tiny, handmade furniture on the shelf had grown an extra chair. Ever since Naomi had spotted the doll's house in an expensive toy store in New Stockholm-no Daddy-I-want, no wheedling, just that rapt look on her face when she saw it-she'd been collecting all kinds of scraps, and spent hours cutting and gluing them to make furniture. There was a table, a bed, and now a dining suite. Staffan picked up one of the fragile chairs and studied it with his own craftsman's eye, marveling at how square the angles were and how neat the glued joints.

Pride overwhelmed him for a moment. Naomi would be six in a few days. She shouldn't have had that level of dexterity or precision. Average six-year-olds were struggling with joined-up writing while his daughter was measuring angles and working out scale.

Every parent thought their child was uniquely perfect, but Staffan knew the difference between fond delusion and the realization that Naomi was a gifted child. A few months ago, an educational psychologist from the Colonial Administration Authority had visited the school to carry out batteries of tests on her class, and Naomi's teacher had told Staffan and Lena what they already knew: Naomi was exceptional, in the top small fraction of a percent- one in millions, maybe one in a billion. He just hoped that a small colony world like Sansar would have enough to offer her when she grew up.

It was funny that she was so taken with the doll's house, though. She didn't even like dolls. She wasn't interested in being a princess, either. There was something about the detail of the house, the creation of a separate world, that seemed to absorb her.

Staffan turned the miniature chair over in his fingers. The cushion fell off. He swore under his breath and took it out to his workshop. He'd stick it together again and hope she didn't notice, but she never missed a thing.

A dab of wood glue put the tiny cushion- the fingertip of a knitted glove- back in place. There: good as new. Then he wrapped the planetarium projector in the red- and- white striped paper that he'd sneaked into the house last week. He'd have to lock it away somewhere. Naomi had a lot of self- control for a small girl, but she was a very curious child, always busy searching for something to do or make.

He parted the blinds with his finger to look across the yard. It was getting dark. She'd be home soon. He hid the parcel in his rifle locker and went back inside the house.

"Where's she gotten to?"

Lena stirred a pot on the stove. "I just called the school. They were running late. She's on the bus now, so I make that ten minutes."

Staffan wanted to wrap his daughter in cotton wool, but if he did then she'd grow up afraid of everything. She was smart enough to catch the right bus and not talk to strangers. She had a watch- a proper adult one, not some glittery pink toy- and the drivers kept an eye on the kids and old folks anyway. Lena didn't approve. It was one battle that Staffan had won.

He worried, all the same. Dads couldn't help themselves.

And then before I know it there'll be parties, and dating, and all that to fret about.

While he watched TV, he could hear Lena walking back and forth between the kitchen and the hall. Then the front door opened. He expected to hear Naomi's voice. But the door closed after a few seconds, and Lena came into the living room, pulling on her coat.

"I'm going to walk to the bus stop," she said. "I don't want her wandering around in the dark. Which wouldn't have happened if you'd let me pick her up."

Staffan checked his watch. Damn, it had been nearly half an hour since Lena had called the school. There was probably a perfectly good explanation. "Honey, you know she likes to feel grown- up. She's not an idiot."

"I know. But she's five."

"Six."

"I'm going. Keep an eye on the stove."

Staffan fretted for a few moments, trying to work out if this was Dad worry or rational anxiety. Naomi wasn't the kind of kid to wander off or lose track of the time. Okay, he'd do some more overtime and get her her own phone. That would keep Lena happy.

He opened the front door to take a look. The bus stop wasn't that far: he could see the string of streetlights dotted along the road in the distance and the silhouette of the climbing frames and swings in the park. He expected to see Lena and Naomi walking back across the grass, but there was just Lena. And she was running.

Oh God. Oh God, no.

Some things were instantly understood.

In the moments it took to close the distance between them, Staffan had thought a hundred terrified, stomach-churning thoughts about perverts, road accidents, ponds, and God I should never have let her go out on her own, I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't-

He ran down the drive. Lena almost cannoned into him and grabbed his arm, wide- eyed and distraught. "She's gone. He called the depot."

Staffan could hardly breathe. "Whoa, slow down. Who?"

"The bus driver. He just called the other driver, the one on the earlier bus. He said she got off a stop early. She just got off the bus. I told you. I told you she was too young-"

"Then she's just walking a bit farther. Nothing to worry about." It was a lie and Staffan knew it. There was everything to worry about. His heart pounded. He thought immediately of his neighbors, trying to work out which of them had always seemed a bit odd. Everyone warned kids about strangers but forgot to mention it was the people they knew and trusted who were the biggest danger.

Did I do that? Did I teach her to be too trusting? Is it my fault?

Staffan fumbled in his pockets for his keys. "I'll drive back down the route. I'll find her. You stay here in case she's taken a shortcut."

Lena was shaking. "He said she's done it before. This is your fault."

"Yeah, I knew it would be."

"If anything happens to her, I'll never forgive you."

"Jesus Christ, Lena, this isn't the time, okay? Stay here. She'll probably be back before I am."

He backed the car out of the drive and headed for the main road. Naomi would have been home by now if she'd walked that distance.

Please be all right, sweetie. Please. God? God, if you're there at all, if you're listening, you haven't done a whole lot for my family, so maybe now would be a good time to show yourself. Let her be okay. Please.

He drove along the bus route back to the school, now shuttered and in darkness, before looping around to scan both sides of the road. He didn't even pass anyone out walking. Maybe she'd taken a shortcut through the new houses that were springing up to the west of the park. He doubled back and turned into the tract.

Or maybe she cut through the construction site.

Staffan slowed to a crawl to press the receiver into his ear and call Lena, but the number was busy. She was probably ringing around Naomi's friends' moms to see if she was with them. Which direction would Naomi have taken? He drove around every possible permutation of roads he could think of, but he knew damn well that she would have been long gone if she'd actually walked through here.

So am I looking for a body? Am I? Is that what I'm doing?

He could hardly bear to listen to his own thoughts. He headed home and turned into the drive, willing Naomi to be back and in need of nothing more than a talking- to about staying on the bus and not scaring Mom and Dad, followed by being escorted to and from school for a few weeks. But Lena was standing at the front door, eyes glassy with unshed tears.

"Nothing," she said.

He wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question. "Well?"

"Everyone's calling their neighbors. They're going to search for her. I've called the police. They're putting out alerts."

"I'm going back out, then." For no good reason, Staffan was suddenly grateful that his mother was days out of communication range and Lena's folks hadn't spoken to him-or her-in years. It was one less set of explanations and recriminations to think about. "Someone's got to organize this. How could she go missing between a couple of bus stops?"

It was a stupid question because the answer was both obvious and terrifying. He wished he hadn't said it. As he checked the map of the area on his datapad, he was still thinking through the list of everyone he knew in the village, trying to work out which one was the pervert that he'd never suspected. Naomi would never have gone off with a stranger.

Or she's lying in a ditch, hurt. Or worse.

"I've got to look for her," Lena said.

"No, stay put. Someone's got to be here to talk to the cops."

Staffan had already covered all the roads he could think of. The places he hadn't searched- the construction site, the stream, the farm- were the kind of hazard-ridden places where kids were found dead. In less than two hours, he'd gone from worrying if Naomi would be disappointed by her birthday present to not knowing if he'd ever see her again. Lena stood with one hand to her mouth, tearful and accusing at the same time, while he rang friends and tried to coordinate the search.

Alstad was a small place. All the kids who went to Naomi's school were from three villages in an eight- kilometer radius. This wasn't like a big city where a kid could vanish in seconds.

But we don't have all the street cameras that a big city would have, either.

Someone hammered on the front door. Lena rushed to answer it, but it wasn't the police. Twenty or more neighbors, including a couple with dogs and night hunting scopes, stood outside, clutching flashlights and looking grim. It seemed like the entire village had turned out in a matter of minutes.

"We'll find her, Staf," said Jakob. He was the district councilman, the kind of guy who always stepped up with a plan. "She's only been gone a few hours. She can't get far. They've got cams on all the buses."

It was just comforting noise. If she'd been taken by someone in a car, that meant nothing. She could be anywhere by now, unseen and unheard. Staffan gave Lena as reassuring a hug as he could manage.

"Call me if you hear anything," he said, as if it needed saying. "I'll keep my line clear."

Jakob took over as if he knew Staffan was now going in circles and needed steering. He'd already divided everyone into teams and given them areas to search- the sheds and slurry pit at the dairy farm north of the main road, the construction site, and the park. Others were tasked to go door to door, asking people to look in their sheds and out houses. Nobody suggested waiting for the police. Staffan felt useless. He wasn't sure what the dogs would be able to achieve, either, but everything was worth trying.

Every minute that passed became the worst of his life, a steady downward path. The construction site was a list of fatal accidents waiting to befall a kid, from the holes full of water to the stacks of building materials that could fall and crush the unwary.

"She wouldn't come in here voluntarily." Staffan poked a long piece of wooden batten into a water- filled trench. Reflections of the security lights danced on the surface. "I know my daughter."

While they were dragging the ditches, the construction manager showed up with half a dozen guys and started opening every storage hut and locked door, working through half- built houses with no floors or stairs. When the search party drew a blank on the site, they moved on to the occupied houses. With every door that opened, someone offered to join the search. Even strangers cared what happened to a little girl.

