BB watched Vaz remove the chip. Staffan turned to him. It was all treacle-slow. He could see the Huragok, too, zipping along conduits and looking like a tube train speeding through a station every time he passed a monitoring device. If the little bastard was coming to try to turf BB out, he was too late. BB put up his own defenses on the mainframe’s power supply and blocked all inbound data. He had the system secured.
There was only one problem with being able to move at near-light speed when you didn’t have any hands.
The guy who did have hands already knew what you were doing, because you were so damn fast that you’d already started doing it. And he could do things that you simply couldn’t undo. BB felt the power to the propulsion systems vanish.
And the doors, and the weapons, and the slipspace drive …
You crafty little bugger. I’d take my hat off to you, if I had a head.
BB checked all the monitors and found Sinks working away like a little violet blur in one of the main fiber-optic routers that ran through Inquisitor like a spinal cord. He was simply cutting the power physically. And there was nothing BB could do to stop him.
The ship still had full life support, though, and gravity. BB poked around a little more. Internal comms, too: what was all that about? If Sinks had cut power to the slipspace drive, it would lose containment and explode, so he must have simply looped the power supply to isolate it. Sinks wanted to stay alive, then, but he could have done that now without bothering about anyone else’s compartment. He seemed to want people to be able to talk, too.
BB was stuck in the mainframe behind his own firewall and couldn’t override any of the ship’s main systems. Inquisitor was dead in the water. Sinks couldn’t get at BB or move the ship either, but he had what he needed to sit it out. BB couldn’t mess around with the life support because he might kill Vaz and Staffan. It was a stalemate.
“Sinks?” Staffan still looked calm. Vaz kept looking up at the deckhead. “Sinks, how are we doing?”
It was some time before the Huragok’s synthesized voice emerged from a speaker.
“Good. Well done.”
“Yes, it’s BB,” Staffan said. “I’m sorry. They made me help them, and you know we need to get the Kig-Yar out.” Then he looked at Vaz and shook his head. BB couldn’t connect to his fragment in Vaz’s helmet cam, but he could see and hear via sensors in the deckhead. “Sorry, son. You’re a decent man, but did you really think I was going to let you guys ship me out to some ONI cesspit for the rest of my life and never see my family again? Put them through the hell I’ve been through? No, you don’t get to do that to another generation.”
“You can’t go anywhere,” Vaz said. “You know you can’t.”
“Well, if I never see my girl again, it’ll be because I’m dead. Not because ONI locked me up in solitary for the rest of my days.” Staffan sat down on the deck with his back resting against the doors. “I know you’ve tried hard to do the right thing, but your masters will never let you.”
That was all BB needed: a Huragok having a moral epiphany, or a breakdown, or maybe both simultaneously. They only ended one way. BB wondered if he was now handcuffed to a man on a ledge.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
IF YOU CAN’T WIN, YOU NEED TO MAKE THE OTHER GUY WISH HE’D NEVER BEATEN YOU.
—ANDREW REMO, HEAD OF HERSCHEL’S MOST PROLIFIC CRIME SYNDICATE, AND GRIEVING FATHER
UNSC TART-CART, ON PIOUS INQUISITOR’S HULL: QAB SYSTEM
“Don’t worry,” Mal said. “The Covenant were unimaginative bastards. Seen one CCS-class, seen ’em all. The configuration’s going to be the same.”
Naomi watched the feed from Tart-Cart’s hull cam in her HUD, mentally rehearsing where she’d place frame charges to blow the access hatch. The dropship sat on the battlecruiser’s hull like a mosquito waiting to sink her proboscis into an unsuspecting cow. Naomi and Mal were now squeezed into an airlock facing the hull, waiting for the order to go, the moment when the hatch would open, the airlock would depressurize, and they’d have seconds to lay and detonate charges to breach the hull. Naomi’s Mjolnir armor was good for more than an hour in vacuum. Even with his supplementary air supply, though, Mal had half an hour at best.
But if they hadn’t cracked this in thirty minutes, they probably wouldn’t crack it at all.
