Halo: Glasslands (44 page)

Her Spartans. She always referred to us as
hers.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have let Naomi read her journal. But would she have believed me otherwise?

Naomi came down the passage toward them, still in her armor and carrying what Osman liked to call a cattle prod. It didn’t get a lot of use, but she’d been assured that it worked on all large species. “You wanted me, ma’am?”

“I’m going to put Adj in the cell and see if he can extract any data from the body armor,” Osman said. “It used to be his job, after all. Just stop the hinge-head damaging him while he does it, because if push comes to shove, I’d rather have the Huragok in one piece.”

“Understood, ma’am.” She looked at Mal and Vaz. “Usual drill?”

“Let’s get it over with,” Mal said. “Helmets on, boys and girls.”

BB ushered Adj up to the cell door and projected a set of tentacles to sign at him. Adj didn’t appear worried about the prospect of wrestling with a pissed-off shipmaster and floated patiently as Mal and Vaz prepared to go in first with Naomi right behind them.

Did Sangheili warriors feel it was beneath their masculine dignity to hit a female? It certainly didn’t stop the Covenant killing women and children along with the men. Osman held her breath.

“Okay, in three—
three,
” Mal said. The door slid back, the Sangheili stood up, and the two marines stormed in with Naomi on their heels. Mal went right and Vaz went left to grab one arm each. The Sangheili fought to shake them off and very nearly succeeded. He batted Mal across the compartment, smashing him against the bulkhead with a loud crash.

“Bastard,” Mal grunted, scrambling to his feet. Vaz hung on to the left arm but the Sangheili brought his fist up under Vaz’s chin just as Mal lunged back and pinned the right arm again. Naomi moved straight in between them. It took two seconds from opening the door to the moment when Naomi shoved the cattle prod up into the gap between the Sangheili’s lower jaws.

It was hard to unbalance a Sangheili, but the speed of the multipronged attack did the job. As Mal and Vaz struggled to hold on to the Sangheili’s arms, Naomi gave him a quick zap. The prod crackled like a plug discharging and the angry bellowing turned into a single high-pitched squeal. The Sangheili fell back to land on his backside on the bench.

Adj drifted in, fiddled about with the chest plate, then drifted out again like a nurse taking a blood sample from a difficult toddler. Naomi moved out and shut the door behind her, then helped Vaz off with his helmet.

“You okay?” she asked. She tipped his head back and checked him over. Mal peered at him too. “He really snapped your head back.”

“I’m a shock trooper,” Vaz said. “I’m used to hard landings.”

ODST or not, Osman wasn’t taking any chances with closed brain injury. “Corporal, you take a shot of chorotazine, and that’s an order. I don’t need paralyzed marines, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The hinge-head got to his feet and tottered a little before regaining his balance and roaring abuse again. Phillips looked distinctly uncomfortable, arms folded as he watched.

“Is this where you tell me you could have gone in and reasoned with him?” Osman asked. “Because that’s great in the movies, but it only needs one blow from him to take your damn face off.”

Vaz grunted. “Believe it.”

Phillips scratched his nose, somewhere between embarrassment and looking like he wanted to argue. The reality of this kind of war was equally unlike the movies. It was brutal and dirty and nobody was going to win on points. It was an idea Phillips needed to get used to. The Sangheili was now back at full volume, roaring and hissing.

“It sounds like he’s saying
blarg,
” Mal said. “Is that good?”

“I’ll summarize the rant.” Phillips looked away. “He’s telling us we’re all intestinal worms and vermin, and describing what he’s going to do with our entrails in due course.”

“I didn’t think he was asking for his lawyer,” Osman said. “Okay, Evan, start eavesdropping.”

“I took the liberty of recording all voice traffic from the moment I knew you had a prisoner, and I’ve sifted through it, but there’s nothing to interest you so far,” BB said, all tact and diplomacy. “I’m thoughtful like that, I am.”

