For those of you who have pre-ordered and haven’t yet seen, the Art of Halo 5 Guardians has been delayed to Oct 27 to coincide with the release of the game.
It’s likely that 343 didn’t want any of the ‘secrets’ of the game to come out before it was released, via this book.
For those who haven’t yet pre-ordered and are thinking about it, the book is available for pre-order from Amazon. If you do so now (as of this writing) you can save nearly $14 off the retail cost of the book, which runs at $45.
Thanks to Laird MacLean for posting this info on Facebook.
-Sal
Hunters in the Dark, a Simon and Schuster publication, was written by Peter David.
This book will be available at retail, as well as eBook and audio versions.
The list price is $11.99 and will be available June 16, 2015.
Here is a brief description of what’s to come: (Potential SPOILERS) Continue reading
Okay folks, it’s out now and can be bought through googleplay. It’ll cost you five ‘Bucks’…
I will say only this ATM…from the first chapter’s intro, you will be HOOKED!
You will of course need a google account to get it through googleplay, but that takes just a couple of minutes to set up.
-Sal
You might have missed this info in the Cannon Fodder article I posted. There is some exciting news in the way of Halo novels coming soon.
Halo: New Blood, the new book by Matt Forbeck tells a story of Gunnery Sergeant Buck. Himself a highly decorated ODST, the UNSC comes with a proposal to him. It had already been said of Buck that if he were any better, he’d be a Spartan. Well now it seems like he has his shot at it. But will he take it? Continue reading
This is a reblog from (several entries on) Halo Waypoint:
By GrimBrother One
In case you either forgot or didn’t know about this, Halo Broken Circle is out today. I’ll be picking up my copy shortly. This will give me some reading material for a day or two to help tide me over until the Master Chief Collection. Continue reading
I’ve blogged about this before, however since the release date is so close and I got a reminder about this from another group, I wanted to blog about it again in case any of you had forgotten.
Halo: Broken Circle takes place centuries before our war with the Covenant. This time we see the Sangheili (Elites) and San ‘Shyuum (Prophets) facing off against one another. Before the start of the fateful Covenant itself. Continue reading
Text blurb from 343:
Simon & Schuster is proud to announce a new Halo novel from John Shirley, releasing on November 4, 2014! Continue reading
Gallery Books and 343 have partnered for a multi-book deal that will bring us a new Halo novel in Fall of 2014.
The following is a repost from Halo Waypoint.
NEW YORK, February 4, 2014—Gallery Books and 343 Industries are pleased to announce a multi-year co-publishing program based on the award-winning and phenomenally popular video game franchise Halo. Already a massive New York Times bestselling series, all-new canonical tales in the Halo expanded universe will be published across the Gallery Books, Pocket Books, and Pocket Star imprints in a variety of print and digital formats.
Frank O’Connor, Franchise Development Director of 343 Industries said, “We’ve had the luxury of working with amazing novelists and publishing partners in the past – and we’re excited to continue that tradition and growth with the announcement of our new novel publishing partner, Gallery Books – and we can’t wait to share the worlds and wonders we’ll build together.”
“We are thrilled to be working with 343 Industries and Microsoft on these upcoming Halo books,” said Louise Burke, President of Gallery Books. “It’s a phenomenal brand that continues to grow and we look forward to continuing the ascent with them.”
Ed Schlesinger, Senior Editor at Gallery Books, and Jennifer Bergstrom, Publisher of Gallery Books, negotiated the licensing partnership directly with Halo Consumer Products at 343 Industries. The first publication is scheduled for release in Fall 2014.
ABOUT GALLERY BOOKS: Gallery Books is an imprint dedicated to publishing a variety of must-read books on a wide array of topics. Launched in February 2010, Gallery is designed to showcase established voices and to introduce emerging new ones—in both fiction and nonfiction genres. Some of Gallery Books’ bestselling titles include Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible by Tim Gunn, Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea by Chelsea Handler, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Love Anthony by Lisa Genova, Mrs. Kennedy and Me by Clint Hill, and The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.
ABOUT SIMON & SCHUSTER: Simon & Schuster, a part of CBS Corporation, is a global leader in the field of general interest publishing, dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for consumers of all ages, across all printed, electronic, and audio formats. Its divisions include Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Simon & Schuster Audio, Simon & Schuster Digital, and international companies in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.
HFFL: I’m curious if this means new authors or some of the same authors just a different publishing house? I’m REALLY curious about though is what stories will be told. Will they continue from where Kilo-5 left off? Will it be stories from the UNSC Infinity? One thing’s for sure, it’s NEW Halo and I’m very happy about that.
-Sal
Mortal Dictata is the third of the Kilo-5 trilogy written by Karen Traviss. At just under 500 pages (soft cover edition), for most it’s not likely a one sitting read, though I do have a friend who did just that. Should out to PensHalo for attaining that achievement.
This is a long article and I did not put a TL;DR portion at the bottom. Honestly, that would have been doing a disservice to this well written book and fantastic story.
Mortal Dictata starts out with a prologue in which we learn more about Staffan Sentzke and his role as a terrorist, father and grandfather.
The first chapter is about the abduction of Spartan Naomi-010, from the viewpoint of Staffan Sentzke, father to Naomi. I quickly felt like I was in the midst of what was going on and felt sad for Staffan and had only just begun to realize what horrors parents face when their child is abducted. It’s fairly powerful reading. Fair warning, if you’ve been in this position in anyway, then you may be in for something emotional when reading the prologue.
