The Thursday War

by Karen Traviss

  “It’s okay,” she said. “No need to spare my feelings. I’m still working out what they are myself.”

  Spenser’s house was one of a row of single-story buildings on an industrial estate across on the other side of New Tyne. He parked the Warthog on the cracked concrete drive and went to pick up Naomi’s holdall.

  “Whoa,” she said. “Leave that to me. It’s heavy. Don’t show the world just how heavy before I pick it up.…”

  She heaved it out of the back without any visible effort and took it indoors. Vaz followed her in and slid past her in the central passage that divided the house in half.

  “In here,” he said. It was a dusty back room with a couple of bunk beds in it. When she put the holdall down, it made a loud thud. “Your room. I’ll take the one opposite. Spenser’s got an ops center in the basement.”

  Spenser stuck his head through the doorway. “Bathroom’s on the left. Care to come down to my salon and inspect my etchings? Mal said there was coffee.”

  Vaz unzipped his holdall and took out a can. “Courtesy of CINCONI. Jamaican.”

  “I could fall in love with Big Maggie if she was forty years younger. Hell, even thirty. Is it poisoned?”

  “Possibly. But it’s good.”

  Naomi looked around the basement like a prospective buyer deciding this wasn’t quite the place she had in mind. She pulled off her headscarf, wandered around inspecting the comms equipment, and then flopped into one of the scuffed leather armchairs. Spenser loaded the coffee machine and rummaged for a datapad.

  “Here.” He tapped it a few times, then held it out to her. “Staffan Sentzke.”

  Vaz felt he should have looked away out of simple courtesy, but he had to watch her reaction for his own peace of mind. She would react: emotional bombshells usually caught her for a split second before she fixed her expression into unflinching neutrality. This time, the only sign that something was getting to her was a slight flare of her nostrils as she breathed in slowly. She stared at the datapad and didn’t even blink.

  Then her eyes moved from side to side, not like speed reading but fast jerks. She was looking at his picture and trying to remember. This was her father maybe more than thirty years older than the one she’d last seen, if she remembered that face at all. Eyes didn’t change, though. The skin around them got crêpey and lined, but Vaz knew that she had to see some familiarity in those eyes.

  “Okay.” Her voice was slightly husky. She cleared her throat. “I do look like him, don’t I?” She got up and handed the datapad back to Spenser. “So what’s the schedule? We need to get a feel for this place first. Walk around a little and see what it takes to fit in.”

  Vaz had to let her handle this in her own way. He wasn’t going to mention her father again until she did. Spenser seemed to think the subject was off limits for the time being too, because he just reached across to a nearby stain-ringed table and pulled out a small paper map.

  “If you want my advice on New Tyne,” he said carefully, “I’d do what most of the new arrivals do. There’s always a trickle of people going in and out. The first thing they have to do is get some cash, because Venezia isn’t exactly connected to the clearing banks. They even have their bank notes. Quaint, isn’t it? Like a paramilitary Toytown.”

  “How do they deal with the really big purchases?” Vaz asked. “You know. Artillery pieces, ships, that kind of thing. That’s a lot of cash.”

  “Barter, from what I can see. Like I said last time, the Kig-Yar are trading arms for ships from the Brutes. It’s all rather seventeenth century in its way.”

  “Okay, so we take a rifle and try to fence it tomorrow,” Vaz said.

  “Why not today?” Naomi asked.

  “Because I want Mike here to talk us through the local gossip, and get myself in character. I’m just an ODST. I’m not really trained for this.”

  Vaz didn’t know if Naomi was trained for it either, but she was exceptionally smart and resourceful. Spartans were survivors. If anything, that seemed to be their defining quality.

  “Okay,” she said. “That would be useful.”

  Spenser spent the rest of the day marking bars and shops on the map, the regular places where people did business. By the end of the day, they’d drunk a lot of coffee, eaten a large can of dubious processed meat that had no fibrous texture at all as far as Vaz could tell, and agreed on a plan for Vaz and Naomi to visit the street where most of the arms dealers hung out to try to sell one of the tagged UNSC rifles they’d brought, an MA5B. It was a good way to inject a marker into the system and to begin merging into the naturally wary community. Vaz lay awake that night expecting to hear Naomi pacing the floor of her room, but there was just an occasional snore that could just as easily have been coming from Spenser’s bedroom. He didn’t get up to check.

