“Show us.”

“She means show us your data on the threat,” Olivia said. “Maybe we know what it is.”

Prone didn’t respond. He seemed to be studying Lucy’s face in return. Then he just wandered off and rejoined his friends.

“Sometimes I think those things react to humans, and sometimes I think they’re just looking at a complicated circuit diagram,” said Mark. “But maybe he’s gone away to mul it over.”

For the moment, there was nothing that they could do. Lucy wondered whether to stay out of Halsey’s way, but she had to face the woman sooner or later, and they were stil stuck here with no immediate hope of rescue. No, she had to stop thinking of it as a rescue. She had to see it as the retrieval of high-value technology. She walked outside into the sunlight, suddenly terrified that she didn’t know what to say—literal y say—next. If she didn’t try to keep talking, she knew she would slide back into silence.

She looked around the camp at the underclothes and jerky drying side by side on the bushes and saw the Spartan-IIs standing in a huddle, talking. Mendez and Halsey were head to head a few meters away. Their body language said it al .

They were standing square on to each other, shoulders braced in confrontation. Lucy could hear the discussion building into a fight. They were oblivious. Maybe they didn’t care that they now had an audience of Spartans.

Halsey had her arms folded tight across her chest, more a blocking gesture than a defensive one. “Do you take my point now, Chief? They’re just not stable. They’re a liability.”

“So what do you want me to do, Doctor?” Mendez growled. “They were broken when we got them. It was their goddamn qualification to get into the program, for Chrissakes. Terrified, angry little kids who’d seen their parents kil ed and wanted to lash out.”

“Wel , yes, that’s a classic profile, but—”

“You know what regular recruits are like when you draft them?” He started stabbing his finger in her direction to make his point. “A mixed bag.

Some are downright psychopathic. Some are bone idle. Some are scared of their own shadows. Al kinds.” He took out his cigar and shoved it between his lips, stil talking as it dangled there while he felt in his pockets for that ancient Swedish fire-starter he always carried. “But dumb guys like me make them into fighting men and women by giving them discipline and pride. That’s the way the armed forces always ran before we started designing soldiers.” He paused for breath as he struck furious sparks off the two metal strips onto a scrap of dry grass, then lit the Sweet Wil iam.

“You know something?” He gestured with the cigar right under her nose, wafting her with smoke. “It’s the way the rest of the UNSC still runs. What you cal disorders and abnormalities, I cal different personalities. You just want to medicate and tweak and modify people into one vanil a definition of perfect, lady, and it’s not what humans are like.”

“You finished, Chief?”

“Hel , no, Doctor, I only just got started. You were never much good at accepting imperfect people, were you? You dumped your own goddamn daughter on her dad when she got too imperfect. Poor Jacob Keyes. Nice guy. Good father. Great officer. So then you made your own perfect daughter with that AI of yours, Cortana, a tidy little copy of yourself who thinks you’re the Virgin Mary. I don’t need a goddamn Ph.D. in psychiatry to work out what’s wrong with you. ”

Lucy couldn’t move. She didn’t real y know Halsey and she didn’t care what the woman thought of Spartan-IIIs. But she could hear Mendez losing his temper. His voice was getting more gravel y as his throat constricted. He almost wheezed when he puffed on that cigar. This was the man who’d looked after her and the other Spartan recruits from the day she’d landed on a strange planet with a bunch of six-year-old savages who’d almost forgotten what it meant to be human beings. He asked them who wanted a chance to kil the Covenant. Me. I wanted that. I wanted to kill them all.

Mendez had faced the same risks alongside them. She knew whose side she’d be on in any fight.

“You bastard, ” Halsey said at last. It was more of a hiss. “How dare you pry into my private life.”

“You’re not the only one with a nosey AI, Doctor. But a lot of UNSC staff can access the DNA database—and the goddamn calendar. A lot of people know. They’ve just got too much respect for Miranda to gossip.”

“You and Ackerson. A matching pair of treacherous assholes.”

“At least he only took volunteers.”

