“Wel , let’s just say you’re an awful y long way from home.”
“I’l tel you nothing,” he said. “What’s the point of al this?”
“Wel , they real y wanted a live Sangheili prisoner, so who am I to deny them? Al I know is that there are a lot of scientists and other people in white coats down there, figuratively speaking, and I’m sure you’l al get on famously.”
Jul didn’t understand what white coats signified. The avatar disappeared again, but then it popped back right in front of him. “Phil ips is going to be a guest of the Arbiter, by the way. Is there any message you want me to pass on to your boss?”
“Thel ‘Vadam is not my boss,” Jul snarled. “He’s a weakling who spends too much time worrying whether humans like him instead of exterminating them.”
It just slipped out. It didn’t matter what a human—or its computer—thought of his lack of al egiance to the Arbiter, but it dawned on him that the devious little AI had simply flushed out a fundamental answer: they just wanted to know if Jul was one of the Arbiter’s agents. He was furious at himself for providing the answer so easily simply because he couldn’t control his temper.
Or perhaps not. Humans are so twisted that they might think I’m simply saying that to deceive them.
“I’l just send your best wishes to Professor Phyllis, then,” BB said, and vanished.
Jul roared with fury and punched his fist hard into the bulkhead. It was slightly dented now from constant pounding, but even if he ripped open the whole compartment, he was stil marooned on a ship deep in space, and his chances of escape were dwindling every time more humans arrived.
He sank back on his bunk and tried to calm himself.
The biggest threat he faced was that the isolation would slowly break him.
When there was nothing else to do except stare at the bulkhead and fantasize about the many varied ways to end a human life, a certain sensitivity developed to the subliminal sounds of the vessel. Jul could now tel when the ship’s drives were maneuvering to hold station, and even when someone was ditching waste. There was a distinctive clunk overhead. He wondered how much could be heard outside the ship, because the AI had told him with insufferable smugness that this was a stealth vessel, and that nobody would know Port Stanley was there until they hit one of her mines.
Jul was also building up a picture of his environment from his sense of smel . On the occasions when a hatch opened, he could detect sweat, machine oil, burnt meat, and oddly floral scents. There was another smel that might have been a sterilizing agent or disinfectant, and now a new one—a sour aroma of human agitation, almost as pungent as their fear when he’d fought them—that got his attention. He tried to memorize it al , because one day this kind of intel igence might come in useful.
Sometime later, he heard the sound of boots, several pairs of them, thudding along the passage toward the cel . They might not have been specifical y heading his way, because the cel was on one of the main passages running fore to aft in the ship. But he knew that sound.
Spartans. Demons.
Even without their heavy armor, they were much heavier than the average human and he could hear them stalking up and down the passage outside his cel , sometimes in silence and sometimes talking quietly among themselves as they went by. He recognized the voices. There were more females on board now, and an older male with a rasping voice who didn’t seem very happy with life. The words made no sense to Jul, although he was starting to learn that the repetition of goddamn indicated a certain mood, and when voices were raised there were many more words with explosive consonants like F and sibilants like S. Even their anger lacked eloquence.
A conversation was now going on outside his cel door. He kept hearing a repetition of the word halsey, but he had no idea what a halsey was, only that the humans seemed particularly agitated about it.
“No, you can’t talk to her.” That was the female shipmaster, the one who’d had him imprisoned here. “Strict instructions from Admiral Parangosky.”
“But what happens now?” That was a male voice he wasn’t familiar with, neither the bad-tempered older male nor the two soldiers who were part of the ship’s crew. “Where are they going to take her?”
“I can’t tel you that,” the shipmaster said. “But you’re going to Sydney for debriefing.”
Jul had no idea what they were talking about, but he could memorize the sounds and detect the emotion behind the words. There was a great deal of tension. He could smel their agitation again in their sweat, the acrid human scents that they pumped out when their stress levels were high.
