“I thought he was listed as missing, ma’am.”

Osman seemed to be picking each word with absolute precision. Vaz detected a slight shift in tone now, slowing and lowering pitch, like she was making a statement. “Yes, dead Spartans always are, and we can stil hope that he’s out there somewhere, but we’ve got to be realistic.”

“I assume there’s no news on Kel y, Linda … Fred?”

“Nothing concrete that I can tel you yet. The other name that’s going to bother you is Catherine Halsey. UNSC’s now declared her dead so that they can release records. Nobody who was left on Reach could have survived. Anyway, I’m sorry that we’ve lost some good people.”

Osman didn’t indicate whether she thought Halsey was one of them. Vaz got the feeling that he was missing something. He turned his head as casual y as he could, just to check if there was a spark of that same doubt on anyone else’s face, but he couldn’t tel . He was drinking too much of that ONI coffee. Maybe that stuff was special y blended to keep their field operatives at maximum paranoia.

Osman went on regardless. “Now, the rest of the business. Admiral Hood’s planning to visit Sanghelios for talks with the Arbiter, so we’l be standing by to keep an eye on that. We might also end up diverted to the Onyx sector to assist with an anomaly.” Osman seemed to be focused on Naomi, so maybe she was worried about her reaction to the news about the Master Chief. “Okay, Onyx isn’t a secret. You’ve probably worked out one way or another that Parangosky quarantined it for our own extremely dodgy purposes, but the planet isn’t there anymore. It broke up. It was a Forerunner satel ite made of mil ions of defensive robotic constructs, but we think there’s a slipspace shelter at the core that survived the destruction.”

“And we need to acquire the technology,” Mal said.

“Probably, but we might have UNSC personnel trapped there in need of extraction, and I think that’l interest us more. Any questions?”

“Do we know who?” Devereaux asked.

“Maybe,” Osman said, suddenly very ONI again.

Vaz decided to change the subject to something that was gnawing at him. “This business with Admiral Hood, ma’am. If this is al part of a peace treaty, how does that affect our mission?”

“It doesn’t,” Osman said. “And it doesn’t make any difference if the Arbiter is completely genuine, shakes Hood’s hand, and asks him to marry his sister. We know damn wel that the Arbiter doesn’t speak for al Sangheili, let alone the rest of the assorted rabble out there. So we carry on, and if Hood manages to charm the pants off of the hinge-heads, then that’s terrific. But if he doesn’t, then we’re stil there in the background making sure that we never have to go through this again.”

“And should we know who Halsey is?”

“Chief scientist at ONI,” Osman said. Vaz decided she had some serious issues with this Halsey, judging by the set of her jaw. “Creator of the Spartan program. It’s only fair to warn you that there’l be some unpleasant revelations emerging about her. Bril iant, yes, and the Spartans changed the course of the war, but her methods left a lot to be desired. History might not judge her kindly.”

Naomi wouldn’t have made a very good poker player. She might have been able to keep up that unblinking Spartan stoicism for a while, but Vaz had learned to spot the smal giveaway gestures. He could see her pressing her lips together more tightly with every mention of Halsey’s name.

“And how wil you judge her, Captain?” Mal asked.

Osman shrugged. “If I tel you, I have to reveal classified information—and I’m not keeping that from you because it’s classified, but because it’s extremely personal, and I think I’d like to talk to Naomi privately before the rest of you hear it.”

You could have cut the tension on that bridge with a blunt plastic butter knife. Vaz interpreted it as a suggestion to get lost and leave Osman and Naomi to have a girl-to-girl chat.

“You’re always pretty straight with us, ma’am,” Devereaux said. “I’m not brown-nosing, but we want you to know that we appreciate it.”

Osman folded her arms, not so much defensive as looking like she wanted to curl up and hide, and she wasn’t the shrinking violet type. There was definitely something else going on here.

“If I ask you to put your lives on the line, the least I can do is to tel you as much of the truth as I can,” she said. “I know I often ask your opinion rather than give you clear orders, but that’s because you’ve al got a hel of a lot more combat experience than me, and I respect and trust your judgment. So if you ever think I’m screwing up on a biblical scale, I want you to tel me so.”

