The Thursday War

  It wasn’t a perfect solution, but Mal knew there wasn’t going to be a better one. Osman looked at him as if he had a veto. He shrugged. They’d work out a way to pass off Naomi as just another regular miscreant who happened to end up on Venezia.

  “Okay, I suppose we’d better thin out so Vaz can watch the hockey,” Osman said. “BB, use our spiffy new slipspace comms and ask the Admiral to route us every bit of current data on Venezia, up to the minute. Vaz and Naomi insert first, and then we send Mal in a few days later, with the rest of us on standby.”

  Naomi disappeared. Mal didn’t care much for hockey anyway and gave her half an hour before he left the others to watch the game and went looking for her. She was down on Foxtrot, sitting cross-legged on the glass deck with her elbows braced on her knees. Without the armor, she was still a very tall girl, but not conspicuously muscular. Maybe she’d get away with it on Venezia. Mal closed one eye to defocus slightly and tried to imagine seeing her for the first time without knowing what she was. He might have taken her for a basketball player, or even a field athlete. She had a point. That lean, fine-boned face sort of fitted the image.

  Mal walked out onto the transparent deck and sat down with her. It was easier when there was nothing to see below in space.

  “Would he be happier not knowing?” she asked.

  “What do you want to say to him? Are you going to tell him what was done to you?”

  “It would upset him, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. Of course it would.”

  “But what if I hadn’t been taken? I’d probably be dead now, along with everyone else on Sansar. But I survived and I excelled, and because of the Spartans, humanity survived too. Would he be proud of me?”

  It was one way of looking at it. It didn’t make it any easier. “Are you happy with what you’ve become?”

  “I don’t think I would have been happy being anything else,” she said. “Not if I was as … exceptional as Halsey told us we all were.”

  Mal had to remember that the kids had been taken because they were rare, brilliant, genetically gifted examples of humanity, even without all the crap that Halsey had bolted on later. Growing up to be a librarian or a truck driver in a backwater colony would have been pretty frustrating for a one-in-a-billion kid like Naomi.

  “Yeah,” Mal said. “I think your dad would be proud. Earth or no Earth.”

  ONIRF TREVELYAN

  “Okay, if they were so smart, how come they couldn’t make portals you could see?”

  “Maybe they could see them. They were aliens.”

  “Well, Warren nearly crapped himself. He couldn’t find his way back out for half an hour.”

  The explosive harness had many advantages, Jul decided. As Prone strapped it onto him for the day—a little looser so that it didn’t chafe his neck, as he’d requested—the stream of human babbling outside his cell resolved into comprehensible language. So the humans blundered into these gateways, too. It was a good question: why did the Forerunners do that?

  “Why can’t we see the portals, Prone?” Jul asked.

 

  “That makes no sense.”

  Prone finished adjusting the harness and stepped back like a seamstress checking a garment.

  “But you can change that. You can make them detectable.”

 

  Huragok seemed completely obedient and passive, even timid, but Jul now had occasional glimpses of stubborn adherence to conventions that the Covenant hadn’t been fully aware of. Huragok grew agitated when Forerunner technology was damaged; Jul, like everyone else, had thought that was an integral part of their programming, a simple way to reinforce their single-minded devotion to their tasks. But now that he spent so much time with the creatures, he was beginning to see a different side of them.

  Obedience to the Covenant had been entirely incidental.

  It wasn’t what they wanted to do, or even submitted to. They had tasks laid down by the Forerunners, and their cooperation had only been given so far simply because it didn’t substantially interfere with those. The thought made Jul uneasy. There was a line the Huragok would eventually draw. He’d crossed it just once and been put firmly and painfully in his place.

  Prone was standing his ground in that quiet, unfathomable way. The maintenance portals were Huragok business, not the province of Sangheili or humans.

  Jul waited for the guard to open the cell door. “What’s your most important duty, Prone?”

  Prone drifted through the open door ahead of him.

  The Huragok was very clear. Jul envied that clarity, and also that endless patience, however misguided it might be. Jul thought in days and weeks. Prone thought in millennia.

  “The Forerunners aren’t coming back,” Jul said as they walked the familiar route out of the base. He bent down from time to time to examine interesting stones and pretty, silver-striped, spiral objects that appeared to be tiny mollusk shells, now empty and dry, and put them in his pocket. “You now know what happened in the world outside this sphere. We have found only the remains of their civilization.”

  Prone speeded up. Perhaps he was getting frustrated with looking after Jul when he could have been tinkering with equipment.

  It was more mystical nonsense. Jul doubted that such a precise machine as a Huragok would babble, though, so he decided that there simply weren’t words in the Sangheili language to express the actual meaning. He decided to keep Prone talking about the Didact, which would also keep Magnusson off-balance if she was eavesdropping.

  Prone said.

  “You know what I mean by a temple, yes?”

