Halo: Retribution E-Book

Troy Denning

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 449

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

An original novel set in the Halo Universe and based on the New York Times bestselling video game series! December 2553. Less than a year after the end of the Covenant War, a string of violent incidents continues to threaten the tenuous peace in human-held space, culminating in the assassination of UNSC fleet admiral Graselyn Tuwa and the abduction of her family. It is a provocation so outrageous that the Office of Naval Intelligence must retaliate swiftly and ferociously—but only after its operatives identify her killer and rescue the hostages. This mission will be the first for homicide-detective-turned-ONI-operative Veta Lopis and her young team of Spartan-IIIs, and something feels wrong from the start. The obvious suspect is an infamous Brute who leads the Keepers of the One Freedom, an ex-Covenant splinter group in fierce opposition to the UNSC. But Lopis and her team soon realize that the truth is much more insidious than they could ever have imagined, and with Fred-104, Kelly-087, and Linda-058 of Blue Team for combat support, they must stop a plan hatched in the bowels of the secret research station Argent Moon—a plan so sinister it could destroy all those still reeling from thirty years of intergalactic conflict...

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Don’t Miss These Other Thrilling Stories in the Worlds of Halo

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Historian’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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THE FORERUNNER SAGA

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RETRIBUTION

TROY DENNING

BASED ON THE BESTSELLING XBOX® VIDEO GAMES

TITANBOOKS

Halo: Retribution

Print edition ISBN: 9781785656736

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785656743

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: August 2017

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 by Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Microsoft, 343 Industries, the 343 Industries logo, Halo, and the Halo logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Interior design by Leydiana Rodríguez

For Leif Jeffers

If someone makes a movie out of this, I hope it’s you

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

The events of this novel take place in December 2553, approximately five months after the discovery of an archeon-class ancilla in Halo: Last Light, and two months after Veta Lopis’s Ferret Team is imperiled in the Halo: Fractures story “A Necessary Truth.”

CHAPTER 1

1432 hours, December 12, 2553 (military calendar)

Trattoria Georgi

New Tyne, Planet Venezia, Qab System

The gunrunner in the corner booth was not the usual space trash. Wearing a high-necked tunic with an embroidered collar, he sat with three rough-looking lackeys, sipping a golden cordial while his companions gulped hiskal and wotha. His head was fashionably shaved, his dark beard closely trimmed, his eyes amber and thoughtful. And his smile—it was quick and bright, an invitation to fun and trouble that almost made ONI operative Veta Lopis regret what she was about to do to him.

Almost.

Leaving her backup team at the table, she rose and started across a small dining room packed with customers, mostly human and Kig-Yar. As she drew near the gunrunner’s booth, a huge Jiralhanae bodyguard stepped away from the wall to block her way. Tall enough that his head scraped the ceiling, he had a rawboned face with pebbly gray skin, a sloped brow, and twenty-centimeter fangs rising from a massive jaw.

Veta continued toward him, unfazed. Her backup team might look like over-pierced street punks, but they were Spartan-III super-soldiers—and all three were palming M6P pocket pistols loaded with four rounds of high-explosive ammunition. If the Jiralhanae got rough, he’d be dead before he landed a single blow.

Two meters from the Brute, Veta stopped. “Easy, big guy,” she said. To prove she was unarmed, she pulled up her shirttail and turned around slowly. “I’m here to talk business.”

The Jiralhanae snarled and pointed a huge finger back toward her table. She had been careful to position herself outside her team’s line of fire, so his arm extended at an angle that opened his rib cage to attack. Reassured by his ineptitude, Veta merely circled around his other side and, with the gunrunner calmly watching, continued toward the booth.

“Just hear me out,” she said. The Jiralhanae was already spinning around to grab at her, but Veta slipped aside and hitched a thumb back over her shoulder. “Trust me, it’ll be better for everyone.”

The gunrunner glanced toward Veta’s table, where she knew her team would be on the verge of opening fire. His smile grew wry, and he quickly signaled his bodyguard to stand down.

“Rude and dangerous,” he said. “How can I refuse?”

“I’m glad we understand each other,” Veta said. “Though I do apologize for the intrusion.”

The gunrunner waved a dismissive hand. “Save your apologies for Picus.” He shot his bodyguard a scowl. “You know how dangerous Jiralhanae can be when they’ve been embarrassed.”

“I do,” Veta said. “And I’m not that worried.”

The gunrunner chuckled. “I imagine not.” He leaned against the booth’s backrest, then said, “So . . . talk.”

“I need to hire one of your Razors.”

The gunrunner’s brow rose. He was big for a human, with shoulders as wide as a door and biceps the size of HEAT rockets, and Veta could see why his Venezian business partners called him “the Goliath.”

After a moment, he asked, “As in the old UNSC corvette? That kind of Razor?”

Veta nodded. “As in the old UNSC stealth corvette,” she said. “And the UNSC isn’t the only outfit operating them anymore. You know that better than anyone.”

The gunrunner assumed an innocent look. “And why would I know that?”

“Because Lieutenant Commander Hector Nyeto commandeered three of them when he defected from the UNSC,” Veta said. “And you’re Ross Nyeto—his son.”

Nyeto’s posture grew tense, and his companions dropped their hands beneath the table. All three wore ballistic vests over bare torsos, a popular style that was more bad-boy fashion than effective protection. Veta ran her gaze around the booth, locking eyes with each man until she saw a glimmer of uncertainty, then returned her attention to Nyeto.

“Your father used those vessels to become a hero of the Insurrection,” Veta said. “You used them to smuggle arms for Arlo Casille.”

Nyeto forced a neutral expression, but the color drained from his face. Arlo Casille was the new president of the nearby planet Gao. He was also the most corrupt and ruthless politician in the entire sector. And before he had become president, he had been Veta’s boss.

