Footsteps pattered behind Thel. He turned around and saw Reth trying to run away from Saal. Saal grabbed the Kig-Yar leader and dragged him back toward the windows and out of the direct line of fire.

"Do you two realize what you are doing?" the Kig-Yar asked.

Saal cocked his head. "We are kidnapping you."

Reth did not find it as amusing as Saal seemed to. "There are hundreds of thousands of Unggoy out there, all who are at my command."

"They are out there," Saal said. "But you and I know they cannot all get in here." And Saal chuckled.

"So you plan on doing what then?" Reth hissed. "You are meddling in extraordinarily important affairs."

Thel ducked behind the doorframe as more Unggoy spilled out into the far side of the corridor. One stumbled when he saw Thel duck back around with his plasma rifle. "Sangheili! Defend the Redoubt!" it screamed, and the back of its methane tank exploded from another accurate shot. Flaming debris struck other Unggoy, who lost their cohesive charge down the corridor and scattered, trying to pat the flames away before they got burned.

"That should hold them for a bit," Thel muttered. But then to his surprise, the Unggoy turned back toward him again.

These were some very determined Unggoy.

"They have something to fight for," Reth shouted. "Sangheili, you don't understand what's going on. You must free me. I can save your lives. I swear it."

Thel watched the Unggoy charge. There was little love between the Kig-Yar and Sangheili -- Reth's kind resented the position Sangheili held in the Covenant. And the Sangheili regarded the Kig-Yar as little more than scavengers.

Thel suspected Reth was lying and would happily have them killed the moment they set their weapons down.

But Reth pressed on nonetheless. "You are the Sangheili from

Retribution's Thunder, am I right?"

Why was Zhar taking so long? Thel shot another handful of Unggoy.

"Yes."

More came up the elevators and stairs and ran forward.

"It was a mistake. We should not have betrayed you to those Jiralhanae," Reth said in as soothing a voice as a Kig-Yar could. "But we needed you to not interfere! Not after all the work we've done so far."

Thel shook his head. "What is done is done. You have made your choices. Now we are making ours." Way too many Unggoy were rushing up to the top floor, flooding over dead bodies in the hall. Thel knew they were going to continue until he ran out of the charge in his plasma rifle.

"You go against the Hierarchs!" Reth shouted.

Saal backhanded the Kig-Yar. "We are on a direct mission for the Hierarchs. Do not dare blaspheme like that. As if you speak for the Hierarchs ..." he muttered.

Thel saw out of the corner of his eye that the Kig-Yar looked stunned. "Which Hierarch?"

"The Prophet of Regret himself," Saal proclaimed proudly.

Reth shook his head. "Wrong Prophet," he muttered, the feathered spines on his head wavering in confusion.

Wrong Prophet? Saal and Thel looked at each other, and then Saal shouted, "Zhar is up!"

Sure enough a column of disturbed air rippled just outside the windows.

"Blow the windows out!" Thel ordered. He shut the doors and locked them against the Unggoy.

Saal used a sticky grenade on the thick windows. The blue light pulsed, and then Thel grabbed Reth to shield him as the explosion shook the room.

Glass shards flew out, and the thunder of engines filled the room, bringing the acrid clouds of methane mist with it.

Thel hoisted Reth onto his back. "You scream, struggle, or move about, you will regret it dearly. Now take a deep breath while there's still some air!"

He followed Saal out onto the lip of the window, looking at the slope of the repurposed ship stretching out before him. They didn't want to go that way.

Slide off the edge, they'd have a very long fall.

Thel pulled himself and the weight of the Kig-Yar up, using his hands and legs to crawl up onto the slope of metal above the windows. Saal scrambled up ahead, unencumbered, to the top of the ship, where the shuttle hovered, waiting for them.

They needed one last tactic to gain them some time. Thel pulled out a pair of grenades and let them roll down toward the slope of the hull. As they dropped by his feet he kicked them in through the window.

He scrambled up after Saal as fast he could, the grenades' explosions blowing red flame and debris out of the windows underneath him as he ran.

