BB drifted up from the deck and hung in front of the gantry. “You’re going to miss the Mjolnir. And me.”
“I’l manage somehow, BB…”
Mal rippled his fingers in a little mock wave. “Bye-bye, you two. Be good. No fighting.”
Devereaux dug out a fifty-centimeter square of gray polishing cloth and handed it to Naomi. “I bet you won’t need this. The place is ful of Kig-Yar and Brutes and al kinds, so I don’t think you’re going to stand out that much now.”
“Thanks, Lian.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that in a mixed environment, humans are looking at gross detail, like beaks and claws. The aliens think we al look like big, soft worms anyway.”
Naomi nodded. It was hard to tel if she was offended or not. Vaz stil found it weird that the ultimate kil ing machine on two legs was self- conscious, but she was a pretty awkward woman and this wasn’t how Spartans usual y operated. Vaz wondered if al the Spartan-IIs were like that when they were out of armor.
“You look like a deserter,” Vaz said. “I’m more than happy to be seen drinking with you.”
She started a weak smile but didn’t finish it. “I suppose it’s another way to work out who I real y am.”
“Without BB revving you up.”
“He doesn’t get out much.”
“He’s always everywhere. He’s been more places than me and Mal have.”
She put her fingers on the nape of her neck and fiddled with the dock of her neural implant. “This doesn’t show, I hope. I got Leaks to reduce the profile a little.”
“No more than mine does. Even some of the militias had them. Not like yours, of course, but nobody’s going to look that hard or get that close.”
Naomi just crossed her long, deathly white fingers at him. “That’s a sad indictment, isn’t it?”
Vaz wasn’t sure if she was being deadpan or letting a little personal pain leak out. Either way, he was seeing more of the real Naomi these days.
He sat back in his seat as Tart-Cart maneuvered out of the hangar, and hoped he didn’t reek of the ship’s jasmine air freshener when he landed.
Spenser was waiting for them at the RV point in the gorge about thirty kilometers from the city. He stood leaning against the driver’s door of his old Warthog, having a smoke and just shaking his head. Vaz jumped out of the open hatch and walked over to see him, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Now that’s impressive,” Spenser said. He waved at Devereaux. “I could get you a real y good price for that. Is that even the same Pelican?”
“Yes, that’s Tart-Cart after an Engineer respray. One careless lady owner, ful service history.” Vaz was now far enough away from Tart-Cart to get the ful effect of the adaptive camo. He had to admit it was pretty good. The shape of the airframe took some concentration to pick out, and a casual inspection from the air or the nearest road would probably have missed it completely. “We’re going to rotate the squad if we’re here for an extended period.”
Naomi jumped out and started unloading kit. Spenser stubbed out his cigar and put the flattened butt in his pocket. “Is that wise? Naomi, I mean.”
“She wants to do this.”
“It’s not my cal , but I’d keep her out of it. For al kinds of reasons.”
Naomi walked right up to him with a heavy holdal of equipment tucked under one arm as easily as a purse, and held out her hand for shaking.
Spenser took it and craned his neck to look up.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this, Naomi,” he said. “Have you got everything you need? Sling your bag in the back. You too, Vaz. Let’s not hang around.”
Naomi slid down in her seat, tied the scarf around her hair with a few wisps of fringe left sticking out, and suddenly didn’t look half as strikingly unusual as Vaz had feared. Maybe he’d projected the almost mythological Spartan image onto the reality of a very tal , very fit woman who just happened to be platinum blond as wel . Yes, she was a lot more blond than gray. It took some effort to see it.
“So here’s your ID, in case you ever have to show it.” Spenser had a knack of driving, talking, shuffling paper, and observing everything around him at the same time. He reached around to hand the old-fashioned plastic chips to Vaz and Naomi. “It’s easier to stick with your actual first names and just change the surnames. It’s not as if anyone can check UNSC records, but you never know who you’l run into. Naomi Bakke and Vasily Desny. Your trades are recorded as comms operator and regular grunt. Before you jumped ship, that is.”
