Halo: Glasslands (5 page)

“It’s called need-to-know, ma’am, and I don’t decide who needs to. I just follow lawful orders.” He gave her that look again, heavy-lidded, as if he was shaping up to spit on her. “But you knew more about Onyx than you’re telling me.”

“Just putting two and two together. Following the crumbs.”

“And I’m sure you’re too professional to withhold any information from us that we need to stay alive.”

Ouch.
“My only aim is to save the Spartans. I think you can count on that.”

Mendez looked away in silence and kept walking. Halsey realized she was matching his pace, struggling to keep up with him.
I really wish I’d worn pants. And I wish I was fitter. We’re the same age, for goodness’ sake.
She was following his lead, one of those little psychological tells. He was the dominant individual now because this was his natural environment—the concrete, the physically dangerous—and not hers. She didn’t like that at all.

“Who told you not to mention the Spartan-Three program to me?” she asked. There was a chance it would never matter, but she had to know. Colonel Ackerson had hacked her confidential data, but that didn’t mean that his was the only score she’d have to settle. “Ackerson? Parangosky? Or both?”

“I was only told who I
could
tell. But I wouldn’t have told you anyway.” No, this wasn’t quite the Chief she was used to, the one who looked away and kept his counsel: rounding on Olivia had definitely provoked him. “You’d have spent all your time arguing that we didn’t have good enough candidates and trying to get it shelved. And I’d have told you that attitude trumps genetics every time.”

“I know that. I—”

Halsey didn’t have a personal radio, but everyone else did. Mendez turned away from her instantly and responded to a call she couldn’t hear.

“Go ahead, sir.” It had to be Fred. “Where?”

Where.
The word made Halsey spin around, left then right. It was pure instinct. But when she caught sight of Kelly, the Spartan was looking
up.

“Damn, he’s right,” she said, and aimed.

Halsey could see now. There was a black dot in the picture-perfect blue sky, getting bigger by the second. Something was swooping down on them.

Tom was nearest to her. “Ma’am,
down!
”

It was a fluke. If anyone had the lightning reflexes and sheer speed to reach her, it was Kelly. But Tom cannoned into Halsey and pinned her down just as a charcoal gray cylinder the size of a wine bottle whisked by so close that she felt the rush of air on her face. For a moment she couldn’t see where it had gone. She was looking up at the lower edge of Tom’s visor, wondering for a moment why she could still breathe.

That SPI armor was light, cheap stuff.
Thank God.
Three hundred kilos of Mjolnir armor would have killed her. But Tom was kneeling over her on all fours, shielding her from whatever had decided to target them. He’d just pushed her down.

“It’s okay. It’s
okay.
” That was Kelly. Halsey heard her rifle click. “I’ve got it. It’s not doing anything.”

Tom got to his feet and helped Halsey up. Kelly had her rifle trained on the cylinder, frozen at a silent hover two meters off the ground.

“Is that some kind of mini Sentinel?” Mendez asked. “Because if it is, we’ve already seen the big ones. And you know what happens when those bastards link up.”

For a moment, Halsey was totally distracted by the matte gray device and completely forgot her moment of ignominy in the grass. It wasn’t a defensive machine like the deadly Sentinels they’d encountered on the surface. It gave the impression that it was waiting for something, although it had dived on them like a fighter. Halsey edged closer despite Kelly waving her away, and looked at the underside. A cluster of lights—no, illuminated symbols she couldn’t read—was visible, two blue and one a greenish white. The blue ones were blinking.

It could have been counting down to detonate, of course. The Forerunners would have gone to a lot of trouble to ensure no unwanted life-forms contaminated this sanctuary. Halsey still had no evidence that the sphere’s apparent tolerance of human intrusion was anything more than luck.

“No telling what’ll happen if I shoot it,” Kelly said. “And size doesn’t mean something isn’t lethal. Right, O?”

Olivia suddenly appeared from nowhere. Halsey really never heard her coming. Maybe old age was creeping on.

