But after another forty minutes of checking out deserted buildings, he did it anyway.

“You ever feel a sense of injustice about your life, Fred?” This was man-to-man now. At some point Mendez would need to say sorry, but it had to be more than a word and it had to be discussed. “About the life you never had, I mean.”

Fred didn’t answer for a few moments. They walked on in the echoing silence. “I don’t recal that life,” he said. “But wherever I came from, I’m pretty sure it was glassed. So I got a life I might not otherwise have lived. And how many people get to fulfil their ful potential? I’m okay with it, Chief.”

Mendez wasn’t sure if it was just a kind answer for his benefit, a rationalization because regret was a sour and painful thing, or if it was simply the way Fred real y felt.

And how can I be sorry if I went and did it all over again with the next batch of Spartans?

Linda’s voice came over the radio. “Sir, I might be jumping to conclusions, but I think we’ve found a food warehouse. First dome on the left. Not good news.”

“Got you,” Fred said. “On our way.”

Mendez jogged down the street after him. Linda was standing outside the arched entrance to what could have been a spa, hands on hips. She didn’t say a word. She jerked her head at them to fol ow and led them into the building.

The interior reminded Mendez of a dance hal or an ice rink, a big open tiled floor with a kind of colonnade on three sides. The dome had looked opaque from the outside but from in here he could see the sky, blue and marbled with wispy clouds. The place was another immaculate shel . This time, though, there were plenty of Forerunner glyphs on the wal s and above the doors.

“Mind the tables,” Linda said.

Fred was a few paces ahead of Mendez. “What tables?”

Linda put her left hand out to her side as she walked, then stood stil . Where her hand cast a shadow, the tiles deformed and the flooring coalesced into something almost like extruded plastic. It rose up in a column and stopped at hand-height, then spread horizontal y like a mushroom cap opening. It was now a table.

“Wel , at least we know where some of the furnishings are,” she said.

Mendez grunted. “Neat technology.”

“And we weren’t far off the mark about Lucy walking through the wal , either.” Linda kept going and seemed to be on a col ision course with a panel halfway along the colonnade. “Look.”

She was a meter from the wal when it parted. It didn’t slide apart: it dissolved. That was the only way Mendez could describe it. As he stood on the threshold, he could feel something on his face which he would have thought was a constant breeze, but knowing the Forerunners it couldn’t be that simple. The room he stared into was lined with completely plain shelves.

“Is this a cold store?” he asked.

“Not sure if it’s chil ed.” Linda walked inside and cast around with that head movement that told him she was switching through the different filters in her visor. “But the atmosphere is different in here. I can’t swear to this, either, because I can’t even begin to guess how the Forerunners cleaned premises, but I don’t think this place has ever been stocked. I’m not picking up any traces of organic material in my filters.”

Mark, Ash, and Tom walked in behind them, boots clattering on the tiles. Their silence was tel ing. They looked around and eventual y Tom took off his helmet.

“You ever get the feeling that they started building this place but never finished it?” he said.

Yes, that was exactly how it looked. Mendez wasn’t sure just how much worse that made things, but it did raise a question. What had stopped the Forerunners? A civilization like that didn’t shelve projects because the budget ran out.

But it was thousands of years ago, something to keep Halsey occupied, and he had a Spartan missing.

“Come on,” he said. “Lucy’s stil out there somewhere.”

UNSC PORT STANLEY, URS SYSTEM: FEBRUARY 2553.

“It’s just like Earth,” Philips said. “You sel arms to some bunch of revolutionaries you think are on your side, and before you know it, the stuff ends up in the wrong hands. Wel , that’s why you tagged the weapons, isn’t it? Just to work out who’s in cahoots with who.”

Osman checked over Piety again to make sure that there was nothing else of use that she could strip from it. BB, evicted from Naomi’s armor, was buzzing around the ship’s systems harvesting data. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Every few minutes she heard him say “Yoink…”

“That’s true,” Osman said. “I don’t mind if they share the kit with Beelzebub as long as they’re squabbling between themselves and not bothering us. I just want to know the supply route.”

