Nulm nodded. “I’ll check that he’s not already aboard, mistress.”
There was always the chance that Eith had anticipated this and paid the Unggoy to mislead anyone looking for him. Chol prowled the four main decks, peering into compartments and checking behind stacks of crates, hoping that he’d have the sense to take her offer and not force her to do anything unpleasant. He wasn’t from an allied clan. He had no political protection from her.
Her communicator alerted her as she walked past the cold store for the third time in an hour. She stopped to answer the call. It was Bakz.
“I’ve just seen him,” he said. “On the gantry above the docking deck. Do you want me to pursue him?”
Chol visualized where she was in relation to the ladder leading down from the gantry. “Leave Nulm on the door. I’m going to approach Eith from the deck above. Drive him along the gantry, and we’ll grab him.”
It was a long time since she’d hunted like this instead of simply sitting in a comfortable seat and opening fire from within a ship. It was exhilarating. She sprinted along the deck, scattering a gaggle of juvenile Kig-Yar, and burst through the doors. Eith was leaning on the safety rail, watching the activity on the deck below.
He hadn’t seen Bakz, then. But Chol could see him, slowly climbing the near-vertical perforated metal steps up to the gantry. She closed the gap. Eith had only one escape route. He’d have to jump.
But that’s crazy. He’ll break his legs from that height.
Eith looked left, then right, and appeared to realize he had a problem.
He could have just stopped and talked, of course, and got a ride home at the end of the mission. But he didn’t. He scrambled over the rail and dangled there for a moment before launching himself onto a heap of sacks that must have looked like a soft landing from this angle.
It broke his fall, but he struggled to stand up again. Chol didn’t even think before she launched herself after him. T’vaoans were bigger, tougher, and stronger than their ordinary cousins, and she was willing to risk a few bruises to get Eith. She hit the pile of sacks, felt it rip out some plumage on her left arm, and rolled onto the deck. Momentum kept her going. She crashed into the limping Eith a few seconds before Nulm rushed from the doors to pin him down for her. Bakz caught up with them a few moments later.
Everyone on the deck simply stood back to let them sort out their issues. They probably thought it was a squabble over a disputed piece of salvage. Nobody wanted to intervene in those.
“You didn’t need to run,” she said, hauling Eith to his feet. A streak of purple blood trickled from one of his nostrils. “But seeing as you did, it makes me curious.”
“I don’t like being cornered.” Eith fluffed up his quills, indignant. “You look like criminals.”
“Really. You heard my broadcast?”
“Yes.”
“I just want some information.”
“That’ll cost you.”
“You don’t know what it is yet. When you do, you might just be grateful that I don’t kill you.”
The rest of the Kig-Yar had resumed their looting. Nobody cared what was happening to Eith. He probably realized that.
“What do you want?”
“Tell me what you did with the ship.”
“What ship?”
Bakz leaned over him as Chol tightened her grip. “You know damned well which ship. The one you were supposed to deliver to the crazy four-jaws. Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Chol balled her fist and punched him hard in the side of the head. He squealed. A couple of Kig-Yar looked his way, then went on dismantling a chest-high metal tank with a laser cutter. It was none of their business.
“Where is it?” Chol demanded.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I know where it was. But—” Eith stopped. “It was moved.”
“Fel’s starting his own navy, is he? What would you pathetic flea-catchers do with a battlecruiser?”
“Ah. You know about Fel.”
Chol gave him some credit for not offering up his shipmaster right away. “Of course I do.”
“Well, there’s no point going after him, because he hasn’t got it, either.”
“You sold it.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Chol grabbed him, both hands tight around his neck, and dug in her claws. “Enough. Where’s the ship? Where’s Fel? Who did he sell it to?”
Eith flailed and choked. Chol hung on for a few seconds until he got the idea and started to go limp in her grasp. Then she let go.
“You’d side with the four-jaws against your own kind?” he gasped.
“No, I just want to know where the ship is. I have nothing against Fel. Where’s Fen-Es-Ya?”
Eith looked puzzled for a second. “If you know where he is, why pick on me? Ask him. He’s the one with the big ideas.”
An elderly Kig-Yar with a lot of scars ambled over to peer at them. “Ven-etz-ee-ya,” he said. “It’s Venezia. Mostly humans. One town, basically. They do business with some of the clans.”
Chol straightened up. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It orbits Qab. That’s about all I know. Like I say—one town and a lot of nothing.”
He walked off again. Chol let go of Eith. “So Fel likes the flat-faces, does he? Has he sold the ship to a human?”
“He’s my shipmaster. I can’t betray him.”
“Forget Fel. Where did you last see the ship?”
“Shaps. Shaps Three. I doubt it’s still there now.”
Chol had everything she needed. She could find Fel now. She didn’t want to get involved with humans if she didn’t have to, because other humans would pitch in, it would become a conspicuous feud, and ‘Telcam would notice. She just needed to find Inquisitor and seize the ship very, very quietly.
The opportunity might have passed by now, but she’d come this far. She had to press on. She gestured to Bakz and Nulm to get back to the ship.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Make sure we have everyone embarked. I saw some of the crew liberating a few items.”
