But she was an AI close to rampancy. Jai wondered how much they should follow her plans.
He'd have to revisit that once they had their hands on Bonifacio and the navigation data.
Juliana faded, becoming almost a ghost in the bright medical bay, then she appeared again. "Okay," she almost whispered. "I can pass the fix I have on Distancia onto you, but I'm going to need some of you to help me. One team goes after Bonifacio, the other I need to do something a little bit trickier.
"There's a Kig-Yar ship still in the Rubble. I can't crack their encryption, but if I can physically get into one of their systems, that would let me figure out exactly what they're up to. If it's a full-scale attack, we need to know for sure so that we don*t make a big mistake. If we use non-Rubble attackers, then the Rubble can deny this little incursion was our doing if things turn out to be okay with the Kig-Yar."
Jai looked at the AI. "You want us to board a Covenant ship?"
"And plug me in, yes." Juliana nodded. "My higher functions. I'll be leaving a simple base copy to keep regulating the Rubble, of course. But the core me will go with the boarding party."
Juliana was rampant. Or just plain insane, Jai thought. He scratched his chin, then looked at Juliana. "We'll need a larger force. We need to free the crew of that UNSC ship that was captured. It'll have ODSTs aboard. Release those men and we have a force." Helljumpers weren't huge fans of the Spartans, but were somewhat like Spartans, Jai had to admit, but without the altered physiology and powered armor. And they were good fighting men; he was sure he could get them to storm a Jackal ship.
It was the sort of thing ODSTs would enjoy doing.
"I'm not the ruler of the Rubble," she said. "Only the Council can release them. Besides, most of those people are tagged with locaters. People will notice it if they start trooping out to help us."
"Do all of them have locaters?" Adriana asked.
Juliana smiled. "Not all. The ones who refused to become Rubble citizens don't."
"Then we can use some of them," Jai said.
"I won't open the doors," Juliana said. "That would draw attention. But if the cameras, were to malfunction, you could break the crew out and get them to help you before anyone would really notice."
"That'll have to do." Jai turned around. "Adriana, Mike, you take Bonifacio. Delgado, you're with me, I need someone who knows the inside of these habitats."
Delgado swung his legs over the side of the table with a wince. "You sure you're going to break up your little team?"
Jai grinned. "Who else will be able to talk the ODSTs into coming with us? Mike, Adriana, get on the navigation data, and quickly. I'll take care of things for Juliana."
The
Petya shuddered as Mike disengaged the ship. "I'll drop you off at the nearest working set of locks," he announced. "Then it's a full burn for Distancia."
Delgado stood up, wavering on his feet. "Do me a favor," he asked Adriana. "When you catch up to Bonifacio, make sure you shoot the thieving bastard for me. Preferably in the knee, or somewhere painful like that."
The
Petya thudded into another airlock.
"I'll go release the others," Jai told Delgado. "You and Juliana need to scare up another ship for the attack."
Delgado and Juliana exchanged a glance. "We're on it."
Jai ran a systems check of the Mjolnir armor, and walked down the corridor for a pair of M7 submachine guns and extra ammo.
Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
THE REDOUBT, METISETTE, 23 LIBRAE
Reth quickly strode through the hall of one of the Redoubt's grounded ships. There were ten old decommissioned ships that had been landed around
"the Plaza," with the largest Kig-Yar ship towering over them all from the northeast corner. Docking tubes connected the ships like bridges high over the ground.
And if Reth chose, he could descend into the ground, where every day the Unggoy warrens spread deeper and farther into the warmed rock. The escape pod he had landed in still sat out on the landing pad of the Plaza, crackling and shimmering from the heat of reentry.
He'd lived in fear for several long minutes, convinced that the Sangheili would get the ship running in time to turn around for him, but they hadn't. The Sangheili had gotten the ship booted up and kept moving along their trajectory, headed for the Rubble.
Reth needed to order the
Infinite Spoils away from dock along with all the other Kig-Yar ships, but he was reluctant to do so. Soon the
Infinite Spoils would have human Slipspace drives, something the Hierarch hadn't even granted Reth, but something that all Kig-Yar wanted: a
Slipspace ship of their own. But first Reth needed to take the Rubble, and any human ships with the drives, for the Kig-Yar. The humans had been stockpiling the Slipspace drives they'd traded for to install in their own machine: the Exodus Project.
But when the
Infinite Spoils got its drives it would mark something new, as long as the Kig-Yar could spirit it out of the Rubble before the Hierarchs heard of it.
Everything was about to change, Reth felt, as he took an elevator up into the tall, grounded ship that was the Kig-Yar refuge inside the Redoubt. There were many, many more guards around now than when the Sangheili had broached it.
He entered his room. The remains of the firefight had been cleaned up, the glass replaced so that he could, once again, look out over the Plaza, and the Redoubt as a whole.
The river of methane on the surface of Metisette rumbled underneath their creation. Its passage turned giant turbines, creating power for the entire complex. The Unggoy thrived here among the mists of methane reclaimed from the rivers and pools.
Shuttles were already descending from the reddened clouds to touch down on Metisette's surface. Kig-Yar were forming up in the square below the
balcony, as well as Unggoy Deacons. All per his command.
Several of his key advisors hustled up behind him. They looked shocked at the wounds all over his body, and his hunched position. Reth paid the stares no mind.
"We have planned for the invasion of the Rubble for a long time," Reth said, doing his best to straighten up against the twinges of pain the Sangheili had left him.
"Is it time?" they asked.
Reth smiled. "Yes," he said. "It is time. Send the orders. Gather the Unggoy out onto the Plaza. Give them their harnesses and masks. Prepare for the attack. We will take it all for our own, and once we have that data, we will continue to their homeworld as well."
The Kig-Yar in the room warbled happily. They had been waiting patiently as the humans developed asteroids that the Kig-Yar considered prime for Kig-Yar nests.
Now they would be rewarded.
"Go," Reth snapped. "Tend to your functions!"
The Kig-Yar advisors scattered out of the room, bumping into a slew of Unggoy that waited outside.
They were not rocketing into the Rubble just yet. But for all intents and purposes, the invasion had begun.
Chapter THIRTY-NINE
HABITAT
ASUNCION, INNER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE
The first sign for Keyes that something was happening were the shouts from the guards who had been walking the corridor outside. Two of them ran full tilt past Keyes's cell. Keyes walked over to the bars as the guards dogged shut the thick, metal door leading to the corridor. They pulled out handguns and stepped back from the door.
"Faison?" Keyes shouted down the row of cells. "What's going on?"
"Don't know," came the response.
The guard on the left side of the door looked back at them. "Quiet!"