“Venezia,” BB said suddenly. “There’s a link to Venezia in the comms log.”

“How?” Osman knew BB could process information in nanoseconds. He’d taken his time about that. “This ship hasn’t got anything like that range. No slipspace drive, for a start.”

“No, but they are in touch with a party of Kig-Yar who appear to be transmitting from within the Venezia sector.”

Osman’s mind went straight back to the Covenant AA battery that Venezia had fired at Monte Cassino. She’d wondered how the colonists had acquired missiles, and now she knew. Bastard Jackals. The aftermath of government col apse in a war was usual y a free-for-al with the hardware.

Who was left to keep an inventory? It wasn’t a surprise, but it did complicate matters in both good and bad ways. The Prophets hadn’t trusted the Kig-Yar any more than she did, and restricted the slipspace drives they were al owed access to. The Kig-Yar got what the UNSC diplomatical y termed the de-enriched spec.

Well, I’d make sure they got the monkey model, too. But Venezia doesn’t care. They need the arms, and I bet they’ve acquired some really interesting vessels now.

“Any indication of how chummy they are?” she asked. “Did they know the Brutes had an Engineer embarked?”

“I don’t think they’re doing business,” BB said. “The flight path suggests they were avoiding another ship. So the Kig-Yar probably knew.”

The compartment was starting to smel foul now, a blend of Kig-Yar and rapidly decomposing Jiralhanae that prodded at her gag reflex. The Kig- Yar corpses were a fairly safe bet as bogus evidence went. It was simply a case of sending Piety back to the Sangheili in a way that would fuel mistrust. She could always destroy the ship, of course, but the cumulative effect of smal incidents could stoke hatred far faster than one huge outrage, especial y now the Sangheili were reliant more on gossip than efficient imperial communications from the San’Shyuum.

“Are the Sangheili likely to do any forensic tests on corpses, Evan?” she asked. “Because we would, obviously.”

Phil ips squatted to look at one of the dead Brutes with a flashlight. He real y did grab every single new experience, even the gruesome ones.

“They don’t do doctors,” he said. “If a warrior accepts any medical care apart from a few bracing herbal remedies, it’s a shocking disgrace— especial y surgery. They think he’s a big girl. So without the San’Shyuum around, I think their chances of finding a pathologist are pretty slim. Added to which … they’re so cultural y arrogant that they’l probably assume the Kig-Yar took on too much raiding the ship, and the Jiralhanae were too dumb to deal with it.” He prodded the huge corpse, running the back of his fingers over the bristly gray fur on the Brute’s neck. “Wow, they’re big boys, aren’t they?”

“But they can tel the difference between a projectile injury and an energy weapon wound, so we’d better give our Kig-Yar a UNSC rifle.”

“You’re a devious woman, Captain.”

“Flatterer.”

She’d done al she could for the moment, so she withdrew from the cargo bay to inhale clean air in the hangar. BB was now whistling tunelessly to himself. She had to smile.

“Next scheduled OPSNORMAL is in half an hour, Captain,” he said. “It’l be good to give the Admiral a nice surprise. You know it’s her birthday in three days, don’t you? Ninety-two. What a gal.”

Osman warmed to the idea of making Parangosky’s day. The inevitable was hard to ignore, but she tried: Parangosky was, as she often said herself, at the stage of life when just waking up the next morning was a good result. Osman occasional y rehearsed the idea of life without her and it wasn’t pleasant. Very rarely, she let herself wonder whether her real mother—the woman who’d lost her, who’d mourned for a dead cloned surrogate and never known her daughter was stil alive—would have been anything like Parangosky.

I could find out in an instant.

I could access my file and see my real past.

But not now. Too late. Too painful. Too pointless.

She’d resisted it for nearly thirty years because she didn’t deserve to be anything more than an anonymous orphan. She could resist it for thirty more.

