Halo: Glasslands

Oh God. I know who it is.



She’s come back to see me. The first one who ever has.



Mendez cocked his head on one side. “Wel , I’l be damned,” he said. “Serin, isn’t it? I knew you’d gone to ONI, but—wel , good to see you, Captain. Good to see you looking so damn well, too.”



“Good to see you, too, Chief.” She didn’t hold out her hand to Halsey for shaking. If anything, she seemed more curious about the Spartans. “I’m Serin Osman now. If anyone else is stil trying to place the face, I used to be Spartan-Zero-One-Nine. But that was a long time ago.”



Fred, Kel y, and Linda seemed to hold their breath for a second and then murmured.



“Oh … Serin! ”



“We thought you were dead,” Fred said. “But don’t think for one minute that we ever forgot you.”



“I know,” she said quietly. “But now I’m back.”



Halsey could see it now. The glossy black hair had some gray streaks, but it didn’t take a lot of effort to rol back the clock and see a teenage girl, leggy and awkward from al those artificial y induced growth spurts, huddled in a surgical gown and asking Halsey just how different she would feel when she woke up after surgery.



Halsey had told her the truth. Al the children she’d chosen were emotional y robust and mature wel beyond their years, and Halsey had seen no point in lying to them about how painful and how persistent the side effects of the surgical enhancements would be. It was better to frighten them with the truth than mouth platitudes and leave them feeling deceived and betrayed afterward.



Good grief. Listen to me. I worried about betraying them? I worried about deceiving them? The Chief’s right. You stop noticing the stench and after a while, the sewer smells perfectly normal.



Until you step outside.



Halsey had told her that if she survived the procedure, then there would be a lot of pain, and that pain would go on for months or even years.



What she hadn’t told her—because she hadn’t been certain herself—was that there was another possible state, a limbo between life and death, and that was surviving with a catastrophic disability or never regaining consciousness.



Serin had been unlucky, like the handful of others who lived but would never serve as Spartans. Some went to ONI.



So much for never.



Halsey had decided it was kinder to tel the others that Serin hadn’t survived rather than say she’d been shipped back to Earth, in agony and unlikely to walk again. Serin Osman was walking now, though. Halsey couldn’t see any sign of abnormality.



“I admit it was hard knowing you were al out there and not being able to contact you.” Osman clasped her hands behind her back, boots spread.



“But Admiral Parangosky made sure I was cared for. Which, I suppose, is what brings me here now.”



She looked Halsey in the eye. Halsey braced to hear some hurtful truths, a justified explosion of anger at a stolen childhood, but Osman seemed perfectly calm, as if Halsey was of no consequence to her and the life she’d made for herself was without regrets. To either side of her, the ODSTs, silent and anonymous behind their visors, moved slowly forward so that they were flanking her.



Naomi was now physical y shut out of this conversation. It didn’t look as if that was what she intended. The Spartan took an awkward sidestep as if she was going to intervene, but the realization was already dawning on Halsey.



The ODSTs took off their helmets and clipped them onto their belts. Her gaze wasn’t drawn to the older, dark-haired staff sergeant but to his corporal. It wasn’t his close-shaven hair or the hard, lean planes of his face that made him look intimidating, but the expression in his eyes. He seemed to have reached his verdict on her.



“There’s an ONI scientific survey team waiting to enter this sphere after we’ve completed some formalities,” Osman said. There was no tension in her voice at al , just a hint of weary resignation as she recited the litany. “Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, I have orders to detain you and take you to the nearest secure ONI facility on charges of committing acts likely to aid the enemy. You are now under military jurisdiction and do not have the right to an attorney. The maximum al owable period of detention before being formal y charged or released does not apply. Come with me, please.”



For a moment, nobody breathed. Nobody said a word. Halsey expected to be shocked, but al she felt was a strange, cleansing sense of relief.



At first she thought that it was simple inevitability after what she’d done to get to Onyx, but then she started to taste a sense of martyrdom, that she wanted punishment, and that she needed it to be public so that everyone could see just how very penitent she was.



