“Make each of these last a day. It’l be easier than you think.”

Halsey looked him in the eye like a kicked dog, as if she couldn’t understand why he was getting more acid with her. He wondered how long she’d spent rehearsing that look until she got the appearance of sincerity just right.

Because I’ve been here for twenty-odd years churning out more Spartans for the meat-grinder, that’s why. I’ve had a lot of time to think. But it still didn’t make me a better person. I went and did it all over again, more or less.

“Thank you, Chief.” Halsey went back to examining the broken cylinder. “When we find Lucy, would you like me to check her over?”

Mendez searched for the ulterior motive. “I’l ask her.”

He had to jog to catch up with the Spartans. They were already a hundred meters west of the towers, spread out in wedge formation. He could see Fred and Linda scanning the ground as they walked over it, probably taking advantage of the ful range of sensors in the Mjolnir helmets. The Spartan-I Is didn’t have most of those extras in their SPI armor and they couldn’t even upgrade their kit via software. It made a big difference.

Mendez tapped his radio. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Thought we could see some thermal variation,” Fred said. “Straight lines. Might be tunnels. You know how the Forerunners love their underground facilities. When we get back to base, slap in a request for ground-penetrating radar for these lids, wil you, Chief?”

“You want a soda vending machine too?”

“Got that already. Sort of.”

Mendez was now far enough from the towers to look back and get a sense of scale again. He’d assumed Lucy had gone through. She might wel have gone down. They were back on open grassland with nothing else in sight except trees and vegetation.

Fred started jogging, pul ing ahead of the others. He was definitely fol owing a trail now. Mendez could see him looking down every few meters as he went. And then he broke into a run.

This was always the moment when Mendez ful y appreciated just how different a Spartan-II was from a regular soldier and even from the Spartan-IIIs. He’d seen it hundreds, even thousands of times, but it was stil sobering to watch a human being in a power-assisted suit accelerate to nearly sixty kilometers an hour and keep going. Mark, Olivia, and Ash hung back to wait for Mendez. Tom carried on, starting to fal behind Linda.

“Wel ,” Ash said, “if we haven’t got wheels, that’s one sure way to cover some ground, isn’t it?” He put his hand on Mendez’s shoulder. “Maybe it was just an animal Lucy heard down there, Chief. Real rabbit hole stuff.”

“Let’s hope. Rabbits are good eating.”

Mendez kept walking, wondering why he’d coped with al the crap he’d done for Halsey, and al the other crap that he couldn’t blame on her at al , but found it hard to accept one Spartan-III going missing out of al the hundreds who’d been kil ed. The Threes were cheap and disposable, intended for suicide missions that were beneath a Spartan-I and beyond an ODST. He’d accepted that, to his everlasting shame.

Why now? Why was he losing his detachment now?

Because she can’t scream. Because I put her in that position. Because it’s the straw that’ll break this camel’s back.

“Now that’s more like it.” Fred’s voice came over the radio and steered Mendez away from the brink. “We’ve definitely been out of town.”

“Transmit an image, Lieutenant. It’s going to take us a while to catch you up.”

Mark seemed to be getting something in his HUD. “He’s found buildings.” He stopped and took off his helmet, offering it to Mendez. “You want to take a look, Chief?”

Mendez tilted the helmet and glanced at the image that now fil ed the HUD, a cluster of silver-gray, almost featureless multistories in the same architectural style as the towers.

“No signs of life, but let’s not take that for granted,” Fred said. “Check it out.”

Mendez al owed himself a little relief. This was, as Fred had said, much more like it. A bunker had to have shelters, kitchens, an infirmary—al the trappings of normal life. Now they at least had a base to operate from. It was another problem that was going to be solved.

Hang in there, Lucy. We’ll put the pieces together and work out where you are.

There was every chance they’d be here for a long time. And if Halsey was right, then they might be the last sentient life left in the galaxy. No amount of luck could save John from a Halo Array firing.

Or save her own daughter, either.

Halsey had taken an awful y big gamble to save just three of her Spartans. He understood. Now it was his turn to atone.

“It’s times like this that I miss the Pelican,” Fred said. “Better find a high observation point.”

