Halo: Mortal Dictata: Book Three of the Kilo-Five Trilogy by Karen Traviss

Author:Karen Traviss [Traviss, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2019-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Independent Kig-Yar Ship Paragon, Somewhere off Venezia

“I don’t want your fee for this, Fel, whatever it is,” Chol said. “Keep it. Use it to hide from your four-jaw friends. But I will have the warship. Where is it?”

Fel fixed her with a defiant yellow eye, head tilted away from her. “What about my chicks? My mate? My customer will kill them.”

“If you don’t tell me,” she said, “then I’ll kill them. Because I know exactly where they are, and ‘Telcam doesn’t seem to know that Venezia even exists.”

She let him think about that. He sat in the middle of the hangar deck, well away from any sharp objects or access to comms. He was missing a few feathers and a little bruised, but that was because he’d struggled when they’d seized him and needed restraining. She preferred to get results by offering a choice. Torture and violence were a hobby for the humans, a substitute for intelligent questions for the short-tempered four-jaws, but a last resort from a Kig-Yar. It often yielded unreliable information.

“What have I ever done to you, cousin?” Fel asked.

“I never said this was personal.”

“You’re the one who preaches a united Kig-Yar to defend our kind against the savages.”

“And I need a ship to begin that process. Where is it?”

“He might have moved it by now.”

“Then tell me the last coordinates you were at.”

“He’ll kill me. He’s very clever. He’s also very patient. He can wait years to put a knife through your back.”

“Tell me his name, then.” In case a rival locates him and uses him to get to the ship. I’m so close now. I can smell it. “Who is he? What does he want a battlecruiser for? The humans now have more of a navy than the Covenant. This is a warlord with scores to settle, by the sound of it. Tell him he’ll achieve a great deal more by small bites from many angles than he ever will by one great act of destruction.”

“Before or after he slices my head off? Flat-faces talk about eating us, you know. We’re just large food animals to them. Chi-kens. And stuffing. I have had threats of being stuffed. Which involves disemboweling.”

“Fel, you might well be more afraid of your customers, but they’re not here. I am.”

It was bad form to treat a fellow T’vaoan like that in front of common Kig-Yar, but this was about her dominance almost as much as finding Pious Inquisitor. If she could do this to one of her own ethnic group, then she could exact far worse revenge on a wayward crew or anyone who tried to cheat her. But Fel had appearances to keep up as well. This was going to be slow.

And ‘Telcam was getting impatient. He’d send another search party when he could afford one, and then he’d add her to his vengeance list as well. But she had Fel. That was her best treasure map to Inquisitor. The ideal one was a human, but that might have been one step too far even for her.

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