“No Phil ips here, Staff.”
“We’re going to have to search the grounds.” Vaz didn’t feel very comradely right then. “Quietly. Are those hinge-heads inside the wal s yet?”
They stood outside for a few moments, looking and listening, just in case Phil ips decided to pop up from a hiding place and they could run for it.
But it was a few seconds too long. Vaz edged beyond the building and held his breath. He was looking at maybe a hundred Elites as they clustered around the front door, right inside the compound. Someone was arguing with them. It wasn’t Phil ips. It looked like Olar, the hinge-head they’d met going in.
And then one of the Sangheili turned to face Vaz.
“Nishum! ” he roared.
Vaz didn’t need a translation. The hinge-heads surged forward and he ducked back. Mal and Naomi got the idea instantly. They started running down the side of the temple building toward the rear, fol owed by a roaring that sounded like the surge of a tidal wave.
“Dev, here we come,” Mal said. “Plan B. Up and out, fast as you can.”
The noise of the drives suddenly rose into a high-pitched whine. It was going to be a rough takeoff. Vaz skidded around the end of the wal just behind Naomi, who reached into her belt and flung something back over her head without even looking. Vaz caught a glimpse as it arced over him.
“Just smoke,” she said. “Every second counts.”
The smoke grenade went off behind them with a loud bang and Vaz spotted Tart-Cart’s velvet gray nose up ahead. The next thing he saw was half a dozen Elites between him and the ship. The dropship’s side hatch was open. If this wasn’t ‘Telcam’s guys coming to help them out, it was going to turn ugly pretty fast. Then one of the hinge-heads answered the question by aiming his plasma pistol, and a green bolt of energy sizzled off Vaz’s shoulder plate, almost bowling him over. Something caught him and shoved him upright in a second—maybe Naomi, maybe Mal—and his body did what it had learned to do without thinking: he returned fire, and kept firing as he ran, crashing into one Sangheili so hard that the impact hurt deep in his sinuses. He didn’t realize how high he could jump until he landed in the open hatch and smashed onto the coaming. He rol ed clear and grabbed the first arm he could see. Mal hauled him through the hatch and Naomi jumped onto the step, holding on to the hul .
“Go, Dev,” Mal yel ed. “Lift. Go go go. ”
The dropship shot up vertical y like a mortar. Vaz found himself on his back, looking through the open hatch at a fireworks show of green and white streaks zipping past Naomi, framed in silhouette for a second. The hatch shut and sealed with a fwoomp of air.
“So,” Devereaux said. “No Phil ips. If he’d been outside, I’d have found him.”
“If he’d been inside, we’d have found him.” Mal leaned over Vaz and checked him out. “So, apart from explaining to Osman how we managed to start a riot and kil a few hinge-heads on holy ground, I think we ought to start an aerial search.”
Vaz’s ribs were starting to throb where he’d fal en against the hatch. “He can’t have gone that far. No more than thirty klicks, even if he was running.”
Naomi looked down at him and BB’s voice emerged from her helmet. It didn’t look as funny as it had an hour ago.
“That,” BB said, “depends on how he left the temple.”
SANGHELIOS: EXACT LOCATION UNKNOWN “That didn’t happen,” Phil ips said. “Did it?”
For a moment he thought he’d stepped into the temple grounds, but his stomach was stil cartwheeling as if he’d done a somersault. A breeze played on his face.
Ontom was gone. He had no idea where he was.
He stood in a ruined building—no roof, no windows, just three crumbling stone-block wal s—in the middle of nowhere. Hip-high, dark green grass rol ed and swayed like an ocean for a couple of kilometers ahead of him. He turned around slowly, taking in a smal town in the distance, and decided that his only chance of getting out was to walk to the nearest keep and beg for help. Maybe a little sleight of hand with an arum would be his passport.
If only BB would suddenly snap back to normal.
“That was a portal,” BB said.
“I sort of worked that out.” Portals were routed al over the place, usual y not on the same planet. The sky looked the same; the air smel ed familiar. “But we’re stil on Sanghelios, aren’t we?”
