But she could see the skyline of Vadam now, and there was smoke. The assault seemed to have started in earnest.

‘Telcam took a cal on the bridge and listened careful y. Raia caught snatches of the conversation and could only guess what might be happening at the other end.

“Can you understand me?” He paused and nodded. “Yes, I can hear you. He’s safe and I’ve secured him in the temple, under guard … I see, but why was that necessary?” He paused again, looking irritated. “Let us both hope the Arbiter knows nothing of our arrangement. Can I count on you?”

Whatever answer he received seemed to reassure him. “Very wel .” He looked irritated for a moment, then picked up another communications handset and barked at someone. “Olar? The scholar’s escorts have come for him. Let them take him so that we avoid inconvenient retaliation from Earth if anything goes wrong. Do you understand? Try to show restraint.”

That meant nothing to Raia. Earth? How could humans retaliate? What had this war to do with them anyway? She was trying to work that out when a bril iant flash of white light blinded her for a few moments. A huge roar of approval went up on the bridge. When her vision cleared, she could see what had raised everyone’s spirits. Two ships were flying slowly across the city, firing blue-white bolts on the buildings below. Whoever was down there returned fire, spitting burning arcs into the sky, but the ships continued their barrage.

A slim spire next to the river took a direct hit and crumbled in slow motion, col apsing a layer at a time into the water below. More smoke had appeared on the skyline, reaching up to the clouds as if someone had thrown down a coil of dirty rope from the heavens. The Arbiter was under attack.

This was what Jul had wanted. Raia hoped that wherever he was, he would think it was worth the price.

“Take us in closer, Buran, and target Vadam keep,” ‘Telcam said. “But nobody is to cause damage to Forerunner relics, even indirectly.”

Buran and a few of the other males turned to look at the monk in badly disguised disbelief.

“That might not be possible, brother,” Buran said. “And what if ‘Vadam’s forces shelter in them?”

“Then we must find another way,” ‘Telcam said. “Because the gods are our reason for fighting.”

CHAPTER FIVE

YOU CAN WIN WARS ANY NUMBER OF WAYS. YOU CAN CARPET BOMB, OR SEND IN GROUND TROOPS, OR SHELL A CITY, OR DETONATE A NUKE. YOU CAN LAY SIEGE, CUT OFF WATER AND POWER, OR BLOCKADE THEIR PORTS. BUT THERE’S ONE UNIVERSAL ACHILLES’ HEEL THAT EVERY ORGANISM HAS. IF THEY CAN’T GROW FOOD, OR CAN’T EAT WHAT THEY’VE GOT, THEY DIE. IT BEATS A SHOOTING WAR.

(DR. IRENA MAGNUSSON, ONI RESEARCH FACILITY TREVELYAN)

TEMPLE OF THE ABIDING TRUTH, ONTOM “I’l be gone for a few hours,” Phil ips said to Olar. He’d stuffed what he could into a bundle made from a knotted tunic and half-draped his jacket over it in case the Sangheili started asking awkward questions. “I’ve helped myself to some rations. I won’t get lost.”

Olar seemed more interested in what was happening outside. A couple of his comrades came running back shouting that more armed Brutes had landed and that there was a stand-off in the plaza.

“Those tunnels run for many, many spans, right across the island,” he said, not paying attention. “It’s a labyrinth. Don’t expect me to come and rescue you. And don’t go down the wal ed-off tunnels. It’s dangerous.”

Dangerous. Right. There was a firefight going on outside and the coup had started. Phil ips thought an unstable tunnel was probably the least of his problems. “I’l be careful,” he said. He headed into the network of passages again, confident that he knew the route to the farthest point he’d mapped and that he could find his way back here. “Don’t worry about me.”

So the passages run for kilometers, do they? Well, there’s definitely got to be a back door or two, then.

He ran his fingertips along the wal as he walked, feeling for the weird barrier that covered some of the cartouches. Perhaps they weren’t safety covers at al . Maybe this was a museum and always had been, and the barriers were there to stop sticky fingers from messing up the ancient exhibits. But that didn’t mean they were useless. There was information on them, and al information was valuable sooner or later.