To suggest they had parted on bad terms was an understatement. Casille had risen to power during a military crisis of his own making, when he secretly helped a faction of ex-Covenant zealots assault a UNSC research battalion deployed on Gao. The resulting battle had destroyed an entire village and cost hundreds of innocent lives: the tragedy had given Casille the leverage he needed to crush his political rivals and claim the presidency of the Gao Republic for himself.

Ross Nyeto’s only involvement had been running arms shipments between Casille and the zealots . . . but that had earned him a long list of enemies. The Unified Earth Government wanted Nyeto dead because he had helped arm ex-Covenant. Casille wanted him dead because Nyeto was one of the few people who knew of Casille’s involvement in the entire affair. And the Gao Ministry of War wanted him dead because his smuggling activities were a stain on the legacy of his heroic father.

Veta just wanted to take him captive, though that wasn’t the primary objective of her first official mission leading a Ferret team. It was more of a bonus.

After giving Nyeto a few seconds to worry, Veta said, “Relax. I’m only making sure you understand that I know who you are.”

Nyeto’s gaze flicked toward Veta’s table and remained there as he studied the three “street punks” backing her up. “Then I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. Have we met?”

“We have now.” Veta slipped two fingers into her shirt pocket and removed a small lethron bag with a flex-mag closure. “I’m the woman who wants to hire one of your Razors. I hear the Ghost Flag can be under way by tonight.”

She squeezed the bag open, then emptied a line of shimmering spheres across the table. Varying in size from that of a pea to a little larger than a human thumb-tip, the spheres initially appeared more liquid than solid, like drops of water on the verge of erupting into splashes. After a moment in the light, they coalesced into solid balls and developed an iridescent glow so deep and bright it seemed to be shining through a hole in the bottom of the universe.

The tension in the air dissolved into wonder, and the man to Nyeto’s left gasped. “Phase pearls! Where did you get those?”

“None of your business,” Veta said.

Technically known as boson beads, the gems were created by the plasma bombardment of a Forerunner hard-light device. This particular batch had been collected on nearby Shaps III, when the UNSC’s 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion had sent a company to survey a Forerunner site that had been glassed a few months before.

But Veta was not about to reveal that. Phase pearls were among the rarest gems known to man, and if she divulged the source, it wouldn’t take a month for Shaps III to become one huge mining camp. She closed the bag and left it lying on the table, still half-full and undulating, then looked back to Nyeto.

“That’s more than enough to hire the Ghost Flag for a month,” she said. “Probably for two months, come to think of it.”

“Probably.” Nyeto continued to eye the phase pearls for a moment, then finally looked up at Veta. “But that’s not how I do business.”

“I won’t pay more.”

“It wouldn’t help. I’m not a gem dealer, and I don’t run a transport service. My interests are more . . . specialized.” Nyeto flashed a bright smile. “I think you know that.”

“I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.” Veta was careful to remain stone-faced. Nyeto was starting to sniff at the bait, but she had to appear reluctant if she expected him to take it. “I need a ride, not a partner.”

Nyeto spread his hands. “Then you’ve interrupted my lunch for nothing.”

Veta glowered at Nyeto’s half-empty cordial glass. “You call that lunch?” She reached for the pearl bag. “Sorry we couldn’t do business.”

The man to Nyeto’s left slapped a beefy hand over Veta’s. “You can leave those here.” He was a moonfaced fellow with rough skin and slit eyes, a head shorter than Nyeto, but almost as wide. “Think of it as a consulting fee.”

Veta clamped her free hand over his. “You’re a funny man.”

She grabbed his thumb and peeled. When he tried to jerk loose, she slipped into a wrist lock and pivoted sideways, increasing her leverage and forcing him to flop across Nyeto’s lap. The pain-compliance technique was one she had often used during her time as a Special Inspector in the Gao Ministry of Protection, and one she still preferred to the more lethal methods favored by her current employer.

Chairs began to scrape across the floor as nervous patrons started for the exit, and she glimpsed her backup team moving to cover her.

Olivia-G291 was already in front of the Jiralhanae, pointing an M6P up at his face, while Mark-G313 and Ash-G099 were flanking Nyeto’s booth from opposite sides. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and gold bling in their brows, nostrils, and lips, the trio looked like a crew of twenty-year-old zoneouts—but that was just the makeup. They were actually closer to fifteen, and by far the most dangerous people in the room.

Veta began to lift Moonface’s arm, drawing a bellow of pain as the angle put pressure on his shoulder. She looked back to Nyeto.

“This doesn’t need to get bloody.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” The raspy, raised voice came from the near end of the bar, where a gray-haired man in a purple vest was emerging from a door marked OFFICE. He was holding a glass of coppery liquid in one hand and nothing in the other, and he looked more irritated than alarmed. “The Georgi is a quiet place.”

Nyeto was quick to dip his chin. “My apologies, Mr. Baklanov.” He looked toward the line of patrons heading for the exit, then added, “I hope you’ll allow me to reimburse the trattoria for the disturbance.”

Baklanov nodded. “That will be fine.” He turned to a slender brunette woman behind the bar, then spoke loudly enough to make himself heard by everyone in the dining room. “The Goliath will be paying everyone’s tab while he’s here.”

Nyeto’s smile grew strained. “It will be my pleasure.”

The exodus slowed as human and Kig-Yar customers began to murmur and cackle, weighing the prospect of free drinks against the likelihood of a firefight breaking out any second. When they remained wary of returning to their tables, Baklanov turned to Veta and waved two fingers in her team’s direction.

“You and your friends are visitors here,” he said. “Maybe you should remember that.”

Veta returned his stare, pretending she did not know who he was, then finally shrugged and began to ease Moonface’s wrist toward the table.

“All we want is what belongs to us,” she said. “As long as it’s returned, there won’t be any trouble.”

