Vaz was suddenly terrified of blowing his cover with one badly chosen bit of slang. I’m a deserter, I’ve walked off with a few rifles, my friend here is a deserter, too.… By the time they found the dealer’s premises, Vaz believed himself. He was that deserter, and he felt furtive and hunted. It felt a lot like working for ONI in a very hostile environment. As he took the blanket-wrapped rifle out of the back of the Warthog, he saw a Kig-Yar pass by in a truck and give him a long, beady-eyed look. For a moment, he thought it had recognized him, but then he remembered that he hadn’t left any Kig-Yar alive on Reynes to identify him.
He walked into the warehouse with Naomi beside him. He hadn’t checked how much hardware she was carrying under her parka, but she’d have at least two sidearms. The place was dimly lit and stank of fuel.
“What do you want?”
A guy in his thirties—wiry, dark haired, clean shaven—sat on a crate with a metal bowl between his feet, soaking machinery parts in some solvent or other. He shook his hands off and wiped them on a rag. Vaz hoped he didn’t smoke.
“I’ve got a rifle I need to sel ,” Vaz said.
The guy stood up. “Why do you need to sel it? Have you shot someone with it?”
“Yeah, lots. Hinge-heads.” Here we go. Can’t back out now. “I left UNSC in a hurry a while ago and I just happened to take my weapon with me.
Now I need some cash. Wel , both of us do. We didn’t fil in our PVR forms before we left.”
The guy looked Naomi up and down. It was impossible to read him. Naomi stared back, dead-eyed and unfazed. Vaz reminded himself that even without the Mjolnir, she was immensely strong and could take a lot more damage than a regular human. Vaz unwrapped the MA5B and held it out for the guy to look at.
“Properly maintained,” Vaz said. And tagged, so we can track the supply chain when we need to. “Obviously.”
The guy’s eyes lit up just a little, not so hard to read after al . He took it and tested it with exaggerated clicks.
“Seven hundred,” he said.
“Thousand.”
“Eight hundred.”
“Nine.”
“Don’t push your luck, Ivan. Eight-fifty.”
“Eight-seventy-five.”
The guy paused and gave Vaz the evil eye. Vaz had seen a lot worse back home and responded with his best Russian mobster stare. The guy sighed and reached into his back pocket. Naomi drew her pistol.
“Whoa, babe,” he said, holding up both hands. He clutched a wad of grubby notes in one. “I’m not the MPs. Eight-seventy-five.”
Naomi held the weapon on him for a count of two before shoving it back in her coat. She blinked a lot. If she was trying to act like a jumpy deserter, she was giving a first-class performance. Vaz stood there and counted the notes as careful y as a man who hadn’t had a square meal in a while and needed every buck.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’m always in the market for UNSC kit,” the guy said. “And smal vehicles and vessels up to troop carrier size.”
Vaz thought of the hinge-head Spirit that he, Mal, and Manny had hijacked and left on Criterion. Maybe it was stil there. “I’ve got a Spirit stashed away off-world. Just a little short of transport to go get it. One day, maybe.”
“Or upsized Magnums,” the guy said, looking at Naomi. He seemed to have taken a shine to her sidearm. But he looked and kept looking, and then he frowned. “I swear I recognize you from somewhere. You’ve got a real y familiar face.”
“Everyone’s got a double,” she said.
“No, real y.” He looked like he had a name on the tip of his tongue, and then his expression changed, because he must have remembered exactly who she looked like. This was practical y Arms Dealers Row, after al . “Hey, it’s okay. Anytime. Some of my best customers are UA.”
Vaz shoved the cash in his jacket and walked out as convincingly as he could. Naomi didn’t say a word until they got back into the Warthog and were halfway down the road.
“I wasn’t prepared for that,” she said.
“You weren’t.…”
“This is a smal town. Wel , a very tight-knit community, anyway.”
“Okay, let’s park up somewhere and think this through.”
