“No, hold your fire. Al of you.” Phil ips was stil talking. “You too, Elar. Everybody relax. Everybody calm down—”

Naomi drew back her arm and simply punched her fist into the barricade like a power-hammer. Mal jumped up behind her, almost crashing into Vaz as the Spartan drove a huge hole in the wood and metal and sent the debris clattering into the hal . Mal braced for a blinding hail of plasma, but the first thing he saw wasn’t the hinge-heads but Phil ips, standing in front of them with a plasma pistol raised two-handed, right in the crossfire zone. Everyone froze.

“Don’t you bloody dare, ” Mal said.

“I’m stopping them from shooting you.”

“Great. Thanks. Now get out of the way.”

The Elites had formed a barrier in front of their kids, with one big female slightly out in front with her pistol aimed squarely at Mal. He looked into her face for a moment and saw smal , angry, animal eyes and flaring nostrils. They must have thought Phil ips was worth a lot if he was al that was stopping them. Naomi didn’t seem to give a damn and held her pistol on the Elites as she stalked along the line. Some of them stared at her as if they didn’t believe humans came in that size and shape.

“Ladies, we’ve got a warship right overhead,” Mal said. “If we’d wanted to kil you, we could have reduced this keep to rubble from a safe distance. Now we’re taking our man and going. Okay?”

“They’re under attack,” Phil ips said. “You’ve seen what’s outside.”

Vaz jerked his head toward the door. “That’s not our problem. You ready, Dev?”

“Standing by.”

“We can’t abandon them,” Phil ips said.

Mal was running out of patience. At any second, a hinge-head kid could start firing, or one of the jumpier females, and then it would be a bloodbath. “We can, Prof, and they’re big enough to take care of themselves. Move.”

This was the tricky moment. They’d have to turn around. Naomi started backing out. They were seconds away from getting out of this shit hole.

Mal grabbed Phil ips and pul ed him toward the door, keeping his eyes on the big female at the front. They were picking their way over the debris from the barricade when two voices fil ed Mal’s helmet—Devereaux’s and BB’s.

“Enemy vessel approaching.”

“Abort that, Mal. Take cover.”

“Two enemy vessels approaching.”

“We’ve got ‘Telcam’s team and some other joker.”

Mal stuck his head out of the door just as a vol ey of bolts skimmed past. “Shit, why isn’t anything simple these days? Everybody down. ”

Phil ips dropped prone as if he’d been shown how to do it. He aimed out the door. “Told you so,” he said. “The other keep wants their land and buildings. It’s nothing to do with the war.”

Mal stopped short of smacking him around the head. It was a technicality. Wars were always great excuses to settle al kinds of personal scores.

“Wel , you tel that to the plasma round that cooks your frigging head.” He signaled to Vaz and Naomi. The hinge-heads were already in position at the windows. “You’ve got to work out which side you’re on, Phil ips, and here’s a clue—it’s ours. ”

UNSC INFINITY, OORT CLOUD Parangosky watched the discreet icon on her datapad switch from green to blue. It was a shame to stop young Lieutenant Priselkov when she was in ful flood about the slipspace comms tests, but Parangosky trusted BB to know better than any human what was truly urgent and what could wait for a presentation to end.

“My apologies, Lieutenant,” she said, getting to her feet and sliding the pad off the table. “May we resume this a little later? Something’s come up. I’l be back as soon as I get this resolved.”

It was always educational to watch their faces. She cast a benign glance around the table and noted who looked worried, who looked intrigued, who looked irritated, and who was doing their best not to betray any reaction at al . This project had consumed their lives for the last year or two, cut them off from everything they held dear on Earth, and—since the Huragok had arrived and changed everything in a frantic whirlwind of modification —most of them hadn’t been able to grab more than three hours’ sleep a day. She watched them wondering whether she understood al that.

“This is quite a serious situation,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t interrupt this meeting for anything less.” It did them no harm to think she was a mind-reader as wel as omniscient. She nodded at Hood. “Excuse me.”

