“Down here,” he said, opening the pantry door. “Long winters here, apparently. Everyone’s got a store cel ar.”
But not everyone had ONI’s latest surveil ance kit stored where their pickles should have been. Spenser threw off his coat and motioned them to sit down.
“I’l get the coffee on,” he said. “You can amuse yourselves looking through these. They’re al congenital y paranoid about outsiders here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been able to build up profiles pretty fast.” Spenser took out an old chip from his pocket, forced it into an adapter, and inserted it into his datapad. “I’ve been around a long time, so I’ve stil got files from the colonial insurgency. Stil a few old faces around, too. And some new ones. Look.” Pictures began scrol ing across the smal screen, some clearly from recent surveil ance, others old mug shots. “Moritz … Lanto … damn, I remember shooting this jerk’s dad. I should have done that before the bastard bred. That’d be before your time, though.”
Vaz took the pad, sat on the water-stained sofa, and began thumbing through the files. While Spenser rattled mugs and poured coffee, Mal leaned over the back of the sofa to see what kind of rogues’ gal ery the agent had assembled. The names meant nothing to him: it real y had been long before his time, mostly while he was in short pants. There was a whole world of hostility out here that he’d never real y known about.
So this was why they needed Spartans, was it?
Al the files had names on them, sometimes incomplete, but that seemed to be what Spenser was doing for the time being: observing, col ating, working out who associated with whom and what that association was with off-planet activity.
The Covenant was gone. These tossers could move around as they pleased now.
“Yes, it’s a real models’ portfolio, isn’t it?” Spenser said, slapping the coffee down on an upturned crate. “Stunned you into silence with their beauty, obviously.”
“We’re on receive,” Mal said. “Teach us, spook-master.”
Spenser chuckled. “Okay, think of this bunch as divided into two species,” he said. “The career terrorist, who’s in it for the money, and the ideologue, who has a political mission.”
He joined Mal leaning over Vaz. If there was anything Vaz hated, it was having someone reading over his shoulder, but he seemed oblivious right then. He didn’t even hunch his shoulders in protest. His gaze was glued to the datapad. He’d ground to a halt at one particular file.
“Oh, yeah,” Spenser said. “Now, if you saw that guy on the bus, you’d move to another seat, wouldn’t you? He’s got nutter written al over him.
The eyes don’t help. Boiled. Know what I mean?”
“I’m guessing that he’s political, judging by the technical term nutter, ” Mal said.
Vaz didn’t seem to be paying attention to the conversation. Spenser leaned right over him and magnified the image, and stil got no reaction.
“This guy’s been around awhile. Just hates Earth. If the Sangheili hadn’t shot humans on sight, I swear he would have enlisted with the Arbiter.
He’s definitely in the market for nukes, maybe as dirty bombs, maybe as ordnance, and he’s not going to be using them to rob banks.”
“But he needs transport if he wants to pul a Mamore-type bombing on Earth.”
“He’l get it. The Kig-Yar are getting al kinds of craft from the Brutes in exchange for arms.” Spenser flicked the screen again. “Lots of hardware floating around postwar, nobody keeping tabs on it, and suddenly our terrorists are back with more firepower than they had during the Insurrection.
Weird bastard, isn’t he?”
The picture looked like it was cropped from a wedding snap or something, with the man in question in a relatively tidy jacket. Mal couldn’t work out from the fragment of shoulder to one side of him whether it was a bride or just a woman in a light dress, but it was a moment from a normal life.
He was white-haired, maybe blond. No, Mal wouldn’t have started a casual conversation him. It was those eyes.
“You stil awake, Vaz?” Mal asked.
Vaz didn’t move for a moment, and Mal dipped down to check he real y was conscious. His eyes were shut. Then he opened them and stared at the pad for a while, not happy at al .
“I know him,” Vaz said. “Or at least I know who he is.”
“Shit, don’t tel me you owe him money.”
Vaz held the pad up for Mal, not looking at it. “We know his daughter. Check the name.”
Mal tilted his head. He didn’t know anyone by that name, least of al a woman. “Is she hot? Give me a clue.”
