Halo®: Mortal Dictata

by Karen Traviss

  “Very well.” She pointed at the ground. “Stay there while I fetch you something.”

  She wasn’t expecting him to obey, but when she opened the door to the pantry and looked around, he wasn’t at her heels. It was a start. She took some soft berries and chopped up a small piece of uoi steak with a little enzyme powder. Laik was past the stage of needing puréed food.

  “Here,” she said. Instead of dropping it into his mouth, she put the small bowl on the ground where he could reach it himself. Her mother tutted dismissively. “Can you wait? Can you wait until I count to ten?”

  She wasn’t sure he understood numbers yet, but he could recognize words. She leaned over. Her shadow fell on him.

  “One … two…”

  “You really should regurgitate for him,” Ais said. “I don’t think it’s good for them to be plate-fed.”

  “… five, six…”

  “I regurgitated food for you until you shed your down.”

  “… nine … ten.”

  Laik pounced on the food. He had to dip his head, scoop up the meat, and flip it back down his throat, but he ate on his own.

  And he’d waited. Chol was ecstatic with pride. “My clever boy! My clever, patient boy.” She nuzzled him and groomed his down with her teeth while he made little get-off-it’s-all-mine noises at the back of his throat. “See, Mama? I shall make a prince of him.”

  Ais said nothing. Chol took that as conceding defeat and set off for Dal’koth, a short hop from T’vao among the belt of small moons and asteroids orbiting Y’Deio. She savored being back at the helm of a ship again. She’d laid claim to her last command—Joyous Discovery, a missionary vessel whose name she’d changed immediately to Paragon—when the Covenant was too busy with its own civil war to notice, but this Phantom was her personal transport, seized from a Sangheili who made the mistake of underestimating those near the bottom of the pecking order. It had taken her weeks to get the smell of rotting meat out of the cockpit. Chol thought the pilot should have simply handed it over in gratitude for cycles of far more loyal service than his kind deserved, but the fool decided to put up a fight, and he didn’t win.

  And still some Kig-Yar choose to serve them. What do the humans say? “They got religion.” Traitors, all of them. Weak-minded children who want to believe in magic.

  The gathering on Dal’koth was no more than an informal get-together. To call a meeting at a specific time required organization, something Kig-Yar mistrusted almost as much as cash on delivery, so Chol had simply responded to word passed around the clans to get together to swap intelligence on the state of the postwar galaxy.

  And also what’s happened to all that hardware. We should have moved faster. We should have grabbed more when we started to see the cracks. The Sangheili shipmasters have commandeered far too much.

  There was still a substantial navy out there somewhere, even with all the vessels lost in battle. Sangheili elders had seized ships for themselves and taken them back to their keeps. All Chol was doing was applying the same common sense as they had.

  She swaggered around the airfield, looking for familiar hulls. It was fascinating to see how many dropships and small fighters had been liberated from the Covenant fleet, but there were also UNSC Pelicans. They had their uses. The UNSC might now be in the market for used parts. When she went into the hangar, the vaulted cavern was full of Kig-Yar trading carbines and other small arms. One of the males turned to look at her, abandoned his haggling, and came trotting over to greet her. She took a few moments to recognize him. It was Zim, a scout she’d employed on several missions some time ago. The seasons didn’t seem to have treated him well. He looked thin and bedraggled.

  “Well, nothing like a breaking branch to shower those beneath with fruit,” he said, brandishing a human rifle with some satisfaction. “What brings you here, Shipmistress?”

  “Curiosity and the need to escape my mother.”

  “Oh. Not the news of an interesting contract, then.”

  “How interesting?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems to be of great amusement to Mistress Isk.” Zim cocked his head in the direction of a dais made out of ammunition crates stamped with the UNSC emblem. Chol found it interesting that they chose a bird as their totemic symbol. The few humans she’d had contact with seemed to think birds were for eating or hunting, not revering. “She’s promised to address that matter first before opening the floor to ship trading.”

  Isk was too old to do much traveling now, but she was still fond of brokering deals and taking her cut. She clambered up on the dais and called for attention. It took her a little while to get it because of the busy trading over the sudden glut of weapons. Zim was right. There was always some capital to be made out of someone else’s disaster, in this case the Covenant’s.

