Zhar frowned. "Asteroids?"

Thel smiled. Zhar, ever the analytical. Hardheaded, but a hard thinker. He knew that the Kig-Yar, after leaving their homeworld, had chosen to settle out among the asteroids of their home system. It was what had made them so hard for the Prophets to ferret out while battling them when the Kig-Yar had initially resisted joining the Covenant. "Yes. We will seed the asteroid belt with sensor buoys. We will leave no stone unturned."

Zhar nodded. "It will be done."

Thel leaned over. "Veer, would you do me the ..." his voice dripped with sarcasm, "... honor of contacting

A Psalm Every Day?"

Veer nodded, and the three-dimensional image of Pellius appeared in front of Thel. The Jiralhanae stood eye-to-eye with Thel. Behind the giant, furred chieftain sat the Kig-Yar Ship-mistress, Chur 'R-Mut, her lanky arms draped over her chair's arms. He grinned his needle-sharp grin and the quills on his head twitched.

Pellius curled his lip slightly. "What do you want? We're preparing to land and search the destroyed capital city."

"You will not find anything there," Thel said, and explained what he'd already told his bridge crew.

The Jiralhanae chieftan looked disappointed. For a second. "You still search, though?"

"Yes."

"Good." And then the image faded away.

"jiralhanae," spat Saal from his weapons console. "Uncivil and untrustworthy."

"So they are," Thel agreed. "The Prophets in their inscrutable wisdom have assigned them to us. They are here to stay. Zhar move us out."

Without seeding the system with navigation buoys the ship's own long-range scanners weren't good enough to root out a hiding enemy. Unless

something was moving around.

To catch sneaking ships, they'd need to lay some traps.

Thel settled into his chair, getting ready for the Slipspace hop they'd have to make to the asteroid belt, when Veer straightened in his chair.

"Shipmaster," Veer hissed. "Our long range instruments are detecting multiple signals. They are not even trying to hide!" Thel hid his excitement before them. "Where?"

"The gas giant."

Not where he'd been expecting. But nonetheless, they had something!

"Take us there," Thel ordered.

Retribution's Thunder poked a hole through space and time as the ship made the sudden leap from Madrigal to a trailing orbit just behind 23 Librae's sole gas giant.

This was a great location Thel thought. Gas giants tended to have small rocky clusters both in front of their orbit and behind them -- it was a natural place to hove his ship to and spy on whatever was going on near the gas giant.

Retribution's Thunder's screens lit up with contact symbols. Alarms wailed as the crew scrambled for damage control and fire stations, and Thel

realized he hadn't been the only one with that particular idea.

"Situation?" Thel barked.

"They are everywhere!" a Sangheili shouted from the deck. "We are surrounded."

Thel whipped around at the outburst to look at the unnamed and slightly unnerved Sangheili. "Get off my bridge!" Thel turned to Saal. "Take his console. What do we face -- numbers and weapons strength?"

"My honor, Shipmaster," Saal replied quickly.

Thel watched the shamed Sangheili slink off the bridge, disgusted that someone so incompetent could end up on his bridge.

"Human contacts," Saal reported. "But they do not appear to be warships. And they are not moving to engage."

"Tell Pellius to hold his fire and follow our lead." Thel stood up and walked toward the screens, a long shipmaster's cloak pulling off the chair with him. His ancestors had worn thick, doarmir-fur cloaks like this at sea to stay warm and dry on long voyages.

Thel had made his by hand during a long recuperation in the Vadam Keep after a training accident the family had tried to hide. Thel remembered the shame of seeing his own blood spilled on the sand of the training ring in the courtyard, due to his own mistake. He recalled the faintness and the tall snowcapped mountains that rose above Vadam Keep as he pitched to his side.

The family had a recently promoted shipmaster in their bloodline, and they had been loath to lose that particular honor. They'd secretly called for a doctor in the night and held Thel down by his limbs as he was operated on.

Thel kept the cloak as a reminder to himself that he could make grave mistakes when he let his guard down.

Mistakes like letting an inexperienced minor Sangheili aboard the bridge who panicked at the thought of being surrounded by human warships.