“Good,” Baklanov said. “Then it’s decided.”

He did not bother to ask Nyeto’s opinion. In addition to the Trattoria Georgi—which served as an informal meeting place for smugglers of all kinds—Georgi Baklanov controlled an orbital warehouse complex named Uashon Station. Between the two businesses, he facilitated fully half the black-market commerce on Venezia, and any gunrunner foolish enough to defy him in his own establishment would soon be looking for a new planet to call home base.

Veta motioned her team to secure their weapons. Once they had tucked the pistols into their belts, Baklanov swirled his drink and shot Nyeto a warning look, then retreated into his office.

Nyeto assumed a placating smile and gestured at Moonface. “I apologize for Marco’s manner. He only meant to say we’d like more information before making a counterproposal.”

“I don’t have time for counterproposals.” Veta released Marco’s wrist completely. “The offer is take-it-or-leave-it.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Nyeto eased Marco out of his lap, then said, “You don’t strike me as someone who plans poorly.”

“I’m not.” Veta began to collect the phase pearls off the table and return them to their bag. “You might say we had an equipment failure.”

“So you have your own vessel?”

“We did.”

Veta stole a glance at the patrons returning to their seats and noticed two thin-snouted Kig-Yar switching to a table closer to Nyeto’s booth. They were either information dealers or spies from an ex-Covenant religious sect known as the Keepers of the One Freedom—and Veta was hoping for the latter. The Trattoria Georgi was a known hangout for the sect’s smuggling gangs, and local sources reported that a Keeper gunrunning crew was in port looking for a cargo. In fact, the whole point of approaching Nyeto in public was to catch the attention of his Keeper rivals.

Veta turned back to Nyeto. “You know anyone interested in a damaged Crow?” she asked. “It can be repaired, but we really need to be on our way.”

Nyeto’s companions shifted in their seats, but he merely forced a smirk and tried to look indifferent.

“Crows are a little small for our operation,” he said. “But I can ask around. What series?”

“A modified S77,” Veta said. Originally used as convoy accompaniment by private cargo-hauling firms, Crows were lightly armored escort fighters. Obsolete by current standards, they were nevertheless so swift and packed with weapons systems that small pirate gangs still flew them as corsairs. “We added ten Archer pods and a Mini-MAC.”

Nyeto’s smirk vanished. “I didn’t know a Crow could carry that much firepower.”

“We found a way.” Veta closed the pearl bag. “Five pods on each side and the Mini-MAC under the belly. Now are you interested?”

“Not in the Crow itself,” Nyeto said. “But how you used it? That interests me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Taulanti,” Nyeto said. “Someone hits a UNSC munitions ship in the Isbanola sector—and you think I won’t hear about it?”

“That doesn’t mean it was us.”

“No? The UNSC has been sniffing around the Qab System for days now.” Nyeto leaned across the table and spoke in a softer voice. “They’re boarding Crows and looking for Archers and Mini-MACS.”

“Still doesn’t mean it was us,” Veta said.

Nyeto studied Veta through narrowed eyes, and she began to fear something in her manner had tipped him off. As a former detective, she’d done some undercover work, but nothing like this. And while she and her Ferret team had just spent five-and-a-half months training for field operations, the one thing their ONI instructors had drilled into them from day one was that if something could go wrong on an op, it usually did.

But after a moment, Nyeto merely nodded and gave her a knowing smile. “Ah, it was you,” he said. “That’s why you’re in such a hurry.”

“That was a bold move, hitting a UNSC munitions ship,” Marco added. “But you didn’t get away clean. And it’s going to get you killed.”

“Not necessarily.” Nyeto kept his eyes locked on Veta. “They still have time . . . if they let us help them.”

“Great.” Veta dangled the pearl bag between her fingers. “Half at the starport, half at the destination.”

“Like I said, that’s not the way I work,” Nyeto replied. “I want in.”

Veta was careful to keep her brow furrowed and her mouth tight. Nyeto was hooked, but the operation could still go bad.

“In what?” she asked.

Nyeto’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I want in on the nukes. From what I’m hearing, you got away with ten. I want five.”

“Can’t do it.”

Veta stole a glance toward the trattoria office and found the Kig-Yar still seated at their new table. They were being sure to face one another instead of Nyeto’s booth, but their bulbous eyes were unfocused, and their dorsal head-quills were standing on end. Good. Veta needed them to hear the Taulanti story before she left the Trattoria Georgi.

She turned back to Nyeto. “Look . . . okay. I can let you have some of the Argent Vs and Gauss cannons. But the Havoks?” She paused to make sure the Kig-Yar eavesdroppers heard her clearly, then shook her head. “The Havoks are already spoken for.”

“Better to deliver some than none,” Nyeto said. “Blame the shortfall on me. I’m sure your clients will—”

“I told you, we can’t do it,” Veta said. “The people I work for? No one disappoints them.”

She exhaled sharply, relying on the show of frustration to mask the prickle of apprehension digging at the base of her skull. She had just uttered the GO phrase, and in about four minutes, all hell would break loose.

“These people you work for,” Nyeto said. “Who are they?”

“Sorry.” Veta gave him a sardonic smile. “I’d tell you, but then—”

“You’d have to kill me?” Nyeto rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”

“Seriously,” Olivia remarked. Her eyebrows and short-cropped hair had been bleached to a pale gold, and an ashen tint had been applied to her dark skin to make her look a bit unhealthy. “We’d have to kill you. All of you.”

“Nothing personal,” Mark said. “That’s just the way it is.”

“Business is never personal,” Nyeto said. He eyed Mark’s sleeveless leather tunic and golden ear hoops with a show of disdain. “Not until some punk makes it that way.”

Mark’s eyes went cold. “Are you saying we’re there now? Because that’s fine with me.”

