She pressed the comms key in front of her. “Naomi, have you changed your mind? We’re going ashore in thirty minutes.”
“No, ma’am.” It was impossible to tell from the Spartan’s voice if she was having a good day or a bad one. “I’m going to get to know our Huragok better.”
“Okay. Tell me if you change your mind.”
She didn’t, but then Osman didn’t expect her to. ONI clearance got Tart-Cart into UNSCSB Fort Southwick without the need for any personnel to go through customs or immigration. The agency moved unseen and unrecorded. Osman felt odd landing on a world where normal paperwork and bureaucracy still existed after so many years of operating between Sydney and places that no longer had capitals left standing, let alone anyone to check ID.
And BB wasn’t with them. That felt odd, too. He was on permanent link via Osman’s comms to be summoned or to alert her in an emergency, but he was, for all intents and purposes, absent. She missed him immediately. When she parted company with the rest of the squad, she found herself truly alone for the first time in months, making her way through Mindoro by taxi so she could see something of the place and try to make sense of what heritage she might have if she decided it was worth having.
The city was all high-rises and new construction, somehow much busier than Sydney and less weary, as if it had heard about all that Covenant unpleasantness over the years and was very sorry about it, but it had its own life to get on with. It was easy to forget that there were still colonies left that had managed to sit out the war, not modest backwaters like Venezia but big, brash, confident worlds like this.
“You could have done this trip a lot cheaper on the monorail, Admiral,” the taxi driver said.
“I’ve been away for a few years.” Osman gazed at the cityscape whipping by. “I just wanted to catch up.”
Mindoro thinned out into suburbs. A few kilometers later, she started seeing the signs for St. Malo. She’d built a mental image of it simply to visualize garbage bins and how she might have reached into them as a six-year-old, but it turned out not to be the post-apocalyptic hell-hole with roving gangs and graffiti that she’d imagined. It looked like the kind of town that property agents would describe as gentrified. Old houses had been restored and the streets were clean and tidy.
“This is the place,” the driver said. “Want me to wait?”
Osman paid him and stood looking up a tree-lined avenue. No memories came flooding back at all. She wondered whether she’d go and wander around the street where she’d lived later, or if that would be a bad idea.
“No, I’ll probably be some time,” she said. “Thanks.”
She really should have called Mrs. Leandro first. The woman might have been out, or in hospital, or on vacation. But Osman had to do this face-to-face, and there was every chance she’d get to the door and not be able to go through with it.
Why? What could possibly be left to know that could hurt me?
Get a grip. I’m Rear Admiral Serin Osman, next in line to the ONI throne. I don’t have anxiety attacks on doorsteps and chicken out of talking to old ladies.
She walked past the house once and took a few deep breaths, then turned around and went back to rap on the door. When it opened, a dark-haired woman in her sixties, smartly dressed and not a little old lady at all, stood in the doorway. Osman strained to recognize the face.
“Hi, are you Mrs. Leandro?” she asked. “Do I have the right address? Alkmini Leandro?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
God, how did she say this? How did you tell someone you weren’t dead? “Do you remember me? I know it’s been a long time, but I’m Serin. I was in your class. Serin Çelik. My name’s Serin Osman now.” She indicated her collar, a little self-conscious. “Rear Admiral, UNSC.”
The woman took a step back and put her hands to her mouth, studying Osman’s face. Then a smile formed and spread. She dissolved into tears. She flung her arms around Osman and hugged her, laughing and crying.
“Serin! Oh my, look at you! I thought you were dead. I really did. I thought something awful happened to you. Oh … this is a shock. Sorry. A wonderful shock, though. I think about you even now, and here you are.”
“Well, some awful things did happen.” Osman concentrated on steady, calming breaths. “But in the end, my luck changed. How are you?”
“Happier with the world for knowing that miracles still happen. My, you look well. Come in. Come in.” She grabbed Osman’s hand and led her into a hall lined with photos of people and places, all meaningless to Osman but that spoke of a life full of family and friends. “You were such a clever girl. I always knew you’d do well if someone got you out of that dreadful place and gave you a chance.”