Staffan's phone rang a while later, showing 20:05 on the screen. He realized he'd completely lost track of the time. His heartbeat and the strangled sound of his own breathing almost drowned out Lena's voice.

"I gave the police one of her blouses from the laundry basket," Lena said. "For the canine unit. They've called in a Pelican with thermal imaging to scan the ground."

"Yeah, well, we're going to carry on anyway," Staffan said. Thermal imaging. That meant they thought she was alive. That was a good sign, wasn't it? He clung to the belief like a life belt. "We've got half the village out here now. We'll find her. I promise."

Staffan went back to sit in the car for a few minutes to check the local news, just to be sure something was being broadcast and that they'd gotten the detail right. He didn't catch anything on the radio. But his datapad showed an appeal for sightings on the local news site, complete with a picture of Naomi.

A police car with a flashing light bar slowed to a stop alongside him. The driver got out and Staffan lowered the window.

"Have you found her?" Staffan asked.

"Not yet, sir." The cop's comms unit was burbling quietly on his lapel like a second conversation in the background. "The dog's tracking right now, and we've got the bus security footage, so we know that she got off at-"

"Yeah. We knew that hours ago."

"Look, most kids usually turn up again safe and sound. Sometimes they forget the time and go playing somewhere, and then they're too scared to face the music for being late."

"Yeah, but not Naomi," Staffan said. "Not my daughter."

He drove back to the bus stop and sat watching the police dog and its handler. The dog was wandering back and forth on a long leash about fifty meters from the road. In the distance, flashlight beams crossed and wobbled between the trees as people searched the woods. Staffan decided he'd had enough and went to talk to the dog handler.

He stopped on the paved path. "What's the dog found? I'm her father. I want to know."

"He's picked up a trail from the bus stop, sir, but it doesn't go very far." The handler nodded in the dog's direction. "Let's not jump to conclusions. It might not be the right one."

Staffan wasn't stupid and he knew the dog wasn't, either. The trail ended abruptly a distance from the road because someone had lifted Naomi off the ground at that point. It was the only explanation.

"She's been taken," Staffan said. The words were strange and distant, completely unreal. "Some bastard's snatched my little girl. You know it."

In three hours, Naomi could have been a long way from Alstad- or dead. Staffan had no idea what to do next except not stand here talking a second longer. He got back into his car and just drove blindly. He should have been home with Lena, but he felt helpless, useless, guilty. He had to do something or go crazy.

Lena was right. He should never have let a six- year- old out on her own like that.

He headed for New Stockholm, praying one minute and swearing the next, cruising the streets while he scanned pedestrians and every single car that passed. There was no reason to think anyone would have brought Naomi here, but he didn't have a better idea. It wasn't until his phone bleeped again that he snapped out of it and accepted this was all random and pointless. "Come home," Lena said. "I can't stand everyone calling to tell me it's all going to be all right."

It was nearly midnight. It was shocking how much life could change in a matter of hours.

I could have just driven to the school and picked her up.

Why the hell did she get off the bus early?

When he got home, there were neighbors' cars still parked in the road outside, but Lena was alone, sitting in the kitchen with her arms folded on the table. She had the radio and TV on at the same time. The competing audio streams merged into a quiet babble in the background.

She looked like she'd been crying. Staffan waited for the whatifs and if-onlies.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said. "I'm so sorry. But we'll find her. She can't just disappear like that."

"But they do, don't they?" Lena had that look on her face, the one that stopped short of saying this is all your fault. He didn't need reminding. "You've only got to watch the news."

Staffan knew he wouldn't get through the next hour if he let himself think that. He'd expected to find himself crying and pacing the floor, but he and Lena just sat at the kitchen table, not talking, not looking at each other, just fending off sporadic knocks at the door from well- meaning neighbors. The police called pretty well on the hour, but they had no more news.

"I should go out again," Staffan said. It'd be light in a few hours. His eyes kept closing. How could he be tired at a time like this? "I really should."

Lena poured a pot of cold coffee down the drain. "I'll go. You stay here."

"You sure?"

"I've done all the sitting and waiting I'm going to do." She took the keys. "She's out there. I know she is. I refuse to believe she's gone. Don't you dare tell me she is."

"Okay, honey. I know. I know."

Staffan had expected himself to be more than this somehow: more decisive, more logical, more grief- stricken, more angry. He felt like he was bargaining with fate. If he didn't actually say the words or think the worst, then it wouldn't happen. Naomi was still alive; he'd see her again. Repeating that mantra was the only way to cope with the unthinkable.

He switched to another TV channel and rested his head on his hands, trying to think of something that he'd overlooked. Had anyone rung around the hospitals? Maybe she'd been hit by a car and they couldn't ID her.

Maybe . . .

This is crazy.

His head started to buzz. He closed his eyes for just a moment.

The phone rang and woke him. He hadn't even realized he'd fallen asleep at the table. Lena was back. She stood with the handset pressed to her ear, sobbing. "Are you sure? Are you sure? Oh, thank God . . ."

Staffan jumped to his feet, heart pounding, trying to listen in on the call. Lena put the phone down and cupped her hands over her mouth, eyes tight shut.

"Jesus, honey, just tell me."

"They've found her. She's okay. They've taken her to the hospital to check her over."

The relief was so powerful that his legs almost buckled. "Where?" He looked at the clock on the wall. It was just before six in the morning. Was he really awake? Yes, he was. The nightmare was over. "Goddamn it, you should have let me talk to them."

"She's okay. Come on. Let's go."

"Who took her? What did they do to her?" Staffan's dread was already giving way to a panicky anger. "I swear I'll kill the bastard if he's laid a finger on her-"

"They said she's fine. She's safe. Come on."

"What the hell happened? Where was she?"

"Five klicks southwest of New Stockholm," Lena said. "She was sitting at a bus stop. A bus driver stopped to check on her and she asked him to help her find her way home."

That was an hour or so from Alstad. "What was she doing out there?"

"No idea. She can't remember. She didn't show up on any other bus cams, so they'll want to talk to her again later. She certainly didn't walk there on her own."

Staffan had to search for his keys. He realized he hadn't called the factory to let them know he'd be late, either. Well, too bad. He struggled to keep his mind on the road while he tried to make sense of what he knew.

"I don't believe it. Six in the goddamn morning? Nobody notices a kid out on her own all night?"

"Someone did spot her. Eventually."

"But where was she for the rest of the time? She was gone for twelve hours. She couldn't have done that on her own. What were the goddamn cops doing? They couldn't even find her with a dog and a dropship. Useless assholes."

Lena held up her hands to silence him. "Look, we'll find out later. All that matters is she's alive and she's coming home. Just stop this. Please."

Staffan hardly dared say it. But Lena had to be thinking it as well. "I swear if anyone's touched her, I'm going to find him and cut off his balls. Because all he'll get from the judge is a rap across the knuckles and his own personal social worker to-"

"Staffan. Please. Don't."

"Why aren't they telling us what happened?"

"Because they don't know. For Chrissakes. Just stop it."

It confirmed the worst for him. Naomi was probably too traumatized to speak. When they got to the hospital, they had to wait with a woman police officer for the best part of an hour before the doctors were ready to let them see Naomi. Staffan braced himself. When he and Lena were shown into the private room, Naomi was sitting cross- legged on a metal-framed bed, hands folded in her lap, still wearing her bright red dress and blue jacket. She looked more baffled than terrified.

Lena grabbed her and crushed her in a tearful hug. Staffan had to wait to get a look in. When he cuddled Naomi, she looked at him blankly for a second, as if she was working out who he was, but then she smiled. It worried him. Maybe they'd sedated her.

"Wow, you're away with the fairies, aren't you, baby?" he said. "What did they give you?"

"Breakfast," she said. "I had eggs."

Staffan looked at the doctor. "Have you given her any drugs? She seems pretty spacey."

The doctor shrugged. He had no way of knowing what was normal Naomi. This wasn't. "No sedation," he said. "She wasn't agitated. And she has no injuries at all. Which is odd, given that she can't remember how she got to the bus stop. Has she ever had seizures or blackouts before?"

"No." Seizures? My little girl? "She's perfectly healthy. Lord knows she's had enough medical examinations at school this last year. They'd have spotted anything odd. Look, when you say no injuries . . ."

"No, she hasn't been molested, if that's what you're asking. We do check in these cases."

It was a massive relief. Staffan found himself breathing normally for the first time in what felt like forever. "Well, she's never had fits. Are you sure she wasn't drugged by whoever took her?"

"We've run a tox screen-all clear so far. And nothing on the brain scan. She just doesn't remember anything before she arrived at the bus stop, let alone anyone taking her, and she still seems disoriented." The doctor ruffled Naomi's hair and gave her a big smile. "But you ate a pretty good breakfast, didn't you, poppet?"

"Where are all the other doctors?" Naomi asked. "There were always more than this."

That made no sense at all. Staffan glanced at Lena. She looked worried too. Just when he thought it would be enough to have Naomi back alive, it looked like they had a new problem.

"Keep an eye on her for the next few days," the doctor said. "I'll refer her to the consultant neurologist. It's the memory loss that concerns me. She might just be scared of a telling- off, but let's err on the side of caution."

