"Huh ... Well you're not the only one. Miss Universe over there is, too." Eddie jerked his head toward the booth in the shadows where the massive man sat. He shifted, and Delgado noticed the triceps flexing under the person's shirt. He had to assume Eddie meant there was a woman in the booth with the guy.

It wasn't a bodybuilder sitting there. It wasn't even a man. It was the Spartan, Adriana. He recognized her face. The last time he'd seen her, she had been surrounded by iridescent gray metal, and she'd worn the immensely powerful armor as if it had been a second suit of clothing.

Now she wore a clean pair of pants and a tight, long-sleeved shirt in the manner of the off-duty miners in the bar.

It didn't camouflage the fact that she was well over six and a half feet tall and dominated the booth.

It couldn't camouflage the fact that she could, quite obviously, break any man in the bar in half. And many of them seemed to sense it and keep well clear.

Delgado sat back down in the chair, and Eddie sighed. "You know her."

"No, not really, Eddie. Not really." Delgado didn't try too hard to sell that. He slid off the chair and approached the booth. "Can I buy you a drink?"

She didn't bother to turn, but waved him into the booth. "Hello Mr. Delgado," she said. "Hunting for something, are we?"

Delgado glanced around the bar. "Maybe. But the chances of me finding it are somewhat ruined now that you've arrived asking the same questions."

There were people paying too much attention to them near the other side of the bar. "I'm sorry," Adriana said.

Five men walked over before Delgado could suggest that they get the hell out of there.

"What the hell are you two doing asking about the

Kestrel?"

The leader of the little group asked.

"Hey, guys, come on." Delgado held up his hands, placating them. "Let's stay calm."

"Shut up." These were large, muscled miners, their eyes glassy from being too far into the drink. "This freak's been nosing around about stuff that's not her business."

Adriana looked at the group. "I'm just asking a few questions. No reason to make this anything it's not."

"What we don't need, is some Earth-lovin' she-hulk skulking about our bars, asking about things that ain't none of her business," another man snapped.

"Hey now," Delgado said.

"Hey now what?" The leader reached over and grabbed Adriana's shoulder. "Now listen here!"

She shrugged his hand off and pushed it back. The stout miner staggered slightly, and for a moment, the whole group paused.

Then the miner surged back, grabbing at Adriana's shirt collar again. "You -- "

This time she grabbed his hand and twisted it. "Don't touch me." She didn't ask this, she stated it. Like it was a fact.

A second man swore and lunged for her as well. "We'll do whatever the hell we want."

He grabbed for her arm, but she grabbed his instead and jerked it.

Now she had both men by an arm, twisting their hands back around. "Now listen to me," Adriana snapped. "If I want to ask after the Kestrel, or anything else that strikes my fancy, what makes you think you could stop me?"

The air in the bar suddenly broke, and the faux politeness dropped. "None of that stuff ain't none of your business, bitch!" another miner screamed. He threw a punch.

Adriana let go of the two arms she held and grabbed the punch out of midair. She pulled the man toward her and slammed his head into the table.

The table gave way and splintered where the man's head struck it. He fell through the destroyed wood onto the floor in between Adriana and Delgado.

A fight erupted, the whole bar streaming their way in, Delgado cursing as he pushed his way back farther into the booth. He hadn't wanted to get involved, but the entire bar had already assumed they were working together.

Adriana ripped the remains of the table out of the ground with a grunt. She held the large pedestal that had anchored it into the floor out in front of her with one hand, keeping the angry men at bay as she tapped her ear. "Yeah, okay, let's bug out."

An explosion of brick, grating, and debris blew past Delgado.

As the dust settled, he spotted one of the miners pulling a gun on Adriana. Delgado whipped out

Sen ora Sies, and the men all froze.

But they weren't looking at him. As the dust cloud in the booth wafted away, they all stood looking at the giant gray suit of powered armor that had just burst its way through the wall of Eddie's like it was balsa wood.

"Don't move," the deep voice from behind the gold visor snapped. A large rifle in the Spartan's hands covered the crowd. No one moved.

This new Spartan grabbed Adriana and Delgado and pulled them back through the debris. Delgado's feet scraped against the jagged remains.

