The humans came back to peer at him from time to time.
Jul could hear them outside even if he couldn’t see them. He wasn’t sure if they were simply checking to see if he was stil alive or plucking up courage to enter the cel again. He had no way of knowing the layout of the ship, but how complex could it be? Ships needed hangars, he knew he’d been brought up from the hangar deck, and it was only a matter of finding his way back down there, seizing the shuttle, and smashing his way through the stern doors.
It would breach the corvette’s hul and kil its occupants, almost certainly, but that was a welcome but unintended consequence. First, though, he needed to get out of the cel .
The footsteps outside stopped and there was a slight hiss as a viewscreen opened in the door.
“Shipmaster? It’s me, Phil ips.” He was much more slightly built than the others, with even less muscle than the tal female shipmaster, but he was clearly someone of importance to them. “Jul ‘Mdama, your clan’s worried about you. They don’t know where you are. Your friend Forze is searching for you.”
Phil ips spoke a Sangheili dialect. He pronounced it like an idiot child, the kind best cul ed for the good of the clan, but the words were understandable and his grammar was excel ent. Against his wil , Jul found himself drawn instantly into debate. He knew he shouldn’t have responded but he found it impossible to resist.
Poor Forze. Poor Raia.
He would have thought it was purely interrogator’s bluff if Phil ips hadn’t mentioned Forze’s name. How did he know al this? He must have been monitoring radio channels. Humans were much better at spying and sneaking around than they were at honest warfare, just like the Kig-Yar. Those two were made for each other.
“And he may find me, vermin, but I expect to be long gone from the ship by then,” Jul said.
He stepped right up to the door and roared against the screen, jaws wide open. Phil ips didn’t even flinch. That was remarkable in itself. Jul could see outside into the passage now, and one of the armored soldiers was standing beside Phil ips, helmetless but carrying a short carbine. Jul had looked into enough human eyes in their final moments to be able to gauge their feelings. The soldier clearly loathed Sangheili to the depth of his being. He had a conspicuous scar along his jaw and greenish-brown eyes that didn’t blink, those awful pale human eyes like a dead fish’s. Jul doubted that the man wanted to ask him any questions.
“So what were you doing down there?” Phil ips asked. He was a complete contrast to the other human. His eyes were burning, alive, consumed with the desire to know. “Why were you stalking the monk?”
“Why don’t you let me out of here before I simply tear my way out?”
“Here’s the problem.” Phil ips did that display of teeth which was supposed to be a friendly gesture in a human, although Jul had always found that very odd. What was the point of displaying your fangs if it wasn’t a warning? “If we let you go, you’re going to cause a lot of problems. If we keep you, we avoid those problems. You might even be helpful to us, and then one day we can hand you back to your clan.”
“If you think you can threaten me, you should know better. No matter how many times you send that demon to give me electric shocks.”
Phil ips frowned for a moment. The soldier whispered something to him that made him shake his head. Phil ips leaned close to the viewscreen and held up the arum that one of the soldiers had taken.
“This is wonderful. It’s beautiful y made. It’s an arum, isn’t it?” He started fiddling with it, moving the spheres around. Jul could hear the clunk and tap of the stone inside. “It certainly teaches you patience, doesn’t it?” Phil ips was moving sections of the spheres more slowly now, one click at a time, and holding it up to his ear to listen to it with that bared-teeth expression. “There … nearly got it … there!”
He held his palm beneath the arum, the fingers of his other hand barely able to grip the sphere, and shook it.
To Jul’s horror, the stone fel out.
It was marbled blue and green, like a little planet, like a tiny version of Earth, the world that had nearly been within the Covenant’s grasp. Jul almost felt more ashamed at seeing a human solve the arum with such ease that he did at being captured.
“It took me a few hours to get there.” Phil ips dropped the stone back in the slot and scrambled the spheres again. “I used to love things like that when I was a child.”
Jul couldn’t work out if it was a psychological trick or genuine innocence, but whatever the intention it had shaken him to his core. Very few Sangheili could unlock an arum within days, let alone hours.