“People don’t change their names here, then,” Naomi said, taking the chip from him and leaning on the back of Vaz’s seat. “My father didn’t.”
She said it casual y, as if there was no bizarre history at al . “Depends who they’re hiding from,” Spenser said. “Off-worlders or the local enforcers. Remember that this isn’t anarchy here. They’re organized. It’s easier to think of Venezia as an alternative society, just not the vegetarian peacenik kind.”
As they hit the outskirts of New Tyne, Vaz started seeing pickups, every variant of the Warthog chassis known to man, and quite a few Covenant ground transports. He’d passed the amazement stage on his last visit, short as it was, but Naomi murmured occasional y in quiet surprise.
“Damn, look at al those Brutes,” she said. “And Jackals.”
It was a smal colony like hundreds of others had once been, except it had a huge amount of firepower and a population of miscreants and misfits from at least four species. The city was a regular-looking place with decent buildings and office blocks, and not a scrap of battle damage. Gun batteries sat at some of the intersections. Spenser pointed out landmarks and interesting features like a tour guide.
“And that’s the sewerage company over there … yeah, the war’s pretty much passed them by.” Spenser paused for a red light. Vaz wondered if they had proper renegade traffic cops to police their renegade society. There was a kind of mirror-world feel about the whole setup. “It’s the previous war that’s stil gripping their proverbial shit. But you know that wel enough.”
“Have you got a picture?” Naomi asked.
“Sorry?”
“Have you got a picture of my father? I don’t remember what he looked like.”
Spenser looked only slightly uncomfortable. “Back at the house,” he said. “I’l show you his file. I’l apologize in advance for any unflattering notes I might have made on it.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “No need to spare my feelings. I’m stil working out what they are myself.”
Spenser’s house was one of a row of single-story buildings on an industrial estate across on the other side of New Tyne. He parked the Warthog on the cracked concrete drive and went to pick up Naomi’s holdal .
“Whoa,” she said. “Leave that to me. It’s heavy. Don’t show the world just how heavy before I pick it up.…”
She heaved it out of the back without any visible effort and took it indoors. Vaz fol owed her in and slid past her in the central passage that divided the house in half.
“In here,” he said. It was a dusty back room with a couple of bunk beds in it. When she put the holdal down, it made a loud thud. “Your room. I’l take the one opposite. Spenser’s got an ops center in the basement.”
Spenser stuck his head through the doorway. “Bathroom’s on the left. Care to come down to my salon and inspect my etchings? Mal said there was coffee.”
Vaz unzipped his holdal and took out a can. “Courtesy of CINCONI. Jamaican.”
“I could fal in love with Big Maggie if she was forty years younger. Hel , even thirty. Is it poisoned?”
“Possibly. But it’s good.”
Naomi looked around the basement like a prospective buyer deciding this wasn’t quite the place she had in mind. She pul ed off her headscarf, wandered around inspecting the comms equipment, and then flopped into one of the scuffed leather armchairs. Spenser loaded the coffee machine and rummaged for a datapad.
“Here.” He tapped it a few times, then held it out to her. “Staffan Sentzke.”
Vaz felt he should have looked away out of simple courtesy, but he had to watch her reaction for his own peace of mind. She would react: emotional bombshel s usual y caught her for a split second before she fixed her expression into unflinching neutrality. This time, the only sign that something was getting to her was a slight flare of her nostrils as she breathed in slowly. She stared at the datapad and didn’t even blink.
Then her eyes moved from side to side, not like speed reading but fast jerks. She was looking at his picture and trying to remember. This was her father maybe more than thirty years older than the one she’d last seen, if she remembered that face at al . Eyes didn’t change, though. The skin around them got crêpey and lined, but Vaz knew that she had to see some familiarity in those eyes.
“Okay.” Her voice was slightly husky. She cleared her throat. “I do look like him, don’t I?” She got up and handed the datapad back to Spenser.
“So what’s the schedule? We need to get a feel for this place first. Walk around a little and see what it takes to fit in.”
Vaz had to let her handle this in her own way. He wasn’t going to mention her father again until she did. Spenser seemed to think the subject was off limits for the time being too, because he just reached across to a nearby stain-ringed table and pul ed out a smal paper map.