“I believe so. I stil have my positioning system.”
“How far from Ontom?”
“I estimate eighty kilometers.”
It seemed a pointlessly short journey for a portal given the energy needed to power it. But perhaps it made sense when the Forerunners were last here, and at least the thing stil worked even though the exit end was in ruins. Phil ips took a look around the structure and wondered whether it was worth risking an unencrypted broadcast. He didn’t have any protection from the rebels now, no top cover as Mal cal ed it, and announcing that he was a good pal of the Arbiter might get him kil ed with equal speed.
The ODSTs would definitely come looking for him sooner or later. He had to make it easier for them to find him.
“I can’t hide, BB.” There was a panel of carved symbols on a slab of masonry but half of it had crumbled away. Phil ips recorded a few images anyway. “So I might as wel make myself conspicuous. Nice brisk walk into town.”
“I think that’s a col ective of keeps cal ed Acroli. But I can’t tel what its loyalties are.”
“I have a feeling it’s not going to make much difference. I’m a worm. An arum-solving worm.”
“Professor, I find I’m having to revise my translation.”
Phil ips was sure he could see smoke in the far distance. He checked his datapad map, which wasn’t exactly reliable. He should have asked the Arbiter for an accurate chart. “Is that a problem, BB? Because I think you got the word for portal right.”
“Coordinates,” BB said. “I must have interpreted the numbers wrongly. Or Halsey did. This location doesn’t correspond to the position I would have expected.”
“Back to the drawing board.”
“It’s important. I need to work out how the Forerunners navigated, or else you won’t know the locations of the Halos.”
“How come your security thingie hasn’t wiped your awareness of Halos?”
“I don’t know. It’s very distressing.”
Phil ips didn’t know what to say to comfort him. He wasn’t even sure if changing the subject worked. “We’l sort it out later,” he said. “Let’s get home first.”
Somehow he’d always expected the Sangheili to have sophisticated security that could pick up an alien incursion anywhere on the planet, but here he was, ambling through a meadow within sight of a town, and nothing had swooped on him, shot at him, or detected him yet. He was used to a world where security cameras picked him up two hundred times a day just wandering around Sydney and where his bank and comms provider knew his every desire, habit, and movement, let alone al the government snoopers who’d probably been keeping tabs on him without his knowledge. Yes, but I’m a snooper now. ONI was right about the technological infrastructure going down the pan with the San’Shyuum. They’d only been gone a few months but they’d left a massive hole.
The town was getting closer. So were the pal s of smoke behind it. Phil ips started to rethink his perspective, wondering if the smoke was actual y closer than he’d first thought and that he was walking into trouble. But there was no other place to head to. He felt in his bag to see if he had anything sharp that he could use to defend himself. Okay. Two-fifty centimeters of Sangheili, one-meter-seventy me, and the winner would be … not me. Then his fingers touched cool, polished wood, and he took out the arum that he’d been clutching before the explosion, the one that had contained the message from ‘Telcam. That would get him out of more tight spots than any knife. He spun the nested spheres, got it open, and bent down to pick up a smal stone to place in its heart. Al he had to do when confronted was rattle it and dazzle his enemy with his dexterity.
“What’s that?” BB asked.
“You know what this is, BB.” Oh God, is the rest of his memory failing, too? “It’s an arum.”
“I mean that up ahead.”
Phil ips had been too wrapped up in the arum to notice. He scanned along the radio cam’s line of sight, looking for whatever had grabbed BB’s attention. The grass was moving about fifty meters ahead of him, and it wasn’t the wind. Something was wading through it. There must have been wildlife on Sanghelios, even livestock, but he knew nothing about it. He decided to assume it would sink its teeth in him.
“What do you think it is, BB?”
“Something short.”
“Or something with its head down, stalking us.”
“I’m just the radio cam, Professor. It’s stalking you. ”
Phil ips started thinking what he’d do if the thing — whatever it was —came at him. Okay, he had a bag, and he had a lump of wood, and he could swing that like a sock ful of coins. Yet again he thought how helpless he was compared to Mal or Vaz. Vaz would probably have head-butted the thing and then eaten it raw. Nothing scared him. Christ, even Devereaux wouldn’t have broken a sweat: pilot or not, she’d been through exactly the same training as the two guys. Phil ips envied their absolute physical confidence.
