“Probably not. Depends what’s happening when we get there.”

“We’l be there in minutes, BB,” Devereaux said. “Is there a fight or not?”

“At the moment, it sounds like not. Look, I’m just listening in on a very unreliable comms link. I’l have to move a surveil ance drone to actual y see anything, and we’l be in Acroli long before it’s in position.”

“I hope you’ve got an exact location.”

“Nes’alun keep. It’s not marked on charts.”

“But it’s a smal town.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, we’l worry about how we knock on doors when we get there. A keep’s got to be obvious, right?”

Vaz made a noisy show of clipping down his armor plates and reloading his rifle. “Females.” He checked the optics. “Remind me, have I ever seen a female hinge-head? Do they look any different?”

“Not a lot,” BB said. “You won’t want a date. It’s the jaws. Ghastly kissers.”

“Then they’d better hand Phyllis over.” Vaz was immune to being cheered up. “I believe in equality. I’l shoot anyone.”

He got up and walked to the front of the compartment, grabbing the safety rails as he went. Naomi stil had the shutters up. She hadn’t taken off her helmet and sat staring at the bulkhead, arms folded, which probably meant she was watching something on her HUD. Mal placed a mental bet that it was the latest ONI reports on Venezia. It was too easy to forget that once they’d retrieved Phil ips, a queue of other messy problems was stil waiting patiently for them.

“So remind me what the strategy is,” Vaz said. “Are we playing nice with ‘Telcam or not? How do you think he’s going to react when we grab Phil ips?”

“Wel , there’s the interesting thing,” BB said. “Osman told him to find Phil ips or else no more arms, but they’re using words like hostage on the comms channels.”

Naomi lifted off her helmet and tidied her hair with one hand. If Mal hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she’d just woken up. “Even if he doesn’t think Phil ips is a hostage, the others might. We’re not dealing with one tidy group here.”

“I always assume the worst,” Mal said.

“So do I.” Devereaux sounded as if she’d leaned out of her seat. “It’s you-can’t-see-me time.”

A row of unfamiliar status lights flashed up on the bulkhead repeater. “Deflective camo, Dev? That’s nostalgic. I didn’t think we stil had it.”

“Just because it didn’t fool Covenant sensors doesn’t mean that Farmer Giles can spot us,” she said. “There’s stil value in hiding behind a tree, you know.”

Mal caught himself teetering on the edge of praying that nobody would wonder what that funny whining noise was overhead, as if any god would care about what happened to one ODST. Carbon nanotube cloaking was very old and largely useless now, but Kilo-Five wasn’t going up against a high-tech enemy. This was pitchfork country. It would do.

“It doesn’t make us completely invisible,” he said. “Or silent.”

“No, but it makes us pretty damn hard to spot at two hundred meters.” Devereaux made a few grunting sounds, as if she real y was combing out tangled hair. BB didn’t comment. “Did you think he was dead?”

“Phil ips? No. I never gave him permission to die.”

Naomi flipped her helmet over between her hands like a basketbal . “I don’t believe anyone’s dead until I see a body.”

It wasn’t like her to join in unless she was asked a specific question. Mal’s first thought was that she meant her father, but then he remembered that she’d been real y cut up to hear that the Master Chief was official y MIA with a strong unofficial dash of KIA. Maybe she meant him. It was hard to tel with so many dead and so few bodies brought home.

“We’l be over Acroli in six minutes.” Devereaux stil seemed more worried about Phil ips than she’d admit. “Ideas on how to identify Nes’alun, BB?”

“Wel , a farmhouse with a lot of damage, probably.”

“You’re a natural-born navigator.”

Six minutes was a lot longer than it sounded. Mal sealed his helmet and checked the video feeds. One was the exterior cam mounted under Tart- Cart’s nose, showing a lot of greenery that threw long shadows in the late afternoon and a little stone-built town beyond. It looked like half a dozen smal , wal ed keeps and a few big barns. But as the town rushed up on them, Mal saw some serious damage—big holes in some of the wal s, missing sections of roof, and the charred remains of a fighter or something gouged into the ground. It wasn’t exactly pitchfork fighting, then.