The Unggoy pilot stood in the back of the shuttle, eyes wide in stunned surprise as he watched them run toward him. Zhar gently touched the top of the old Kig-Yar wreck with the shuttle and Saal and Thel leapt aboard. The tips of other grounded ships poked out of the thick, ruddy mists all around them like towers.

"Take it up!" Saal shouted forward, and they accelerated away, the structure dwindling at the top of the falls, the crater lake falling into the distance.

Chapter THIRTY-THREE

HABITAT EL CUIDAD, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

Despite being left alone, Ignatio Delgado had still not managed to free himself.

The thing was, trying to use a sliver of metal to pick the lock of a pair of handcuffs was a challenging proposition. And Delgado couldn't even get the sliver to reach the keyhole.

With a loud sigh the one guard in the warehouse stood up and folded up whatever he'd been watching and pocketed it. "Alright, Delgado, things are settling down. Time to get you moved out."

Delgado nodded, filled with a sense of foreboding. This was it, then.

The guard noticed the look on his face. "Come on, Delgado. It's not like that."

"Really?" Delgado looked the heavily muscled man up and down. "How is it, then?"

The man shrugged. "All Bonifacio and the Security Council know is that the data keeps getting found out. Better to keep you on close watch."

Delgado shook his head. "Then why are you doing this? Why the hired muscle, the empty warehouse?"

"It keeps you under his eye. He doesn't trust you, Delgado. You're a wild card, man." Delgado was unshackled from the chain, then handcuffed to the man's right wrist.

With a shove, Delgado was pushed forward.

"What's your name?" Delgado asked.

"Owen."

"Your real name?"

"What do you think?"

"Owen" asked, looking down at Delgado as he herded him outside to a waiting tube car.

"Where are we going?" Delgado asked.

Owen smiled. "One of Bonifacio's working ships."

Delgado frowned. "Working ships? He have a lot of broken ones?"

. "Look." Owen leaned in close, almost whispering. "Relax a little, Delgado. Bonifacio's going to be in a foul mood because his smuggler ship, it just got fried."

"What?"

Owen was laughing. "The best-laid plans ... Someone really doesn't like Bonifacio. They fried his ship. It's structurally intact, but nothing inside it works; the data got wiped out."

Delgado swallowed. The Spartans had struck again. "So now Bonifacio needs me."

"Pretty much."

The tube car stopped after making its way between a handful of coupled asteroids. Owen opened the door, and Delgado quickly followed him to avoid being yanked along.

Peter Bonifacio stood near an airlock, along with a handful of Security Council members. Including Diego Esquival.

Owen unlocked the handcuffs, and Delgado massaged his wrists. "What's this all about?"

"Where's the navigation data, Mr. Delgado?" one of the suited Security Council members asked.

Delgado stood still for a second. "Safe. As we agreed on."

Diego pursed his lips. "Bonifacio presented evidence to the council that there are Earth-first elements within our population that have attacked any navigation data that might lead ships of any sort back to Earth or the Inner Colonies. The data you have needs to be transported to its final destination, where it will be better safeguarded."

"Final destination?" Delgado looked around at them. "What final destination? The Kig-Yar? Come on, you know where that will lead."

"We're moving it to the Exodus Project," said one of the councilmen, an older man with scars across his face. "It's final. We've all voted. So please, Mr.

Delgado, give up the data. You've served the Rubble well. It's time to hand it over now."

"What the hell is this Exodus Project?" Delgado snapped.

"It's just a big emergency plan," Diego said. "We can't talk about the particulars."

"And it needs nav data?" Delgado looked at Diego.

"Yes." Diego nodded, and spread his arms. "It really does, Ignatio. Please, trust me on this. Trust the Council as the Rubble's elected leaders."

Delgado looked at the other members. They didn't look like they meant him any ill.

But was it the right choice, whatever they had in mind? Delgado took a deep breath. It wasn't his decision to make, was it? The Rubble had elected the entire Council for a reason. The Council had hired Delgado.

He was no longer keeper of the data.

"Okay," Delgado said. "It's aboard

Distancia.

I have to key everything open."

Diego laughed. "In plain sight, huh?"

"The best place." For a quick moment, everything felt okay. Maybe even normal. Delgado relaxed slightly.

