Halo®: Mortal Dictata

by Karen Traviss

  “Enough.” Edvin drew his pistol. “Shut it. Just shut up.”

  “Egg sandwiches with mayonnaise and dill,” Vaz said. “Cut into triangles.”

  “That’s it—”

  “And she told the psychologist she wanted a doll’s house.”

  Staffan stepped forward and grabbed Edvin’s arm, abandoning Mal. He looked like he was shaking.

  “Leave us, Ed.”

  “For Chrissakes, Dad, can’t you see what he’s doing?”

  “Please. Go. You don’t understand.”

  “Dad—”

  “Out. Now.”

  Edvin looked like he was going to have to be dragged away. But after a few seconds’ glowering, he holstered his pistol and stormed out. Staffan closed the door again and locked it, not fully turning his back on either of them for one second. He stood with his arms at his side with his finger inside the pistol’s trigger guard, which Mal thought was a really bad idea for a bloke getting edgier by the second.

  “Now that’s an interesting detail.” Staffan put his free hand to his nose for a second to brush his top lip. It looked like a nervous gesture. “Tell me why you used the word clone.”

  “I think you know.”

  “Don’t dick me around. I’m not a tolerant man when it comes to my daughter.”

  “Sansar was glassed. How would I be able to see the colonial admin records?”

  “So this wasn’t the CAA,” Staffan said. Mal expected a flash of temper from him. What he actually saw was a weird kind of relief. “Well, I get more right every time, don’t I?”

  Mal wasn’t sure if Vaz had now blown the mission or not. But maybe he’d seen the warning signs in his friend and hadn’t taken enough notice. Vaz was disgusted by Halsey and was set on shooting her. He’d even cornered Mendez, the Spartans’ training sergeant, and had a go at him for taking part in the SPARTAN-II program. Vaz didn’t mince his words. He thought they were monsters, the worst kind of scum, Nazis, war criminals. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to let him get this close to Staffan Sentzke.

  Now is this a maneuver to get out of here, a seriously big mistake, a moral stand, or is he just forgetting he’s a bloody marine?

  But I was the one who said we ought to tell Staffan that his daughter was alive, that the poor bastard had a right to know.

  Yeah, Mal still thought that. But it was the worst possible time to do it. They were prisoners, and a Covenant battlecruiser was still out there waiting to glass Earth. Mal needed to get word to Osman to just go and lob a few Shivas at the thing while they still had a location. Parangosky would have to find another ventral beam elsewhere.

  And Vaz had orders, just as he had. This wasn’t right. You thought on your feet, yes, and you improvised, yes, but you didn’t reveal classified information, because you had no idea what else the enemy knew. You didn’t know how many pieces of the puzzle they had, or even what else you didn’t know and never would. Command ballsed things up and played stupid internal politics, and withheld things you needed to know; blokes died because of vanity and incompetence upstairs as often as bad luck, superior firepower, and their own bad judgment. But that didn’t make the basic rules wrong or optional. Orders were what gave you the best chance of staying alive—or winning, for which staying alive didn’t necessarily matter.

  Stop it, Vaz.

  Mal looked at him. “I think it’s time for you to shut up, mate.”

  “Your men think you’re a bit crazy, Staffan,” Vaz said quietly, ignoring him. “A tin-foiler. A conspiracy theorist. But I know you’re perfectly sane.”

  Mal realized he’d often underestimated Vaz. He seemed to have learned a lot from Phillips. Phillips was really good at this kind of shit, like when he’d interrogated Jul ‘Mdama and conned him into revealing all kinds of stuff without laying a finger on him, and in an alien language, too. Now that was spook-fu. Vaz—clear-cut, in your face, moral, uncompromising—was definitely playing that game now.

  Maybe he played it even better because his grim, earnest honesty showed on his face. Phillips was a smiling charmer. Vaz was the blunt but decent soldier. If push came to shove, you’d take Vaz’s word over Phillips’s.

  “You do, do you?” Staffan said. Mal kept an eye on the pistol. “Then tell me this. Why my kid?”

  Oh God. No. Please, Vaz, no.

  “Because she was one in billions,” Vaz said. “She had exceptional skills that Earth needed.”

