Halo®: Mortal Dictata by Karen Traviss
They all appeared to be hanging out together. It was either a positive sign of team bonding or an all-hands emergency that they hadn’t chosen to share with her. She switched off the display, feeling slightly guilty and intrusive for keeping an eye on them, but that was what the system was for—to locate personnel and objects when necessary. The ship was too big for her to get up and search for a handful of people every time she needed something. But it still had that chess-piece feeling that she hated. The lights were units, stripped of personhood into deployable assets.
She didn’t want to get used to doing things this way. Once that distance between herself and subordinates was established, it became a process of othering, of not like me, and then she might feel entitled to use them much as Catherine Halsey might have done. They would be relegated to assets, just means to an end.
People. People, even if some of them are Huragok. If we fought to save humanity, then the word ought to have some meaning.
She’d jogged around the decks, burned an hour in the gym, and made herself two pots of ONI’s finest Blue Mountain by the time her radio alerted her to an incoming message from Spenser. She took it in the galley.
“Hi, Oz.” Spenser always called her that. He’d first met her when she was sixteen, a cadet on a study attachment to ONI as far as the official record was concerned. The name had stuck. “I just got back. They haven’t called in, then?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, don’t panic just yet. It’s their first honest day’s work at the militia HQ. But Vaz had a transponder with him. I’ve checked the log and it went from the airfield to the jump point, then disappeared. My guess is that they went somewhere in a slipspace vessel.”
“Or blew their cover, and got taken away and dumped out of an airlock.” Osman checked the time display on the radio. “Okay, can you send me that transponder link? I’ll track it from here as well.”
“It’s no trouble, Oz.”
“You know I like to worry personally.”
“Okay. Sending now. I’m monitoring some local channels for chatter, too, just to be sure.”
Spenser didn’t pass any comment about the wisdom or otherwise of asking frontline marines to do undercover work. Osman went back to the bridge and settled in to watch for the transponder signal on the monitor, not sure what it might mean if it reappeared. It all depended on where Vaz had put it.
A little later, Phillips came bouncing through the doors, put an arum in her hands without saying a word, and left. BB must have suggested that she was in need of some substantial distraction. Those puzzle balls definitely provided that. Within minutes she was so mesmerized by the thing that some time later, while she was wrestling with a sequence that she was certain she hadn’t tried before, the monitoring system chirped and she had to make herself put the arum down. A three-dimensional holographic image of the Venezia sector popped up in front of her just above the console, flashing a small point of yellow light.
“Any idea what that is, BB?” she asked.
He didn’t appear. He was just a disembodied voice. “Not yet. If it’s going to land at the airfield, I’ll move a remote to watch it.”
The vessel, which might or might not have contained Vaz and Mal, emerged near the inner slipspace limit, the closest point to Venezia that a small vessel could make a jump or drop out of slip. The holographic plot scaled down until it took in Venezia itself and then zoomed into the surface, showing the vessel coming to a dead stop. It had landed. That was the only way she could interpret it. But it was another hour, a tense hour that even the arum couldn’t make pass any less stressfully, before the comms console came to life and Mal’s voice filled the bridge.
“Daytripper to Port Stanley, over.”
Osman savored the relief. “Go ahead, Staff. Where the hell have you been?”
“Sorry we missed the last couple of checks, ma’am. But we’ve got a fantastic excuse for staying out late. Is Naomi listening?”
“No. I can guess what’s coming next, then.”
“Maybe not. We were inspecting a ship.”
“A ship, or the ship?”
“It was definitely Inquisitor. And we didn’t even have to blow a hole in the hull. Staffan let us scramble all over her. In fact, he insisted. One fully serviced, cannoned-up, fully fueled HMS Bastard.”
“Where is she?”
“Did you pick up the signal? You should have her coordinates.”
“Probably out of range, but I’ll check again.”