Instead of answering, Nyeto let his gaze drift toward the trattoria’s office, and Veta found herself hoping the gunrunner was about to do something stupid. He was not the reason she’d been forced to abandon her career in the Gao Ministry of Protection and flee her home planet under threat of death. But this man had smuggled weapons to the Keepers of the One Freedom—the same ex-Covenant extremists whom Casille had used to seize the presidency of Gao. And now the gunrunner was trying to get his hands on a clutch of nuclear warheads. As far as Veta was concerned, an ONI interrogation cell was too good for Ross Nyeto. The sooner his body vanished down a black hole, the happier she would be.

But Nyeto was too smart—or too lucky—to be goaded into a foolish mistake. He continued to gaze in the direction of the office for another instant, then frowned, and Veta turned to find Georgi Baklanov stepping into the dining room again.

“Okay, everybody out!” Baklanov’s voice boomed. “We have Spartans coming!”

A hush fell over the room, and patrons began to look toward the office door in doubt and confusion. Spartans were the elite of the elite, super-soldiers so rare that only one civilian in a hundred million had ever actually glimpsed one. To most of the Venezians in the room, the notion of a Spartan team raiding the Trattoria Georgi would sound almost inconceivable.

Baklanov’s voice grew low and urgent. “This is why I pay lookouts, people. Two Spartans just turned onto Via Notoli.”

The hush broke into a speculative murmur. Via Notoli was long and narrow and notoriously choked with traffic, so even Spartans would find it slow going. And with all of the taverns and warehouses lining the lane, it certainly seemed possible that the super-soldiers were headed somewhere else.

Still, the Trattoria Georgi was a well-known black-market hangout, and the trouble that had almost erupted earlier was unusual. A dozen patrons stood and started for the door.

When the rest of the clientele were slow to follow, Baklanov extended a hand toward his office and made a summoning motion. Two henchmen stepped through the door, both brandishing Sevine Arms 10mm machine pistols. At the same time, the bartender pulled another SAMP-10 from behind the counter.

“Let me make myself absolutely clear. You should leave now.” Baklanov’s tone was growing calmer and steadier by the second. “Anyone still here in sixty seconds, the Spartans won’t need to shoot.”

The threat worked, because the remaining patrons mobbed the exit. Veta was glad to see the Kig-Yar eavesdroppers leading the way. Even if they were not Keeper spies, they would spread the tale of the crazy human woman who had used a Crow to steal ten Havoks, and the Keeper gunrunning crew would find her. All she and her team had to do now was make the coming fight with the Spartans look convincing.

She tucked the phase pearls into her shirt pocket and motioned her team toward the kitchen.

“We’ll go out the back.”

“They’ll be expecting that.” Nyeto remained seated, calmly waiting while his companions slid out of the booth. “Those Spartans may be as dumb as canned fruit, but you can bet there’s an ONI agent calling the shots. My guess is ONI has a sniper watching every exit, and they’re just using the Spartans to flush you out.”

“Could be . . .” Veta said. Nyeto had obviously never matched wits with a Spartan or he wouldn’t be comparing them to canned fruit, but his guess was only slightly inaccurate. She began to fear she had underestimated him. “If you have a better idea, I’m listening.”

“Do we have an agreement?” Nyeto slipped out of the booth and flashed a smirk. “We both know those Spartans are after you and your nukes. So either you split your haul with me . . . or you die and lose it all.”

Veta feigned hesitation, then glanced at her team and received three wary nods. Their reluctance was for show, but they were well trained and had no trouble selling it. She turned to Nyeto.

“You have a way to get us out of here fast?” she asked. “In one piece?”

“Of course.”

“You expect me to take your word for it?” Veta asked. “No details, no deal.”

“Fair enough.” Nyeto motioned to his Jiralhanae bodyguard, then said, “We’ll make our own door.”

“You want to bust through a side wall? An exterior wall?” Veta’s clarification was for the benefit of the approaching Spartans. She had a thread-style microphone sewn in her collar, and everything it picked up was being transmitted to an encrypted comm net. “What about Mr. Baklanov?”

“Give him a phase pearl,” Nyeto said. “He won’t complain.”

“That’s enough for me to buy the whole building.”

“And what would you do with the place?” Nyeto asked. “Especially with ONI hunting you for the rest of your life?”

“Good point.”

She removed the pearl bag from her pocket and began to fumble at the closure, trying to buy time for the third Spartan— the one concealed in the service alley behind the trattoria—to change position.

Nyeto’s face tightened. “What’s the holdup?”

“The magtab is sticking.” Veta squeezed the bag open and began to sort through the pearls. “It does that sometimes.”

Nyeto waited about two seconds before reaching for his sidearm. “You’re stalling.”

Knowing that her team’s hands would already be on their M6Ps, Veta signaled them not to draw. Nyeto and his men were carrying New Tyne Armory 12mm Comets—a class of weapon ONI combat instructors mocked as “hand cannons.” The oversize pistols put the gunrunners at an enormous disadvantage in a quick-draw fight, so she had room to bluff this out.

“The Spartans are coming for us,” she said, “and you think I’m stalling?”

Veta shook her head in mock disbelief, then withdrew one of the smaller phase pearls and summoned Ash over. His hair had been dyed orange and shaved into a flaming wing above each ear, but the rest of his head was bald. He was making a point of watching Nyeto—not staring him down, just making sure the gunrunner knew that if things turned ugly, he would be the first to die.

Nyeto seemed to take the hint. Despite his suspicious expression, he motioned to his men to wait.

Veta put the phase pearl in Ash’s hand. “Give this to Mr. Baklanov, with our apologies in advance for the damage,” she said. The trattoria was nearly empty now, and Baklanov was close enough to overhear. “And hurry. We don’t have much time.”

Ash eyed Baklanov’s henchmen, then said, “We could just take them out.”

