Halo®: Mortal Dictata

by Karen Traviss

  Nobody pointed out that Osman was an admiral, and slightly rusty when it came to vessel interdiction. But she couldn’t sit on her backside staring into space from the bridge viewscreen and leave it all to Dev and Naomi when she knew she was capable.

  “We could jump straight to your location if you went after Inquisitor with Stanley,” Dev said.

  “What if you sustain damage and can’t slip fast enough? No, I’ll wait until you dock.”

  “There’s no perfect solution to this, ma’am. But Pelicans were designed for extractions and Stanley can make holes in big ships. So that seems as sane a plan as any.”

  “The key thing is to at least track the ship. The moment Sentzke thinks she’s compromised, he’ll try to move her. If he hasn’t already.”

  “He seemed pretty confident that his neurotic Huragok can keep the ship locked down,” BB said. “Although I can’t see how it would deal with an armed boarding. Can openers ready, ladies.”

  Phillips looked up. “What do you mean by neurotic?”

  “Mal said the Huragok went into meltdown when the Kig-Yar glassed a Forerunner site as a sales demo. He’s called Sometimes Sinks. And he does. He sinks.”

  “Malfunctioning? Unwell? In need of maintenance? Mad as a box of frogs?”

  “Who knows? They’ve all got their funny little ways. They do have an instinct to defend technology, though.”

  “Forerunner tech.”

  “Where do you draw the line between that and a Covenant ship, though? Their purpose in life is to keep the lights on, after all. Maybe I should ask Leaks.”

  Osman wasn’t sure how significant that was. The question was not what the Huragok thought, but whether Sentzke felt the creature was capable of holding the ship, or if he’d now try to hide her.

  “Are we sure that Chol Von is going after the ship, BB?”

  “I’d bet Phyllis’s pension on it, Admiral. And if she kidnapped Fel, then we have to assume she’s there right now.”

  Osman rubbed her eyes, thinking the sequences through. Take Bogof as soon as the Pelicans are back, tag Inquisitor, and go after her later when Mal and Vaz are retrieved. Can we send a remote to monitor her? No, too far, too slow. Mini slipspace portal end to end? Can Leaks build one? No, even if he can, it’s easier to use a Pelican. So … Stanley or Bogof.

  “Okay,” she said. There were a lot of assumptions. The only certainty she had was that Mal and Vaz were in trouble, and time wasn’t on anyone’s side. She’d have to go with her best guess, hoping that she hadn’t unknowingly steered everyone to her own wrong conclusion. “As soon as everyone’s back on board, I take Stanley and deal with Inquisitor. Mike Spenser’s still awaiting extraction too, as far as we know, but he’s got to let us know where he is. Naomi, Dev—grab the boys first, then go get Spenser. If the situation on the ground isn’t how it looks now, then play it by ear. The ODSTs have to be our priority.”

  Spenser could sit it out longer than Mal and Vaz. Osman could always have a second bite at extracting him, provided he was still alive. He was used to operating in insurgent territory, and he knew this particular enemy a lot better than Kilo-Five.

  Except Naomi, of course. She’s neutralized a few rebels in her time.

  “Got it, ma’am,” Dev said. “Any restriction on weapons?”

  “It’s Venezia,” Osman said. “Do whatever you have to.”

  The two Pelicans would reach Venezia in ninety minutes. Osman remembered when that was too short a time to get anything done, but now it stretched like a life sentence. She studied the chart, working out how she would have accessed and breached the armory if she’d been in Naomi’s position. Getting in was often easier than getting out, especially in an urban area.

  We should have moved in when we first had the coordinates. I should never have waited for a chance to get BB on board. Even if we didn’t want to destroy the ship, we could have tried tagging her and hoped the Huragok didn’t detect the signal.

  Could have, should have, ought. Didn’t.

  Phillips took a seat at the comms console and plugged in his earpiece, eyes flickering as he listened to one of the intercepted channels. “‘Telcam’s getting very pissed off about Chol Von,” he said, not looking away from the screen. “She hasn’t called him for days. He’s contacting his various chums to see if anyone can track her.”