Coffee beckoned from the wardroom gal ey, decent ONI coffee, the special blend, the stuff that good morale was made of, and Osman fol owed its perfume to find Devereaux trying to interest Adj in the range. He huddled in the corner like the shy guest at a party who’d retreated to take comfort in the canapés. Devereaux cradled a coffee and nodded in the direction of the coffee machine. The gal ey was a mix of prosaic technology and quietly comforting anachronism, but the coffee machine didn’t look quite as Osman remembered it. When she tasted what came out of it, she was even more sorely tempted to keep the Huragok.

“Forget the military applications, ma’am.” Devereaux cradled a steaming mug as if it was nectar. “Think what he’d be worth commercial y.”

Adj inched out of the corner and reached out a wary tentacle to touch the back of Devereaux’s head. She moved away and gave him a gentle tap on the arm.

“Don’t let him fix your neural implant,” Osman said.

“He’s been trying to repair this cut on my hand, too. I’m stil a little too creeped out to let him.”

Osman found herself thinking of a Huragok breeding program and the pick of the litter rather than replication. They weren’t machines any more than BB was just software.

But we’re just organic machines too. No wonder the Covenant thought the Forerunners were gods. By our own definition, they were.

This was a very bad time to find God, even an explicable and mortal one. Osman shook herself out of it and drained her coffee. She had to send Piety on her way before she cal ed in.

“BB, have you finished nobbling their nav computer yet?” she asked, heading for her day cabin.

“Autopilot back on course for the original coordinates in Mdama, Captain. And the rest of the cockpit data’s creatively edited—rather thrilling, if I might say so—to show a spirited defense against Kig-Yar pirates, one of whom didn’t make it and lies clutching a MA-Five-B. Not a Five-C. No point being too lavish.”

“I’l hope they don’t ponder too long on how a Kig-Yar managed to snap a Brute’s spinal cord, but we have to work with what we’ve got.” Osman settled into her seat. “Okay, launch it so Devereaux can get the dropship secured.”

“I could do that for her.”

“I know, but I don’t want her getting bored. This is already a pretty low-key life for an ODST as it is.”

Seven years. Is that all he gets? Doesn’t seem fair. Seven damn years.

That was BB’s life expectancy before rampancy destroyed him. It had started to gnaw more deeply at Osman now. Perhaps that was what came of worrying about a ninety-two-year-old boss. Everyone she relied on seemed more finite than she was.

I wonder if BB’s engram donor was anything like him in real life.

But AIs weren’t copies of human brains. They were unique entities in their own right. It made her feel guilty for even wanting to find out, as if it negated BB’s individuality. She reached out to tap the comms panel and waited for Parangosky’s image to appear on the main screen.

The UNSC portal screen dissolved to an image she wasn’t expecting. Parangosky appeared to be sitting at an open window overlooking the harbor, not in her office. Osman hadn’t been away from Sydney long enough yet to miss it.

“Looks like a nice day, ma’am,” Osman said.

“It is,” Parangosky said, turning to the lens. “I rarely feel the need for a day off, but I’m final y learning to pace myself.”

Osman fought down a reflex to worry. She’s not ill. She’s just old and she can’t keep up that schedule forever. “We’re due to make another weapons drop to ‘Telcam shortly. Some of the items are already finding their way into other hands, but I don’t think we need to worry too much about that. You’ve had a chance to read Phil ips’s analyses of the chatter, have you?”

“Yes. I think it’s inevitable that Sangheili lapse back into their keep structures, waiting to be told what to do. But that won’t last forever. How’s the plot against the Arbiter?”

“Simmering. ‘Telcam looks like he’s assembling a pretty mixed fol owing, but he may wel have a warship now and a few more competent shipmasters.”

“Very positive. Be aware that Hood’s planning to travel to Vadam to talk to the Arbiter in the next week.” Parangosky paused to swat away a fly.

“Very low key, very smal entourage, just in case—wel , just in case your mission is excessively successful, I suppose. We could end up stoking so much unrest that poor Terrence gets assassinated too. There’s going to be a memorial service at Voi and he’s rather keen for the Arbiter to attend.”

“Memorial to what?”

“Personnel who were lost in the portal when they disabled the Halo. You probably need to mention this to Naomi. Spartan One-One-Seven’s top of the list.”