  “I have mixed feelings about what I’m going to tell you,” said Isk. She paused, head bobbing as if she was trying not to laugh. “It seems that Sav Fel has disappeared with one of the Sangheili’s more significant vessels.”

  A loud chorus of cheering interrupted her. She held up one hand.

  “He took the battlecruiser Pious Inquisitor,” she went on. There were sarcastic oohs and aahs. “Or at least he failed to deliver it in the middle of a battle, which, might I say, is a most prudent thing to do.”

  “How much did he get for it?” someone yelled.

  Chol didn’t take note of who’d asked that question. She was much more interested in the name and class of the ship. A battlecruiser. It was a capital ship made to scour life from planets, to melt their surfaces to glass.

  It was exactly the kind of warship that a united Kig-Yar navy needed.

  “Ah, therein lies our dilemma,” Isk said. “Fel has disappeared and the ship can’t be found. We should applaud him for that alone, but Field Master Avu Med ‘Telcam has put out an offer. He’ll pay for the return of the ship. I believe he needs it to glass his Sangheili brothers’ cities.”

  “Unless he pressed the wrong button and blew it up,” a female said. “That’s what happens when you let males drive, you see…”

  It got another laugh, but Isk had left out the most important detail for the majority of Kig-Yar present.

  “How much is he paying?” Zim asked.

  “Eighty thousand gekz,” Isk replied. “For what that’s worth these days. He has few goods to trade at the moment.”

  It wasn’t enough to start a stampede. It wasn’t even enough to make it worth stealing the ship, because if it was damaged the repair bill could be a great deal more. Just maintaining a battlecruiser while waiting to find a buyer was too expensive for most Kig-Yar to consider.

  Chol didn’t want to sell the ship, though. She had other plans for it. This was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to ignore. All she needed was a skeleton crew to find it and bring it back. She’d worry about exactly how to do that when she’d secured the contract.

  “Where was Inquisitor last seen?” she asked.

  “All we know is that it isn’t in Sangheili space.” Isk peered at her from the dais. “Are you interested in this contract?”

  What do I have to lose? Nothing. The galaxy was in disarray and a new galactic order would emerge. The choice seemed to be between carrying on as before and hoping for the best, or establishing a stronger position for all Kig-Yar.

  “Tell the Sangheili I’ll take the contract,” Chol said. “How do I contact this ‘Telcam? What is he?”

  “He’ll contact you.” Isk still looked dubious. “He’s a disciple of the Abiding Truth. Religious lunatics. Are you sure you want this job? It’s a very big burden.”

  Chol was certain now. It was time for the Kig-Yar to remember they’d once done very well without the Covenant to provide for them.

  “You’re crazy,” Zim said. “All that hard graft for eighty thousand? What if he can’t pay? Won’t pay? Currency’s worth nothing these days. What are you going to do with a battlecruiser left on your hands? Ah well. I suppose you could strip
it for parts.”

  Chol almost gave him the speech she hadn’t given her mother, the one that she’d made too many times in bars, about how Kig-Yar had let themselves be ground down and despised, and that they were nobody’s servants any longer. But there was no point in showing her hand yet.

  “You lack vision,” she said. He looked up at her. She was taller than the average male, being T’vaoan, so she could command physical respect as well as deference to her gender. Just as T’vaoan males had much heavier upper-body plumage than other Kig-Yar, T’vaoan females had a ruff of feathers on the head and neck instead of dull scales, and there was a certain satisfaction to feeling them rise and fan out. It could make any male back down. “You forget the most important thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “We might squabble over garbage heaps now,” she said, “but we were an empire once. And we shall be again.”

  UNSC PORT STANLEY, OFF VENEZIA

  Up, down, or in front of?

  Mal lay facedown on the transparent deck, propped on folded arms, and told his brain that the blue marbled disc of Venezia lay beneath him. If he tried to convince it that the planet was anywhere else, it became too disorienting. He let the ship’s generated gravity settle the argument. Down there. Below. Definitely. His body confirmed it.

