The Huragok must have made a translation device to acquire an audible means of taunting them while it hid. When the full meaning of that hit her, Chol was more stunned than furious, but fury didn’t take long to catch up.
“Did that thing just defy me?” she snarled. “Did it refuse an order? Did it?”
Noit, still gazing up at the deckhead, nodded. “I believe it did, mistress.”
“Listen to me, you useless gas-bag,” she snarled. “When I find you, I’ll perforate you with a blade and use your hide to make a kitbag. Do you hear me? Know your place. Now open these doors.”
She was still expecting a response, and even to see the Huragok squeeze out of a conduit and drift meekly across the deck to do as it was told. Then she’d take her knife and stab it. It would sink, and she would finish it off. She might even hang the hide on a bulkhead to show other Huragok she might acquire one day that she brooked no disobedience.
But there was just the profound silence of an empty ship in space.
“It spoke,” Bakz said.
“I heard.”
“I’ve never known one do that before. What’s made it behave like that?”
“It’s defective,” Chol snapped.
“It’s more than that. Defective just means that it gets things wrong. That one’s hostile. They’re never hostile. They never get things wrong, either.”
“Are you going to carry on telling me what I already know, or do something useful?” Chol called Paragon’s bridge. She couldn’t count on the comms channels not being jammed now. “Zim, can you hear this? Zim?”
But there was just dead air and the occasional fizz of static. Sometimes Sinks seemed to have blocked their comms. Now she was worried as well as furious. Bakz was right; a rogue Huragok was unheard of. But she now had one roaming around her ship, and all of its skills that she took for granted to keep things running smoothly were now being diverted to disruption. She had no idea just how bad things might get. She needed to access the bridge and vent the entire ship, or she’d wasted her journey.
Now the rest of the search party started calling in.
“Mistress, this is Ril. We can’t get into the drive compartments. The access controls have been sabotaged.”
“Same here in the forward section, mistress.”
I will have this ship. I’m not going home empty-handed now.
“Bakz, get back to ship and take a team with you,” she said. “Noit, he’ll need you to open the doors. Bring back the portable laser cutters. Ved, Lig—guard those dropships with your lives. We have a Huragok sabotaging the ship.”
“Understood, mistress. We’ve found—”
The comms went dead. She should have expected that. The Huragok was capable of reducing the ship to its component atoms, given enough time. What else would he dare to do now? What did he want? She was sure they had no concept of right or wrong, just working or not working. She couldn’t understand it.
I don’t have to understand it. I just have to defeat it.
She couldn’t tell how far Bakz and Noit had gone because she couldn’t speak to them. All she could do was wait. They came running back sooner than she expected, though, and they were empty-handed.
She could guess the worst. They’d taken off their helmets. They couldn’t communicate any other way.
“We can’t get out, mistress,” Bakz said. “The controls have been destroyed. We’re trapped here.”
Chol managed to remain calm. She was up against a glorified mechanic, not the Arbiter’s entire fleet. She could think her way out of this. Zim would have realized something was wrong, and he’d be mounting a rescue. She could sit tight or go on the offensive.
How?
She gazed up at the deckhead. The thing was in those conduits somewhere, and he was as reliant on oxygen as she was. Did she dare take off her helmet and conserve her suit’s air? Could the Huragok isolate the compartment and vent it?
Of course he could. They could do anything. The question was whether it would deliberately kill. When the day had begun, she hadn’t even known Huragok were capable of disobedience, let alone violence. She removed her helmet anyway.
“Let’s not panic,” she said. “If Huragok were invincible, they’d be running the galaxy. Let’s think.”
She paced around the bulkheads, checking in alcoves and passages to see if there were any backdoor routes she could exploit. The three of them had been going over the whole section between the two sets of doors for some time before she noticed a slight trembling beneath her boots.
The drives were powering up.
“Mistress?” Bakz called. “Mistress, can you feel that?”