Some marines liked cast-iron certainty in an officer, but Vaz was happy to settle for intel igent honesty. Officers who knew what they didn’t know were rare gems. He realized he was wil ing to do just about any damn thing she asked him to. Maybe that was the intention. She was Parangosky’s protégé, after al , and he couldn’t imagine the old girl picking someone who couldn’t get the best out of her people.

No. Sometimes you have to accept that people mean what they say.

Likeable officer or not, she stil had to do some difficult stuff with Naomi. “Okay, people, dismiss,” she said. “We need a little while to talk, me and Naomi.”

Mal herded everyone down to the hangar deck, as much distance as he could give anyone in this ship. Adj fol owed them and hung around, fondling the equipment in the smal comms workstation that Phil ips had set up to one side of the deck.

“I know you’re there, BB.” Mal looked up at the deckhead. “Just be a good mate and let us know what we can do for Naomi, wil you? Because I know bad news when I see it.”

BB’s avatar appeared below the gantry. “Now you know why the captain’s been tel ing you so much about the Spartan program. The end of a war’s as good a time as any to take a serious look at the unsavory things we’ve done.”

“Yeah, that’s a lot easier now that this Halsey woman’s dead,” Vaz said, trying to imagine what could possibly be worse than kidnapping six- year-olds and shooting them up with hormones and ceramic implants. “Very convenient of her. Always best not to mention it while they’re alive and can stil name names.”

“You’re a rather cynical young man, Vasily,” BB said. “Very wel , I promise I’l keep you up to speed on Naomi—with her consent.”

BB disappeared and the three ODSTs stood there in silence with Phil ips. Vaz was suddenly aware of pinging and scratching noises coming out of Phil ips’s comms workstation. Whatever Adj was doing, he was un-vandalizing the equipment with enthusiasm.

“Busy little guy, isn’t he?” Phil ips said, going to check on the frantic remodeling. “Okay, okay, I’l keep him out of the main systems.”

“Osman’s okay,” Mal said. “Good sort.”

Vaz shrugged. “She’s half Spartan.”

“Yeah,” said Devereaux. “But the other half is purebred spook. That’s not the kind of pet you can trust with your kids.”

“I don’t care,” Vaz said. “I like her. And what the hel are we now, anyway?”

Vaz didn’t know how long Osman talked to Naomi, but it was a couple of hours before the Spartan came down to the hangar. She looked as if nothing had happened. But then she was pretty good at battening down the hatches as long as she had a few moments to compose herself before she had to face everyone. It was al part of the psychology of spending a lot of time with your face obscured behind a visor, something Vaz understood al too wel . He passed her on the way to the heads and gave her a you-can-talk-to-me look, holding eye contact for a few extra seconds.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“I’m stil working that out,” she said, and disappeared into the Mjolnir compartment.

“We’re here whenever you want to talk,” Vaz said, but he wasn’t sure if she heard him.

For the next twenty-four hours everything fel back into the daily routine of monitoring voice traffic and gathering intel igence. Port Stanley was doing the ship equivalent of an ODST’s “hard routine”—carrying out surveil ance under the enemy’s nose, hiding in the bushes in total silence for weeks at a time without even a smoke or a cooked meal for comfort—except that she didn’t need bushes, she didn’t get leg cramps, and she didn’t get distracted by the need to take a leak. Vaz had carried out way too much recon and FAC behind enemy lines to feel less of a man for doing it the ONI way. He could brew a pot of coffee and have a good scratch while he watched the data come in.

It would have been better to have someone on the ground as wel , on Sanghelios itself, but it was hard to pass yourself off as a hinge-head when everyone around you was a meter tal er. Vaz tried to think creatively about ways to infiltrate the keeps.