  “So what if she finds it?” Osman asked.

  “Well, we know her ambitions, kind of, so I’m sure she’ll want to seize it. But the Kig-Yar are short of vessels anyway. They’ve been relying on Covenant company vehicles to run their piracy sideline for a few hundred years, so now they’ve got to buy their own wheels. I’d bet that Fel got paid in small vessels rather than arms. The Brutes are still trading vessels for weapons. Isn’t intercultural barter economics fascinating?”

  “You’re brushing up your Kig-Yar dialects, I see.”

  “Absolutely. BB even translated a completely unknown one for me.” Phillips did a little shake of his head, as if he was still stunned by the wonder of it. “Listen to me taking that for granted. Academia would wet its pants with excitement to know that. And we just knock it off in the course of a working day because it’s handy for spying.”

  “I knock it off,” BB said. His tone was definitely subdued. “But feel free to publish the paper under your own name.”

  Phillips adjusted his earpiece and gazed absently at the console in front of him as if he was having a conversation with himself. “I was going to say, ‘No, it’s yours or it’s nobody’s.’ Damn. I’m going soft.”

  As Osman watched, five green dots appeared in a layer above the holochart, then descended to roof height and fanned out from a central point. She lost them for a moment as they went off the chart. When she adjusted the scale and zoomed out, they appeared again at the city limits, working their way back in on zigzag search patterns that overlapped to cover the whole area.

  “I thought it would be reassuring to watch the remotes work,” BB said. “And you can add the path overlay back in if you want to check where they’ve searched.”

  “Extra yeast sludge for Leaks tonight, BB,” she murmured. The rhythmic movement of the lights was like watching a knitting machine, hypnotic and soothing, if anything could be soothing at times like this. “He’s a clever boy.”

  About fifteen minutes later, Phillips sat bolt upright. All he needed was a green celluloid eyeshade and a ticker tape machine, and he would have been an icon of urgent news. “‘Telcam’s cracked a few skulls together and worked out that Chol Von went to some ex-Covenant replenishment base. Station of Constant Sustenance, Korfo system.”

  “So, worst scenario?”

  “He turns up on Venezia. But it doesn’t sound as if he’s getting very far with that.”

  Osman wasn’t sure how much worse that might make things. She hoped to be long gone from Venezia by the time ‘Telcam joined up any more dots. For a moment, she felt genuine regret for Staffan Sentzke, but she put it in its place and worried about her crew.

  BB cut in. “Ma’am, incoming signal from Spenser.”

  That was a relief. “Can you put it on audio?”

  “Ah … no, he’s gone again. It was a data burst. Secure and compressed. That’s textbook paranoia.”

  “Have we got coordinates?”

  “Yes. He’s transmitting from northwest of the town. How he got there without being picked up is beyond me. Just a cryptic message that he had to abandon the coffee but he rescued his smokes.”

  “Okay, BB, let him know we’ll extract him but he’s got a couple of hours to wait, at least, and tell him we haven’t located Mal or Vaz.”

  Phillips was leaning on the chart table, one finger pressed to his ear while he listened to his Sangheili feeds.

  “Got them,” BB said suddenly. “Look. Stuttgart Armory.” One point of yellow light popped up to the north of the town. “I’m transmitting this to the Pelicans now. Don’t worry, ma’am—it’s actually two signals, but they must be in the same roo
m. I’m monitoring for movement.”

  As Osman watched the yellow dot, nothing seemed to be happening. It might have been a morgue, a cold store, or any room where two dead bodies had been dumped for later disposal. She might not have been looking at a rescue at all, just confirmed KIAs. But then BB adjusted something, and there was a clear separation between the transponder icons.

  Then one moved. It tracked slowly in a line, then turned at ninety degrees, then returned on a diagonal to its original position. It looked very much like one of the ODSTs was wandering around a room, following the walls.

  Looking for a way out. They’re alive.