  The view was one-way. Port Stanley could monitor Venezia, but Venezia or any passing ship couldn’t see Port Stanley. The corvette was in stealth mode, cold and silent and invisible. Where would Sav Fel park a CCS-class battlecruiser nearly two kilometers long? It obviously wasn’t within Stanley’s sensor range, or else they’d have found her by now. Mal could have asked BB to display a chart of features within Venezia’s system, but he didn’t feel like chatting. He rolled over, took his datapad out of his shirt pocket, and studied the images.

  Once we know what the buzzard’s using to get on and off the planet we’ll have some idea of the range, and that’ll give us a clue. Maybe.

  Of course, he could always be getting a lift from a buddy with an FTL drive … and that still doesn’t mean he can’t do short hops.

  It didn’t solve much. Stanley had remote sensors in stationary orbit, football-sized spy satellites that could watch a small city like New Tyne, but keeping an eye on the business that went on indoors still came down to getting on the ground and following people. Mal switched to the feed from the sensors and checked to see if there was any traffic entering or leaving Sangheili space. Apart from Venezia’s network of monitoring satellites, nothing was moving. It was a backwater planet with a small population that didn’t even need to import food on a regular basis. Spotting larger ships in transit should have been easy.

  Mal flopped back onto his stomach and went on watching the infinite black, just letting his mind wander, but that was a mistake. Thoughts that he kept trying to shut out wheedled their way back in like pushy insurance salesmen.

  So what are you going to do about poor bloody Staffan Sentzke, eh? Just blow him up too, yeah? Poor bastard loses his daughter—twice—and loses his wife, and then loses his mind, and it’s all thanks to your employer. Feel good about yourself now, do you? Going to follow orders? Is a lawful order about an unlawful act lawful at all?

  It just wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Staffan Sentzke was an enemy that Earth had made for itself from scratch. The poor sod didn’t even know the half of what had happened to his daughter. Mal was trying to weigh the certain knowledge that he would have reacted just like Staffan—worse, probably—against the fact that his job was to defend Earth. He realized he was now agreeing with Vaz. And Vaz had admitted standing outside Halsey’s holding cell in Port Stanley with his sidearm, on the point of dispensing the justice that the bitch would never face in a court. Only BB’s intervention had stopped him.

  We need defending against the Catherine Halseys of this world more than the Staffan Sentzkes. But that’s not my job, not while I wear this uniform. More’s the bloody pity.

  It was a circular argument. Mal was close to banging his head on the glass deck to make himself stop when the reflection of a ghostly blue cube drifted into view behind him.

  “I’m not even going to ask what you’re doing.” BB settled on the deck right in Mal’s eye line, landing gently like an air balloon. “But you’ll never get a decent suntan there.”

  “Just thinking. Remind me why the jelly boys did this to the deck.”

  “I asked them nicely.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Naomi’s fascinated by astronomy. I thought she’d like it.”

  “Was your brain donor a bit of a lady’s man?”

  “I have no idea. Why?”

  “Because you’re very smarmy with the female crew. And prone to pissing contests with the male ones.”

  “Which I win.” BB could somehow say that with a wink despite the fact that nothing in his avatar changed at all. “But I can see why you’d be envious of my effortless charm.”

  Mal eased himself off the deck press-up style and knelt back on his heels. “So … you really think that Naomi’s old man is planning to glass Earth?”

  “That’s quite an extrapolative leap.”

  “Yeah. But everyone’s making it.”

  “You feel sorry for him, don’t you?”

  “Of course I bloody well do. ONI cost him his wife and kid. And now we’re going to finish the job. Yay us, as Phyllis would say.”

  “Oh, we don’t know how it’s going to turn out yet, do we? You’re going to miss the Admiral’s briefing.” BB buzzed him like a fly. “Chop chop. Move it, Staff. Get some exercise.”

  “Don’t you start. That’s all I hear from Vaz.”