“I don’t think we’ve ever put a full deck plan together, actually,” Naomi said. “Just the parts we’ve stormed before.”
Devereaux’s voice came over the helmet comms. “It’s all going to depend on the access conduits. We know they’ve got them, just not where they go. How fast can Huragok move?”
“Zero KPH, if you deflate them.” Mal was busy stuffing every pouch in his belt with extra ammo. With the supplementary air supply, he was already loaded like a packhorse. “Maybe they go whizzing around like punctured balloons. We’ll see. Bit sad, but if it’s him or us, I don’t care how cute they are.”
Naomi had fought her way into Covenant bases and even seized smaller vessels, but usually with a degree of certainty that the target wouldn’t move far. Sangheili would stand and fight even if they had the option of making a run for it. But the Huragok had jumped the ship once, and he might do it again while they were on the hull. They probably wouldn’t survive the enormous forces of the leap into slipspace.
Come on, come on, come on …
She waited to hear BB confirming that he’d infiltrated Inquisitor’s computer and had control of the ship, and then they could all breathe easy again. Her father and Vaz had made it into the shuttle bay. Dad was probably just talking Sinks around now, reassuring him and getting him to drop his guard so that they could remove the Kig-Yar.
Osman cut in on the radio. “Blue One and Two, stand to. We’ve lost contact with BB.”
“Copy that, ma’am.” Mal gestured to Naomi. “Go, go, go.”
Her adrenaline spiked. It was like a switch. One second she was thinking, weighing all the options, and the next there was nothing in her mind but the motions she’d gone through a thousand times in training and exercises and drill, drill, drill: boots on hull, grip secure, move to hatch, adhesive XTCC strip placed here, here, and here, det attached, and clear.
“Firing.”
She pressed the switch. There was a silent, short-lived flash; no shockwave, but debris and mist ejected in all directions, including a chunk of the hatch that skimmed noiselessly over her helmet. From there all she had to do was walk back without losing her magnetic foothold and give the remaining chunk the kind of tug that only a power-assisted Mjolnir suit could generate. She dropped down onto a deck that was mostly pipes and filters.
Mal called Stanley. “Ma’am, Blue One and Two in. Stand by … Blue One to Stanley … Blue One to Tart-Cart…” He tutted. “Lost the signal. Sinks must have some kind of jamming around the hull.”
“We’ll busk it.”
“We always do, don’t we?”
Naomi prowled around, waiting for Kig-Yar to spring out of the cover of ductwork. If there was anyone else in the compartment minus a suit, they’d be sucking vacuum by now. Sinks would probably know from the damage monitoring that there’d been a breach, but automated systems would probably start sealing bulkheads without him. From this point, Naomi needed to open doors without damaging them wherever she could. She didn’t know who’d be in the next compartment or if they’d be suited up. Vaz and her father were in here somewhere.
“Let’s try BB,” Mal said. “Sinks knows we’re here anyway. BB, are you receiving? Inquisitor BB, not Stanley BB.” There was no response on any of the comms channels. “Okay
, maybe he can’t get a signal out either. But he still might be able to hear us.”
Mal reached a hatch in the deck and pointed down. Naomi gave him a thumbs-up. He pulled a hand-operated lever and the cover opened, releasing a fine cloud of dust that shot past her as the atmosphere escaped. She dropped through the opening first and worked out that she was in a long access shaft with very dim white lighting. It had footholds, so it wasn’t a Huragok conduit.
“You clear, Mal?”
“Yeah. Sealing the hatch again.”
Her helmet sensor showed they now had partial atmosphere, but they still had a long way to go. They climbed down narrow ladders through three more decks of dimly lit deserted engineering spaces, closing hatches behind them and pausing to listen for the Huragok. The bottom of this access shaft ended in a small compartment with no more hatches in the deck, just a manual door in the bulkhead. Naomi grasped the lever to open it and a characteristic purplish-blue light flooded in.
“Ah, we reached the cocktail lounge,” Mal said. “Mine’s a brandy and Babycham, please.”