“Never mind. Vaz used the transponder, so it’ll be on the log somewhere. He worked it out by hand too. BB, stand by for the position now, just in case we don’t get the chance to call in again.”
Osman was almost afraid to get her hopes up. It was going so smoothly that it felt like a setup. But Mal and Vaz were too smart to fall for anything like that. “What about the comms channel for BB?”
“We did try to extract a comms frequency, but pushing it might have made them suspicious.”
“Sorry. I’m being ungracious. Well done, both of you. Good result.”
“Staffan’s got some kind of radio check system going with the ship. We could try intercepting that signal. Which brings us on to the bad news.”
“Y’know, Staff, I feel oddly happier knowing that there is some.”
“He’s got an Engineer on board. Mad little bugger called Sometimes Sinks.”
“We can handle that. Can’t we, BB?”
BB appeared immediately and spun on one of his corners with a sparkly effect. “Piece of cake, ma’am. Mad buggers my specialty.”
“And,” Mal said, “Staffan’s renamed the ship.”
Osman repeated that to herself. “I’ve obviously missed something here.”
“He’s called her Naomi.”
Mal didn’t have to explain further. Osman wasn’t surprised, just dismayed that they hadn’t overestimated how fixated Staffan Sentzke was. “Well, at least we know how his mind’s working. Has he said anything about it?”
“Yeah. We had a brief chat.” Mal took a long breath, his cue that he was about to say something that he wished he didn’t have to. “He’s spent his life looking for her. He’s a clever bloke, ma’am. Very clever. Very persistent. You can see who Naomi takes after.”
Mal ground to a halt. Osman could fill in the rest for herself. Mal, Vaz, and Devereaux had been picked for Kilo-Five for specific qualities on top of their soldiering skills. They were honest and loyal, with a strong moral compass. Parangosky had given Osman a Praetorian Guard, as BB liked to call it. They’d watch her back but never be bootlickers. Within the rules of command, they’d argue. They’d challenge her. Being CINCONI was a lonely job, and it was a healthy brake on megalomania to have a close circle that wasn’t afraid to tell you that your plan sucked.
Well, she’d definitely got that with Kilo-Five. Mal had made it clear that he didn’t think ONI were the good guys this time.
“I know you’re not happy with this, Staff,” she said. “But the best thing we can do for him is to stop him from using that ship against Earth in any way.”
“I never said it wasn’t. Anything else for us?”
That could have easily been my father. Does that mean I ought to be more detached from this crap, or less?
“No, go and get a beer,” she said. “You’ve earned it.”
“What about BB? We still haven’t identified an entry vector for him.”
“Are you scheduled to visit the ship again?”
“Nothing planned, but can BB send a fragment down the line so that we’re ready if we do?”
“Patch in via your personal comms,” BB said.
“Okay—there. We’re connected. Got it?”
“I’m in. I love slumming it.”
“I’ll make sure I keep you in my arse pocket, then. If there’s nothing else then, ma’am—next radio check in six hours.”
Whatever Mal and Vaz felt, they’d do their jobs. Osman was sure of it. “Keep your head down, Staff,??
Osman stood at the bridge viewscreen for a while, wondering how she was going to break this to Naomi. Blurt it out, no frills? Temper it a little? It was hard to judge. How would I react if someone stopped me in the street and told me who I really was, with all the detail about my family? Naomi had consented to being told, but that didn’t change a damn thing about how she might feel.
“Want me to brief the others, Admiral?” BB asked.
Osman watched the reflection of his ghostly blue cube track across the bridge and come to a halt next to her. The viewscreen, an unbroken sheet of glass from deck to deckhead, had become her thinking spot, the place where she could let her mind rove and come up with solutions. The view was never a blank sheet. It was black and infinite, but it was also speckled with the luminous proof that humanity was a small, transient detail that the universe would blink and miss, and that she was an even tinier fraction of that irrelevance. Rather than making her feel helpless, it told her that all things were possible. If she took a risk, then it wouldn’t knock creation out of balance. There was a sense of freedom in that.
