Halo: Glasslands (39 page)

Naomi wouldn’t have made a very good poker player. She might have been able to keep up that unblinking Spartan stoicism for a while, but Vaz had learned to spot the small giveaway gestures. He could see her pressing her lips together more tightly with every mention of Halsey’s name.

“And how will
you
judge her, Captain?” Mal asked.

Osman shrugged. “If I tell you, I have to reveal classified information—and I’m not keeping that from you because it’s classified, but because it’s extremely personal, and I think I’d like to talk to Naomi privately before the rest of you hear it.”

You could have cut the tension on that bridge with a blunt plastic butter knife. Vaz interpreted it as a suggestion to get lost and leave Osman and Naomi to have a girl-to-girl chat.

“You’re always pretty straight with us, ma’am,” Devereaux said. “I’m not brown-nosing, but we want you to know that we appreciate it.”

Osman folded her arms, not so much defensive as looking like she wanted to curl up and hide, and she wasn’t the shrinking violet type. There was definitely something else going on here.

“If I ask you to put your lives on the line, the least I can do is to tell you as much of the truth as I can,” she said. “I know I often ask your opinion rather than give you clear orders, but that’s because you’ve all got a hell of a lot more combat experience than me, and I respect and trust your judgment. So if you ever think I’m screwing up on a biblical scale, I want you to tell me so.”

Some marines liked cast-iron certainty in an officer, but Vaz was happy to settle for intelligent honesty. Officers who knew what they
didn’t
know were rare gems. He realized he was willing to do just about any damn thing she asked him to. Maybe that was the intention. She was Parangosky’s protégé, after all, and he couldn’t imagine the old girl picking someone who couldn’t get the best out of her people.

No. Sometimes you have to accept that people mean what they say.

Likeable officer or not, she still had to do some difficult stuff with Naomi. “Okay, people, dismiss,” she said. “We need a little while to talk, me and Naomi.”

Mal herded everyone down to the hangar deck, as much distance as he could give anyone in this ship. Adj followed them and hung around, fondling the equipment in the small comms workstation that Phillips had set up to one side of the deck.

“I know you’re there, BB.” Mal looked up at the deckhead. “Just be a good mate and let us know what we can do for Naomi, will you? Because I know bad news when I see it.”

BB’s avatar appeared below the gantry. “Now you know why the captain’s been telling you so much about the Spartan program. The end of a war’s as good a time as any to take a serious look at the unsavory things we’ve done.”

“Yeah, that’s a lot easier now that this Halsey woman’s dead,” Vaz said, trying to imagine what could possibly be worse than kidnapping six-year-olds and shooting them up with hormones and ceramic implants. “Very convenient of her. Always best not to mention it while they’re alive and can still name names.”

“You’re a rather cynical young man, Vasily,” BB said. “Very well, I promise I’ll keep you up to speed on Naomi—with her consent.”

BB disappeared and the three ODSTs stood there in silence with Phillips. Vaz was suddenly aware of pinging and scratching noises coming out of Phillips’s comms workstation. Whatever Adj was doing, he was
un
-vandalizing the equipment with enthusiasm.

“Busy little guy, isn’t he?” Phillips said, going to check on the frantic remodeling. “Okay, okay, I’ll keep him out of the main systems.”

“Osman’s okay,” Mal said. “Good sort.”

Vaz shrugged. “She’s half Spartan.”

“Yeah,” said Devereaux. “But the other half is purebred spook. That’s not the kind of pet you can trust with your kids.”

“I don’t care,” Vaz said. “I like her. And what the hell are
we
now, anyway?”

Vaz didn’t know how long Osman talked to Naomi, but it was a couple of hours before the Spartan came down to the hangar. She looked as if nothing had happened. But then she was pretty good at battening down the hatches as long as she had a few moments to compose herself before she had to face everyone. It was all part of the psychology of spending a lot of time with your face obscured behind a visor, something Vaz understood all too well. He passed her on the way to the heads and gave her a you-can-talk-to-me look, holding eye contact for a few extra seconds.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“I’m still working that out,” she said, and disappeared into the Mjolnir compartment.

“We’re here whenever you want to talk,” Vaz said, but he wasn’t sure if she heard him.

For the next twenty-four hours everything fell back into the daily routine of monitoring voice traffic and gathering intelligence.
Port Stanley
was doing the ship equivalent of an ODST’s “hard routine”—carrying out surveillance under the enemy’s nose, hiding in the bushes in total silence for weeks at a time without even a smoke or a cooked meal for comfort—except that she didn’t need bushes, she didn’t get leg cramps, and she didn’t get distracted by the need to take a leak. Vaz had carried out way too much recon and FAC behind enemy lines to feel less of a man for doing it the ONI way. He could brew a pot of coffee and have a good scratch while he watched the data come in.

It would have been better to have someone on the ground as well, on Sanghelios itself, but it was hard to pass yourself off as a hinge-head when everyone around you was a meter taller. Vaz tried to think creatively about ways to infiltrate the keeps.

He sat at one of the workstations on the bridge, noting the occasional movement of Sangheili ships between their various orbital shipyards and the two moons, Suban and Qikost. There was a lot of traffic, but certainly nothing to suggest that they were attempting to rearm or regroup. If anything it seemed more like a free-for-all, with ships disappearing to scattered locations across the planet, something that Phillips confirmed from the radio chatter.

“It’s really quite sad.” Phillips was lounging at the console a couple of seats away with his feet up on another seat, one hand to his earpiece. “They’ve been this amazing military culture for thousands of years, but now the San’Shyuum have gone they’re running out of equipment and motivation. The kaidons are just taking whatever ships and equipment they can find and stashing it in their own cities.”

“Can’t stop fighting men from fighting,” Vaz said. “That sounds like a recipe for civil war without any intervention from us.”