Staffan carried Naomi to the car and put her in the backseat. She was still clutching her satchel. He watched her for a moment, desperate to see some hint of the normal Naomi, but maybe that was asking too much. She opened the satchel and looked inside as if she wasn't sure what was in there. Lena drove while he sat in the back, holding Naomi's hand. It was more for his benefit than hers.

"No school for a few days, sweetie," Lena said. "You've had a nasty fright, that's all."

Staffan didn't think that Naomi would ever be too scared to tell him anything, but there was always a first time. Maybe the doctor was right; maybe she'd behaved like a little girl for a change instead of a child prodigy.

"We're not angry with you, baby," he said. "But did you go into town to look at that doll's house again?"

Naomi gazed up at him, baffled. "What doll's house?"

"Doesn't matter." That was weird. She couldn't have forgotten it already. "I've got you something even better for your birthday."

"Okay." That was all she said. "Okay."

Staffan was really scared now. There was something wrong. When they got home, he tucked her up in a blanket on the sofa and sat watching her for the rest of the day, frightened to take his eyes off her. Whatever had happened, she was a lot quieter than normal. When she got up to go to the bathroom, she stood in the hallway for a moment as if she was working out where it was, and Lena had to lead her upstairs. When she came back and started reading her book, she turned it over from time to time to frown at the cover, and she didn't finish her favorite sandwich-crustless triangles filled with mashed egg, dill, and mayonnaise. Lena put her to bed early and she didn't beg for a few more minutes to finish the chapter. She didn't do anything that she usually did.

Weird. Wrong.

"Yeah, I think she's ill," Lena said, folding the blanket. "Whatever the doctor said, she's sickening for something. Flu, maybe."

"I hope that's all it is."

Lena just looked at him, arms folded. "And we'll keep a closer eye on her, because Naomi or not, we nearly lost her. She'll grow up fast enough. Until we know exactly what happened, she isn't going anywhere on her own again, okay?"

"Okay."

It was strange how Naomi had forgotten all about the doll's house. Some kids had a different fad every day, but once Naomi set her mind to something, it was hard to derail her. Perhaps she'd been into the shop after all, seen how much the doll's house cost, and realized that she was expecting a very expensive thing.

Maybe she'd felt guilty about that, and was too embarrassed to come home and admit it until she'd worked out a way to change her mind without sounding like she felt her dad had let her down.

Come on, she's smart, but she's still five- okay, six. On the other hand . . . she's like her grandma. She'll pretend she didn't really want it after all.

Staffan couldn't afford the doll's house, but he could certainly make one like it. How hard could it be? He worked in a machine shop. If he could cut and grind metal to fi ne tolerances, he could make a wooden house and all the furniture that went in it. And he could make it special and personal for her.

But that would take time. Naomi needed something special right now. He unwrapped the planetarium lamp and put it on the table next to her bed. She opened her eyes just as he switched it on and filled the room with drifting stars.

"There," he said. "You've got the whole galaxy now. And all the galaxies beyond it. See that one? And that? Can you remember what it's called?"

Naomi gazed up at the ceiling. She seemed mesmerized. "No. But it's pretty."

She could normally name the constellations. Staffan put his hand on her forehead, but she didn't feel feverish. "We got it for your birthday. But you deserve a treat right now."

"Thank you, Daddy. I'm sorry for not remembering."

"It doesn't matter, sweetheart. You'll be right as rain before long." He turned the dial to the rainbow setting. If she woke in the night, the first thing she'd see would be the soothing play of lights. He stroked her hair as she watched the ceiling. He had his little girl back, and right then nothing else mattered. "Just enjoy the stars."

   Every vessel counts. We can’t yet replace what we lose, so the war against the arbiter and the other blasphemers may be won or lost on a single hull. We need to recover Pious Inquisitor from the Kig-Yar. The simplest way to find her is to pay another Kig-Yar to betray his own kind. They have no honor—fortunately.

   —Shipmaster Avu Med ’Telcam, Servant of the Abiding Truth, adressing rebellion commanders at his headquarters on Laqil,
   formerly the human colony world New Llanelli

UNSC PORT STANLEY IN STEALTH MODE, OFF VENEZIA; THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER—APRIL 2553

“Smooth icing,” Mal Geffen said, gesturing at Adj. “Come on, BB. Can’t you make him understand? I thought you’d fixed his translator.”

BB projected his plain, box-shaped avatar into Port Stanley’s galley, where Mal, Devereaux, and Adj were putting the finishing touches to a cake for Osman. Adj floated around the table, occasionally reaching out a tentacle to tease a layer of navy blue frosting into even more ragged peaks. On closer inspection, the curved tips of the frosting turned out to not to be random; they were fractals. Huragok didn’t do anything by halves. The common name for them, Engineers, didn’t even begin to cover their skills.

“Serves you right for using the galaxy’s most sophisticated organic computer as a food processor, Staff.”

“I was trying to be inclusive,” Mal said. “You know. Team building.”

BB projected two holographic tentacles to begin signing. Huragok appreciated someone talking to them in their own language. <Fractals? Smartass.>

Adj’s translucent mantle shimmered with a hint of violet bioluminescence. If he’d been agitated, he’d have lit up like a Christmas tree. <And an uneven surface makes the substance taste more appealing to humans.>

<They need it to be smooth and level,> BB signed. Huragok knew best, and it baffled them that humans sometimes didn’t want what was best. <It has to be written upon.>

<Mal should have specified that.>

<You know what humans are like. Vague. Just make the surface completely smooth.>

Mal leaned against the counter, arms folded, and fixed Adj with a narrow-eyed stare. “Is he pissed off because he thinks cooking’s beneath him?”

“No, he’s fine, and he understands you perfectly well.”

It was clear to BB that Mal was joking, but maybe not to Adj. “Just being arsey, then.”

“Let’s say perfectionist.”

Huragok didn’t care what they were doing as long as they were busy and improving things. Sometimes that meant more elegant patisserie; sometimes it meant a more lethal nuclear missile. They didn’t seem to make moral judgments. BB marveled at the human capacity to see that as innocence rather than an inherent danger.

Adj switched to his translator’s quiet, monotone male voice. <It would have tasted better with an uneven surface.>

He’d had the last word, which seemed to make him happy. His mantle sparkled with bioluminescence as he reworked the frosting. BB wondered if that was the Huragok equivalent of whistling while he worked.

“Can you write ‘Congratulations Rear Admiral Osman’ on the top as well, please?” Devereaux asked. “In gold?”

<Yes.> Adj waited.

“And in English,” Devereaux said, taking the hint.

<You were imprecise again.>

BB took that as a scolding. Adj pounced on the cake and in seconds it was as smooth as a Johansson block. His tentacles plunged into the bowl of sugar again, worked furiously, and strands of gleaming gold paste emerged. One paid out like a rope trick onto the top of the cake to form the lettering, and two more—one wide strip, one narrow—appeared as a replica of a rear admiral’s lace. How he’d managed to build metallic color into the sugar was anyone’s guess.

Adj placed the sugar braid around the sides of the cake, then licked one tentacle with a tiny anteater tongue. Huragok could adapt to survive on any energy source, and even recharge from a power outlet, but when given a choice they seemed to prefer something sugary. It just added to their deceptive cuteness as far as BB was concerned.

“Thanks, Adj.” Devereaux put her hand on his back like a favorite child. “You’ll never be unemployed. Do you want us to save a couple of slices for you and Leaks?”

Adj drifted away, job done. Sharing food was one thing, but the minutiae of human social customs appeared to be of no interest to him. <Puréed, please.>

Mal slid the cake onto a tray and stood back to admire it. It really was very professional. “Okay, BB. Where’s Phillips?”

“Moping around on the hangar deck. ”

“Really?”

“He’s preoccupied.”

“The hinge-heads.”

“He felt he should have saved them.”

“Hinge-heads.”

“He sees them as women and children.”

“Okay, I’m going to put my boot up his arse and un-preoccupy him.” Mal would probably take Phillips to one side and give him a sympathetic sergeantly chat instead, but BB could translate Geffenese now. The time to brace for impact was when he went quietly polite. “Christ, you can’t save every stray in the kennels. Are you going to round him up, or shall I?”

“I’ll do it,” Devereaux said. “I’ve got the special touch. ”

“Don’t leave any bruises.”

Devereaux made a show of tucking her shirt in her belt and tidying her hair as she headed for the door. “Poor old Phyllis. He’s got to learn not to make pets of species we might have to kill.”

She had a soft spot for Phillips. BB wondered whether to give the relationship a gentle nudge in the right direction, but decided to mind his own business for once. Mal adjusted the cake on the tray and sighed.

“Do you want a single red rose to put with that?” BB teased.

Mal raised a middle finger. “Vaz is the one with a thing for Spartans. Not me.”

“Oo-oo-ooh…” Sometimes Mal would respond to a heartto-heart, but sometimes dressing things up in a joke worked better. “Is it Naomi you’re worried about, Staff? Or are you missing Vaz? You do get stroppy when your little chum’s away.”

“I worry about everybody. It’s my job.” Mal fidgeted with the cake again. “Osman doesn’t seem delirious about her promotion. Is she okay?”