He noted that he didn’t compare his lack of survival skil s to Naomi’s, though. Naomi was beyond human. Nobody expected him to shape up to a Spartan, not even his ego.
“Professor, I think there’s more than one,” BB said helpful y. “The grass is moving in several places.”
“Pray for sheep.” Phil ips put the arum back in the bag, transferred everything breakable to his pockets, and began twisting the fabric to make a long handle. His heart started pounding. Swing it nice and hard. Whack. Real y hard. Job done. “Or whatever Sangheili rear for dinner.”
He was ready. He real y was going to take a swing and brain whatever came at him. He was in ful primal mode, about twenty meters away from the target, and pumping up a good head of adrenaline to carry him through. Then something bobbed above the top of the grass. It stood up. It was deformed and comical y ugly, or at least he thought it was until he realized it was wearing a breathing mask and the hump on its spine was a backpack.
“Unggoy,” BB said. “Grunts. They breathe methane.”
Two more masked heads popped up. Phil ips had never seen a Grunt in the flesh before. It was nice to be tal er than an alien for a change.
“Yeah, and methane’s flammable.” The Grunts just stared at him. “Do they fight?”
“Some do. Most are just manual labor.”
“Okay, silent routine, BB.”
This was no time to make new enemies. Phil ips lowered his bag slowly and tried to look nonthreatening. They’d speak Sangheili. He could dazzle them.
“Hi,” he said. “My name’s Evan. I’m lost and I need help. I was invited here by Thel ‘Vadam and I need to contact his office.”
The Grunt looked up at him through slit-like eye-pieces. “You talk funny. Fancy, but funny. ”
“Do you work here?”
“Yeah.”
“Is this a farm?”
“Yeah.”
Okay. This is going to take some time. “If I knock on the door, wil the farmer help me?”
“Nah,” said the Grunt. His two buddies padded a little closer. “He’s a bastard. They al are. Elites. Hate ’em.”
“I just want to make a cal to the Arbiter.”
“You want to go to the keep?”
“Yes. Please.”
One of the other Grunts shuffled through the grass and stood in front of Phil ips. He pointed into the distance with an oversized hand. Whatever they looked like without the masks, they probably weren’t much prettier.
“Wassat smoke?” he asked. “Humans invading? You’re a human, yeah?”
So they didn’t even know there was a coup going on. Why should they? They seemed to be just farmhands. “Yes, I’m human, but no, we’re not invading.”
“Oh. Pity. Our ancestors tried fighting the Elites. But the bastards glassed them.”
“And gave us al the shitty jobs,” his buddy added. “We hate ’em.”
“So you said.” The smoke was looking way too close for Phil ips’s comfort now. He could hear drives whining in the distance, but the vessels could have been anything from civilian transports to crop sprayers. For a Sangheili expert, he stil had a lot of gaps to fil . “Look, I’m going to walk down to the keep. What’s the elder’s name?”
“Jicam,” said the main Grunt. “You ought to shoot him.”
“Don’t take any notice of Dengo,” his buddy said. “He’s sucking too much infusion. Passes the time in this job, you know? Just approach nice and slow. You want us to walk with you?”
“Okay.” Phil ips thought that would make getting shot on sight less likely. “What’s infusion?”
“It smoothes the day out. You want some?”
Oh. Dope. Alcohol. Whatever. “No thanks, I don’t think I’ve got the right body chemistry.”
Phil ips started walking and the Grunts trotted along with him, two at his side and one some way behind. When he pushed through the grass, he walked straight into a mown area and realized they’d been cutting whatever the crop was and decided to take a very long break. They grabbed any excuse to stop working for a while.
So I’m making friends with Unggoy. Wow. That’s got to be worth another paper. Professor Evan Phillips, alien pundit, part-time spook. Oh, the lecture tours … the TV gigs.