He kept walking and sniffed the air from time to time. There was no mustiness, no dampness, nothing at al to indicate that he was a long way underground and getting farther from the entrance with every step. Now he’d been walking for about thirty minutes, and he couldn’t hear a damn thing other than his own breathing. He would have kept on walking but BB stopped him.

“This is an area we haven’t catalogued, Professor,” the not-quite-BB said. “I’l start recording.”

Phil ips cast around. It was al starting to look the same to him, a monotonous perfection of cream and taupe stonework, punctuated by crisply carved symbols every few meters and the string of scruffy lights. He looked at his datapad again: left, left, right, straight ahead, left. He made sure he was recording everything by hand, not just relying on BB, if this husk of the AI could be relied upon at al . He found himself starting to treat BB like a senile relative.

“Adj would probably be able to read al this,” Phil ips said, just by way of conversation.

“Who’s Adj?”

Oh, damn. He’s erased data that could compromise us. Yeah, we didn’t want the Sangheili to know we hijacked their Engineer. “Never mind.

Just someone I knew.”

“Dr. Halsey has made some errors in her translations, I believe, but I’m correcting them.”

“Can’t wait to see you tel her that.”

“I’l have difficulty doing that, Professor, because she died in the assault on Reach.”

Phil ips marveled at the programming that decided which parts of BB’s memory to wipe and which to keep. His selective amnesia was both impressive and confusing.

“Yeah, so she did,” Phil ips said. “You were saying something about errors.”

“The elements of the symbols that she interpreted as nouns. Some of them are actual y adjectives, and that changes the meaning somewhat.”

“Show me.”

“You’re a linguist, aren’t you, Professor?”

There was no sarcasm. BB didn’t remember anything that was classified. Maybe that meant he didn’t know they’d been buddies. So? I’m chummy with a computer. What’s wrong with that? He really does have a personality. He’s real. When BB got himself back together again and did that reintegration thing, perhaps they’d have something to laugh about. Phil ips hoped so.

“I’m a xenoanthropologist specializing in languages,” he said. “I hold the Arkel Chair at Wheatley University, Sydney.”

“Then you’l understand this. This language is a blend of phonetics and ideographs. It also appears to have pointing to indicate vowels, like Semitic languages. The trick is working out which elements are phonetic and which are ideographic. I’m using the pointing to differentiate, although that might be whol y misleading.”

This was Phil ips’s bread and butter, his life’s work. However fond as he was of the old BB, however sorry he felt for him right now, he was damned if he’d be beaten at his specialty by a glorified personal organizer. He rested his arm on the wal and held the datapad’s light at an angle to throw a stronger shadow, scrutinizing the symbols. There was no sign of a barrier. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

“So what do you think this one says?”

BB didn’t respond for a few seconds. Given the processing speed of an AI, even one in this state, that was the equivalent of putting Phil ips on hold and going away for the weekend.

“If I went by Halsey’s lexicon, then this symbol here refers to shield world zero zero six. I think the symbol on the end is sarcophagus.”

“Wow.” Phil ips scanned the panel, running his forefinger down the surface. Yes, there was something preventing him from touching the stone itself. “Zero zero six is cal ed Onyx. Wel , there had to be more than one bomb shelter, right? Which symbol?”

“Down … down … stop. That one.”

Phil ips studied it, searching for some resonance. He real y had to get up to speed with this alphabet. He thought he could see a recurring element in each symbol below the one that BB had identified as Onyx.

“Does that mean these are al shield worlds?”

“I believe so. We know of many, and different kinds.”

“So … what is this? A commemorative plaque? A map?”

“I can’t translate the symbol at the start of each line.”

“Okay, if that bit is shield or shield world, and that element is the number, is the thing here just decorative?”

“The Onyx one repeats three lines down.”

Now that was interesting: there were eight lines with three smal er symbols next to each—the shield element, a symbol unique to the line, and a third symbol. Five bore one design and two another, and Onyx appeared to be one of those two.