“And get stuck trading lead until the Spartans show?” Veta shook her head. “Just give him the pearl. It’ll be faster.”

Ash shrugged. “If you say so.” He handed his M6P to Veta, then pinched the phase pearl between his thumb and forefinger and started across the room. “Hey, Mr. B. I’ve got something for you.”

Veta heard a single click from the reception-dot concealed near her eardrum, and she knew the third Spartan was in position to cover the expected exit route. It wouldn’t be long before the other two arrived to flush the quarry into their trap. She turned to Ross Nyeto.

“We’d better still have a deal,” she said. “I’d hate to lose one of my phase pearls for nothing.”

Nyeto moved his hand away from his holster. “You can’t blame a man for being careful,” he said. “I have my own reasons to be nervous about Spartans.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Maybe not, but it’ll have to do for now.” Nyeto motioned his Jiralhanae bodyguard toward the wall. “Picus—”

“Stop!” Baklanov called. “Do that, and you’re finished on Venezia.”

Nyeto motioned Picus to wait, then faced the proprietor. “Mr. Baklanov, trust me. You don’t want the Spartans to find us here.”

“Sure I do,” Baklanov said. “At least, I’d like them find your new friends.”

Veta turned to find Baklanov’s henchmen swinging their SAMP-10 machine pistols toward her side of the room. Baklanov himself was pointing an 8mm automatic—a Sevine Arms Defender—at Ash’s face. Ash was still pinching the phase pearl between his thumb and forefinger, staring down the Defender’s muzzle and looking more irritated than concerned. Mark and Olivia had drawn their M6Ps, but were keeping the muzzles pointed at the floor until they received an order to engage.

Given his reflexes and training, Ash could easily pivot aside and take Baklanov’s weapon away, and even firing from the waist, Mark and Olivia could take out the henchmen before their SAMP-10s settled on target. But then the team’s cover would be blown, and the young Ferrets had too much discipline to put their own lives ahead of the mission. It was a holdover from their SPARTAN-III training, and one Veta feared would get them killed someday.

She used a hand flick to signal WAIT, then glared at Baklanov. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

Baklanov appeared to consider the possibility for a moment, then shook his head. “Not the way I see it.” He gestured at the M6P in Veta’s hand. “You and your punks can put the popguns on the floor.”

“I don’t think so.” Veta stepped toward Baklanov. “What do you expect to happen here?”

“What’s it look like?” Baklanov thumbed back the hammer of his Defender, the unspoken threat bringing Veta to a halt. “The Spartans want you and those nukes in a bad way. I turn you over, all my problems go away.”

“Maybe because you’re already dead,” Ash said. He rolled the phase pearl into the palm of his hand, then extended it toward Baklanov. “Take it. You’ll live longer.”

Baklanov almost smiled. “I like your style, kid. But I’ll take my chances.”

“With ONI?” Veta asked. The mission planners had not foreseen Baklanov volunteering to “help” the UNSC—though maybe they should have. In the field, anything could happen. “You think those two Spartans don’t know who you are? That you’re not listed as a target of opportunity?”

Doubt filled Baklanov’s eyes, and she realized she still had a chance to keep the mission on track. The two Spartans had to sell the Ferret team’s cover story by making it look like the UNSC was desperate to recover the “stolen” Havoks. But the deception required careful timing—the Ferrets needed to escape just as the Spartans arrived, because nobody was going to believe a few low-lifes could survive a firefight with fully armored Spartans.

Veta let Baklanov’s skepticism build for a moment, then said, “Look, if you try to strike a deal with those two Spartans, you’ll end up in a body bag. The Goliath too.”

“Is that a threat?” Baklanov’s tone was tough, but the doubt was still there. “Because I’m not a guy you want to threaten.”

“I’m just telling you how it is.” Veta tipped her head toward the phase pearl in Ash’s hand. “You want to live, take the pearl and follow us out of here. You want to die, start a firefight. If we don’t kill you, the Spartans will.”

Baklanov’s gaze shifted to the glowing bead in Ash’s palm, and Veta realized she was winning him over. She let her breath out— and heard a double click from the reception-dot in her ear. Ash’s eyes widened, and she knew he’d heard it too. The Spartans were about to breach—and her team was badly out of position.

Veta gave her head a subtle rock, signaling her team to forget the plan and follow her lead. She did not relish the thought of improvising—that was usually when operatives got hurt—but Baklanov had forced her hand.

She looked toward the wall-size picture window in the front of the trattoria and spotted a pair of Jackrabbit scout cycles on Via Notoli. Spread roughly a meter apart, they were cutting across traffic toward the trattoria.

“Time’s up, Mr. Baklanov.” Veta swung her M6P toward the front window. “Now we die.”

The two Jackrabbits reached the walkway, scattering pedestrians in all directions, then accelerated hard. Their front wheels rose into the air and crashed through the trattoria’s window just above the sill. Veta opened fire on the nearest cycle, and the cockpit canopy shattered beneath two explosive rounds. She fired again, aiming for the driver’s faceplate. His shields shimmered as the round detonated, and his helmet vanished behind a fiery orange flash.

The Jackrabbit veered toward the bar and slammed into the side, causing an eruption of polished stone and dark wood. Veta glimpsed blue Mjolnir armor and knew the Spartan she’d just shot was the leader of the legendary Blue Team, Fred-104. It was what a pirate would have done, but still . . . he was a friend.

By then, Ash was wrenching the Defender out of Baklanov’s hand, and Mark and Olivia were blasting the wheels off the second Jackrabbit. A Spartan in gray Mjolnir with a half-bubble faceplate—the second member of Blue Team, Kelly-087—bailed out and rolled across the floor, reaching for her sidearm. Mark and Olivia continued to fire, enveloping her in an orange aura as their rounds detonated against her energy shield.

