by Troy Denning
“Then what was New Leaf working on?” Veta asked. “And why were you facilitating it?”
“What makes you think I was?” What Arlo really wanted to know was whether they had found the Warrant of Sanction he had recorded—but asking would only guarantee that they did. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but—”
“Inspector, this is taking too long,” the Spartan said. “We’ll get him to the facility.”
“Your call.” Lopis engaged her pistol’s safety again and returned the weapon to its holster. “He deserves it.”
“Wait.” Arlo had no idea what facility they were talking about, but if he let the Spartans take him anywhere, he knew he wouldn’t be coming back. “All they asked for was a secure base. I didn’t know that they were targeting Admiral Tuwa and her family—and this is the first I’m hearing about any bioweapons. I swear it.”
Lopis looked doubtful.
“Veta . . . you know me. Am I foolish enough to get involved in something that practically demands a UNSC invasion?”
“Apparently so,” Lopis said.
And Arlo saw just how right she was. Somebody had been playing him from the beginning, laying a trail that would lead from the Keepers of the One Freedom straight back to Gao.
“So who is ‘they’?” Lopis continued. “And what did you think they were doing at New Leaf?”
Arlo turned to face her squarely. “I assume you’ve heard of Dark Moon?” Lopis shot a knowing glance at the Spartan behind his shoulder, and he immediately knew she had. “They came to me with an offer. I’m sure you can guess what it was.”
“Spell it out for me,” said Lopis, ever the careful interrogator. “And don’t forget anything. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“I remember how this works.” Arlo took a deep breath, then said, “Look, it’s really not complicated. Dark Moon is a private security firm with deep pockets and a long reach. They said they could maneuver the UNSC into taking care of our Keeper problem for us. All they needed in return was an operating base on Gao.”
“And they offered this out of the goodness of their hearts?”
Arlo snorted. “Hardly,” he said. “But the price was reasonable, given the damage Keeper pirates have been doing to us lately.”
“And the Tuwas?”
“I didn’t know about them until a couple of weeks ago, when the New Leaf field director contacted me.” Arlo paused, trying to recall whether Lopis had said anything to suggest she had seen the Warrant of Sanction, then decided to gamble. “She was in a panic because the Dark Moon unit was using her lab to hold UNSC captives.”
“And?”
“And I told her to go along with it,” Arlo said. “What was I supposed to do at that point? Alert ONI and prepare for an invasion?”
“That might have been smarter than letting someone use an admiral’s family as human guinea pigs—and stealing their organs to culture bioweapon components.”
Arlo made his eyes go wide. “I . . . I didn’t know.” He dropped his gaze—forced eye contact was a liar’s worst tip-off—and emphatically shook his head. “I’m telling you, Dark Moon has played us both. They set Gao up to take the blame.”
Close enough to the truth. Arlo had no trouble convincing himself to believe it—and apparently, Lopis was ready to buy it as well. She studied him for several breaths, then finally let her expression soften.
“If I know you,” she said, “you’ll want to even the score.”
“It’s a welcome thought,” Arlo said. “But I’m not sure I see how I can do that.”
“You can help us find what we’re looking for,” Lopis said.
“So you haven’t picked up a trail at New Leaf?”
“We’re being thorough.”
Arlo smirked. “Which means you’ve got no leads,” he said. “If we’re going to work with each other, we need to be honest here.”
“Does that mean you have something?”
“And does that mean you don’t have anything?”
Lopis said nothing, then finally nodded. “The Keepers made sure of it,” she said. “They brought the entire lab building down. It could take weeks to sift through the rubble.”
“So . . . you’re left with . . . what?” Arlo hoped his relief did not show on his face. “Me and Dark Moon?”
“We can work on Dark Moon,” Veta said. “But if they’re as good as they appear to be, it could take longer than going through what’s left of New Leaf to get anything useful. The company is organized like a nebula.”
“And I know less about them than you do,” Arlo confessed. “I have no idea where they might have taken those . . . bioweapon components.”