 

  “Well, I spent a lot of time in Mdama’s temples as a child. My clan was devout, as we all once were. I still find it comforting.”

 

  “I no longer know what I think. I need to examine my life again, everything I took for granted and everything I abandoned. Is there an existence after this one? If the Forerunners could change time in this sphere, did they know how to live for eternity? Were the San’Shyuum right for once, that there’s a transformation awaiting us all?”

  Prone took it in silence, which could have meant that he didn’t want to talk or that he had no interest in metaphysical matters. Jul strode ahead of him, confident of the route. He couldn’t see any surveillance devices but he was sure that they were around somewhere, and that meant he would do what he did every day now and walk confidently into the area around the spire until he felt the energy field brush him like an unseen cloud of flies. The humans expected him to do that. Not deviating from his routine seemed to be the key to lulling them into inaction.

  Ahhh …

  The field washed over him and he was in the underground passage again. Half an hour. I have half an hour, perhaps, because that was how long the human was lost underground. Magnusson won’t think I’ve escaped. When he looked over his shoulder, Prone was about four meters behind him. Well, he’d convinced him that he thought the structure was a holy relic. Now was the time to reinforce that charade. Jul squatted on his haunches in front of the panel that had made Prone so anxious when he’d reached out to touch it.

  The symbols do something. They’re keys, buttons, switches, something like that, even though they look like part of the stone. I have to touch one and see what happens. The challenge is … Prone.

  Jul stayed in his squat position, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. That would
prevent Prone interrupting him for a while.

  What would stop Prone from grabbing me if I were to touch the wall?

  The harness.

  Huragok grew distressed when Forerunner technology was damaged. If Jul threatened to destroy an entire panel, a wall of devices that seemed to be a hub for portal network in one of the Forerunners’ most critical installations, then that would surely persuade him to deactivate his harness.

  But he needs to get very close to me to do it. Can I manage that? I’ve got one chance to do this, because if I fail, that ruse won’t work again. In fact … I’ll be marooned here, unable to remove the harness at all.

  Jul opened his eyes a fraction. Prone was on the far side of the chamber, apparently gazing at inscriptions. Jul was two paces from the wall.

  If I don’t make my move, I’ll die here eventually anyway. They’ll never release me. They can’t.

  He had to do it in one move. And he had to do it very soon, before the loss of contact with him started a search. The harness was loose. Prone wouldn’t have thought that was a security problem because simply taking it off would trigger it.

  Get to the wall, lift the harness—not too far, mind—and give him the ultimatum.

  Show me a portal that works, or I’ll destroy this chamber. Have you ever seen an explosion in a confined space? You’d die too.

  Prone might not care what happened to him, but he’d certainly care about the precious Forerunner facility. Jul crossed his arms on his chest very slowly, curled his fingers around the straps of the harness, and sprang up from a squat toward the wall. He hit it with a thud just as Prone spun around. As the Huragok came at him, he raised the harness to shoulder level. Prone stopped.

  “I have nothing to lose, Engineer,” he said. “I’ll die here either way. Show me the portal to Sanghelios, and remove this harness, or I’ll detonate it.”

  Prone edged forward. This was going to be awkward. Jul had to keep an eye on the creature, but he also needed to look at the symbols on the wall. He could already feel a tingling sensation throughout his body: the wall was active in some way.

  Prone said.

  “I don’t believe you.” Jul reached out with one hand, holding the harness half-raised with the other. He wasn’t sure how much he’d have to pull it away from his body to trigger it, but he’d find out very soon. “So I’m going to carry out an experiment.”

 

  “Let’s see.” Jul reached into his pocket and gathered the shells and stones in his palm. If he could open a portal, at least he could toss a stone in and see what happened before he tried it himself. Doing this one-handed was hard. He held one stone between two fingers, gripping the rest as best he could, and stood off to one side of the symbols so that he could both see them and keep Prone in his field of view. “What happens if I do this?”

  He pressed the first symbol. Prone made a faint groaning sound. A panel in the wall dissolved, leaving a tall rectangle that looked like sunlight trying to penetrate a thick mist. Jul tossed the stone into the light, but a heartbeat later, it bounced back and clattered across the floor.

  Prone said.

  Jul wasn’t going to give up that easily. Now he was committed: keep trying, or die. “Plenty more controls to press, my friend. Plenty more.” He worked another stone out of his palm and positioned it between his fingers, then tried the next symbol in the line. When he lobbed the stone into the portal this time, it didn’t bounce back. He held his breath, hoping this was his exit, then a light flashed and he heard something hit the floor on the other side of the chamber. It was the stone again.

  Prone said.

  “But some do.” Jul prepared a third stone. His other arm was starting to ache from holding up the harness. “Some do.”

  He tried again. Again, the stone bounced out. He tried four more times, equally unsuccessfully, and wondered if he’d run out of stones before he found a portal destination that worked. Every time he threw one into the void, Prone edged forward a little.

