The Thursday War Read online

  “Where are the Brutes?” he demanded. “Have you found any Brutes? Where did they go?”

  He was right, though: the Jiralhanae had vanished. Not many had stayed with the Sangheili once the Covenant fell, but their absence was suddenly conspicuous. Phillips struggled with the idea that these might have turned on their former superiors.

  ‘Telcam came striding back, jaws working angrily. “Not one,” he snarled. “Not one has remained.”

  “You think this is an uprising?”

  “Most of the Brutes turned on us in the Great Schism.”

  “Yes, but lots of them just took ships and went home, too.”

  “You seem to have missed the point, Philliss.” Yes, he really did make it sound like Phyllis, just as Vaz Beloi had said. Those extra jaws made explosive consonants hard going. “There is no affection between our species.”

  “Perhaps they just ran for it,” Phillips said. No, he didn’t believe that. A Brute had tried to take on Naomi and lost—not that he could share that with ‘Telcam. “We’ll find them quaking in a cellar somewhere.”

  “I knew we should never have tolerated them. This is the worst possible timing.”

  Ah, so that was his problem: not that they’d dared to kill Sangheili, something that he was preparing to do himself, but that they’d messed up his tidy insurrection.

  “Yes, but how do you—”

  Phillips never got to the end of the sentence. A bolt of energy hit the paving twenty meters from him, spattering him with painfully sharp grit, then another and another, bright as lightning.

  He dived instinctively and hit the ground, not that it would have saved him, and another alien sensation overtook him: real fear, the absolute fear that he would die any second. His body ignored his conscious mind completely. It saved itself. He couldn’t move. All he could do was listen to the crack and sizzle of energy rounds zipping past his ears. That was how close it felt. He could smell it, too, like paint burning on a hot radiator.

  “Brutes!” someone yelled. “It’s Brutes! Filthy traitors! Kill them!”

  Boots thudded near his head. “Outrage!” one Sangheili kept shouting. “Ingrates! To think we gave you food and shelter!”

  Phillips tried to turn his head, looking for somewhere to take cover. Three Sangheili were still trading shots with somebody up on the walls. Was it a Brute? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t raise his head far enough to see. He just wanted the shooting to stop. He was sure he’d crap himself if he had to lie here in the open a moment longer. He was going to die alone without even BB for company. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

  Get a grip. It’s seconds. Vaz told me so. You think it’s going on forever, but it’s only a few seconds.

  There was more zip and crack as the shooting continued. Then it stopped and the echo around the walls seemed to go on forever before being swallowed up in roars and murmurs. Phillips didn’t know whether to raise his head or stay down, but someone made the decision for him and hauled him upright by his collar.

  ‘Telcam stared down at him, nostrils flaring, looking distinctly unimpressed. “Those shots were nowhere near you.”

  Phillips had had enough for one day. He’d been bombed and shot at. He’d seen people killed. And he was on his own a long way from home. The novelty of playing spy games was over. It was a lonely way to end up dead.

  “I’m going to go and find Cadan,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. More heavily armed city militia were streaming into the plaza, arriving in all kinds of mismatched vehicles that parted the crowd. The mood had now changed from shock to anger, something Phillips was certain he could smell. “My pilot. He went to a tavern. He’ll be looking for me. I need to call in to tell everyone I’m okay.”

  ‘Telcam still had a tight grip on his collar. “And then what? Go back to the Arbiter’s keep?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “That would be an unwise choice of sanctuary, and you’re well aware why.”

  The closest that Phillips had ever been to a riot was a rowdy night in Sydney when the Aussies had won some rugby trophy and the bars had started overcrowding, then overflowing into the streets. There’d been arrests, scuffles, deafening noise, and a few moments when he was sure he was going to get his head kicked in while simply trying to hail a taxi. He’d felt just as confused and alien as he did now. Just like that night, the hundreds—maybe thousands—of Sangheili were a wall of muscle and hostility, not particularly aimed at him but still volatile and potentially lethal.

