“Believe it or not, Kilo-Five ran into Raia ‘Mdama,” Osman said. “She was with Forze, looking for Jul.”
“My, my. Stand by your hinge-head. I’ll pass that to Trevelyan.”
“How’s Magnusson doing with him?”
“She got the bioweapons team to modify the proteins and saccharides in some of their staple foods and tried them out on him. And on some Sangheili livestock.”
“That was fast. What happened?”
“It made the grain indigestible. The livestock are dying, and he was as sick as the proverbial dog until she called a halt. She wants to introduce the modified seed to Sanghelios to starve them out. But I’m not too keen. I don’t want to risk accidental contamination of similar crops when we recolonize.”
Osman didn’t even flinch. BB had to admire that detachment in the face of plans for global extinction. “Well, at least we have it in reserve if all else fails.”
“Indeed. Look, I have to be getting back now, Serin, but when we’ve finished mopping up and things are less fraught, come over and take a look at Infinity.”
“I will, ma’am. Good hunting.”
BB tried to herd Adj and Leaks toward the compartment he’d set aside for them. There was no point locking them in, because they’d just rebuild the locks. He’d learned that as long as he explained everything to them and made his instructions explicit then they did as they were told. They didn’t have time to defy him and they didn’t get offended. Life for them was about fixing and building and improving anything from equipment to injured organic tissue. It was all they wanted to do.
He barred the Huragok’s way and held up virtual tentacles.
Adj signed back.
Adj seemed to be explaining that to Leaks.
It was always sobering to see yourself through the eyes of others. BB was about to explain how ultra-fast processing inevitably made an AI impatient, but Adj was simply stating facts to the new kid, not passing judgment. Osman overtook BB, chewing contentedly and trailing a haze of zingerone and a few other fascinating volatile oils. He could smell the ginger via the ship’s chemhaz monitoring.
“You realize most officers would be too scared to eat anything Parangosky gave them,” he said. “Like accepting mushrooms from Agrippina.”
“The mushrooms are a great tip. Thanks.” She settled into her seat and held her finger just above the comms link. “Okay, BB, we’re fighting this ship alone. Ready?”
“Of course I am,” he said. “I have full tactical capability in case the crew’s incapacitated. But I know you like to feel useful.”
“It’s been a long time since I fired a shot in anger.”
“Oh, it’s like riding a bike. You never forget. And all you have to do is set objectives and I’ll achieve them for you.”
“Okay. See if you can get hold of ‘Telcam.”
BB could maintain monitoring on as many situations as he needed to, as long as he could establish a link with the relevant system. But as far as he was concerned he was actually present in all of them simultaneously. Tart-Cart was still grounded, and he was down there with Devereaux checking the diagnostic feedback; he was in Infinity scrutinizing targets around Vadam, using her imaging and dodging around Aine, just as he was wandering around Bravo-6 keeping an eye on Hogarth and Harriet, spying on Halsey out of sheer fascinated horror, and—intermittently—lurking in the makeshift rebel command center south of Vadam keep.
He could see all, be everywhere, and, if human beings acted as his hands, he could also do everything. But this was the humans’ war: they had to be the ones to take action and give one another information, not him. It was more than courtesy that made him leave Osman to tell Parangosky about Raia. Once he started driving those decisions himself, it became his war, and if a war was left to AIs, then he suspected it would only last seconds before they all decided it wasn’t worth the effort and went home to raid databases and play with fascinating theorems.
BB existed to protect Earth, and Osman in particular. Part of that protection was to accept that this was how they wished their world to be. Like a soldier, he was the instrument of the elected government, and he couldn’t simply pick the parts he agreed with.
Their choices are what make them human—good or bad. If I take away their choices, I take away their humanity.
In the space of a second, he watched it all, spread across space. Devereaux dropped a connector and swore in Cantonese. Halsey put her head in her hands and cried quietly while she repeated the name Miranda. Phillips watched Mal loading his ammo pouches, trying to find the right moment to start a conversation. On the ground in Vadam, BB detected a radio signal that connected a ship called Promised Revelation with one of ‘Telcam’s lieutenants, Buran.
He resisted the urge to ride the carrier wave in case the signal was interrupted and he found part of himself stranded again.
“This is Avu Med ‘Telcam,” a voice said.
“Captain, I’ve got him.” BB switched the channel through to Osman. “Go ahead.”
If Osman had any doubts, they didn’t show. She sat back in the seat, confident and in control. “Field Master, thank you for your assistance in recovering Professor Phillips. Now let me help you out in return.”
BB projected Infinity’s aerial recon image of Vadam onto the viewscreen right in her eye line. The wooded area in front of the Arbiter’s keep was now a solid mass of infantry behind a line of artillery pieces. Smoke blew back across them, kicking the image into thermal mode to maintain detail, and then one, two, three of them fired, dotting the image with flares of hot light. Explosions peppered the walls of the keep.