He sat at one of the workstations on the bridge, noting the occasional movement of Sangheili ships between their various orbital shipyards and the two moons, Suban and Qikost. There was a lot of traffic, but certainly nothing to suggest that they were attempting to rearm or regroup. If anything it seemed more like a free-for-al , with ships disappearing to scattered locations across the planet, something that Phil ips confirmed from the radio chatter.

“It’s real y quite sad.” Phil ips was lounging at the console a couple of seats away with his feet up on another seat, one hand to his earpiece.

“They’ve been this amazing military culture for thousands of years, but now the San’Shyuum have gone they’re running out of equipment and motivation. The kaidons are just taking whatever ships and equipment they can find and stashing it in their own cities.”

“Can’t stop fighting men from fighting,” Vaz said. “That sounds like a recipe for civil war without any intervention from us.”

Phil ips shook his head. “Don’t underestimate the charismatic power of an Arbiter, especial y ‘Vadam. What I can’t work out is just how much fighting there was on Sanghelios itself when he split from the Covenant. ‘Telcam says they’re stil factionalized, but he omits to tel me just how much damage was done in the fighting.”

“You want to get down there and take a look, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

“Only through my scope. Just before I squeeze one off.”

“But it’s a fascinating, ancient culture.”

“It’s a fortress ful of angry hinge-heads who stil think we’re bacteria.”

“You know, travel broadens the—” Phil ips stopped dead and swung his boots off the seat to lean on the console and concentrate on a transmission coming in. “Okay, Vaz, quiet. It’s ‘Telcam, and remember that he understands every word we say.”

“Yes. Just like my gran’s dog.”

‘Telcam cal ed in as regularly now as any UNSC operating base. It seemed to take him a few days to col ect arms, get them back home, and distribute them before asking for the next batch. Osman’s policy was to drip-feed him anyway, and Vaz understood the wisdom of sneaking weapons in a few at a time in dozens of different vessels rather than risk losing everything in a single intercepted shipment.

But maybe his missus had told him that he couldn’t store the stuff in the garage. Sangheili had wives too.

What’s everyone else on Sanghelios doing? They can’t all be in the army. Phillips has a point. I bet he’d wet himself with excitement if someone offered him a trip down there.

Phil ips listened intently for a while, grunting “Yes, I’l do that,” now and again, then pushed himself back from the console, brandishing his datapad. BB materialized beside him.

“You’d make a wonderful receptionist,” BB said. “Go on, give the message to the captain.”

Phil ips looked at BB and smiled. “Pizza with al the toppings for Mister ‘Telcam, I think.”

Vaz wondered if Naomi fancied a run ashore after being cooped up in Stanley for so long. Even the glasslands were starting to look like a day out now, regardless of how wel -stocked the wardroom gal ey was or how many creature comforts the ship provided. ONI didn’t believe in roughing it. Vaz went to find her.

She was tinkering with her helmet, something that real y didn’t need doing if that armor fixed itself. She glanced up at him.

“Lid okay?” he asked.

“Lighter than the old model. Mark Seven. New supplier.”

“You get al the best kit.”

Naomi took a breath. It wasn’t impatience. It looked more like embarrassment. “Look, I know you’re being kind,” she said. “And just because I’m not very talkative, it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it.”

“So are you coming?”

“Why not? They say Spartans need to get out more.”

She’d tel him what was troubling her in her own good time. He just couldn’t imagine what would disturb a Spartan.

But whatever it was, it had something to do with that Halsey woman.

BEKAN QUARRY, MDAMA, SANGHELIOS.

Raia looked over Unflinching Resolve from a distance but declined to step on board. Jul was a little disappointed. She’d never seen his world before and he’d hoped she might understand him better if she saw how he lived while he was away from home.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to move this ship?” she asked, turning to Buran and Forze. “Many shipmasters have reclaimed their vessels and taken them back to their keeps, from what I hear. I doubt anyone would find it suspicious now.”

Buran shrugged and shot a glance at Jul. “Ask your husband. He’s the one who’s worried that traitors know these coordinates. The worst that can happen is that some worthless Kig-Yar and a few civilian humans know this location. So? What are they going to do about it?”