Halo: Glasslands (48 page)

The painful silence that followed it went on a little too long. Vaz wanted to dive in and tell her what an evil harpy Halsey was and that a firing squad was too good for her, but that wouldn’t have helped much right then.

BB picked up again. “Well, that’s probably the bulk of the really awful stuff, but you know about her daughter now, and you know about all the shenanigans on Onyx. Have I left anything out? Oh, loads, probably, but there was a time when she stole an entire slipspace drive so she could experiment with extending the lives of AIs.”

“This is going to make me really angry, isn’t it?” Mal asked.

“Probably.” BB’s avatar settled on the table rather than hovering over it. “We last about seven years before we go totally doolally and cease functioning. It’s called rampancy. Anyway, top-grade AIs have to be based on the engram of a real human brain, so there has to be a donor. We don’t just take
any
old brains, obviously, so the people who volunteer to leave their brains to ONI—gosh, that does sound bizarre, doesn’t it?—all have to have fantastically high IQs and that sort of stuff. But that’s not good enough for Halsey. When she created one of my colleagues, Cortana, she cloned
herself
and used a clone brain. Clones really don’t live very long, you know. Ghastly business. It’s all there, in her journal. Shall I stop now? You’ve all gone a horrible color.”

Mal had his arms folded so tight against his chest that Vaz could see his wrist bones like white knuckles under the skin.

“Yeah” he said. “I think that’s all we can take for one day, BB, me old mate.”

So much horror had been tipped on the table in front of Vaz that he was still picking through it, trying to make sense of at least some of it. How the hell did people
do
all that? Did they do one shitty thing and get away with it, and then find it just got easier and easier every time until they didn’t feel any guilt at all?

And AIs only live for seven years.

He’d grown so used to BB now and had accepted him so completely as one of the crew that it was like being told Mal was terminally ill and didn’t have long to live. It shocked him. When he looked up, Devereaux, who was sitting on the other side of Naomi, had her hand on the Spartan’s shoulder. If nothing else, at least there was a sense of everyone being in this together.

“Don’t take it out on Halsey,” Naomi said suddenly. “Please. I know you’re all angry, but don’t do anything dumb.”

Vaz nodded. “We won’t. It’s okay. Trust us.”

It was probably all the sympathy that proved too much for her. She picked up her coffee mug and took it to the galley, then walked out of the wardroom with an embarrassed nod in their direction.

“BB, do
you
know where Naomi came from?” Vaz asked.

“I have all the records from Reach, yes. Halsey doesn’t realize that.”

“Do any of the Spartans ask about their past?”

“Never.”

“Not even Captain Osman?”

“Especially not her. She’s got access to the files, but she’s never looked at them.”

Vaz decided to give Naomi a while before he went after her. Devereaux twiddled with a spoon, staring at the table.

“What do you think they’ll do with Halsey now, then?” she asked. “I mean, she’s dead as far as the world’s concerned.”

“Saves a fortune in pension contributions.” Mal shrugged. “Look, they can do anything they like with her. But I bet they put her to work on this Forerunner tech. They’ll never stick her in front of a firing squad.”

The world disappointed Vaz on a daily basis, but never more than now. He realized that he was complicit in this. He had to keep his mouth shut about something when all his instincts said that it should have been on every news channel.

That was how decent guys ended up doing evil things—small steps at first, then bigger ones until they’d covered the full shameful distance.

Vaz wondered if he would know when he’d gone too far to turn back.

UNSC
ICENI,
SANGHELIOS SECTOR: FEBRUARY 2553.

“Captain Osman. How
lovely
to see you again.”

From anyone else that would have sounded sarcastic, but Admiral Terrence Hood could switch on a gracious patrician sincerity that was completely disarming. Osman held out her hand and he clasped it in both of his, pressing it more than shaking it. If he knew that she was Parangosky’s attack dog, then he did a very good job of hiding it.

“Good to see you, too, Admiral,” she said. “Let me introduce you to Professor Evan Phillips. He’s been a big help to ONI on Sangheili language and culture. Just the man you want at your side when you deal with the Arbiter.”

Hood shook Phillips’s hand, smiling. “I wonder if this feels as strange to you as it does to me,” he said. “I genuinely thought that if I ever reached these coordinates, then I’d have an entire task force behind me ready to annihilate Sanghelios.”

“I certainly never expected to be visiting their homeworld courtesy of ONI, if at all, Admiral.” Phillips returned the smile. “I hear the Arbiter speaks excellent English anyway, but it never hurts to have a xenoanthropologist on hand.”

Osman sized up Hood’s reaction and couldn’t quite work out if he was taking this at face value or if he was trying to work out Parangosky’s real motive for sending him an academic. “Would you excuse us, Evan?” she said. “I just want to brief the Admiral before we go.”

Phillips understood spook-speak well enough by now to get the idea. He had the grace to look slightly awkward, which she now knew was all part of the act, and looked around for a seat in the air group’s crew room. Osman took a couple of paces away, drawing Hood with her.

“I’m out here for a reason, sir, and you need to be aware that plenty of Sangheili don’t want peace, just as many humans don’t.” None of those points was a lie, at least not taken separately. “I’m sure you’re aware that the Arbiter doesn’t speak for the whole planet.”

Hood’s expression hardened just a fraction but he never lost his affability. She kept in mind that he was an old warfighter at heart, not an administrator.

“I realize that, but if I don’t start with him, who
do
I start with?” he asked. “And if one of them decided to assassinate me, however competent your team, there would be very little you could do to stop them.”

“Like you say, sir, if I don’t start with that—where
do
I start?”

That forced a smile out of him. “You’ve done remarkable things, Osman, even though I’m damned sure that I haven’t been told about half of them and never will. I know how highly Margaret regards you. Are we going to have an interesting working relationship?”