“Shall we—well, catch it?” Olivia asked. “We’re supposed to be acquiring technology here.”

Kelly reached out, slow and cautious for once. She was a finger-length from the cylinder when it shot up in a perfect vertical and vanished before she could target it.

“Damn, I’ve finally been outrun,” she said. “Oh, the shame of it.”

Mendez watched from a distance, lips moving. He was talking to Fred’s squad on the radio. Halsey’s stomach growled, reminding her of the top priority.

“It’ll be back,” she said. “And I’d like to take it alive.” She turned to Tom, who’d taken off his helmet and was scratching his scalp. He was just as luminously young as the other Spartan-IIIs, with dark hair and a bruise on his chin that was already turning yellow at the margins. “Is that from when Kurt knocked you out?”

“Yes.” Tom stared at a point between his boots and blinked a few times. “I’d never have left him to hold off the Elites on his own.”

“It’s okay, I know you wouldn’t.” Halsey wasn’t sure if she was trying harder because Mendez had snarled at her or if she really did feel a pang of regret. “Saving someone is a reflex. Nobody who’s wired that way thinks about it. Do they?”

Tom just shrugged. “No point taking chances, ma’am. You’re the only one here who can read a Forerunner menu, aren’t you?”

“Thanks, Spartan,” she said.
Do I mean that? Yes, I think I do.
“I’ll try to find you a steak.”

CHAPTER

TWO

HUMANITY CAN NOW BREATHE AGAIN.

THE COVENANT HAS FINALLY BEEN DRIVEN BACK. THE COST IN LIVES—OUR TROOPS AND OUR CITIZENS—HAS BEEN ENORMOUS.

BUT FREEDOM NEVER COMES CHEAPLY, AND NOW, WE REBUILD.

I PROMISE THIS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD ON EARTH AND IN ITS COLONIES. WHILE WE WILL CONTINUE TO STRIVE FOR A PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE WITH OTHER SPECIES, HUMANITY WILL NEVER AGAIN ALLOW ITSELF TO BE THE VICTIM OF AGGRESSION. THIS IS THE MOMENT WE START TO RECLAIM OUR RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE.

(INAUGURAL SPEECH OF DR. RUTH CHARET, NEW PRESIDENT OF THE UNIFIED EARTH GOVERNMENT: JANUARY 2553)

CORE 5, OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE, BRAVO-6 FACILITY: JANUARY 26, 2553.

Don’t mind me.
BB settled down to watch and learn.
I’m no trouble at all. I’ll stay out of your way. I’m just observing.

And he was observing a man who seemed to think his time had come, the idiot. Didn’t he realize the war was anything but over? David Agnoli, Minister for the Colonies, sat on the low oak bookcase with his back to Parangosky’s office. He still didn’t seem to have the measure of UNSC yet.

“Do you think the old bat’s
ever
going to die, Captain?” Agnoli reached down between his legs to pull out a volume at random, but BB was pretty sure he was keeping an eye on the office door via the reflection in the glass panel opposite. “Or will she transmogrify into her true basilisk form, and vanish in a puff of sulfur? I’d pay good money to see that.”

He started leafing through the book, a faded and ancient copy of
The Admiralty Manual of Seamanship Vol. II.
Captain Osman glanced at him with faint contempt.

“The Admiral speaks very highly of you, too, David,” she said sourly. “I think the word was
weasel.
Well, it began with a
W
, anyway.”

“Come on, you’re the anointed one. You can get me in to see her, can’t you?”

“If she’d known you were coming, I’m sure she would have made time for you. But she’s got a lot of souls to digest.” She gave him a look of faint disgust as he riffled through the yellowing pages. “Look, do you know how many
centuries
old that book is? Admiral Hood gave it to me. Don’t get greasy fingerprints all over it.”

Agnoli turned to look over his shoulder as Parangosky’s door opened. Her flag lieutenant, Dorsey, hovered with his hands braced on the door frame as if he didn’t dare cross the threshold.