Baklanov stepped toward the gray-armored Spartan and held up his now-weaponless hand, motioning her to wait. Like that was going to happen. They were in the middle of a firefight, and Kelly’s hand came up holding her sidearm. Blood sprayed the wall as the M6C’s armor-piercing round exited through the back of his purple vest.

Ash returned fire using Baklanov’s Defender, but the weapon’s hollow-point ammo just disintegrated against her shields. Kelly swung the M6C toward Ash; then Baklanov’s henchmen opened fire on her with their SAMP-10s, and she had to dive into an evasive roll. Tables and chairs dissolved into splinters behind her.

Fred rose from the bar’s wreckage and sprayed the henchmen with mini-bursts from his assault rifle. The machine pistols fell from their hands and all three collapsed where they stood, each bleeding from a line of holes stitched across his torso.

The roar of the SAMP-10s had barely faded before Ross Nyeto’s men began to boom away with their Comets. Kelly’s energy shield crackled with overload static and went down, and flakes of titanium alloy began to spawl off her armor. The Spartans brought their own fire to bear almost instantly, and the first of Nyeto’s men dropped.

Then Mark staggered back, blood pouring from his shoulder. Whether he had been hit by a stray bullet or deliberately wounded to help sell the Ferret team’s cover story, Veta didn’t know—and it didn’t matter. The entire operation was a desperate ploy. The Keepers of the One Freedom had assassinated an admiral and abducted her family, and the trail was running cold. ONI’s best hope of drawing the kidnappers into the open was to dangle a bunch of stolen Havoks in their home territory and hope they took the bait.

Veta swung her M6P toward Fred and fired her last round.

His shields were already down, and the shot caught him in the middle of his chest armor. The detonation barely rocked him, but he used it as an excuse to fire his next burst high. Veta tossed the pocket pistol aside and reached down to grab a SAMP-10—then a large hand clasped her arm and drew her away. She looked over to find Ross Nyeto grasping her biceps, yelling something she could not hear above the thunder of the firefight.

Only one of Nyeto’s three men remained standing, but Picus, the Jiralhanae bodyguard, was by the corner booth, hurling himself into the plaster-finished wall. The impact sent a shiver through his entire body and rocked him back on his heels, and Veta’s heart caught for an instant. If the Brute failed to breach the wall, their escape from the Spartans would become a lot less believable—and the Keeper gunrunning crew a lot less likely to show themselves.

Picus drew back, then threw himself at the wall again. This time, a structural panel buckled, and he disappeared into a cloud of billowing dust. Green Venezian light began to pour into the room through a three-meter hole, and Veta allowed Nyeto to pull her across the booth toward the opening.

Outside, Veta could see the wood-planked side street emptying as pedestrians raced away from the firefight. Picus was kneeling in a pile of rubble, shaking his head and gathering himself to rise.

The Jiralhanae’s head snapped sideways and sprayed blood, and he collapsed onto his flank and began to convulse. Nyeto put out a hand, signaling Veta to wait behind him, then stared at the Brute’s shuddering body as though he could not quite understand what had just happened. There were three holes in the bodyguard’s massive temple, surrounded by powder stippling and arranged in a triangle so tight it was almost a single wound.

Which meant the attack had come from close range—no more than a couple of meters away. Nyeto dropped to his haunches and duckwalked into the hole.

Veta took the chance to glance back into the trattoria and saw that Nyeto’s last man had fallen. Ash and Olivia had each retrieved a Comet and were continuing to blast away at the two Spartans, who were returning fire with their assault rifles. Mark was ignoring the blood pouring from his shoulder and using a SAMP-10 to spray the wall above Fred’s head. No one was hitting anyone, but they were all making it look damn good.

Veta caught Olivia’s attention by tossing a piece of loose plaster past her shoulder, then signaled her to collect Mark and Ash and disengage. When she turned forward again, Nyeto was still squatting, holding his Comet in both hands and cautiously leaning forward to peer outside. She drew her leg back and planted a boot in the middle of his back, stomp-kicking him out onto the walkway.

A female Spartan in copper-tinted Mjolnir armor stepped into view. Wearing a goggle-eyed ARGUS-class helmet with extra sensor boxes on the sides, she was the third member of Blue Team, Linda-058. She placed a titanium boot on Nyeto’s weapon arm, then looked up and gave a curt nod as Veta and her team clambered out onto the walkway.

The gesture was not lost on Nyeto, who craned his neck to watch the Ferret team race past. “Who are you?” he called. “Why did you—”

The question ended in a thump as Linda brought her assault rifle down, using the pressure point at the hinge of Nyeto’s jaw to knock him unconscious. She kicked the Comet away from his hand, then Veta lost sight of them as the Ferrets spilled into the street and sprinted for the intersection with Via Notoli.

They had taken about five steps when triple-round bursts began to crack from Linda’s assault rifle. Olivia cried out, and Veta looked over to see her staggering as she struggled to regain her stride. There was a fresh bullet hole in the thigh of her dark pants, and blood pouring down both sides of her leg.

First Mark takes a bullet, now Olivia. That was half of her squad wounded. Veta was beginning to think Blue Team was trying a little too hard to make the chase look real. She slipped a hand under Olivia’s arm and pulled her along for two steps. Once Olivia’s stride evened out, she twisted around, allowing Veta to guide her while she fired the big Comet over her shoulder. Ash and Mark were both doing the same, though parked scooter trucks and tri-wheel minivans seemed to be taking most of the damage.

They reached Via Notoli a few steps later. Veta led the way around the corner, away from the Trattoria Georgi. Traffic in the intersection had deteriorated into an impassible snarl of crashed and abandoned vehicles, but the walkway cleared ahead of them as alarmed pedestrians ducked into shops or hid between parked vehicles. Despite their wounds, Mark and Olivia had no trouble keeping up. If anything, their injuries only made them faster—a result of the biological augmentations they had received during their SPARTAN-III training.