  The next morning, Spenser handed Vaz a wad of rather well-printed bank notes—yes, they were real, old colonial credits with a distinctive smell—and a set of keys.

  “Don’t crash this,” Spenser said. “If I have to buy any more vehicles, people are going to start wondering if I’m really just an electrician after all. And don’t get pulled over for a traffic violation. I mean it. Stick to the speed limits and stop at the lights. Even the Kig-Yar do.”

  He opened the dented, rusty garage door to reveal an even more dented, rusty ’hog. The colonies ran on them, just like UNSC did. Vaz tossed the keys up and down on his palm.

  “I’m on my best behavior,” he said. “I don’t want anything going wrong, least of all with Naomi around.”

  Spenser raised an eyebrow. “Still no sign of Sentzke. I can’t believe he picked now to skip town for good, so he’s off somewhere having talks or doing business.”

  “You managed not to say nutter or scumbag.”

  “Yeah. I know. She doesn’t need any more upsets, does she?”

  Naomi didn’t give the impression of a woman in pain, but she had a job on her mind, and she seemed to be able to shut out anything as long as she had an objective. As Vaz drove off, she leaned back in the passenger seat, arms folded and eyes narrowed against the breeze from the open windshield.

  “Who’s going to do the talking?” she asked.

  “Me.” Vaz kept an eye on the speedo and stayed a couple of klicks under the limit. For some reason, he found road speed signs on an insurgent planet incredibly funny. “I’ve had to sell stuff before. I bet you haven’t.”

  “I’ll learn from the master, then. Has she tried to get in touch with you yet?”

  “Who, Osman?”

  “No, the Old Trollop, as BB calls her. Chrissie.”

  “No. And I don’t even notice now.”

  “Don’t be tempted to take her back.”

  It was odd to hear Naomi being chatty, but she might have been trying to relax so that they didn’t look like two ONI operatives on a job. Vaz took it at face value.

  “You sound just like Mal,” he said. “She was only unfaithful to me once, though. With the crew of Implacable.”

  Naomi laughed. She did have a sense of humor, just a sporadic one. Vaz tried to stay in character. I’m a deserter. I’m an ordinary guy, a UNSC deserter who’s trying to steer clear of the military police. Christ, what should I call them? Redcaps? MPs? Mal calls them crushers. Reggies. Vaz was suddenly terrified of blowing his cover with one badly chosen bit of slang. I’m a deserter, I’ve walked off with a few rifles, my friend here is a deserter, too.…

  By the time they found the dealer’s premises, Vaz believed himself. He was that deserter, and he felt furtive and hunted. It felt a lot like working for ONI in a very hostile environment. As he took the blanket-wrapped rifle out of the back of the Warthog, he saw a Kig-Yar pass by in a truck and give him a long, beady-eyed look. For a moment, he thought it had recognized him, but then he remembered that he hadn’t left any Kig-Yar alive on Reynes to identify him.

  He walked into the warehouse with Naomi beside him. He hadn’t checked how much hardware she was carrying under her par
ka, but she’d have at least two sidearms. The place was dimly lit and stank of fuel.

  “What do you want?”

  A guy in his thirties—wiry, dark haired, clean shaven—sat on a crate with a metal bowl between his feet, soaking machinery parts in some solvent or other. He shook his hands off and wiped them on a rag. Vaz hoped he didn’t smoke.

  “I’ve got a rifle I need to sell,” Vaz said.

  The guy stood up. “Why do you need to sell it? Have you shot someone with it?”

  “Yeah, lots. Hinge-heads.” Here we go. Can’t back out now. “I left UNSC in a hurry a while ago and I just happened to take my weapon with me. Now I need some cash. Well, both of us do. We didn’t fill in our PVR forms before we left.”

  The guy looked Naomi up and down. It was impossible to read him. Naomi stared back, dead-eyed and unfazed. Vaz reminded himself that even without the Mjolnir, she was immensely strong and could take a lot more damage than a regular human. Vaz unwrapped the MA5B and held it out for the guy to look at.