  Then something distracted them. Phillips saw every head turn simultaneously before he heard the shouts of Jir’a’ul, Jir’a’ul—Brute, a play on the Brutes’ own name for themselves and the Sangheili word for a lump of wood, a’ul. It was an ugly term of abuse. He could guess what was coming when a loud, communal hiss like escaping steam swept through the crowd. He’d never heard that before and wasn’t even sure what it was, but the meaning was instantly clear, the kind of knowledge he’d never have gleaned in a lifetime’s research in the safe comfort of his office at Wheatley University.

  The crowd parted. Now Phillips could see a Brute struggling in the grip of two Sangheili troops, snarling and spitting, and the crowd closed again like a wave. The Brute’s snarls were drowned by Sangheili roars. Phillips couldn’t see what was happening, just the ripples of movement. It was a lynch mob. But Sangheili didn’t use ropes. They were carnivores, and they fell on the Brute like a pack of dogs. Phillips let his imagination fill in the gaps. It was time to run.

  “I’ve got to go,” Phillips said. He could remember where the tavern was. He had to get out. Jesus, BB, why pick now to break down? “My radio’s not working. I’ll contact you later.”

  It was hard to see what was happening because he was a lot shorter than the average male Sangheili. He was a child lost in a dark forest, staring at legs and weapon belts. Then the firing started again. But it was coming from the walls: he risked looking around and now he could see a lot more Brutes with rifles. His belief in invincible Elite superiority was waning fast. Bolts of energy sizzled through the air before an explosion sent debris flying. The blast was much farther away on the north side of the plaza, but still deafening, still powerful enough for Phillips to feel it in his chest and ears.

  “Oh, shit—”

  “There is your answer, scholar.” ‘Telcam yanked him back toward the temple so hard that his arm hurt. “You’ll be safe here.”

  “Cadan will come looking for me.”

  “It’s too late. It must begin now.”

  Phillips struggled to match ‘Telcam’s huge stride. Somewhere at his back, all hell had broken loose. He didn’t know if it was a pitched battle or just the crowd erupting in fury, but his legs had made the decision to keep moving away from the noise as fast as they could.

  “What does? What’s got to begin?”

  ‘Telcam shoved him through the gate into the temple grounds. “What do you think? We have to bring the revolt forward, to strike before the Brutes force us to fight on another front.” ‘Telcam slipped into English. He was fluent, trained as an interpreter for the fleet, and it was hard to tell whether he thought that Phillips didn’t understand him or if he’d switched languages for some other reason. “Cowards. Utter cowards. Why do they plant bombs? This is a filthy, sly habit they have learned from you humans. Terrorism. That is the word, yes?”

  That was the whole point of being here: Phillips had known the unspoken deal with ONI from the start. He wasn’t here to study the Sangheili or build bridges with them. ONI’s mission was to crush them before they regained their military strength, and he was the one man who could talk to them and gain their trust because he was so harmless. He felt like a complete bastard. But then he thought of billions of dead humans, and Sydney in flames, and talked himself back into knowing which side he had to be on.

  Terrorism. That’s the word, ‘Telcam. We’re all doing it, one way or another. It’s just semantics. I’m good at that.

 
“It works, though,” Phillips said, catching his breath. He could still hear the rioting but the walls muffled the sounds, creating an illusion of safety. “Efficient. Cheap. You can keep it up for years. You could learn a lot from us monkeys.”

  Phillips was only saying what was factually true, and playing the game of planting a suggestion that ‘Telcam might follow to the benefit of Earth, but the monk rounded on him as if it was blasphemy.

  “No!” For a moment Phillips thought he was going to shake him like a badly behaved child. “That is not war! There is a line between catching the enemy off guard and being too cowardly to show yourself. I will not cross it. It defiles us. We fight for faith, Philliss, we fight to restore what we were, to come close to knowing the gods’ intent for us again—not to make them shun us in disgust.”