“You offered help before, but I think we’re doing better than we expected … Shipmaster.” Maybe ‘Telcam had someone within earshot. “The Arbiter’s sympathizers seem unwilling to join the fight.”
“Let me tell you what I can. There’s nothing I can do to prevent this, but your situation’s going to change radically in the next few hours. What I can do is assist and try to save some of your assets. I don’t know what form that’ll take yet, but I’ve got enough firepower and intel to stop this turning into a rout.”
‘Telcam went quiet for a couple of seconds. “Any advice, Shipmaster?”
“How many warships do you have?” Osman didn’t need to ask, because BB snatched the data from Infinity and overlaid it on the viewscreen. It was more a test of ‘Telcam’s honesty. “Not small vessels—proper warships. And where are they?”
“I have seven frigates and a cruiser. Four of the frigates are deployed to other states, and three are east of Vadam awaiting orders. The cruiser is still over Ontom. I want to avoid destroying Vadam itself, but if the Arbiter doesn’t surrender, I’ll use the ventral beam.”
“You’ve lost one ship, so I’d take good care of the others if I were you.”
“The Arbiter only has a call on five small cruisers.”
“Just be ready to change your plan. Take a look at what’s just shown up in high orbit, if your long-range sensors are still working. Trust me. Osman out.”
BB shut the link. ‘Telcam really had leveled with her.
“I don’t believe I said that.” Osman ran her hands over her face. “Trust me. Christ, BB, I wouldn’t, not if I were him.”
“You haven’t actually stitched him up yet, Captain.”
“So where’s the rest of the fleet gone? I know they’ve lost plenty of hulls one way or another, but is that all they’ve got?”
“No, but it’s all that the keeps are willing to commit. Like Earth’s civil wars.
In many of them, most people stayed out of it and let two factions slug it out. Most of Sanghelios is probably waiting to see who wins.”
“The more I see, the more I think that Magnusson’s crop killer project makes sense.”
“Ah, but it’s not the navy way, is it?” BB had a close eye on the decisions being taken on Infinity’s bridge, where Del Rio was waiting for the word to deploy the MAC against the rebels. “I’ll update the Admiral.”
“Hood does know we’re here, doesn’t he?”
“Of course, even if he can’t see us.”
“Remind them that we still have Kilo-Five stuck on the ground.”
Parangosky already had. Del Rio was happy to wait, and the Arbiter hadn’t responded to Hood’s latest message yet. BB watched Devereaux from the aft section safety cam.
“I think they’ll be able to move in a couple of hours,” BB said. “But it might end up being a salvage operation once they take off. It’s a good time to mention that to—oh, hang on.” ‘Telcam was trying to make contact. “It’s ‘Telcam again.”
Osman nodded. “Go ahead, Field Master.”
“Osman,” he said. His voice sounded very distracted, very different. And he rarely used her name. “I took your advice. Promised Revelation has just sent me a sensor image, and … when did you acquire that?”
He’d spotted Infinity, then. It was very, very hard not to.
ONIRF TREVELYAN
The first lesson that Jul had learned from humans was deceit, and the second was sly patience. Every day, they would chip away at whatever frustrated them, sometimes boldly head on, mostly sneaking up behind it, until it crumbled and gave way.
Every day, then, he would do the same. He felt better this morning. The food was back to the bland menu he’d been given before Magnusson’s inexplicable attempt to make him feel at home, with the exception of the colo meat. He stared at the bowl for a long time before scooping up half a mouthful of food and tasting it without swallowing, ready to spit it out if his instincts told him it was going to make him ill again.
It was the food. He knew it was the food. When he’d tried to eat yesterday, the very smell of it had made his stomach churn. But now … he felt fragile, but hungry. He cleared the bowl and waited for that awful cramping and nausea to start again. But after a couple of hours he still felt well.
Magnusson rapped at the door. She waited a few moments and then walked in without waiting for a response, accompanied by a guard and Prone to Drift. The Huragok carried the explosive harness.
“Hello, Jul,” she said. “Do you want to go out for a walk today?”
Jul got the feeling that there was some humorous undercurrent to that at his expense, but it was irrelevant. His plan was crystallizing and he wasn’t going to be distracted. He needed to spend time with the Huragok.
“I do,” he said. “I want to see more Forerunner relics.”
“Well, there’s enough to keep you busy for years. We haven’t even surveyed five percent of the surface yet.” She gestured to Prone to attach the harness. “By the way, one of our colleagues saw Raia the other day. I hope I pronounced that right.”
Just when Jul thought he finally had the measure of humans and how to deal with their games, one word could cut his legs from under him. He steeled himself not to react or start babbling questions. Magnusson appeared to notice that anyway, because she smiled.
“She was with your friend, Shipmaster Forze,” she said. “I thought you’d like to know.”