While the far back of Eddie's was buried into the hard rock, this section had apparently been right next to a maintenance corridor.

A few of the bar's patrons tried to peer around the hole in the bar to see where they were going, but the armored Spartan fired the rifle at the bricks, and the faces ducked back into the bar.

"Delgado, look at me," Adriana ordered, and Delgado turned to her voice.

Something very large smacked the back of his head and he fell to his knees in front of her, then passed out.

Chapter SEVEN

FREIGHTER

PETYA,

JUST OFF HABITAT BOLIVAR, OUTER RUBBLE, 23 LIBRAE

Delgado woke up on a cot. He sat there, rubbing the back of his head and wincing. He was in the cramped crew quarters of a freight ship -- bulkheads, grated flooring, flickering tube lights, and grime and grease was everywhere. "You're up."

A giant machine had been welded into the back of the crew quarters. The voice came over the sounds of a maintenance pod whose arms sparked

electricity as they carefully removed the suit of armor from a Spartan with almost midnight black eyes.

The Spartan scratched his stubbly head and pulled on pants and a shirt. "Itches," he said. "I'd like to take a shower, but we have to deal with you first.

Adriana refused to leave you knocked out on the ground for those miners to eat alive."

Delgado stood up and stumbled. The Spartan grabbed him firmly by the arm and hauled him back up. Another giant of a man who stood so tall he

blocked the lights above. Delgado blinked. "What do you want with me?"

"You know who we are, right?"

"Spartans. The boogeymen of Insurrectionist children everywhere," Delgado grunted.

His head still throbbed, but he was feeling scrappy despite the fact that this mountain of a human being next to him could probably break him in half like a stick. But if they were going to kill him, they would have done it already. This gave Delgado a sudden boldness as he straightened up. Delgado smiled.

"Don't be spoiled, don't start a fight. Always be careful, here at night. Because the Spartans might come, in suits that weigh half a ton. And they'll steal from you all you gots, just like they did from Colonel Watts."

The Spartan cocked his head. "What?"

"Just a kid's rhyme," Delgado muttered. "Yeah, there are a lot of rumors about you guys. Like the one about how you super soldiers took out Colonel Watts and the rebels' whole network had to scramble to find a new leader. And there are other rumors, too. You know, a lot of people would be quite flattered that the UNSC created an entire special division of super soldiers just to come after them. But it's all been different since Harvest fell, hasn't it? The aliens sure bloodied your noses."

"Yes, yes they have," the Spartan agreed.

"Suddenly the idea of fighting for the right to your own survival isn't such an alien idea."

"True," the Spartan said. "But then, the UNSC never glassed an entire populace, so it's not exactly fair to compare the UNSC/Covenant fight with the UNSC/Insurrectionist fight, is it?"

The Spartan had a point.

"What's your name?" Delgado asked.

"Jai. Spartan double-oh-six."

"You like your numbers. You have last names?"

The Spartan didn't even answer, just pulled Delgado along into the freighter's cockpit, stooping to avoid hitting his head on the bulkhead.

Another man, too massive not to be a Spartan, sat in the pi lot's chair. Adriana lounged near a navigation console. She spun her chair to face the two of them. "Mr. Delgado. You've met Jai, our team leader. In the pilot's chair is Mike."

From the windows of the cockpit Delgado could tell they were still in the Rubble, but not hanging off a dock connector. They were moving slowly

through the intricate maze of tubes and asteroids.

Jai sat down at a communications console and swung around to face Delgado, who found a jumpseat.

"You were right, back there. We used to go after Insurrectionists. But that's what we were trained to do ... We live, breathe, and eat this stuff, Delgado.

We serve humanity, we exist to protect Earth and all her colonies."

"Huh ... Nice sound bite." Delgado crossed his arms.

"That's no sound bite," Mike growled.

Jai held up a hand. "We have given everything over to this, Mr. Delgado, don't dismiss our entire lives so casually. I take it you are an Insurrectionist?"

Delgado shook his head. "Not exactly ... A lot of people on Madrigal were neutral, even loyal to Earth. But when Madrigal was being glassed, it wasn't the UNSC that scrambled freighters and everything they had to evacuate people from Madrigal and try to hide them here."