Phillips shook his head. “Don’t underestimate the charismatic power of an Arbiter, especially ‘Vadam. What I can’t work out is just how much fighting there was on Sanghelios itself when he split from the Covenant. ‘Telcam says they’re still factionalized, but he omits to tell me just how much damage was done in the fighting.”

“You want to get down there and take a look, don’t you?”

“Don’t
you
?”

“Only through my scope. Just before I squeeze one off.”

“But it’s a fascinating, ancient culture.”

“It’s a fortress full of angry hinge-heads who still think we’re bacteria.”

“You know, travel broadens the—” Phillips stopped dead and swung his boots off the seat to lean on the console and concentrate on a transmission coming in. “Okay, Vaz, quiet. It’s ‘Telcam, and remember that he understands every word we say.”

“Yes. Just like my gran’s dog.”

‘Telcam called in as regularly now as any UNSC operating base. It seemed to take him a few days to collect arms, get them back home, and distribute them before asking for the next batch. Osman’s policy was to drip-feed him anyway, and Vaz understood the wisdom of sneaking weapons in a few at a time in dozens of different vessels rather than risk losing everything in a single intercepted shipment.

But maybe his missus had told him that he couldn’t store the stuff in the garage. Sangheili had wives too.

What’s everyone else on Sanghelios doing? They can’t all be in the army. Phillips has a point. I bet he’d wet himself with excitement if someone offered him a trip down there.

Phillips listened intently for a while, grunting “Yes, I’ll do that,” now and again, then pushed himself back from the console, brandishing his datapad. BB materialized beside him.

“You’d make a
wonderful
receptionist,” BB said. “Go on, give the message to the captain.”

Phillips looked at BB and smiled. “Pizza with all the toppings for Mister ‘Telcam, I think.”

Vaz wondered if Naomi fancied a run ashore after being cooped up in
Stanley
for so long. Even the glasslands were starting to look like a day out now, regardless of how well-stocked the wardroom galley was or how many creature comforts the ship provided. ONI didn’t believe in roughing it. Vaz went to find her.

She was tinkering with her helmet, something that really didn’t need doing if that armor fixed itself. She glanced up at him.

“Lid okay?” he asked.

“Lighter than the old model. Mark Seven. New supplier.”

“You get all the best kit.”

Naomi took a breath. It wasn’t impatience. It looked more like embarrassment. “Look, I know you’re being kind,” she said. “And just because I’m not very talkative, it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it.”

“So are you coming?”

“Why not? They say Spartans need to get out more.”

She’d tell him what was troubling her in her own good time. He just couldn’t imagine what would disturb a Spartan.

But whatever it was, it had something to do with that Halsey woman.

BEKAN QUARRY, MDAMA, SANGHELIOS.

Raia looked over
Unflinching Resolve
from a distance but declined to step on board. Jul was a little disappointed. She’d never seen his world before and he’d hoped she might understand him better if she saw how he lived while he was away from home.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to move this ship?” she asked, turning to Buran and Forze. “Many shipmasters have reclaimed their vessels and taken them back to their keeps, from what I hear. I doubt anyone would find it suspicious now.”

Buran shrugged and shot a glance at Jul. “Ask your husband. He’s the one who’s worried that traitors know these coordinates. The worst that can happen is that some worthless Kig-Yar and a few civilian humans know this location. So? What are they going to do about it?”

“They could trade the information,” Jul said. “And they managed to board
Piety
and kill the crew, so we have no guarantee that they didn’t make a note of her course from the nav computer.”

Information was frequently currency, and it was always power, but there were times when Jul knew it could be both a weapon and a liability. ‘Telcam said he picked up weapons shipments on a cleansed human colony world. It made sense to take the frigate there, wherever it was. Jul wondered if he was being selfish for putting his fear for his clan above the necessity of his duty, but there was such a thing as not risking the lives of the uninvolved any more than he had to. The rest of his brethren would face the Arbiter’s vengeance if his coup failed.

“If you’re asking me, I think it’s a good idea to move her, too,” said Forze. “There’s no more defensible base than the one the enemy doesn’t know about.”

“So where
is
this secret hiding place, then?” Raia asked. Her tone suggested that she thought it was all a childish prank, that this brave talk of overthrowing the Arbiter was turning into a hobby to make them feel like warriors again. “Seeing as your revolutionary headquarters is a temple right in the middle of one of the most heavily populated states on the planet.”

“I don’t know where it is,” Jul said. “But it’s a planet that was cleansed of humans, so perhaps nobody pays any attention to it. I would still like to know where it is.”

‘Telcam was due to arrive shortly. Jul had begun to feel he spent his entire existence waiting for the monk to show up without explanation, but then he supposed that was the nature of an underground movement. There would come a point, though, when Jul would no longer be willing to take things on trust. He was a shipmaster: he was used to setting courses and giving orders, not trailing along in the wake of others. If things didn’t start to move more rapidly, then he would reconsider his plans. The longer the Arbiter was left to soothe and cajole the population into accepting a false peace with the humans, the harder it would be to galvanize them into action before the inevitable happened.

“Well, I have real work to do,” Raia said, turning to go back to the keep. “I’m sure you’ll let me know when something decisive and manly has taken place.”

Buran watched her go and turned back to Jul with a wary swing of his head. “Perhaps we should unleash our wives on the Arbiter,” he said. “They could glower at him until he concedes defeat. It would certainly be effective against me.”

It was Buran’s ship and he could take it back any time he pleased, but he seemed persuaded by ‘Telcam. Jul paced up and down, wondering again how the great Sangheili nation had come to this shambling indecisiveness. Eventually the sound of another shuttle rumbled in the still country air and announced the monk’s arrival.