“No problem,” the Spartan behind him said. “The Borodyne staff is good at helping people remember things.”
“I have nothing to remember!” Arlo had never heard of Borodyne, but he didn’t like the sound of it—especially since ONI seldom mentioned secret installations to anyone who might live to repeat the names. “I’d never even heard of Dark Moon until—”
Arlo stopped when realized he might know something after all—and it might be just enough to save him.
“It’s a bad time to keep us in suspense,” Lopis said. “What do you have?”
“A place to start,” Arlo said.
“Which is?”
“I’ll need something in return.”
“How about we leave you here?” the Spartan said. “Alive.”
“That’s good to open negotiations,” Arlo said. “And I don’t think you’ll have a problem with the rest of my request. Our interests are closely aligned.”
“Maybe we should rethink our interests,” Lopis said. “But I’m listening.”
“I want ONI to finish the job.”
“You’ll need to be a little more specific,” Lopis said. “ONI does a lot of jobs.”
“Castor.” Arlo watched Lopis’s face and was disappointed to see no surprise in it. “He’s the only Keeper smart enough to mount a surface raid on Gao and get away with it.”
“And now that he’s gotten away with it once, you’re thinking he’ll visit again sometime soon. Maybe take a night tour of the People’s Palace.” Lopis thought for a moment, then said, “That’s a good assumption. He already hates you for betraying him at Wendosa. Now, he probably has you marked for death. He has to know you played a part in setting him up.”
“I’m glad you understand my concern.”
“Oh, I understand it,” Lopis said. “But I’m not sure what ONI can do about it. Castor is a tough subject to track.”
“Not this time,” Arlo said. “He’s headed for the same place you are.”
Lopis looked doubtful. “You expect me to take that on faith?”
“You said it yourself: Castor brought the lab down to cover his trail. Why would he bother if he didn’t think you’re after the same thing he is?”
“The Tuwas’ organs?”
“Not just the organs,” Arlo said. “The people who want the organs.”
The unhappy truth of the situation was growing clearer by the moment. Arlo had hired Dark Moon Enterprises to set up Castor’s pirates, which it had done by framing the dokab and his cell for a crime so shocking the UNSC had to hunt down their secret base. But Castor had captured some of Dark Moon’s operatives in the process, then forced them to reveal their firm’s arrangement with Gao and followed the trail to the New Leaf field laboratory. Apparently, what he discovered there had convinced the Jiralhanae to go after the plan’s true architects instead of Arlo—at least for now.
Arlo harbored no illusions about his adversary’s capacity for forgiveness. Unless he convinced ONI to finish the job it had started, Castor would be back. Arlo allowed Lopis a moment to contemplate his assertion, then began to press.
“The people who want the organs are the ones who set all this in motion. They’re the ones Castor is after—and the ones you need to find, if you want to stop your Code Hydra threat.”
Lopi
s lowered her gaze, thinking.
“The man has a point,” the Spartan said. “He didn’t steal Gao’s presidency by being stupid.”
“I know that.” Lopis raised her head, then said to Arlo, “I’m just looking for traps.”
“No traps.” Arlo smiled and extended his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
“I’m not going to shake your hand,” Lopis said. “Just tell me what I need to know—before I come to my senses and take you out.”
“You shouldn’t be so rude.” Arlo withdrew his arm. “We’re on the same side now.”
“And where have I heard that before?” Lopis’s gaze shifted to the Spartan and she asked: “If he doesn’t answer, do I have clearance to shoot him?”
“That works,” the Spartan said. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned Borodyne anyway.”
Even through an electronically modulated voice, it was hard to miss the mockery. Arlo allowed himself to fume for a moment, then said, “You were never going to take me there, were you?”
“There’s no such place,” Lopis said. “So . . . you want to live, tell me where to start looking.”
Arlo sighed, then said, “On Meridian—Pinnacle Station, to be exact. With Jonas Sladwal.”
