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The circle of onlookers widened a little—as if to let him through—and so he gingerly stepped forward. He addressed the Engineer, wondering if he had this all right. The drugs were starting to fade, and the returning pain was making things shaky, confusing.

“You have to reconnect the ship’s AI system. She has the coordinates. She’ll obey me, but not you.”

The Engineer rotated to face the Elite and again chirped. Again, the Elite barked something, glaring at Baird the entire time, shaking his head. Baird stepped forward, closer to both. The Elite snarled a final order at the Engineer and unsheathed his sword. The points of it hissed and sizzled, leveled at his neck. A fairly universal warning: Don’t try anything funny.

The Engineers both turned back to this new task, literally disconnecting some of the cabling and then performing more delicate ministrations with those strange tentacles. A light flared on the bridge console and an automated voice announced blaringly, “BASELINE REINITIALIZATION OF UNSC BATTLE CLASS SMART AI ‘MO YE’ PLEASE WAIT.”

A few seconds later and a small dais in front of the bridge terminal flickered to life with Mo Ye’s diminutive form, brightening back to wakefulness, reconnected and fully restored.

Baird turned and spoke directly to her. “Good to have you back, if only for a moment. I need you to give them the slip-space coordinates for Earth.”

She looked back at him, trying to figure out what the hell he was up to.

“Mo Ye, these creatures want Earth’s location.” He winked. “Are you reconstituted enough to give them access to those, uh, coordinates?”

Mo Ye looked desperate, pained. “Baird—I have access to all the ship systems now, but they’re being careful, they think you’re trying to trick them. What we talked about in the med-bay is still true. I can’t override the first law in my current condition.”

He winked again, a great big shit-eating grin spreading across his face. “Security clearance: Robot, passcode: Asimov.”

An Engineer chirped an explanation, calmly. Things seemed to be progressing as the human had promised. A sense of excitement, a murmur, spread though the assembled Covenant—they realized they were on the brink of a great military breakthrough.

But Mo Ye moaned as she realized what Baird was up to. “No . . . Baird . . . wait . . .”

Baird did not wait. Baird turned around and looked up at the Elite’s puzzled face. He hauled back his right arm and with an open hand, slapped the Elite straight across the jaw with all the force his drug-fueled system could muster. The impact broke bones in his hand, and he felt a satisfying reciprocal crunch from the Elite’s jaw. The massive alien staggered, sagged, and fell to one knee, stunned by both impact and surprise.

Before it could do anything else, Baird looked him in the eye, now level with his, and said, “Well, you stupid arsehole? Think you can do it right this time?”

The Elite roared in fury as he swung the energy sword in a scything arc and took Baird’s head off cleanly at the shoulders. Baird’s body keeled lifelessly backward. Arms spread out wide, as if falling backward into snow.

The Elite spun around and glared at the AI’s shimmering form.

“Passcode accepted,” she sneered sarcastically, her eyes lit from within by some unknowable emotion. “Self-destruct sequence initiated. Four minutes and counting.”

The Elite barked at the Engineers, who were already moving, herding Grunts out the door, and translating the grave news of the impending destruction.

The Elite started a quick-march back to the Covenant boarding pods, just a few floors below, glancing at an arm-mounted chronograph. He chanced one hate-filled glance back at Mo Ye, standing, arms folded, on her plinth. She stared at him with a coldly venomous expression and spoke flatly this time.

“I’m kidding. There’s no need for any countdown whatsoever.”

The Elite blinked.

The Heart of Midlothian’s network of shaped nuclear charges briefly flowered in the shadow of the gas giant like a beautiful little star. Then, as the chain reaction crushed the exotic fissile materials