“Six-year-olds can’t possibly volunteer. Spare me the competitive morality.”

“They didn’t have parents grieving for them, either.”

“You’ve been saving this up, haven’t you?”

“Not real y. Work in a sewer long enough and you don’t notice the smel until you go outside.”

Lucy was transfixed. Al the stuff about Halsey and her daughter and parents grieving—it was getting ugly, even if she didn’t understand the context. She realized Tom and Fred were now standing next to her, helmets in hands.

“I better break this up,” Fred said.

Tom shook his head. “No, sir, I think you better leave them to air their differences.”

Halsey dropped her voice, but it was stil crystal-clear. “You knew what the deal was, Chief. You could have walked away at any time.”

“So I deserve what’s coming to me. I should have asked for a transfer as soon as I found out what you’d done to their parents. And those goddamn clones. You know what? Just saying it out loud now makes me sick to my gut. It was al wrong. Al completely wrong. Wel , I hope someone charges me with the crimes, because this should never be hidden. This should never be covered up.”

“But you did it once,” Halsey said, hands on hips, “and then you did it again, without me. And you did it for the same reason that I did—because creating Spartans gave us the best chance of saving the human race.”

“Steady with that airbrush, Doctor. You created the Spartans to counter colonial insurgents. That was a hel of a long time before the Covenant showed up.”

“And they were just as big a threat. Remember Haven? I wanted to stop that ever happening again.”

“You wanted to do it because you could. Curiosity. Goddamn vanity. You don’t give a damn about human life, not even your own daughter’s— only about being the smartest kid in the class.”

“Don’t you dare lecture me on Miranda. I asked Jacob to bring her up because I knew I was a bad mother.”

“I never said you weren’t self-aware.”

“Look, I know I can’t give anyone unconditional love. But I’m smarter than most abusive parents and I knew Jacob would do a better job than I ever could. I didn’t want a dol to play with, Chief. I got pregnant, it wasn’t convenient, and I wasn’t prepared to take an unborn life.”

“Don’t you dump that pious handwringing bul shit on me. ” Mendez was now white with fury. He was gesturing so hard with the cigar that ash was flying everywhere. Lucy hovered on the edge of stepping in to break it up. “You had no damn respect for born life.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Fred strode forward, pushing between them until they backed apart. “This stops now. Both of you. Wind your necks in, and that’s an order. ”

Mendez just stood his ground and took a drag on what was left of his cigar. “Yes, sir.” Then he walked back to the tower entrance and went into the lobby.

Halsey stood there for a moment, expressionless, then looked up at Fred. Lucy could see that her neck was flushed bright red. That was something she couldn’t hide.

“He’s right, I’m afraid,” Halsey said. “Why else do you think I went slightly crazy and brought you al here? Late onset of menopause?”

“Preserving vital assets, ma’am.”

“Salving my conscience,” Halsey said, and walked away toward the river.

Lucy’s mad moment seemed smal and forgotten by comparison. Everyone was looking either in the direction of the tower entrance or toward the river, which she took as a sign of whether they were more worried about Mendez or Halsey. A split was forming. If the Engineers didn’t find them a way out of here, that was going to become a major problem. Fred might have been the ranking officer but there wasn’t a lot he could do to keep Halsey on a leash.

“That’s real y sad about her daughter,” Kel y said at last. “Miranda Keyes? I’d never have guessed. She’s so much like her father.”

“And what about your parents?” Olivia asked. “What did the Chief mean about clones?”

Kel y shrugged as if she wasn’t bothered about it at al . With a helmet on, Spartans could hide a lot of turmoil. “You’l need to ask him about that.”

Tom nudged Lucy with his elbow and steered her away for a walk. If Lucy had a close buddy in the squad, then it was Tom. They’d been the only two survivors from the raid on the Pegasi Delta refinery. She knew that was where she’d started to come unraveled, while Tom just kept on going, dependable and unflappable as ever. Sometimes she wondered why he could handle it and she couldn’t, but by the time that thought started to form in her mind she was past the stage of being able to have a discussion about it. The doctors said that sooner or later, given enough pressure, shot at enough times, isolated and deprived of sleep for long enough, almost everyone would succumb to traumatic stress. Everyone reached their individual tipping point, and hers just happened sooner than Tom’s.