  “That’s Mal,” BB said. He did a little twirl, pivoting on one corner of his cube. “Good show. Confirmed ID.”

  Osman rubbed the back of her neck, feeling the muscles relax for the first time in hours. “Okay, let’s get as much data as we can on the site. You can follow them if they’re moved, yes?”

  “We won’t lose them. I’m moving the orbital remotes to do extended frequency mapping of the building, so I’ll have the internal layout for you very soon.”

  Naomi’s voice cut in on the bridge audio. “Good. Back to stun grenades and kicking down doors. I’ve missed all that.”

  She was as near to enthusiastic as Osman had ever heard her. It was hard to tell if she’d factored in that her father might be there. If she had, Osman was sure that she’d completely shut that out and was focused on retrieving her comrades. Maybe that was what she seemed glad of: a clear choice.

  “Remember you’re going in because it’s a Spartan core skill,” Osman said carefully. “Not because you’re responsible in any way for your father.”

  That didn’t quite come out as Osman intended. She meant responsibility for dealing with him, clearing up a family mess rather like other people would feel obliged to drive Uncle Fred home from the party before he threw up in the punch bowl. But having been through Spartan indoctrination herself, Osman knew how easily that button could be pressed. Only you can save Earth. You have the gift, so you also have the duty. You have to make this sacrifice. It wasn’t a cultural guilt for original sin, like some of Osman’s Catholic acquaintances, but still a sense of guilt for being born so smart, so strong, so driven, that to do any less than devote your entire being to the welfare of Earth’s empire—to the state—was shameful.

  Naomi sounded flat calm. “I’ll just get our guys out, ma’am. I’ll draw up a plan as soon as I get the interior layout.”

  “They’ll know we’re coming for them,” Osman said. “They know we wouldn’t leave them.”

  BB was back to his old self, outrageous and theatrical. “And they know how unutterably awesome I am, too, so they’ll be expecting us to do dazzling things to locate them. How right they are.”

  We don’t leave our people behind.

  Osman knew reality was very different, though. For all the talk of never leaving a man behind, it was often all you could do. That stuck with her at the academy. It was said quietly in a class, as if it was a dirty secret that everyone had to be told but was best never mentioned again. Going back to rescue someone could compromise the mission and get the rest of your team killed. You often didn’t do it: it wasn’t smart.

  But it was right, and men and women would willingly die to rescue a comrade. Osman realized even back then that it wasn’t a simple numbers game. It might not have made tactical sense on paper, but wars made no sense anyway, and if that ethos of solidarity was removed then everything that underpinned armed service would start to crumble. Asking someone to risk their life required mutual faith. Your buddies would look out for you, and you for them. Everything hung on that. As far as she was concerned, officers weren’t exempt. She chose to ignore the instructor and be the kind of commander who might well risk the mission to rescue her team.

  Well, the mission wasn’t at risk yet. She still had plenty of options left.

  “Yes, unutterably awesome, BB,” she said. “I’ll put that in your performance review.”

  STUTTGART ARMORY, NEW TYNE

  “I think it must be midnight,” Vaz mumbled. “Way past my bedtime.”

  He was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, back against the wall. Mal listened to the steady rasp-rasp-rasp, very quiet but insistent, that had been going on for the last hour.

  Or at least he thought it was an hour. He’d lost track of the time.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Same as I was doing the last time you asked me.”

  Mal stood up and walked around the room again to ease the cramp in his legs, but mostly to take a careful look at Vaz’s progress as he passed. He still couldn’t tell if the room was bugged. It took a certain technique to make this look casual.

  Vaz was propped against the corner of an alcove, the only abrasive surface he could reach. He was sawing his plastic cuffs against the rough edge of the bricks. It was slow. If he made too much noise, someone would notice. Or maybe they already had, and they just didn’t care because they knew there was no way out of the building.

  You would have thought they’d be a bit more careful with us, seeing as I put Gareth out of action. But they’re used to dealing with criminals. Not special forces. Daft bastards.

