We’ll get out of this. They’ll detain Dad, and nobody will know they’ve got him. He won’t get a lawyer or a trial. But maybe I can use my status. Maybe I can get to visit him from time to time. Maybe ONI will do it for me. They owe us, after all.
Mal spread his arms, looking as if he’d given up on Chol Von, and gestured to Naomi to stand by to breach the doors to the bridge. Then a rasping voice came over the audio.
“How do you know my name? Who are you? Who sent you?”
Mal checked his optics, sighting up on the door. “Oh, we’re nosey. We eavesdrop.”
“Only Avu Med ‘Telcam would know I was doing this, because he hired me to retrieve this vessel. And how would UNSC humans know him?”
Naomi looked at Mal. It was that who-knew-what-and-when maze again, because any Kig-Yar that survived might let ‘Telcam know who had their ship. He’d want to know why they hadn’t informed him.
Mal had told Naomi to leave the talking to him, so she did.
“Actually, it’s the Arbiter’s ship, and he’d like it back. Our ally the Arbiter. The one we signed the cease-fire with.” Mal cocked his head to one side as if he was enjoying the verbal fencing. Naomi couldn’t see his expression. “But we can go ahead and call this ‘Telcam bloke and tell him where his ship is and where you are. We’re ever so helpful. It might not take him long to get here and give you a lift home.” Chol didn’t respond. “You think he’s looking for you?”
“Save yourselves while you can. We have no argument with you. This ship is my bounty.”
“Are you going to vacate this ship like a good girl?”
“Why would I leave,” Chol asked, “when I now have the added bonus of one of your AIs trapped on my bridge?”
Naomi saw clear objectives now emerging from their range of options: storm the bridge, kill the Kig-Yar, neutralize the Huragok, free up BB, secure the ship.
And what about Dad?
She didn’t know now if he was a hostage or the hostage-taker.
BRIDGE OF FORMER COVENANT SHIP PIOUS INQUISITOR: FOUR HOURS AFTER LOSS OF CONTACT WITH PARAGON
Chol Von paced around the command platform, calculating her chances both of surviving and of holding on to the battlecruiser she’d staked her future on.
The bridge was her advantage because the flat-faces probably wouldn’t want to damage their precious AI. They’d be constrained because he was trapped here too. She wasn’t entirely sure how these smart AIs worked, but she was certain this one would gather what data it could while it was in Inquisitor’s systems, which meant that even if it was a copy then it would have extra value for the humans, and they’d want to extract it.
Bakz sidled up to her and whispered in her ear so quietly that she could barely hear him. She hoped the background hum of the machinery would be enough to drown out their conversation.
“Mistress, if ‘Telcam learns where we are, then we’re dead anyway. He’s searching for us. Maybe he’s found Paragon. Maybe someone on board has already given him information. You paid them, after all. They had no more reason to hold out for us.”
Chol knew Zim wouldn’t betray her. She wasn’t entirely sure about the others, though—if her ship had survived the stresses of Inquisitor’s jump to slipspace right alongside her. “If the worst happens, then we say we were trying to wrest the ship from the UNSC.”
“How do we know they’re UNSC? We can’t see them. The flat-face who traded with Fel isn’t UNSC.”
“Does it matter what kind of flat-face they are? ‘Telcam despises them all equally.”
“Even so, we could get out of this with our lives and the balance of the fee.”
“You’re surrendering.”
“Living to fight another day is good business, not cowardly.” He lowered his voice still further. “And it’s not surrender. It’s withdrawal. We take the option the Huragok gave us, leave in the dropship, and put out a distress call to Paragon.”
“If Paragon isn’t a pretty little asteroid belt of mangled parts by now.”
“We can’t win here. And not because of the flat-face troops.” Bakz pointed upward, very discreetly, hand against his chest. From time to time, it sounded as if someone was dragging a waste sack along the deck above. The Huragok conduits probably converged above the bridge, and the creature was crisscrossing there. “That thing is determined to thwart us. We can’t kill it. We can’t find it to shoot it, and we can’t vent the ship’s atmosphere now. We’re all low on suit air.”