  “I will detonate this, Engineer. Believe me when I say that.”

 

  Jul still didn’t believe there were any gods, but if he was wrong, then he hoped they would look down on this desperate moment and open a portal for him. It was a small favor to ask of beings who could build entire stars. His mouth was dry and he wondered if he was being stupid rather than courageous. Sometimes it was hard to draw a line between the two.

  He threw again, and there was silence.

  The silence turned into seconds. Then it stretched into a long pause punctuated by his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. The stone didn’t bounce back, and it didn’t emerge in the chamber. Prone hung there, sighing like bellows.

  “This one works,” Jul said. “This works. Doesn’t it?”

 

  “Where does it lead?”

 

  Jul lifted the harness up a little higher. His arm muscles were getting tired and beginning to twitch. “I’ll enter anyway. I’ll ask you again. What is this symbol?”

 

  Jul had never heard of it. “Where is that?”

 

  “Like you don’t know where Requiem is.”

 

  Jul was now beyond impatience with the Huragok’s half-explanations. Having explosives draped around him didn’t improve his mood. But he had a functioning portal, and he had to try. Kelekos would do. When he got there, he’d work out where it was. It was just a name. There was little chance that the Forerunner name bore any resemblance to what the world was known as now.

  But before he stepped into freedom, even a terrifyingly unknown freedom, he had to get rid of the harness. Magnusson couldn’t detonate it, not here in this place that shut out all signals, but he couldn’t take it with him, because there would be no Huragok to remove it safely.

  “Prone, come here and remove this harness,” Jul said. “Or I’ll detonate it.”

 

  “You know I’ll do it. Remove it.”

 

  “If I try to take it off, what happens to your terminal? What was your most important order? Do you obey the orders the Forerunners gave you, or those of these humans, who would destroy everything the Forerunners built if it suited them?”

  Prone was as brightly luminous as Jul had ever seen him, tentacles fluttering aimlessly. Jul edged closer to the glowing portal to force the creature to act, and placed one leg across the threshold. It was the strangest feeling. He’d used portals before but none of them had felt like this. His leg tingled as if it was being kneaded by thousands of fingers, not quite a tearing sensation but very uncomfortable nevertheless. He had both hands free now. He raised the harness a little higher. The next moment could prove to be his last.

  Home or dead. There’s no other way.

  Prone moved in very slowly and placed a tentacle on the harness.

  Jul’s heart almost stopped. Prone’s tentacles slid over the straps and the weight of the harness lifted from Jul’s shoulders.

  Now. Do it now.

  Jul put all his weight on his back foot, the foot within the uncertain world of the portal, and let himself fall backward without a word. Light engulfed him.

  Kelekos …

  It was not Onyx-Trevelyan, and that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  I BELIEVE THE SANGH
EILI ARE BEGINNING TO ACCEPT THAT HUMANS ARE HERE TO STAY, AND EVEN IF THEY DON’T LIKE THAT, THEY’RE MORE INCLINED TO AVOID US THAN TO CONFRONT US. LET’S TOAST THIS, MARGARET. WHAT’S TODAY? THURSDAY. VERY WELL—A BLOODY WAR, AND A QUICK PROMOTION.

  (ADMIRAL LORD HOOD, CINCFLEET, MAKING THE HISTORIC ROYAL NAVY TOAST TRADITIONALLY PROPOSED ON THURSDAYS)

  UNSC INFINITY, RETURNING TO THE SOL SYSTEM: ADMIRAL PARANGOSKY’S DAY CABIN

  Bad news could never wait, the saying went, and thanks to the new slipspace comms Parangosky didn’t have to. But she’d still been kept in the dark for far too long.

  How the hell could anyone lose a Sangheili prisoner from a sealed world? How could ONI lose him?

  Dear God …

  “It’s taken you fifteen hours to report ‘Mdama missing.” She stared at the screen, as worried as she was angry. I thought I could pick the right people. Perhaps I’m losing my touch. “Fifteen hours. Why?”

  Irena Magnusson looked as if she was arguing for her life, and whether she knew it or not, she was. The imaging from Trevelyan was brutally lifelike. The scientist’s mouth opened and closed a few times before any sound emerged, and it wasn’t a technical sync problem.

  “Admiral, we had to carry out a search,” she said, shaky and desperate. “This is an entire planet.”

  “You can’t search a planet in fifteen hours, either.”

  “The Huragok said he saw Jul step through a portal. Those portals are unstable, and some don’t go anywhere. Some feed back into the sphere. We don’t know where the others go, or if they go where they were intended to. The Huragok seems to think that some are so unstable that they’re dangerous or may even exit in space, or worse.”

  “But the one he stepped through appears to be active, and you haven’t recovered a body.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then damn well follow him,” Parangosky snapped. “You’re the facility director, for God’s sake. Take some responsibility. You do know exactly which portal he activated, I take it. Yes or no?”