They’d said the most important thing they possibly could. The war real y was over now. Osman tried to grasp the sense of finality.

But there isn’t one. If a handshake is all it takes to put everything right, we’d scrap this mission right now.

She wondered if she was tel ing herself that this was a meaningless exchange simply to justify what ONI was doing. If the Arbiter real y could deliver peace, then she was doing everything in her power to stoke a revolt that would remove him. But she couldn’t gamble Earth’s future on the goodwil of one individual. What was that line that Parangosky never let her forget?

It’s not the enemy’s intentions that you have to consider. It’s their capability.

Osman was going to have those damn words tattooed on her arm one day.

“I’l take my leave of you then, Arbiter,” Hood said, half turning to the door. “One thing before I go, though. If you stil hold any human prisoners of war, I wonder if you would be wil ing to release them. They’re no use to you now.”

The Arbiter walked with him to the door, leaving Osman, Vaz, and Phil ips to trail after them. “If we hold any, I wil order them to be freed. I doubt you hold any of our people, but I’m confident you would do the same for us.”

“That I would,” Hood said.

The Arbiter paused to hold out his hand to Phil ips, but not to Osman or Vaz. Phil ips just glowed. There was no other word for it. He shook the Arbiter’s hand as if he was a rock star, and then the meeting was over. Osman found herself walking back down that long, highly polished corridor toward the exit, partly amazed and partly disappointed at the sense of a pivotal moment wrapped in an anticlimax. The guard at the end of the corridor didn’t even look at them. They stepped straight out to the landing pad and into the shuttle.

A thought kept crossing Osman’s mind and wouldn’t go away. How would she insert forces here? The place was locked down tight. And mingling unnoticed with the locals wasn’t an option. Deploying a team here would be like dropping them into the waste disposal.

“Sanghelios doesn’t welcome careful drivers, then,” Devereaux muttered over the intercom. The flight control er seemed anxious to get them out of Sangheili airspace as fast as he could and they were escorted wel out of orbit by two fighter craft, just in case anyone changed their mind.

“Miserable bastards.”

“Did we pul it off, Captain Osman?” Hood asked.

“I think you did, sir.”

He laughed to himself. Vaz just sat there on the bench seat opposite them, rifle resting on his knees, and stared down at the floor between his boots. Osman knew him wel enough by now to see that he wasn’t going to be celebrating tonight.

“We don’t have any Sangheili prisoners, do we?” Hood asked absently, removing his cap and resting his head against the smal viewscreen beside his seat. “I can’t recal ever taking one. But who knows what Margaret col ected over the years?”

“I don’t envy anyone trying to handcuff one of those things.” Osman dodged a direct answer and wondered if she was simply practicing deniability until she perfected it, or if she just couldn’t bear to tel an outright lie to an honorable man. “Don’t get your hopes up about our prisoners, though. They don’t tend to keep them long.”

There was nothing much to pick over in terms of analysis. Phil ips had his arms tightly folded across his chest, gazing in defocus at the bulkhead, so maybe he’d seen more with his trained eye for hinge-heads than she had. When they docked with Iceni, there was already a message waiting for them, handed over on a datapad by a rating whose expression suggested she wasn’t yet ready for Sangheili guests either.

The Arbiter’s minion wanted to make arrangements for the memorial ceremony and also to extend an invitation to Professor Phil ips—and only Professor Phil ips, no escort—to visit Vadam and see more of Sanghelios. Hood looked over the signal and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, I say, the Arbiter real y likes you, ” he said quietly. “Are you inclined to accept that invitation, Professor? It would be very useful if you did, I think. It’s not without its risks, of course, but I suspect it’s the only way we’re ever going to get past the door stewards in that club.”

Yes, it was one hel of a break. Osman needed someone on the ground, but Phil ips, whatever his natural talent for espionage, wasn’t trained.

And it was about more than understanding opsec procedures. She simply didn’t know if he could cope with the worst that might happen—being held hostage, being interrogated or tortured, and compromising the mission. Phil ips would be down there total y on his own and she couldn’t even give him BB for backup. She couldn’t risk letting the core matrix of an AI fal into what was stil effectively enemy hands.