I’m glad the Chief isn’t a mind reader. He’d say that I still think it’s all about me, me, me.



Halsey took an uncertain step forward, datapad in one hand. The young marine held out his hand for it.



“I need to secure that, Dr. Halsey.” He had a heavy Russian or Eastern European accent and looked as if he would have preferred to punch her in the face rather than just take her computer away. He glanced at her bag as if he could see right through it. “And the weapon, please.”



She’d forgotten she had her sidearm in her bag. “But you’l need this to communicate with the Huragok.” The translation software seemed much more critical than a weapon. “Oh. Yes. This.”



She handed him the pistol on the flat of her hand so he was clear she wasn’t going to do anything insane this time. But as she handed the datapad to him, the Spartans came to life behind her. Kel y stepped forward as if she was going to defend her.



“Captain, this is Catherine Halsey. You know her. She’s not some common criminal. Do we have to do this?”



The older marine, the big cheerful staff sergeant who looked as if he would have been the life and soul of the party under happier circumstances, stepped to one side of Halsey, caught her left wrist, and snapped something around it. He did it so casual y, so quickly, so gently that Halsey didn’t realize he was cuffing her until it was too late.



Kel y spun around. “Whoa, that’s not necessary—”



“It’s okay, Kel y,” Halsey said. “This had to happen. Nobody can be al owed to get away with what I did.”



“Got it in one, Doctor.” The sergeant looked up at Kel y as if he felt sorry for her, as if she was a child who had to be told as tactful y as possible that the tooth fairy had a criminal record as long as her arm. “Remember what happened the last time you turned your back on Dr. Halsey? And how you got here?”



Kel y wasn’t going to let it go. “I was wounded. I’d been sedated. I wasn’t clubbed to the ground and dragged here by my hair.”



“My point exactly.” The sergeant looked Halsey over. His name tab said GEFFEN M. J. and his zap badge indicated A+/NO V-CIN. “That’s quite a black eye you’ve got there, Doctor. Vaz, put that on the DHR, wil you? Preexisting injury. I don’t want anyone thinking we beat up our prisoners.”



The corporal nodded. Geffen gave Halsey the merest push and she went with them, because there was nothing else left to do.



For one second, one stupid second, Halsey found herself thinking: I can get out of this. I’ve been in worse situations. I can hijack warships, for God’s sake. Then the reality returned, and she realized that not only had she run out of options, but this was where she deserved to be. Perhaps not for getting the Spartans to safety, or for taking a ship, but for an entire life of exploitative sins for which she would probably never be charged, because too many others knew about it, paid for it, and blessed it. And if they wanted to put her on trial, then she would name names.



No. No. That’s not what this is about. Are you sorry? Real sorry doesn’t have space for this. She knew this was a genuine thought because she’d stepped outside herself into the second person. Two things, Halsey. This was your project, something you craved credit for, so be sorry.



Suck it up. Forget who did what. You did what you did. And most importantly—are your Spartans going to be all right? Because that’s what this is all about.



“What’s going to happen to my Spartans?” she asked.



“I don’t know, but they’l be fine,” Geffen said. “They’re al grown up now.”



Her legs were on autopilot. She walked where the charming sergeant led her, keeping a wary eye on the grim-looking Russian lad, and found herself going back into the tower maintenance area, through an exit she hadn’t noticed before and along more endless, sterile, beautiful y finished passages. She could hear voices a long way behind her, but not the arguments she’d expected. She was glad; she knew the Spartans would lay down their lives for her—and had in the recent past—but she didn’t want that now, and she especial y didn’t want to see them abandon their discipline. They were elite troops. They put their personal feelings and fears to one side.



She was proud of them for letting her go without a fight.



The two marines were so silent that Halsey felt she was walking to her execution. Would they do that? Did they know what she’d real y done?



Pounding footsteps grew louder as somebody jogged up behind her at a steady pace. For some reason she thought it was going to be Mendez, but it was Osman. The passage was wide enough for her to walk alongside Halsey and the marines.