Vaz turned around and even for a bloke who didn’t smile much at the best of times, he looked devastated. Mal decided to cut the jokes. Spenser just straightened up and watched in silence.
“Sentzke,” Vaz said quietly. “The file says Staffan Sentzke. His daughter’s cal ed Naomi.”
ONTOM, SANGHELIOS: MARCH 2553.
BB was stil undecided whether Philips was a briliant actor or genuinely thriled to be alowed to wander around the ruins of Ontom.
“I think this is their equivalent of bella Firenze, ” Phil ips said breathlessly. “There’l be wonderful gal eries somewhere. Maybe a nice trattoria.”
“Check your blood sugar, there’s a good lad.”
“Come on, get into the spirit of things, BB.” Beneath al that excitement, he was scared. BB could detect the tremor in his voice. “Nobody gets to visit this place. Except me. ”
Phil ips was sitting on the broad rail of a low balustrade next to the river that cut through the city, looking somehow less conspicuous by talking openly into his comms unit with his datapad clutched in front of him like a guidebook. Each time he moved, BB—locked into that narrow perspective from his comms cam—caught a glimpse of the audience that now gathered wherever he went. A huge four-jawed mouth with huge canine teeth suddenly fil ed far too much of the frame as a Sangheili leaned over to peer into Phil ips’s face.
“Is it true?” the Sangheili asked. “Can you speak?”
“Of course I can speak.” Phil ips started laughing to himself as if it was some in-joke. “I hold the Arkel Chair of Anthropology at Wheatley.”
“Ah. Scholar. Yes, we thought you were too smal even for a soldier. ”
Dear God, and he’s still wandering around without his minder. He’s going to get himself ripped apart.
BB debated whether to tel him to move on. But the locals simply seemed stunned by him. He’d col ected a smal crowd now, blocking out the sun and throwing deep shadows across his lap. BB decided that the locals thought he was recording copious notes. They couldn’t have failed to notice him sketching furiously on his datapad like some demented tourist. Did they have any concept of human tourism? Nobody had bothered to record that in the database. They certainly understood pilgrimage, though, and BB got the feeling there was a lot of that in Phil ips.
A huge four-fingered hand fil ed the screen. It was clutching an arum, this time made from pale polished wood instead of the usual ebony or mahogany type.
“Now let’s see you crack this one.”
BB had no idea how Phil ips’s reputation for arum wrangling had spread, but it had, and every time he was offered an arum to solve he did so in record time, and left them baffled. Now they were bringing him ever more complex ones.
There seemed to be a wide range of mechanisms, and so far Phil ips had unlocked them al in less than half an hour. BB wondered whether to warn him that in the end, nobody real y liked a smart-ass. He knew that better than anybody.
Phil ips whistled tunelessly to himself. At one point he shook the arum and it made no noise. “Ah, this one’s already empty,” he said.
“I’d try a little humble incompetence if I were you,” BB whispered in his earpiece.
While Phil ips was taking an AI’s eternity unlocking the arum, BB kept a careful eye on Port Stanley. Vaz and Mal were off-comms on Venezia, lurking somewhere with Mike Spenser and due to cal in in an hour or so. Back at the Tart-Cart, Devereaux had her boots up on the console, carbine resting on her knees as she studied a service manual on her datapad. Osman was in her day cabin, poring over the schematics of Infinity with Naomi.
The arrest of Halsey and whatever fol owed would be a sideshow, BB decided. The real business of coming to terms with the old Spartan program was taking place here among the few survivors. It would be a footnote in the history books, like al the unsavory parts of Earth’s wars, of interest only to students of medical ethics, and forgotten until the next time someone repeated it because it seemed like a real y good idea this time.
“Wow,” Phil ips said. “Wow, wil you take a look at this. …”
BB was aware of everything that was perceived by each of his fragments, but some of his multiple viewpoints got his attention more than others at any given moment. Phil ips had just grabbed the top slot.
He wasn’t actual y talking into his radio. He’d just made a comment to himself. BB could hear the whispering noise of wood surfaces sliding against each other like a jar being opened, and then Phil ips straightened up a little so that the light fel on the arum he was grappling with.
Eventual y something tumbled into his lap.