  Mal got to his feet and headed for the bridge, up ladders, through decks, and along passages, a quick jog in a small ship. BB went ahead of him, occasionally doing dice rolls and singing something vaguely nautical to himself that sounded like Gilbert and Sullivan, but Mal could never remember which one was H.M.S. Pinafore and which was Pirates of Penzance. Were all AIs like this? Mal had never worked with one before, but he knew he’d be disappointed if the next one he met wasn’t as good a mate as BB. BB wasn’t some user-friendly interface. He was a proper bloke, albeit a posh and educated one. Mal sometimes felt the urge to tell him. The cocky little sod knew, though.

  Phillips and Devereaux were chatting to Osman at the navigation console when Mal arrived. Phillips looked up and brandished his datapad like it was going to be the topic of the briefing.

  “Staff, there’s been a change of plan,” Osman said.

  Mal parked his backside on the edge of the chart table. Osman could always take a joke. “Bugger me, ma’am, I’m stunned. I’ve never known that happen before in the entire history of the UNSC.”

  “Given the extreme interest now in Pious Inquisitor, henceforth known as P.I. because I’m fed up repeating the name, Parangosky would like us to retrieve her in one piece.”

  “Shame,” Mal said, relieved. He’d imagined a scenario of having to fire a couple of Shivas at Staffan Sentzke and then trying to live with the knowledge that he’d killed a guy who had the moral high ground. “I love big explosions.”

  Phillips handed him the datapad. It was a transcript in English. “That’s our buddy ‘Telcam talking about some Kig-Yar. I don’t have a name yet, but it’s obviously a female because he’s referring to her as shipmistress. Quite a courtesy, coming from him. The usual Sangheili term for a female Kig-Yar translates roughly as overbreeding chicken-bitch.”

  “Of course, she might just literally be that,” Osman said. “A ship’s commanding officer. They trusted them with missionary ships and the odd frigate.”

  Mal scrolled through the file and picked out a few key words. He noted that ‘Telcam was asking the Kig-Yar to find the ship and notify him, not to bring her back. Well, that was academic. If ‘Telcam was worried about the buzzards welshing on the deal and holding the ship to ransom, then he wasn’t going to be able to enforce the look-don’t-touch order unless he had a warship
of his own on instant standby. Otherwise the Kig-Yar could hot-wire Inquisitor and be light-years away in seconds.

  “He’s going to follow her, then,” Mal said. “Because he wouldn’t take a Kig-Yar’s word for anything.”

  Osman shrugged. “Well, we never actually planned to stop him using P.I., remember. He just happened to lose her mid-battle. So no actual harm done if he does reclaim her, but we’ve never recovered a fully functional capital ship intact from the Covenant, let alone one that might have some interesting data in her systems.”

  “So why can’t our Huragok add Covenant gizmos?” Phillips asked. “I thought they all shared data. If they maintained the Covenant fleet, don’t they remember all the blueprints or whatever? If I were Fleet, I’d be asking them to add a ventral beam or three to Infinity.”

  “Good point, Phyllis,” Mal said. “Maybe the Covenant didn’t want the Engineers swapping trade secrets with the rest of the fleet, though. We’ve confined Infinity’s Engineers for the same reason.”

  “Yeah, Fleet procurement’s still bitching about that.” Osman sounded weary. “They wanted a Huragok in every vessel. We should never have told them we had them, but that’s what happens when you have to car-share Infinity with CINCFLEET.”

  “Trust us, we’re ONI,” Phillips said in a mock-professorial voice. “We’ll make the best use of these little chaps. They’re perfectly safe with us.”

  Osman didn’t volunteer information about plans for ventral beams or anything else by way of mass destruction, but Mal was starting to think the ONI way now. If ONI had commissioned a vessel with a ventral beam, it would only mean one thing: that they were thinking about glassing the Sangheili, and Admiral Hood was pretty old-fashioned about sticking to the peace treaty he’d shaken hands on with the Arbiter. Acquiring a Covenant ship with glassing kit was the politically expedient alternative. Mal could imagine Parangosky smiling at Hood and telling him that they were just capturing more Covenant hulls to reverse-engineer them, same as they’d done with Forerunner technology for years. And he wouldn’t believe her, of course, but he’d back off. Parangosky might well have wielded more practical power than Hood and she’d undermined Fleet to help the Sangheili rebels, but she’d avoid an internal civil war. God bless the old girl. She was all about getting the job done.