Phil ips tossed the sphere between his hands, back and forth. “Jul, I’m wel aware that you find it honorable to die rather than give us answers.
Many humans feel the same way. But what do you think your brothers and your clan would think if we let everyone on Sanghelios know that you’d surrendered to us?”
Phil ips just looked at him, teeth now covered by his lips, but stil with that stupid upward curve of his mouth that might have been amusement or an attempt at friendliness. This creature understood Sangheili better than Jul had anticipated. This was the worst possible shame, and Phil ips obviously knew it. To be exposed as a traitor and a coward, someone wil ing to trade his honor for his miserable life, was something that would not only soil Jul’s memory but also cast a massive stain on his entire clan. Raia would never be able to remarry. Al the children of the keep would be shunned, shut out of Sangheili society, in case he had fathered them. It would be both the end of his personal bloodline and that of al his brothers. It was beyond death.
Yes, humans were infinitely devious.
Jul struggled for a retort. This wasn’t the way Sangheili dealt with an enemy. He should have grabbed the human by his scrawny throat and squeezed the life out of him, but that was a pleasure he’d have to reserve for later. He had to think his way out of this.
“But if you tel anyone that you have a Sangheili prisoner,” he said, “how can your Shipmaster of Shipmasters make peace with the Arbiter?
That’s what you seek, isn’t it?”
Phil ips blinked, nothing more. “Wel , that makes the assumption that we would tel them you surrendered while you were doing something honorable. If we were to say that you’d given yourself up while doing a deal with us to overthrow the Arbiter, how do you think that that would be received at home?”
“I forgot,” Jul said. “You just lie, don’t you?”
“So we do.” Phil ips did that nauseating curve of his lips again. “It saves on ammunition, my friend here tel s me.”
“There’s no help that I can possibly give you,” Jul said. “Even if I was such a disgrace to my clan that I wanted to.”
Phil ips hunched his shoulders up and let them fal again, possibly indicating that he didn’t care. “You’re going to be handed over to the Office of Naval Intel igence. If that doesn’t worry you, then it should. They can do whatever they want with you. Now, I’l take a guess that you’re working undercover for the Arbiter to keep an eye on those who want to overthrow him, which is al very honorable, but if word of that reaches Avu Med ‘Telcam, then Abiding Truth knows where your keep is and where your children are, and they’l exact their revenge.”
My children. My keep.
Jul had nothing left to say. He dissolved into a mass of rage and drew back his head to spit with al his strength against the glass. That was a gesture these humans understood as wel any Sangheili. Phil ips stil didn’t flinch. He just stared, smiling.
When Jul’s rage and frustration subsided a little, something struck him that he could use to his advantage. Phil ips didn’t have al the answers.
He had guessed wrongly about al egiance to the Arbiter.
That was something Jul could cling to and use, although he wasn’t sure quite how yet. This bargaining business, this sly maneuvering, wasn’t something he was used to.
Phil ips was stil looking at him, neither afraid nor angry, as if he had al the time in creation.
“Why should I even listen to you?” Jul asked. It was more a question he was asking himself, because at any point during this exchange, he could simply have turned his back and started ripping the cel apart again. Yet he was standing here, having a conversation with this lying little human insect, when there was nothing he needed to do or say except refuse to cooperate with them. “There is nothing in this for me. There is nothing in it for Sanghelios. So this is pointless. Have your sport with me now or kil me, whatever amuses you, but there’s no way you can engage me in your plot.”
Phil ips cocked his head on one side, just like a Kig-Yar. It was tempting to think they had some common genetic ancestry. “I noticed that you’ve been looking at my friend Vaz from time to time. You can see he’d love to cut your throat and watch you bleed to death. He’s a very nice man, but he’s like almost every other human—most of us hate you because you’ve tried to wipe out our entire species. There’s only three human beings who’d be sorry to see you go extinct, in fact, and that would be me and my two research assistants, because we study Sangheili. So remember that we’re both a long way from home, Shipmaster, and the balance of power in the galaxy has just changed. ”
Phil ips looked as if he was going to continue the conversation, but then he jerked back as if someone Jul couldn’t see had interrupted him. The viewscreen and the audio link were stil open. He caught one word that he understood in the garbled, mumbled human language.