She half-expected Eith to come scuttling after her, asking if he could have passage back to Eayn, but he dusted himself down and disappeared into the maze of corridors leading off the deck. Maybe he thought traveling with her was too risky.
Zim vacated the command chair as she swept onto the bridge. “Successful?” he asked.
“Lay in a course for Qab,” she said. “Fel’s living on Venezia. A human colony. It all makes sense now.”
“But where’s the ship?”
“Eith doesn’t know, but it was off Shaps Three at one point, and if Fel’s on Venezia, and he’s fond of the company of humans, then Inquisitor can’t be far from there. Let’s pay him a visit.”
Chol almost lost her nerve on the slipspace jump to the Qab system. She’d lost too much time already. Inquisitor was almost certainly in the hands of the humans, but were they an isolated colony or a military base? She wasn’t suicidal. The Kig-Yar needed their own defense force, but taking on a navy of that size without the weight of the Covenant to back her up would be a very brief battle, and she would certainly lose within minutes. This had to be done stealthily. She needed to find the ship, assess how much of a fight the crew could put up, and then make her decision.
Do humans even know how to operate a battlecruiser?
Perhaps they could learn very fast. She had to face the prospect of shelving her plans and simply locating the ship for ‘Telcam. Then it would be his problem to deal with the humans.
But when will I ever get another opportunity to take a ship like that?
Probably never.
Venezia wasn’t what she expected at all. It was, as the veteran shipmaster had said, one town and a lot of nothing. She asked for permission to land—although if she hadn’t, she wasn’t sure how they would have detected a ship, let alone prevented it from landing—and took one of Paragon’s shuttles to the surface, accompanied
by Bakz and Nulm again. At the airfield, the vessels parked up were from every era, human and Covenant, and there were even Kig-Yar wandering around talking to humans. It was the most unnatural thing she’d ever seen.
And there were freight shuttles. That explained Huz’s reaction. This was a cozy little market for some clans, and they wanted to keep it to themselves.
“Who’d have imagined this?” Bakz said. “To think we’d have enough in common to live here with them.”
Chol stood by the shuttle, working out where she’d need to go to get information. Then one of the Kig-Yar trotted over to intercept them.
“What’s your business?” he asked, no sign of deference to her standing whatsoever. He must have picked up some insolent human ways. “Do you have a meeting here?”
It was worth a try. She feigned casual indifference. “I’m looking for Sav Fel.”
“He has an estate out on the western side of town. Follow the road to where the buildings end, then look for the bridge across the river. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.”
He trotted off. She checked the nav display. “Let’s pay Fel a visit and see what he can tell us.”
“An estate?” Bakz said. “He’s made a princeling of himself. Business must be good here.”
The signs said this place was called New Tyne. Chol had seen bigger middens than this. It was square and tidy, like all human settlements, a grid of roads with rules and regulations written on boards everywhere. No wonder the flat-faces had clashed with the Covenant. They were much the same, bureaucratic and always seeking to spread and overwhelm. They had no idea how to just fit into the easy spaces that any fool could find. The town was so small that they located Fel’s estate in minutes and set down by the gates, which were wide open. The place had thick walls and every indication of being a fortress, but she was able to walk right in.
It was early evening, a very pleasant spring day by the look of the trees. Maybe Fel wasn’t at home. As she walked up the path, she noted the lavish decoration set in the gate posts and the very human style of the building. And the front doors were open as well: what was going on?
Then a T’vaoan male trotted out of the doors and went to a vehicle parked near the steps, a human-style truck with tires. That explained why the gates were open.
Chol called out. “Sav Fel?”
He looked up. T’vaoans were a minority, so he should at least have been interested to see one of his own kind. But he simply looked puzzled and a little preoccupied.
“I was just leaving,” he said. “I have business at the mines. Who are you? You’ll have to make an appointment.”
She looked at Bakz. He nodded. She could hear the sounds of chicks and juveniles from behind an inner courtyard wall, squawking and squabbling while adults tried to break up a fight, so whoever was in the house was probably distracted. Fel needed to know she meant business, too, and it had nothing to do with mining. Bakz and Nulm approached him and grabbed his arms, flattening him against the Warthog just as she shoved her pistol in his face.
She put one claw to the tip of her nose: be quiet. Fel froze.
“I’m sure you can fit me in to your busy schedule,” she said. “Come with us, Fel. We’re going to take a little trip. It’s a lovely evening for it.”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
YOU ONLY NOTICE WHAT WE DO WHEN WE’RE NO LONGER THERE TO DO IT.
—SOMETIMES SINKS, RESIDENT HURAGOK OF THE INDEPENDENT BATTLECRUISER NAOMI
MOUNT LONGDON ROAD, NEW TYNE
“Finished.” Staffan applied the last coat of matt lacquer to the tile-print paper covering the roof of the doll’s house, then took a couple of steps back to admire it. “Damn, I’m talking to myself now. What a senile old bastard.”