“Oh, it’s just the sobering reality of coming one step closer to omnipotence. That’s much healthier than the alternative. Look, would you excuse me a moment? I have to pay a courtesy visit to Admiral Parangosky.”

Mal opened the galley lockers to collect plates and napkins. “I thought you could do fifty things at once.”

“I can, but you get confused by it. Linear time. Don’t you just hate it?”

BB could spread his attention through a thousand separate systems in locations light-years apart, but he tried to keep his visible presence restricted to one place at a time. I’m not going soft. No face, no limbs, none of that cutesy-pie corporealist nonsense. Really. It’s just good manners. He wasn’t trying to be human, just considerate of his human crewmates. He split off a fragment of himself and rode Stanley’s instant comms channel to appear in Margaret Parangosky’s office, light-years’ away in UNSC’s Bravo-6 HQ in Sydney.

Parangosky looked up from her elevenses—Kona coffee, one sugar, two ginger nut biscuits—and smiled. “Morning, BB. How’s our brand-new admiral?”

“We’re waiting for the List to be formally promulgated before we wheel out the cake, ma’am.”

“I’ll send her a Bravo Zulu later. Everything okay?”

“We’re expecting a sitrep from Venezia in a couple of hours. ”

“I’m not stepping on Osman’s turf.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“Just curious. Mainly about the Naomi situation.”

BB thought that over for several nanoseconds, an AI’s eternity. It was a delicate topic. “How would you feel if you discovered your father was not only still alive but living on Venezia under surveillance by DCS counter-terrorism?”

“That wasn’t quite what I was asking.”

“Naomi’s a Spartan, ma’am. And a Spartan-Two, at that. If you can’t rely on a Spartan, who can you trust?”

“That wasn’t what I was asking, either.”

“Ah. I see.” BB read between the lines. “Kilo-Five is very closeknit. Very supportive of their oppos. Very loyal. But they do the job, regardless of their personal feelings, or else Dr. Halsey would be frozen solid and floating somewhere in space by now. Wouldn’t she?”

Parangosky laughed, a throaty chuckle. “I’ll cherish that image on dull days, BB. It’ll be my happy place.” She checked her watch. “CINCFLEET’s releasing the List at noon, Alpha Time. Do you think Osman’s getting cold feet about doing the job?”

The job meant only one thing; Parangosky’s job, Commander in Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence. BB fully understood her fixation with making sure she was succeeded by someone with the right stuff, which in ONI’s case was best described as the bad stuff. Parangosky had transformed the branch from just another tribe within the rivalry-ridden intelligence world to effectively its sole power—clear in its purpose, unflinching in its resolve, and free of the budget squabbles that made agencies put preserving their own existence before the needs of Earth. BB had no illusions about the bodies that Parangosky had buried to achieve that, but only the very mean-spirited would deny that the woman was brilliant. Even as a mere captain, she’d punched well above her weight and brought down senior officers. When nobody wanted the Department of Colonial Security after the CAA fell from grace, she took it on as a doer-upper and acquired her own instant spy army of civilians with no preexisting loyalties to anyone else in the UNSC.

That took vision. Parangosky had it in spades. It extended beyond her own lifetime, too, which was where Serin Osman came in, because this wasn’t about empire or the exercise of power, but the pursuit of a goal that would span generations. BB, doomed to a seven-year life span, took enormous comfort from a human who refused to let a small detail like being dead stop her from finishing what she’d started.

“I think Osman just needs a sustained run of unsavory choices to harden her casing,” BB said. “That’s the trouble with spending her formative years in the Spartan program. Her default setting is to seize the initiative and go it alone. To take one for the team. Not to send someone else to die in her place.”

“And to bond with her squad. I am aware, BB.”

BB picked his words as carefully as someone trying to avoid the coffee cremes in a box of chocolates. Coffee cremes. Why did I think that? I’ve never even seen them. “I know you couldn’t possibly have set this up, Admiral, but I imagine the dilemma presented by Naomi’s father will be rather character-forming for Osman.”

There was a hair-fine line to walk between serving Osman and knowing what not to tell Parangosky, and Parangosky made it clear that she knew BB walked it. Sometimes he wondered whether it was a test to check that he would side with Osman instead of her if push came to shove—as he had to, as Osman would need him to when she became CINCONI. Parangosky was ninety-two and had ruled the Office of Naval Intelligence with a rod of unforgiving iron for decades, making some people disappear and others wish that they could. Osman was only forty-one, which was nowhere near enough time to build a throne of skulls like Parangosky’s. On the other hand, her early childhood had been one of life-or-death survival in Halsey’s boot camp on Reach, so he wondered how fast the adult Osman would revert to that primal ruthlessness when her back was against the wall.

And she’d been raised on the concept of killing a human enemy, colonial terrorists, not the clear-cut and easily digested threat of invading alien monsters. She was used to morally dirty warfare. No, she’d be fine. BB was sure of it.

He felt he’d been waiting minutes for Parangosky’s reply, but that was the price of being an AI, running so fast that a blink for a human was an hour’s internal debate for him. She’d simply paused for a second to brush a crumb of ginger nut off her jacket. The biscuits sounded like concrete when she crunched on them. Even in her choice of cookies, the old girl liked something that put up a fight.

“Very well, BB,” she said. “Keep me posted.”

He rode the comms channel back to Port Stanley in an upbeat mood. There was good news to impart, even if it wasn’t actually news to anybody, and he enjoyed being the bearer because it was always in short supply. He changed his box-shaped avatar into a gold envelope and projected himself at eye level above the desk in Osman’s day cabin.

“Ta-da.” His hologram glittered with a ripple of light. The latest Fleet promotions list, known simply as The List in every wardroom across the fleet, was the UNSC’s official notification of which officers had been promoted and which were doomed to toil in the same rank for another year, or maybe forever. BB opened the envelope’s flap and slid out a holographic sheet of paper with an accompanying drum roll. “And the winner is… gosh, not Captain Hogarth! Not even nominated for best-supporting minion. No, it’s Rear Admiral Osman.”

Osman leaned back a little, almost cringing from the news. “I’m not breaking out the Krug for this, you know. Maybe a cup of ONI’s finest Jamaican, though.”

“Oh, go on.” BB reverted to his blue-lit box form. “Allow yourself some pride in achievement.”

“I haven’t done anything to earn it yet.”

“I meant surviving the bear-pit of ONI thus far. Not the admiral bit.”

“Thank you, BB.”

Osman didn’t even smile. She’d known it was coming for years, part of the necessary process to groom her as the most powerful officer in the UNSC—in reality, if not on paper—and by default the most powerful person on Earth. It was a prospect that BB knew weighed more heavily on her with every passing week.

Osman shrugged and looked past him, apparently studying her reflection in one of the nav displays. “I didn’t have this many gray hairs six months ago.”

“They’re admiralty highlights, dear.”

“Well, at least I won’t look too young for the job when the day comes.”

“Cheer up. Your loyal ship’s company has a surprise for you.” BB drifted to the door. “Would you care to come to the bridge?”

Osman managed a smile. “And be it understood, I command a right good crew.”

“Oh, I do so love comic opera. Are you going to give us a tune?”

“No, and you’d thank me for it.”

Mal was already on the bridge with Devereaux and Phillips. Stanley was a strangely empty ship at the best of times with only six humans on board, but she felt far emptier with Naomi and Vaz deployed to the surface. Mal had placed the cake under a small metal dome that looked suspiciously like part of an environment filter. His hand hovered over it, waiter-style.

“Is that the head of John the Baptist?” Osman asked.

“Not unless he’s a Victoria sponge, ma’am.” Mal lifted the cover. “Congratulations.”

Phillips clapped and handed her a knife. “We’d have brought balloons and party whizzers, but there’s a war on. Sort of.”

Osman cocked her head as if she was calculating and cut the cake into eighths. It was funny how dividing up a cake could tell BB everything about her. Four portions would have meant she didn’t think beyond the crew present on the bridge. Six would have omitted the Huragok. They all ate and made small talk for a few minutes—pay, pensions, how best to preserve Vaz’s and Naomi’s share of the cake until they returned—and then the chat died away.

“Okay, so where are we now, people?” Osman peeled the gold icing off her portion of cake and put it aside. “Vaz and Naomi—establishing their cover on Venezia. Mal and Dev on standby to relieve them. Primary objective—find Pious Inquisitor. Secondary—map the weapons supply routes, which we can roll up with keeping the supplies flowing to ‘Telcam.”

“I’ve been listening to ‘Telcam’s radio chatter overnight,” Phillips said. “He’s getting more agitated about Inquisitor. Piecing it together, I think he’s going to hire someone he can trust to track Sav Fel and get the ship back. I wouldn’t want to be Fel when he finds him.”

“Is that pride or desperation?” Devereaux asked. “I know he’s short of vessels, but there have to be easier ways of getting another ship.”

“Maybe he wants the data on board. Don’t forget Inquisitor’s been through a few hands. The Brutes had her when they fought the Sangheili, and then the rebel Sangheili under the Arbiter. There’s probably loads of dirt and intel in the computers.”

“And he’s got to be as worried about asset denial as we are,” Osman said. “Okay, keep monitoring that until you get a lead, Evan.”