“If you want my advice on New Tyne,” he said careful y, “I’d do what most of the new arrivals do. There’s always a trickle of people going in and out. The first thing they have to do is get some cash, because Venezia isn’t exactly connected to the clearing banks. They even have their bank notes. Quaint, isn’t it? Like a paramilitary Toytown.”
“How do they deal with the real y big purchases?” Vaz asked. “You know. Artil ery pieces, ships, that kind of thing. That’s a lot of cash.”
“Barter, from what I can see. Like I said last time, the Kig-Yar are trading arms for ships from the Brutes. It’s al rather seventeenth century in its way.”
“Okay, so we take a rifle and try to fence it tomorrow,” Vaz said.
“Why not today?” Naomi asked.
“Because I want Mike here to talk us through the local gossip, and get myself in character. I’m just an ODST. I’m not real y trained for this.”
Vaz didn’t know if Naomi was trained for it either, but she was exceptional y smart and resourceful. Spartans were survivors. If anything, that seemed to be their defining quality.
“Okay,” she said. “That would be useful.”
Spenser spent the rest of the day marking bars and shops on the map, the regular places where people did business. By the end of the day, they’d drunk a lot of coffee, eaten a large can of dubious processed meat that had no fibrous texture at al as far as Vaz could tel , and agreed on a plan for Vaz and Naomi to visit the street where most of the arms dealers hung out to try to sel one of the tagged UNSC rifles they’d brought, an MA5B. It was a good way to inject a marker into the system and to begin merging into the natural y wary community. Vaz lay awake that night expecting to hear Naomi pacing the floor of her room, but there was just an occasional snore that could just as easily have been coming from Spenser’s bedroom. He didn’t get up to check.
The next morning, Spenser handed Vaz a wad of rather wel -printed bank notes—yes, they were real, old colonial credits with a distinctive smel —and a set of keys.
“Don’t crash this,” Spenser said. “If I have to buy any more vehicles, people are going to start wondering if I’m real y just an electrician after al .
And don’t get pul ed over for a traffic violation. I mean it. Stick to the speed limits and stop at the lights. Even the Kig-Yar do.”
He opened the dented, rusty garage door to reveal an even more dented, rusty ’hog. The colonies ran on them, just like UNSC did. Vaz tossed the keys up and down on his palm.
“I’m on my best behavior,” he said. “I don’t want anything going wrong, least of al with Naomi around.”
Spenser raised an eyebrow. “Stil no sign of Sentzke. I can’t believe he picked now to skip town for good, so he’s off somewhere having talks or doing business.”
“You managed not to say nutter or scumbag.”
“Yeah. I know. She doesn’t need any more upsets, does she?”
Naomi didn’t give the impression of a woman in pain, but she had a job on her mind, and she seemed to be able to shut out anything as long as she had an objective. As Vaz drove off, she leaned back in the passenger seat, arms folded and eyes narrowed against the breeze from the open windshield.
“Who’s going to do the talking?” she asked.
“Me.” Vaz kept an eye on the speedo and stayed a couple of klicks under the limit. For some reason, he found road speed signs on an insurgent planet incredibly funny. “I’ve had to sel stuff before. I bet you haven’t.”
“I’l learn from the master, then. Has she tried to get in touch with you yet?”
“Who, Osman?”
“No, the Old Trol op, as BB cal s her. Chrissie.”
“No. And I don’t even notice now.”
“Don’t be tempted to take her back.”
It was odd to hear Naomi being chatty, but she might have been trying to relax so that they didn’t look like two ONI operatives on a job. Vaz took it at face value.
“You sound just like Mal,” he said. “She was only unfaithful to me once, though. With the crew of Implacable.”
Naomi laughed. She did have a sense of humor, just a sporadic one. Vaz tried to stay in character. I’m a deserter. I’m an ordinary guy, a UNSC deserter who’s trying to steer clear of the military police. Christ, what should I call them? Redcaps? MPs? Mal calls them crushers. Reggies.