An aerial view of the complex would have been useful. For once, it was a toss-up between working their way through town and assessing the layout, or just clearing the place building by building. Mendez trudged on, realizing just how much ground a Spartan could cover at speed. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back as he tried to keep up a respectable pace, but he wasn’t a Spartan and he wasn’t twenty any longer. He resisted the temptation to break into a jog.

I’m sixty. They’re twenty, thirty, even forty-odd years younger. And genetically enhanced. I’ve got a right to be the last across the line.

Mark kept up with him, either to keep him company or spare his embarassment. He was a nice kid. “You could do with a night’s sleep,” he said.

“We al could.”

“Won’t make me any younger or faster,” Mendez grunted.

“Don’t give me that old man BS, Chief.”

It was the doors that kept Mendez going at a brisk walk. He caught a glimpse of them up ahead in the elegant buildings, the first truly recognizable ones that he’d seen here—doors meant to be walked through, complete with ornate lintels and frames. He approached the nearest one, alert for more of whatever Lucy had gone chasing. The Spartans were already there, waiting as if they thought it was discourteous to start this without him.

Fred gestured to Linda and the others to stack either side of the first door. He nodded at Mendez.

“Okay, Chief,” he said. “In we go.”

CHAPTER NINE

PEACE TREATIES AREN’T BROKERED BETWEEN COUNTRIES OR NEGOTIATED BETWEEN WORLDS. THEY HAPPEN BECAUSE TWO INDIVIDUALS CAN TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. I CAN DO BUSINESS WITH THE ARBITER. AND I BELIEVE HE CAN DO BUSINESS WITH ME.

(ADMIRAL LORD HOOD, CINCFLEET)

MAINTENANCE AREA, UNSC PORT STANLEY, ON STATION IN SANGHELIOS SPACE: FEBRUARY 2553 “What is this, street theater?” Devereaux jerked a wrench at Vaz and Mal in a get-lost gesture. “Beat it. Nothing to see here.”

Vaz shoved Mal with his shoulder. “Come on. Leave it.”

“You won’t even know we’re here,” Mal said. “We’ve never seen Spartans put on their fril ies before. Go on. How bad can it be?”

Naomi’s voice drifted out of the compartment. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just armor.”

Vaz debated whether to haul Mal away and give Naomi some privacy. Poor woman: she reminded him increasingly of a bear in an il egal circus, a big wild thing that real y wasn’t meant to be cooped up like that, capable of eventual y snapping under the strain and lashing out with a lethal paw.

But he had to admit that he was just as curious about the Mjolnir, and he wrestled with his guilt for a ful five seconds before giving in and peering around the compartment door.

Devereaux was at a control panel with a diagnostics pad in one hand. She stil had the wrench in the other.

“No smartass comments,” she said. “She’s perimenopausal and I’ve got PMS.”

Mal glanced at the wrench. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Mjolnir wasn’t exactly body armor like the kind Vaz was used to. It was more like an APC with legs. Naomi stood partial y engulfed in it, up to her waist in titanium plates and surrounded by what Vaz could only describe as a gantry. It projected into the machinery space, a steel scaffold two meters deep and three meters wide, extending right up to the deckhead. It was only when he moved around and stood right in front of it that he could see what it was doing. Like a robot on a vehicle assembly line, it was building the armor around her section by section, slotting the plates into place over her bodysuit with steady but alarming chonk-chonk-chonk trip-hammer noises.

Vaz hadn’t worked out what al the long steel tubes were for. Al he knew was that he’d never want to be sealed in quite like that. It’s like being buried alive. No, canned alive. Armor was fine: he lived in his, like every other ODST. It was al that stood between him and the hereafter most of the time. No, it was the automation that made him squirm, the robotic relentlessness of the assembly process that looked as if it wouldn’t stop until it had crushed Naomi like a car in a junkyard compactor.

Vaz looked up at the helmet poised above her head and gave her an awkward half smile. He couldn’t tel if she was annoyed or embarrassed, but she looked a little flushed around the neck.

