Prone took it in silence, which could have meant that he didn’t want to talk or that he had no interest in metaphysical matters. Jul strode ahead of him, confident of the route. He couldn’t see any surveil ance devices but he was sure that they were around somewhere, and that meant he would do what he did every day now and walk confidently into the area around the spire until he felt the energy field brush him like an unseen cloud of flies.

The humans expected him to do that. Not deviating from his routine seemed to be the key to lul ing them into inaction.

Ahhh … The field washed over him and he was in the underground passage again. Half an hour. I have half an hour, perhaps, because that was how long the human was lost underground. Magnusson won’t think I’ve escaped. When he looked over his shoulder, Prone was about four meters behind him. Wel , he’d convinced him that he thought the structure was a holy relic. Now was the time to reinforce that charade. Jul squatted on his haunches in front of the panel that had made Prone so anxious when he’d reached out to touch it.

The symbols do something. They’re keys, buttons, switches, something like that, even though they look like part of the stone. I have to touch one and see what happens. The challenge is … Prone.

Jul stayed in his squat position, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. That would prevent Prone interrupting him for a while.

What would stop Prone from grabbing me if I were to touch the wall?

The harness.

Huragok grew distressed when Forerunner technology was damaged. If Jul threatened to destroy an entire panel, a wal of devices that seemed to be a hub for portal network in one of the Forerunners’ most critical instal ations, then that would surely persuade him to deactivate his harness.

But he needs to get very close to me to do it. Can I manage that? I’ve got one chance to do this, because if I fail, that ruse won’t work again. In fact … I’ll be marooned here, unable to remove the harness at all.

Jul opened his eyes a fraction. Prone was on the far side of the chamber, apparently gazing at inscriptions. Jul was two paces from the wal .

If I don’t make my move, I’ll die here eventually anyway. They’ll never release me. They can’t.

He had to do it in one move. And he had to do it very soon, before the loss of contact with him started a search. The harness was loose. Prone wouldn’t have thought that was a security problem because simply taking it off would trigger it.

Get to the wall, lift the harness—not too far, mind—and give him the ultimatum.

Show me a portal that works, or I’ll destroy this chamber. Have you ever seen an explosion in a confined space? You’d die too.

Prone might not care what happened to him, but he’d certainly care about the precious Forerunner facility. Jul crossed his arms on his chest very slowly, curled his fingers around the straps of the harness, and sprang up from a squat toward the wal . He hit it with a thud just as Prone spun around. As the Huragok came at him, he raised the harness to shoulder level. Prone stopped.

“I have nothing to lose, Engineer,” he said. “I’l die here either way. Show me the portal to Sanghelios, and remove this harness, or I’l detonate it.”

Prone edged forward. This was going to be awkward. Jul had to keep an eye on the creature, but he also needed to look at the symbols on the wal . He could already feel a tingling sensation throughout his body: the wal was active in some way.

< Sanghelios does not work, > Prone said. < It was not maintained at the terminal. > “I don’t believe you.” Jul reached out with one hand, holding the harness half-raised with the other. He wasn’t sure how much he’d have to pul it away from his body to trigger it, but he’d find out very soon. “So I’m going to carry out an experiment.”

< You might go nowhere. You might damage the portals by trying. > “Let’s see.” Jul reached into his pocket and gathered the shel s and stones in his palm. If he could open a portal, at least he could toss a stone in and see what happened before he tried it himself. Doing this one-handed was hard. He held one stone between two fingers, gripping the rest as best he could, and stood off to one side of the symbols so that he could both see them and keep Prone in his field of view. “What happens if I do this?”

He pressed the first symbol. Prone made a faint groaning sound. A panel in the wal dissolved, leaving a tal rectangle that looked like sunlight trying to penetrate a thick mist. Jul tossed the stone into the light, but a heartbeat later, it bounced back and clattered across the floor.