The conversation stopped and the boots strode away. A few minutes later, the smal viewscreen set in his cel door activated and he found himself looking at the female shipmaster—Osman—and an anonymous, helmeted Spartan. It was hard to tel the demons apart until they spoke.
“Okay, BB, read him his rights, if he has any,” said Osman. Jul recognized the name BB. “We’re going to have to move him now. Parangosky wants Halsey transferred as soon as Compton-Hall gets here.”
The AI appeared in front of Jul. “Time to go, Shipmaster,” BB said. He had as good a command of the language as Phil ips. “We’re going to disembark you. Now you can do this in a civilized way and walk out under your own steam, or we can do it the cattle prod way. You do understand what I mean by cattle prod, don’t you?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Like I said, it’s quite a pleasant location. We’l transfer you by shuttle. Now, are you going to behave yourself?”
“I’m not a child.”
“If you resist, they’l simply shoot you. I know you love the idea of death before dishonor, but if you force them to shoot you, nobody wil ever know how courageous you were anyway. I don’t suppose that matters to you, because you’l know that you did the decent and manly thing, and perhaps that’s al you want. But if you want to take revenge at some future date, surviving is a pretty essential part of that strategy. It’s your choice.”
BB’s logic was seductive. “Very wel . What must I do?”
“They’l insist that you’re handcuffed. Please don’t resist.”
BB was absolutely correct. To die resisting the enemy, with or without an audience to witness the event, was a noble thing. But returning to defeat the enemy was smarter and infinitely more satisfying. Jul waited for the door to open and presented his outstretched wrists without comment as the Spartan moved in to put restraints on his arms.
“You have a very persuasive way with you, BB,” Osman said. “What did you do, threaten to tel his family that he cried like a girl?”
“You have to admit it’s very effective,” BB said. “A little trick that Phil ips taught me, which I believe he dredged up from World War Two. That’s anthropologists for you.”
“Sometimes I think honor is vastly overrated,” Osman said. She nodded at the Spartan. “See him off, Naomi.”
It was the female Spartan again. She had the cattle prod hanging from her belt. Jul kept his word and walked beside her down the passage toward the hangar, where a group of six troops were waiting. Four other humans who looked like technicians were waiting there too, al clutching datapads and al far too frail or fat to be soldiers. The hangar was as crowded as a Kig-Yar bazaar with two dropships berthed and every available space behind the safety barrier fil ed with crates.
One of the technicians, a female with long pale hair scraped back from her face, looked up and smiled at him as if she’d never seen a live Sangheili before and didn’t know how much damage he could do her. He suspected it was delighted curiosity rather than goodwil . She said nothing.
“Jul, I’ve instructed Dr. Magnusson’s AI in the Sangheili language, so you should be able to communicate adequately,” BB said. “Don’t forget to send a postcard.”
“Who is this Dr. Magnusson?” Jul demanded.
“You’l find out.”
“Wait—”
Jul was slammed flat on the deck in the smal shuttle, facedown, secured by clamps. He wanted to show them that the Sangheili didn’t take this sort of treatment without protest, but it was pointless trying to educate humans, and there was nobody he cared about who could see him compound his shame by surrendering again. He would bide his time. Once he was on the surface of this planet, wherever it was, he would find a way home.
And he would also find a way to inflict great damage on these vermin.
But first he had to learn to think like them, and he realized that escaping from his new prison wouldn’t require physical strength and daring, but learning to play the humans’ games of lies and deceit.
It’s shameful. But I can do it. There is a greater need that it serves.
He was expecting the journey to be much longer. It seemed that the shuttle’s drives had only just run up to speed and left the ship behind when they powered down again and the ship settled on its dampers. He was certain he hadn’t felt the vessel enter slipspace, and he was also sure from the distinctive sound of the drive that the ship wasn’t slipspace-capable anyway.
The pressure lifted from his back as the securing straps were removed. Light flooded in behind him as a hatch opened.
“This is your stop, buddy.” The troops hauled him to his feet. “Come on. Just be a good hinge-head and nobody gets hurt.”