After this we start to get into the main storyline. It’s the year 2553. Kilo-5 is orbiting Venezia aboard the ONI ship the UNSC Port Stanley. The players are all there. Mal, Vaz and Devereaux, Kilo-5’s ODSTs; Spartan Naomi-010, Captain Serin Ozman, commander of Kilo-5 and soon to be Admiral Ozman, CINCONI (that’s Commander in Chief, Office of Naval Intelligence); Evan “Phyllis” Phillips, Sangheli expert, and of course the smart A.I. Black Box, aka “BB” for which he’s known in the trilogy.
Their mission is to stop Staffan Sentzke from ever being a threat to Earth and the Inner Colonies. Sentzke is a known arms dealer, insurrectionist and would be terrorist. We find out that Sentzke is actually Naomi’s father and this complicates the mission in various degrees. Mal and Vaz meet up with a spy on Venezia who helps them be recruited by Staffan himself.
Now before I go any further, I have to say, the writing in this, the third book in the series, is the best of them, in my opinion. I really saw a progression of character growth in this one more than the other two books. In particular, we gain access to how the minds of ODSTs think in certain situations. There’s the usual raucous bar behavior, along with military plotting, knowing your squad mate and what they would saying, without them saying it, as well as how they deal with heavy handed interrogation.
We also get into the mind of a Spartan like we never have before. Through the book, we read how Naomi deals with the fact of Staffan being her father, as well as her new found feelings towards him and how that may endanger the mission. During one part of the book, Naomi finally reads the ONI file regarding her abduction. She comes to the full realization of what that meant, not only to Staffan, but her feelings and thoughts towards Catherine Halsey. To say the Naomi becomes complex is right on the mark. As a spartan, she was trained from an early age to obey orders and she did without questions. Now is the first time she’s beginning to question orders, at first in her mind, then outwardly. While she doesn’t sway far from orders on the whole, it’s clear she doesn’t want to kill her father, though he may be deemed an enemy of the UNSC.
Back to the story. Mal and Vaz are on the inside. They integrate nicely within Staffan’s group as they have a set of skills that Staffan needs. Now before this time in the book, Staffan has acquired a Covenant CCS battlecruiser, a two-kilometer long warship with a ventral beam capable of glassing planets. The mission of Mal and Vaz has become such that they need to find and take the ship if possible. If not, then destroy the ship. If Staffan gets caught in the crossfire, so be it. Mal and Vaz are brought aboard the Covenant ship Pious Inquisitor, now renamed Naomi for Staffan’s daughter, whom he still thinks is dead. The main reason Staffan has become an enemy is due to his belief that his daughter was taken, and did not die as a 6 year old child. He spent 35 years looking for her and never gave up. With the ship, he hopes to exact revenge on the UNSC for what he knows in his heart to be an abduction by them for reasons as yet unknown to him.
Aboard Naomi, Mal and Vaz figure out the coordinates for the ship’s location. They had hoped to plug BB into it so that the A.I. could seize the ship, however they didn’t have time to get a BB “fragment” to insert into the battlecruiser. Shortly after Mal, Vaz, and Staffan come back to Venezia, the two ODSTs try to infiltrate the ship with a BB fragment only to be denied by the onboard engineer, known as “Sometimes Sinks”. Sinks as it’s called is a malfuctioning Forerunner engineer, having been kept apart from any other engineer for sometime and is not capable of repairing himself. Sinks sends word to Staffan about the infiltration attempt and near immediately Mal and Vaz are suspected.
Now there is another side story going on in the meantime. Staffan had bought the cruiser from a Kig Yar of the Skirmisher kind (also known as T’vaoan the correct term for the Skirmisher variant of Kig Yar). His name is Sav Fel. Another T’vaoan named Chol Von, a female Kig Yar wants the ship for herself. She wants to build a Kig Yar fleet, starting with the Pious Inquisitor. Chol goes looking for Sav, who himself had stolen the ship from Avu Med ‘Telcam, a Sangheili rebel who sides with Jul M’dama. Telcam puts out a bounty for Sav Fel, for which Chol Von accepts, even though she has her own plans for the ship. Chol finds Sav on Venezia and commands him to take her to Pious Inquisitor. Once there, with her ship the Paragon, a repurposed Covenant missionary ship, formerly known as Joyous Discovery they find the ship has been virtually locked down by the malfuctioning Sinks. The only way to take it, is for her crew to forcefully board it by cutting through the hull.
Now this part of the story is interesting as it gives us a deeper look into Kig Yar life, specifically Skirmishers and their hierarchy. Females of the Kig Yar race are higher in position than males and are most often the leaders of tribes and/or starships, as Chol Von is. I really like the way this was handled. I think Karen Traviss did an excellent job of explaining this facet of the Haloverse.
While Chol and her group are trying to board Pious Inquisitor/Naomi, Mal and Vaz have been taken forcibly by Staffan and his group. They’ve been beaten and thrust into holding rooms. It’s during this time that they are temporarily separated. Here is where we learn much more about ODSTs and in particular how Mal and Vaz each deal with what has happened to them. Through fights with their captors (of which I won’t reveal as it’s a juicy part of the story that shouldn’t be spoiled), they are put together. Vaz has let slip a very minute, yet very important part of the mystery of Naomi. Staffan realizes this and attempts to find out what the mystery is.
While all of this is going on, Admiral Ozman, Naomi, and ODST Deveraux hatch a plan to extricate both Mal and Vaz. The plan succeeds and in spectacular fashion. Again, something I won’t spoil for you… Staffan is with Vaz and is taken aboard Port Stanley. It is here where he fully learns what happened to his daughter. Naomi makes herself known to him. It’s a tearful reunion for Staffan who is grateful for her still being alive as well as the fact that his beliefs were not wrong all those many years.