< I told you, > Prone said. < It doesn’t work.> Jul wasn’t going to give up that easily. Now he was committed: keep trying, or die. “Plenty more controls to press, my friend. Plenty more.” He worked another stone out of his palm and positioned it between his fingers, then tried the next symbol in the line. When he lobbed the stone into the portal this time, it didn’t bounce back. He held his breath, hoping this was his exit, then a light flashed and he heard something hit the floor on the other side of the chamber. It was the stone again.

< Some don’t go where they were intended, > Prone said. < Which I have also told you. > “But some do.” Jul prepared a third stone. His other arm was starting to ache from holding up the harness. “Some do. ”

He tried again. Again, the stone bounced out. He tried four more times, equal y unsuccessful y, and wondered if he’d run out of stones before he found a portal destination that worked. Every time he threw one into the void, Prone edged forward a little.

“I wil detonate this, Engineer. Believe me when I say that.”

< I do. > Jul stil didn’t believe there were any gods, but if he was wrong, then he hoped they would look down on this desperate moment and open a portal for him. It was a smal favor to ask of beings who could build entire stars. His mouth was dry and he wondered if he was being stupid rather than courageous. Sometimes it was hard to draw a line between the two.

He threw again, and there was silence.

The silence turned into seconds. Then it stretched into a long pause punctuated by his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. The stone didn’t bounce back, and it didn’t emerge in the chamber. Prone hung there, sighing like bel ows.

“This one works,” Jul said. “This works. Doesn’t it?”

< For the time being. It’s unstable. > “Where does it lead?”

< You mustn’t enter. > Jul lifted the harness up a little higher. His arm muscles were getting tired and beginning to twitch. “I’l enter anyway. I’l ask you again. What is this symbol?”

< Kelekos. > Jul had never heard of it. “Where is that?”

< I don’t know. There were many Forerunners there. > “Like you don’t know where Requiem is.”

< Requiem cannot be reached from here, because the Didact sleeps and must never be woken. Kelekos could be reached. If you can reach a place, we have no need to know its location. This terminal is for ingathering. > Jul was now beyond impatience with the Huragok’s half-explanations. Having explosives draped around him didn’t improve his mood. But he had a functioning portal, and he had to try. Kelekos would do. When he got there, he’d work out where it was. It was just a name. There was little chance that the Forerunner name bore any resemblance to what the world was known as now.

But before he stepped into freedom, even a terrifyingly unknown freedom, he had to get rid of the harness. Magnusson couldn’t detonate it, not here in this place that shut out al signals, but he couldn’t take it with him, because there would be no Huragok to remove it safely.

“Prone, come here and remove this harness,” Jul said. “Or I’l detonate it.”

< I was ordered not to. > “You know I’l do it. Remove it.”

< I must not. > “If I try to take it off, what happens to your terminal? What was your most important order? Do you obey the orders the Forerunners gave you, or those of these humans, who would destroy everything the Forerunners built if it suited them?”

Prone was as brightly luminous as Jul had ever seen him, tentacles fluttering aimlessly. Jul edged closer to the glowing portal to force the creature to act, and placed one leg across the threshold. It was the strangest feeling. He’d used portals before but none of them had felt like this.

His leg tingled as if it was being kneaded by thousands of fingers, not quite a tearing sensation but very uncomfortable nevertheless. He had both hands free now. He raised the harness a little higher. The next moment could prove to be his last.

Home or dead. There’s no other way.

< Wait. > Prone moved in very slowly and placed a tentacle on the harness. < This is foolish, but this terminal must not be damaged. But if you are damaged—that’s your choice. > Jul’s heart almost stopped. Prone’s tentacles slid over the straps and the weight of the harness lifted from Jul’s shoulders.

Now. Do it now.

Jul put al his weight on his back foot, the foot within the uncertain world of the portal, and let himself fal backward without a word. Light engulfed him.

Kelekos … It was not Onyx-Trevelyan, and that was al that mattered.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I BELIEVE THE SANGHEILI ARE BEGINNING TO ACCEPT THAT HUMANS ARE HERE TO STAY, AND EVEN IF THEY DON’T LIKE THAT, THEY’RE MORE INCLINED TO AVOID US THAN TO CONFRONT US. LET’S TOAST THIS, MARGARET. WHAT’S TODAY?