He had a point, but Chol wasn’t keen to give up so easily. Maybe she could bargain with this AI. He’d been largely silent apart from a brief discussion with these UNSC pirates—if that was who they were—but now he’d started making an annoying musical sound that humans called whistling. Was it some kind of code? Could he hear their whispered conversation?
“What are you doing, AI?” she demanded.
“I’m bored,” he said. He mimicked another voice. “I’m whistling. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Chol? You just put your lips together and—oops. Sorry! Another fun thing that humans can do and you can’t. And never stand in front of a Sangheili trying to whistle. It’s like a stormy day on Brighton seafront.”
They called him BB. She’d heard the name. She couldn’t understand what he was getting at, but that seemed to be the point. “BB, are you attempting to distract us?”
“Well, you’ve got a warship up your chuff, and tooled-up special forces crawling everywhere, so it’s hard to see how my whimsical habits could possibly put you at any more of a disadvantage than you already are.”
“You could have just said no.”
“Where’s the joy in that?”
“You seem to think these humans see you as a friend, not as a computer program.”
“Oh, let’s not go down the ‘your comrades have betrayed you’ path, please. It’s so last millennium.”
“What do they really want?”
“You heard the man. They want to give the Arbiter back his ship. Look, you do realize they can hear all this, don’t you?”
Chol hoped the members of her crew who were trapped in the drive section could hear it too, and that they’d understand what she now wanted them to do. They were now her best hope.
“If we can’t have the ship, we’d rather destroy it,” she said.
There. She hadn’t heard them, so they could have been dead by now, but if they were still alive then they might have understood that she wanted them to get to the plasma torpedos and set them to detonate. The Huragok had isolated the slipspace drive, but setting off the torpedoes would breach the fusion reactors. As soon as the Huragok realized they were doing that, it would flush him out.
“A tad extreme, isn’t it?” BB said. “There’s a nice Spirit in one of the starboard bays waiting to go. That’s got to be worth a few beer vouchers, hasn’t it?”
“You mock me. And beer is of no interest to us.”
Chol was sure that the Huragok would rush to stop the detonation. Once he’d done that, they could shoot him. Then they’d be able to restore power in their own time, pick off the UNSC intruders where and when they had to, and eventually head home with the extra delight of an AI to sell to the highest bidder.
It was a tall order, but not beyond her.
“A torpedo or two,” she said. “That’s all it would take.”
She heard the garbage bag sound again. Sinks must have taken note of that. She just hoped her crew had.
“Okay, we’re coming in.” It was the male soldier’s voice again. “BB, keep your head down, mate. It’s chicken wings for dinner tonight.”
“I say, that’s rather speciesist.” BB muttered disapproval. “Do we have any good Chablis in the wardroom cellar to go with them, though?”
Chol tried to ignore the provocation. She’d heard the abusive term chi-ken too many times from flat-faces, but would never let them have the satisfaction of knowing it enraged her. She could hear the noises from outside the starboard bridge doors. The human
s could have blown their way in now, but they hadn’t. They’d been forced to pick off her crew one by one. That meant they either didn’t have explosives or were wary of using them for some reason.
If they wanted to destroy the entire vessel, then their warship, if it exists at all, could have done so by now. But the troops got here somehow. Wherever here is. I might be wrong about where we are. Maybe we moved farther than I thought. For all I know, we might be in a low orbit above a human world.
That wasn’t a comforting thought. She had to stall to let her crew work on the drive trick, and find out what she could.
“Flat-face,” she called. “Human. Listen to me.”
“It’s Staff Sergeant to you, love.”
“Would you really risk your life for this ship?”