There’s a bit more of this interaction between Naomi and Staffan before the next part of the mission takes place. With Kilo-5 all reunited, they head for Naomi the ship. Again their task being to board and take the ship, barring that destroying it. They come to find out about Chol Von and her plans. They also know the ship’s on lockdown. However, with a fragment of BB, they are able to take partial control of the ship. Immediately upon being inserted into the ship, BB copies all information about the ship and sends it back to Port Stanley. At the very least, the UNSC now has blueprints of a Covenant ship and more importantly a ventral beam. Through firefights, an attempt at diplomacy with Von and an eventual explosion of the ship, the boarding party from Kilo-5 make it out alive. As for what happens to Staffan, well, you’re just going to have to read that part. Again, that’s something I just can’t bring myself to spoil for you all.
Regarding the plot of the story, it’s easy to pick up on and predict what’s going to happen. However with ONI being involved, you never know if what you think is going to happen will. I am glad that Staffan got to know the truth, even if that seems a bit sappy to others. Every parent who has had a child taken from them should have some closure and he got that.
With the story winding down, Ozman finally decides to take a look at her own ONI record of her abduction. What she finds is heartbreak, yet with a small glimmer of hope. She makes orders for the Port Stanley to go to her homeworld. There the crew takes a much needed shore leave, while she seeks out a person from her past.
The story ends with an epilogue. It’s regarding the brain donor for BB. I had expected the donor to be someone we’ve known previously in the Haloverse. However, it’s not anyone we’ve heard of before. This in it’s own way is a small plot twist. Will it ever be written more about or left to just this little bit of writing? Who knows.
It took me longer than I wanted it to, to read this book to the end. Not because it wasn’t good. In part it’s because I can’t seem to read hundreds of pages in one sitting anymore, without my eyes growing tired. As well, when I read, I tend to imagine the setting in full detail. This makes my time reading much longer than the usual person as I often go off into tangents thinking about this or that of what might be happening in the story. It helps me become even more immersed with what is written and I feel I come to appreciate the story even more for it.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, Karen Traviss does an exceptional job at character development. The complexities of ODST and Spartan minds are revealed far more than they ever have been before. We the readers are privy to information the characters are not during the course of the story and it’s great to read how they come to deal with each situation.
Mortal Dictata is a story that could have been written about current day espionage (though of course without spaceships, engineers and spartans. But it has that REAL WORLD feeling to it and is very plausible. So in this respect it isn’t just a Halo tale. It’s a tale about trust, loyalty, enduring love and redemption. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone. Of course I’d recommend that you read the first two in the series first, but I find that it might not be necessary in this particular series. In any event, I quite enjoyed the Kilo-5 trilogy and look forward to Traviss penning another story in the future.
-Sal
I just checked the status of delivery for my copy of Halo: Mortal Dictata. It’s in Pittsburgh, ready to be delivered sometime Friday.
So, I know I’ll be a readin’ fool when it comes in! Anyone else get a copy of the book? If so, have you finished it yet?
NO SPOILERS IN REPLIES, please. (Lest I hunt you down and t-bag you. Trust me, you wouldn’t like it…LOL)
-Sal
Today, Karen Traviss’ final book in the Kilo-Five trilogy, Halo: Mortal Dictata is available for purchase. Recently we had the chance to chat with Traviss about the entire trilogy, as well as get exclusive insights into Halo: Mortal Dictata. Enjoy!
If you could briefly synthesize the entire Kilo-Five trilogy for someone who might not be familiar with the books, what would that look like?
The Kilo-Five trilogy is about loyalty and the moral dilemmas facing individuals in warfare, told in the context of a Cold War kind of black ops thriller. The head of ONI, Admiral Margaret Parangosky – arguably the finest-ever role model for pensioners – plans to make sure the Sangheili are down and stay down after the Covenant collapses. She sends in a handpicked black ops team, Kilo-Five, to destabilize Sanghelios by stirring up its postwar unrest into a civil war that’ll keep it too busy to bother Earth again, and degrade its strike capability. The essence of the story lies in the team itself — three ODSTs, a full Spartan and a Spartan washout who’s being groomed to succeed Parangosky as Commander in Chief Naval Intelligence, a civilian Sangheili expert who really excels at spying and dirty tricks after a career in academia, and the AI assigned to them, BB (Black Box).
Neither the Spartans nor the AI know their pasts, and there’s a painful process of discovery about the UNSC’s conduct that calls into question whether there are any good guys involved in this at all. The collapse of the Covenant takes the lid off all the other wars that have been on hold for 30 years, and a key player in the colonial insurgency that’s building is the father of one of the Spartans. But he has no idea she’s a Spartan, let alone still alive, or that Kilo-Five has been tasked to stop him acquiring a Covenant planet-killer to threaten Earth. In the end, everyone in Kilo-Five has to decide what duty demands of them and if that’s a demand too far in the bigger scheme of being a decent human being. How do they do the right thing as well as completing their mission? They’re trying to square a circle. Without spoiling any big reveals, all I can say is keep an eye on the AI throughout. BB’s got secrets. He’s got secrets he keeps even from himself.
Although many of the characters in the Kilo-Five trilogy were intriguing and memorable, which one would you consider to be your favorite? Why?
I never have a favorite character in anything I write, because I don’t work that way – my entire approach to characterization relies on complete neutrality, the polar opposite. The only way I can write multiple tight third person point-of-view successfully is to be able to step in and out of each character’s mind, every character, and feel what they feel to the fullest extent so I can make them come to life for the reader. You can’t do that if you prefer some to others. You won’t be able to “be” the other characters in the story when you need to give them their voice or take the necessary dramatic risks with your favorites, which is why I have none. They all have to have equal weight to make the whole world feel three-dimensional and fully realized. A story should be a real slice of life with winners and losers, and no guarantee of who wins, or even a definition of winning. Well, that’s how I write mine, and anyone who picks up a Traviss book knows that’s what they’re going to get.