  Phillips had never really got used to rules of engagement. He wasn’t going to debate about them now. ‘Telcam strode back into the temple lobby, pushing Phillips ahead of him. Monk-warriors and former Sangheili soldiers who’d found themselves purposeless in what was to them a sudden, catastrophic peace were already sweeping up the blast damage and fortifying the temple again.

  How could he get word back to Osman that he was okay? He had nothing with him except a broken radio—not even a change of underwear. He was sitting in the middle of an unfolding civil war, clueless and alone. He might be back on board Port Stanley in a few days, or still hiding in tunnels months from now.

  Or he might have been counting down the days to his death.

  Suddenly he realized he felt more real, more alive, more relevant than he ever had in his life. The thrill of it ambushed him. It wasn’t fun, but the adrenaline had ebbed and the paralyzing fear had been replaced with an extreme focus. He liked this new feeling. It was sharp, bright, and intense. Everything—sound, color, smell, every sensation in his body—was vivid and minutely detailed.

  Maybe this was what kept his UNSC buddies going. He understood them a lot better now. If he played his cards right, he might live to swap this tale with them over a beer.

  ‘Telcam walked up to a table that had just been set upright again and slammed his fist down on it to get attention. Everyone stopped and listened.

  “Brothers,” he boomed. “This is the work of the Brutes. An irrelevance. An annoyance. Are we all fit to fight?”

  “We are, Field Master.”

  “Are we set on our path? Does anyone wish to step back from the war to come?”

  ‘Telcam was a monk who still believed in the Forerunners as gods, even if the San’Shyuum had been discredited as false prophets. But he also had a pragmatic political streak. Phillips had started to think of him as medieval Pope material, a Borgia of a creature, both ruthless commander and devout bishop. The Sangheili was playing a bit of both now. He looked from face to face as if he was searching out the waverers before devouring them. Nobody twitched.

  “Are we ready to launch our assault?”

  “Close, Field Master. Very close.”

  ‘Telcam hit the table again. Dust jumped. So did Phillips.

  “Then that is close enough. Ignore the Brutes. Kill any that get in the way, but focus on the main objective.” He turned his head slowly from side to side to take in the whole room, suddenly seeming more like a swaying cobra. “The assault on Vadam must begin now.”

  UNSC INTELLIGENCE SAFE HOUSE, NEW TYNE, VENEZIA: MARCH 2553

  Me and my big mouth.

  As soon as Vaz Beloi said the name Naomi, he knew he’d regret it. But he couldn’t stop himself. He just wasn’t expecting to scroll through mug shots of Venezia’s resident undesirables and see her father’s face looking out from the rogues’ gallery.

  Staffan Sentzke. Terror suspect. Colonial insurgent. Ready to take a pop at Earth any chance he gets.

  Sentzke was the one conspiracy theorist in a million who was actually right. His long-lost daughter really was alive and the child the police had brought back to him was an impostor, just like he’d claimed. He didn’t know she was a Spartan, though. And Naomi didn’t know he hadn’t been killed when Sansar was glassed by the Covenant. Vaz sat staring at the datapad, wondering where the hell he’d start explaining this escalating disaster to her—or anybody else, for that matter. He’d thought ONI had finally done the decent thing by letting the Spartans know about the families they’d been snatched from as kids and brainwashed to forget, but now it didn’t look decent at all. It looked agonizingly messy. There’d be no happy endings and no healing reunions, not for any of them.

  Maybe she’s better off never knowing where she came from.

  But it was too late for that. Naomi knew, and now he and the two men peering over his shoulder knew a lot more. Vaz craned his neck to look up at Mal Geffen for a reaction. Mal wasn’t just his friend. He was his sergeant, too, and—Vaz had to admit it—a lot calmer when it came to these kinds of situations. He didn’t get angry. Vaz did.

  Mal just let out a long breath, hands still braced on the back of the sofa as he leaned over Vaz. The basement was a scruffy jumble of old furniture and high-tech comms equipment, with the dead, musty, muffled silence of a soundproofed room. It swallowed every breath and creak.

  “Well, bugger me,” Mal said quietly. “Small world, eh?”

