“I’d cal that a timely miracle,” Forze said. His jaws parted and snapped together again with satisfaction. “And an apt one.”
“What?” Raia stood in his way, demanding an answer. “What is it?”
Forze removed his communicator and held it out to her. “Listen to the sound of salvation,” he said.
The mood had changed in seconds. The surviving crew were al standing in the open now, either listening to their communicators or roaring in approval as they looked up into the sky. She put Forze’s device to her ear. Someone was talking to ‘Telcam.
“We’re not alone,” the voice said. “Word is spreading, from city to city. The keeps are ral ying. We might not be the most pious warriors, but ‘Vadam has gone too far this time. Al owing human troops to land on Sanghelios, al owing them to defile a temple—that’s more than enough to unite the keeps against him.”
‘Telcam had his miracle, then. Raia hoped it would last long enough to bring Jul home, wherever he was. She gazed at her pistol, now feeling more comforting in her hand than unfamiliar, and decided she wasn’t going home to Mdama just yet.
Gusay would have a wasted journey. Forze could cal him now and tel him to stay at home.
TEMPLE OF ABIDING TRUTH, ONTOM Fifty meters into the tunnel, comms with Port Stanley began to break up. By one hundred meters, Vaz had lost the link completely.
“Can you stil hear us, Dev?” Sooner or later, they’d lose Tart-Cart, too. BB hadn’t been able to scan inside the temple from orbit, so there was a fair chance that something about the Forerunner structure was interfering with signals. “Everything okay out there?”
“No,” Devereaux said. “Do you want to see? I’ve moved so I can monitor the lynch mob outside.”
Tart-Cart’s forward exterior cam fed Vaz a view of the plaza from ground level, just a few hundred Elites gathering and making angry gestures, but even in that big open space it stil looked like a lot of hinge-heads. They hadn’t plucked up the courage to storm the temple and piss off the gods yet. Judging by the body language of the ones closest to the cam, though, they were giving it some serious consideration.
The image relayed to everyone’s HUD. Mal whistled to himself.
“Hinge-heads to the southwest,” he said, putting on an exaggerated accent that Vaz didn’t recognize. “Thousands of ’em, sir.”
Devereaux huffed. She seemed to get the joke. “Yeah, funny, Staff, but I’ve got to move the ship. I’l take a big loop around and avoid going over their heads, because that real y won’t help matters. I’m going to set down at the back of the temple.”
“Is there enough space?”
“I’l make space.”
“Try not to damage anything, Dev.”
“You just make sure you exit via the back door, okay?”
“Got it. You’re breaking up now, so we’re going to lose comms.”
“Tart-Cart out.”
Vaz replayed the footage as he walked. He wondered how long piety would stop the Elites storming the place. If they were anything like humans in crowds, the whole thing would boil over in a second and they’d be in here, bent on revenge. Narrow passages, nowhere to run—would they open fire, or would they be too worried about damaging sacred structures? Did it matter? They could rip Vaz apart with their bare hands and just mop up the mess later.
And Phil ips might not have been the only person down here. Maybe they were al walking straight into an ambush.
“Phil ips?” Vaz yel ed at the top of his voice but there wasn’t even the hint of an echo. “Come on, Phil ips, where the hel are you?”
“He’s come this way, because I can smel him,” BB said. “And his fingerprints are on some of the surfaces.”
“What do you mean, smell him?”
“Human sebum. Very persistent, ful of heavy alcohols and hydrocarbons. No witty rejoinders, please, Mal.”
Mal had his finger inside the trigger guard, so he was as worried as Vaz about what might be around the next corner—or behind them. “Is Phil ips all you can smel ? No Elites?”
“Just Phil ips. At least in recent weeks.”
”Are you using my nose?” Naomi asked. She sounded absolutely serious to Vaz. “How did you pick that up?”
“Your NBCD filters.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Mal stopped a few meters ahead of them. “So you’re sure we haven’t been down this one before, BB?”
“Positive. But Phil ips has. Keep going.”
“How far have we come?”
“Over three kilometers.”