There are characters that stand out to you as especially useful as a fiction device, and when you’ve made a challenging character work especially well then you feel good about that, but that’s not about the characters. It’s about your own exercise and command of your craft as a writer. It’s like the compulsory figures in skating – the audience doesn’t need to see it, but as a pro you have to master them so that the performance itself is seamless and nobody sees the strings.
Were there any advantages or challenges while pioneering some of the uncharted territory immediately after the Human-Covenant War?
There are things that work in a game but make lousy narrative fiction, and vice versa. I was able to look at events and scenarios that wouldn’t make good gameplay but make cracking novels – intricate, open to interpretation, real insights into how the individual characters think, and the kind of political maneuvering and human military detail (as in how people in uniform behave – I’m not being speciesist there) that provokes thought. I don’t care what conclusion readers come to – it’s up to you as an individual to decide which character is right – but I do insist that they stop and think, and don’t just swallow what they’re told.
What was the reasoning behind selecting ‘Mortal Dictata,’ a reference to government legislation within the Halsey Journal, as the title of the third Kilo-Five installment?Favorite is a word that has misleading overtones of enjoyment, so I’d prefer to say “the scene that made everything fall into place” – the cornerstone, if you can call something at the final stage of construction a cornerstone. It was the whole last chapter, and the epilogue in particular. I built up to that for four years, and keeping it on track over such a long period and through two games was a big challenge. When I kept the mystery going to the very last page, I admit I was both relieved and satisfied. The epilogue really gave me a sense of closure. There are so many open-ended series you find yourself having to write that actually having an ending that’s an outcome people have been waiting for rather than just tidying up a stump, so to speak, is very therapeutic.
Just a reminder that you can pick this book up today. Buy it at your local bookstore or order it online.
I’m getting mine from Amazon (for $10.74 + shipping). You can bet that when I receive it, I’ll be reading this cover to cover…well, at least as long as my eyes will stay open to read it. I’m SO looking forward to this. NO spoilers in comments please. Once I read this, I’ll do a full review of it, then you are welcome to comment on it, in that article.
-Sal
Following up the Prologue post, here is an excerpt from Chapter One of Halo: Mortal Dictata:
CHAPTER
ONE
ONI SPEC OPS AI BLACK- BOX (BBX- 8995- 1)
RECORDING 4/5/2553
PARTITION SECURITY FAILSAFE ACTIVATED
I don’t actually need to record any of this, but my memory isn’t what it was.
Let me put that another way. I recognize its potential fallibility after that unpleasant business of reintegrating my damaged fragment. Not that I misremember, lie to myself, or acquire false memories like humans do. I might have missing segments and damaged clusters, but what I actually recall is real, and it doesn’t change or get overwritten. So, reminder to self: memory gaps hurt, a preview of death by rampancy. Second reminder to self: yes, I’m reminding myself to remind myself, because Mal says the best way to stop worrying about your inevitable demise is to dwell on it morbidly until you’re so bored that you forget it.
Anyway, I’m securing this data so that it can’t be retrieved by hostiles if I find myself in the same pickle again. My name is Black-Box, generally called BB: I work for Captain Serin Osman of ONI, who would have been a Spartan- II now if the program hadn’t nearly killed her, and I serve with her personal black ops unit, Kilo-Five-Sangheili cultural expert Professor Evan Phillips; ODST Marines Staff Sergeant Mal Geffen; Corporal Vasily Beloi; and Sergeant Lian Devereaux; and a Spartan- II, Naomi-010. We also have two Huragok on board, Requires Adjustment, aka Adj, and Leaks Repaired, known as Leaks. We’ve been covertly supplying arms to the Sangheili rebels to keep a civil war with the Arbiter on a steady simmer, because all the time they’re busy killing each other, they’re not regrouping to kill humans. They’re a tad disorganized since the collapse of the Covenant-job jobbed, as Mal would say-and the rebels have misplaced a battlecruiser. Like everything else, it’ll end up in the wrong hands unless we go and retrieve it. Or blow it up. I’m easy.
There’s also the added complication of Naomi’s father showing up on Venezia. I suppose it was inevitable that the ugly past of the SPARTAN program would come back to bite us one day. Vaz and Naomi are on Venezia now, undercover. This will not end well.
But now I have to go bake a cake. I just need to enlist some organics. Meatbags have their uses. They have hands.
And, I admit, some of them are my friends.
RECORDING ENDS
ALSTAD, SANSAR, OUTER COLONIES: SEPTEMBER 10, 2517
“Honey, where’s Naomi?”
Staffan Sentzke hung up his jacket and looked for his daughter’s satchel and coat on the hook halfway up the wall, set as high as a six- year- old could reach. If the bus hadn’t dropped her off yet, he still had time to sneak the box into his workshop. It was five days to her birthday. She was already keeping an eye on everything he did with the unblinking vigilance of a security guard. Lena wandered into the hall, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Music practice, remember,” she said. “She won’t be back until five.”
“You think she’s a bit young for all these extra classes?”
“If you think she’s old enough to go to school on her own . . .”
“Okay. You win that round.”
“So did you get it?”
“Yeah.” Staffan put the box on the kitchen table, pleased with himself both for finding such a uniquely Naomi kind of gift and for the overtime he’d had to work to buy it. It was a mini planetarium the size of a table lamp. “I bet she can name all the stars. You can get different discs to show the northern and southern hemispheres. Even views from other planets.”