“Wel , it’s all damage, BB,” Mal said. “Next idea?”

Tart-Cart slowed and looped around the settlement at three hundred meters. There were some Sangheili trying to salvage their property, and a couple of them looked up as the dropship passed overhead, but they went back to clearing the rubble. They’d heard it but they couldn’t quite see it.

They probably thought the noise was coming from another direction.

“‘ Telcam’s got to have coordinates to find the place,” BB said. “If I could get hold of him. Acroli is largely Arbiter supporters.”

“Location. Any clue at al would do.”

“Wait one.”

“See, BB, when we were baby ODSTs in training, the sarge impressed on us the importance of observation and planning when retrieving hostages.”

BB went a little acid. “You can go back and ask Sarge, then, Staff.”

A rough stone building that looked like a kid’s idea of a fort stood a couple of klicks away from the settlement.

“Okay, what’s that over there?”

“Another keep.”

“And what’s that muzzle flash?” Mal knew perfectly wel what it was. He’d seen enough plasma fire to last him a lifetime. “I bet that’s Nes’alun.”

A s Tart-Cart slowed to sweep wide around the fields, Mal could see that it wasn’t so much a firefight as a sporadic exchange of shots. About twenty hinge-heads crouched in the cover of low wal s and shabby outbuildings, focused on the main structure, but they seemed to be playing a waiting game rather than launching an assault. A couple of shots spat out from a narrow window. The hinge-heads laying siege ducked, then fired back. Then it went quiet again.

This had to be the farmhouse. The dropship changed course again and now Mal could see the state of the main doors. The opening was blocked with al kinds of wood, and black smoke streaks radiated from the stone door frame like sooty petals. It looked like they’d tried to storm the place and failed.

“So the women are defending the keep because the blokes are away fighting, I suppose,” Mal said. “Which means they could be back anytime, so the ones down there can’t wait forever.”

“What do you want to do?” Devereaux asked. “Set down and observe for a while?”

“No, let’s clear the area. Come around and approach from the east. Lay down a bit of fire and push them back.”

Whoever the Elites outside were, they’d almost certainly open fire on any humans they weren’t expecting. The Arbiter hadn’t exactly broadcast a plea to treat al human tourists as welcome guests. Sanghelios didn’t even seem to have a public network, so how they circulated general information these days was anyone’s guess. For al Mal knew, most hinge-heads would stil see humans as the vanguard of an invasion.

Come to that, whoever was inside the keep would probably see things that way, too.

“Okay, do it,” Mal said. “Buckets on. Get ready to drop.”

Devereaux banked the ship. “I haven’t actual y done this before, but I’m told it’s the most fun you can have without getting arrested.”

Mal scanned the nose cam view. The hinge-heads were stil facing the keep. Tart-Cart was coming up to the rear and flank, unseen, dropping to seventy meters. “What d’you mean?”

“Like this … surprise! ”

The deflective camo warning light went off. Twenty hinge-heads looked up at once. Devereaux hit the chin gun and Mal’s view of the ground was lost in cannon flash, flying debris, and smoke. One second the Elites had been scratching their backsides and waiting for hinge-head Christmas, and the next the sky was ful of angry dropship. Devereaux kept up the fire while she dropped low enough for Mal, Vaz, and Naomi to jump out of the side hatch and run for the keep. Mal found himself up to his ankles in churned mud. A couple of plasma bolts shot past him, too wide to worry about.

“We’re in position, Dev,” Vaz said. “You can pul back now.”

Tart-Cart rose to a hover above the keep and broke up like a mirage into a shimmering patch of nothing. Now they had to check that they had the right keep. Mal wasn’t counting on any gratitude from whoever was inside.

“Here’s the fun bit,” he said. “No door to knock. BB, can you do some shouting?” He edged around to the side of the building. “Ask them if they’ve got Phyl is in there—very loudly.”

“I can pick off the Elites, Staff,” Devereaux said over the radio. “I don’t think I actual y kil ed any, but I can remedy that.”

