“Wel , let’s just say you’re an awful y long way from home.”
“I’l tel you nothing,” he said. “What’s the point of al this?”
“Wel , they real y wanted a live Sangheili prisoner, so who am I to deny them? Al I know is that there are a lot of scientists and other people in white coats down there, figuratively speaking, and I’m sure you’l al get on famously.”
Jul didn’t understand what white coats signified. The avatar disappeared again, but then it popped back right in front of him. “Phil ips is going to be a guest of the Arbiter, by the way. Is there any message you want me to pass on to your boss?”
“Thel ‘Vadam is not my boss,” Jul snarled. “He’s a weakling who spends too much time worrying whether humans like him instead of exterminating them.”
It just slipped out. It didn’t matter what a human—or its computer—thought of his lack of al egiance to the Arbiter, but it dawned on him that the devious little AI had simply flushed out a fundamental answer: they just wanted to know if Jul was one of the Arbiter’s agents. He was furious at himself for providing the answer so easily simply because he couldn’t control his temper.
Or perhaps not. Humans are so twisted that they might think I’m simply saying that to deceive them.
“I’l just send your best wishes to Professor Phyllis, then,” BB said, and vanished.
Jul roared with fury and punched his fist hard into the bulkhead. It was slightly dented now from constant pounding, but even if he ripped open the whole compartment, he was stil marooned on a ship deep in space, and his chances of escape were dwindling every time more humans arrived.
He sank back on his bunk and tried to calm himself.
The biggest threat he faced was that the isolation would slowly break him.
When there was nothing else to do except stare at the bulkhead and fantasize about the many varied ways to end a human life, a certain sensitivity developed to the subliminal sounds of the vessel. Jul could now tel when the ship’s drives were maneuvering to hold station, and even when someone was ditching waste. There was a distinctive clunk overhead. He wondered how much could be heard outside the ship, because the AI had told him with insufferable smugness that this was a stealth vessel, and that nobody would know Port Stanley was there until they hit one of her mines.
Jul was also building up a picture of his environment from his sense of smel . On the occasions when a hatch opened, he could detect sweat, machine oil, burnt meat, and oddly floral scents. There was another smel that might have been a sterilizing agent or disinfectant, and now a new one—a sour aroma of human agitation, almost as pungent as their fear when he’d fought them—that got his attention. He tried to memorize it al , because one day this kind of intel igence might come in useful.
Sometime later, he heard the sound of boots, several pairs of them, thudding along the passage toward the cel . They might not have been specifical y heading his way, because the cel was on one of the main passages running fore to aft in the ship. But he knew that sound.
Spartans. Demons.
Even without their heavy armor, they were much heavier than the average human and he could hear them stalking up and down the passage outside his cel , sometimes in silence and sometimes talking quietly among themselves as they went by. He recognized the voices. There were more females on board now, and an older male with a rasping voice who didn’t seem very happy with life. The words made no sense to Jul, although he was starting to learn that the repetition of goddamn indicated a certain mood, and when voices were raised there were many more words with explosive consonants like F and sibilants like S. Even their anger lacked eloquence.
A conversation was now going on outside his cel door. He kept hearing a repetition of the word halsey, but he had no idea what a halsey was, only that the humans seemed particularly agitated about it.
“No, you can’t talk to her.” That was the female shipmaster, the one who’d had him imprisoned here. “Strict instructions from Admiral Parangosky.”
“But what happens now?” That was a male voice he wasn’t familiar with, neither the bad-tempered older male nor the two soldiers who were part of the ship’s crew. “Where are they going to take her?”
“I can’t tel you that,” the shipmaster said. “But you’re going to Sydney for debriefing.”
Jul had no idea what they were talking about, but he could memorize the sounds and detect the emotion behind the words. There was a great deal of tension. He could smel their agitation again in their sweat, the acrid human scents that they pumped out when their stress levels were high.
The conversation stopped and the boots strode away. A few minutes later, the smal viewscreen set in his cel door activated and he found himself looking at the female shipmaster—Osman—and an anonymous, helmeted Spartan. It was hard to tel the demons apart until they spoke.
“Okay, BB, read him his rights, if he has any,” said Osman. Jul recognized the name BB. “We’re going to have to move him now. Parangosky wants Halsey transferred as soon as Compton-Hall gets here.”
The AI appeared in front of Jul. “Time to go, Shipmaster,” BB said. He had as good a command of the language as Phil ips. “We’re going to disembark you. Now you can do this in a civilized way and walk out under your own steam, or we can do it the cattle prod way. You do understand what I mean by cattle prod, don’t you?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Like I said, it’s quite a pleasant location. We’l transfer you by shuttle. Now, are you going to behave yourself?”
“I’m not a child.”
“If you resist, they’l simply shoot you. I know you love the idea of death before dishonor, but if you force them to shoot you, nobody wil ever know how courageous you were anyway. I don’t suppose that matters to you, because you’l know that you did the decent and manly thing, and perhaps that’s al you want. But if you want to take revenge at some future date, surviving is a pretty essential part of that strategy. It’s your choice.”
BB’s logic was seductive. “Very wel . What must I do?”
“They’l insist that you’re handcuffed. Please don’t resist.”
BB was absolutely correct. To die resisting the enemy, with or without an audience to witness the event, was a noble thing. But returning to defeat the enemy was smarter and infinitely more satisfying. Jul waited for the door to open and presented his outstretched wrists without comment as the Spartan moved in to put restraints on his arms.
“You have a very persuasive way with you, BB,” Osman said. “What did you do, threaten to tel his family that he cried like a girl?”
“You have to admit it’s very effective,” BB said. “A little trick that Phil ips taught me, which I believe he dredged up from World War Two. That’s anthropologists for you.”
“Sometimes I think honor is vastly overrated,” Osman said. She nodded at the Spartan. “See him off, Naomi.”