She found herself thinking about what she might be able to do with a fragment of BB, though. And BB could also make sure Phil ips revealed nothing if push came to shove.

But I like Evan. He’s one of ours now. See how easy it is to think the unthinkable, though?

ONI paranoia plunged her back into the infinite Byzantine layers of move and countermove. Hood might have been keen to put Phil ips on Sanghelios for his own purposes, or perhaps he was simply being social, or, as the admiral was no fool, he was wary of Parangosky and seeking somehow to block whatever scam he thought she was pul ing. There was a spiral of speculation that didn’t stop until you’d made a conscious effort to surface above water and taken a good, deep breath of common sense.

“I need to talk to the captain about that,” Phil ips said, suitably humble. “I’m supposed to be doing interpretation work for her.”

“We’l discuss it,” Osman said.

Hood cocked his head on one side. “If anyone would like a drink, we have a very wel -stocked wardroom. You too, Corporal.”

Osman headed that off at the pass. “That’s very kind of you, sir, so perhaps we can take a rain check on that. I have some maintenance issues in Stanley. ”

“I expect you at the memorial service, then,” Hood said, not looking convinced. “And I think we should talk more often.”

Osman saluted, then shook Hood’s hand and wondered about the wisdom of turning down a drink with the Admiral of the Fleet. But that was weakness. She had priorities. Closing the shuttle hatch behind her felt like blissful relief and she al owed herself to exhale properly for the first time in hours.

“Maintenance, ” Vaz said. “Wel , if you end up in Hinge-Head Town, Evan, and things go wrong, at least we’l have a hostage to exchange for you.”

“I’m up for it if you are,” Phil ips said.

Osman found herself working out how long it might take to give Phil ips a crash course in resisting interrogation and sending covert transmissions. It wouldn’t be long enough, but it wasn’t every day that the Arbiter of Sanghelios opened his doors.

“Game on,” she said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I DON’T DELUDE MYSELF THAT THERE ARE MORAL AMBIGUITIES IN MY JOB. THE THINGS WE DID WEREN’T AMBIGUOUS, NOT AT ALL. I KNOW I’VE DONE THEM AND HOW BAD THEY WERE, AND IF THERE’S A HELL, I’LL PROBABLY BURN IN IT BEFORE TOO LONG. BUT THAT’S THE KIND OF THING YOU CAN FACE WHEN YOU’RE NINETY-TWO. I’M PREPARED TO DO THE VERY WORST, AND BECAUSE I AM, MORE PEOPLE SURVIVE THAN GET KILLED. BUT I’LL TAKE WHAT’S COMING TO ME—AND I’LL MAKE NO EXCUSES.

(ADMIRAL MARGARET O. PARANGOSKY, CINCONI, DRAFTING HER EVIDENCE TO THE UEG SELECT DEFENSE COMMITTEE)

FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE, ONYX: LOCAL DATE NOVEMBER 2552.

Halsey stood at the comms panel, waiting for Parangosky to rip into her about how and why she’d gone to Onyx.

It was only one minute since she’d heard the Admiral’s voice for the first time, but nearly twenty minutes had elapsed at the other end of the conversation. She tried to take account of that, wondering what the woman was doing in the meantime. She doubted that Parangosky was hanging out bunting to celebrate her safe return. Halsey had crossed her once too often. But she was irreplaceable, and so she knew she’d get away with it every time. It was the only thing that had saved her from being posted to a planet directly in the path of the Covenant onslaught or disappearing without trace like others who’d transgressed.

I’ve really pushed my luck this time. But I’m not coming back empty-handed, am I? She needs me to incorporate the new technology into the fleet.

“Fred, we might be some time,” Halsey said. She didn’t like the idea of having a fight with Parangosky in front of the Spartans. It was bad enough having a knock-down-drag-out with Mendez with an audience. And was it even possible for anyone to have a row when one side had to wait twenty minutes to get their riposte in? “Do you want to take the others and—”

“It’s okay, ma’am,” Fred said firmly. “I think it’s better that we’re on hand if you need us.”

