Osman saluted and wondered if she would hold ONI together for as long as Parangosky had.

As if the Admiral’s exit was his cue, Mendez broke away from a conversation with the Spartan-IIs and Mal, Vaz, and Devereaux. Maybe Osman was reading too much into it, but there seemed to be a gap in the group, and Naomi was definitely standing with the ODSTs. Mendez headed her way.

“Looking good, Chief,” she said.

He patted his gut, self-conscious. “It stil fits after al these years, ma’am. You’re back on patrol now?”

“No rest for the wicked. I expect we’l see one another again fairly soon, though.”

“If it’s okay with you, Kel y, Linda, and Fred aren’t going to take you up on your offer of access to their files for the time being, but they’re grateful for the opportunity.” He slipped a white-gloved finger inside his col ar as if to loosen it a little. Maybe it didn’t quite fit after al . “I think it’s too much too soon. And maybe thirty-five years too late anyway.”

“That’s okay,” Osman said. “They’ve always got the option.” She reached out for his hand and shook it. “Look after yourself, Chief.”

Mendez gave her one of his tight, regretful smiles. “And you stay out of trouble, ma’am.”

An event like this would normal y have broken down into spotting old shipmates and sinking further into reminiscence, and then, once a few suitably bracing drinks had been taken in the wardroom, she would make her excuses for an early getaway before it al got too emotional and messy for her. But she had a very good excuse for absence today. She had a coup to support.

She jerked her head in the direction of the waiting transport and gave the ODSTs and Naomi a get-moving gesture, just a discreet tilt of her thumb. They’d made a lot of effort with the spit and polish. Vaz looked especial y wel turned out. Osman wondered if his feckless ex-girlfriend had bothered to contact him again, and hoped that he’d had the sense to tel her to sling her hook.

“Does it offend you, al this focus on the Spartans?” she asked. The pool driver couldn’t hear them in the front compartment, and Naomi had turned to gaze out of the window as if to indicate she wasn’t taking part in this conversation. “I know the Master Chief played a pivotal role, but I wonder if the other side of al this adulation is almost dismissing the role of the ordinary guys who were kil ed and maimed to stop the Covenant.”

Mal looked as if he wanted to loosen his high col ar too. They’d been stuck in those uniforms for more than seven hours. “At least it’s not al tea and medals for the senior command, ma’am. The Spartans were NCOs. No offense.”

“None taken, Staff.”

Port Stanley was close to an Earth orbit for a fast slip. Osman wondered if the detour had been worth it in lost time, because the Arbiter’s visit had been uneventful and she could have hung around Sanghelios after al . But she looked at the faces around her, and decided it had been no bad thing to give her ODSTs and Naomi a chance to grieve and remember.

She couldn’t think of it as closure. It was al very far from over, and there would be more names to engrave on plaques, both on Earth and on distant worlds.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FOR US, THE STORM HAS PASSED, THE WAR IS OVER. BUT LET US NEVER FORGET THOSE WHO JOURNEYED INTO THE HOWLING DARK AND DID NOT RETURN. FOR THEIR DECISION REQUIRED COURAGE BEYOND MEASURE—SACRIFICE, AND UNSHAKABLE CONVICTION THAT THEIR FIGHT, OUR FIGHT, WAS ELSEWHERE. AS WE START TO REBUILD, THIS HILLSIDE WILL REMAIN BARREN, A MEMORIAL TO HEROES FALLEN. THEY ENNOBLED ALL OF US, AND THEY SHALL NOT BE FORGOTTEN.

(ADMIRAL LORD HOOD, DEDICATING THE UNSC MEMORIAL TO THE DEAD OF THE COVENANT WAR, VOI, KENYA, MARCH 2553)

UNSC PORT STANLEY, EN ROUTE FOR THE SANGHELIOS SECTOR.

“Are you seriously going through with this?” Devereaux asked.

“How can I say no?” Phil ips was fiddling with the arum and trying to look nonchalant, but BB knew better. He suspected that Devereaux did, too.

“It needs doing. And it’s an incredible opportunity.”

“It wil be, if you survive to write the paper.”

“Come on, I’m a guest of the Arbiter. I’l be as safe as houses. It’s only for a few weeks.”