“It might indicate a general location, because I can’t see any numerical coordinates,” BB said. “But we don’t know if the Forerunners thought in terms of star systems, quadrants, or even separate galaxies.”

Phil ips sketched the cartouche even though he didn’t need to with his datapad and BB recording. This was fascinating. He wanted to feel the language, to understand how the shapes were formed, to know how Forerunners had felt when they were writing. The sense of connection was exhilarating. He realized he was breathing faster and his back itched with sweat.

“Okay, let’s see what else we can find.” He was in deep shit but it almost didn’t matter while he was having this extraordinary cultural adventure.

“Onward and upward.”

BB had no choice about moving on. Phil ips walked and he was dragged along with him. The next section of wal turned a corner to the right and there were no more inscriptions for another five minutes. How far had they come now? Phil ips started calculating his pace and working it out, but it just didn’t matter now. He was fol owing a trail, excited as a kid.

I could be dead tomorrow. And all I care about is this.

“This is fun, BB,” he said. “Knowledge. You like finding things out, don’t you? That’s what drives you. Me too.”

“May I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“We know one another better than I recal , don’t we?”

“Actual y, yes.” Phil ips dithered on the edge of explaining in case it triggered memories that BB wasn’t supposed to retrieve now. He felt along the wal like a blind man, wil ing his fingertips to hit that slightly raised edge that wasn’t there but felt like … fur. That was it: fur. “You’re a fragment of yourself, and back where we came from, we’re pretty good buddies. You’l see.”

“Ah.”

“Ohhh…” Phil ips touched that velvet-pile fur again, but he couldn’t see anything on the wal . “Here we go.”

This time it seemed to go on for a good couple of meters and he thought he was walking into a dead end, but when he reached it, it was just another corner. Then something touched his face and he batted it away instinctively. His brain said cobwebs, spiders. But there was nothing he could see, nothing at al . That was the weirdest thing about this place: the passages were as clean as if they were swept daily. He couldn’t imagine the Sangheili doing that. He’d been here a couple of days and he’d never seen them doing any housework beyond keeping the main chamber and living areas clean and tidy.

“I keep picking up interference,” BB said. “But it’s stopped now.”

To Phil ips, interference meant comms. For a second he thought the link with Port Stanley had started working again, and he pressed the radio.

But there was nothing. He glanced behind him. The passage was lit, but he couldn’t see the jury-rigged lights. He checked his watch. They’d been gone an hour and a half.

“You want to press on, BB?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“You know you’re not normal y this deferential to me.”

“I have to take your word for that. Tel me, do I have more functions than this?”

“Functions?” It was upsetting, even pitiful. “Jesus H. Christ, BB, you’re probably the most intel igent entity in UNSC, you perform a zil ion processes a second, and you can run entire warships single-handed. Yes, I’d say you have a lot more functions. Just relax and you’l be your old self before too long.”

“Thank you,” BB said. “That’s comforting. Something about the gaps in my mind is becoming very distressing.”

Phil ips knew he had to knock that on the head before it turned into the only thing that BB could think about. Rampancy. AIs can think themselves to death. Literally. Phil ips needed him working, however limited, but his instinct said to take care of a buddy. “BB, you’re an intel igence agent. A spy. Whatever’s been turned off in your brain is just temporary, to protect both of us.”

“Are you tel ing me the truth?”

“Yes. Trust me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your friend.”

BB didn’t respond. Phil ips carried on walking and let him think it over a few mil ion times. The floor felt different beneath the soles of his boots, almost carpeted, but it was stil a continuous run of immaculately faced, precisely laid flagstones, and he moved on methodical y looking from side to side for more cartouches.

“Jackpot,” he said. There it was, the first panel he’d seen for ages. “I hope it’s a sign for the bathrooms. I need to pump ship, as Mal would say.”

And the old BB would have said how very nautical, but this one didn’t even pass comment. Phil ips compared this cartouche with his hand-drawn notes. It was much starker than the previous one—six symbols of one design, one of another, with a smal er nonrepeating symbol beside each and two separate lines that could have been headers. He was certain he’d seen these before, or at least part of them. He was stil looking through his notes when BB spoke.