He washed the brush and dried it on a piece of rag while he walked around the table, studying the roofless structure. The house stood in the center of the workshop like a mansion on a private island. When he knelt down, chin resting on his folded arms on the tabletop, he began to understand the fascination it held for a child. You really had to see it from their physical perspective to get a sense of the wonder of it. He reached out and closed the front wall, and it became even more absorbing. The little paneled front door opened to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of a staircase and a hall table. Light shone golden and inviting from the downstairs windows. He felt for a moment that he could almost step into the house and live the untroubled, unchanging life of the dolls who would take up residence: no pain, no aging, no weariness, and no grief.
It was for Kerstin, but somehow it was also for Naomi.
It had taken him thirty-five years to fulfill his unspoken promise to her. How long had it taken to make this house? A couple of months. He could have made one in time, before she died—no, he couldn’t have. The child who died wasn’t Naomi. Why did he keep thinking in loops like this? She wasn’t Naomi, and that meant the little planetarium lamp, the one he’d kept and treasured, the one that had given that dying child so much comfort in her final days, was something the real Naomi had never seen.
The star lamp, a battered leather briefcase full of essential documents and photos—all hard copy—and a few precious manual tools like his antique Vernier scale were all he’d taken with him when he left Sansar. The keepsakes you rescued in a disaster, Staffan decided, told you who you really were. He’d already lost everything that truly mattered long before the Covenant glassed the planet.
He pushed open the tiny front door a few times with his fingertip and let it swing almost shut. Damn, he was proud of those miniature hinges. Closing the door required use of his fingernails, but Kerstin’s little hands would cope with that easily. It wasn’t so much a toy as an expression of everything he was and everything he held dear. If she broke it or got bored with it, his heart would be broken too.
But that’s not how you give.
When you give, you give the person what they want. Then you let go.
He dabbed the roof cautiously with his fingertip. The water-based lacquer was already dry. He’d have to dismantle the whole house to move it, but for the moment it was finished and perfect, every tiny item of furniture in its place. He locked the workshop and went into the house for dinner.
Laura was in the kitchen. “Just got to check in with the ship, sweetheart,” he said, leaning around the door. “Time to call the Huragok.”
“Damn, do you have conversations with it?” she asked. “Poor thing. Stuck there all on its own. I hope it doesn’t go stir-crazy.”
“It’s all they want to do, apparently—work. I don’t think they sleep.”
“Wow. We could do with a few more of those.”
“Yeah, he was a bonus I didn’t expect.”
“So how long is this going to go on? Where are you going to keep it? What do you do with those big ships, keep them in orbit? Land them? Kind of hard to hide if the UNSC shows up again.”
Staffan shrugged. “It’s going to take us years to build any kind of orbital dock, so she just has to stay in a stable orbit somewhere for the meantime. Security’s a matter of getting a watch crew together. Better still, finding some way to lock her down so that she can’t move if anyone boards her. The Huragok’s the best bet at the moment.”
“You think someone could do that? Cut their way in or something?”
“UNSC troops boarded Covenant warships a few times. They didn’t knock first.”
“Damn. You can’t even garage it.”
“That’s why I’m relying on a Huragok night watchman. If anything happens to me and he doesn’t get a scheduled call—from me, my voice, not some code that anyone could fake—he’s got instructions to trigger a slipspace jump to coordinates that I gave him. He doesn’t like the Kig-Yar much by the look of it.”
Laura looked slightly dismayed. For her, that was the equivalent of a fainting fit. “What do you mean, if something happens to you?”
“The original owner might come looking for it. Or another Kig-Yar might fa
ncy his chances.” He winked at her. “I don’t want to frighten you, sweetie, but there’s a lot of riffraff in the galaxy. Fortunately, I was trained by someone even worse. Or better. Depends on your moral prism, I suppose.”
Staffan tapped in the code and got the comms tone. Yes, it really was a little weird to phone the Huragok babysitter to check that everything was okay. The sudden click and then silence told him that Sinks had opened the comms channel on the bridge. Huragok were smart, but they didn’t seem able to master the concept of saying “Hello” or “Sinks receiving.” Staffan always had to speak first.
“Hi, Sinks,” he said. “It’s me. Confirm you can identify my voice.”
“Yes, I’m fine. Any problems? Malfunctions?” Staffan was learning the art of questioning a Huragok. They didn’t seem to volunteer anything, or at least this one didn’t. It was like wording your three wishes to a genie. “Are all the readouts normal?”
Staffan wasn’t sure he’d heard that right. His stomach flipped. “What kind of intrusion?”
“When? When was the attempted breach?” Staffan was close to panicking. How many people knew the ship existed? Of those, how many knew how to access its comms channel? The last thing he needed was an angry Sangheili complete with a warship paying a visit here. “Who did it?”
Staffan could think of only one person who had the knowledge to mess around with the ship, but he couldn’t think why the buzzard would do it.
Fel, you asshole. What are you playing at?
“It’s okay, Sinks. You did well. Just don’t let anyone into the ship. Only me and anyone I bring with me, until I tell you otherwise. If you think the ship’s compromised, execute the jump as we agreed.”