Phillips nodded enthusiastically. “I bet ‘Telcam calls in renta-crow. It’ll take another Kig-Yar to find Fel.”

BB could have monitored all the channels simultaneously for Phillips—and did anyway, discreetly, just in case Phillips missed anything in real time—but humans preferred to do things for themselves. Phillips came into his own on the face-to-face interaction, though. He was very persuasive with Sangheili, completely at home with their language and culture, and he wowed them with his skill with an arum puzzle ball. It looked like a toy to humans, a sphere of complex, interconnected pieces that had to be moved in a precise sequence to release a stone held at the center. But to Sangheili it was a powerful cultural and political symbol on multiple levels, the embodiment of patience, discipline, and acceptance of the rigid order of society to achieve outcomes. Mastering it made Phillips something of a celebrity to them.

“ ‘Telcam’s due another arms shipment from us in a couple of weeks, Evan,” Osman said. “You want to ride along for that?”

Phillips nodded. He never refused an opportunity. “Can I have some more firearms training first, though?”

“You did okay with that plasma pistol back on Sanghelios,” Mal said. “You could tool up with one of those. It’s not like we haven’t got a hold full of them, is it?”

He said it innocently, but Phillips flinched. BB made a note of that. Osman either didn’t notice or thought it was wise to move on. She finished her slice of cake, checked the level in her coffee cup, and sat down to read through the overnight signals, if night had any meaning 200,000 kilometers off Venezia. BB monitored every scrap of data that came in or left the corvette anyway. In a sense, he was the ship.

Phillips went back to the hangar deck, where he’d laid claim to a small compartment as his listening station. Leaks—Leaks Repaired, the other Huragok conscripted into Port Stanley’s service—had taken to upgrading it whenever he was allowed in. BB still wasn’t sure why Phillips had holed up down here when he had an entire corvette to choose from, but Mal had muttered something about the compartment being Phillips’s gardening shed. BB had had to look that one up.

He followed Phillips, zipping through the decks via relays and conduits for cameras, environmental monitoring, and power controls, a hundred roads for an AI to travel, and projected himself in the doorway.

“I’m going to intrude,” BB said. “Are you all right? Please don’t keep beating yourself up about Nes’alun. That’s what happens in a civil war. The natives kill each other. The ones you save may very well end up killing you. So best let nature run its course and stop blaming yourself.”

Phillips busied himself with the console. “But we’re not doing that. We’re throwing arms on the barbecue to keep the war simmering.”

“I know. Humans do that. Despite numerous lessons from history that arming third parties who don’t like you almost always backfires at some point.”

“Oh, you’ve got a better idea. I see.”

“I’d rather launch an all-out biological war of the kind ONI keeps in the freezer in places like Trevelyan. But those backfire quite often as well.”

Phillips scratched his scrubby beard. He looked more like a student than a professor. “Actually, I was thinking about Naomi.”

“You’ll need a ladder. But I admire your pluck.”

“I meant how far this might go with her dad.”

“Are you asking if ONI plans to terminate him in their signature way?”

“I suppose I am.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Phillips looked as if he was going to press BB on it but stopped short. He changed tack. “So how are you doing? Have you come to terms with your broken fragment yet?”

“As much as any human comes to terms with their own mortality.”

“I nearly died once.”

“I know. I was there. Thanks for getting me damaged as well. ”

“No, I mean I nearly drowned myself off Bondi years ago. Being a dick, naturally. And when I really thought that was it, I’d bought it, it was surprising how ordinary it felt. An anticlimax, almost. So I don’t worry too much about dying now.”

“Oh good. I won’t feel too bad about volunteering you for suicide missions, then.”

Phillips managed a grin and paused for a moment, listening to the audio in his earpiece. Everyone’s routine was slipping back to normal, or at least normal for Kilo-Five. BB did a quick check to locate the crew—Osman on the bridge, Adj and Leaks tinkering with the water reclamation a couple of decks below her, Mal and Devereaux in their respective cabins—but felt frustrated that Naomi and Vaz had gone silent between sitreps. He was used to monitoring them. Not being able to sense them felt like his path was dotted with bottomless black pits. Planned absence of data had never bothered him before he’d reintegrated the fragment of himself that had been damaged on Sanghelios when Phillips was caught in a bomb blast. The data gaps that it left felt like harbingers of rampancy. It was what Devereaux described as the sensation of someone walking on your grave. BB knew exactly how that felt. Without a body, he shouldn’t have been able to, but his mind had its foundations in the pathways of a real human brain, donated by an individual man who’d lived and breathed, and its most primal components underpinned his existence. Somehow, he recalled how some things felt.

He could have found out who that donor was, but he’d stopped himself from accessing the data so that he was never tempted to look.

Whoever he was… I’m me. A distant relative with a few characteristics in common.

It was a step beyond the measures he’d taken to firewall Osman’s data so he never accidentally blurted out something she didn’t want to hear. That was forgotten. His own data was not known. He understood exactly why Naomi was the only Spartan who’d taken up ONI’s offer to open their background file.

And look what she’s found. Awful, awful pain. No thanks.

Not even Osman had looked into her own past. She’d had ONI clearance to do it for years. BB blocked his recall of the detail, but he remembered how he’d felt when he read her file.

Oddly enough, it had felt like… relief.

JARROW CROSSROADS, NEW TYNE, VENEZIA: APRIL 2553

“Naomi, are you okay?”

The vehicle had gone. No matter how long she looked down the road, she couldn’t change what she’d just seen. She’d been confident—completely confident—that it wouldn’t make any difference to her, but it had.

Naomi-010, Spartan and UNSC Petty Officer, couldn’t recall ever being Naomi Sentzke or living on a colony world called Sansar, but she’d just seen the proof drive past her in a truck— her own father, a man she couldn’t remember, talking to a KigYar in the passenger seat as the vehicle waited at the stop lights. She recognized him from a photo in an intelligence folder. But it was one thing to look at a photo without feeling anything, and another entirely to see someone in the flesh.

Halsey had convinced Naomi and her fellow conscripts that they were immune to the weaknesses of normal humans, but she’d probably never planned for the unlikely event that a Spartan would come face-to-face with their real family again. A crack had opened in Naomi’s world. Her curiosity drove her to peer through it.

For a moment, she wasn’t sitting in a Warthog on a potentially hostile planet, and she wasn’t operating undercover. She was…

She was…

She just didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. She simply felt, and it wasn’t a feeling she could define or name. She only knew that it made her uncomfortable.

“Naomi, did you hear that?”

She replayed the footage on her datapad. Look at him. That’s me. That’s who I take after. That’s my father. She tried to connect the thought to some emotion, but it only triggered a vague sensation of guilt, as if she knew she’d done something wrong but couldn’t recall what it was.

“Naomi, I said did you hear all that?” Vaz Beloi nudged her with his elbow, almost peering into her face as he leaned over the steering wheel. His finger was pressed against his concealed earpiece. “Did you hear what Spenser said?”

“What?”

“He ID’d the Kig-Yar in the truck as the one who hijacked Pious Inquisitor. It’s Sav Fel.”

“Yes, I heard, Vasya.” Maybe that was too abrupt. “I keep my comms channel open. I always do.”

Poor Vaz: he’d gone out of his way to be kind to her. He’d even read her background file to find out who she’d been before she was abducted and what had happened to her family, because she couldn’t face reading it herself. He’d shouldered the burden of deciding what was too harrowing to tell her, the first person she’d truly trusted outside her narrow Spartan circle.

“Okay, no point trying to tail Fel now,” he said, as if Staffan Sentzke had never been part of the equation. “We’ll pick him up again later.”

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you’d say if I was Mal.” What should she call her father? Sentzke, Staffan, Dad? Every possible name seemed wrong. “You’d speculate about Fel supplying… Sentzke with a warship to use against Earth.”

Vaz started the Warthog and pulled out of the parking lot to turn onto the main road. “Naomi, every human here has some grudge against Earth. The aliens probably have a grudge against Earth and their own governments. Welcome to Venezia. It’s Grudgeworld.”

Damn: they were less than two days into this op and her personal connection to it was already putting Vaz in an awkward position. She wasn’t supposed to let anything get in the way of her mission. But Halsey and Chief Mendez had never taught their Spartans how to deal with friends who felt outrage on their behalf.

“So who’s calling this in?” she asked. “You or me?”

“We need to talk to Spenser first.”

“Why?”

“You ever wonder why BB had no idea your father was here?” Vaz kept checking the rearview mirror. “I don’t know why I didn’t ask sooner. Because Spenser hadn’t put him on any database that BB could access. He keeps it all on his personal datapad.”

“Oversight?”

“Old DCS habit, maybe. Spooks live in a permanent state of paranoia. And he’s a civilian spook. I bet he keeps intel to himself without even thinking about it.”

“But DCS have been reporting to Parangosky since she was a captain.”

“Yeah, but he’s been around since the colonial insurgency. ”

“We don’t tell him everything, either.”

“Well, what we do to others, they probably do to us. Never mind. Parangosky allows for that.”