“Someone did,” she said. No, she knew that she didn’t mean Halsey, and the awful place wasn’t where Mrs. Leandro imagined. “Someone gave me a choice. And you gave me a chance.”
“But what happened to you? Who took you? Family? Did someone rescue you?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you what I can.”
Osman couldn’t remember Mrs. Leandro at all. She tried hard to, and maybe it would come back to her after they’d talked for a while, but for the meantime she was content to sit and drink tiny cups of pungent Greek coffee, trying to recap on thirty-five missing years without revealing anything classified.
“Good Lord, where are my manners? Sorry, I’m still in shock. I never thought I’d see you again.” Mrs. Leandro jumped up, went to the kitchen, and came back with a white china plate of baklava, each little square oozing with syrup and studded with pistachios. “Are you hungry? Eat.”
Osman bit into the fragile pastry, which managed to be simultaneously crumbly, crunchy, moist, and sticky. It was a time machine. The taste took her back years.
Now she remembered everything, or at least everything that mattered. For a moment, she couldn’t swallow. It was shockingly primal. She had no idea that powerful memories could be unlocked quite like that.
“It’s like it was yesterday,” she said. It was the best she could manage.
“You always did like baklava,” Mrs. Leandro said, beaming. “So you’re an admiral now? I’m so proud of you, Serin. But it’s been an awful war. Will the peace treaty last? I won’t be able to look at things the same way if it all starts up again, not now that I know you’re in the Navy.”
It really was very good baklava. Osman would tell BB all about it. The taste and fragrance overwhelmed her, along with a growing but vague recollection of this kind, patient woman, and the realization of what her life might have been without ONI.
“Oh, don’t you worry about me,” Osman said. “I have a terrific crew. Good friends I can rely on. I’m a survivor.”
OLD ADMIRALTY HOTEL, KOWLOON, CASCADE: DAY TWO OF A FORTY-EIGHT-HOUR PASS
“This is a nice bar, so remember to leave it that way, eh, mate?” Mal brandished a glass with a twist of lemon peel and an olive in it. “Look. Two of my recommended fruit and veg for the day. You want another one?”
“I’ll get them.” Vaz, arms folded on the marble counter, nodded at the barman. Two glasses arrived with impressive speed, one vodka martini with a lot of garnish and one rum over ice. Vaz was getting slightly numb but he was pretty sure that you had lemon or an olive, not both. “I’ve never seen you drink cocktails.”
“That’s because you were normally under the table after two dry sherries by the time I started on them. So, what do you fancy for dinner? Chinese? Korean?”
Vaz lined up his glass with the edge of a precisely folded damask napkin embroidered with the name of the hotel. It was the poshest thing he’d seen in years. He’d waited for this run ashore for a very long time, and in ODST etiquette that meant he was obliged to get very drunk, eat himself to a standstill, and wake up with some woman whose name he didn’t just not know, but who he didn’t even recall meeting the night before.
But what he actually wanted was to find somewhere quiet to blow his brains out to erase all the th
ings he knew, and all the things he’d seen, and the last few weeks in particular.
It shouldn’t have ended like that. I should have done more.
If we’d just taken BB’s fragment in the radio from the start, I could have sneaked him into that ship the first time, he would have moved it that day, and Staffan would never have known about Naomi or ended up dead. It was that simple. But we decided to operate without BB. We got it wrong.
At least he hadn’t chickened out like he had with Halsey. It hadn’t panned out as he’d wanted, but then that kind of past could never be put right. The best you could do was claw back a few points.
As for BB—he didn’t know what the hell was going on there. He didn’t know AIs at all. Maybe he thought that not opening up another festering sore in the team was best for Earth’s security, because he was privy to things that Vaz and Mal probably never would be. Maybe all they really wanted was the data from the ship and the rest was just some smokescreen. Whatever BB had done, he’d sent that file. Vaz found himself wondering how to check if Staffan had managed to send a copy to Edvin.