  Staffan almost tottered. Holy shit. Nerve, contact, ouch. It was hard to judge if it was cruel or kind, but as Mal had spent the last two hours getting tortured, he wasn’t going to be picky. Vaz had Staffan’s attention for the moment and he was making the most of it.

  “Had,” Staffan said. He wanted to know if she was still alive. What father wouldn’t? “Had. Past tense.”

  Mal wondered why he didn’t just ask the question straight out. Perhaps he was scared to hear the answer “no” after so many years of living on hope. Mal made a note of that as an indicator of a crack in the facade.

  “Sorry, Staffan,” Vaz looked like he was in a lot of pain. “We want to stay alive like anyone else. We’re just better at accepting we might not and dealing with it, that’s all.” He let out a long breath. “Now you know that we know a lot more than you do. But not all the answers can be beaten out of us. You’re going to have to negotiate.”

  Staffan looked at Vaz for a long time. Mal would have felt a bit better if he’d just put that sodding pistol back in his holster. “So why did you come here? To hunt me down?”

  “No.” Vaz half-closed his eyes for a moment, like he was going to pass out. “It was nothing to do with you. You just got in the way.”

  Staffan didn’t make them a cup of tea and apologize, but he didn’t put rounds through their heads, either. He just left. The door closed—quietly, no slamming—and the lock clicked. Mal sat glaring at Vaz, not sure whether to go ballistic at him or not. He was furious. He also felt guilty. Vaz had done it all for him—the moral act and the clever mind games. They suddenly had more value alive than dead, so Vaz had probably saved his life.

  But Parangosky would have Vaz’s arse if Osman didn’t. He wouldn’t have to worry about a court martial now. ONI was very informal about discipline, but also very emphatic.

  Shit.

  There was a good chance this conversation was being monitored. Mal couldn’t undo what had been said. All that was left was to reinforce the idea that they’d been cornered and reluctantly forced into a deal.

  “Well, whatever happened to name, rank, and number only, you daft bastard?” Mal asked.

  Vaz did his dead-eyed gangsterish look. It was even more convincing with the black eye and split lip. “You’re welcome. Glad they didn’t drill your brain out to trash your chip.”

  “Why the hell did you blurt all that out?”

  “I didn’t blurt.”

  “We’re buggered. And the mission’s buggered. Why tell him?”

  “He had to be told.”

  “He doesn’t believe you.”

  “He does.”

  “Ahhh, shit.” Mal had to ask. “Did you piss yourself? You stink like a public urinal.”

  “It was the beers. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

  “Animal.”

  Vaz mouthed at him. Bought some time.

  They were both pretty good at lip-reading now. It was the only way of not being overheard by BB, as long as you avoided cameras. It was a shame that BB wasn’t here now. He’d hijack all the systems and pull off some amazing stunt. Osman would be searching for them, but that was no use if Inquisitor moved again. They might never find her.

  Don’t know where we are, Mal mouthed back.

  Vaz nodded. BB will. Then it looked like he said omniscient. That was a tough one to read.

  Mal shrugged. Damage?

  Minor I think. Vaz stretched out his left leg with difficulty. You?

  Mal’s head felt like a throbbing, burning spike was being twisted through every ce
ll. It’s only pain.

  Vaz almost smiled, but not quite. That was asking too much. Mad bastard. Cannibal. You’ll eat anything.

  Mal clung to the satisfaction of at least putting up a hoofing fight. The taste in his mouth was disgusting. All he could smell now was blood and piss. He hoped Gareth was being overrun by virulent Wolverhampton-evolved germs that would rot the colonial bastard from the arm up and make his arse fall out.

  For starters.

  It was good to stay vengeful.

  Other than that, they were still alive. And a pair of live ODSTs, trussed up and battered or not, were still capable of turning a battle around.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  IN A WAY, WE STRUCK LUCKY WITH THE COVENANT. IF THEY HADN’T SHOWN UP, THEN ALL THE SPARTANS WOULD BE REMEMBERED FOR WOULD BE KIDNAPPING AND ASSASSINATING COLONIAL SEPARATISTS. HUMANS JUST LIKE US. IT’S NOT SUCH TERRIFIC, CLEAR-CUT PR AS SLAYING INVADING GENOCIDAL ALIENS. JUST POINT TO THE HEROIC POSTER AND HOPE NOBODY CHECKS THE DATES. HISTORY’S A GREAT AIRBRUSH, ISN’T IT?

