“They could trade the information,” Jul said. “And they managed to board Piety and kil 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 al 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 stil 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 wil ing 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.
“Wel , I have real work to do,” Raia said, turning to go back to the keep. “I’m sure you’l 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. Eventual y the sound of another shuttle rumbled in the stil country air and announced the monk’s arrival.
Jul identified it as a smal military transport this time, one of the old but stil serviceable Contrition-class. Seeing the ship appear over the top of the quarry and confirm his identification gave him a little satisfaction.
‘Telcam stepped down from the shuttle and opened the cargo door. “I have just one warhead today, brothers. I believe we can move that without the assistance of Jiralhanae.” He had a very eloquent way of tel ing them to rol up their sleeves and get working. “But I have another col ection to make now, so we wil have many more new rifles tomorrow.”
“I think we should move Unflinching Resolve to another location,” Jul said, walking up the loading ramp to take one end of the lift-loader.
‘Telcam looked past him at Buran. “Do you share that opinion?”
Buran shrugged. “There’s a lot to be said for covert bases, but it depends on how far your little hiding place is.”
‘Telcam looked at them more as if he was deciding which of them would be the biggest troublemaker.
“Where is this place of yours?” Jul asked.
“I promised my suppliers that I would keep our rendezvous point to myself,” ‘Telcam said. “It’s not a matter of individual trust. We’ve now seen what the Kig-Yar can do with a little help from humans when they put their minds to it. What nobody else knows cannot be accidental y discovered.”
Did he just insult us? Jul wasn’t sure. He hesitated to cal a devout servant a liar, however eccentric he thought ‘Telcam’s religious views were, and he’d come to admire the monk’s hardheaded warrior instinct. He’d risen to the rank of field master; he understood humans exceptional y wel from his service as an interpreter. If anyone grasped the idea that humans would never stop spreading and would always be a threat, it was ‘Telcam. But something in Jul’s instinct told him that a little too much was being kept from him, considering the risk he was taking.
“I would like to come with you and assess this place,” Jul said. “There’s no reason why I can’t accompany you, is there?”
‘Telcam hesitated for just a fraction of a second too long. “My suppliers are very nervous, as you’l appreciate. I think they would be a little worried to see more Sangheili at the rendezvous point, especial y ones they haven’t learned to trust.”
“Who are they?”
“Who do you think?”
“Tel me you’re not trading with Kig-Yar. None of them can be trusted. Many of them are in league with humans, and the last thing we want is for humans to know how divided our people are.”
‘Telcam just looked at him, mildly disapproving. “I realize the incident with Piety has disturbed us, brother, but we’ve always known that Kig-Yar are unreliable, undisciplined, and without honor. Why this should unsettle you so much now I have no idea.”
“This has already cost us a Huragok we sorely needed,” Jul said, feeling a little childish for his retaliation. “I trust nobody these days.”
‘Telcam nodded politely. “Indeed. I understand.”
Forze and Jul finished unloading the warhead, and ‘Telcam got back into the shuttle. As the Contrition lifted off, Buran turned to Jul.
“He real y doesn’t want anyone else there when the handover takes place,” Buran said. “I wonder if he trusts us. Or perhaps he thinks we’re losing our nerve.”
Jul made an instant decision—not a rash one, a rapid one—and turned to head back to the keep. “There’s something I must do. I’l talk with you later.”
“Jul, wait, we must talk—”
“Later. ”
Once he was out of sight of the quarry, Jul broke into a run and made for the growing assortment of smal vessels that had started to assemble at Bekan. Jul had to know where ‘Telcam was going and who he was meeting, if only to have a fal back position if anything went wrong and ‘Telcam failed to return one day.
The kind of creatures who would sel the monk weapons would just as easily betray him to someone else for a higher price. Jul fired up his shuttle’s drive and took the routine flight path out of Mdama. If he was lucky, ‘Telcam wouldn’t be looking for vessels on his trail, and Jul could hang behind him at a discreet distance and perhaps even work out his destination without needing to land.
He set his shuttle to maintain a fixed distance behind the Contrition and sat back to study the sensor screens. After six hours, Jul decided ‘Telcam was heading for the Narumad system, scattered with planets that humans referred to as glasslands. That was their disrespectful term for worlds that had felt the cleansing fire of a plasma bombardment sanctioned by the San’Shyuum.
As good a place as any to have an unnoticed rendezvous. And to hide warships, of course.
‘Telcam’s Contrition began to fol ow a more specific course two hours later. He was on a trajectory for a world that appeared on Jul’s charts as Laqil, but that the humans had renamed New Llanel i. The colonists had managed to establish only a handful of sprawling settlements and it hadn’t needed much attention to restore it to its prehuman state. Jul kept out of ‘Telcam’s visual range, tracking him on his screen, and landed in the lee of a hil about a kilometer from where the shuttle had touched down.