“Sladwal . . . the spy?” Lopis’s expression was full of skepticism. “I thought he was dead.”
“He is—more or less.” Arlo smiled to himself. What the UNSC didn’t know about Jonas Sladwal could fill Gao’s main archives. The legendary Insurrectionist spy had kept the insurgents in munitions for decades by leaking Colonial Administration Authority convoy routes and schedules. “He died during the war with the Covenant.”
“What does he have to do with Dark Moon?”
“He’s the one who recommended them to me.”
“A dead man?” the Spartan asked. “Nice trick.”
“Death is not as black-and-white as you think, Spartan,” Arlo said. “Jonas Sladwal’s real name was Johanson Sloan. He was a senior vice president with Chalybs Defense Solutions, in charge of order fulfillment.”
“As in Administrator Sloan?” Lopis asked. “Pinnacle Station’s new AI boss?”
“Exactly,” Arlo said. “Chalybs didn’t know Sloan was an Insurrectionist spy—and that’s still a closely held secret, by the way. I’m only telling you now because he helped Dark Moon set me up.”
“And because it’s the only hope we have of catching Castor and saving your sorry ass,” the Spartan said. “Just to be clear.”
“Well, that too,” he said. “Anyway, the human Sloan was fatally injured during the Battle of Meridian in early 2551. He lived long enough for Chalybs to decide they couldn’t afford to let him die, and they scanned his brain patterns into a Riemann matrix. They were just finishing the job when the Covenant pushed the UNSC back and began glassing operations.”
“So the legend lives on in Administrator Sloan,” Lopis said. “But how did Sloan get involved with Dark Moon?”
Arlo spread his hands. “When you find out, I hope you’ll let me know.”
“Sure I will.” Lopis put her helmet on and reached for the door handle. “Maybe the next time I’m home.”
CHAPTER 20
* * *
* * *
0316 hours, December 16, 2553 (military calendar)
Loading Dock Delta 20, Fabrication Ring Delta, Pinnacle Station
Moon Meridian, Planet Hestia V, Hestia System
The coveralls gave them away. After a twelve-hour shift crammed inside pressurized mobility suits, actual construction workers were hot and exhausted and eager to reach the shuttle station at the core of Fabrication Ring Delta. They wore their bright yellow transit coveralls open to the belly and left their headsets hanging around their necks, and the only things they carried in their hands were personal commpads and red, soft-sided gear bags labeled PINNACLE STATION CONSTRUCTION.
But the crew now passing in front of the True Light kept their outfits closed over torsos too blocky not to be armored. They wore their headsets properly, and, instead of clank-booting along the maglane with their gazes fixed on the shuttle station ahead, the six humans were watching their environment, studying fellow pedestrians and peering around structural partitions. Most telling of all, they did not have the red gear bags. Instead, they carried hand-thrusters and long, hard-sided satchels.
Castor pointed through the flight deck canopy. “That does not look like a typical crew of builder-thralls.” He was speaking through the translation disc hanging from his neck. “Do they carry the cryo-jars in their satchels?”
“No.” The answer came from Agnes Sabara, the director of the field laboratory that Castor and his pack had destroyed on Gao. A thin woman with large eyes and long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, she sat perched on the edge of the copilot’s seat. The True Light was a human-manufactured, Laden-class freighter that had been modified for a Jiralhanae crew, so she looked like a child’s doll in the seat, and she had to stretch forward and brace her hands on the instrument panel to see out through the canopy. “The satchels are too small, and the shape is wrong. Cryo-jars look more like a barrel on a hexagonal base.”
“You are sure?”
“I know what a cryo-jar looks like,” Sabara said. “Or do you still think I’m lying?”
“It seems possible,” Castor said. Unlike the humans who served the Keepers of the One Freedom, Sabara was an unwilling participant in his hunt for vengeance. He had spared her life only because he needed her to discover who had framed him and his followers for killing the Tuwas. “You are in service to Arlo Casille.”