  “Properly maintained,” Vaz said. And tagged, so we can track the supply chain when we need to. “Obviously.”

  The guy’s eyes lit up just a little, not so hard to read after all. He took it and tested it with exaggerated clicks.

  “Seven hundred,” he said.

  “Thousand.”

  “Eight hundred.”

  “Nine.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Ivan. Eight-fifty.”

  “Eight-seventy-five.”

  The guy paused and gave Vaz the evil eye. Vaz had seen a lot worse back home and responded with his best Russian mobster stare. The guy sighed and reached into his back pocket. Naomi drew her pistol.

  “Whoa, babe,” he said, holding up both hands. He clutched a wad of grubby notes in one. “I’m not the MPs. Eight-seventy-five.”

  Naomi held the weapon on him for a count of two before shoving it back in her coat. She blinked a lot. If she was trying to act like a jumpy deserter, she was giving a first-class performance. Vaz stood there and counted the notes as carefully as a man who hadn’t had a square meal in a while and needed every buck.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “I’m always in the market for UNSC kit,” the guy said. “And small vehicles and vessels up to troop carrier size.”

  Vaz thought of the hinge-head Spirit that he, Mal, and Manny had hijacked and left on Criterion. Maybe it was still there. “I’ve got a Spirit stashed away off-world. Just a little short of transport to go get it. One day, maybe.”

  “Or upsized Magnums,” the guy said, looking at Naomi. He seemed to have taken a shine to her sidearm. But he looked and kept looking, and then he frowned. “I swear I recognize you from somewhere. You’ve got a really familiar face.”

  “Everyone’s got a double,” she said.

  “No, really.” He looked like he had a name on the tip of his tongue, and then his expression changed, because he must have remembered exactly who she looked like. This was practically Arms Dealers Row, after all. “Hey, it’s okay. Anytime. Some of my best customers are UA.”

  Vaz shoved the cash in his jacket and walked out as convincingly as he could. Naomi didn’t say a word until they got back into the Warthog and were halfway down the road.

  “I wasn’t prepared for that,” she said.

  “You weren’t.…”

  “This is a small town. Well, a very tight-knit community, anyway.”

  “Okay, let’s park up somewhere and think this through.”

  Vaz spotted a big, open parking lot and pulled in. It was at the intersection with the main road into town and there were a lot of other vehicles lined up in orderly rows, which didn’t make sense until he looked around and saw a hot food stall doing a brisk trade on the opposite side. He watched the traffic rumble through the control lights, trying to work out what to say. It must have been a good fifteen minutes before he spoke. Naomi didn’t seem in a hurry. She was just staring at the traffic.

  “He has to know your dad,” Vaz said at last. “But even if he mentions you to him, your dad’s never going to think, oh, that’s Naomi, she’s not dead after all. Is he?”

  “Maybe you were right, and I am too conspicuous for this mission.”

  She stopped abruptly. Vaz felt bad for her yet again, and wondered where the hell this was all going to end. Then he realized she was staring at a truck waiting at the lights, a small delivery van. She reached into her pocket and slid out her datapad, raised it carefully, and recorded. The lights changed to green and the truck moved off.

  Naomi looked at the datapad, then held it out to Vaz.

  “Who’s that?” she asked. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  Vaz didn’t have to enlarge the image much. Staffan Sentzke was a really distinctive guy from any angle. Oh God. Well, at least he’s back. We know where he is. He was driving the truck, and there was a Kig-Yar sitting next to him, one of the Skirmisher bastards with black, crow-shiny feathers fanning out from its head.

  “Better let Spenser know we’ve spotted him,” Vaz said. “Mind if I send this?”

  “Go ahead.”

  That was all she said. It was the first time she’d seen her father in the flesh since she’d been snatched as a six-year-old but she just sat there, calm and silent. Vaz was willing to bet it was a different story inside her head, though. She was in Spartan mode now, and nothing was going to get past that veneer.

