Jul decided that if the monks lived in a Forerunner relic, then they'd probably declared knocking on doors a theological gray area.

"It's a building," he said. "Not technology. We shall risk it."

He walked through the arch and rapped his knuckles on the first wood he could find-a decorated screen mounted on metal runners blue-green with the patina of age.

He waited.

"Pilgrim," said a voice. "What brings you to look upon on the gifts of the gods?"

Jul willed Forze to keep a piously straight face. Maybe the vivid memory of Relon's guts spread across the courtyard would do the job.

"We are Jul and Forze, elders from Mdama," Jul said. "Blasphemers are everywhere, as you've seen. We want to root out the poison that's weakening the Sangheili."

And none of that was actually a lie. It was merely phrased sensitively. Jul waited.

He was expecting an old monk in an archaic robe, at the very least. He wasn't expecting a fully armored field master to step out of the shadows with a rifle across his back. Behind the field master, shapes moved and metal clicked. Jul suspected the entire holy order was armed to the teeth.

"Well, pilgrims," the field master said. "Faith is a most powerful thing."

Jul had once thought of himself as devout, but he feared making some doctrinal or ritual error that would enrage the orthodox here and he would end the same way as Relon. So he wasn't going to attempt anything clever. He would tell the truth.

The partial truth, though.

"I plan to oust the Arbiter," Jul said. "He's responsible for this pitiful state in which we find ourselves, and he must die before we can restore Sangheili to their rightful place. He denied the gods. We have common cause, I think. I have some arms and a willing keep."

The field master stared into Jul's eyes for a few moments, then looked at Forze, jaws jutting.

"The Arbiter let the humans put him on a leash," Forze said, as if he couldn't take the glowering silence any longer. "No good will come of it. The humans will be allowed to swarm through the galaxy again. I have a willing keep too."

The holy field master studied both of them for a few more moments, then beckoned them to follow.

The deeper into the ruined building Jul walked, the more he saw. The armored devout huddled in recesses, gathered around tables over charts and datapads. Every open space in the mazelike building seemed to be stacked with crates of rifles and ordnance. It was a sanctified munitions store. Jul looked to Forze to gauge his reaction. The expression on his tight-clamped jaws was more than surprised.

The field master pulled out a couple of chairs at a table and gestured to them to sit.

"I am Field Master Avu Med 'Telcam, Servant of the Abiding Truth," he said. "And I have many brothers."

CHAPTER.

SIX.

LEARN SOMETHING FROM THE HUMANS. RELIGION IS NOT SYNONYMOUS WITH GODS. IT'S A MORTAL'S CONCEIT. LOOK AT THEIR GREAT RELIGIONS, HOW CORRUPT AND POLITICAL AND IN LOVE WITH POWER THEY'VE BEEN THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY, AND SEE THE TRUTH-THAT THE PROPHETS LIED TO US, BUT THEY DID NOT SPEAK FOR THE GODS, AND THE DESTRUCTIVE NATURE OF THE HALOS TELLS US NOTHING ABOUT WHERE THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEATH TAKES US.

(AVU MED 'TELCAM, SERVANT OF THE ABIDING TRUTH) FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE-LAST DEFINITIVE POSITION, ONYX: LOCAL DATE NOVEMBER 2552.

Three Engineers floated in midair, tentacles entwined as if they were clinging to each other in terror.

Lucy wanted to make them realize she meant no harm, but it was hard to explain that when she couldn't speak and when the creatures had just seen her kill one of their comrades.

She decided to take the risk that they were the only life-forms in here with her, and slung her rifle over her shoulder with slow care. Laying it on the ground was a little too trusting when she couldn't assess the risk. She held her arms away from her sides to show them she wasn't going to shoot.

Did they understand that?

The Engineers hung there like a bunch of brightly colored balloons, blue and magenta with bioluminescent beads. Lucy held her hand out, palm up. It was the only thing she could think of. It had always worked with horses. She remembered one vaguely from her childhood, looming above her with a warm velvety nose and the strong malty smell of grain. The Engineers suddenly unlinked their tentacles and drifted toward her. Maybe it worked with Engineers too.