THURSDAY. VERY WELL—A BLOODY WAR, AND A QUICK PROMOTION.

(ADMIRAL LORD HOOD, CINCFLEET, MAKING THE HISTORIC ROYAL NAVY TOAST TRADITIONALLY PROPOSED ON THURSDAYS)

UNSC INFINITY, RETURNING TO THE SOL SYSTEM: ADMIRAL PARANGOSKY’S DAY CABIN

Bad news could never wait, the saying went, and thanks to the new slipspace comms Parangosky didn’t have to. But she’d stil been kept in the dark for far too long.

How the hel could anyone lose a Sangheili prisoner from a sealed world? How could ONI lose him?

Dear God … “It’s taken you fifteen hours to report ‘Mdama missing.” She stared at the screen, as worried as she was angry. I thought I could pick the right people. Perhaps I’m losing my touch. “Fifteen hours. Why?”

Irena Magnusson looked as if she was arguing for her life, and whether she knew it or not, she was. The imaging from Trevelyan was brutal y lifelike. The scientist’s mouth opened and closed a few times before any sound emerged, and it wasn’t a technical sync problem.

“Admiral, we had to carry out a search,” she said, shaky and desperate. “This is an entire planet.”

“You can’t search a planet in fifteen hours, either.”

“The Huragok said he saw Jul step through a portal. Those portals are unstable, and some don’t go anywhere. Some feed back into the sphere.

We don’t know where the others go, or if they go where they were intended to. The Huragok seems to think that some are so unstable that they’re dangerous or may even exit in space, or worse.”

“But the one he stepped through appears to be active, and you haven’t recovered a body.”

“Correct.”

“Then damn wel follow him, ” Parangosky snapped. “You’re the facility director, for God’s sake. Take some responsibility. You do know exactly which portal he activated, I take it. Yes or no?”

“Admiral, I did send a remote through as soon as we’d realized what had happened, but it emerged about two hundred klicks from here. It didn’t leave the sphere. And yes, we’re searching that area, too.”

This wasn’t the first debacle that Parangosky had experienced on her watch and almost certainly wouldn’t be the last, but this one needn’t have happened at al . She stil wasn’t sure if Jul ‘Mdama had escaped or not. She had to work on the assumption that he had.

What will he do next? Will he blurt everything out to the Arbiter? ‘Telcam’s not the problem. It’s the damage this will do within UNSC, between me and Hood, and the Arbiter might change his mind about the treaty.

But it won’t stop his civil war, it won’t stop me, and it won’t stop Infinity.

“How are you trying to track him now?” she asked.

“By surveil ance drones and by sending remotes through al the active portals. He’s not wearing his explosive harness, so we can’t locate him via that.”

“You al owed him out without it?”

“No, no, he pressured the Huragok into removing it, despite orders. We’l keep looking, Admiral, but we can’t rule out the possibility that he’s managed to reach another planet.”

Parangosky could do little right then, but Trevelyan was the most important asset that ONI had, perhaps even more than Infinity, which was not solely hers to deploy. The technology—the advances already discovered and the untold treasure stil to come—was the key to everything.

And it was currently under the directorship of an idiot.

My fault. I appointed her. Halsey wouldn’t have made that mistake, for all her faults.

Parangosky had a wil that could bend steel but even after seventy years in uniform, some things made her doubt herself. One of them was realizing she’d appointed the wrong person to a post. That meant removing them, and the more senior or sensitive the posting in ONI, the less suitable the failure was for release back into the wild. Magnusson wouldn’t be put out to pasture at some university to end her days as an obscure goddess to students who knew no better. She would have to be contained.

I seem to have bad luck with scientists these days. But I won’t let this one turn into another Halsey. Magnusson has to pay for her mistakes.

No second chances, no matter how good she is. These civilians are getting out of control. They have to learn that their actions have real consequences.

“Keep looking, and contact me the instant anything develops,” Parangosky said. “And I do mean instant. Expect a visit as soon as I get Infinity to divert from her mission, which should give you some idea of how very, very disappointed I am in you, Irena.”