Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [79]
With his head cocked quizzically, the Drone watched as Black-Two tried to rephrase the question a couple of different ways so that the Interrogator might translate, but no avail.
Then the creature made an unmistakable gesture, extending one claw in her direction, then curling his digits rapidly toward himself: Give.
Black-Two frowned. What little intel ONI had on the Drones suggested they had an instinctive faculty for technology. Cautiously, she handed the Interrogator over. There seemed little harm in it. A cord attached the device to her forearm to supply it with power and data, as well as ensure that the other half of a conversation couldn’t just walk away with it.
The second the Yanme’e wrapped his claws around the device he popped open the access panel on its underside. He rearranged the circuits and microfilament wires in the Interrogator’s guts with such speed and precision that one would have thought he had spent every waking moment for the past twenty years working with them.
Two opened her mouth to protest, but found herself just watching, transfixed by the rapidity of the thing’s movements, which had a certain kind of flitting grace, like a dragonfly making its evasive way across the surface of a pond. Something in the device clicked.
And the creature started talking.
IN THE nursery lookout, Black-One was just starting to wonder what was taking Black-Two so long when her subordinate’s voice rang out from inside the apartment: “Chief! Better come here! Bring the boys, too!”
The rest of Spartan: Black walked into the living room to find Two tethered to the Drone by the Interrogator’s power cord. At first glance it looked like the Yanme’e was holding the Spartan on a leash.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Instantly, the three other Spartans fell into an attack phalanx, Three and Four both dropping to one knee and raising their ARs while One remained standing, training her own weapon on the Drone’s head. “Spartan Black-Two!” she barked. “Step away from the hostile!”
Two held up both hands and made calming gestures. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. He’s not all that hostile. I named him Hopalong. Hopalong, meet the guys. Guys, meet Hopalong.”
Hopalong’s claws flickered across the translator’s digital ink keypad. “Hello, guys.” Normally, the Interrogator spoke in the inflectionless nonaccent of the midwestern United States. But whatever the Drone did to the machine’s insides had distorted the computer voice so that now it sounded more like a recording of intelligible speech played backward that just happened to also sound like intelligible speech.
“The hell, Two?” Three snapped. “Making friends?”
“He knows an alternate route to the Beacon, an underground one,” Two said calmly, but with urgency. “Tunnels that have been completely cleaned out of helium-3 so the buggers don’t go in them anymore. We can slip in under the antigrav pylons and take them out before the Covenant knows what hit them.”
“How did he know we were after the Beacon in the first place?” Three demanded. “You tell him?”
“Have you looked outside?” Two snapped defensively. “Like there’s anything else on this dirtball worth blowing up.”
“I can’t think of a single reported instance in which Covenant provided aid to human troops against their own kind,” One said, pointing her weapon at Hopalong. “We trust this bug . . . why?”
“See that?” Two pointed to the stumps where Hopalong’s missing limbs had once been. “The Jackals did that. They work the buggers to death on that thing.”
Hopalong’s claw flickered across the translator in short, staccato bursts. “Kig-Yar do this,” the machine said, using the Jackals’ own name for themselves. “I drop cache twice. Kig-Yar cut legs off.