Naomi prepared to meet a hail of plasma bolts. “Is that good?”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
“Okay—go.”
They burst out with rifles raised, but the section was empty. The passages were so wide that it was hard to tell if they really were corridors or just flats. She pointed to the next set of doors and they set off at a slow jog. A battlecruiser wasn’t a big ship by Covenant standards, but it was still the best part of two kilometers in length and it was going to take time to move down the deck. There was still no sign of any Kig-Yar. Naomi prepared to breach the doors.
“Okay, we’ve definitely got atmosphere,” Mal said, checking his TACPAD. “BB? You there?”
“I can see you, Mal. Quick sitrep, so just listen—and we’re stuck on an open circuit, and it’s all translated.” BB’s voice wafted out of a broadcast system somewhere in the deckhead. “I’m confined to the computer. I’ve locked Sinks out, but he’s physically interrupted the controls to the drives and weapons. So either way—he can’t jump the ship. We’ve still got sixteen Kig-Yar locked in different sections, three on the bridge, five in the section forward of you. Vaz and Staffan are trapped between the hangar bay and the bridge. No injuries.”
It was a real pain in the ass having no comms with BB except for one broadcast channel that everyone could hear. Naomi looked around for a data port she could hack. If she asked for a location specifically, Sinks might beat her to it and render it unusable. “Is there any way you can give me a schematic of the ship?”
“I’ve got traffic out but I’m not letting traffic in. I’ve got hard access to cams and audio throughout. Well, for the time being.”
“Where are we now?”
“One section forward of the brig. After that, it’s the bridge.”
“Can we speak to the next compartment?”
“Comms seem to be very patchy, but go ahead. Assume that everything that the ship’s audio picks up here, like my dulcet tones right now, everyone can hear … including Sinks. Who’s a splendid little chap. Who can probably also see the deck security cams, which are not exclusively routed via the bridge. Are you grasping the full import of all this?”
“Seeing as you keep repeating it, yes. Are the Kig-Yar in contact with each other?”
“Not all of them.”
“Great.”
Naomi did a quick recap of who could hear who and who was supposed to know what. This was almost as limiting as having an enemy who could read her mind. She could talk to Mal on the local helmet link, but anything they said to BB—or anyone else—was on an open circuit.
And Sinks could probably see hand signals too. She couldn’t rely on him not understanding them.
Well, shit.
She looked at Mal. He tapped his helmet and indicated his air supply, then a number: twenty minutes. He was switching off and unsealing the suit to conserve his oxygen in case he really needed it later. Naomi followed suit in case she had to share her supply with him. Then she heard the helmet comms kick in again.
“Before we start blatting away at the buzzards,” Mal said, “let’s agree on a plan. Y’know, for the hell of it. If it comes to talking meaningfully, let me do it.”
“Okay. I’ll just rip things open and slaughter the contents, shall I?”
“You’re great at that. Thanks.” Mal pointed aft, then switched to external audio. This was all going to hinge on staying alert to what could be heard outside the helmets and what couldn’t. “Okay, BB, we’d like to talk to the Kig-Yar.”
“Go ahead.”
“Gentlemen?” Mal called out. “You in the brig section. Can you hear me?”
There was a pause. “We hear you. Now get lost. This ship is ours. We found it abandoned.”
“Okay. There’s just one snag there.” Mal signaled to Naomi to bypass the doors. “We’ve got a UNSC warship standing off. You’re stranded. No ship. So why not take up the Huragok’s offer and leave?”
“Make us.”
“Okay. Will do.”
Naomi pressed flat against the bulkhead in the hope that Sinks wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing as she placed shaped charges around the doors. Where was the camera? She couldn’t tell. But if he wanted to stop her, he’d have to come down here. As she set the detonators, she visualized the task he faced. He was just one Huragok with kilometers of interconnecting conduits to cover, and he couldn’t be everywhere at once. He would have to zip up and down those tunnels like a demented pinball to get from one part of the ship to another. He wasn’t like BB, able to travel almost instantaneously via any convenient signal and spread himself everywhere at once. Restoring what he’d cut off would be a massive task, but keeping one step ahead of him was a lot easier.