Veta studied the warehouses ahead, looking for a red awning over a pair of green doors. This part of New Tyne had been built atop a swamp, and the red awning marked a building with a trapdoor that descended to a loading dock. To make their escape look credible, the Ferrets had left a shallow-draft airboat there. But they didn’t have much time to reach it. Blue Team could hold back only a few seconds without making it obvious that they were deliberately delaying pursuit.

The red awning came into view forty paces away, far enough from the action that confused pedestrians were still clustering in front of it. Veta glanced back and saw onlookers beginning to drift onto the walkway behind her. Beyond the gawkers, almost seeming to float above their heads in Venezia’s hazy air, two large Spartan helmets were emerging from the ruins of Trattoria Georgi. There was no sign of the Kig-Yar eavesdroppers, which Veta decided to take as a good sign. Given the circumstances, it would only make sense for a pair of Keeper spies to avoid showing themselves.

Veta continued to watch as the two Spartans—Fred and Kelly—started to pursue. She knew Linda would not be joining them. Instead, the third Spartan would be busy securing Ross Nyeto for transport to an ONI interrogation facility. At least that part of the operation had gone right.

“Do not slow down!” Veta’s ears had stopped ringing enough that she could hear her own voice, so she hoped the rest of her team could too. “If we need to clear a lane, fire warning—”

Olivia’s arm came up, catching Veta across the chest so forcefully the impact almost knocked her off her feet. She caught her balance and heard a vehicle clanging to a halt in front of her, then turned to find a tri-wheel minivan screeching to a full stop across the walkway.

The side door slid open. A tri-digit hand motioned them inside, and a scaly Kig-Yar face peered out. “If you want to live,” he said, “come with us.”

CHAPTER 2

1122 hours, December 8, 2553 (military calendar)

UNSC passenger schooner Donoma

Deep Space Transitional Zone, Tisiphone System

Operation: RETRIBUTION had been set into motion four days earlier, after Veta and her Ferret team were summoned to a deep-space rendezvous with the UNSC passenger schooner Donoma. They had entered the vessel through a temporary airlock and found themselves floating in a zero-G slaughterhouse.

The Donoma’s wardroom had been breached inward by a powerful detonation, and Veta could tell from the blood spatter that the blast had hurled three occupants into the far wall. Near the top of each pattern, an ovoid dent indicated where their heads had impacted, so it seemed likely that all three victims had been dead or unconscious when the cabin decompressed and sent their pressure-bloated corpses tumbling into the void. Fortunately for Veta—who still found it awkward to work in a pressure suit—the temporary airlock had sealed the breach and allowed the Donoma to be repressurized. So even if the vessel lacked gravity, at least it had a standard atmosphere.

Veta spun toward Rear Admiral Serin Osman, the officer who had summoned her to the scene. A slender woman with short-cropped hair and high cheekbones, the admiral wore a thruster harness over blue camouflage utilities. There was no unit patch or name tag, only a single black star on each collar tip. If you didn’t know she was ONI, you weren’t paying attention.

“Did they recover the bodies?” Veta asked.

“Not yet.” Osman was the current head of the Beta-5 Division of Section Three operations, which ran the SPARTAN programs and most of ONI’s other black ops and helped oversee an array of reverse-engineering programs that used alien technology to create new weapons and devices for the UNSC. She was among the most powerful of ONI’s division heads, and—according to rumor— being groomed to take over as the agency’s commander-in-chief when Margaret Parangosky finally retired. “We have a squadron of Storks running a search cone, but you know how it is—dead bodies are small, deep space is big. And the commanding investigator tells me the assault happened seven days ago. I don’t expect any recoveries.”

“Let’s hope they prove you wrong,” Veta said. She really wanted to see the bodies—more often than not, the bodies told the story. “How long has the IRI team been aboard?”

“Two days,” Osman said. Piracy had grown so common in the Outer Colonies that the UNSC had an entire Incident Response and Investigation branch dedicated to identifying and locating perpetrators. “But they haven’t removed anything from the scene. I wanted you to have a look first.”

“Because IRI investigators aren’t good enough?”

“Because there’s a lot at stake,” Osman said. “And I need answers fast.”

“I’m flattered, but—”

“Lopis, you were Gao’s best homicide investigator. Just give me something we can use to identify the killers. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Mark used a maneuvering thruster to move to Osman’s side. “Isn’t that what we’ve been training for, Admiral?” Like Ash and Olivia, he wore plain gray utilities, and his adolescent face showed no sign of the piercings and jewelry that would adorn it in the coming days. “To identify problems—and take care of them?”

“Mark, when Admiral Osman has a job for us, she’ll say so,” Veta said. Unlike her subordinates, she was in no hurry to interrupt their Ferret training and start working in the field. Deep-penetration black ops had a way of going sideways, and so far her young Spartan-IIIs were still far better soldiers than they were secret agents. “For now, let’s concentrate on giving the admiral what she’s asked for.”

Mark frowned but said, “Yes, ma’am. Just let me know what my assignment is.”

“How about you check the Donoma’s weapons inventory, both ship-to-ship and personal,” Veta said. The task was more than a way to keep Mark busy. As her team’s security specialist, he was the one most qualified to evaluate what combat tactics the crew might have employed in an attempt to fend off the boarders. “That should give us some idea of how the fight progressed—and how quickly.”

“Very well, ma’am.”

Mark turned to Osman and saluted. He nodded to Veta before departing, but skipped the salute. Although Veta was an ONI operative, that did not make her a military officer—which suited her just fine. As a Gao native, she still had a few anti-centralization feelings, and swearing an oath of loyalty to the UNSC might be more than she was ready for.