“It looks bad if I don’t do it, BB,” she said. “But thanks.”
“They’re loafing around on the hangar deck. They usually do. It’s like the mall for ninjas.”
“I better head on down, then.”
“Call me if you need me.”
“You’ll be lurking anyway.”
“Only because my entire existence is one giant lurk, dear. Just remember that the trick is to go as your guts guide you. Overthinking, expectations, what will the neighbors think—pah. Do what you think is right. Start rebuilding the ONI you want it to be.”
If anyone had told Osman a year ago that she would have adored an AI and regarded him as her best friend, she would have laughed at them. One day, all too soon, it would break her heart to lose him.
“Were you a saint in a previous life?” she asked.
BB usually had a glittering riposte for every comment, but he paused for a moment before answering. A second’s pause for BB was an hour’s careful consideration for a human.
“I have the feeling that I wasn’t very nice at all,” he said. “But I’m perfect now, so that’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think it is.”
MIKE SPENSER’S HOUSE, NEW TYNE, VENEZIA
“You could have done this from the start, you know,” BB said. “And I’d have Inquisitor halfway to Trevelyan by now.”
Mike Spenser leaned into his field of view. “Oh, it’s you. I know that voice. The blue box.”
“Black-Box.”
“Well, make yourself at home, buddy. You can’t project your avatar from there, then?”
“No. I’m incognito.”
Spenser laughed loudly and sat down, arms folded on a tabletop. BB worked out that they were in the kitchen. Mal’s personal radio, BB’s temporary home, sat on the table with the camera facing the back door, looking across a landscape of sauce bottles, a jug of juice, a pile of toast, and a steel coffeepot. Without access to any other sensors like Naomi’s helmet filter or environmental monitors, he was reduced to two senses, just sight and hearing. He couldn’t smell anything even though he could see the frying pan on the stove coughing up little flecks of fat from time to time.
“Damn, if I’d had a guy like you in my gear when I was on Reynes, I might not have gone crazy,” Spenser said. “You know, if you don’t talk for long enough, you forget how to. I used to talk to myself a lot to stop that from happening.”
“It’s a strange life, being someone else.”
“It’s even stranger trying to recalibrate yourself to being you again. I’m not sure I’m the me that I used to be.” Spenser felt in his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. The fingertips of his right hand were stained with nicotine, so his smokes were the real thing. “Still, peons like me wouldn’t get issued with top-end AIs. You’re a big budget item.”
“Handmade by craftsmen, dear boy. And the right brains don’t grow on trees.”
“Donor, right? Actual volunteer, I mean. Not just harvesting brains postmortem.”
“Well, yes. Halsey grew her own, but that’s another matter.”
“Is she still officially dead? I was kind of hoping for a show trial.”
“It’ll take a stake through the heart to finish her off. I’m maintaining the volunteer list for that. Want me to put you on it?”
Spenser laughed again, then got up to prod the contents of the frying pan. BB saw a shriveled strip of bacon flip over. Judging by the densely amber color of the juice, it was carrot, not orange, and the toast was whole grain. BB decided Spenser was a man who believed in balancing the healthy eating books.
“Okay, BB.” Spenser tipped the bacon onto a plate. “I’m going to check out the radio and telecomms network around town to see which transmitter Sentzke would use to contact the ship. If it’s any distance away, he’ll have to relay it the orbital node that the Kig-Yar stationed just past the jump point anyway. But I think our best bet is to get you in at the transmitter.”
“You can do that, can you?”
“I’m the barracks electrician. They expect me to fix anything with plugs and a power supply. Mostly, I can.”
He settled down at the table and assembled the bacon and toast into sandwiches, liberally glued together with bottled brown sauce. BB could hear Mal and Vaz talking in another room. The murmur of conversation grew louder and they walked into the kitchen.