“And he’s really safe, of course. Because people like us aren’t trying to foment civil war al around him.”

“Most people say ferment, ” Phil ips said, winking at her. “Correct usage always impresses us academics.”

“Wel , you better leave that toy behind or they’l know something’s not quite right.” She took the arum from him. “Are you really okay about this?”

“I don’t know enough to be dangerous.”

Actual y, he did. That was partly why BB was going along for the ride in fragment form, with just enough of his program instal ed in Phil ips’s personal comms kit to be useful and to flag problems to Port Stanley, but with none of the core matrix accessible to those busy Sangheili fingers— or Huragok, if he was unlucky—if anything went badly wrong.

And if the worst happened, he would silence Phil ips permanently if he couldn’t be extracted. He wasn’t sure if Phil ips had ful y grasped what a lethal injection did, because he’d hardly reacted to the news. But the man had a pretty good imagination, and he’d now settled into this dirty business with a speed and enthusiasm that made BB wonder whether he’d actual y been planted within ONI by a rival agency.

But there are no rival agencies. We castrated them all. Left them cowering in our shadow. What am I thinking?

The natural state of paranoia affected even AIs, BB reflected. But it was a lot healthier than being a trusting soul. It certainly made for a longer lifespan.

Devereaux and Phil ips hung around the dropship, waiting for Osman to show up and see him off. The captain came thundering down the gantry a few minutes later.

“Al ready, then?” she asked. “Now remember what I said. However tempting it is, don’t get too clever. Just observe. Concentrate on the cultural stuff, not data gathering. Just be what you real y are.”

“It’s okay, Captain, I’ve got my suicide pil .”

BB tried to make light of it. “It’s just a sharp ejected from your personal radio, and you won’t feel a thing,” he said. “I’l be gentle.”

“It’s so good to have friends like you, BB.”

Osman didn’t seem to find it funny. Her lips compressed in a tight line for a moment. “We’l be back to extract you in a week. And you don’t go anywhere without that radio—not even the shower. Got it? I don’t care which body cavity you have to insert it in. They’l expect you to have personal comms anyway, but there’s no sense in making them too interested in it.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

Osman half turned to go, then seemed to change her mind and turned back to give him an awkward pat on the back. It was the kind of stiff exchange that suggested she was convinced he wouldn’t make it back. BB hoped Phil ips didn’t notice.

Devereaux raised an eyebrow as Osman walked off. “You’re wel in there, Prof.”

“I’m not even going to ask what that means, but I think it scares me. Shal we go?”

They were interrupted by a cacophony of off-key singing from the gantry above. Mal and Vaz were watching from up top, arms folded on the rail and singing the theme tune from Undercover. It was a popular spy drama, although not with BB. Phil ips laughed.

“I may be back sooner than you think, Control,” he said, doing a pretty good impression of the actor’s catchphrase.

“Don’t get yourself kil ed,” Mal cal ed. “And don’t let BB stick that needle in you. Nobody else can do that stupid puzzle.”

“Phyl is,” Vaz cal ed. “Is it true the hinge-head cal s you Phyllis?”

“BB, you’re a bastard,” Phil ips muttered. “Yes, Vaz, he does, because he can’t pronounce my name.”

“Okay, Phyl is. We believe you.”

They roared with laughter. Phil ips seemed to understand the oblique language of slagging now, and take it for what it was—the ODSTs’ way of tel ing him that he was one of their own and that they were seriously concerned for his welfare. A nickname was a sure sign of comradeship. He gave them a Girl Scout salute and climbed into the dropship.

This was the point where BB was more conscious of his many fragments. One aspect of him was now clipped on Phil ips’s top pocket, and another was stil light-years away in Sydney, walking through electronic corridors to gossip, argue, peer into filing cabinets, slam doors, rap knuckles, and play pranks in the invisible and political y tangled community of AIs. At the same time, his matrix occupied Port Stanley and oversaw every aspect of the corvette and her crew, both consciously and subliminal y. He’d tried to explain this multitasking to Mal and Vaz, and final y achieved it by comparing himself with a human being watching TV while having a conversation with the person sitting next to them, holding a datapad on their lap, and keeping an ear on a conversation taking place in the kitchen. It could al be done, even by humans. It was just done on a far broader, more complex scale by an AI.