But they sailed past, not interested in her at all, and clustered around the corpse of the one she'd shot, touching it and making faint groaning sounds. She didn't need a degree in xenobiology to work out that they were upset. Kurt had explained during training that they were organic machines that could replicate and repair themselves, and that they were probably descended from the first ones built by the Forerunners. They didn't seem at all machinelike now, though.

He'd also said that all they cared about was repairing machinery and computer systems. Well, Lucy now knew they cared about other things, too. They were grieving. Lucy could only see them as strange, sad children. One of them ran a tentacle over the corpse and drew back. She could almost hear his thoughts: We're too late to repair him. Lucy watched, racking her brains for a way to get their attention.

The Forerunners had left them here. They had to be the Dyson sphere's maintenance crew, the latest generation of Engineers, fixing and tinkering and waiting patiently until the day they were needed.

Maybe they'd been the ones who put Team Katana in the cryo pods. Perhaps they'd found the Spartans wounded and tried their hand at repairing humans before finding that it was beyond them.

I need to get them to open the doors before they wander off again.

It was pointless trying to force them at gunpoint. They'd just cower and hide. The only thing she could think of was to distract them with a technical puzzle, and the best she had was her helmet. She held it out to them.

One of them turned to look, but the other two were still more interested in their fallen comrade, moaning softly and making very precise gestures to each other with their tentacles. Then they lifted the body and drifted off between the vehicles.

The one who seemed interested in her floated over and put a tentacle-a hand-on the helmet, stroking the surface. Then it coiled its arms around it, making the reactive camo turn blue and mauve as the armor systems tried to match the Engineer's skin.

That did the trick. The Engineer began dismantling the helmet at a breakneck speed, stacking the components-faceplate, lining, mikes, data processor, even microfans-on the nearest flat surface, a hydroplane-like structure on a small vessel. Then, just as quickly, it reassembled them. Lucy had heard that they couldn't resist tinkering with things, but seeing them actually do it was another thing entirely. It looked as if the Engineer was ripping the helmet apart like an angry toddler. It hadn't even used a toolkit. But it held out the helmet to her with two of its arms, jiggling it a little.

Try this.

Yes, Lucy understood that much. She took the helmet and peered inside first, not sure what she was expecting to see. When she put it on and activated the HUD, everything looked normal. But there were a couple of icons that hadn't been there before, two broken circles, each with a symbol inside that she couldn't recognize. She'd seen the glyphlike style before in Covenant bases but she had no idea what it meant.

So ... do I activate them and see what happens?

A couple of blinks would show her what the Engineer had added. It seemed to be waiting expectantly for a verdict, peering into her face and cocking its head. Yes, it really did remind her of an anteater or an armadillo with that small, smooth head. She was even getting used to the six eyes. She made the effort to stare into just two of them-the middle pair-and ignore the others.

Now it was a face. Now she could look it in the eye. Now she could connect.

Might as well try.

She activated one of the icons and braced for something weird. Engineers were clever, but that didn't mean they never got things wrong, and the ones here couldn't have had much if any contact with humans before. At first she thought the Engineer hadn't changed anything, but then it moved, rustling with that leather noise, and she realized she could hear a lot more. It was almost like having no helmet at all: clear, unmuffled, perfect sound. She couldn't tell if the Engineer had modified the audio channels or the physical acoustics of the helmet, but it was one hell of a trick.

So let's see ... what does this one do?

Lucy blinked to activate the second new icon and waited for another minor miracle.

Nothing.

It didn't do anything at all. She tried again, but the circle of glyphs just changed color from red to green. After a few attempts she shook her head in frustration and pulled off the helmet to find the Engineer peering into her face.

It made a few precise gestures with its tentacle-hands, repeating them in a sequence. Lucy tried to recall everything from briefings she'd forgotten years ago. Sign language. Engineers used sign language. Well, that was no use to her. She couldn't speak that, either.

But this place was expecting us, or something like us. Wasn't it?

The robotic Sentinels on the surface had attacked the Spartans, probably seeing them as just another threat to Onyx like the Flood or anything else. But Ash had said that one had reacted to him and tried to respond in different languages until it settled on English. It had called him Reclaimer. Then he must have failed some unknown test, because the Sentinels had turned on the Spartans and nearly killed them.