“Ah, bacon sarnies,” Mal said, inhaling like he’d caught a whiff of some luscious perfume. He rummaged in the fridge and took out a paper-wrapped wad of rashers. “Proper breakfast. Want some, Vaz?”
Vaz grabbed a slice of toast and buttered it. “Ninety percent of your food triangle is some form of dead pig.”
“Not true. I had a vegetable last week. A tomato, I think.”
“You two sound chipper.” Spenser gulped down his juice. “I’m off now. Note that I haven’t had any sleep. I’ve told them I’m doing an extra shift to sort out the comms in the barracks. Which means I get to look at the landline and satellite plans for the whole town.”
Spenser left for work and BB sat watching the ODSTs going through a fascinating morning ritual. Mal flipped his bacon like a pancake.
“I hope Staffan calls the ship more than once a month,” he said. “Or else this is going to get bloody tedious.”
“Didn’t you ask him how often?” BB said.
“Let’s just say it didn’t flow naturally.” Mal piled the bacon between two slices of bread. “There’s such a thing as being too curious on a first date.”
Now that they knew where Pious Inquisitor was, they could have simply cut their way into the ship and boarded her the hard way, but there was a Huragok on board, and while they were busy hacking away at metal, he could have deployed any number of countermeasures. BB’s experience of Huragok was the two passive little chaps that Stanley had acquired. But if the ship was venting atmosphere, they’d rush to do something about it. So would Sinks.
Far better to sneak in via the computer and just sort it out quietly. No damage, no fuss, no casualties.
“So is this going to work?” Vaz asked. “Once you’re in, what are you going to do, exactly?”
“You want the full explanation, or a meatbag’s guide?”
“Meatbag version, please. I can’t cope with technobabble in the morning.”
“I get into the ship’s central computer, lock Sinks out of the power supply in case he thinks it’s a glitch and tries to fix it, and neutralize the ship’s defenses.”
“Terminate him. Or her.”
“Just isolate the decision-making process. It’s just a very dumb AI, Vaz. Not a self-aware personality. No him or her. The Covenant weren’t into that.”
“Oh, wow, the relativism…”
“Then I move in and take over power and navigation. Do you want the Huragok alive?”
“I th
“Okay, then I take over life support as well. Then I lay in a course for Trevelyan, kick the old tub into slipspace, then sit back and scarf all the peanuts and cocktails during the flight. Voilà. I hope there’s a good movie.”
Mal gave him a knowing grin. Sometimes BB had to remind himself that Mal was responding to a small piece of electronics the size of a bar of soap. He seemed to have superimposed a person on top of that. Everyone did.
“Well, we’re due on watch the day after tomorrow, so how are we going to use this time fruitfully?” Mal asked.
“Show me around town. I want to see the place. Analyze some data. Remember that I pick up more than you do.”
There was a practical purpose to it, but BB also quite liked the idea of exploring this place. He’d enjoyed wandering around Sanghelios with Phillips. Provided there was some link or carrier wave that he could access, and he had an interface to be his senses, he could have traveled anywhere in the galaxy and experienced the universe in more ways than a human ever could, seeing wavelengths beyond their limited eyes and hearing what they could never hear. But accompanying a human was somehow a lot more fun. They reacted. You could compare notes. You could do stuff with them.
“Okay, we’ll take you to the pub, then,” Mal said. “Because that’s what blokes do.”
“Oh, I’m a bloke. How splendid.”
“We’ll take you to the place where the Kig-Yar hang out. That’ll be fun.” Mal held the radio up to his face and peered at the camera. “Now, you know what happened last time you went on a trip with Phyllis. We’re going to maintain a link to Stanley, so if things get hairy, you transmit yourself back to base the second we’re compromised. Got it? You bang out, up the line, and call the cavalry. No hanging around getting caught. Because the first thing they’ll do is grab our comms. Oh, and warn Spenser right away, because if we’re burned, he’s next.”