Naomi did the math. Spenser must have been sixty or so, then, older than he looked. But she had no reason to mistrust him. Not sharing low-level intel seemed a natural precaution for an agent who lived undercover most of the time. It must have been hard for him to decide which was the real Mike Spenser, the DCS agent or his Mike Amberley persona, electrician and ne’er-do-well ostensibly seeking a quiet and unnoticed life in New Tyne. He spent more hours being the latter.

How had he come across her father? Dad had never been a colonial rebel, not according to her file, so all he’d done was show up here and plot his vengeance against Earth. Had he ever done any more than that? What had he done between leaving Sansar and arriving here? Her file said that Dad had worked out half the story for himself—that his daughter had been abducted and replaced by a short-lived double, that it was all part of some government conspiracy. He just didn’t know the rest, or how right he was. It was an impressive feat for a factory worker.

Oh God. I’m thinking of him as Dad. How did that happen?

It caught Naomi off-guard. She shook herself and focused on keeping an eye out for potential trouble. Venezia, untouched by the Covenant, looked strikingly normal to her in a way that few other colony worlds did. Few? I don’t think I’ve seen any intact. And I don’t even remember Sansar. New Tyne’s houses and stores were undamaged, with a patina of sun-fading and lichen that said they’d been there for a long time rather than rebuilt after a Covenant attack. It was a world that had somehow been spared.

She watched a Brute drive past in a small troop carrier, heading south with a Grunt sitting beside him. On the sidewalk, a woman strolled with a shopping basket in one hand and a small boy hanging on tightly to the other. Aliens that had been Naomi’s deadly enemies a few months ago were still a sight that made her uneasy, but New Tyne didn’t exactly look like a hotbed of insurrection. Spenser said that anyone with a reason to avoid the authorities—human or non-human—could find sanctuary here in Venezia’s unique multiculture of shared risk, the common bond of being on the wrong side of something or someone.

Naomi had no idea how long alien fugitives had lived here alongside humans. But given that the rest of the galaxy had only just ended a thirty-year war, even months would have been impressive feat of tolerance.

She hadn’t seen any Sangheili, though. She had no illusions about them. Arming their rebels was something she did because she was ordered to, not because she liked the idea. She’d killed thousands and she had no regrets about that at all. Was that wrong? No, she’d seen too many ravaged worlds. She’d been taught to take satisfaction from a necessary job done well.

They deserve what they get.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Vaz said.

“What is?”

“All those Covenant aliens, walking around like the war never happened.” He glanced at a passing pickup with a couple of KigYar in it. “Did you ever plan for a life outside the service?”

It was the hardest question Naomi had ever been asked. To plan, you had to want something. What did she want? A little voice murmured warnings at the back of her mind, more a vague uneasiness than anything audible or articulated. She was still trying to remember something that just wouldn’t crystallize. She hadn’t felt that for a long time.

“I didn’t know it was even possible,” she said. “Or that I’d live long enough to have the luxury of wondering about it.”

“Yeah, it’s easy to forget there’s still a world out there.”

“I wonder where Jul ‘Mdama is now.”

“Well, if he’s still alive, he’s plotting his revenge.” Vaz pulled his dubious expression, wrinkling his nose. “Especially if he’s found out his wife’s dead.”

“I’d still rather deal with him than ‘Telcam. At least he tries to kill you to your face.”

Vaz laughed, but she wasn’t joking. It troubled her when that happened. She felt gauche, as if she’d missed something that normal people understood but that she didn’t. She wasn’t used to feeling inadequate. She’d only ever been told she was exceptional, mankind’s best hope.

“Ah, the mad monk,” Vaz said. “But he does speak good English for a hinge-head. Even if he can’t say Phillips.”

“Do you ever wonder how many ODSTs he’s killed?”

Vaz slowed for another set of stoplights. New Tyne seemed to have an awful lot of controlled intersections for a small place. “All the time,” he said. “Elites don’t have full-time interpreters. He was an armed ’terp. When the time comes to kill him, I’ll volunteer. And sleep easier.”

A shadow fell across the front seat as another vehicle pulled up next to them at the lights. Naomi braced, hand on her sidearm. This was when ambushes happened. She could see the driver out of the corner of her eye, a thickset middle-aged guy in a plaid shirt, but he just glanced at them and looked away again. If he’d seen her, she hadn’t reminded him of anyone. The lights changed and the vehicles moved off.

She slid her hand under her coat for the reassurance of her magnum again, still a little disoriented without her Mjolnir armor. It was about more than just missing the augmentation and electronics. She felt more conspicuous in a drab gray parka and shabby combat pants than she ever did in three hundred kilos of gleaming titanium alloy. The Mjolnir face was who and what she was, the tribal identity she shared with the family she’d spent most of her life with—her fellow Spartans. Her civilian-looking self was flayed, peeled, missing both its protection and its selfimage. She took her cap out of her pocket and pulled it down hard on her head. It was a poor substitute for a helmet.

“It’s the eyes,” Vaz said.

“What is?”

“It’s not your hair that makes you look like your dad. It’s your eyes.”

The arms dealer they’d just sold an MA5B rifle to had definitely recognized a family resemblance. He hadn’t said the name Sentzke, but then he hadn’t needed to. Naomi had seen the look on his face. She ducked her head to check herself in the wing mirror and saw her father’s pale gray eyes blink back at her. Dying her white-blond hair some other color wouldn’t change that.

“I need some colored contacts,” she said.

Vaz studied her face for a moment as she turned to him. “Adj can whip up a pair. I’ll ask BB on the next radio check. He knows all your biometrics, seeing as he’s been in your neural interface.”

“Yeah, I don’t have any secrets,” she said. “Except from myself.”

She realized that she’d put her hand on the back of her neck, a reflex reaction to cover the external port of the interface at the base of her skull. Adj had remodeled it to reduce the profile. If anyone got too close—closer than she’d tolerate, anyway—all they’d see through her hair would be something that looked like the regular implant that most UNSC personnel had. It supported the simplest of cover stories, that they were Naomi Bakke and Vaz Desny, two deserters looking for a quiet refuge in New Tyne. It was easier to play a soldier with a reason for hiding on Venezia than to try to walk, talk, and behave like a civilian. Some things were hard to conceal.

Her thoughts drifted back to the kid walking along the road with his mother. What was it like to grow up in an outlaw community? It didn’t look that different from what she thought of as normal life.

“There.” Vaz indicated left and turned down a ramp into the grim concrete housing estate where Spenser lived an outwardly regular Venezian life. “Nobody tailed us, either. So far, so good.”

Spenser was making sandwiches in the kitchen, filling the place with the smell of hard-boiled eggs. He was a rumpledlooking, everyday guy with gray hair and a lot of lines, as far from the movie image of a spy as it was possible to get. It made him perfect for the job.

“I’ve got to go to work,” he said, putting the sandwiches in his lunchbox. He did contract maintenance shifts at the local militia base, a testament to what Mal Geffen called his spook-fu. Naomi was always impressed by the power of ordinariness. What better place for a spy like him, a civilian used to working in military environments, to infiltrate? He fitted in seamlessly. “So… Sav Fel’s shown up here. How do you want to play this?”

Vaz didn’t look at Naomi. “Our priority’s Pious Inquisitor. Are we going to have to do this the old-fashioned way?”

“Yeah, we’re going to have to tail him. I’ll see what I can glean at work, but he’s got to have access to a small atmospherecapable transport, because he’s going to have a hard time hiding nearly two kilometers of battlecruiser on the surface. I’m assuming Oz hasn’t detected anything that size in orbit.”

Naomi wondered if Spenser would still call Osman “Oz” when she became CINCONI. “We’d have heard if she had.”

“Okay, so we follow Fel somehow,” Vaz said. “Or Sentzke. ”

“Where do they hang out?”

“Not sure yet. I’m still putting the pieces together on Sentzke.” Spenser sealed his lunchbox with a snap. “Some of the locals are known quantities from my DCS days, but he’s a new face to me. I’ve only been here a couple of months, remember. Did I tell you how I pinged him?”

“No,” Naomi said. “But I did wonder how you got the photo.”

“Sorry. Old spook habit. Sometimes he does maintenance work at the barracks. It’s not his main job—I think he does it as a favor. Anyway, you know what they’re like for insisting on passes, so I just poked around in the admin filing cabinet one night.” He looked at Naomi as if she’d reacted, but she was sure she hadn’t. It was still just words: father, Staffan, Sansar. “I knew when he went off-planet because getting to and from Venezia is a big logistics job. Think about it. Even if you’ve got your own small vessel, you need to get a ride with a slipspace-capable ship if you’re heading for another planet. The bigger vessels tend to belong to the militia. I overheard someone arranging it. One thing you need to remember about the culture here—it’s cautious. These people don’t trust tech that can be hacked. Nobody’s ever created better security than pieces of paper you can burn and conversations you have face-to-face.”

Spenser played his cards close to his chest, just like the local population. Naomi wasn’t sure if that was simply his ingrained secretiveness or if he was trying to be diplomatic about her father. But she had to ask.

“Do you know where he lives?”

Spenser’s expression changed for a moment, as if he’d slipped out of character and was trying to ground himself again.

“Fifteen, Mount Longdon Road—on the south of town, next to the old slate quarry. But I promised Mal Geffen I’d leave him to you. So I haven’t been near him yet. Just keeping my ears open.” Spenser shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry. This must be awkward for you.”