She could. It wasn’t just the maneuvering engines, either. It was the slipspace drive. Judging by the vibrating deck, the drive was spooling up to jump, and faster than usual.
“It’s insane,” she said. “It can’t possibly—”
But it did. Pious Inquisitor jumped into slipspace with nobody at the helm. Chol shrieked with rage and—yes, she’d admit it to herself—shock.
UNSC PORT STANLEY, OFF VENEZIA
Osman watched the two transponder icons moving toward Stanley on the screen. How was she going to deal with this? Things had to be said. She rehearsed a few diplomatic phrases in her head.
Naomi, don’t disembark until the prisoner has been removed from Tart-Cart.
Naomi, please come to the bridge. Dev, hold all hatches secure until Naomi’s clear of the hangar deck.
Naomi, I don’t think your first meeting with your dad should be when he’s hauled out of Tart-Cart wearing handcuffs.
No matter how Osman worded it, it would be difficult. This was the classic good news, bad news joke that wasn’t remotely funny. She reached for a piece of crystallized ginger, rolled the wrapping into a tight ball, and lobbed it into the waste hatch.
BB faded up gently to hover above the radar plot, the very image of tact and diplomacy. “Would you like me to ask Vaz to dismount first and take the prisoner to the brig?”
“You’re a gentleman, BB. But I’m not much of an officer if I can’t do it myself. Can you imagine Parangosky dithering like this?” Sometimes she felt she could see expressions on that plain, featureless box of blue light. “Okay, patch me through to Dev first. Deep breath. Stanley to Tart-Cart … Dev, this is Osman.”
“Yes, ma’am. ETA six minutes.”
“I want to disembark Sentzke and get him out of the way before Naomi sees him.”
“Understood, ma’am.”
“How’s Vaz?”
“I think he needs to be scanned for head injuries. Not quite himself.”
“BB’s got the med suite standing by. We’ll get him straight up there.”
“Sorry about the helmet cam, ma’am. I forgot to switch it on. You didn’t miss much, except my great frame charge breaching technique.”
Osman almost didn’t want to know if Dev had decided not to record her actions on Venezia. There was nothing for her to hide. “No problem. You’re all safe and we’ve got a significant prisoner. I’ll debrief Vaz and Mal later. Osman out.”
She turned to BB again. His light was a little dimmer.
“There,” he said. “It’s going to be much easier than you think.”
“I’m glad Parangosky isn’t the kind of boss who calls me every five minutes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure what I’d do if she told me to ship Sentzke back to Bravo-Six right away.”
“Well, you’re not going to call her, so she’s not going to tell you, which is how it works. She’s left you to deal with it as you see fit. How long have you been in ONI? That’s how we do business.”
“I’m not sure if that’s profound trust or a culture of plausible deniability, BB.”
“Both, probably. The point is that you need to work out what’s right. What you can live with. If you were a civilian politician, you wouldn’t turn a hair about this.”
“But I’m not.”
??
?Just putting it in context. One day, you won’t have anyone to answer to. That’s not the end of civilization. It’s dealing with reality rather than dealing with the system. Remember that we’re in this mess because Parangosky tolerated a law being broken for the sake of expedience, so all you’re doing is a little tactful unraveling for which she might well be grateful. Law is just religion for atheists, dear. It’s equally shot full of contradictory nonsense.”
“Can I descend into cliché?”
“Only if you make it snappy. Naomi’s on her approach path.”
“Okay. Two wrongs—not equal to or more than a right.”
“Silliest saying I ever heard.” BB brightened and twirled, obviously satisfied that he’d grounded her again. He had. He always did. “Good luck with quantifying a unit of right or wrong. Shall I put you on the blower to Naomi, then?”
Osman nodded. BB had changed since his painful loss of fragment data on Sanghelios. He seemed older and wiser. She just hoped she was, too.
“Stanley to Bogof. Naomi, can you let Tart-Cart clear the hangar first?” No need to explain. She’s not stupid. She needs time to prepare for this too. “Or is Mal in worse shape than Vaz?”