Phillips grunted something that sounded like thanks and headed for his cubbyhole in the hangar. Vaz looked at Osman and raised his eyebrows. He seemed a bit unsteady.

“He’ll come around to the idea, ma’am,” Vaz said. “He always disappears to think things over when he finds out something nasty about his government. But he always gets on with the job in the end.”

Naomi was still waiting to be dismissed, holding the cattle prod tucked under her arm like a swagger stick.

“You all right, Spartan?” Osman asked.

“Fine, thanks, ma’am.”

“Okay, I’m going to talk to the Admiral about getting this guy offloaded, and then we’ll see what Hood’s up to.”

“Are we still on for that, ma’am?” Mal asked.

“It’d be handy to get clearance to tag along, if only to get Phillips on nodding terms with the Arbiter. Who else is Hood going to want with him? I expect the Admiral’s suggesting it right now.”

There was just a flicker of doubt on Mal’s face. She could understand that. Everyone liked Hood, and it wasn’t easy to stomach the idea of ONI unleashing dirty tricks on the man who’d brought Earth through the war in some kind of shape to rebuild, but then that depended on which of them thought their efforts had made the most difference. The Spartans were ONI’s project and the Spartans had been the tipping point, one way or another. Parangosky felt she had prior claim. Osman wasn’t sure. But she knew who her boss was.

She took another look through the plate of the brig door. The Sangheili was on his feet now, pacing around and occasionally landing a punch on the bulkheads.

“See, he’s all better now.” Mal peered over her shoulder. “Do their teeth grow back again, like sharks’ do?”

“Stick your arm in and find out,” Vaz suggested.

Osman decided she could leave the Sangheili in there until she’d arranged a handover. If the brig needed hosing down afterward, that was a price worth paying. She went back to her day cabin and sat down at the desk with her chin resting on her hands.

“BB, can you find out what Hood’s planning?” she asked. She meant accessing his secure files and comms, not asking his secretary. She really hadn’t wanted to do that to the man, not after how kind he’d been to her over the years. “I know Parangosky’s going to tell me, but it would be nice to plan ahead.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” BB said, appearing in the in-tray. “Let me see what my naughty fragment’s been up to while my back’s been turned. Oh, and Hogarth. I hope you didn’t mind my smacking his bottom. He keeps sending Harriet to snoop in your files so I stuck something in his and alerted Internal Audit.”

“I believe the phrase is you
fitted him up.
…”

“Nothing major. Just triggered the attack accountants from hell to check a truly
massive
overspend. They’ll find it’s a misplaced decimal point in due course.”

“Remind me never to cross you.”

“And Phillips will be here to see you in …
ten
seconds.”

“You’re fabulous, d’you know that?”

“Yes. I do.”

BB disappeared just as Phillips stuck his head inside the door.

“Good lead with Mdama, Captain,” he said. “I have a name.”

Osman leaned back in her chair. “That was quick.”

“Jul ‘Mdama.” Phillips could even do the little cross between a glottal stop and a click before the clan name. “Shipmaster. Some traffic between ‘Telcam, another shipmaster called Buran, and some guy called Forze who appears to be his best buddy. Jul took off from Bekan in a shuttle, and hasn’t called in for ages.”

“So he’s known to ‘Telcam.”

Phillips nodded. “Apparently.”

“That could get interesting. Naomi says he definitely wasn’t on overwatch. He was doing some sneaky observation.”

“Maybe he’s an agent for the Arbiter. A plant. A sleeper. Or whatever the Spookish is for
undercover
these days.”

Now there’s a thought.

“Cover blown, then,” Osman said. “Now let’s work out the most divisive and strife-inducing way I can use that information.”

MAINTENANCE AREA, FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE, ONYX: LOCAL DATE NOVEMBER 2552.