“Ready?” Mal asked.
Naomi held the det up. “Ready.”
“Okay, lads, we’re coming through. Nothing personal, honest. Some of my best friends are chicken nuggets.”
The Kig-Yar were expecting an assault anyway, and there was only one point it could come from. An appeal to their pragmatism was worth a try. Mal paused long enough to shrug and then signal from the other side of the doors to stand clear.
Three, two, one—go.
“Firing.” Naomi pressed the det.
The doors blew apart. She expected a steady green stream of plasma bolts to spew out of the gap, but nothing happened. Wait or charge in? She looked at Mal, adjusting her grip on her rifle, and nodded.
“Now!” she yelled, and burst in firing.
Green bolts streaked past her. She aimed down them like following tracer rounds and blew a corner off a bulkhead, flushing out a Kig-Yar who ran for the next cover. The space opened up into a long run of passages with ninety-degree bends that turned this into a running battle. To her left, Mal sprinted for the entrance to the first of the two brigs and put a burst of fire into a buzzard who tried to ambush them from around a corner. The Kig-Yar went down like a stone and his plasma rifle skidded across the deck.
“One down,” Mal called.
It wouldn’t do the others any harm to hear their buddies getting dropped one by one. Four left, then: Naomi listened for footsteps ahead. Had they decided to go? No, Sinks would have had to open a series of locked doors for them. They were still in here. Naomi turned right and saw what looked like a passage to the other brig. She couldn’t tell if it was sensible to head down there in case they were cut off.
But that might draw them to us.
She headed down there. Mal hung back, covering the passage to the left from the cover of the corner.
“Correct assumption,” BB said cryptically. He could see what they couldn’t. There must have been a camera above the next set of doors. “From your left.”
Lobbing a grenade would have been easier and saved ammo. Naomi spun around as Mal suddenly squeezed off two short bursts. She ran forward, firing as bolts grazed her armor, and cut one Kig-Yar almost in half a
s he ran at her. Mal took out the second. She swung around to look for the remaining two. Mal took a hit that knocked him back for a moment. Where did that come from? Gotcha. She followed the direction and ran up the passage, hitting the retreating Kig-Yar square in the back and spraying purple blood up the bulkheads. The last one came at her from an alcove to her right as she rounded a left-hand corner but she was a lot faster than he was. Crack-crack-crack. He was down. She went back and put an extra round through his skull to make sure.
There was no point missing an opportunity. She picked up a couple of plasma weapons, just in case.
“I’m okay,” Mal said, tottering a little as he twisted his head around to check his shoulders for damage. “Section clear. Five down.” He paused and looked up at the deckhead, either acknowledging BB or making sure the other Kig-Yar could hear him. “Chol? Chol Von? Can you hear me?”
He waited, using the time to reload while Naomi took advantage of the pause to look for a data port. BB prompted her. “Left … left … stop. Up a bit … there.”
She worked the probe into the dock and waited while her HUD and TACPAD scrolled though the data BB was uploading. That felt better. Now she could project the schematic as she moved instead of guessing her way. She could see the way to the bridge: right, left, right, left, right, left, right, right. She repeated it to herself until she’d memorized it.
“This way,” she said.
Mal kept calling as he trotted along beside, following her turns. “Chol? Knock knock. Are you still there? Sorry about your lads. They didn’t see reason.”
Naomi tried not to dwell on the fact that she hadn’t heard a sound from her father or Vaz. BB had said they were okay, so she accepted that. She hadn’t let personal problems intrude on the immediate task in hand—God, how many Spartans even had personal problems?—but now that there was a lull in the shooting, she couldn’t erase the stranger of a father she was starting to get to know and wasn’t entirely sure she’d want to forget again. She could still do her job. She simply did it knowing who was trapped on the ship with her, and what he should have meant to her.
Halo®: Mortal Dictata Page 42