Lena opened the box and lifted out the projector. “At least she won’t think it’s the doll’s house before she opens it.” She had to move the toaster to plug the lamp into the wall socket. “Too small.”
“You think she’ll be disappointed?”
Lena flicked the switch. Sansar’s night sky came to life in the kitchen as constellations began tracking slowly across the walls and ceiling. Naomi would love it. She could leave the projector running all night if she wanted to. It was a grown- up kind of night- light for a smart little girl who was sometimes still afraid of the dark.
“No, she’ll forget all about the doll’s house as soon as she sees it,” Lena said. A slow smile spread across her face as her gaze flickered from star to star. “It’s pretty magical, isn’t it?”
“You can change the colors.” Staffan turned a dial on the side. “Look. There’s even a rainbow setting. And you can zoom in on individual stars and planets. Look.” He pressed a key and a blue- green planetary disc sprang out of the heavens. “Just like landing on Reach.”
“Okay, let’s wrap it and put it away before she gets home.”
Staffan rummaged in the kitchen drawers for scissors and tape, and noticed that the collection of tiny, handmade furniture on the shelf had grown an extra chair. Ever since Naomi had spotted the doll’s house in an expensive toy store in New Stockholm-no Daddy-I-want, no wheedling, just that rapt look on her face when she saw it-she’d been collecting all kinds of scraps, and spent hours cutting and gluing them to make furniture. There was a table, a bed, and now a dining suite. Staffan picked up one of the fragile chairs and studied it with his own craftsman’s eye, marveling at how square the angles were and how neat the glued joints.
Pride overwhelmed him for a moment. Naomi would be six in a few days. She shouldn’t have had that level of dexterity or precision. Average six-year-olds were struggling with joined-up writing while his daughter was measuring angles and working out scale.
Every parent thought their child was uniquely perfect, but Staffan knew the difference between fond delusion and the realization that Naomi was a gifted child. A few months ago, an educational psychologist from the Colonial Administration Authority had visited the school to carry out batteries of tests on her class, and Naomi’s teacher had told Staffan and Lena what they already knew: Naomi was exceptional, in the top small fraction of a percent- one in millions, maybe one in a billion. He just hoped that a small colony world like Sansar would have enough to offer her when she grew up.
It was funny that she was so taken with the doll’s house, though. She didn’t even like dolls. She wasn’t interested in being a princess, either. There was something about the detail of the house, the creation of a separate world, that seemed to absorb her.
Staffan turned the miniature chair over in his fingers. The cushion fell off. He swore under his breath and took it out to his workshop. He’d stick it together again and hope she didn’t notice, but she never missed a thing.
A dab of wood glue put the tiny cushion- the fingertip of a knitted glove- back in place. There: good as new. Then he wrapped the planetarium projector in the red- and- white striped paper that he’d sneaked into the house last week. He’d have to lock it away somewhere. Naomi had a lot of self- control for a small girl, but she was a very curious child, always busy searching for something to do or make.
He parted the blinds with his finger to look across the yard. It was getting dark. She’d be home soon. He hid the parcel in his rifle locker and went back inside the house.
“Where’s she gotten to?”
Lena stirred a pot on the stove. “I just called the school. They were running late. She’s on the bus now, so I make that ten minutes.”
Staffan wanted to wrap his daughter in cotton wool, but if he did then she’d grow up afraid of everything. She was smart enough to catch the right bus and not talk to strangers. She had a watch- a proper adult one, not some glittery pink toy- and the drivers kept an eye on the kids and old folks anyway. Lena didn’t approve. It was one battle that Staffan had won.
He worried, all the same. Dads couldn’t help themselves.
And then before I know it there’ll be parties, and dating, and all that to fret about.
While he watched TV, he could hear Lena walking back and forth between the kitchen and the hall. Then the front door opened. He expected to hear Naomi’s voice. But the door closed after a few seconds, and Lena came into the living room, pulling on her coat.
“I’m going to walk to the bus stop,” she said. “I don’t want her wandering around in the dark. Which wouldn’t have happened if you’d let me pick her up.”
Staffan checked his watch. Damn, it had been nearly half an hour since Lena had called the school. There was probably a perfectly good explanation. “Honey, you know she likes to feel grown- up. She’s not an idiot.”
“I know. But she’s five.”
“Six.”
“I’m going. Keep an eye on the stove.”
Staffan fretted for a few moments, trying to work out if this was Dad worry or rational anxiety. Naomi wasn’t the kind of kid to wander off or lose track of the time. Okay, he’d do some more overtime and get her her own phone. That would keep Lena happy.
He opened the front door to take a look. The bus stop wasn’t that far: he could see the string of streetlights dotted along the road in the distance and the silhouette of the climbing frames and swings in the park. He expected to see Lena and Naomi walking back across the grass, but there was just Lena. And she was running.
Oh God. Oh God, no.
Some things were instantly understood.
In the moments it took to close the distance between them, Staffan had thought a hundred terrified, stomach-churning thoughts about perverts, road accidents, ponds, and God I should never have let her go out on her own, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t-
He ran down the drive. Lena almost cannoned into him and grabbed his arm, wide- eyed and distraught. “She’s gone. He called the depot.”
Staffan could hardly breathe. “Whoa, slow down. Who?”
“The bus driver. He just called the other driver, the one on the earlier bus. He said she got off a stop early. She just got off the bus. I told you. I told you she was too young-”
“Then she’s just walking a bit farther. Nothing to worry about.” It was a lie and Staffan knew it. There was everything to worry about. His heart pounded. He thought immediately of his neighbors, trying to work out which of them had always seemed a bit odd. Everyone warned kids about strangers but forgot to mention it was the people they knew and trusted who were the biggest danger.