Phil ips made the journey to Sanghelios in the cockpit, sitting in the copilot’s seat and chatting to Devereaux. BB was both there and not there as far as they were concerned. They seemed to have reached the stage where they could talk freely without embarrassment. He could hear how their voices and language had changed since the end of January, from the hesitation and careful y chosen words of the first days to complete informality now. In a few weeks, a group of complete strangers from unpromisingly different backgrounds had not only welded themselves into a cohesive team, but had grown comfortable with a permanent and intrusive presence like himself. He didn’t judge them like a human, and they knew it BB was happy. He could define it now. It made him feel thoroughly satisfied with his existence. He turned his attention back to Port Stanley while the dropship approached Sanghelios and picked up its fighter escorts.

“Do you have five minutes, Captain?”

Osman swung her chair away from the console. “Shoot.”

“The Admiral’s instructed me to brief you on a project that’s been withheld from you until now. And don’t take offense at that, by the way.”

“None taken,” Osman said. “I’ve been in ONI for too long. She said you’d brief me.”

Ah, Osman was a little gem. She ful y accepted there were things she was better off not knowing for the time being. It made her easy to work for.

Damian Hogarth didn’t have that subtle judgment, though, and expended far too much energy in pointless fishing expeditions. There was a time for trawling, BB decided, and there was a time for hauling in your nets and conserving your fuel. Osman trusted Parangosky as much as she seemed to trust anyone. There weren’t many people who felt that way about the Admiral, but however Machiavel ian she could be—and Machiavel i was an uncomplicated soul by comparison—she wasn’t untrustworthy. What you saw was what you got; provided you saw it coming, of course.

Many hadn’t.

“It’s a project cal ed Infinity, ” BB said. “To be exact, Infinity is a warship—a very, very expensive prototype, because she’s been fitted with every scrap of Forerunner technology we’ve picked apart during the course of the war, and now she’l benefit from the tech Halsey found in the sphere.

Unfortunately, the Woodentop Navy needed to know about her because even ONI couldn’t hide anything that big in the budget, but it’s stil known to only a handful of very senior officers.”

He got a smile out of Osman with Woodentop Navy. It was what he cal ed any branch of the senior service that wasn’t ONI. “So how about al those yappy shipyard workers and technicians, then?” she asked.

“There’s not much yapping they can do when they’ve been permanently deployed in the Oort Cloud with ful comms lockdown for the past few years,” BB said. “Would you like to see the schematics?”

He flashed up the deck-by-deck blueprint on the screen to her left. She rested her elbows on the console and leaned forward, lips slowly parting as the ful wonder of Infinity began to sink in.

“Ooh.” She hovered on the edge of a smile. “And al that wonderful kit that Halsey’s found.” Then the smile iced over again. “Is that real y why she went to Onyx, then? Did we misjudge her?”

“Oh, good grief, no. She real y didn’t know anything about Infinity, believe me. She would only have tried to take over the project. No, the crazy hijacker act was just that. Crazy. Not a cover for anything.”

Osman’s gaze went back to the blueprints again. “Who’s going to have command?”

“Andrew Del Rio’s been driving her for a few years. It’s not easy to find competent commanders who can drop off the grid unnoticed for that long.

And we’ve had some Spartan-Fours out there for a while too. But with the slipspace navigation refinement, I think Infinity’s going to be ready for trials a lot sooner than planned.”

“I don’t suppose I get to do any working-up in her.”

“You’re the heir to the ONI throne, my dear. I imagine you can do anything you like when the time comes. We might even get you on a Thursday war.”

“Just tel me Hogarth isn’t going to pip me at the post now my back’s turned.”

BB coughed. “I am your back. I have contingency plans to make sure that doesn’t happen in the event that the Admiral’s wishes aren’t immediately honored.”

“Bless you, BB.”

“Bless the Admiral, Captain.”

BB left Osman to pore over the blueprints. If he’d had physical hands, he’d have brought her a nice strong coffee so she could ful y enjoy browsing through the fine detail of the ship. Where other women read magazines, Osman liked nothing better than to while away the time with a dense pile of data. There was stil a lot of the Spartan in her. BB sometimes wondered what kind of operational Spartan she would have made, just the averagely terrifying kind or a ful -blown angel of death.