  The image showed as sent. It’d be with Spenser now. Vaz waited for the response, debating whether to act like the locals and cross the road to get a snack, and almost put his hand on Naomi’s shoulder to let her know he understood what a weird, terrible, unsettling day this was for her. But before he had a chance to open the door and get out, his earpiece crackled.

  “Vaz, I’ve got the picture,” Spenser said.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, that’s one less thing to worry about.”

  “No, it’s not.” Spenser paused. He always did when he was going to lob a grenade into the conversation. “You don’t know the buzzard with him, do you? It’s Sav Fel.”

  The name rang a bell, but Vaz struggled. “Should we worry?”

  “Christ Almighty, yes,” Spenser said. “That’s the bastard who took Pious Inquisitor.”

  PANOM KEEP, HESDUROS

  Things were finally beginning to fall back into place for Jul, albeit in ways he’d never expected.

  He didn’t have a plan beyond regrouping at Bekan keep, but that was a minor miracle in itself at the moment. He’d beaten the most devious humans at their own sly game, and that gave him hope for the future. He understood them now. He’d learned from them, and the Sangheili wouldn’t end up like those Hittites that Phillips had talked about. Understanding the enemy was as powerful a weapon as a plasma cannon.

  Now he had to learn to understand these colonial Sangheili well enough to get them to help him. They were untainted by the political intrigues back home. He had hope.

  “Kaidon Panom, I have to contact my keep,” he said. “My wife will be worried. I was taken prisoner a season ago, and she has no idea what’s happened to me. Can you send messages to Sanghelios?”

  Panom gestured imperiously to one of the children, who were still milling around to catch a glimpse of the stranger who’d stepped out of the holy relic.

  “Ilic, find a communicator that works. Hurry. Bring it to the shipmaster.” Panom was walking beside Jul now, in an excellent mood. “We seldom make contact with the old world. We’ll gladly fight for the gods, but we prefer our own company. Now … to think that you made the holy gate open for you. We’ve touched it many times, and felt its power, but nobody has ever passed through it. Nobody. This is something of a miracle. An omen.”

  Prone had been right about the unstable and intermittent connections, then. Jul realized he was lucky to survive the transition. He really could have ended up dead, so perhaps miracles did happen—or the bold made their own miracles by seizing c
hances. The humans might not have even realized yet that he’d escaped.

  Who could he trust now, though? ‘Telcam was in the pocket of the humans, whether he realized it or not, part of their convoluted tribal politics. The Arbiter was a plain and unalloyed collaborator. Jul had to create a third force on Sanghelios.

  And when I expose the truth about the human strategy to keep us fighting one another, patriots will rally to the cause.

  Panom took Jul into the hall of his keep and sat him down at the long, battered table. By now more warriors, females, and youngsters had come to stare at him, this cousin from the old world who knew the names of gods and was allowed to use their sacred portals. Jul felt like a charlatan. But he’d made no claims that weren’t true, and he told the greatest truth of all: that the humans were the biggest threat to everything Sangheili held dear.

  My only lie is that I don’t believe in gods. But that’s between me and my mortal soul.

  “Here, Shipmaster, my lord.” A young lad barely old enough to begin weapons training approached him, bearing an old communicator that was too large for his hands. “This one works. Is it all right?”

  “It’s perfect,” Jul said. “Thank you.”

  Everything would be fine now. He’d make it that way. He activated the code for his keep, and waited. He didn’t expect to be answered immediately, but the length of the delay worried him. Then Naxan responded.

  “Who calls us? Who is it?”

  “Uncle? Uncle, this is Jul.”

  Naxan sucked in a breath. “Jul, where have you been? Where are you?”

  “I was taken prisoner by the humans, but I’ve escaped. I’m on a colony world now. I’ll explain it all to you, but first I must speak with Raia. Find her for me.”

  The link went quiet, but Naxan was still there. Jul could hear his breathing. “Naxan, I must talk to her.” Naxan still didn’t speak. Had the link failed? No, that rasping breath was still there. “Can you hear me, Naxan?”

  “I have to talk with you, Jul.” Naxan sounded hoarse. “This is difficult.”

  He expected Naxan to remonstrate with him or at least ask him more questions, but there was clearly something wrong. “Naxan, where is Raia?”