Did I do that? Did I teach her to be too trusting? Is it my fault?
Staffan fumbled in his pockets for his keys. “I’ll drive back down the route. I’ll find her. You stay here in case she’s taken a shortcut.”
Lena was shaking. “He said she’s done it before. This is your fault.”
“Yeah, I knew it would be.”
“If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Jesus Christ, Lena, this isn’t the time, okay? Stay here. She’ll probably be back before I am.”
He backed the car out of the drive and headed for the main road. Naomi would have been home by now if she’d walked that distance.
Please be all right, sweetie. Please. God? God, if you’re there at all, if you’re listening, you haven’t done a whole lot for my family, so maybe now would be a good time to show yourself. Let her be okay. Please.
He drove along the bus route back to the school, now shuttered and in darkness, before looping around to scan both sides of the road. He didn’t even pass anyone out walking. Maybe she’d taken a shortcut through the new houses that were springing up to the west of the park. He doubled back and turned into the tract.
Or maybe she cut through the construction site.
Staffan slowed to a crawl to press the receiver into his ear and call Lena, but the number was busy. She was probably ringing around Naomi’s friends’ moms to see if she was with them. Which direction would Naomi have taken? He drove around every possible permutation of roads he could think of, but he knew damn well that she would have been long gone if she’d actually walked through here.
So am I looking for a body? Am I? Is that what I’m doing?
He could hardly bear to listen to his own thoughts. He headed home and turned into the drive, willing Naomi to be back and in need of nothing more than a talking- to about staying on the bus and not scaring Mom and Dad, followed by being escorted to and from school for a few weeks. But Lena was standing at the front door, eyes glassy with unshed tears.
“Nothing,” she said.
He wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question. “Well?”
“Everyone’s calling their neighbors. They’re going to search for her. I’ve called the police. They’re putting out alerts.”
“I’m going back out, then.” For no good reason, Staffan was suddenly grateful that his mother was days out of communication range and Lena’s folks hadn’t spoken to him-or her-in years. It was one less set of explanations and recriminations to think about. “Someone’s got to organize this. How could she go missing between a couple of bus stops?”
It was a stupid question because the answer was both obvious and terrifying. He wished he hadn’t said it. As he checked the map of the area on his datapad, he was still thinking through the list of everyone he knew in the village, trying to work out which one was the pervert that he’d never suspected. Naomi would never have gone off with a stranger.
Or she’s lying in a ditch, hurt. Or worse.
“I’ve got to look for her,” Lena said.
“No, stay put. Someone’s got to be here to talk to the cops.”
Staffan had already covered all the roads he could think of. The places he hadn’t searched- the construction site, the stream, the farm- were the kind of hazard-ridden places where kids were found dead. In less than two hours, he’d gone from worrying if Naomi would be disappointed by her birthday present to not knowing if he’d ever see her again. Lena stood with one hand to her mouth, tearful and accusing at the same time, while he rang friends and tried to coordinate the search.
Alstad was a small place. All the kids who went to Naomi’s school were from three villages in an eight- kilometer radius. This wasn’t like a big city where a kid could vanish in seconds.
But we don’t have all the street cameras that a big city would have, either.
Someone hammered on the front door. Lena rushed to answer it, but it wasn’t the police. Twenty or more neighbors, including a couple with dogs and night hunting scopes, stood outside, clutching flashlights and looking grim. It seemed like the entire village had turned out in a matter of minutes.
“We’ll find her, Staf,” said Jakob. He was the district councilman, the kind of guy who always stepped up with a plan. “She’s only been gone a few hours. She can’t get far. They’ve got cams on all the buses.”
It was just comforting noise. If she’d been taken by someone in a car, that meant nothing. She could be anywhere by now, unseen and unheard. Staffan gave Lena as reassuring a hug as he could manage.
“Call me if you hear anything,” he said, as if it needed saying. “I’ll keep my line clear.”
Jakob took over as if he knew Staffan was now going in circles and needed steering. He’d already divided everyone into teams and given them areas to search- the sheds and slurry pit at the dairy farm north of the main road, the construction site, and the park. Others were tasked to go door to door, asking people to look in their sheds and out houses. Nobody suggested waiting for the police. Staffan felt useless. He wasn’t sure what the dogs would be able to achieve, either, but everything was worth trying.
Every minute that passed became the worst of his life, a steady downward path. The construction site was a list of fatal accidents waiting to befall a kid, from the holes full of water to the stacks of building materials that could fall and crush the unwary.
“She wouldn’t come in here voluntarily.” Staffan poked a long piece of wooden batten into a water- filled trench. Reflections of the security lights danced on the surface. “I know my daughter.”
While they were dragging the ditches, the construction manager showed up with half a dozen guys and started opening every storage hut and locked door, working through half- built houses with no floors or stairs. When the search party drew a blank on the site, they moved on to the occupied houses. With every door that opened, someone offered to join the search. Even strangers cared what happened to a little girl.
Staffan’s phone rang a while later, showing 20:05 on the screen. He realized he’d completely lost track of the time. His heartbeat and the strangled sound of his own breathing almost drowned out Lena’s voice.
“I gave the police one of her blouses from the laundry basket,” Lena said. “For the canine unit. They’ve called in a Pelican with thermal imaging to scan the ground.”
“Yeah, well, we’re going to carry on anyway,” Staffan said. Thermal imaging. That meant they thought she was alive. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? He clung to the belief like a life belt. “We’ve got half the village out here now. We’ll find her. I promise.”