But she could stil function in combat. And that was al that mattered to her, because her punishment had been to survive her friends, and that meant she had some duty to perform before life would let her off the hook.

“Talk to me, Lucy,” Tom said. “You know the last thing you said to me? To anyone? How do we know we’re still alive. Yeah, living’s hard after al that.”

Lucy pursed her lips, making a conscious effort to shape the word. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, Luce. Nothing at al .”

She knew it was going to take a lot more effort to get back to the person she’d been, if she ever made it at al . In the meantime, she was satisfied that she would be able to say enough to be a more useful member of the squad. She walked around for a while with Tom, searching for edible plants, until a shout from behind made them turn.

Mendez had come out of the lobby, walking behind Prone to Drift. The set of his shoulders had changed and it looked like there was some news. Lucy and Tom jogged back to the others.

“You’ve got a persuasive way with you, Petty Officer,” Mendez said to her. “Your friend has something to say.”

Prone was stil clutching the smal sheet of white glass, his message pad. He held it in front of her.

YOU MUST BE FULLY REPAIRED. MAKE THE CALL.

Maybe he was trying to encourage Lucy to speak. But if he wanted her to send a signal and was prepared to risk alerting whatever was lurking out there, she wasn’t the person for the job. Halsey was best qualified to do this stuff. Lucy gestured.

“Her,” she said. “Ask her.”

Halsey plunged straight in. “Thank you, Prone.” She was doing her “mommy” voice again. “The worst that can happen is that someone realizes we’re in here, but it’s a Dyson sphere in another dimension. We’re stil safe.”

Prone drifted back inside and everyone fol owed him. The rest of them seemed to have gone into hiding again. He tapped a couple of the symbols on the wal and beckoned Halsey forward.

The word SPEAK appeared in the white glass in front of her. She didn’t hesitate.

“This is Dr. Catherine Halsey,” she said. “Al UNSC cal signs, this is Dr. Catherine Halsey, ONI, and I require assistance. Respond to receive coordinates.”

There was no crackling static or any sound of dead air. Either Forerunner comms equipment was as perfect as their masonry, or there was no signal. Halsey repeated the message a couple of times and then a voice fil ed the entire room—an old woman’s voice, slightly husky with age and authority, but as clear as if she was standing there with them.

“Hel o, Catherine,” the voice said. Lucy could hear something in it that sounded more like satisfaction than genuine warmth. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Halsey obviously wasn’t expecting that. Her head jerked back and her gaze flickered across the wal s as if she was trying to pin down the source. And she didn’t look happy.

Lucy’s peripheral vision caught the Chief shifting his weight and clasping his hands in front of him, head bowed. She looked straight at him and didn’t recognize the expression on his face at al . It might have been amusement, or surprise, or just relief. She was normal y tuned in to the attitudes of the people around her, but today she got the feeling that there was a paral el set of events taking place that she wasn’t part of and never would be.

“Admiral Parangosky?” Halsey said at last.

“Do cal me Margaret. You always did. I suppose we’d better get you out of there, hadn’t we?”

The line popped and went on standby. Nobody spoke for a few moments.

“Who’s that?” Tom asked.

“We’re honored,” Halsey said, but Lucy saw real dread on her face for the first time. “It’s the Empress of Naval Intel igence. That’s Margaret Orlenda Parangosky.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BB, I THINK WE’RE APPROACHING THE POINT WHEN OSMAN NEEDS TO BE BRIEFED ON INFINITY. CHECK BACK IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS FOR THE LATEST SCHEMATICS. I’LL GIVE YOU A NOD WHEN IT’S TIME.

(ADMIRAL MARGARET O. PARANGOSKY, CINCONI, TO AI BLACK-BOX)

UNSC PORT STANLEY, SOMEWHERE OFF SANGHELIOS: FEBRUARY 2553.