“Yeah, it’s in the contract.” They seemed to be taking their time about forcing the doors. They were either being careful to ensure they could shut them again and seal the citadel, or they were having problems with their explosives. There was extra security on the bridge doors. “We’ve got to do all sorts of daft and pointless shit. Are you coming out or what?”
“What guarantee do I have that you won’t accept our surrender and then just slaughter us as we withdraw?”
Thud. Something hit the bulkhead from the other side, as if a weight had been hurled against it.
“All we want is the bloody ship so we can go home and get some sleep.”
Thud. Noit looked, then trotted across the deck below the platform. It crossed Chol’s mind that they might be stalling too, or even diverting her attention. She looked behind her, down the long ramp to the port-side doors. BB whistled to himself. He could see into other compartments, or so he claimed, and she couldn’t.
Tricks. I know the flat-faces.
“I want to see the Huragok prove that he’ll open hatches and give us access to the starboard bays,” she said.
Thud. Noit was gazing at a point in the bulkhead.
“He doesn’t listen to me.” The sergeant didn’t sound in a hurry. Chol thought she could smell the hot, ozonic scent of a discharged plasma weapon. “But I’ll try. Sinks, can you open a door or something? Are you listening?” He paused. “BB, I know what you’re whistling. Very funny.”
It had to be code. Chol heard the sound of a hatch to her right, one of the service access points. She was sure it was sliding open. She pulled her pistol and turned to face it.
Thud.
It was definitely open. She walked toward it, ready to fry the brains out of whatever fool thought he could pull a stunt like this on her. When she bent her knees slightly to aim, she dipped her head. A faint shimmer made her start but it vanished like mist. It was the Huragok.
If he’d opened this door, then maybe he’d opened the rest. Maybe they didn’t need to lure him by sabotaging the drive containment after all. No, no, no. That was defeatist thinking. She really had no plans to die for a cause, not even her own, not for a long time anyway, and she wanted to see her brood again, but maybe she could achieve more from the hull of this ship than from inside.
Thud. Thud.
“Mistress…”
Thud.
Chol heard the groan of metal before she jumped back from the hatch that promised an escape. By the time she turned, a bulge had formed next to the starboard doors, and then a rip, and then the metal glowed briefly. Noit opened fire at the widening split in the bulkhead. A vivid bolt shot back at him and he fell. Bakz went sprinting down the ramp and ran across the deck to help him, but it was obvious even from Chol’s position that Noit was dead.
“Let’s go,” Bakz said. “Please, mistress, let’s go. Let’s leave while we still have our lives. We can get our vengeance later.”
The doors didn’t yield, but it was only a matter of time before they did, and the force trying to break in would pour in and overwhelm them.
And then you’ll overwhelm your own graves. I’ll see to that.
“If you can hear me,” Chol shouted, “detonate the torpedoes. Do it. Do it now.”
The slithering noise in the conduits sounded as if it was heading the other way. Chol hoped that Sinks really had opened all the doors and hatches to the starboard bay. She ducked into the hatch with Bakz behind her, and was sure she felt a shudder in the deck, not enough to be a slipspace jump or a missile strike but more than a glitch.
She didn’t know what she was running into. She ran anyway.
“Oh, terrific.” BB’s voice carried into the low, narrow passage. “Sinks? Sinks, I think we need to start cooperating. Fast.”
AFT BRIDGE FLAT, PIOUS INQUISITOR
“BB? What’s going on?” Vaz paced around the deck, frustrated at knowing there was a boarding in progress but that he couldn’t do a damn thing to help. He’d kept quiet for as long as he could. “Come on, BB. Can they hear us or not?”
Stupid question: he couldn’t ask BB to reveal anything that might help the Kig-Yar. Everyone would hear. He tested his comms again, but they were still jammed. Shit. He caught Staffan’s arm and guided him as far away as he could from where he thought the audio pickup might be, right in the corner near a relatively noisy air vent. “Staffan, did you have some kind of plan pre-arranged with Sinks? Just tell me. I hope you did.”