“I can’t assess that, ma’am. He looks worse than he sounds. Spenser’s checked him out.”
“He’s a trauma doctor now, is he?”
“He says he’s patched up quite a few colleagues who didn’t dare go to a hospital.”
The big question seemed to have passed unasked. “In case you didn’t know, we have your father.”
“Copy that, ma’am.” There wasn’t even a hint of reaction. “I was aware.”
“Okay.” Well, at least that’s out of the way. “We secure the Pelicans and jump right away. Osman out.” She turned to BB again. “Is Phillips still in the med suite?”
“I’ll keep him there. He’s having fun checking himself for alien parasites.”
Osman took the long walk down to the hangar deck, rehearsing her greeting. Neutrality seemed best, like receiving a new ambassador who might turn out to be a perfectly decent and sociable man even if he represented the Republic of Beelzebub. Apologetic was probably right, but Sentzke didn’t know the magnitude of the original wrong that had been done to his family. Accusing was unfair, because he hadn’t actually done anything yet. He might have been amassing an arsenal, and if UEG law had any relevance then he was guilty of terrorism simply on the basis of intent, but this was a case of what was right and wrong, and she would listen first. She wasn’t sure if that was because it might achieve a more positive outcome or because she was too close to the issues at the heart of it.
Would I do that for anyone except Naomi’s father? Probably not. Is it for Naomi, or to make me feel better? No idea.
And remember that it’s all about capability. Not intent.
She waited at the safety bulkhead for the flashing lights to stop and indicate that the Pelicans were secured on deck, engines shut down and hangar doors sealed. On the deck below, the gantry, Bogof still looked much like a regular Pelican except for the stealth coating and her height, jacked up a little to allow for the slip drive mounted midships under her hull. Dev was the first out. She tucked her helmet under one arm as she looked to the gantry and gave Osman a thumbs-up.
“Okay, BB,” Osman said. “Spool us up for a jump. Let’s go find P.I.”
“Spooling up, ma’am. No launching pavement pizzas from the gantry, please.”
“I’m fine.”
Osman headed for the ladder. It was crazy to climb down to the deck during a slipspace jump, but nausea was the least of her problems. She had to move Sentzke fast if only to get Mal to the med suite as quickly as possible. Fast was good. Fast meant she followed her gut, and after all these years her gut should have known what it was doing. She was two steps from the bottom of the ladder when her gut let her down and she felt like she’d been turned upside down and spun in a drum. She found herself hanging by one arm for a second or two, then got her bearings and let herself slide down to the deck.
Vaz was already standing at the ramp, holding out an arm to someone Osman couldn’t see. He looked terrible. She was instantly furious that anyone had dared lay a finger on one of her men. One eye was nearly closed with a purple swelling. His lip was split, too. For a moment the enormity of detaining Naomi’s father took second place to Vaz and his fitness to deal with what might be coming.
“Get yourself to the med suite, Vaz.” She caught his arm. “I’m hoping we’re going to find a battlecruiser plus one Huragok, but we might run into a Kig-Yar ship as well. Or instead.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He fumbled in the pockets of what looked like a company’s work clothes and pulled out a pistol, a radio, and a plastic bag of personal effects. One was a very old, bulging leather wallet. “Do you want me to take Staffan to the brig first?”
“I’ll take him. You get yourself fixed up.” She drew her pistol, not that any prisoner could escape in slipspace. “So he wants to be called Staffan, does he?”
“That’s what everyone calls him.”
Okay, Staffan it is. Sentzke … well, that’s Naomi too, and I don’t know how this is going to affect her. “Sure. Get going.”
“I need to brief you before you talk to him, ma’am. I think you’ll be disappointed in me.”
“I doubt that.” She tried to look past Vaz into the crew bay. “BB, tell Bogof it’s all clear as soon as I’m off the gantry. And—”
And there he was.