“No good asking Mal to zip you up,” he said. Okay, Spartans worked alone, but he was sure she would be happier if she joined the gang. He tried to coax her in. “Not with his hernia. Three hundred kilos?”

“Yes. When I run out of ammo, I can just sit on hinge-heads.” Wel , at least she’d thawed enough to synchronize her slang with theirs. The chest plate swung across from a robotic arm on her left, so fast that Vaz flinched, expecting it to slam into her and smash bone. The sleeve sections fol owed. “Don’t look so worried. You’ve missed the awkward part.”

“What awkward part?” Mal asked. “And I haven’t got a hernia. It’s my car keys.”

Naomi was now up to her neck in steel-blue titanium and composite. As the helmet began to descend, she reached up and the machine stopped dead to let her take it.

“Good to go, Naomi.” Devereaux gave her a thumbs-up. “Go get ’em.”

The robot arms swung back. Naomi stepped down from the plinth as easily as Vaz would have done in his tin-can ODST armor, al easy grace, and that was when it struck him just how extraordinary that was.

It’s the weight of a quad bike, and she’s just striding around in it like it’s her fatigues. I know it’s power-assisted, but that’s still quite something.

“Here,” she said. She tipped the helmet upside down and shoved it under Mal’s nose. “See that slot at the back? That aligns with my neural interface. Yours is a transponder. Mine’s more like a docking station. It’s where the AI data chip fits if I’m ever unwise enough to let BB into my brain.”

Vaz expected BB to materialize instantly with a witty put-down about claustrophobia in confined spaces, but he obviously wasn’t playing today.

Mal peered into the helmet with the look of a man who was making a note of al the tech that Spartans had and that ODSTs didn’t.

“Once you’re sealed in,” he said careful y, “you can’t just … you know, step out of it easily when you need to, can you? That rig’s got to dismantle it.”

“Correct. It’s a last resort to do it manual y.”

Vaz had never seen Mal lost for words before. He actual y blushed. “So … bathroom breaks?” he asked, very quietly.

Naomi paused a beat. “I’m catheterized. Another reason why that machine has to be so precisely calibrated. This suit plugs into me in a lot of places.”

“I think I’m going to cry,” Mal said.

“Think of it as a weaponized life-support unit. It recycles the urine, too.”

To his credit, Mal kept his nerve and winked at her. “Ah, that explains everything about the beer they serve in the mess.”

He didn’t get a smile, though. Naomi put her helmet on and it sealed with a faint thunk. Suddenly she wasn’t the forbiddingly awkward Baba Yaga any longer, but—just like the PR people said—a perfectly designed, total y confident fighting machine. Vaz heard footsteps behind him that scuffed to a sudden halt.

“Oh wow…” It was Phil ips. His voice trailed off and he walked right up to Naomi, grinning like a schoolboy as he craned his neck to look up at her. “You look amazing. Real kil er robot stuff.”

Vaz didn’t know Naomi wel enough yet to pick up any body language, and he couldn’t see her expression, but she leaned forward so that her gold-mirrored visor was right in Phil ips’s face. For a moment the compartment was so quiet that Vaz could hear the faint sigh of the armor’s servos as she moved.

“Be honest,” she said. “Does my ass look big in this?”

Phil ips burst out laughing. “You look like a goddess. Go on, do a twirl for us.”

And she did. She rotated 360 degrees for him then strode out into the hangar. Only the thud of her boots gave any hint of the sheer weight of that kit.

So she had another side to her, then. Vaz hadn’t seen that coming.

Phil ips gazed after her with a look of pure delight until he realized Vaz was staring at him. “What?”

“You’re having fun, aren’t you?”

“You guys take this for granted.” Phil ips looked suddenly embarrassed. “We never see anything like that at the university.”

Vaz shrugged. “Neither do we. We’re the riffraff. We don’t normal y get to hang out with Spartans.”

“Hey, you know that suit maintains and upgrades itself when she’s in cryo? It’s al nanotech.” Devereaux herded them out of the compartment.

She seemed to be getting on fine with Naomi, but it couldn’t have been sisterly bonding. “It must cost more than a damn Longsword. No wonder we don’t get issued with that kit.”