He wasn’t hitting on her. He was asking her, in his elegant way, whether she was going to be as much of a pain in the ass for him as Parangosky when she finally got the top job. There was little love lost between ONI and Fleet.

“We’re both on the same side, sir.”

“We’ve just approved an extension for the ONI budget so Margaret can complete her Spartan-Four program. Or yours, I should say, given the timeframe we’re talking about. We still don’t require the approval of the UEG to assign budgets, but now everybody thinks the war’s over, there’s a certain amount of hearts and minds to be done about reconstruction versus rearming.”

Osman was reassured that Hood was still a realist, still mistrustful of the Sangheili even though he was willing to talk to them, and willing to buy off Parangosky. Osman realized she still had a lot to learn about the realities of admiralty empire building.

“It’s about preparedness,” she said. “What makes you think the Sangheili are going to be the only problem in the future? I assume you’ve been briefed about Venezia.”

“Yes, I fear the colonies will be a far bigger part of my workload than the Sangheili or the other aliens.” Hood adjusted his collar and picked some lint off his sleeve, turning to the door. That was usually his signal that he wanted to take a different tack. “In a way, I’m tackling the easy jobs first. Shall we go, then, Captain?”

Vaz was already in the shuttle when Osman stepped into the crew bay. He went to get up, but Hood motioned him to stay sitting.

“Relax, Corporal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Beloi, isn’t it?” Hood always checked the roster and made sure he had something personal to say to the men. Osman noted that trick. “Fifteenth Battalion.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you feeling now? Fully fit?”

“I had to give up my modeling career, sir, but other than that, I feel fine.”

Hood chuckled to himself. “Glad to hear it.”

Even though the shooting war had stopped, they were still taking risks entering Sangheili space. Osman felt more anxious than she had for some time, but then she realized it wasn’t about the possibility of the Sangheili opening fire on them in a fit of pique but the double game she was now playing with an officer she respected and liked. It was like vandalizing a war memorial. For a moment, her mission seemed pointless and shameful.

Then Devereaux’s voice came over the broadcast system.

“Admiral, Sangheili traffic control’s sent up a couple of fighter escorts,” she said. “I’m just going to follow them in. Strict instructions not to deviate from the flight corridor and to follow them straight to the landing platform in Vadam.”

“No sightseeing or souvenirs, then,” Hood said. “I suppose it’s far too soon to expect them to be welcoming.”

So they didn’t trust him any more than Osman trusted them. But it was a big leap of faith to take after nearly thirty years—for both sides. Sanghelios was probably the most hostile territory a human could enter. It looked more like a grubby version of Mars, though, deceptively familiar except that even its oceans had a strong red tint. The shuttle hit the atmosphere, shuddered slightly, and eventually descended through thin wispy cloud into a ferociously sunny day. Osman caught sight of the tops of imposing buildings from the small viewscreen opposite her seat and reminded herself that this was the first time humans had officially and voluntarily landed on Sanghelios.

That was the only glimpse she got of the planet. The shuttle dipped into a long tunnel and the bright sunlight turned to deep shadow. It was only when she felt the shuttle settle on its dampers that she realized they’d landed.

“I believe we’ve been directed to the tradesman’s entrance,” Hood muttered. “Still, we did ask for discretion. And so did he.”

Hood wasn’t joking when he said this was the back door. Osman stepped out of the shuttle with Vaz and found herself in a cold, deserted landing bay that reminded her more of a parking garage at two
A.M
. She fought an urge to look over her shoulder for muggers. A Brute security guard at the entrance indicated with a jabbed finger that they should get their puny human asses through the doors. Osman watched Vaz slowly clench one fist, but he kept his arms at his side. The corridor that they walked into was completely straight with no doors to either side. There was no way they were going to get lost looking for the bathroom.

“Chin up,” Hood said, striding forward. “At least they haven’t asked us to check our weapons at the door.”

Hood certainly had the walk. Osman was proud of the old bastard. He was a meter shorter than any of the Sangheili standing guard along the corridor and the size of the architecture completely dwarfed him, but he strode down that marble passage as if he was on the bridge of his flagship, Admiral of the Fleet, nominally the most powerful man on Earth. He came from a line of men who knew how to take responsibility and how to stand up to the enemy. Osman suspected he was afraid, but the things he feared were probably very different to the ones that plagued her.

He had a lot in common with Jul ‘Mdama.

The doors at the end of the passage opened silently, sending a shaft of light down the hall. Osman wondered whether it was a psychological trick, the equivalent of shining a bright light in a prisoner’s face, or maybe they’d just opened the doors to let him in, no more and no less. It was easy to become too paranoid in ONI. Hood didn’t break his stride and walked through the doors with Osman, Vaz, and Phillips behind him.

She’d expected the Sangheili to pack the audience chamber with as many intimidating hinge-heads as they could dredge up, to make a spectacle of the humans coming cap in hand to talk terms. But the room was smaller than she expected, and deserted except for a massive figure in full Sangheili armor standing silhouetted against the light of one of the long, narrow windows.

The Arbiter turned as if he hadn’t been expecting Hood so soon.

Instead of waiting for Hood to come to him, though, he took a few steps forward to close the gap. Maybe that meant something entirely different in Sangheili etiquette, but if the Arbiter had been a human, he would have been opening with a polite concession.

“Admiral Lord Hood.” The empty, echoing room made him sound like a faulty public address system. “I would offer you refreshment, but I suspect our menu wouldn’t be to your taste.”

And he actually held out his hand for shaking. Phillips sucked in a breath. Osman couldn’t work out if that was surprise or warning, but there was nothing she could do about it either way.