“That doesn’t mean I like what he ordered me to do—or that I like the UNSC any more than you do.” Sabara looked over, then asked, “Has anything I’ve told you so far been wrong?”
“That remains to be seen.”
After being captured in her lab, Sabara had made no effort to resist interrogation. In truth, she had seemed eager to cooperate, volunteering that she had been asked on short notice to prepare the cryo-jars for transport—and that she had overheard the Dark Moon couriers discussing their destination. In a bargain for her life, she had revealed the destination to be an orbital construction site called Pinnacle Station, above the moon Meridian in the Hestia system—a location Castor recognized as the site of a hard-fought Covenant victory during the war to eradicate humanity. Sabara had even supported her claim by providing an emergency launch authorization that had come from the Gao Minister of the Environment just hours after Castor had captured the two Dark Moon operatives on Salvation Base.
Still, Castor had been suspicious of Sabara’s assertion until one of his human engineers read the cryo-jar operating manual. The jars needed a full coolant recharge every thirty hours—a process that required both an experienced technician and a bulky charging tank that would be difficult to carry in a small transport. The launch authorization had identified the couriers’ vessel as a small reconnaissance boat similar to the one that had infiltrated Salvation Base, so it stood to reason that their destination was within a thirty-hour slipspace jump of Gao. When his navigator had confirmed that Pinnacle Station was one of only three possibilities, Castor had finally decided to accept Sabara’s claim and let her live.
As Castor now watched, the crew of impostors stepped away from the maglane and began to free-float in the station’s weightless environment. Using their hand-thrusters, they started across the loading dock laterally, maneuvering around deck-tethered girder bundles and wall-parked load tractors.
“Whoever they are, those guys look like they’re on assignment,” Sabara said. “I’d say we’ve come to the right place.”
Castor was not so certain. On approach, the True Light had circled Pinnacle Station, attempting to locate the Turaco being used by the Dark Moon couriers. The effort had met with no success—but it should have. At this stage of construction, Pinnacle Station was little more than a tube-shaped skeleton of girders that still lacked artificial gravity, and the Turaco had a unique profile with an easily i
dentifiable cannon turret on its back. The craft’s silhouette should have been easy to spot against the station’s open framework.
But they had not seen it, so Castor had ordered the pilot to move in closer and circle a second time. The maneuver had brought angry protests from the station’s traffic control officer, but the True Light’s human navigator had apologized profusely and explained they were looking for their preassigned dock, and the inspection had continued.
Pinnacle Station’s girder-skeleton was encircled top and bottom by disc-shaped fabrication rings. It was in those rings that materials were received, assembled, and attached to what was rapidly becoming the apex of a heavy-lift space elevator. Fabrication Ring Delta was the only ring with internal docking facilities. But even there, the bays were separated from empty space by only a transparent energy barrier, and as the True Light circled, Castor had been able to see that none of them contained the Turaco either.
Finally, with the traffic-control officer complaining bitterly that the True Light’s erratic approach was endangering other vessels, Castor had accepted a berthing in Fabrication Ring Delta and dispatched a band of human spies to search for the Turaco on foot.
As Castor continued to think, his gaze drifted to the communications holoplinth at the front of the True Light’s flight deck, and he found himself wishing that the Oracle would show herself. Since the destruction of Salvation Base, he had felt utterly adrift, with nothing to guide him but his rage and his devotion. He had spoken to the holoplinth many times while alone with his thoughts, beseeching the Oracle’s guidance and begging her forgivenesss for the annihilation of Salvation Base. But no answer ever came, and in her silence, he felt the anguish of her wrath.
There could be only one hope of regaining her favor, Castor saw. He had to find and obliterate Dark Moon and the tricksters who had hired them, just as their deceptions had obliterated Salvation Base. Perhaps then the Oracle would forgive him . . . and if not, then at least he would still have the honor of destroying her hidden enemies.