“Not at all.” Naomi had learned long ago to lock down her own expression and shut out all external distractions. She was still uneasy, but she couldn’t pin it down to whatever her father was doing right now. “If it was, I’d ask Osman to redeploy me.”

“Well, I plug into the Kig-Yar bush telegraph. The Jackals get around. If Fel’s selling off that warship, I’ll get to hear. He definitely isn’t hanging out with Sentzke to attack Earth, though. Kig-Yar couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Earth, not unless we want to buy something.”

“No use for a battlecruiser themselves, then.”

“Not their style. A big warship isn’t much use for a lot of the things they do, and it’s goddamn expensive to maintain.” Spenser took his jacket off the hook on the back of the door. “I’ll leave you to tell Osman. Okay, I have to go now. You’ve got your map, yeah?”

Vaz tapped his pocket. “All the recommended hot spots.”

“Don’t forget there’s a bounty on your head for offing those Jackals on Reynes.”

“They don’t know it was us,” Vaz said. “We didn’t leave any witnesses, did we?”

Spenser chuckled. “I’m glad to see ONI’s teaching you something. Did you sell the rifle, by the way?”

“Got eight-seventy-five for it.”

“Not too shabby. Remember to secure the house if you go out.” Vaz didn’t say anything for a long time after Spenser left. He topped up the coffee machine, humming to himself. He was picking his words. Naomi wanted him to just speak his mind.

“Well, if Sentzke’s in the market for a warship, I wonder how he’s going to pay for it,” he said at last.

“And he’ll need a crew. Unless he’s got an AI as good as BB.”

“Well, that’ll take him some time. I bet the Covenant didn’t have anything.”

“Isn’t it time we called this in to Osman? ”

“What do you want me to say?”

“That we’ve spotted Sav Fel, and that he was with my father. That’d be a start, I think.” There: she’d done it again. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be abrasive. Okay, I’m going downstairs to call the ship.”

Vaz just nodded. He knew she needed to do it herself. She didn’t need to explain.

Spenser had set up a mini listening station in the basement, complete with a fridge and a battered sofa. It was probably a lot more comfortable to work in than the disused mine shaft he’d lived in on Reynes while he was monitoring the Sangheili. Naomi opened the secure link to Port Stanley and BB responded

“Remember to call Osman Admiral now,” BB said. “It’s official. We baked a cake. We’ll send you some on the next resupply run. Anything you need?”

“Cosmetic lenses. Blue, hazel, green—anything to darken my eye color. Just in case anyone spots the resemblance.” Words: still just words. But she did feel odd. She was trying to remember and wasn’t sure what or why. “We just made a positive ID of Sav Fel in New Tyne. We eyeballed him less than an hour ago. He was in a vehicle with my father.”

That even silenced BB for a second. “Oh,” he said. “At least that narrows your search area.”

“Tell Osman we’re going to work on a way to track Sav Fel to Inquisitor. Next radio check in two hours.”

“Is that all you want to say?” BB asked.

“Yes. Naomi out.”

She cut the link and leaned back on the sofa, picking at a rip in the leather while she worked out a search pattern to locate both the truck and Sav Fel.

We need to know when they leave the planet. Dad might be a red herring. He might be involved with Fel for some other reason, but common sense says the ship’s the most likely reason. So… how do we do this?

Tagging Sav Fel—or her father, if her suspicions were right—was going to require face-to-face contact anyway. Whatever they did, they’d have to get personal.

Dare I risk that?

And I’m calling him Dad again.

She waited for Osman to call back and pull her out because the risk of recognition was too high. But no call came. She looked at a six-pack of sodas on top of the battered gray filing cabinet, debating whether to just go back upstairs and tell Vaz the deed had been done and the sky hadn’t fallen in. No, she had to sort out this uneasiness first. Spartan or not, she was human, and the brain always tried to complete the pattern: a gap had now been filled in her memory, the one that said Father.

So how about Mother? What did that evoke?

Naomi tried to grasp the thought as she poured a soda into the only clean glass she could find. The absence of hostile aliens—obvious, dangerous, lethal—was allowing thoughts that she hadn’t been aware of before to surface. She watched the soda bubbles rise and vanish.

Bubbles. They only form a running bead in carbonated liquid when there’s dirt on the glass.

For a second the surface of the soda was completely still, a perfect mirror before it shivered and broke up. Now she remembered what she’d wanted. It was the last thing she’d truly longed for, other than wanting to go home to her mom and dad.

She’d been five years old, maybe six. And she’d wanted a doll’s house.

FIVE KILOMETERS OUTSIDE NEW TYNE, VENEZIA

Skirmisher Kig-Yar were a lot like birds, Staffan Sentzke reminded himself, and that explained everything he needed to know about dealing with them.

Kig-Yar weren’t canine, despite the nickname most humans used—Jackals. Their ancestors were reptiles. Some sub-species still looked very lizard-like to Staffan, but others were more like birds, just the way Earth’s lizards had branched off to grow feathers and beaks. The most birdlike were the Skirmishers from T’vao. They liked shiny, glittery things, they squabbled, and they displayed. He suspected it was the legacy of an ancient ancestor that collected blossoms and pebbles to impress prospective mates. As he drove up the track to Sav Fel’s grand house, he couldn’t help but notice the fragments of brightly colored glass set in the concrete gate posts.

An armed Grunt stood guard. Staffan peered down at him from the truck window.

“I’ve come to see Shipmaster Fel. Staffan Sentzke.”

The Grunt checked a datapad. “Your name’s not on the list, and if your name’s not on the list, then—”

“Cut the crap and try spelling it with two Fs,” Staffan said. “Oh. Yeah.”

“I didn’t think you guys liked Kig-Yar.”

“He pays on time.”

Staffan took that as a sign that he could mistrust Fel a little less. He’d learned to assume that everyone he dealt with from the time he’d lost his daughter was a liar with an ulterior motive, and that nothing he saw was what it seemed, but there was a spectrum of bastardry. Some bastards were at the shoot-onsight end of the curve; some were otherwise regular people with occasional but repellent flaws. In the middle lay the wide spread that the world wouldn’t miss if they met their deserved fate. Kig-Yar generally scored as less objectionable than many humans because they didn’t have ideologies. They liked stuff, pure and simple—acquiring it, smuggling it, stealing it, selling it, trading it, possessing it.

It’s a game. Shiny stones. Bower bird mentality. But at least they make sense.

Sav Fel made sense too. He had his own agenda that happened to be running in parallel with Staffan’s for a while. He wanted what Staffan had a great deal of, and Staffan wanted something that was little direct use to Fel: a warship.

Perfect.

One of the paneled front doors eased open just before he reached out to knock. A beaklike snout poked out of the gap, then the door creaked open fully to let Staffan in.

“He’s in the office.” The Kig-Yar minion was the more common reptilian kind. He took a few paces toward a corridor and let out a stream of ear-splitting chatter. “Wait here. I’ll get him.”

The hall wasn’t quite as luxurious as Staffan had expected. The whole place smelled slightly of ammonia and what he could only describe as mud. The furniture was an odd mix of styles, but every piece had some gilding or polished metallic detail. Fel had the typical Kig-Yar weakness for glitz. It was echoed in his beaded, studded belt as he emerged from the passage.

Staffan caught a glimpse of another Skirmisher before Fel closed the door behind him, and heard a burst of angry jay-like noises. The shipmaster flinched.

Oh, it’s his wife. It has to be his wife. Staffan tried not to give in to a smile. The idea of Shipmaster Fel being squawked at by an angry female was too funny. Staffan kept forgetting their society was matriarchal, because most of what he saw of it was the males toiling for a living. Henpecked. Literally. Hah…

Fel’s minion trotted into the room to be dismissed again with an imperious gesture and a long rattling hiss. Fel might have been doing the Kig-Yar equivalent of kicking the cat, or just reminding his more reptilian cousin of his place in the pecking order. Skirmishers definitely thought they were a cut above other Kig-Yar.

“Welcome.” Fel’s black head feathers lifted a little. He reminded Staffan of a pterodactyl in the process of turning into a crow, with rows of little teeth set in a long beak. The vertical pupils in his yellow eyes were pure reptile, though. “Were you followed?”

“If I thought I was,” Staffan said, “I’d have driven to the grocery store and wasted his time, whoever he was.”

“There are spies here, you know.”

“There’s spies everywhere. But you know they don’t last long here.” Venezia was a colony of dissenters—and criminals. Strangers were treated with due caution, and a spy would have to be very good indeed to escape Staffan’s attention for long. “So you have one at last, do you?”

Fel almost preened. He knew he’d pulled off a coup. “The opportunity presented itself. I seized it.”

The Kig-Yar opened another inner door and led Staffan through into the main room. It was full of gilded mirrors that gave the place the feel of a home decor showroom. He could hear other Kig-Yar now, a mix of adult voices with higherpitched ones in the distant background—children. Chicks. Staffan wondered if they were cute and fluffy when they hatched. He settled in the most comfortable-looking seat without being asked, just so that Fel understood who held the power here, and crossed his legs.

“Tell me exactly how you took the ship,” he said.