Staffan went back to sit in the car for a few minutes to check the local news, just to be sure something was being broadcast and that they’d gotten the detail right. He didn’t catch anything on the radio. But his datapad showed an appeal for sightings on the local news site, complete with a picture of Naomi.
A police car with a flashing light bar slowed to a stop alongside him. The driver got out and Staffan lowered the window.
“Have you found her?” Staffan asked.
“Not yet, sir.” The cop’s comms unit was burbling quietly on his lapel like a second conversation in the background. “The dog’s tracking right now, and we’ve got the bus security footage, so we know that she got off at-”
“Yeah. We knew that hours ago.”
“Look, most kids usually turn up again safe and sound. Sometimes they forget the time and go playing somewhere, and then they’re too scared to face the music for being late.”
“Yeah, but not Naomi,” Staffan said. “Not my daughter.”
He drove back to the bus stop and sat watching the police dog and its handler. The dog was wandering back and forth on a long leash about fifty meters from the road. In the distance, flashlight beams crossed and wobbled between the trees as people searched the woods. Staffan decided he’d had enough and went to talk to the dog handler.
He stopped on the paved path. “What’s the dog found? I’m her father. I want to know.”
“He’s picked up a trail from the bus stop, sir, but it doesn’t go very far.” The handler nodded in the dog’s direction. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. It might not be the right one.”
Staffan wasn’t stupid and he knew the dog wasn’t, either. The trail ended abruptly a distance from the road because someone had lifted Naomi off the ground at that point. It was the only explanation.
“She’s been taken,” Staffan said. The words were strange and distant, completely unreal. “Some bastard’s snatched my little girl. You know it.”
In three hours, Naomi could have been a long way from Alstad- or dead. Staffan had no idea what to do next except not stand here talking a second longer. He got back into his car and just drove blindly. He should have been home with Lena, but he felt helpless, useless, guilty. He had to do something or go crazy.
Lena was right. He should never have let a six- year- old out on her own like that.
He headed for New Stockholm, praying one minute and swearing the next, cruising the streets while he scanned pedestrians and every single car that passed. There was no reason to think anyone would have brought Naomi here, but he didn’t have a better idea. It wasn’t until his phone bleeped again that he snapped out of it and accepted this was all random and pointless. “Come home,” Lena said. “I can’t stand everyone calling to tell me it’s all going to be all right.”
It was nearly midnight. It was shocking how much life could change in a matter of hours.
I could have just driven to the school and picked her up.
Why the hell did she get off the bus early?
When he got home, there were neighbors’ cars still parked in the road outside, but Lena was alone, sitting in the kitchen with her arms folded on the table. She had the radio and TV on at the same time. The competing audio streams merged into a quiet babble in the background.
She looked like she’d been crying. Staffan waited for the whatifs and if-onlies.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m so sorry. But we’ll find her. She can’t just disappear like that.”
“But they do, don’t they?” Lena had that look on her face, the one that stopped short of saying this is all your fault. He didn’t need reminding. “You’ve only got to watch the news.”
Staffan knew he wouldn’t get through the next hour if he let himself think that. He’d expected to find himself crying and pacing the floor, but he and Lena just sat at the kitchen table, not talking, not looking at each other, just fending off sporadic knocks at the door from well- meaning neighbors. The police called pretty well on the hour, but they had no more news.
“I should go out again,” Staffan said. It’d be light in a few hours. His eyes kept closing. How could he be tired at a time like this? “I really should.”
Lena poured a pot of cold coffee down the drain. “I’ll go. You stay here.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve done all the sitting and waiting I’m going to do.” She took the keys. “She’s out there. I know she is. I refuse to believe she’s gone. Don’t you dare tell me she is.”
“Okay, honey. I know. I know.”
Staffan had expected himself to be more than this somehow: more decisive, more logical, more grief- stricken, more angry. He felt like he was bargaining with fate. If he didn’t actually say the words or think the worst, then it wouldn’t happen. Naomi was still alive; he’d see her again. Repeating that mantra was the only way to cope with the unthinkable.
He switched to another TV channel and rested his head on his hands, trying to think of something that he’d overlooked. Had anyone rung around the hospitals? Maybe she’d been hit by a car and they couldn’t ID her.
Maybe . . .
This is crazy.
His head started to buzz. He closed his eyes for just a moment.
The phone rang and woke him. He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep at the table. Lena was back. She stood with the handset pressed to her ear, sobbing. “Are you sure? Are you sure? Oh, thank God . . .”
Staffan jumped to his feet, heart pounding, trying to listen in on the call. Lena put the phone down and cupped her hands over her mouth, eyes tight shut.
“Jesus, honey, just tell me.”
“They’ve found her. She’s okay. They’ve taken her to the hospital to check her over.”
The relief was so powerful that his legs almost buckled. “Where?” He looked at the clock on the wall. It was just before six in the morning. Was he really awake? Yes, he was. The nightmare was over. “Goddamn it, you should have let me talk to them.”
“She’s okay. Come on. Let’s go.”
“Who took her? What did they do to her?” Staffan’s dread was already giving way to a panicky anger. “I swear I’ll kill the bastard if he’s laid a finger on her-”
“They said she’s fine. She’s safe. Come on.”
“What the hell happened? Where was she?”
“Five klicks southwest of New Stockholm,” Lena said. “She was sitting at a bus stop. A bus driver stopped to check on her and she asked him to help her find her way home.”
That was an hour or so from Alstad. “What was she doing out there?”
“No idea. She can’t remember. She didn’t show up on any other bus cams, so they’ll want to talk to her again later. She certainly didn’t walk there on her own.”