Vaz spotted a big, open parking lot and pul ed in. It was at the intersection with the main road into town and there were a lot of other vehicles lined up in orderly rows, which didn’t make sense until he looked around and saw a hot food stal doing a brisk trade on the opposite side. He watched the traffic rumble through the control lights, trying to work out what to say. It must have been a good fifteen minutes before he spoke. Naomi didn’t seem in a hurry. She was just staring at the traffic.
“He has to know your dad,” Vaz said at last. “But even if he mentions you to him, your dad’s never going to think, oh, that’s Naomi, she’s not dead after al . Is he?”
“Maybe you were right, and I am too conspicuous for this mission.”
She stopped abruptly. Vaz felt bad for her yet again, and wondered where the hel this was al going to end. Then he realized she was staring at a truck waiting at the lights, a smal delivery van. She reached into her pocket and slid out her datapad, raised it careful y, and recorded. The lights changed to green and the truck moved off.
Naomi looked at the datapad, then held it out to Vaz.
“Who’s that?” she asked. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
Vaz didn’t have to enlarge the image much. Staffan Sentzke was a real y distinctive guy from any angle. Oh God. Well, at least he’s back. We know where he is. He was driving the truck, and there was a Kig-Yar sitting next to him, one of the Skirmisher bastards with black, crow-shiny feathers fanning out from its head.
“Better let Spenser know we’ve spotted him,” Vaz said. “Mind if I send this?”
“Go ahead.”
That was al she said. It was the first time she’d seen her father in the flesh since she’d been snatched as a six-year-old but she just sat there, calm and silent. Vaz was wil ing to bet it was a different story inside her head, though. She was in Spartan mode now, and nothing was going to get past that veneer.
The image showed as sent. It’d be with Spenser now. Vaz waited for the response, debating whether to act like the locals and cross the road to get a snack, and almost put his hand on Naomi’s shoulder to let her know he understood what a weird, terrible, unsettling day this was for her. But before he had a chance to open the door and get out, his earpiece crackled.
“Vaz, I’ve got the picture,” Spenser said.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Wel , that’s one less thing to worry about.”
“No, it’s not.” Spenser paused. He always did when he was going to lob a grenade into the conversation. “You don’t know the buzzard with him, do you? It’s Sav Fel.”
The name rang a bel , but Vaz struggled. “Should we worry?”
“Christ Almighty, yes,” Spenser said. “That’s the bastard who took Pious Inquisitor. ”
PANOM KEEP, HESDUROS Things were final y beginning to fal back into place for Jul, albeit in ways he’d never expected.
He didn’t have a plan beyond regrouping at Bekan keep, but that was a minor miracle in itself at the moment. He’d beaten the most devious humans at their own sly game, and that gave him hope for the future. He understood them now. He’d learned from them, and the Sangheili wouldn’t end up like those Hittites that Phil ips had talked about. Understanding the enemy was as powerful a weapon as a plasma cannon.
Now he had to learn to understand these colonial Sangheili wel enough to get them to help him. They were untainted by the political intrigues back home. He had hope.
“Kaidon Panom, I have to contact my keep,” he said. “My wife wil be worried. I was taken prisoner a season ago, and she has no idea what’s happened to me. Can you send messages to Sanghelios?”
Panom gestured imperiously to one of the children, who were stil mil ing around to catch a glimpse of the stranger who’d stepped out of the holy relic.
“Ilic, find a communicator that works. Hurry. Bring it to the shipmaster.” Panom was walking beside Jul now, in an excel ent mood. “We seldom make contact with the old world. We’l gladly fight for the gods, but we prefer our own company. Now … to think that you made the holy gate open for you. We’ve touched it many times, and felt its power, but nobody has ever passed through it. Nobody. This is something of a miracle. An omen.”
Prone had been right about the unstable and intermittent connections, then. Jul realized he was lucky to survive the transition. He real y could have ended up dead, so perhaps miracles did happen—or the bold made their own miracles by seizing chances. The humans might not have even realized yet that he’d escaped.
Who could he trust now, though? ‘Telcam was in the pocket of the humans, whether he realized it or not, part of their convoluted tribal politics.
The Arbiter was a plain and unal oyed col aborator. Jul had to create a third force on Sanghelios.
