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The Engineer was stil staring patiently into her face, signing that sa for her to understand He certainly didn’t look as if he was going to attack her
Whatever the Forerunners nizes us as a special species--most of the time, anyway
It didn’t help her If this colony of Engineers had that sae and work out how to communicate, then she was stil stuffed The Forerunners probably hadn’t made al owance for soot probleh, it doesn’t mean I can sort myself out
The doctors and psychiatrists had told her she could speak if she wanted to Wel , she wanted to She’d wanted to say good-bye to Kurt for the last tiht 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 coet 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 Hiood Keep it up
Lucy strained to connect her ht up a ramp If she could just strain that little bit ht would reach the edge, balance for a ates But soe She was almost there, but-- She opened her ht she remembered how to ered her gag reflex and she alhed It would not coineer reached out and stroked her head
It was al that He didn’t seee for what she’d done
Shame we didn’t ineer cupped her face with two tentacles, holding her chin just under the jaw like a dentist It scared the hel out of her She jerked away and he recoiled, tentacles signing rapidly
That had toto look as harmless as possible He floated back nervously and took hold of her chin again
She had to trust hientle pressure made her open her mouth Now itto 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 , 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 stil , then gestured to her et that? Was a headshake a universal negative? There were places on Earth where it meant the opposite Did he realize shehim not to touch herat her The last tie hen a ot a pen to draw pictures for the 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 led toEven if he’d never seen a human before, he had to kno sound was made He made sounds himself
The tentacle felt like soft down She could see a fine fringe of tiny cilia along it, gloith that blue phosphorescence For aseemed 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, see, and drifted back One tentacle curled around her wrist and he pul ed gently
Co was crystal-clear
Lucy fol owed, hand in hand with a living coes
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 fil
He could perform five bil ion six-dimensional operations in that time And time had to be fil ed, because he was pure intel ect 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 co herself to punch through into another diround like an autonoh, was consumed with raw curiosity; around the ship, back on Earth, and on the various cos going on He listened to them al siuing with Muir, the refugee they’d picked up on New Llanel i The man didn’t understand why he had to be locked in a cabin Mal was tel ing hi accent that he was quarantined, there was a shower in the cabin, and h tie with Phil ips, trying to explain what it felt like to enter a planet’s at to the translated recordings of Sangheili voice traffic at the navigation console
In the captain’s day cabin, Os sitreps Stil no sign of Halsey yet, then; and the battle reports and casualty lists were stil trickling in months late frorim picture
Colonel James Ackerson was final y confirmed dead, as wel as Coosky was the only person ould ive hira Os on her hand "I’l have to settle for tel ing her that he died a hero Just after I let her knohat happened to her daughter"
She real y wasn’t that venohts 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 froht up with her
Miranda Keyes, Miranda Halsey to be legal y accurate, had died heroical y too Halsey thought nobody knew she even had a daughter, even though it was i from ONI or even from a curious UNSC HR clerk who could count Routinely stored DNA sa 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 ownershipAnd yet she hands her shter 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 arth back at Bravo-6 on Earth via another fragment of himself that he’d left in the ONI systeh Just a little bit of arth was stil jockeying for Parangosky’s job, rifling through her virtual filing cabinets for dirt on her via his own AI, Harriet