The sensation was shattered as Peter Bonifacio stepped forward. "I'll take him over to

Distancia, then meet the rest of you at Exodus. The

Distancia only has a light guard on it. It's an easy target. My guards aren't just Rubble Defense volunteers, they have actual fighting experience." There was accusation in his glare, and Delgado saw a few nod in agreement. It looked like Bonifacio had been knocking Delgado's ability, to keep the data safe.

Diego came forward. "I go with you." He and Delgado shared a glance.

Bonifacio shrugged. "I'd be delighted to have you aboard, Councilman, as well as anyone else who wants to come. Keep in mind, my ship's quarters are cramped. This way." He held out his hand, indicating that they should go first.

His guards had already cycled through the airlock into the ship Bonifacio had waiting for them.

It was a cramped ship, a converted tug of some sort. It had probably once grappled dirty asteroids and pushed them into new orbits to be harvested by the miners and their processing plants. Now it was Bonifacio's personal transport. Quick enough, Delgado thought, looking around the extended

cockpit once they'd come in through the airlock. But still a bit over the top. Who had a personal ship just for transport in the Rubble? It was part of Bonifacio's desire to preen and make a point of showing how special he was.

Bonifacio got inside, gave the order to leave, and turned to Delgado. In the darkly lit cockpit he looked birdlike, his eyes pools of beady darkness.

"Someone fried my ship, everything electrical was shorted, and several good men guarding it are dead. That costs.

A lot."

"I'm sorry to hear it," Delgado said, eyeing the three large guards now surrounding him in the tiny cockpit.

Diego chuckled, and Bonifacio turned to him. "This amuses you? The future of the Rubble is laughable? I'm working hard to make sure we have a future, despite your meddling."

"A future?" Diego shook his head. "You're full of shit, Bonifacio. You care about future profits, not the future."

"Yeah?" Bonifacio reached into his pocket, hands trembling slightly, face red. "Were you all so high-and-mighty when the Covenant first came? Tell Delgado the real story, and how you all, in your democratic glory, turned to one person when it all came to a head."

Diego didn't say anything.

Bonifacio shook his head and pulled out a Sweet William. He pointed the cigar at Diego. "They tell you how the Kig-Yar contact really happened? I'll bet not. Because it doesn't make those men look good."

He lit the cigar and drew in a long pull, then laughed, cigar smoke puffing out of his mouth. "They crapped their pants when that first Kig-Yar ship swung by the Rubble, scanning us, checking everything out. Wanted to know what to do. Attack it, or try to pack up and run to some other part of the system? And if attack, how? But they were taking so long to deliberate, I did something else.

"I hailed it. And I offered to trade. Sent them a manifest of everything I could imagine we had in our storage areas. I explained we weren't UNSC, that we hated them. That we were rebels. Because, really, even other species have to know about trade, right, Delgado? Economics, that's universal.

Everyone wants to better themselves."

"That was the real first encounter?" Delgado asked. "So it's the second where their ship appeared and offered to trade and set up in the Rubble?"

"A month later. Some sort of Kig-Yar big shot named Reth had a box that could translate their speech into ours. Like they've been studying us," Diego said. "And they wanted to trade."

Bonifacio nodded. "We took guns off them to sell to our brothers, where we could smuggle them back to the colonies, in exchange for goods. The Kig-Yar, in turn, wanted Slipspace drives."

"Slipspace drives?" Delgado frowned.

"Turns out the Kig-Yar are pretty low on the Covenant totem pole." Bonifacio smirked. "They're not allowed to build drives for their own ships. Its engineering is all done by the ones they call Prophets. Closed boxes for the Kig-Yar. See, they're not the monolithic juggernaut the UNSC makes them out to be, this

Covenant. They have divisions and inequalities. And where those exist, we have what you call a market, Mr. Delgado. Combine the engines with

Earth's location, and the Rubble will do more for the Insurrection than any other place in history."

"But what happens when the Kig-Yar slip up and we're all found out?" Delgado asked. "The Covenant will be back to glass us."

"We leave," Diego muttered.

"Ahhh, exodus, exodus, exodus," Bonifacio waved his cigar around. "Diego, we have spent so long building all this. And you want to run away from it?"