He might have had her welfare at heart, of course. Perhaps he thought she was going to start it again with Mendez. She shoved her hands in her pockets and found something fascinating on the console to stare at, aware of eyes boring into her.

“Admiral, you’ve probably worked out we’re in a slipspace bubble, so we have a time differential—perhaps a factor of eighteen or twenty.

What’s happening outside?”

Parangosky’s whole tone had changed, but then she’d been waiting a long time for Halsey’s reply. “The Flood’s been eradicated and the replacement Halo was neutralized.” Halsey twitched. What did Parangosky mean, replacement? But the time differential meant that she couldn’t interrupt her. “The most important thing is that we effectively have a cease-fire with what’s left of the Covenant.”

Mendez let out a breath, but nobody else reacted to the news. Perhaps they didn’t believe it.

Halsey waited for the click to indicate the transmission was finished and that it was her turn to send. She had to concentrate on getting the vital information over first in case she lost contact. “We have good news here, too. Technology. This is a Forerunner bunker. It’s going to take months or even years to assess this place thoroughly, but one breakthrough’s immediately available to us. We now have access to technology that can make slipspace insertion and de-insertion absolutely accurate. And we have a Huragok crew left here by the Forerunners. We need to get a technical assessment team in here right away.”

There was only a two-second delay at Halsey’s end, but Parangosky sounded slightly different yet again.

“That confirms a theory, at least. We have ships standing by. How do we get access?”

Ah, so you did know there was something special down here.… “The Huragok need to be convinced that it’s safe to bring the sphere back into realspace.”

Click. One, two … “We have a Huragok that can communicate with them.”

“That’s a stroke of luck.” Halsey didn’t trust Parangosky as far as she could spit against a gale. She knew the feeling was mutual. “I’d recommend your ships stand off by two point five AUs before the mechanism’s activated. And I don’t know how we factor Zeta Doradus into this.

Onyx’s old sun is in an awkward place, so to speak.”

“Exactly who do you have with you at the moment?” Parangosky asked. “Are you certain the sphere’s uninhabited?”

“It looks that way, but bear in mind that the land area is the inner surface of a sphere, which gives us perhaps five hundred million times the surface area of Earth to recon. You’l forgive us if we haven’t quite covered that yet. But I only have Chief Mendez, Spartans Frederic, Kel y, and Linda, and five of the Spartan-Threes here. Plus eight casualties in cryo. We lost a lot of people.”

“I’ve had a post-action report on Onyx. You obviously realize the planet disassembled itself.” Parangosky paused for a moment and Halsey almost interrupted, but there was no end click. “And I’m glad that you’re now ful y aware of the Threes’ existence.”

“This probably isn’t the time to raise it, but if I’d been told about the program, I could have assisted.”

“I believe Colonel Ackerson had it ful y under control.” Again, Parangosky’s voice had changed pitch. “And there were many projects you weren’t aware of, Catherine, just as many weren’t aware of yours.”

She never calls me Catherine. Halsey waited for the click, anxious not to interrupt if the Admiral hadn’t finished.

“Which brings me on to the bad news,” Parangosky said. “The Master Chief and Cortana stopped the Halo Array from firing, but I’m afraid they’re MIA. It’s been five months, Catherine. I think we have to assume the worst.”

Halsey’s stomach plummeted. Her first reaction was to look at Fred, Kel y, and Linda.

He’s gone. He made it through the whole war, and then—he’s gone. Right at the end. It’s not fair.

Fred just shook his head. Linda and Kel y stood frozen. John, John-117, the Master Chief—the focus of al Halsey’s hopes and ambitions in the Spartan program. When she’d first met him as a smal , scruffy child, he was so outstanding and his genome so unusual even among the exceptional children she’d selected that she knew he’d be their leader, and that he would eventual y turn the course of the war. She’d been right.

She knew she would be. But John had always seemed indestructible. She couldn’t believe that his luck had run out.

At least Cortana was with him. At least he wasn’t alone.

She wondered if she should have felt worse about Cortana. But al she could do was worry that the AI might have fal en into Covenant hands.

“Are you sure?” she asked at last. The pause must have seemed an eternity to Parangosky. “Absolutely sure?”