No. Leave it alone now.
Life went on, though. Cascade was solid proof. It hadn’t been glassed, and even if it had had its ups and downs, it was making the most of the postwar boom. Someone had to take up the economic slack after all those Outer Colonies—and a lot of the Inners—had been melted flat. There was going to be a new space elevator in Mindoro and Kowloon even had a new yacht club. It was a boomtown. One man’s extinction was another’s fresh opportunity.
But Sanghelios is still out there, too.
It wasn’t Cascade’s fault that it wasn’t a gleaming sheet of vitrified soil from horizon to horizon. Vaz twisted on the barstool and looked around the lounge at the smartly dressed clientele who were probably all in construction, agribusiness, and mining, and all on expense accounts. A part of him longed to see his buddies from the 15th again, but what would he be able to talk about?
What have you been doing for the last few months, Vaz? Tell us all about it. Well, I’ve been helping to arm hinge-heads who’ll be back to kill us all one day, shoring up a system that kidnaps and experiments on kids, and killing old men who just wanted justice. How was your day?
He really wished he hadn’t had that last rum on an empty stomach. He turned around to face the bar again and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored wall of shelves behind the bar. Between the bright green kiwi fruit liqueur and a bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch, he saw a disappointment of a man with a fading black eye and a scar that was only just beginning to lose its color. It was a surprise that they let him and Mal in here, even in smart jackets. But a flash of a UNSC pass put the pieces together for the guy on the door. Unglassed or not, Cascade knew there’d been a war and why the planet was still there.
I should have stayed on board with Naomi. BB’s a good friend, but she needs flesh and blood at a time like this.
“Why did Osman want us to come here, anyway?” he said, trying to perk up. “We could have gone home. I could have shown you proper vodka.”
“A trip down Amnesia Lane. Guilt. Gratitude. She’s only human.” Mal put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Look, if you want to go back to the ship fully clothed and mostly sober, I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“No. I’m up for a meal. Really. I am.”
“Then we can torment Phyllis about Dev in the morning. That’ll be priceless.” Mal was trying hard too. “He’ll be in the med suite, a dry husk. No male civvie can survive the attentions of a female ODST and walk quite the same way again.”
“I think they’re just going to a concert.”
“Of course.”
“Do you think I’m an asshole, Mal?”
Mal looked him in the eye for a long time as if he was shaping up to say yes. “I think you narrowly missed a firing squad, to be honest.”
“I meant did I let Staffan down. Don’t give me the lecture on wanted lists. I mean the man.”
“I don’t see what else you could have done. I didn’t see or hear a thing, remember? And what you send to people is your business.”
“Yeah, I didn’t happen to recall a single thing you didn’t see or do, either.”
“What a pair of forgetful shit-heads we are.”
“Parangosky just knows.”
“Well, then, we’ll both wake up with a horse’s arse in our bunks and she’ll make us an offer we can’t understand.” Mal picked up his drink and raised the glass discreetly. “To Staffan. The poor old sod’s dead, but went out on his own terms. Not banged up in Ivanoff with Halsey sticking needles in him. And he got to see his daughter again.”
“And who’s going to tell his family? Who’s going to stop them searching for answers for the rest of their lives?”
“Not you, mate. You hear me? You stay clear of that place.”
There was nobody around to hear them doing the unthinkable and mourning for a terrorist. Vaz held up his glass.
“To someone who deserved better,” he said, and downed it in one.
Mal fished the strip of lemon peel out of his glass and chewed it. “Did you make him any promises?”
“What makes you think I did?”
“You’re Vaz. I know your every thought.”
“Okay, I swore I’d look after her. Even Spartans need looking after.”
“Does she know?”
“Does she need to?”
Mal made a show of checking his watch. It was new. “Okay, time for dinner. And we never discuss this again. But if it raises its head, I’ll be there with you. We both know what we did, and I won’t let you carry the can alone.”
“If I was slightly more drunk than I am,” Vaz said, “I’d be crying all over you.”
“Shit, you’re not drunk enough, then. Let’s fix that.”