Hood had a way of watching her without actual y moving a muscle, not even his eyes. The doors closed behind her and she slid onto the buggy’s seat to ride to the closest secure space on this deck.

“She’s too big, BB.” Parangosky propped the datapad on the dashboard and whirred down the passage. “Just my personal taste. She’s a flying city, not a ship. I’l always be a frigate scale of sailor.”

“I didn’t want to upset Aine again by asking her how things were going.”

“She’s rather unsettled by the Huragok, I’m afraid. They don’t document their modifications. She has no idea what they’re doing sometimes.”

“That sounds astutely unionized of them.”

“Yes, let’s not fal into the same seductive trap that the Sangheili did, because once you lose the services of the little darlings, you’re scuppered.”

She could see the compartment door up ahead, marked SECURITY TESTED. She’d take BB’s word for that. The seal sighed as she closed the door behind her, leaving her leaning on her cane in a conspicuously quiet compartment with generic power outlets and data feed sockets on the bulkheads. It didn’t even have any floor covering, just the bare gray composite of deck sections.

“Okay, Admiral, we have a mixed bag of news for you, and I’l be patching you through to Captain Osman in a moment,” BB said. Parangosky’s datapad flashed up an ONI holding portal. “We’ve found Phil ips, but Kilo-Five is stil trying to extract him. The fascinating news is that it might be a perfect time to offer the Arbiter some help with his little local difficulty.”

Parangosky didn’t rely on God or luck, but she was prepared to accept that the reward for being permanently on the lookout for opportunity sometimes resembled an answered prayer.

“We’re half-finished,” she said. “But that also means we’re half-ready. The important thing is that al the combat systems are operational, so we can manage without a sauna or two.” She watched the portal screen change to Stanley’s bridge. “How’s it going, Captain? Is Kilo-Five al right?”

“They’re with Phil ips now, ma’am.” Osman kept looking up past the console camera. Parangosky guessed she’d projected charts onto the viewscreen like a HUD. “Just smal -scale resistance. I think it’s a case of wrong time and place. You real y need to see the latest from the drone cams, though—things don’t look encouraging for the Arbiter. You might want to show this to Hood. Do the honors, BB.”

It was an aerial view of Vadam, something that Parangosky stil regarded as a watershed in her life. Sanghelios had been a closed world until the last couple of months. The first limited scans gleaned from Hood’s diplomatic mission were keeping ONI analysts busy, and now the information was rol ing in via Port Stanley and BB. The view of Vadam looked almost mundane. There was Mount Kolaar to the right of the image, with the wartlike gray keep on its lower slopes. To the right of frame, the land merged into grass and woods. The detail was partial y obscured by white smears.

“Cloud or smoke?” she asked.

“Smoke. Zoom in. This is only drone imaging, so it’s not perfect, but you can see that Vadam keep is surrounded on three sides.”

Parangosky took her weight off her cane for a moment and tapped the image a couple of times with her right hand. It was hazier now, but the first thought that struck her was cars. It was an instant and unedited reaction: cars parked at a grassy picnic site. The area facing the keep was dotted with blurred patches of color—red, blue, purple, black—but then she adjusted her mind to the actual scale and realized the patches were Covenant military vehicles and other craft. Some were substantial, dropships and larger vessels as wel as mobile artil ery pieces.

“BB’s streaming the comms chatter back to Bravo-Six for analysis,” Osman said. “But to cut to the chase, the Arbiter’s been caught out by the numbers that have turned on him. A lot of that was outrage at him al owing Phil ips and Kilo-Five to enter the temple at Ontom. So … he needs a friend.”

ONI was spinning an increasing number of plates. Parangosky ful y expected ‘Telcam to launch a holy war on Earth after he’d dumped the Arbiter. “What’s the situation like off-planet? We’re not picking up any intel on actual warships.”

“The Arbiter’s forces shot down Unflinching Resolve, but she was a minnow compared to what else must stil be out there. And Pious Inquisitor’s stil missing, possibly seized by Kig-Yar. I doubt they’l be joining this uprising, but they might sel her to the Arbiter.”