“Wel , it’s got to end somewhere.”
“No,” Vaz said. “This place could be in some part of slipspace for al we know.”
He looked back to check on Naomi. He didn’t trust Forerunner technology after what had happened on Onyx, so he walked back around the curve of the tunnel to look for her. He found her standing in front of a carved panel, tilting her head one way then the other as if she was trying out different filters. There was no tel ing what went on with her armor these days. It had some nanite system that upgraded it when it was idling, so her hardware was as much a voyage of discovery as the Forerunner ruins. It stil looked like Mark V Mjolnir from the outside, but it definitely wasn’t.
Maybe she liked the retro style and wanted to keep it, like a shabby but much-loved pair of jeans. He wasn’t going to ask right now.
“No wonder Phil ips has gone on safari,” BB said. He stil sounded as if he was doing a ventriloquist’s act with Naomi as the dummy. Vaz wondered how long she’d put up with that. “Have you seen these engravings? I’m recording them, just in case.”
“I hate it when you say that.”
“These are control panels, like the ones Halsey found in the Dyson sphere, except this isn’t an emergency shelter. It’s more like a command center. A garrison building.”
Naomi stepped back from the panel and walked away. “Hey, I haven’t finished,” BB said. “I need to use your visual feed.”
“You can process information in a split second, and you can monitor through anyone’s helmet.”
“Oh, sorry I spoke—”
Vaz interrupted in to break it up. “So why aren’t you fluent in Forerunner by now, BB? Halsey can’t be smarter than you are.”
“If you think that cereal-packet psychology is going to distract me from the inevitably unpleasant discovery that my fragment is utterly buggered, Vaz, it won’t.”
Yes, BB was definitely strung out. “Okay, so tel me what it says.”
“What does the word link mean in English? Anything from a comms channel to a shuttle service. Be a dear, Naomi, and touch the surface, wil you? I need to analyze that shield that’s covering it.”
Naomi put her gloved palm cautiously on the surface. “What is it?”
“A job for a Huragok,” BB admitted.
Nothing blew up, lit up, or made a noise. After a couple of seconds, Naomi turned, pointed forward in the direction that Mal had gone, and walked off. Vaz prodded the surface of the panel to check and decided it felt more like the bristles of an invisible silicone brush.
Mal was opening up a gap ahead of them, cal ing out like he was looking for a wayward cat. “Phil ips … Phil-lips … come on, time to go home.
Lots of angry hinge-heads outside.”
“Left,” BB said. “He went left. Right’s a dead end, anyway. Look, Mal, let Naomi take point, wil you? I need her sensors out front.”
Mal stopped and turned slowly around, cradling his rifle. “Right away, sir. Any other orders?”
“You know I mean wel .”
“Yeah.”
Naomi strode past Mal, leaving Vaz on tail. Vaz was now starting to worry whether he’d actual y hear anyone coming up behind him. The passages swal owed sound. He was waiting for the outraged faithful to jump him from behind: it was beginning to feel like a jungle patrol minus the trees. He turned around every few meters and walked backward for a few paces.
“Ick,” BB said. “You don’t need sensors to detect that.”
Vaz faced forward and inhaled. He couldn’t pick up anything through his filters, so he lifted his helmet and sniffed again. It was a very familiar odor. “Smel s like the heads.”
“Oh dear, the Prof’s let the side down,” Mal said. “Peeing in a temple. I’l be writing to The Times about this. You stil on the trail, BB?”
“Yes. He went down there—ahhhh. Look at that.” It was another panel of carvings. “That’s like the one in the Dyson sphere. The storehouse- garage-sarcophagus symbol. And lots of negative symbols. I might have to send this back to the Admiral and ask for a Huragok to take a look at it.”
“What makes you think they’d know?”
“Why leave a janitor with instructions he can’t read?”
“But why wouldn’t they volunteer that information?” Naomi asked. “Were they ordered not to, or is it a case of just having to ask them for every damn thing?”
Vaz caught a quick burst of static on his radio, as if someone was trying to contact them but unable to get a stable signal. It had to be Devereaux.
