“Y’know, I don’t think the Forerunners had any sense of theater,” Devereaux said. “They could at least have painted it an interesting color. Or stuck navigation lights on it or something.”
Osman put on her helmet, a standard infantry model with a ten-minute rating in hard vacuum. She obviously didn’t think the Forerunners’ technology was infal ible. “Okay, people, let’s get in there. You’re navigating, BB.”
As they piled into the dropship, Mal’s adrenaline was pumping as hard as if he was about to do a drop behind enemy lines, not strol ing in to arrest a sixty-year-old woman. He tested the vacuum integrity on his bodysuit, checking the display in his HUD more often than he needed to.
Just one little old lady. Okay, she hijacks ships and experiments on kids. But come on. How hard can it be to drop her? On the other hand, she kidnapped a Spartan … Vaz sat opposite him, completely motionless apart from the fact that he was drumming the heel of his right boot on the deck; nothing obvious, not even enough to real y move his knee. ODSTs were trained for police actions but that was al theory. Mal had only ever subdued Covenant aliens, and the general idea wasn’t to take them alive and unharmed.
“I wonder what Venezia’s getting up to now.” Devereaux’s voice came over the broadcast system. It was only a short flight to the sphere’s surface, just enough time to encourage idle chat. “It’s al gone quiet, hasn’t it?”
“Wel , I’ve not forgotten about them.” Osman said it in that same deceptively calm, neutral way that Parangosky did. “They’re stil on my list.”
Mal interpreted on my list as glassing with extreme prejudice before she really got down to expressing how seriously pissed off she was. There was something both comforting and inspirational about working for a ruthless bastard. He was certain she was. Letting the Muir guy live when it would have been easier to shoot him hadn’t fooled Mal one bit.
So … what do I say to Halsey? “You’re nicked”?
He did a few mental rehearsals. This would be like detaining Rasputin. “How are we doing this, ma’am?” he asked. “Do you caution her while I put the cuffs on?” He fidgeted with a couple of microfilament cuffs strong enough to hold a Brute. “If she’s capable of abducting a bloody Spartan, then we better not take any chances.”
“We do this by the book,” Osman said. “If she doesn’t cooperate, you have ful authorization to use whatever force you see fit. Just remember that Parangosky wants her in one piece and capable of answering questions.”
“Shame,” Vaz murmured.
The good thing about having a ful -face helmet was that you could take a sneaky look around as long as you didn’t move your head. Mal glanced in Naomi’s direction. The feed from her helmet cam said she was staring straight ahead. There was no way of tel ing where she was actual y looking.
“Anyone interested in the hul cam feed?” Devereaux asked. “Stand by for docking in five minutes.”
One of the icon positions in Mal’s HUD lit up and he could now see some of the surface details of the sphere. There were no seams visible, no solid shipyard workmanship that showed its construction, just an incredibly smooth and almost velvety surface that now looked chocolate brown. He stil couldn’t get the scale of it yet.
“You know, it would real y help if someone inside could talk me down,” Devereaux said irritably. “Just some damn numbers, people. Okay, I’l do it the old-fashioned way from the coordinates.… Oh, now that’s what I cal runway lights.”
Mal picked it up in his HUD at the same time Devereaux saw it. Beneath the dropship, the sphere had suddenly come to life. A riot of colored lights zipped out below them like a carpet being unrol ed at high speed, resolving into blue, yel ow, and coral stripes along its length. Then it started pulsing.
“I think I’m supposed to fol ow that down,” Devereaux said. “If I’m wrong, it’s been a blast serving with you al , and Vaz stil owes me ten bucks.”
Judging by the camera angle, the dropship was now aligned right over the light strip. Every time Devereaux veered to port or starboard, the lights at the margins glowed bright red until she aligned with the central yel ow strip again. Then cobalt blue discs began popping up at increasingly closer intervals. If that wasn’t a universal language, Mal didn’t know what was. If he’d been the pilot he’d have assumed the lights were tel ing him he was coming up on his target. Eventual y pulsing coral bars appeared across the width of the strip before resolving into concentric rings. They kept pulsing until Devereaux brought the dropship to a hover vertical y above them, and then they locked.