  —PROFESSOR EVAN PHILLIPS, ONI XENOANALYST, FROM HIS INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO ONI OFFICER CANDIDATES APPLYING FOR ATTACHMENTS TO SECTION TWO, PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND PSYOPS

  UNSC PORT STANLEY, OFF VENEZIA

  “I think Parangosky should ask for her money back,” Osman said. “How am I going to run ONI if I can’t even manage to have a pilot on standby when we need one?”

  She braced her hands on the edge of the chart table and studied the enhanced holographic image of New Tyne, constantly rebuilding itself slice by slice in real time via the tiny sensor sats that BB had deployed above Venezia. It was at times like this that she really appreciated Forerunner technology. This chart was a direct result of the 100,000-year-old tech found in Onyx, a way to blend lidar, camera feeds, and all the other sensors available to Stanley to create a continuously updated and ultra-accurate image of the surface down to street level. This was as good as a live 3-D image of the entire city that she could zoom into, rotate, or fly through at will.

  She could even enter buildings via the extended frequency mapping. It was night in New Tyne, but the chart effectively saw the town in permanent daylight with most of the doors wide open. It was worth taking the risk of being detected to get the data.

  The EF mapping wasn’t good at seeing soft tissue inside structures, but that was where neural implants came in. Down there somewhere—she hoped—Mal and Vaz were still alive. Leaks was busy building remote implant trackers to sweep for transponder codes. The remotes had to enter the atmosphere to get within range, but Leaks took that requirement in his stride.

  If she hadn’t been preoccupied with getting her people back, then she might have marveled more at what was happening in the maintenance section. Between them, BB and the two Huragok were developing extraordinary devices. They were coming up with battlefield solutions on the fly, as soldiers had always done throughout history, modding kit to deal with the problems that nobody in Procurement had foreseen. The one drawback was that Huragok didn’t document anything. They just presented little works of genius without explanation. Osman didn’t get any sense of trade secrecy from them, just complete incomprehension as to why anyone would want to know exactly how Huragok did something when all you had to do was ask them to do it.

  I’ll worry about the long-term issues later. Right now, I don’t care how you do it as long as you help me find Mal and Vaz.

  It was hard not to imagine the worst. To most people in New Tyne, the UNSC weren’t the heroes who saved the galaxy from the Covenant. They were the bastards who shot their fathers and granddads. They were the brutal regime that put down colonial rebellions and nuked Far Isle. Mal and Vaz would bear the brunt of that hatred.

  Even I thought the Far Isle bombing was rebel propaganda until I saw the file. But then the rebels nuked civilian targets too. We’re all dirty, all of us.

  She focused on the search again. Sentzke wasn’t stupid. He might not have been fully aware of UNSC technology, but he’d assume they might be able to track more than he was aware of, so he’d take as many precautions as he could. Maybe he’d even move Mal and Vaz to a deep mine, where no sensor could follow them. The implants were detectable under layers of rubble and rock, but they weren’t reliable meters underground.

  But they’re ODSTs. They’ll have a plan to dig their way out with a teaspoon and steal a ship. They’re survivors.

  “Are you talking to me, Admiral, or just berating yourself out loud?” Phillips leaned on the table opposite her, mirroring her position. “Look, we need two Pelicans. There’d never be a good time to pick one up. If you had just one now, you’d still have a problem, just a different kind.”

  “Actually, I’d have Naomi and Dev, and a means of extracting two guys I can’t afford to lose. Three, if we count Spenser as a temporary secondment.”

  “And you’d also have the dilemma of whether to focus on retrieving them or grabbing Pious Inquisitor. And you’d go for the ship and spend the rest of your life drowning in guilt if Mal and Vaz died.”

  “You’re learning the joy of life in a blue suit. Not bad for a few months at sea.”

  Phillips squinted theatrically at her, looking her up and down. “It’s black, I think, and we’re in space.”

  “Well, that’s the modern Navy for you. We cling to centuries-old traditions and language so that we don’t get mistaken for the Air Force.” Osman straightened up, arms folded. “BB, have we got an ETA for Tart-Cart and whatever the new tub’s called?”

  “Two hours.” BB appeared just above the nav console. “And it’s Bogof.”