Mal called a cab and they ended up somewhere on the harbor with a menu that had no English on it at all, and they wished they’d brought Devereaux along to translate. Some of the dishes contained things that even Mal wouldn’t try. They over-ordered, drank too much, and left the restaurant in the early hours. By ODST standards, it was tame. Nobody ended up handcuffed to a lamppost with his eyebrows shaved off and his underpants on his head, and nobody got in a fight. Vaz woke up in the back of the taxi just as Mal was paying the driver.
“Come on, you dirty little stop-out,” Mal said, guiding him in the general direction of the barracks gate. “Don’t tell me you’ve lost your pass. Be nice to the crusher.”
Vaz tapped the back of his neck and tried to focus on the Provost rating standing guard on the gate. “He can scan my chip.”
It didn’t matter that Parangosky thought the sun shone out their backsides. Security was going to give two drunk ODSTs a hard time. The guy on the gate checked Vaz’s ID twice, and when they signed in at the desk, Vaz got pulled over again.
I mustn’t get mouthy. I’m going to be in enough trouble as it is.
“This was dropped off for you earlier, Corporal,” the sergeant said. “Fleet Mail wasn’t happy about the lack of documentation, but apparently your ID and ship flagged special clearance and it went in the ONI Secret Squirrel bag. What a special little flower you are.” He pushed a well-packed box across the desk, about thirty or forty centimeters square, and leaned close to Vaz. “It better not be a head. I know what you ODSTs are like.”
They managed to find their cabins and Vaz flopped onto his bunk into temporary oblivion. He’d deal with the parcel in the morning. The room was whirling too much to unwrap anything. He woke up with a mouth like the bottom of a parrot’s cage, realized he’d slept through the alarm, and had to bust a gut to shower and get to the RV point to meet Tart-Cart. Mal was waiting for him outside the entrance, not looking hungover at all.
“No tactless comments,” he said. “Dev says it was a lovely concert. Yeah. I’ll bet. Osman met her teacher and had coffee. And they all lived happily ever after. Now back to reality, eh?”
Nobody chatted or joked on t
he flight back to Port Stanley. BB popped up in the crew cabin as soon as Devereaux docked, but even he was subdued. Vaz headed for his quarters and unpacked his bag.
Most of it was taken up by the box. He hadn’t had a parcel since he’d joined Kilo-Five, but these things took a while to catch up with ships. It was probably from the guys in his old troop, something really tasteless like a vintage blow-up sex doll or worse.
How do they know which ship I’m in, though? That’s classified.
He checked the label. Maybe they just addressed it with his name and service number, and ONI did the rest when it got coded. There were so many stickers on it that it was hard to tell which had been put on first. His name was there, but no ODST had written it in that format: CPL V. BELOI ODST. It was the wrong form of address, and there wasn’t even a service number. The accepting office’s stamp was Nimrod Dock, but then he found a sender and scribbled signature: MIKE AMBERLEY.
That was Spenser’s alias. Vaz didn’t wonder why. Anything was possible with ONI. It was only when he peeled off four layers of padded wrapping and found a perfect little wooden crate secured with screws that he started to wonder if it was really from Spenser at all.
I bet it’s an arum. I bet Phillips is behind this.
He took out his knife to unscrew the lid. Yes, it had to be an arum. There was something buried in shredded paper, a little old-fashioned and folksy, and when he put his hand in he could feel a curved surface. He picked the shredded packing out and saw the top of a matte black sphere. But when he lifted it with both hands, a length of power cable trailed behind it.
Now he had no idea what it was. The plug didn’t look like it would fit any outlet on the ship, either. Baffled, he poked around in the little crate to see if there was a note with it. His fingers found something small with sharp angles and a folded sheet of paper.
The small item turned out to be a tiny painted wooden chair, perfect in scale and detail, with an ornate carved back and a little padded satin seat. The dawning realization made his scalp prickle. When he unfolded the paper, the message on it simply read: I’LL KEEP MY PROMISE. THANK YOU.