The Engineer was still staring patiently into her face, signing that same sequence over and over, waiting for her to understand. He certainly didn't look as if he was going to attack her.

Whatever the Forerunners made recognizes us as a special species-most of the time, anyway.

It didn't help her. If this colony of Engineers had that same programming, that same ability to spot human language and work out how to communicate, then she was still stuffed. The Forerunners probably hadn't made allowance for someone with her problems.

Okay. I know I've got problems. Just because I know that, though, it doesn't mean I can sort myself out.

The doctors and psychiatrists had told her she could speak if she wanted to. Well, she wanted to. She'd wanted to say good-bye to Kurt for the last time when he made the squad leave him behind, and right now she wanted to speak more than she ever had in her life. She had to find a way to make herself talk. She needed to communicate with this creature if she was ever going to get out of here.

The Engineer signed again. Lucy found herself clenching and flexing her fingers with the effort as she brought her hands up. The Engineer backed away a little, probably expecting a punch in the face after what he'd seen her do to his friend.

He. Him. I'm thinking of them as people. That's good. Keep it up.

Lucy strained to connect her mind to her mouth. It felt like trying to push a weight up a ramp. If she could just strain that little bit more, just push that little bit harder, then the weight would reach the edge, balance for a moment, and then tip over the edge, opening the floodgates. But something stopped her reaching that edge. She was almost there, but- She opened her mouth. The sensation in her throat was ... confused. She thought she remembered how to make sounds, but when she tensed unfamiliar muscles, it triggered her gag reflex and she almost coughed. It would not come. She felt her eyes fill with hot, angry tears. The Engineer reached out and stroked her head.

It was almost a human gesture, and she wasn't expecting that. He didn't seem to bear a grudge for what she'd done.

Shame we didn't meet your lot before we met the Elites....

Suddenly the Engineer cupped her face with two tentacles, holding her chin just under the jaw like a dentist. It scared the hell out of her. She jerked away and he recoiled, tentacles signing rapidly.

That had to mean sorry or take it easy. Lucy beckoned him back, trying to look as harmless as possible. He floated back nervously and took hold of her chin again.

She had to trust him.

He pushed down and the gentle pressure made her open her mouth. Now it made sense. He realized she couldn't speak and he was trying to work out how to fix her. That HUD icon that didn't seem to work-if he'd improved the audio, he'd probably tinkered with the microphone too, but she couldn't make use of it.

For a moment, she felt elated. She was stranded inside a prison within a prison, but she'd made him understand something, and she'd understood him. The sense of connection was incredible.

It's worth a try. We're getting somewhere now.

She put her hand on his tentacle and held it still, then gestured to her mouth and shook her head. Did he get that? Was a headshake a universal negative? There were places on Earth where it meant the opposite. Did he realize she meant that she couldn't speak, or did he think she was telling him not to touch her mouth? It was impossible to tell. He just hung there, peering at her. The last time anyone had stared her in the face at such close range was when a medic had checked out her eyes.

I haven't even got a pen to draw pictures for them. Nothing to write on. Damn, there isn't even any dust I can scrawl in.

The other two Engineers reappeared and just watched their friend. Lucy had to be sure that they understood what her problem was. She opened her mouth, held his tentacle just under her jaw, and struggled to make a sound. He had to be able to feel the muscles tensing. Even if he'd never seen a human before, he had to know how sound was made. He made sounds himself.

The tentacle felt like soft down. She could see a fine fringe of tiny cilia along it, glowing with that blue phosphorescence. For a moment, she looked into those odd little eyes and something seemed to click into place. He withdrew his arms and floated away between the vessels with his two friends. Had he given up?

He hadn't.

He turned as if he was looking over his shoulder, seemed to notice that she wasn't following, and drifted back. One tentacle curled around her wrist and he pulled gently.

Come with me. The meaning was crystal-clear.

Lucy followed, hand in hand with a living computer that didn't bear grudges.

UNSC PORT STANLEY, BRUNEL SYSTEM: JANUARY 2553.

BB started the count to take Stanley into slipspace and found himself with a few idle seconds to fill.