“Coordinates acquired,” she said. “I think I’m going to park here. Apologies for the sloppy RT procedure, but I don’t know what to cal this.”
“On the nail. That’s what you cal it.” BB’s voice interrupted. “Stand by for a novel experience, boys and girls.”
The landing strip lights disappeared and the world outside went pitch-black. Mal assumed the landing lights had been shut down and he was looking into the blackness of space again, but his gut did a somersault. Then the lights came on again, this time piercingly white in his HUD icon and throwing long shafts into the crew bay through the cockpit bulkhead hatch.
“We’re inside now.” Devereaux sounded very matter-of-fact. Mal always wondered if pilots squealed with delight when they opened birthday presents, or if they just grunted. “We’ve come through the shel of the sphere. This is the basement, more or less. I can see Engineers. Four of them, heading this way.”
The dropship’s drive whined down the scale and stopped. Osman popped her helmet’s seal and took it off, tidying her hair one-handed. Mal couldn’t read her expression at al .
“Okay, let’s do it,” she said. “She’s expecting an ONI tech team. I wonder if she’l recognize me.”
“I did,” Naomi said. “And she wil , too.”
Mal stepped down from the dropship and landed on pristine cream flagstones. It looked like the place had never been used. Vaz sidled up to him and switched over to their helmet-to-helmet comms link, triggering the red light in Mal’s HUD.
“I hope the other Spartans are as understanding about this as Naomi,” Vaz said. At the end of the long passage, Mal was sure he could see shafts of daylight. “We’re arresting their mother in front of them.”
“Wel , if they’re not,” Mal said, “I’m real y going to miss my head.”
FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE: FEBRUARY 2553.
Halsey looked at her watch, then at her datapad, and then at Prone to Drift.
“Is that it? Have we— ohhh…”
Her stomach flipped and her ears buzzed, a moment of flulike faintness. It lasted only a second. Scientist or not, she was expecting such a massive unraveling of space and time to be a little more momentous. She looked around to see where the Spartans were, but she was the only one left in the workshop now.
Prone to Drift spoke via the datapad. “The shield world is now back in the other space. Your friends have entered. Is there anything else you require from us?”
“Wil you cooperate with our scientists?” Halsey asked. She wondered if there was any point leaving now. She could stay here and work, without any reminders of the world outside and the precious people she’d let slip through her fingers so carelessly. “They’l spend years exploring this place.”
“We maintain this shield world. Al ow us to do our duty.” It was one of those persistent Huragok non sequiturs. “We must maintain this shelter.”
Halsey had started to understand that these were actual y precise responses, gentle warnings combined with earnest pleas. This was al they did, al they were created to do, and they would carry on doing it until someone kil ed them or they died by some other means. Were these sterile lives, or meaningful ones? Whatever they were, they were painful y like her own.
“I understand,” she said. “I’m driven, too.” So driven I can’t remember the last time I spoke to my own daughter, and now she’s gone. “Have you … created others for us yet?”
“We have constructed three to look after the Forerunner technology you wish to transport,” he said. “I wil fetch them.”
Prone to Drift floated away and Halsey was left with no distraction to stop the bad news flooding back into the idle spaces. John’s gone, and Miranda. Cortana, too. The world would never return to normal. She found a reflective surface and bobbed up and down in front of it, trying to see enough of herself to tidy up before the ONI crew arrived. She was raking her hair with her fingers when Prone returned, sailing like a gal eon ahead of three new Huragok, line astern.
“Perfect Density, Tends to List, and Leaks Repaired,” he said. “They are wil ing to accompany the artifacts.”
Halsey decided they weren’t so much concerned with helping humans as focused on looking after the technology that they’d been created to care about more than life itself. She should have been able to understand that perfectly. She wondered if that was exactly how she looked to people like Mendez.