Veta drifted to the center of the wardroom and spun in a slow circle, assessing the scene. Judging by the swab smears on the walls and the evidence tags affixed to the floor, the IRI investigators had done a good job of collecting trace evidence. Eventually, those efforts might reveal something that pointed to the attackers’ identity. But scientific analysis took time, and if Osman had been willing to wait, she would not have jerked Veta’s team out of its final weeks of Ferret training to look at a crime scene.

“Anything, Lopis?” Osman asked.

“Yeah, a little.” Veta pointed at the jagged edges of the breach, which had been curled inward by the blast and were coated with dried blood. “There were a lot of people sucked out through that breach. More than died here in the wardroom.”

Veta turned away from the damaged hull and carefully used her thruster harness to cross the wardroom. It had been only five and a half months since she had experienced weightlessness for the first time, and while the sensation had grown familiar, she still preferred walking and lamented the absence of the Donoma’s artificial gravity field.

A moment later, she had successfully maneuvered herself into position next to the doorway. Rather than a hatch, the wardroom was serviced by an automatic door, which had jammed ten centimeters out of its storage pocket. She grabbed the leading edge and pulled herself down to examine a blood smear on the floor.

Struggling to hold herself steady while she worked, Veta noted that the smear seemed to be streaking toward the breach in the hull. She ran her fingers inside the door’s receiver slot and found a tuft of bristly brown hair stuck inside the sealing gasket. When she raised the hair to her nose, it smelled musky and acrid.

Veta passed the tuft to Osman, who was following at a polite distance. “You recognize that smell?”

“Jiralhanae,” Osman said. “That’s not a surprise.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll see,” Osman said. “So, what do you think?”

“I think a Jiralhanae corpse was jamming the door open.” Veta ran her fingers along the inside of the receiving slot again, this time about midway up its height, and came away with crusted blood. “When the boarding party withdrew and left in their vessel, the wardroom decompressed a second time. A lot of bodies from deeper in Donoma were drawn out past the Jiralhanae. Eventually, he was dislodged . . . and got sucked out of the breach himself.”

Osman nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. “The Banished don’t usually stick around to make a target airtight after they’re done.”

“The Banished?” Veta asked, not hiding her surprise. The Banished were a fast-growing, tech-savvy horde of marauders. Since the closing days of the war, they’d been causing trouble for humans and the Covenant empire by pillaging ships, installations, and even entire worlds in a relentless pursuit of cutting-edge weapons technology. “You think they did this?”

“So you don’t?” Osman asked. She was watching Veta closely, clearly trying to gauge her reaction. “Why not?”

“I don’t think anything yet,” Veta said. “I haven’t seen enough evidence—unless you’re holding something back?”

Osman shook her head. “At this stage, the Banished are just an assumption,” she said. “Forget I mentioned them. I need you to draw your own conclusions.”

“But hold on,” Olivia said. She hit her thrusters and drifted close. “You think it was the Banished. Did some lamebrain put equipment on the Donoma we should know about?”

Osman scowled. “What part of ‘forget I mentioned them’ wasn’t clear, Petty Officer?”

Olivia’s expression grew contrite. “Sorry, Admiral,” she said. “I didn’t realize the lamebrain was you.”

“It wasn’t,” Osman said. “Shouldn’t you be pissing off the ship’s AI or something?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll get right on that.”

Olivia saluted and maneuvered toward the doorway. As the Ferret team’s information specialist, she had been developed into an elite hacker who could plunder almost any processing system. Veta pushed out of the doorway to let her float past.

“Look for infiltration routines,” Veta said, now speaking to Olivia’s boots. “And anything that explains what the Donoma was doing way out here in the transitional zone.”

“Affirmative,” Olivia called back.

Once she had disappeared around the corner, Osman sighed and asked, “What are you thinking she’ll find, Lopis?”

“I’m not sure,” Veta said. “But whoever attacked the Donoma didn’t stumble on her by accident—not at the edge of the system. They knew she would be here.”

Ash now spoke up. “That doesn’t sound like the Banished. They’re not exactly subtle . . . are they?”

Osman’s thrusters hissed as she rotated to face him. At first, Veta thought Osman would reprimand him as harshly as she had Olivia. But Ash merely gave a look of calm expectation, and the irritation on Osman’s face faded to impatience.

“Ash, you know better than that,” Osman said. “You never underestimate an enemy.”

“I don’t think I am, ma’am,” Ash said. “I’m just saying . . . the Banished aren’t inside operators.”

The corners of Osman’s mouth started to drop, and Veta decided Ash needed backup.

“Taking the subject’s usual modus operandi into consideration isn’t underestimating him, Admiral,” she said. “If the Banished haven’t used espionage tactics in the past, we need a sound reason to think they’re using them now. Are you saying their tactics have evolved?”

Osman hesitated, then said: “We don’t have any intelligence to confirm that. But look at how brutal the attack was, how fast.”

“That characterizes the attack, but it’s not evidence,” Veta said.

“We don’t have time to cross every t and dot every i,” Osman replied, fuming. “We need to identify these bastards—and we need to do it now.”

Veta did not respond immediately. Outbursts were rare for the admiral, so the fact that she had lost control even a little suggested a personal element was involved—one that was making her desperate to push Veta toward the Banished being the culprit.

Once the ire had drained from Osman’s face, Veta asked, “Admiral, is there some reason you need these attackers to be the Banished?”

Osman looked as though she were biting back a sharp reply, then let out a long breath and spoke more calmly. “What I need is a quick answer,” she said. “I have a prowler watching a Banished flotilla in the Nereus system.”

“Ah—and you think they might be the Donoma’s attackers,” Veta surmised. Nereus was the next star Earthward, an uninhabited system of ice balls and dust-smothered rocks that would be a perfect spider hole for a pirate horde. “How long do we have?”

“Impossible to know. They’re holding in orbit at the tenth planet. The prowler captain thinks they might be waiting for a rendezvous, but we don’t have intelligence on that.”