It had been the rebels. Even though Madrigal refugees and regular miners fast outnumbered them here in the Rubble, there had always been strong

respect for the Insurrectionists. Even Delgado. He owed his life to them.

Jai leaned forward. "Then understand; we're not here for a fight. But we are here to try and stop the Covenant from taking any more colonies. Or Earth.

"For a while top brass and ONI agents have been worried about the Covenant's progress. As a result, earlier this week the Cole Protocol went into effect. All UNSC ships have to jump randomly before making a jump to their next destination. If Covenant forces appear, they have to destroy all navigation data that might lead the Covenant back to Earth."

"Just back to Earth, huh?"

"And to the colonies, that's inferred. However, months before the Cole Protocol went into effect, ONI put together several Prowler Corps missions to get back behind enemy lines -- including this team. We have a list of places where navigation data might have survived, and our mission is to make sure it's all destroyed.

"In the case of the Rubble," Jai leaned further forward, intense. "We've been stuck here for almost a month. Every day we're here, we're not destroying data or checking over our targets elsewhere, and the greater the chance of the Covenant stumbling across the location to an Inner Colony, or Earth."

"What Jai's getting at," Adriana interrupted, "is the question of whether you really think the navigation data will be safe here in the Rubble?"

Delgado looked around the cockpit at the three Spartans. "I'm not giving it over to you. You have to do your jobs. I have to do mine."

"So ... we noticed you didn't tell the Security Council that you ran into a Spartan," Adriana said.

He looked up at her, startled. How did she know that? What all were the Spartans into? How much of the Rubble had they gotten bugged? "Why would I? You're not good at keeping a low profile, it seems, with your dramatic attempt to sneak around and ask questions failing so spectacularly.

Jai folded his arms. "You picked a stubborn one to save, Adriana. I don't know."

"Don't know what?" Delgado asked.

Mike shook his head. "Let him be, Jai. Let him be."

A moment passed between the three Spartans. A decision.

Delgado shivered. He'd bet anything his life had just been on the table.

Jai stood up. "My team thinks you're one of the good guys, Delgado. I don't know. Mike, we passing the ship yet?"

Mike turned back around. "Yes. Let me flip us around."

Delgado frowned as the Rubble rotated around the ship. The freighter's cockpit shook a bit as distant thrusters farther down the hull fired.

They drifted past one of the larger habitats on the edge of the structure. Docked to it was a ship that didn't look all that different from the Rubble itself

-- a Tinkertoy assemblage of parts of varying age, shapes, and function.

It slowly passed by, and then Jai turned to Delgado. "It's hard to trust people who do business with the enemy, Delgado, and that's a Jackal ship. Also known as: the enemy."

"Yes ... that's a Jackal ship," Delgado said. "But most Kig-Yar are like us. Rebels. Asteroid dwellers. And they're helping us."

The Covenant had once seemed an implacable foe. A force of nature. When the conglomeration of aliens first made contact ten years ago, at the planet Harvest, the images of destruction relayed back were horrific. Covenant ships and their plasma weapons destroyed the surface of the agrarian world until nothing was left.

Madrigal had not lain too far from Harvest. And after the destruction of Harvest they'd readied themselves for the inevitable. And readied, and waited.

Until 2528, when the Covenant stumbled into orbit around 23 Librae and destroyed Madrigal, the survivors fleeing to the Rubble.

When the Kig-Yar came back to 23 Librae, looking to mine the asteroids around Hesiod, they found the Rubble. Everyone had girded themselves for

another one-sided battle. But instead the odd, birdlike aliens had furtively begun trading with the humans. They'd even established refuges on some of the outer asteroids.

So as the Rubble heard snatches of rumors and data about the Covenant destroying all humanity, they had to second-guess what was happening. After all, they were still alive.

And yet... it had taken the Covenant three years to get around to attacking Madrigal. Delgado knew the Rubble might still be on the list.

"The Jackals are helping you by violently hunting for the nav- * igation data?" Jai asked.

"I know," Delgado muttered. "I don't particularly trust them either."