And three of them means we can keep building our own if need be. I can’t help myself thinking like that. I really am a cold bitch, aren’t I?
“Thank you,” she said. “Your knowledge and skil are priceless. I respect that.”
Prone to Drift didn’t seem to know how to react. It took him a few moments to gather himself and reply. “We are here to serve,” he said at last.
“And you’ve served wel .”
Halsey walked back down the passage to find the others, brushing through the inner slipspace barrier and emerging into the present day—the UNSC’s present, anyway—with the new Huragok fol owing her. It hadn’t been a long exile. She hadn’t even been forced to eat the rest of the ration bars. Outside, Mendez stood in the center of a huddle of Spartans.
Kel y and Linda had taken off their helmets and their expressions were completely transparent. Like Fred, the news about John had hit them hard. Halsey could see it from the way the two women stood with their eyes fixed on the ground. It had to be about John. If they’d known Miranda at al , it would have been no more than a passing acquaintance.
The Spartan-IIIs hovered on the margins of the gathering. It looked like those awful minutes before a funeral, when the more casual mourners mil ed around trying to find someone they knew as wel as the right thing to say, but failed. Halsey debated whether to join them. It would only make them feel more awkward now, she was sure. She wondered what would happen to the rest of the Spartan-IIIs and how many of their comrades were also stil missing.
What happens to any of them? What happens to any of us when everything that defines us is part of a war that’s now over?
She glanced over her shoulder at the Engineers. They seemed to be making adjustments to each other, looking like nervous job candidates picking lint off one another’s suits before the big interview. Perhaps she should have tried talking to them. But it was hard to know where to start a casual conversation, if that was possible at al with a Huragok. We’ll need simpler translation devices for the ONI technicians. That was another project she knew she could immerse herself in so that she never needed to come up for air. She could just bury herself in research until the day she died.
For a moment, Halsey thought about the Spartans buried here. She couldn’t decide if it was more appropriate to leave them in peace or to repatriate them, but they had no true home now. She wasn’t sure that she did, either.
So I’ve got more in common with the dead and with aliens now than I have with the people around me.
But the Katana personnel … perhaps we can save them when they come out of stasis. I can’t face any more deaths. Not even people I don’t know.
There was always a priority, always something more urgent that needed doing rather than wal owing in grief and regret. Then she found her thoughts drifting to things that just didn’t matter a damn—what had happened to her equipment back on Reach, what had happened to her journal, what had happened to completely meaningless possessions—until Mendez looked up, stared past her, and started a brisk walk that turned into a jog. The Spartans turned around as wel and started heading for the tower. When she final y shook herself out of the fog that seemed to be drowning her, and she looked, Halsey could see what had grabbed their attention.
For a moment, she thought it was John.
A Spartan was striding across the grass toward her. Even though the gait was a woman’s and she knew it couldn’t possibly be John, she couldn’t stop herself from reacting. She broke into a trot, then a run, and rushed to meet her.
Halsey almost didn’t notice two ODSTs and a woman in captain’s rig with the Spartan. She was carrying her helmet.
“Naomi?” Halsey pushed past Mendez, devastated that it wasn’t John but somehow elated to know that one more of her Spartans had survived.
She hadn’t realized it was possible to experience both at the same time. “Naomi, is that you? Oh, thank God. I thought you were dead. ”
Halsey realized she thanked God a lot considering that she didn’t believe in him. The Spartan took her helmet off as Fred, Linda, and Kel y went to slap her on the shoulder. It was Naomi, al right. But she didn’t look particularly happy to see them.
“I’m glad you made it,” she said stiffly. Halsey wasn’t clear who she was talking to, to her or to the other Spartans. Then Halsey started paying attention to the captain.
Halsey knew that face. She recognized the eyes. It was hard to pinpoint her age, but the woman was exceptional y tal and her expression said she recognized Halsey too. The woman stopped and looked her over, almost embarrassed.