Phil ips, to his credit, hadn’t been idle. He’d fed al the intercepted Sangheili comms through transcription so that Osman could physical y read it while she was listening to something else. BB could have intercepted, recorded, translated, transcribed, and analyzed the whole lot in a matter of seconds, but he could also navigate and fight the ship, too, and she stil preferred to do much of that herself. BB—in ful control of Port Stanley— only needed humans to shake hands with dignitaries and handle the fiddly close-quarters combat. But he knew that they needed to feel more useful than that to make life worth living.

She’d never had an AI like him before. He was more than an assistant. He was an intel igence officer in his own right, and he was also her bodyguard. They’d been teamed up for less than a month and she already found herself dreading the day when he wouldn’t be around any longer.

Damn. That’s depressing. Got to stop that. I’ll be volunteering for a full AI neural interface next.

Osman kept half her attention on the radio as she let the hours of transcript scrol in front of her on her main CIC screen. The ebb and flow of voice traffic had blended into a white noise of requests for checks as Monte Cassino spiraled slowly out from the center of the explosion, scanning for debris as she went and then working her way back in again. It was only when an abrupt and unfamiliar voice broke into the circuit that her attention was dragged from the transcript and made to listen.

“UNSC warship, this is Venezia TC. You are now in sovereign space. Suggest you withdraw.”

It was like hearing archive material from fifty years ago. There was something oddly distressing about a human voice issuing a hostile chal enge to a warship, and Osman could only listen. Venezia couldn’t detect Port Stanley and that was how it had to stay.

“Venezia TC, this is Monte Cassino . We’re keeping you fully informed of our intended movement. You’re fully aware that we’re searching for possible survivors.”

“ Monte Cassino, unless you turn back we’ll open fire.”

There was a brief pause, and then Commander Cerny’s tone changed from the flat calm of a few seconds earlier.

“I suggest you don’t do that, Venezia. Because we will return fire.”

“You were going to do that anyway. Venezia out.”

She jerked forward in her seat. Venezia didn’t have the firepower to take out Monte Cassino, but Osman stil had a pilot and a dropship out there. BB appeared instantly just above the console and shivered slightly.

“I think it’s National Foolhardy Day,” he said. “I’ve alerted Devereaux and she’s standing off until this nonsense is over.”

“Thanks, BB. Flash Monte Cassino discreetly and tel them we’re here for backup if they need us.”

Port Stanley was close enough to Venezia now for Osman to see the planet and the faint point of light that was the warship. She watched from the viewscreen, waiting for Cerny’s voice over the radio saying that they’d completed the search and were pul ing back, but about a minute later she caught a burst of static and the tail end of a warning.

“—brace brace brace!”

She thought she saw a streak of light fol owed by a faint starburst like a flare, but it was gone before she could study it. Whatever it was, it definitely hadn’t hit Monte Cassino. Any impact would have been visible at this range. But it looked like the bastards real y had opened fire on the destroyer.

“What the hel was that, BB?”

“Ground-based triple-A. Let me nose around.”

Osman could now hear what was happening on the ship’s bridge.

“Point of origin identified. Acquiring lock—standing by.”

“Take, take, take.”

“Missile away. Time to target—eighty-two seconds.”

Eighty-two seconds was a painful y long time when you couldn’t see what was happening. If Monte Cassino hit the launch site, then Osman would be none the wiser until the ship confirmed a kil . But she was far more worried about the prospect of Venezia now having space-capable missiles, which they’d certainly never had before. They’d confined their off-world activities to ship-to-ship attacks and landing personnel to plant explosive devices. They’d never been in the big weapons league.

Who the hel was sel ing them that stuff?

There was a lot of black market hardware floating around these days, and Osman knew that better than anyone. But it was a worrying development at a time when Earth didn’t need any more problems.

“That’s a kill, confirmed,” said a satisfied voice that she didn’t recognize. It was probably the weapons officer. “Target destroyed. Stand off, helm.”

“Port Stanley, we’re pul ing back to five thousand klicks. Do you stil want to transfer personnel?”