“The Admiral will see you now, Captain.” Dorsey made a polite show of noticing Agnoli. “Oh, hello, Minister. Will we be seeing you at Dr. Charet’s reception later?”

“Possibly.” Agnoli closed the ancient book with exaggerated care and stood up to put it back on the shelf. He nodded at Osman as Dorsey vanished. “I’ll show myself out, then. Perhaps the lieutenant can make an appointment for me.”

Osman watched him until he was out of sight—but not out of BB’s—then reached out to pick up some files from her desk. BB decided it was time to introduce himself. He projected his three-dimensional holographic image into the doorway and waited for her to react.

How else was an AI supposed to shake hands?

Osman stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “And whose little pet are you?” She cocked her head a fraction as if she suddenly wasn’t quite sure what he was. “You
are
fully sentient, aren’t you?”

“I’m Black-Box,” he said. “I thought I’d introduce myself before we see the Admiral.”

Osman looked him over with no change in her expression whatsoever. BB’s holographic avatar was a cube, a featureless box picked out in blue light, because he saw no point in masquerading as something other than what he was—pure intellect, his intricate thought processes a closed book to organic life. He couldn’t bear the theatrics of manifesting as flesh and blood.

Faces are for wannabes. I’m not a surrogate human.

“You didn’t answer my question, Black-Box,” Osman said, waiting until he moved aside. “Whose AI are you?”

He followed her for a few meters as she walked down the corridor, as far as he could project himself using her desk terminal. “I report to the Admiral. And she calls me BB. You might like to as well.”

Osman looked over her shoulder to say something, but he’d run out of range and had to switch to another terminal. It took him a fraction of a second to reroute himself through the fire alarm system and the mainframe to project from Parangosky’s terminal and pop up again in front of Osman. She was in the process of turning around again to look for him. Judging by the way she flinched, he’d actually managed to startle her.

“Apologies, Captain,” he said. “As I was saying, I work for Parangosky.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Whatever she wants,” BB said.

Look after Osman. Trust her. I’ve kept her under wraps for years, hidden her even from Halsey. She has a job to do.
The Admiral thought the sun shone out of Osman’s backside, and even a dolt like Agnoli could see that she’d take over when Parangosky decided to call it a day, even if he didn’t know why.

And if it was good enough for Parangosky, then it was good enough for BB.

Ah … Hogarth.
An alert rippled through BB, detected by extensions of his program that he’d distributed throughout the communications and security systems in key government buildings.
There he goes. He’s on the prowl.
Even if Captain Hogarth hadn’t put a private appointment with the UEG in his diary, his comms handset made his movements trackable, and each secure door that he passed through betrayed his identity. He was moving around the president’s suite of offices.
So you’re off to do some lobbying, are you? You really do fancy your chances as head of ONI. Shame that you’ve backed the wrong horse. What possible deal could the civilian government offer you?

In the time it took BB to run all his monitoring systems and check intelligence reports from fifty ships, Osman had only just begun her instant reply.

“I never knew she had an AI,” Osman said, walking straight through BB’s hologram into Parangosky’s office. Humans didn’t usually do that to AIs. They’d walk
around
them. He wasn’t sure how to take it. “Well, nice to meet you, BB.”

Parangosky gave him a wink as he moved in behind Osman. “I see you two are getting to know each other,” she said, gesturing Osman to a seat. “That’s good. Don’t worry, Captain, you can trust BB with your life. Not a phrase I use lightly. Or figuratively.”

“And am I going to need to, ma’am?” Osman asked.

“Very possibly.” Parangosky leaned forward, slowly and painfully, to check the status panel on her desk. The office was secure, door seals shut and soundproofing activated. BB had his own defenses to keep unfriendly AIs out of the Admiral’s systems, but the benign dumb ones needed dissuasion too. He exploited them to spy and expected other AIs to do the same. “Which is why I decided that you needed your own AI. And why this conversation is strictly between you, me, and him.”