So now we’ll see your shy associates.… He moved from cover to cover and eventual y caught sight of it, skylined by the glaring silver reflection of the vitrified plain beyond: a human dropship, sitting about a hundred meters from ‘Telcam’s vessel. So it was Kig-Yar, then. The vermin were pil aging everything they could find.
The human vessel was a cut above the average fruit of Kig-Yar looting, though. It bristled with electronics masts that extended from a pod on top of the hul , which was a soft dark gray material so matte that it seemed more like fabric than metal.
They’re getting very ambitious, our Kig-Yar friends. A rather expensive toy for them. Like the Huragok.
Jul shifted position and knelt among the scrubby bushes like a sly human. Even at this distance, he could hear ‘Telcam’s voice but he couldn’t make out the words. He edged forward a meter at a time until he had a clear view of the commandeered human ship.
Now … I wasn’t expecting that.… A human pilot was sitting in the cockpit, a female with black hair and delicate features, fiddling with controls above the viewscreen. It confirmed his worst fears that the Kig-Yar and scattered human colonists had now found common cause in the aftermath of the Covenant’s destruction. They were kindred spirits in too many ways. ‘Telcam should have known better than to do business with them.
Jul was rehearsing how he would broach this error of judgment with the monk and stil struggling with his disbelief about such crass naiveté when he saw someone get out of the dropship. It was another human female, but this was no opportunist from the civilian colonists. She walked with the confident authority of someone used to command. And she was wearing a UNSC uniform.
Was this official? Was this how the UNSC fought wars?
She might just be a corrupt officer lining her pockets. The war’s over and nobody’s checking the armory too closely.
Jul could hear them talking. He knew little of human languages, but ‘Telcam—inevitably—was completely fluent in the one the UNSC used most frequently: English. Jul recognized the sounds even if the words meant nothing.
“I hear your Admiral Hood plans to visit the Arbiter,” ‘Telcam said. Whatever he was saying, he was a little uneasy with her. Jul could hear the lower note in his voice. “Would you like me to kil him for you, Captain?”
The female officer, one hand on her hip and the other on the holster of her sidearm, shook her head. “That’s not how we do things, Field Master.
It wouldn’t serve either of our purposes.”
“Your government is most subtle, Captain, but subtlety may wel be the undoing of you.…”
Jul didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. Something huge and heavy smashed into him from the side like a missile and knocked him flat on his back, winding him.
His helmet went flying. He struggled to get up, thinking there was some wild animal that he’d failed to take account of on this miserable planet, and then he found himself looking into the gold-mirrored face of a creature that wasn’t quite as big as he’d thought it was.
It was one of the human demons, the soldiers they cal ed Spartans.
Not only had it managed to ambush and bring him to the ground, but it also had him pinned down. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, giving it a moment to bring its fist down into his face.
The Spartan was many times heavier than any human Jul had ever swatted aside with the back of his hand. The powerful downward blow broke his teeth. He tried to yel a warning, but he couldn’t, choking on tooth fragments and blood and struggling to dig his claws into impossibly hard armor.
The Spartan punched him a few more times as he tried to keep a grip on its throat. Then boots appeared on the ground around his head and something smashed into his skul once, twice, three times. Stunned, he stil tried to pul free. But he was now pinned by several armored troops and he couldn’t hang on to the Spartan any longer. Its knee was right across his throat. It could have crushed his windpipe, but it seemed to be waiting.
Maybe it wanted to watch him choke to death as some vengeance for al the comrades it had lost to the Covenant. If that was the case, Jul wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of reacting.
But how could I let this happen? How could humans possibly ambush me? Jul was close to asphyxiating. I will die like a warrior. I will not let it see me give in.
His arms were pinned. Although he was certain he was kicking furiously, he didn’t seem to be connecting with anything. Were his legs obeying him? Al he could do was gasp while his throat was fil ing up with blood and spittle.
“Spying on the Bishop. Tut tut.” The voice came from one of the others, not the Spartan, and it was male. “Hey, somebody get his helmet.”
Jul knew he was losing consciousness when he found himself suddenly just interested in the faceless creature choking the life out of him. He’d never seen a Spartan in the flesh. The more gul ible shipmasters said Spartans were brought back from the dead, repaired and resuscitated to fight again, and he’d always thought those wild exaggerations were cowards’ excuses for losing battles. But this one was everything the rumors had said.
It took me down. Not a shot fired. And now it’s killing me at its leisure.
Why don’t they just kill me outright? Perhaps they can’t.
He should have cal ed out for help from ‘Telcam, but it was too late. And ‘Telcam was in league with them.
Jul had never thought he would be afraid to die. He’d faced death so many times that he was used to it, familiar with the flood of terrified excitement, certain that if the end came then his clan would know that he met his end with honor. But he’d never planned to face the great transcendence helpless and struggling, unable even to inflict damage in his dying moments. It was the worst possible disgrace. And disgrace terrified him far more than death.