"Make sure that coward gets his rations revoked," Thel said to Veer, letting his mind dwell on that particular incident now that he knew the ship was not in danger. "Maybe with a hunger in his belly he will find the hunger in his soul that he needs to be a real warrior."

"A well thought-out solution, shipmaster," Veer said, and leaned over to send out the command.

"Saal, report." Thel gathered the cloak around. Be sharp, he reminded himself. Keep your mind open, and think sideways instead of walking forward into a pit-trap.

"I... I have to show you," Saal said.

A complex set of scans appeared on the screens. Thel narrowed his eyes, then opened his mandibles in shock. "These are all asteroids," he said. "They are all connected."

There were hundreds of connected worldlets.

"This is unlike anything I have ever seen the humans do," Thel said out loud. "There was nothing like it when the human world here was destroyed."

"Perhaps they built it after that?" Zhar suggested. He looked intrigued by the scans. "You have to admit, that demonstrates some strong blood on their part, to remain here and build after the Prophets ordered them destroyed."

"Strong indeed," Thel agreed.

"But it does them little good ultimately," Jora said. "Their blasphemy still cannot stand, and they must all still die."

"What bothers me," Thel grumbled, "is that they have gone this long unnoticed."

"I think I know why," Zhar said. He tapped his console, and before the bridge crew the long-distance image of a Kig-Yar freighter appeared.

It was docked against one of the many asteroids in the superstructure.

A human structure.

"What new treachery is this?" Thel hissed. The Kig-Yar, pirates and scum, worked under contracts given out by the ministries. They were hardly loyal fighters; they had little nobility. But they usually remained in line due to the dual methods of Unggoy Deacons aboard their ships, as well as the contracts and payments the Prophets offered them.

Thel could hardly believe what he saw.

"Brace for impact!" Saal warned, just as the

Retribution's Thunder shivered, throwing Thel from his feet against a pillar.

So the humans had found them and were attacking, Thel thought as he sprang for his shipmaster's throne.

The second impact stabbed through the heart of Thel's ship, a violent, metal-boiling line of light that just missed the bridge. But this wasn't human.

Humans employed kinetic or explosive ordnance, not plasma.

A Psalm Every Day was preparing a second volley. It was very obvious that the plasma salvo was from another Covenant vessel.

Their own escort.

"Traitors!" Thel seethed. "Evasive maneuvers!"

"I have a firing solution," Jora yelled, turning to Thel. "Permission to fire, Shipmaster?"

"Fire at will! Saal tactical Slipspace, now!"

But getting past the shock of being fired upon by their own escort had cost them critical seconds. Even as

Retribution's Thunder fired back, another salvo of blue plasma ripped through the heart of Thel's ship.

He could feel some of the engines firing, but they had been too slow. Sangheili double hearts could take far more acceleration than Jiralhanae or Kig-Yar, but the incredible random high-speed evasive maneuvers Thel had braced himself for didn't come.

"Status," Thel snapped.

He did not like the returning reports. They were venting precious air into space. The number of casualties was rising. Long range communications were down. Life support was failing. The last volley had taken their core engines offline, and their ability to generate plasma had gone with it. While most of their sensors were still operational, they could go nowhere and do nothing.

Pellius appeared in hologram before Thel. The Jiralhanae looked pleased with himself, his large teeth bared. "A mighty shipmaster Sangheili, helpless before me. I shall savor this moment for the rest of my life."

Thel stared at Pellius and wondered where the Kig-Yar ship-mistress had gone. She was nowhere to be seen on the bridge. "It will be a short life."

"Not as short as yours. Good-bye, Shipmaster." Pellius faded away.

"He has released boarding craft and Spirits!" Saal reported.

"They will not have the

Retributions' Thunder,"

Thel said, staring at the spot Pellius had faded from. "Alert the crew. Get in protective gear and draw the boarders in deep. Rig every section to explode.

We will leave nothing to salvage!"

"Shipmaster! A Psalm Every Day has engaged their slipspace drive!" Zhar said. "They're leaving!"

"Leaving?" Jora growled.

"The humans are not likely to go anywhere as are we. He will report whatever his feeble mind can concoct when he reaches

High Charity."