Staffan didn’t look as if he was stalling. His voice was a furious whisper, all sibilants and spit. “Yes, I did, but he’s got ideas of his own. You’re the guy who works with them. Do they go off the rails?”
“No. They don’t. I’ve never seen them do this, ever.” Vaz racked his brains to remember what he’d heard about Prone To Drift, one of the original population of Huragok found on Onyx. He’d done some unexpected things, but nothing like this. Phillips had read out bits of the classified report on how the ONI research station there had lost Jul ‘Mdama, and Vaz was pretty sure it had mentioned Prone getting physical to stop Jul from doing something. He just couldn’t remember the detail. “They’re not machines, though. They have opinions and emotions. I think Sinks is having them in spades right now.”
Staffan looked up at the deckhead again. “Sinks, where’s Naomi? What are you doing? Please don’t hurt my girl. Just tell me what’s pissed you off. Talk to me.”
“They don’t kill,” Vaz said. “He won’t hurt her.”
Vaz didn’t add that Sinks might well defend himself if attacked, though. He’d heard of them trying to defend comrades. He was pretty sure that Sinks would present a threat now, and neither Mal nor Naomi would hesitate to take that shot if they needed to—not for long, anyway.
“Sinks?” Staffan’s tone was still calm, but he didn’t look it. “What are you trying to do?”
There was a shuffling sound overhead and Sinks emerged from a conduit. Vaz would have slotted him if the Huragok hadn’t rushed to Staffan’s side and stopped him from getting a clear shot. Once Sinks was out of the way, they could have brought Adj and Leaks on board to sort everything out. Getting rid of a few Kig-Yar would have been simple after that.
Sinks said.
“Sinks, if you just cooperate, we can resolve this without hurting anyone,” Staffan said. “That’s my daughter in there. Did I tell you about my daughter? She was taken from me. I’ve only just found her again.”
Staffan looked at Vaz and just raised his hand slightly. No. Don’t shoot it. He could obviously read Vaz like a book. “Sinks, they’ll put me in prison. I’ll be all alone, probably for the rest of my life, and you know what it’s like to be alone. So I need to get away. But I can’t do that if you won’t release the ship.”
“Okay, how about letting me talk to BB?” Vaz asked. “Are you stopping him? What’s happening in the
re?”
Sinks couldn’t jump the ship. That was some reassurance. He couldn’t fire on Stanley, either, if the thought ever entered his head, which actually didn’t seem impossible now.
Sinks asked. Vaz could almost see a line of logic in all this, that Sinks was weighing up the moral pros and cons to make a decision.
Sinks stopped mid-sentence as Vaz felt a slight shudder under his boots. The Huragok zipped across to the data port to insert a tentacle into the aperture. How big a frame charge would Mal have needed to make a ship this size shudder? Even if he’d blown out a whole internal bulkhead to get onto the bridge, it wouldn’t have done that. Sinks made a bleating noise.
he said.
“What? What’s escalating?” Vaz tried to block his path but he simply shot up like a cork and vanished into the conduits. “Staffan, give me your radio.”
He held it out and Vaz took it to call Osman and then Tart-Cart, but the signal was jammed the same as everything else they’d tried. Suddenly Sinks was back again, bioluminescence flickering with anxiety.
he said.
BB’s voice cut in. “Seriously, chaps. Bang out right now. You’ve got about fifteen minutes. I’ll work with Sinks to restore enough control to get everyone out.”
“What about Naomi?” Staffan demanded. “Bring them both out this way. We can reach the Pelican. Sinks, open the goddamn doors so we can get to the shuttle bay. Do you hear me?”
The doors fore and aft of them opened. Vaz expected Mal and Naomi to come jogging out, but the bridge lobby was empty. He put on his helmet and sprinted for the bridge itself.
“Vaz, the doors on the other side are jammed.” BB’s voice trailed after him from speaker to speaker. “They can’t exit across the bridge. They’re retracing their path in.”