  Mike Spenser, the veteran intelligence agent who’d been posted here, frowned in that hang-on-a-minute kind of way that said he’d put two and two together and had come up with an embarrassing answer. Vaz was never sure how much Spenser had been told about anything. He was military intelligence, but he wasn’t ONI, and ONI was a law unto itself even in the intelligence world. As far as Vaz knew, Spenser hadn’t even been briefed about Kilo-Five’s mission to destabilize the Sangheili state. Just because they were all on the same side didn’t mean they could share information.

  I shouldn’t have said Naomi. Jesus, what was I thinking?

  “You don’t mean Naomi Naomi, do you?” Spenser asked at last. If anything, he sounded bored, and that had to be an act. “Spartan Naomi? The Valkyrie?”

  Spenser wasn’t the kind of guy to forget a name, and he certainly wouldn’t have forgotten Naomi. She was at least two meters tall, so pale that Vaz still wasn’t sure if she was platinum blond or silver-gray. She could take down an Elite or a Brute with her bare hands, and Vaz had seen her do both without breaking a sweat. She was what a human could become if you took the smartest and strongest, and pumped them up with gene therapy, ceramic bone implants, and the most intensive military training the UNSC could offer.

  Provided you did all that while they were still little kids, of course. That was the heart of the problem as far as Vaz was concerned. It was a recipe for retribution. And he knew that day had come.

  “Yes. Naomi Naomi. Spartan-Zero-One-Zero.” Vaz stood up and handed the datapad to Mal. There was a certain wisdom to stopping digging when you were in a hole, but that would only make Spenser more curious now. “That’s her real name. Naomi Sentzke. I’ve seen her file.”

  Spenser nodded, still pretty relaxed. “Yeah, I wondered when all that crap would come out.” He didn’t elaborate on what he meant by crap and Vaz didn’t know how to ask without revealing anything. The dirty details of the Spartan program had certainly come as a shock to the marines. “I can see the resemblance now. That boiled look. You think he knows? It would explain his attitude to Earth.”

  “He worked out some of it.” Mal narrowed his eyes a fraction. “You know how they recruited for the Spartan program?”

  “I didn’t need to know. But I do know some operatives declined to take part in the recruitment. I’m being heavy on the euphemism there.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “What do you think? This is ONI we’re talking about, not an animal shelter. ONI really does put healthy dogs down.”

  Vaz tried not to dwell on that. Mal missed a beat, but only one.

  “So you know they took kids,” he said.

  “I do now.”

  “Oh.” Mal blinked a couple of times, final
ly caught out. “We never learn, do we?”

  “Ah, come on. You’re ODST. Honest marines. Just stick to low-orbit jumps and shooting things. You’ll sleep better.” Spenser sloshed the dregs of his coffee around his mug, then took the datapad back from Mal. “The question is whether Sentzke knows. Or whether she does.”

  “She knows who her real family is,” Vaz said. Do we tell her? Do we not tell her? Do we tell her before we tell Captain Osman? What the hell’s right? “But this will be news to her.”

  Spenser shook his head, slowly and ruefully. “We’re going to miss the Covenant. Nice simple stuff. One jaw, good. Four jaws, bad.”

  “Are you going to call this in, Mike?” Mal asked.

  “No, because you’re going to do it. Aren’t you?”

  Vaz wasn’t sure how to take that. There was another awkward silence. He could feel the vibration of traffic from the main road. Beyond these walls, old enemies were picking up where they’d left off before the Covenant had arrived and interrupted the long-running war between humans. Venezia had always been a haven for criminals and assorted outlaws. Now it was open house for any species with an axe to grind with its government, but that suddenly seemed a much more theoretical problem than facing Naomi.

  Naomi had to be told, one way or another, and Vaz would do it. She’d make a big show of being completely above all the personal loyalty stuff, maybe even want to arrest her dad to prove she put her duty first, just like the way she’d reacted to Halsey. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt her. Spenser was right: killing hinge-heads had been a blissfully simple kind of war. It had never left Vaz feeling dirty.