Staffan Sentzke stood at the top of the ramp as if he was working out how to keep his balance with his hands tied. He was a fit, lean man in late middle age or early old age, depending on how you looked at it, with white hair, Naomi’s pale gray eyes, and an expression that said the world couldn’t possibly be any more of a disappointment to him. Osman wasn’t following proper procedure for handling prisoners, but then she wasn’t entirely sure what the man’s status was. Not voluntarily embarked. That would do for now.
“I’m Admiral Serin Osman.” She’d studied the photo of him until she thought she knew his face, but it still didn’t prepare her for how much he looked like Naomi. “Call me Serin if you like. Come this way.”
Staffan seemed an odd mix of preoccupation and anger, as if he’d been doing something important when they interrupted him and really didn’t have time for all this crap. “Am I ever going to see my family again?” he asked. “Or is this history repeating itself?”
“I’m going to be straight with you, Staffan. I just don’t know how this is going to pan out. Maybe we can help each other out, maybe not.”
She held out her hand to steady him, conscious of what he’d been through but under no illusions about what it had made of him. He stepped down and looked around the hangar. He was seeing things he probably never should have, but he didn’t seem to be checking the ship out for classified tech.
“Vaz told me my daughter’s alive,” he said. “Whatever you’re planning, just be aware that everything that happens from now on depends on whether that’s true or not, and what you tell me. Do you understand, Admiral?”
“I think so.” No Serin, then. Should she tell him now, and let him sit and think that over while she debriefed Mal and Vaz? Do what you feel is right. “Yes, she’s alive. Yes, I’ll answer some questions. But now I’ve got to head off a problem you’ve given me.”
Like we didn’t give you one. We? Hang on a minute. I was abducted too. Do I have to share the guilt?
She walked Staffan along the passage to the cabins converted for use as cells, and made sure she didn’t put him in the one that Halsey had been held in. Stupid. There was no logic in that, but it just seemed nauseating under the circumstances, as if he’d be able to smell the scent of amoral arrogance and indifference to his suffering that the bitch had left behind. Osman decided to risk giving him the cell with a toilet and basin. The worst he could do was drown himself.
“We’ve jumped, haven’t we?” he said. “Where are we going? Earth?”
r /> Osman shook her head and wished she hadn’t. Her guard was down, and that was a mistake she normally never made on missions. But this was all about people she knew well, situations she was personally part of. It wasn’t the clean, surgical deception of malevolent strangers for the greater good. “You’ll see. I need to check on my people now. I’ll be back soon.”
He watched her go with the patient but cold gaze of a man who’d spent his life being lied to by officialdom and could wait until Kingdom Come for revenge. As she closed the door, she glanced through the inspection hatch and read his face: she was just another government bastard to him.
Is that what happened to my parents? Did my dad end up bent out of shape like that? What about my mother? What could I have done differently as a child to save them from all that?
“BB, keep an eye on him, please.” Osman broke into a jog along the passage. There it was again. She was externalizing her state of mind, running away from Staffan, her body’s expression of the barrier she had to place between the Sentzkes’ situation and her own so that she could be sure the decisions she made were solely about them, not resolving her own issues by proxy. “I’m going to the med suite.”
BB’s voice drifted out of the ship’s broadcast system. “Be patient with Vaz.”
The AI had overheard something, then. “I try not to second-guess people who’ve been in tight spots,” Osman said.
There were too many oughts and should-haves. They solved nothing. There were too many things she felt she should have done and never had, or never would. She walked through into the med suite, following the murmur of voices to the cubicles. Mal and Vaz were sitting in their underpants on the edge of the auto-examination couches, facing each other and talking in a near whisper. They stopped talking immediately and looked up.
It was hardly the time to be embarrassed, but it was awkward catching them half-dressed. She tried to look them in the eye and not let her gaze wander. Once she’d focused on Mal’s face, though, the reality of seeing her team that battered and bloody overrode everything else.
“Christ, that looks bad,” she said. Mal seemed in worse shape than Vaz, and they both had heavy bruising on their bodies, legs, and arms. “What’s come up on the scans?”