Then BB recognized one Sangheili approaching Phil ips on a col ision course.

“Professor,” ‘Telcam said. “You’ve put yourself at great risk.”

“I was invited by the Arbiter. Seemed difficult to refuse.”

“But why here? Where’s your pilot?”

“I left him at the inn with half the solution to an arum. He’s quite engrossed.”

The two of them started walking in another direction. There was an entrance ahead, a very old building that had to be the temple. Phil ips walked through the gates and the camera went into sudden gloom.

“This is wonderful,” Phil ips said, swal owing hard. Keep going, Professor, BB thought. That’s it. Steady. “This must date from before your first contact with the San’Shyuum.”

“Correct, Professor,” ‘Telcam said. Figures scuttled around them in the gloom. They didn’t seem to be in the building yet, just standing in the dappled shade of trees. “I’m glad you respect its antiquity and significance. Now … tel me what you know about Jul ‘Mdama.”

For a terrible moment, Phil ips’s heart rate went haywire. BB confirmed that the radio unit was in close enough contact with the man’s chest to eject the needle, and hated himself for his instant efficiency.

“Should I know him?” Phil ips managed at last.

The two of them were walking slowly toward the temple. BB could see the entrance, but there seemed to be some crowd movement streaming past them, not the usual audience Phil ips now gathered. Something else had seized their attention.

“What’s that?” Osman asked.

Naomi didn’t blink. “I think—”

Then the cam flared, pure white, as if Phil ips had turned straight into the sun and the lens was struggling for a moment, fol owed by a split second of silence before a dul whoomp registered on BB’s analytical audio as an explosion. The camera tipped: maybe Phil ips had fal en or dived for cover, or perhaps ‘Telcam had pushed him to the ground.

“Christ, what’s going on?” Osman snapped. “BB, anything you can do with that image?”

“I’l try, but—”

He could hear ‘Telcam’s voice, a little distant but definitely shaken. “It’s not us,” he said in Sangheili. “It’s not us. What in the name of the gods is happening?”

There was no sound from Phil ips, but his heart was stil pounding. That was something. Then there was another booming explosion, this time without light, and the cam feed dissolved in static. BB felt as if his arm had been torn off, a real physical pain. He thought he had no concept of himself as a corporeal entity, let alone one with limbs, until that moment.

The silence was sudden and complete. And he hurt.

Osman reached for the comms console faster than BB imagined a human could, even a Spartan. She didn’t look at Naomi.

“Kilo-Five, this is Port Stanley, ” she said. “Devereaux, get everyone back here right now. We’re heading back to Sanghelios immediately. Phillips is in trouble.”

And if he was, there was nothing that BB, so used to being ubiquitous and al -seeing, could now do to help him or spare him, and he couldn’t even assess the threat that faced him. He didn’t even know if his fragment was stil functioning. For the first time, the AI ful y understood what a terrifying, uncertain world his human col eagues had to exist in.

“Let’s move it, BB,” Osman said. “Stand by to slip.”