Halo: New Blood by Matt Forbeck;

Halo: New Blood by Matt Forbeck;

Author:Matt Forbeck;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-03-02T00:00:00+00:00


THIRTEEN

* * *

“I don’t even know why we’re talking about this,” Veronica said to me a few weeks later—the fastest I could arrange for a mutual vacation. “You’ve already made up your mind.” She walked out onto the balcony of our rented mountain chalet on Desdoron V, warming her hands around the mug of her hot toddy.

I followed straight after her like a dog on a proximity leash. “But that’s the point,” I said. “I don’t want it to be just my decision. I want it to be our decision.”

She didn’t turn to look at me. Instead she gazed down at the lights of the little ski lodge nestled in the gentle valley at the bottom of the slope. I came up behind her and put my arms around her. She didn’t elbow me in the ribs and knock me to the ground, which I took as a good sign.

“Why?” she said. “I don’t have any say over what you do with your life.”

“Yes,” I said. “You do.”

She tensed up at that. “You don’t have any say over mine.”

“No, I don’t.”

She relaxed into me and took a sip of her drink. “Well, that hardly seems fair.”

“I thought we were talking about our relationship. I don’t remember fair coming into it.”

Now she elbowed me good for that one, but in a playful kind of way. With her ONI training, she could have killed me before I’d have even known it, so I took comfort in the fact I was still breathing.

“I love you, too,” I said as I let her go and rubbed my ribs.

It was the first time I’d actually said those words to her, and I’d kinda backed my way into it. I waited to see if she’d freeze or run.

Or give me the greatest surprise.

Instead, her lips curled up into the cutest wry smirk. “So that’s what this little vacation is really all about? It’s more than just one last whoop-it-up before you dedicate your life to the Spartans?”

“You remember what you told me back in New Mombasa?”

She allowed herself a wistful smile. “I thought maybe you’d forgotten.”

“Did you?”

She shook her head. “I said if you won the war, we’d talk about us.”

I spread my arms wide. “Well, guess what? War’s over.”

She bobbed her head side to side in a way that said she might be willing to concede the point. The Covenant War had officially ended a year ago, but neither one of us had stopped fighting. The UNSC still hadn’t run out of acceptable foes.

“So.” Her voice rose in anticipation. “How do you want to play this?”

“That’s really up to you,” I said.

“Are you ready for this?” Veronica said.

I honestly wasn’t sure what she meant. Were we talking about us or the SPARTAN-IV program? Veronica meant to have it both ways, and she wasn’t about to tell me which topic we were discussing. Not yet.

ONI all the way.

I played along. “I think so.”

“You’d better be more confident about it than that. Once you start down this road, there’s no going back.



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