Osman had no choice. She couldn’t keep Spenser and Muir in tow for a mission like this. “Yes, Commander, we do. And we’l take over from here. Return to Earth.”

“Normal y I’d ask the captain about that,” Cerny said, “but we don’t usual y argue with ONI.”

“I appreciate the cooperation. Have you identified the weapon?”

“T-thirty-eight triple-A. I can only hope they picked it up at a Covenant yard sale, because the alternative’s pretty worrying. There must be plenty of disappointed Sangheili who’d love to see humans infighting again.”

“I’l bet,” Osman said. And I’d be amazed if we were the only ones pulling this destabilization stunt. “But that’s definitely ONI’s part of ship. We’l take it from here. Port Stanley out.” She looked up toward the deckhead to cal BB, a reflex she’d suddenly picked up. She felt she was appealing to a guardian angel.

“Is that right, BB?”

“On the nose, Captain. I piggybacked on their comms signal and checked the return myself.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Mal, Naomi, and Vaz came onto the bridge, looking offended at being dragged away from a decent fight. Mal raised his eyebrows.

“Couldn’t help overhearing, ma’am.”

BB popped up again. “Me and my big mouth.”

“Reckon it’s worth inserting and doing a recce?” Mal asked. “They don’t know we’re here. Once Monte leaves, we can pop in for a look.”

Osman gave it five seconds’ serious consideration. It wasn’t something she could ignore, but she had to keep the kettle boiling on Sanghelios, too. She put Venezia on her mental must-screw list at number two and started drafting a contact report for Parangosky.

“We’l come back later,” she said. “I promise.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

DON’T WORRY—YOUR SECRET’S SAFE WITH ME. I’M NOT GOING TO TELL ANYONE THAT YOU’RE MY MOTHER BECAUSE I’M PRETTY SURE I KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE, AND I LOVE DAD TOO MUCH TO SEE HIM ASSOCIATED WITH IT. I DON’T KNOW WHICH IS WORSE—WAITING FOR EVERYONE TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU DID, OR WAITING TO SEE IF I TAKE AFTER YOU. IF IT’S ALL THE SAME TO YOU, MOTHER DEAR, I’M GOING TO MAKE SURE I TAKE AFTER DAD.

(MIDSHIPMAN MIRANDA KEYES, IN A RARE MESSAGE TO HER ESTRANGED MOTHER, DR. CATHERINE HALSEY)

FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE, ONYX: LOCAL DATE NOVEMBER 2552.

Dust. Lucy needed dust. But there wasn’t a trace of it anywhere.

She trailed along behind the Engineers, looking frantical y for anything she could draw diagrams on. The parking garage area seemed to be a long way behind her now. If she turned around, she wasn’t even sure if she could find her way back. Every meter of the passages of plain, smooth stone looked the same.

The Engineer who’d taken her hand kept stopping and turning, either to check that she was stil behind him or to hurry her along. She knew that somewhere outside, Chief Mendez and the others would be looking for her. She hated herself for putting them through this. They had enough problems without having to rescue her as wel .

Why didn’t I just do as Tom told me? How hard could that be?

The Engineers led her into a room that looked something like a control room, al screens and lights. Engineers built and rebuilt things, so she al owed herself the luxury of an assumption that this wasn’t going to be a sauna. She tucked her helmet under her arm and looked around for a polished surface.

And there it was—a smooth panel of some glasslike material. It was worth a try. She took off her glove and leaned close to the glass, breathing on it to form condensation. For a fleeting moment, a fine bloom dul ed the surface and she dragged her finger through it. The Engineers clustered around her, heads bobbing, but it was impossible to interpret any reaction on their faces. She tried again. The condensation evaporated almost instantly, so she licked her finger and scrawled L-U-C-Y on the glass and tapped her chest.

It’s like the Galapagos Islands. I’ve got a population of Engineers that’s evolved in isolation from the rest of the galaxy. And I still can’t tell if they know anything about humans.

They were certainly trying to find out what they could, though. One of them darted into a passage and emerged with a container that looked like a smooth white ceramic mug with no handle. He held it out to her.