“Don’t you believe me?”

“Oh, I believe you. I just want to be sure that this isn’t some elaborate setup.”

Fel jerked back his head, offended. “The Sangheili are falling apart. They’re not capable of scams. Certainly not scams that cost them warships.”

“Everyone’s capable of scams,” Staffan said. “Especially when they’re desperate. Although I can’t think why the Sangheili would suddenly take an interest in Venezia, unless you’ve pissed them off some other way.”

The Covenant had either never found Venezia during the war or never bothered. The planet was unglassed, untouched, and in pretty good shape, which no doubt irked the Earth authorities. Staffan missed little. He had enough deserters from planetary militias to maintain a pretty good listening station, and pieced together with reports from Kig-Yar ships, the information formed a useful picture.

As useful as you can get now that the Covenant’s collapsed, anyway.

“The Sangheili were so used to the San’Shyuum thinking for them that they’re still struggling without them,” Fel said. “They’re in chaos. And the Arbiter certainly isn’t uniting them. It’s what you call a free-for-all when it comes to keeping track of their assets. One of their rebel factions asked me and my crew to transport a warship from one of their yards.”

“Which faction?”

“A religious one.”

“And you transported it.”

“We did.”

“Except you didn’t transport it to its destination.”

“It was a battle. I don’t like that kind of destination. Not when it isn’t my fight, anyway.”

“So you just took it. Easy as that.”

“Yes. Because, as I’m trying to tell you, the split-faces were too busy fighting each other to come after us. ”

“Okay.”

“I thought it would come in useful for a customer. It is, as you say, a planet killer. A battlecruiser with a ventral beam. Pious Inquisitor.”

Staffan hated those sanctimonious Covenant names, albeit in a theoretical kind of way. The Covenant had never troubled Venezia. Earth was the only power that had ever done that. He hated some UNSC ships’ names a lot more; they were about ferocity and bravery, when all he could see was an imperial power that didn’t do much for its empire except bleed it dry and leave it to save itself when the Covenant came.

I got out of Sansar in time. Millions didn’t.

“That name…”

“The Sangheili are very upset at losing her,” Fel said. “Apart from hulls being at a premium in these uncertain times, I understand she has quite a history.”

“Is this making the Sangheili extra-pissed off?”

“I wouldn’t risk offering her to the Arbiter.”

“Very wise.”

“But I did check the stored data in the navigation computer, and this ship has deployed to Earth in the recent past, so given your interest in acquiring a more compact warship and your relationship with Earth… I thought of you immediately.”

Staffan tried to recall if he’d heard the ship’s name before. “Have you ever seen a planet after it’s been glassed by one of those beams?”

“Of course I have. I used to serve the Covenant.”

“I mean one of your own.”

“No. But you have—yes, yes, I know all that. Just tell me who you might use this ship against.”

“None of your customers, Fel.”

“Humans, then.”

“I may have scores to settle with the Covenant, but those with my own species come first.”

“Because you know—”

“Yes. Glassed cities are cities that can’t do business. Glass a city and you glass the merchandise. Don’t glass the customer. I get it.”

Only a Kig-Yar would turn down the chance of keeping a battlecruiser that could reduce the surface of a planet to molten slag. But it wasn’t morality. Kig-Yar simply didn’t fight that way, not if they had a choice. Staffan tried to recall any human culture that had abandoned an empire before over-expansion and hostile subjects brought it to its natural and inevitable end, but he couldn’t. Yet the Kig-Yar had done just that. It was hard to think like them. They progressed, they expanded, and then they reverted to their tribal, piratical, scavenging selves.

No ideology. No manifest destiny. No mission to civilize or enlighten or save souls. No obsession with dominance. They just do it because they’re good at it, and they actually enjoy the acquiring and winning more than they enjoy what they’ve taken.

Staffan needed to understand motives. If he knew why someone did something—an individual or an entire culture—then they rarely caught him out. Kig-Yar didn’t need big capital ships because they didn’t want to invade or destroy worlds, and most warships weren’t built for raiding and slipping away. Kig-Yar preferred to be free and agile. They preferred to travel light. Even a relatively modest warship like Pious Inquisitor was a little too big for that.

That’s what they do. Strike, peck, collect, fly. Carrion rather than prey. Opportunists. They’re turning into birds. Vultures.

No, magpies. And magpies can be nasty little bastards.

The universe made perfect sense again. Staffan knew that it would if he thought about it long enough.

“So what will you pay for it?” Fel asked.

Staffan stared him out. “I’ll tell you when I see it.”

“I need particle beam rifles, dropships, and plasma pistols. ”

“Plenty of pistols and dropships, but the rifles are temporarily in short supply.”

“Temporarily? You’re one of the biggest arms dealers on Venezia.”

“Meaning I’ll see what I can do. I need to see the ship first. ”

“That means a trip to… another system.”

“Fine. I didn’t think you’d park it in your yard. And I want to test the ventral beam, so let’s find a quiet backwater where we can do that.”

“I shall. There’s something else. It’s extra. ”

“What is?”

“I’ll show you when you see the ship.”

Fel looked almost excited. Kig-Yar didn’t have any facial expressions in common with humans, but they did have little gestures that gave a lot away if you knew how to look. Staffan did. There was a little back-and-forth jerk of the head, almost imperceptible. Most Kig-Yar males displayed color changes when their moods shifted, but Staffan had never seen any real change in Skirmishers at all. Sometimes he thought he caught something, but it was simply iridescence on their feathers.

“If this is a bait and switch, Fel,” Staffan said, “ask your compatriots what happens to business associates who try that on with me. You told me you had a ship with a ventral beam. That’s all I want. Don’t try palming me off with anything else.”

He hoped Fel would ask around. Venezia had its laws, whether people believed that or not, but it was fairly relaxed about how its residents settled disputes. It didn’t need a police force.

“Wait to hear from me,” Fel said. “What are you going to do about crewing this vessel?”

“I can find plenty of willing hands,” Staffan said. “I’ll let you know if I have recruiting issues.”

As he drove back into town, Staffan racked his brains to remember the name. Pious Inquisitor. He’d have to look it up. He wanted as much information as he could get on the vessel, not just the sales brochure detail that Fel would peddle. He checked his mirrors for vehicles that might be following, because Fel had a point about spies. Tribal rivalries, business feuds, and even foolhardy outsiders employed by some Earth or colonial agency weren’t unknown here, and the one thing Venezia didn’t have and didn’t want was a border patrol recording who went in and out. It was a safe haven for people who couldn’t show a passport anywhere else. Small ships were almost impossible to control anyway.

But Staffan took comfort from the fact that the border was almost self-policing. If someone wanted to get to Venezia, they couldn’t exactly catch a scheduled flight. They’d have to pay someone with a ship to bring them in, or they’d need the kind of money to have a ship of their own. And sooner or later, unless they wanted to live like a hermit on a diet of grass and mice, they’d have to come into town. Eventually, they’d be spotted.

And then we remove them. Permanently.

Edvin was sitting in the garden with Kerstin when Staffan got home. She rushed up to him, excited and giggling. “Grandpa! Grandpa! I’ve been drawing!”

“That’s my clever girl.” He gave Edvin a look: you haven’t mentioned the doll’s house, have you? Edvin just blinked slowly to indicate that he hadn’t. “Grandpa’s got to do some work first, but I’ll come and look, okay?”

There was a little bit of Naomi in Kerstin, Staffan was sure. It was the long blond hair. If she’d been any more like her, though, that would have been too painful.

When do you let go? When is it time to close the book and move on?

Staffan asked himself that once in a while, and the answer was always the same: never. This had to be done. The question had to be answered, and the price had to be paid. It had just taken a lifetime to reach the stage where he had the power to demand an answer with the only kind of persuasion that Earth understood—a warship.

Kerstin picked up a toy bucket and trowel and began digging holes in the flower border. She liked to keep busy. Edvin got up and walked slowly out of earshot with his father.

“Well?” Edvin asked. “Was it true?”

“Yes. We may have a battlecruiser.”

“Wow.”

“I still have to check it out and make the payment. But this thing exists. Imagine it—the mighty Sangheili, losing a battlecruiser to the Kig-Yar.”

“Fel’s a cheeky old crow, isn’t he?”

“Pious Inquisitor. That’s the ship.”

Edvin stared into the mid-distance for a few moments, then put on his concerned face. “Are you sure this is what you want, Dad?”

“What, to have the clout to get some respect from Earth?”

“I meant are you sure that you shouldn’t just hand the ship over to the militia. Isn’t that what we all want? Some justice for all Earth’s done to the colonies over the years?”

“When I’m done with the ship, I will,” Staffan said. “But I need answers. And I’m doing it for Remo, too. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d have signed myself into a mental hospital long ago.”

“Okay,” Edvin said. “I know you won’t do anything dumb. Just trying to put things in perspective.”

“Son, I’ve had thirty-five years of perspective. Whatever I do won’t be rash.”

It was too late for Remo, but at least he’d died knowing that someone else would continue the search for information on what really happened to his son. Staffan wanted something that few people would ever get. He wanted the government—somebody’s government, anyway—to tell him the truth.

And if that meant reducing Sydney or some other major city to glass, he’d do it.