"They get the glory for reporting this structure and the humans hiding here," Zhar concluded with frustration. "Cursed cowards," hissed Jora. "The Spirits are approaching to attack!"

"Where are their boarding craft?"

"They are hanging back."

In the distance, the outer hull shook and shivered as Spirits flew up and down the length of the ship, strafing it.

Thel broke the arm off his chair in frustration. "Those who wish to escape the ship may do so now."

It was a rhetorical statement. But it did serve one purpose: to weed out any dishonorable Sangheili who might falter by your side.

Thel pressed his mouth parts firm against each other as they waited in silence for a handful of dishonorable crew to desert. Maybe they were serfs who had risen far enough to work simple duties aboard the ship, or Sangheili who'd managed to hide their lack of real blood.

He waited for that, and for the Kig-Yar to get bolder and try to board the ship.

One of the screens showed Sangheili trying to escape aboard

Spirits from inside

Retribution's Thunder's hold, and the Kig-Yar-run ships fell on them en masse, overwhelming them. Plasma ripped out and filled the space around the ship, and it wasn't long before the cowardly died in the vacuum at the hands of traitorous Kig-Yar.

A fitting fate, Thel thought. "Fire the empty escape pods," he ordered.

They watched those get destroyed, and it strengthened their resolve to fight. To run was to die.

Now the Kig-Yar felt that they could risk boarding, with what seemed like most of the crew of the ship gone.

Thel waited. Waited until Kig-Yar swarmed the hull and trooped through the heart of his ship, and then gave the order.

Explosions ripped through the interior, section by section. The smooth, bulbous lines of his ship flexed and twisted, and fire gushed out from in between the cracks, roiling up through the corridors.

The air in the bridge heated up, and then rushed out. Thel found himself panting for air that no longer existed, and then a secondary explosion turned the cockpit inside out.

Thel hurtled through the air and struck a bulkhead.

Chapter TWENTY-THREE

HESIOD, 23 LIBRAE

The

Kestrel was a svelte smuggler of a ship, more engine than cargo bay. Even then, civilian engine technology didn't hold a candle to what the

Midsummer Night had at its heart.

The

Midsummer Night had been shadowing the

Kestrel for almost a week. UNSC sensor buoys had been put on high alert on the edges of the system, and caught the

Kestrel preparing for its jump into Slipspace. These were the same sensor buoys that had detected the inbound Covenant.

Dmitri Zheng had thrown the

Midsummer Night on a ripping course out to follow it. Badia Campbell at ops reported nervously that the ship's reactor was struggling to keep up.

But the ship had been shaken out. No more pipes blew, or components failed. She'd gotten up to speed, closing in on the Insurrectionist ship like a shark slipping up from the depths on its prey.

On their way out, they'd all continued to watch broadcasts from sensor posts scattered throughout the system of the Covenant ships moving over

Charybdis IX, glassing the surface.

The mood onboard had remained somber and determined. The crew had been itching to fight, and now had to turn tail and run.

No one liked it.

But they had a mission, and they'd all had friends and family fall to the Covenant. Despite Zheng's anger, many had gotten used to the dull pain of human loss. Casualties mounted; they had for years. It had become a part of life for many.

Now they were deep behind Covenant lines, hopping through what had once been the Outer Colonies, sticking close behind the

Kestrel as it seemed to randomly jump into Slipstream space.

"We're close," Keyes announced. The last three jumps the

Kestrel had taken made a line on the star charts that Keyes could use.

Assuming that the jumps continued in their pattern, Keyes had run the charts. He posted the result to the bridge crew's screens.

Zheng took a look and frowned. "You think they're headed to Madrigal? That planet was glassed by the Covenant."

"It could be where they make their drops," Keyes suggested. He paused as his sensors showed the smuggler making another jump.

He was right. The last several Slipspace jumps took them to the outer edge of the system, and then the

Kestrel began curving its way in-system.

The

Midsummer Night followed, invisible and silent. They coasted with the

Kestrel all the way into the depths of the system.

"It isn't Madrigal," Keyes announced several shifts later, reviewing the navigation data left by a junior officer.