Mal turned around. He’d heard it, too.
“I’m going to assume that was Dev,” he said. “And that something’s wrong. Because it usual y is.”
“Skip the survey, BB.” Naomi started jogging. “Just fol ow Phil ips.” She speeded up, sounding like a trip-hammer even with the sound-deadening acoustics of the passages. “Phillips! Come on, Phil ips, answer me.”
Al Vaz could do was run after her. Mal broke into a sprint. Vaz found himself trying to calculate how long it would take a hinge-head to cover three klicks, based on the length of stride, and the worrying answer was that it would be a lot sooner than he thought. He was pretty certain now that at the end of the trail of Phil ips’s unique cocktail of odors, he’d trip over a body.
“You realize that wherever we are, we’re going to come up a bloody long way from the dropship even if we find a way out,” Mal panted.
“So we retrace our steps.”
“Hey, what happened to the lighting?”
“It’s stil —oh. Yeah.” Vaz noticed there were no more visible light fittings hanging from the ceiling, but somehow there was stil light. “How do they do that?”
“I think we’re entering Weirdvil e now.”
Vaz couldn’t see Naomi. The passage curved around to the left and then there was a sharp corner, but BB’s voice came over the radio before Mal got there.
“I’ve lost the trail,” BB said. “It’s just stopped dead.”
Mal let out a long breath and kept going. Vaz was right on his heels, stil checking over his shoulder for enraged hinge-heads. When they caught up with Naomi, she was standing at a T-junction in the passage. Vaz felt that buzz in his earpiece again, like radio interference or a failing loop- suppressor, and stopped to look in both directions.
“No scent?” Vaz asked. “It doesn’t necessarily mean he hasn’t been here, does it? Where else could he go?”
Naomi prodded the stonework. “This isn’t like Onyx. This is solid. He’s gone one way or the other.”
“Okay.” Mal pointed left. “Naomi, you take that passage and we’l take this one. Keep broadcasting and turn back if you lose the signal. I don’t want to misplace anyone else.”
Vaz was now starting to imagine cuffing Phil ips around the ear when he found him rather than slapping him on the back with relief. Once they found him, they stil had to exfil. Vaz hoped that whatever Phil ips had found was worth al this crap.
“Door, ” Naomi said. “I’ve found a door. I’m waiting here until you come to me.”
“You heard the lady.” Mal did a U-turn and gestured at Vaz to go back. “I’m going to kick his arse into the middle of next week.”
“I hope you realize how many panels I’ve not been able to find and record,” BB said irritably.
“That’s al right. Adj can fil in the gaps.”
It was a door al right, like a smal er version of the one at the front of the temple, with an actual locking mechanism rather than a button. Naomi stood beside it, running her finger around the frame while she checked the TACPAD on her wrist.
“It’s just a door,” she said. “Better open it.”
“Live dangerously.” Mal raised his rifle and aimed into the doorway. Vaz stood to the other side. “One, two…”
Naomi turned the circular handle and it swung outward. For a second, al Vaz could see was a patch of light and absolute black shadow until his visor adjusted. He could hear crowd noises but they sounded distant, and—more important—there was the familiar and comforting whine of a dropship’s idling drive. But there was no sign of Phil ips.
“Now I’m getting real y pissed off with him,” Vaz said. “Didn’t he realize we were coming?”
“Evidently not.” Naomi went ahead and stalked up the short passage. “Permission to grab him and cart him off, Staff?”
“By the nuts if you want to,” Mal said. “Dev, can you hear me?”
“Got you, Staff. Meter’s running. Where are you?”
“Where are you?”
“Right behind the temple. I’ve got two meters’ clearance on both wings.”
BB was stil griping. “I can’t pick up any odor. Opening the door might have diffused it, but I doubt it.”
Naomi reached the end of the passage and stepped outside. Then she held her hand up to stop. “I think we’ve come in a circle,” she said. “I can see the wal in the plaza. And no Phil ips.”
“Oh, for Chrissakes—Dev, has he come out near you?”