  Mal leaned against the wall—another routine thing that was a lot harder when your hands were tied—and took a sly look down behind Vaz’s back. Fiber cuffs hadn’t changed in centuries. They were still as bloody hard to get out of as ever. He estimated that Vaz had frayed the material a bit, and if the ties been in a store cupboard for years, then the material might have been a bit brittle. But Mal could see from the sweat on Vaz’s face that the effort and the pain of the thin strips cutting into his skin was wearing him out faster than it was wearing down the cuffs. Still, if he survived this, he’d have terrific triceps to show for it.

  Vaz stopped for a rest and frowned at him. “How come you’re not dying to take a leak?”

  “Bladder of steel, mate. I’m gasping for a drink, though.”

  Poor old Vaz: he sounded a lot better than he looked. One eye was swollen nearly shut. It was hard to tell what was just dried blood and what was an actual abrasion. But Mal was sure he looked worse.

  “Am I a mess?” he asked. “How do I look?”

  Vaz studied him. “Why? Are you going on a date?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Yeah. You’re a mess. But your nose still looks straight. It’s internal bleeding you should worry about.”

  “If I’ve sprung a leak, it’s too slow to kill me. And I’m not getting any neuro symptoms. How about you?”

  “Least of my worries. My leg’s the worst.”

  “You smell like my granddad.”

  “I’m going to kill you when we get out of this.”

  “That’s the spirit, mate.”

  Footsteps passed the door and then faded away. There was only one thing Mal could be sure about: Osman would be looking for them. He could apply common sense to this and work out what she’d do, too. Spenser was gone, either hiding out somewhere, captured, or shot. He might have had an idea where Staffan would take prisoners, so if he was in a position to offer guesses, he’d have done it by now. But if he hadn’t—or even if he had—Osman had one reliable way of locating them if she could get a sensor in range. Staffan’s dickheads seemed to know that the neural implants were a liability, but they also knew they couldn’t turn them off, not if they wanted Mal and Vaz alive.

  Mal didn’t know the maximum range of his implant. The manufacturer’s figures said one thing, but experience in the field told him another. All kinds of environmental stuff affected them. Sometimes you could get a good signal from way outside the maximum quoted range, and sometimes you could be right on top of a bloke and not pick him up. Osman would land someone or something in town to scan for them. Then it was a case of storming the building or intercepting them if and when they were moved.

  Well, there’s Naomi and Dev. I can guess how this is going to go down.
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  Mal pushed himself away from the wall with his shoulder. Vaz resumed his slow, discreet sawing while Mal walked around the edge of the room again, looking for something he might have missed that he could use to cut or scrape.

  Or even work out where we are. I have no bloody idea.

  He sat down again and decided he did need the bathroom. Once he’d thought about it, it was hard to take his mind off it. He was still thinking about not thinking about it when the footsteps came up to the door again and the lock rattled.

  Vaz stopped sawing. Staffan walked in. Before he closed the door, Mal saw another bloke waiting in the corridor outside, one of the men who’d ambushed them but hadn’t taken part in the interrogations.

  Staffan spoke quietly as if he was afraid of waking the neighbors. “It’s just me and Saul here now, so let’s be sensible.” He looked at Mal for a moment, but he was really talking to Vaz. “If you want a deal, it’s going to have to be a damn good one.”

  “We want safe passage out of here,” Vaz said. “What do you want in exchange for that?”

  “Are you still persisting with that deserter crap? Don’t waste my time.”

  “There’s nothing else you can give us, is there? All we want is out.”

  Mal cut in. “If you’re going to keep us alive for a while, how about letting us freshen up and have some water? We’re not going to be much use to you if we die of dehydration.”

  “There’s only one thing I want from you,” Staffan said, “and that’s information about my daughter that I can test. Not crumbs.”

  Vaz looked at Mal. Mal had no idea where he was going with this. They couldn’t even discuss tactics. It was all going to hinge on how well they knew each other’s minds.

  “Ask,” Vaz said. “And if I don’t have the answer in my head, I know who will.”