“Easy, Lucy.
Back off.
”

Mendez had Lucy in a headlock and she was finally running out of adrenaline. She knew she’d kicked him, but she really didn’t mean to, not the Chief, not the man who’d raised her and turned her into a soldier. “I said
stand down,
Spartan. Did you hear me?
Stand down!
”

She took a deep wheezing gasp, deafened by her own pulse. Her legs almost buckled and her face and neck felt like they were on fire. She realized that Mendez was now holding her up rather than holding her back.

And she was
crying
—sobbing like she hadn’t sobbed for years. Mendez turned her around to face him and crushed her to him so tightly that she thought he’d break a rib.

“Good girl. Let it out. It’s okay.” She’d just punched out the ONI’s chief scientist but Mendez didn’t sound angry at all. “Let it all out.
Damn.
That was a long time coming.”

Lucy had a small crowd around her now and suddenly felt completely humiliated. Tom ruffled her hair ferociously. “You’re back, Lucy. You’re
back.
Come on. Keep talking.”

But she wasn’t sure what to say next. It should have been an apology, but she wasn’t sorry, not one damn bit, not for defending Prone. She couldn’t see Halsey behind a cluster of Spartan-IIs, but she knew that she must have hit her a hell of a lot harder than she thought. Her hand was throbbing.

“She’ll be okay,” Kelly said, straightening up. It was hard to tell if she was looking at Lucy but her voice was flat calm. “Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Mendez let Lucy go but still kept a tight grip on her shoulder. He’d never been a kindly-looking man but the granite expression softened just for a moment. “I ought to put you on a charge, Petty Officer. But I’m just too damn glad to hear you talking again.” He looked over her head in Halsey’s direction. “You’re lucky she’s a small one, Doctor. Are you okay?”

Halsey was on her feet now, supported by Kelly and Linda. Fred took his helmet off and looked at Lucy as if he was working out who the hell she was.

“I’ll live,” Halsey said. She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand, trying to mop up a thin trickle of bright red blood. “You and I had better have a talk, Chief.”

Halsey went outside with her Spartan escort like she was some kind of general. Lucy bristled. It must have shown because Mendez gave her his don’t-even-think-about-it look.

“Now I’m going to get my ass kicked,” he said. “Tom, look after her, will you? I’d better make sure Halsey gives the Engineers some space or we’ll be here until hell calls time.”

The adrenaline had ebbed away and Lucy was now at the embarrassed and shaky stage. She’d never lost control like that before. The doctors had warned her that anger was part of traumatic stress, but she was a
Spartan,
for goodness’ sake. She should have had enough discipline to resist throwing a punch.

There was just something about Halsey haranguing the Engineers that snapped something inside her, and for a few seconds she didn’t care whether she lived or died as long as she lashed out and stopped it.

Tom and Olivia kept ruffling her hair. “That’ll make her think twice about treating us as cheap knockoffs,” Olivia said, putting her arm around Lucy’s shoulders. “How’re you doing, Luce? Take it a step at a time, though. I bet that this time next week we won’t be able to shut you up.”

The Engineers were huddled in a corner, probably wondering what the hell they’d let into their sphere. They’d seen Lucy shoot one of their buddies, and now she was swinging punches at civilians. Prone floated away from the group and headed her way, clutching a page-sized piece of the same milky white glass used on the walls. He fluttered his cilia over it and held it in front of her.

YOU ARE PARTLY REPAIRED. WHO WILL FINISH REPAIRING YOU NOW?

Lucy put her hand out to the screen, looking for the makeshift keyboard. Olivia caught her wrist.

“No,
speak
to the guy, Lucy.”

She’d managed one word, but that didn’t mean it had opened the floodgates. A connection in her brain was still fragile and rusted, the one that most people took for granted from the time they were small children—thinking what they were going to say before their vocal cords took over a fraction of a second later. It was an easy habit to lose. Just as she’d found herself struggling to frame written words, she was now back to square one trying to do the same with speech. She took her hand off the screen and touched Prone’s tentacle.