Pious Inquisitor had too much history for Parangosky’s taste, both as enemy and al y. The ship had glassed colonies; she’d also destroyed a Flood infestation in Africa. Capability was always what mattered, though, not intent. Parangosky had to plan on the basis that Inquisitor could be turned on Earth again if she fel into the wrong hands.

And the Sangheili will always be the wrong hands.

“Anything else?” she asked. “I think now would be a good time for Terrence to cal the Arbiter and offer Infinity’s immediate support.”

“Superb timing, ma’am,” Osman said.

“It is, isn’t it?”

“But wil she get here in time to make a difference?”

“Serin,” Parangosky said, “I think your charming staff sergeant has a phrase for it. She’s faster than a greased weasel. Much as it sticks in my throat to thank Halsey, I may have to.” She glanced at the time on the pad. “Give me two hours, and keep me updated on Kilo-Five.”

“May I ask you something, ma’am?”

“Certainly.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea for both you and Admiral Hood to be embarked if Infinity’s flying into a civil war?”

“I think it’s a case of both of us or neither,” Parangosky said. “And I’ve been far too out of touch with the front line for too long, my dear.”

“Understood.”

So it was an eccentric choice. So was sending a ship in refit to do a little gunboat diplomacy that might actual y have to be backed up with action. But this was the best excuse they might have for years—and at the best time.

Parangosky climbed onto the buggy and headed back to the meeting room. Hood gave her a slyly meaningful look as she made her way back to her seat, commanding instant and reverent silence from the table.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, knowing damn wel that things tended to revolve around her whether she wanted them to or not. “I have plenty of questions, though.”

Glassman tapped his datapad and the display on the bulkhead rol ed backward. “Ma’am, I was just bringing everyone up to speed with the drives. I apologize for the lack of technical rigor, but interfacing with the Huragok is an act of faith. I’m not sure if they’re just not used to being asked to show their workings, or if they’re too … enigmatic to explain things. Sometimes they look at me as if I’m asking them to explain what blue looks like.”

“I admit they’re a mixed blessing,” Hood said. “Midas springs to mind. Being able to turn everything you touch to gold sounds wonderful until you need to visit the bathroom.”

Aine spoke up for the first time. “I realize security isn’t my department,” she said, “but they absorb and share al the data they find. We could end up like the Covenant. How can we let them work on other UNSC ships when they have so much classified data on Infinity? We need to start control ing their associations.”

“Excel ent point, Aine,” Parangosky said. She knew she hadn’t worried about it enough, not yet, but the immediate benefits were too great to put everything on hold. “Which is why Admiral Shafiq might have to wait longer for his dream of a Huragok in every ship. We’l need to find another separate population for that. For the time being, Huragok are confined to a handful of classified projects.”

“As long as we’re aware, ma’am,” Aine said.

Aine always did what was asked of her in such a put-upon and resigned tone that Parangosky almost felt sorry for her. She didn’t politic or scheme like an ONI AI. Al she did was prepare ships for deployment, the Queen of the Thursday War. She manifested herself at the side of the meeting table as a smal figure of a thirty-something woman wearing baggy white overal s, safety goggles parked on the top of her head, and a resigned expression.

“So when can we put Infinity through her paces?” Parangosky looked straight at Glassman, not Hood, and prodded his ego. “Are we ready to see if this gamble is worth it?”

Glassman had a lot in common with Halsey, which probably played a part in the friction between them. He was professional y vain, massively ambitious, and in constant competition with life. Any suggestion from Parangosky that she wasn’t dazzled by the speed and bril iance of the modifications was guaranteed to scrape the right raw nerves.

“We’ve changed the entire technology of slipspace propulsion and associated systems in a matter of days, ma’am,” Glassman said stiffly. “And I’m happy to put her through her paces right away.”

Gotcha. Who says humans aren’t ninety percent programming?