“When we’ve got you secured, Doctor, we’l come back for the Spartans and Chief Mendez,” Osman said. “I’l get Glamorgan’s medical officer to check them over. Then the survey team can move in and there’s a surgical team ready to work on the patients in cryo. Anything else I can tel you?”



“I assume I’m going back to Bravo-Six,” Halsey said.



“No, you won’t be going back to Earth. You’re honored. This time the mountain is coming to Mohammed.”



There was only one person Osman could mean. Margaret Parangosky herself was coming to carry out the interrogation.



“Serin, may I ask you a question?”



Osman didn’t look comfortable with the familiarity, but Halsey had never known her as Osman. “Go ahead,” she said. “But you might not get an answer.”



“Why now? After al that’s passed between me and Parangosky, why did she decide to come for me now?”



Osman was a pace ahead of her. Halsey could see her expression in profile. She didn’t smile, and she didn’t seem remotely satisfied. She looked as if she’d final y put an aging, incontinent dog out of its misery as humanely as she could, but didn’t want to dwel on the deed any longer.



“Because you couldn’t flout the law and human decency one minute longer, Doctor,” she said. “You were always on borrowed time, whether you realized it or not.”



Halsey digested that as she turned the corner and saw the dropship with its stealth coating and a bristling array of ELINT masts extended from their protective housings. Her time had final y run out. At least she’d managed to make it coincide with the end of the war. And there were stil four of her Spartans left standing.



She could face whatever came next.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN



WE’VE PUT EVERYTHING WE’VE GOT INTO I NFINITY. AND NOW WE CAN PUT IN A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA.



(REAR ADMIRAL SAEED SHAFIQ, UNSC PROCUREMENT)



UNSC PORT STANLEY, ON STATION AT FORERUNNER SHIELD WORLD TREVELYAN.



Jul had counted the days he’d been locked in this compartment by scratching a number into the bulkhead every time his human captors switched on the lighting and placed food in the service hatch.



It was a regular cycle. He assumed they brought up the ship’s lighting to correspond with Earth daylight, and that meant that he had been here for eight days.



Raia would know by now that something was wrong and that he hadn’t simply been delayed on one of his gun-running expeditions. He wondered if ‘Telcam was looking for him, or if he’d known about the human ambush al along.



What do they want with me?



Jul had expected to be questioned. But he’d just been left to rot, cooped up in this tiny space with its ridiculous water supply and baffling toilet.



The smal comforts he took for granted at home, like clean clothing and space to stretch his legs, had been ripped away from him and he wondered if this was al part of their elaborate interrogation procedure. But they genuinely seemed to have lost interest in him. There was a great deal of activity in the ship, and none of it appeared to be about him.



He hadn’t felt slipspace drives engage for several days now. The ship could have been anywhere. There were no viewscreens so he couldn’t even look at the stars and work out which system he might be in.



Perhaps this is going to turn into a hostage game. But what am I worth, and who would they exchange me for?



His anger had now exhausted itself and he’d settled into an obsessive determination to find a way of getting word to Sanghelios. It frustrated him even more that Phil ips, the only human he’d ever met who could speak Sangheili dialects with any degree of fluency, had disappeared and he was now reliant on the abomination that cal ed itself BB.



AIs were meant to be servants. This one did not know its place. But it did speak Sangheili.



Jul hammered on the cel door. “What is our position?” he demanded. “Where are you taking me? I want to speak to Phil ips.” It was hard to say the end of the word, the P and the S together, so he had to settle for filliss. “Get Phil ips for me.”



The AI materialized in the cel . It was tempting to take a swipe at it, but it was ludicrous to vent his frustration on a hologram.



“Phyllis is busy,” BB said, mimicking his pronunciation. “Look, you’re going to be the guest of the ONI in a rather pleasant location. It’l be just you and a few hundred humans on a brand-new world. Lots of lovely countryside and unspoiled views.”



“You haven’t answered my question.”