And when I expose the truth about the human strategy to keep us fighting one another, patriots will rally to the cause.
Panom took Jul into the hal of his keep and sat him down at the long, battered table. By now more warriors, females, and youngsters had come to stare at him, this cousin from the old world who knew the names of gods and was al owed to use their sacred portals. Jul felt like a charlatan. But he’d made no claims that weren’t true, and he told the greatest truth of al : that the humans were the biggest threat to everything Sangheili held dear.
My only lie is that I don’t believe in gods. But that’s between me and my mortal soul.
“Here, Shipmaster, my lord.” A young lad barely old enough to begin weapons training approached him, bearing an old communicator that was too large for his hands. “This one works. Is it al right?”
“It’s perfect,” Jul said. “Thank you.”
Everything would be fine now. He’d make it that way. He activated the code for his keep, and waited. He didn’t expect to be answered immediately, but the length of the delay worried him. Then Naxan responded.
“Who cal s us? Who is it?”
“Uncle? Uncle, this is Jul.”
Naxan sucked in a breath. “Jul, where have you been? Where are you?”
“I was taken prisoner by the humans, but I’ve escaped. I’m on a colony world now. I’l explain it al to you, but first I must speak with Raia. Find her for me.”
The link went quiet, but Naxan was stil there. Jul could hear his breathing. “Naxan, I must talk to her.” Naxan stil didn’t speak. Had the link failed?
No, that rasping breath was stil there. “Can you hear me, Naxan?”
“I have to talk with you, Jul.” Naxan sounded hoarse. “This is difficult.”
He expected Naxan to remonstrate with him or at least ask him more questions, but there was clearly something wrong. “Naxan, where is Raia?”
“You must be calm, Jul. You must find strength.”
“Where is my wife?”
Naxan inhaled a long, slow breath. “It pains me to say it, but Raia is dead. So is Forze.”
Jul felt his entire body freeze. For a moment, he couldn’t even move his jaws. He wasn’t even certain that he’d heard correctly. “This is impossible,” he managed at last. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. They went to join ‘Telcam. Many of his forces were kil ed when the new human warship intervened to save the Arbiter’s worthless carcass. This is hard to say, Jul, but Raia was among them. We have heard talk that even a Kig-Yar tried to save the ship, but failed.”
Jul tried to make sense of the words. Raia lived in the keep. She stayed in the keep. She didn’t leave it, and she didn’t go to war. He repeated the words in his head several times before the ful meaning began to solidify and sink in his chest, dragging his heart with it into the ground.
“The humans kil ed her?” he said. “The humans destroyed Raia’s ship?”
“It could have been the Arbiter’s forces, Jul.”
No, it was the humans. Whether they fired the missiles or not, they had fought the Arbiter’s battle for him, and it was al their doing, part of their filthy game to set Sangheili against Sangheili.
The humans killed my wife. They tried to kill me. They’ll try to kill all of us. But most of all—they killed Raia.
Jul found it hard to breathe, let alone think. “Why?” he asked. “Why did she go with Forze?”
“She was searching for you, Jul.”
Those words stabbed him. He real y couldn’t speak now. He stood there with his head resting on his hand, unable to move. Had he caused this?
Had she died because he hadn’t been enough of a warrior to resist capture? No, he couldn’t blame himself. The humans were the root cause of it al , the source of every il in his life now.
“Jul, are you stil there?”
He couldn’t reply. He’d get back in touch with Naxan much later, when he’d hauled himself far enough out of this paralysis to do what he’d always known he had to. It wasn’t political now, or philosophical, or even an act of patriotism, although each was a good reason.
It was personal. The humans had kil ed Raia. He didn’t know quite how it had happened, but that didn’t matter. They would pay for that, every last one of them.
Jul shut down the communicator and stared at the surface of the table. Panom sat down opposite him and peered into his face.
“What’s wrong, Shipmaster?”
Jul could hardly form the words. “My wife is dead,” he said. “She died because the humans came to protect the Arbiter. The humans kil ed her.”