  “Some obscure Russian hero?” Phillips asked.

  “Buy One, Get One Free.”

  “Ah. Nothing like a dose of gravitas.”

  BB sidled up to Osman. “First trackers ready to launch. Permission to deploy?”

  “Tell Leaks he’s a genius. So are you, for scoping it out. Do it.”

  “Assuming the remotes survive atmospheric entry, I’ll need to move them across New Tyne via the roofs so that curious local brigands don’t spot them.” BB paused. “If they’ve moved Mal and Vaz out of town, though, it’s going to be a long, slow job.”

  “There isn’t much out of town on Venezia. We know where all the remote sites are. Farms, quarries, factories, mines.”

  “And any number of random holes in the ground that we can’t necessarily pick up on a satellite. They probably know our chaps are chipped. The Kig-Yar certainly do. Assume that anything the buzzards know, the humans know too.”

  Osman fully expected someone to try disabling Mal’s and Vaz’s implants. If Sentzke’s people were dumb enough to do that—assuming they wanted the marines alive—then the ODSTs were already dead. It was a surgical procedure. The implants would still transmit, though. She’d find them. And if she found the worst, she decided she’d have no qualms returning with Pious Inquisitor to test the ventral beam.

  Collateral damage, but there’s a lot of other bastards down there with long terrorist records too, so maybe I’ll have to show them that human shields don’t wash with me.

  “Good work, BB.” She looked up at Phillips. “Evan, next time we pass somewhere with a neuro facility, you need to get chipped. I’ve managed to misplace three out of five personnel in a matter of months.”

  “Sure.” Phillips nodded. He said yes to everything. She wondered what he’d actually refuse. “Why don’t they have longer ranges?”

  “Some do, but the ODSTs have the basic version. That’s all troops usually need. It’s just to stop friendly fire.”

  “Or to find the bodies.”

  “Yes, thanks, Evan.”

  “Sorry.”

  The tracker was another thing Osman felt she should have addressed before. She’d been too reliant on secure radio, armor-mounted devices, and other sophisticated but easily lost comms to track her people. I should have learned my lesson after we lost Phillips in Ontom, shouldn’t I? And she should have known better than to expect ODSTs
to slot straight into undercover work without more training, too. Covert ops weren’t the same thing. Experienced agents got burned all the time. It had been too big a risk.

  Even the one guy born and bred for it was in trouble. Mike Spenser had gone to ground somewhere, and all she could do was wait for him to call for extraction.

  “Ma’am, remember you can keep a comms link open to Tart-Cart if you like,” BB said. “Bogof’s online too.”

  “Are you monitoring my respiration rate, BB?”

  “I am, and I’m a great believer in the reassuring power of the human voice.”

  “Okay, if Dev and Naomi don’t find it distracting, go ahead. How’s Naomi doing?”

  “Well, she hasn’t mastered parallel parking yet, but she has a fabulous driving instructor.”

  Naomi’s channel popped. “No problems, ma’am. Any update?”

  “‘Fraid not. Can you receive holographics yet? We’ve got a functional real-time chart of New Tyne.”

  “Adj is on board. Send it and he’ll adapt the display at this end. I can use the time to familiarize myself before I go in.”

  Well, she seemed to have tasked herself. Osman wondered whether to remind her whose job it was to make the decisions, but thought better of it. Naomi was only doing what Osman had encouraged Kilo-Five to do—to speak their minds and tell her when she needed telling. There was no point pissing off an elite special forces team with years of frontline experience by pretending she knew what she didn’t. What was the point of having Spartans if you made them wait for orders? They just needed a clear objective. So did the ODSTs. How they achieved it was up to them.

  “So you’re volunteering to infiltrate New Tyne,” Osman said.

  “I’m best equipped to do that, ma’am. Seeing as we can forget about fitting in seamlessly now.”

  “Okay, we’ll have remotes on the surface soon, so we’ll relay the signal when we get it. If you’re taking New Tyne, then I’ll divert to P.I.” Osman had no idea what she was going to encounter when she found the ship. “If she looks like an immediate threat that we can’t take control of, then we have to deny her to the enemy. And only Stanley can ruin her day with a few well-placed Shivas. But if you have a tough exfil from Venezia or Mal and Vaz need medical assistance, you’ll want a ship to dock with pronto.”