He could perform five billion six-dimensional operations in that time. And time had to be filled, because he was pure intellect. Unless he was thinking and knowing, then he wasn't existing.

One part of his mind, the dumb AI at his core, counted down, calculated, and spoke to the hundred thousand components of a lightspeed-capable corvette readying herself to punch through into another dimension. He could ignore all that and let it run in the background like an autonomic nervous system. The rest of him, though, was consumed with raw curiosity; around the ship, back on Earth, and on the various comms channels he was monitoring, there were fascinating things going on. He listened to them all simultaneously.

Mal was on the CPOs' mess deck, arguing with Muir, the refugee they'd picked up on New Llanelli. The man didn't understand why he had to be locked in a cabin. Mal was telling him in his odd singsong accent that he was quarantined, there was a shower in the cabin, and maybe it was high time he used it. Vaz and Devereaux were on the bridge with Phillips, trying to explain what it felt like to enter a planet's atmosphere in a drop pod. Naomi was listening to the translated recordings of Sangheili voice traffic at the navigation console.

In the captain's day cabin, Osman talked to Parangosky on the secure link, swapping sitreps. Still no sign of Halsey yet, then; and the battle reports and casualty lists were still trickling in months late from remote places with almost nonexistent comms. It was a grim picture.

Colonel James Ackerson was finally confirmed dead, as well as Commander Miranda Keyes.

BB suspected that Parangosky was the only person who would miss Ackerson. "I was planning to give him the Spartan-Four program and make Halsey work for him," she was telling Osman. The captain listened, chin resting on her hand. "I'll have to settle for telling her that he died a hero. Just after I let her know what happened to her daughter."

She really wasn't that venomous, old Parangosky. BB knew that personal slights were too insignificant to incur her wrath, which was a cold and calculated thing geared solely to the achievement of clear objectives. She exercised power for a reason, not for its own sake, although Halsey probably wouldn't benefit from the difference when the Admiral finally caught up with her.

Miranda Keyes, Miranda Halsey to be legally accurate, had died heroically too. Halsey thought nobody knew she even had a daughter, even though it was impossible to hide that kind of thing from ONI or even from a curious UNSC HR clerk who could count. Routinely stored DNA samples, the period when Halsey was known to be having a fling with Jacob Keyes-no, it wasn't exactly particle physics to work that one out. BB thought of Halsey's journal again and how much it revealed of her mind.

How extraordinary. She refers to people as my lieutenant, my Spartans. She has this sense of ownership. And yet she hands her small daughter to Jacob Keyes and washes her hands of her. How ... odd.

BB wondered how Miranda would have felt if she'd read Halsey's journal, or if Halsey had read hers. He realized he was getting a little too invested in humans. He didn't want to end up like Cortana.

It was three minutes to jump. He checked on Captain Hogarth back at Bravo-6 on Earth via another fragment of himself that he'd left in the ONI systems. Chip off the old block. Ha. Not quite a child, though. Just a little bit of me. Is that how Halsey sees her daughter? Hogarth was still jockeying for Parangosky's job, rifling through her virtual filing cabinets for dirt on her via his own AI, Harriet.

Impertinent oaf. He really thinks Harriet can get past me? Well, she will ... but only when I choose to let her. Maybe I'll play dumb and feed her bogus information. That'll ruin Hogarth's day.

The rising whine of Stanley's Shaw-Fujikawa drive permeated the whole ship. Parangosky was talking to Osman again. "You can RV with Monte Cassino off Venezia to cross deck Spenser and the evacuee. There's no vessel that's closer. If there's any risk of compromising the mission, though, lose them."

"Spenser's no risk." Osman had worked with him years ago. BB wondered if she'd developed quite enough dispassionate ruthlessness yet to take over from Parangosky. "I'll make sure of it."

"Did you have a reason for not disposing of the evacuee?"

Osman's voice tightened. "I didn't want to start the relationship with my squad by killing an unarmed civvie in front of them."

"Good thinking. Glad to see the team's gelling, Captain."

"Good people, ma'am. Osman out." She took a breath. "All hands secure for jump. Do it, BB."

"Hope you've taken your ginger, Captain," BB said. "Chocks away..."