Lucy took it and peered in. A brownish translucent sludge that smel ed faintly of yeast shivered inside. The Engineer dipped a tentacle into the sludge and put it to his mouth, flicking out a smal , pointed blue tongue to lick it. Lucy now couldn’t shake that mental association with an armadil o.

So he thought she was hungry.

She could understand why he thought a woman who seemed to be sniffing and licking their machinery might be trying to tel them that she wanted food. She handed the mug back and shook her head. Actual y, she was ravenous now, but it could wait. The Engineer held his tentacles up in front of her and formed them into exaggerated shapes in a slow sequence, some overlapping and some making simple lines or loops. It was quite touching: he was speaking slowly and loudly to her, the stupid foreign tourist, trying to make her understand.

If she’d been him, though, she’d be spel ing out her name. Maybe that was what he was doing.

A distant memory flashed through Lucy’s mind and was gone almost as quickly as she tried to grasp it. She was playing charades. It might have been her birthday or Christmas, but she was having fun, miming a title and counting out the syl ables by holding up her fingers. Could she even count? She remembered that she hadn’t been sure how many fingers to hold up. She tried to focus on the faces watching her, but the scene dissolved into a brightly colored blur and al she was left with was the awareness that she’d been happy and that it had been a long time ago.

Wel , if Engineers were that smart, she’d hand them the contents of her backpack and they could work it out from there. She unslung her rifle and clamped it between her knees while she eased off her backpack to stop them from wandering off with a loaded weapon. They gathered around her as she tipped the contents out onto the floor.

There was a routine for packing a rucksack with different items in specific layers. Her meager pile of possessions looked as if an archaeological dig had excavated a cross-section of her life. It was probably the same as any soldier or marine carried in their pack, and she suspected it hadn’t changed al that much for centuries: spare shirts, socks, and underwear, extra ammunition clips, a comb, a bar of multipurpose soap, a mess tin with folding cutlery, solid fuel pel ets, first-aid supplies, a snare, a length of fishing line, and signaling equipment. But there were no photos of family or any of the little private things to remind her of family or home. She didn’t have one.

And no datapad. That would have helped. And there’s always my neural interface. There’s got to be some data in that. But that’s got to be removed carefully, and if they don’t know enough about humans to do that … it’ll kill me.

The Engineers rummaged enthusiastical y through the contents of the backpack. The signaling device proved to be a big draw and they passed it between themselves, tentacles whisking over it in a blur of busy cilia. Each time one passed it on, the shape changed completely in a matter of seconds before he handed it over. Then one of them picked up her underwear and stretched a pair of briefs between his tentacles. She was wondering what modifications he could possibly make to her pants—wel , at least he wouldn’t care how gray they were—when she spotted the lettering on the waistband.

Name tag. There’s a name tag.

If old tech worked, it stayed. The simplest, cheapest, most durable way to identify your pants among a hundred identical pairs in the barracks laundry was to have your name and service number dye-embossed into the fabric. Lucy’s briefs, like al her clothing, bore the name LUCY-B091.

She grabbed them from the Engineer and held the label up to him, then tapped her chest. She pointed to the name and then to herself a few more times.

The Engineer who she’d come to think of as the boss made a shape with his tentacles and then pointed at himself, then repeated the gesture and waited. Now she was getting somewhere. They seemed to know they were talking about identities. Lucy tried to mimic the shape he was making with his tentacles, but fingers were a poor substitute for completely flexible appendages that divided into increasingly fine cilia. The closest she could get was to form two linked circles with her thumbs and forefingers.

And knowing my luck … that’ll be the Engineer sign for “Your mom’s a skank.”

The Engineer reached for her helmet and she almost snatched it back, but she had to trust him. She kept her arms at her sides. Letting a creature she couldn’t understand take away her lifeline required al her self-control.

Engineers—they’re harmless. The most they’ll do is try to defend themselves. They’re not even very good at that.

And now al she could do was wait. The two Engineers left in the workshop drifted away and left her on her own. She found a low ledge to sit on and tried to think her way out.

The Sentinels worked out how to speak English just by listening to Ash. So the Engineers can work out some basics from whatever data they can find in my armor systems, right?