Individual words jumped out at him in the noise that made up the human language. He’d heard the word hinge-head a lot. He put it on his mental list of words to learn and understand. He walked down the shuttle’s ramp with his wrists stil secured, and into a bright, sunny day rich with the smel of green things on the air, the landscape al trees and rol ing grassland with no buildings in sight.
A man and a woman in a uniform that he hadn’t seen before were waiting for him. They smiled in that confusing human way as if he was welcome here.
“Shipmaster Jul ‘Mdama,” the woman said, nodding at him politely. He could hear her speaking her own language, but he could also hear a simultaneous translation in Sangheili. “I’m Dr. Magnusson. I hope you enjoy your stay here. Please don’t think of it as extraordinary rendition. Think of it instead as helping to ensure that we never have to go to war again.”
The man with her—hairless and unsmiling in the same dark gray fabric coveral s as the woman—looked Jul up and down and didn’t seem impressed.
“Yes, welcome to ONI Research Facility Trevelyan, Shipmaster,” his translation said. “This is where we gather intel igence to protect Earth. And this is where you disappear from the galaxy.”
Jul understood him, too. It lifted his mood no end.
If he could understand what the humans said, then he was one step closer to working out how to get home.
“Temporarily, human,” he said. “Just temporarily.”
UNSC PORT STANLEY, IN ORBIT AROUND ONI RF TREVELYAN, ONYX SECTOR.
Vaz took his life in his hands and stepped into Naomi’s path as she came thundering down the passage.
“You can’t see her,” he said. “Captain’s orders. Parangosky’s orders. Just leave it, Naomi. Please.”
It took a lot of bal s to try to intercept a Spartan who didn’t want to be intercepted. Vaz expected her to rol right over him and break a few bones in her determination to talk to Halsey before she was transferred to Compton-Hall. Those were his orders, but that wasn’t the only reason he was doing it.
He tried to imagine what it would feel like to live and fight under that kind of unnatural stress for more than thirty-five years, and then find the only person you thought of as a mother was in fact a monster who’d ripped your family apart. Spartans weren’t machines. It had to hurt like hel .
Naomi hadn’t known what had gone on back home while she was being whisked away to Reach with dozens of other unlucky kids whose only mistake had been to be born strong, smart, and a long way from Earth. Vaz could see her imagination was now working overtime picturing the misery that Halsey had left in her wake.
Halsey was a genetics expert. She should have known those cloned kids would stand a high risk of dying. What kind of a bitch would do that to another human being after kidnapping their real child?
“Vaz, I need to talk to her,” Naomi said quietly. “I might not get another chance. I just want to know why she kept al that from us.”
Vaz stil blocked the passage, boots planted firmly and shoulders squared, although if a Spartan wanted to get past him there would have been nothing he could do about it. He had a pretty good idea why Halsey hadn’t bothered to explain to her adoring trainees exactly what she’d done, but it would only make things worse if he said so.
“She didn’t want to hurt you,” Vaz lied.
“Nice try, but I want to hear it from her.”
Now he could hear the stampede sound of the other Spartans heading his way. He wasn’t going to let them past, either. He wondered if the brutal truth might actual y be kinder than letting them think that ONI was extraditing some kind of saint.
The guy in front was a lieutenant, which made things doubly awkward: Frederic. Even that offended Vaz—that Halsey had given them just first names, as if they’d always be children. They had a right to their surnames. Okay, they didn’t remember them, but they had lineage, and they had ancestors, and they came from somewhere.
“Corporal, we just want to talk to Dr. Halsey,” Frederic said. What was Vaz supposed to cal him, Lieutenant Frederic? What kind of a name was that for a grown man, let alone an officer? “I don’t see what harm it can do.”
“Admiral’s orders, sir,” Vaz said. “Please don’t make me disobey my captain. She might be the next head of ONI and I value my nuts.”
Frederic looked uneasy. “I’l make my representations to Admiral Parangosky, then.”