It wasn’t a polished gemstone. Phil ips grabbed it, and the whole angle of the image tipped as if he’d suddenly stood up.
“Hey,” Phil ips cal ed. “Tel me about this one. Hang on—where did he go?”
He was facing into a forest of Sangheili at weapon-belt height. BB could only assume that whoever had handed Phil ips the arum had disappeared. BB’s first thought was that it was booby-trapped, which would have been almost reasonable given the circumstances, but even Phil ips would have reacted by now if he’d found an explosive device inside.
“Who was that?” Phil ips asked. His official minder, Cadan, appeared in view. The surly pilot definitely wasn’t cut out for hospitality work. BB could see him now, striding toward Phil ips with his huge head rol ing slightly as if to say that he hadn’t realized where Phil ips was and he was somewhat pissed off about it.
“Who was what?” Cadan demanded.
The audience was thinning out now. BB heard something rustle in Phil ips’s hand. “Never mind. Somebody gave me this arum and walked off before I could give it back.”
Cadan examined it. “The monks make that type. They make them very hard to open, too, so are you cheating?”
“I’l show you how I do it,” Phil ips promised, “but can you show me where they sel them?”
Cadan let out a long, exasperated growl. “I swear I’l kil you before this duty is over. Our children are less trouble than this.”
“Indulge me. Please.”
BB could now see Cadan’s back as he lumbered ahead of Phil ips, heading toward the old market. Phil ips trailed after him. Then he started unfolding a scrap of paper, holding it close to the lens.
“BB,” he whispered. “You need to take a look at this. This is what came out of the arum. ”
It wasn’t written in Sangheili. It was written in English, in awkward letters as if the shapes were unfamiliar even if the language wasn’t. Few if any Sangheili could read English even if they understood some of the spoken word.
Stay off the streets. You were unwise to come here at a time like this. Wait for contact from the sanctuary of the Abiding Truth and we will shelter you.
It had to be from ‘Telcam. Nobody else here would be sending Phil ips notes in English. Ontom might have been too risky a lead to fol ow after al .
“Oh, shit. ” Phil ips’s voice shook a little. “How am I going to do that with Cheerful Charlie fol owing me everywhere?”
“Just stay calm and stal ,” BB said. “If ‘Telcam knows you’re there, he knows you’ve got company, too.”
Osman needed to be told right away. BB popped up between her and Naomi while he hived off a fragment to place a signal to ‘Telcam.
“Apologies, Captain, but I need to brief you. It won’t take long. Phil ips has just had a message from ‘Telcam that suggests they might make a move against the Arbiter soon. He’s been told to wait for further contact in case they need to shelter him in the monastery.”
Osman shut her eyes for a moment. “I should have seen that coming.” She stopped in her tracks. “I ought to pul Phil ips out now, but that’s going to raise al kinds of awkward questions. I need to talk to ‘Telcam.”
“I’m getting him for you.”
“Okay, give me Phil ips’s cam feed, too.”
Osman stood up and started doing that slow pacing—one, two, three, turn—that was as near as she came to showing agitation. An ODST or a Spartan was a known quantity in a tight spot, but not an untested civilian like Phil ips.
“Worse comes to worst, ma’am, I’l go and extract him myself,” Naomi said.
The fact that Sanghelios was effectively impenetrable wasn’t too much of a deterrent for a Spartan, but BB knew it was a stunt they could only pul once, and then the whole delicate relationship between the Arbiter, UNSC, ONI, and ‘Telcam might come unraveled in an especial y ugly way.
Reigniting the war right after a peace deal wasn’t quite how BB thought Osman should enter the history books.
And ‘Telcam wasn’t responding.
“That might not be an option,” Osman said. “That’s what BB’s standing by for, I’m afraid.”
“It won’t come to that, Captain,” he promised. “Although a plan B is always comforting.”
BB projected the shaky, oddly angled footage onto the battle bridge monitor and Osman watched with her arms folded tightly across her chest.
The view showed a street ahead, a wide boulevard lined with trees with quite a few Sangheili mil ing around. It was the kind of angle beloved of TV reporters who thought that kind of camera work made their undercover stuff look edgy when they’d had gyro-mounted, self-directing minicams for centuries.