She didn’t wait for his reaction. She walked out and the guard stood beside the door, his rifle held on its sling.
I must not be diverted.
She wouldn’t have mentioned Raia unless she thought that her being with Forze would worry me.
And she wouldn’t want to worry me unless she wanted something.
Jul followed the Huragok outside and accepted that he was very worried indeed, but that the way to deal with it was to let Magnusson make the next move. Perhaps they’d picked up the information by intercepting communications, nothing more. It didn’t mean anything.
Prone asked.
Jul wondered what the Forerunners would have made of the humans if they had. “Why does it all look so new? Because of the way the sphere suspended time, or the perfection of the technology?”
Prone didn’t elaborate. Huragok were devoted in every sense to Forerunner artifacts. They cared about their welfare like other creatures cared about their kin, so it was a strange brief answer to give about the entire focus of their life. Jul was willing to invest time in gaining the Huragok’s trust, though, and there was a certain truth in what he’d said: he really did want to see more of the Forerunners’ legacy. They might not have been gods—and he’d come to terms with the universe having no guiding direction—but they were still remarkable, and still able to change the fate of the galaxy even from the grave. Their machines and buildings had a kind of immortality. He would settle for that in lieu of a divine eternity.
Jul had little else to do but walk and explore, but it was an illusory freedom. His eye was caught by an object in the flawless turquoise sky. When he looked up, it wasn’t a bird: it was a small device, flying under its own power. There seemed to be two kinds, one a gray, featureless cylinder, the other a more intricate metal egg that looked much more like human technology.
“What are those?” he asked.
Prone said.
The more Jul checked the sky, the more he realized that there’d always be something watching him. Between the spy drones and the explosive harness, he was still in a cage. How many humans were working here? There seemed to be more every day, more uniforms, more instant boxlike buildings, more little vehicles pottering around or skimming the horizon. But Magnusson had said it herself—this was an entire planet, albeit an inverted one, and the humans had only just started exploring it.
If it was a sphere … Jul looked up and down, orienting himself. If it was a sphere with the sun at the center and he was inside it, then space was beneath his feet. He’d thought about this many times at night, unable to sleep, and he reached the same conclusion. The only way out was down.
He carried on walking along the same path he’d taken the day before, planning to walk for a few more hours beyond his previous limit. Why had the humans chosen to locate their camp here when they had a whole world to choose from? He made a mental note of two curved stone towers that dominated the landscape. Prone stayed at his side, silent unless Jul spoke to him.
“What are the towers?”
Jul found that interesting. Could it be sabotaged? That might destroy this whole facility. “Do the humans control it?”
So sabotage would rely on manipulating Huragok. That was beyond him. The creatures wouldn’t cooperate, and he didn’t have any scientific knowledge to guide him anyway. He dismissed that idea and went back to the next thing available to him, the destruction of the Huragok themselves.
“I’m watched wherever I go,” he said.
“Can I be heard?”
Jul would have to be much more careful about his line of questioning. What would humans believe most easily about a Sangheili? A little religious fervor.
“I want to know about the Forerunners,” he said. “I need to understand who and what they were. They were—are—our gods. Our lives were centered on them. But now we’re told they were never gods, and everything we believed in and sacrificed was for nothing.”
/>
“Were they like us?”
That rankled. Humans always seemed convinced that they were unique and special, not simply one mediocre creature out of many species. “Do you remember them?”
“How many of you does it take to manage this world?”
Jul would have to be more subtle. “I meant are there more towers in other parts of this world.”
Prone might not have understood the question, or his answer might have contained more information than Jul could grasp. Or he might have simply given an evasive answer because Magnusson or even the Forerunners had told him to. If Jul questioned him more specifically, then whoever was monitoring him would guess his plans. It was time to change tack.
“What did the Forerunners want from us?”
The conversation had taken Jul to the bank of a river and much closer to the environmental control towers. The landscape was all gentle hills and orderly woodland, not rugged wilderness like Sanghelios, the kind of soft, tame terrain that humans liked. It would take him a brisk walk to reach the first tower. There were no guards in sight.
If he could get inside, that was where he’d probably find the other Huragok. If he still dared think in terms of detonating his harness, a confined space would mean maximum destruction.
But Raia’s still out there. Death should be a last resort. We never admit this even to ourselves, but we’re too afraid to say it aloud: we want to survive.
He could see a huge open doorway, temple-sized. Yes, this would have been called a temple on Sanghelios. How many of the sacred sites there were actually just warehouses, or barracks, or maintenance areas? This was the problem when trying to read the minds and intentions of gods. It wasn’t possible. The Forerunners probably didn’t even realize they would be distorted into divinity and used as motives for galactic war. They couldn’t have known that their mundane buildings would be declared holy or that devices designed to protect them from a plague would become mystical gateways to eternity. It was all very disappointing. Jul had enjoyed the majesty of the unknown as a boy. The known always fell short.