It was Hood—the Shipmaster of Shipmasters. The other word that kept being repeated was onyx. He didn’t know what onyx was, only that there were now several people outside his cel and they kept repeating the word as if they needed it confirmed.
Phil ips put his hands to the viewscreen and tapped as if he was trying to get Jul’s attention. “I’m afraid I’ve got to go, Shipmaster,” he said. He looked a little confused. “Something’s come up. Just think about our conversation, that’s al I ask you.”
Then the viewscreen closed, leaving the cel door an unbroken sheet of composite again, and Phil ips was gone. Jul stood staring at the bulkhead for a few minutes, out of options and in danger of drowning in his own frustration, but there was one thing he could cling to.
He was definitely going to think about this conversation. He would learn from it.
BRIDGE, UNSC PORT STANLEY.
Vaz was fascinated by the strange spectrum of things that brought a glow to women’s cheeks.
He’d been doing it al wrong. He could have ditched the chocolates and roses a long time ago and saved himself a lot of trouble. Naomi perked up when she was talking about military tactics, and Osman was now definitely radiant at the prospect of getting boots on the ground on Sanghelios.
“We’re coming up to a busy few days,” she said. “You spend months waiting for something significant to happen and then two interesting ops come along at once. Number one—Hood’s visit to the Arbiter is on, and we’re going to accompany him.”
“Ooh,” Phil ips said, miming boyish glee. Or maybe it was real. “Can I volunteer for that, please?”
“He’s been given permission to bring up to three minions with him, presumably because they think we’re trouble in larger numbers. So that’l be me, someone who can drop a Sangheili with one shot, and someone who might give us an advantage when speaking to them. And that would be you, Evan. Any volunteers for the other position?”
“Me, ma’am.” Vaz was itching to do something physical. He was used to being pumped on adrenaline and expending energy, not sitting around and waiting. He knew he wasn’t cut out for the intel igence services. “They might find Naomi too threatening.”
“You could take Devereaux,” Mal said. “She’s much more evil than she looks.”
“I’l be driving the bus,” Devereaux said, pinning up her hair again. A strand had started to work loose and was clearly annoying her. “So when is it scheduled for, ma’am?”
“Sixteen hours,” Osman said. “And as soon as Hood’s safely away, then we’re heading for Onyx.”
It had to be important for Parangosky to want to divert Osman there. Vaz reached out and took the arum away from Phil ips to see if it was as easy as he made it look. Osman seemed very upbeat about Onyx, as if it was something she’d been looking forward to for a long time. She even perched her backside on the comms console rather than sitting down in the captain’s chair. She kept looking at Naomi, but when she did she seemed almost nervous. But Osman didn’t do nervous. Vaz realized something big was going down, and she’d said there were UNSC personnel stranded on Onyx.
So it had to be the Master Chief: they’d found him.
It was the only thing that would explain the excitement and urgency. There were plenty of ONI personnel around to deal with less critical situations. They would only send Parangosky’s heir on a real showstopper.
“The anomaly at the Onyx coordinates is a Dyson sphere,” Osman said. “And we’ve now had transmissions from it. Right now it’s enclosed in a slipspace bubble and compressed to less than the size of a soccer bal in this dimension. But we’re working on bringing it into realspace. Once our techies get in there, there’s a lot of brand-new Forerunner technology that they’re going to strip out and use. This is big stuff, people. Really big stuff.”
“But who’s transmitting?” Devereaux asked.
Osman hesitated for a moment. Naomi perked up. She had to be thinking the same as Vaz, that they’d found the Master Chief.
“Is it John?” Naomi asked at last.
Osman paused for a moment before shaking her head. Even Vaz felt the disappointment, but it must have crushed Naomi.