Bloody diplomacy. Mal could imagine the grief he’d get if he ended up kil ing a bunch of the Arbiter’s al ies and they’d hit the wrong keep anyway. “Wait for me to cal for support. I’d hate to get a stiff memo from CINCFLEET.” He reached behind him and tapped Naomi’s arm. “Window.

Slap a cam on that. See what we’ve got inside.”

Naomi shot off, drawing a hail of plasma that didn’t seem to slow her down. A few moments later, an icon activated in Mal’s HUD and he was looking at a color-enhanced view of a hal ful of moving shapes, some big, some smal . Hinge-heads: hinge-head kids, too. He’d never real y thought of them as having families. When he refocused, Naomi was squatting next to him again.

“That was quick,” he said. The adults al had plasma pistols and a couple had storm rifles, too. “Wel , I’d say that’s the girls. Ten, maybe. Six kids.” He listened. The cam also picked up sound waves flexing the windowpane from inside. “Got that, BB?”

“They’re very quiet.”

Vaz checked the feed too. “Can’t see Phil ips.”

“What about the kids?”

“They’re armed,” Naomi said. “Legitimate targets.”

What else did Mal expect her to say? She’d been handed a weapon and trained to kil at six years old. She didn’t have that taboo ingrained in her.

“Who’d like to be my mouthpiece?” BB asked. “Your turn, Mal. Shal I do the talking, or just render you comprehensible?”

“Just translate.” This was the weird bit. Mal wasn’t sure that his brain could handle saying one thing and hearing another. Ah well. He gave it his best shot. “This is UNSC forces—we’ve come for Professor Phil ips. Have you got him in there?” No, he couldn’t do it. He struggled to find the next word. “BB, kil the external audio. It’s confusing me.”

“Of course it is. Try again.”

“Ladies! We’ve come for Phil ips. Have you got him?”

That was better. As far as Mal was concerned, he was outside the door, yel ing in English. To the Elites, he was shouting in fluent Sangheili.

“We have,” a female voice shouted back. “We’re handing him over to the holy monks.”

“And the monks are going to hand him to us. So let’s save ourselves some time.”

“Get away from the door or we’l open fire.”

“We just drove off the Arbiter’s al ies. The ones attacking you, remember?”

“They’re stil out there. And so are you.”

There was a line of smal arrow-slit windows on the upper floors above him. Plasma fire spat out of one, frying the ground a little way from him.

Whoever was firing couldn’t lower the angle far enough because Mal was too close to the wal .

“Bring him out,” Mal yel ed. “Don’t make us come in.”

“Fool.”

“Would you like to meet a Spartan? A demon?”

Naomi moved around to the doorway and gave him a thumbs-up. She was gagging for a fight. Vaz edged over to the other side of the door, ready to storm it.

“We have children here. You bluff. ”

“Bring Phil ips out and we can al go home.”

Naomi stood up slowly and pressed against the barricaded door with one hand flat on it as if she was testing it. Her other hand gripped her pistol. Mal wasn’t going to lecture her on rules of engagement.

She nodded. “Ready when you are, Staff.”

“Last chance,” Mal cal ed. “We don’t want to hurt anybody.”

He didn’t have to raise his voice, but it always psyched him up. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be done. You hit a building hard and without warning, shot anything that didn’t obey the warning to get down and stay down when you burst into the room, and then you grabbed your hostage and got out. But that couldn’t happen now. There was no element of surprise, and there were kids. It shouldn’t have mattered, but Mal had to think of the consequences if he kil ed any. Just walking into a bloody temple had sent hinge-heads rushing to fight the Arbiter.

“Mal? Mal, don’t crash in here. Please.”

That was Phil ips, al right. Mal now couldn’t tel if he was speaking Sangheili or not. “Phil ips, are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“We’re coming in.”

“No, don’t. Nobody shoot, do you hear? Just don’t. None of you.”

“It’s not your cal , mate.” Mal nodded back to Naomi. “You’re coming out, one way or another. Stand back from the door.”