Staffan had to search for his keys. He realized he hadn’t called the factory to let them know he’d be late, either. Well, too bad. He struggled to keep his mind on the road while he tried to make sense of what he knew.
“I don’t believe it. Six in the goddamn morning? Nobody notices a kid out on her own all night?”
“Someone did spot her. Eventually.”
“But where was she for the rest of the time? She was gone for twelve hours. She couldn’t have done that on her own. What were the goddamn cops doing? They couldn’t even find her with a dog and a dropship. Useless assholes.”
Lena held up her hands to silence him. “Look, we’ll find out later. All that matters is she’s alive and she’s coming home. Just stop this. Please.”
Staffan hardly dared say it. But Lena had to be thinking it as well. “I swear if anyone’s touched her, I’m going to find him and cut off his balls. Because all he’ll get from the judge is a rap across the knuckles and his own personal social worker to-”
“Staffan. Please. Don’t.”
“Why aren’t they telling us what happened?”
“Because they don’t know. For Chrissakes. Just stop it.”
It confirmed the worst for him. Naomi was probably too traumatized to speak. When they got to the hospital, they had to wait with a woman police officer for the best part of an hour before the doctors were ready to let them see Naomi. Staffan braced himself. When he and Lena were shown into the private room, Naomi was sitting cross- legged on a metal-framed bed, hands folded in her lap, still wearing her bright red dress and blue jacket. She looked more baffled than terrified.
Lena grabbed her and crushed her in a tearful hug. Staffan had to wait to get a look in. When he cuddled Naomi, she looked at him blankly for a second, as if she was working out who he was, but then she smiled. It worried him. Maybe they’d sedated her.
“Wow, you’re away with the fairies, aren’t you, baby?” he said. “What did they give you?”
“Breakfast,” she said. “I had eggs.”
Staffan looked at the doctor. “Have you given her any drugs? She seems pretty spacey.”
The doctor shrugged. He had no way of knowing what was normal Naomi. This wasn’t. “No sedation,” he said. “She wasn’t agitated. And she has no injuries at all. Which is odd, given that she can’t remember how she got to the bus stop. Has she ever had seizures or blackouts before?”
“No.” Seizures? My little girl? “She’s perfectly healthy. Lord knows she’s had enough medical examinations at school this last year. They’d have spotted anything odd. Look, when you say no injuries . . .”
“No, she hasn’t been molested, if that’s what you’re asking. We do check in these cases.”
It was a massive relief. Staffan found himself breathing normally for the first time in what felt like forever. “Well, she’s never had fits. Are you sure she wasn’t drugged by whoever took her?”
“We’ve run a tox screen-all clear so far. And nothing on the brain scan. She just doesn’t remember anything before she arrived at the bus stop, let alone anyone taking her, and she still seems disoriented.” The doctor ruffled Naomi’s hair and gave her a big smile. “But you ate a pretty good breakfast, didn’t you, poppet?”
“Where are all the other doctors?” Naomi asked. “There were always more than this.”
That made no sense at all. Staffan glanced at Lena. She looked worried too. Just when he thought it would be enough to have Naomi back alive, it looked like they had a new problem.
“Keep an eye on her for the next few days,” the doctor said. “I’ll refer her to the consultant neurologist. It’s the memory loss that concerns me. She might just be scared of a telling- off, but let’s err on the side of caution.”
Staffan carried Naomi to the car and put her in the backseat. She was still clutching her satchel. He watched her for a moment, desperate to see some hint of the normal Naomi, but maybe that was asking too much. She opened the satchel and looked inside as if she wasn’t sure what was in there. Lena drove while he sat in the back, holding Naomi’s hand. It was more for his benefit than hers.
“No school for a few days, sweetie,” Lena said. “You’ve had a nasty fright, that’s all.”
Staffan didn’t think that Naomi would ever be too scared to tell him anything, but there was always a first time. Maybe the doctor was right; maybe she’d behaved like a little girl for a change instead of a child prodigy.
“We’re not angry with you, baby,” he said. “But did you go into town to look at that doll’s house again?”
Naomi gazed up at him, baffled. “What doll’s house?”
“Doesn’t matter.” That was weird. She couldn’t have forgotten it already. “I’ve got you something even better for your birthday.”
“Okay.” That was all she said. “Okay.”
Staffan was really scared now. There was something wrong. When they got home, he tucked her up in a blanket on the sofa and sat watching her for the rest of the day, frightened to take his eyes off her. Whatever had happened, she was a lot quieter than normal. When she got up to go to the bathroom, she stood in the hallway for a moment as if she was working out where it was, and Lena had to lead her upstairs. When she came back and started reading her book, she turned it over from time to time to frown at the cover, and she didn’t finish her favorite sandwich-crustless triangles filled with mashed egg, dill, and mayonnaise. Lena put her to bed early and she didn’t beg for a few more minutes to finish the chapter. She didn’t do anything that she usually did.
Weird. Wrong.
“Yeah, I think she’s ill,” Lena said, folding the blanket. “Whatever the doctor said, she’s sickening for something. Flu, maybe.”
“I hope that’s all it is.”
Lena just looked at him, arms folded. “And we’ll keep a closer eye on her, because Naomi or not, we nearly lost her. She’ll grow up fast enough. Until we know exactly what happened, she isn’t going anywhere on her own again, okay?”
“Okay.”
It was strange how Naomi had forgotten all about the doll’s house. Some kids had a different fad every day, but once Naomi set her mind to something, it was hard to derail her. Perhaps she’d been into the shop after all, seen how much the doll’s house cost, and realized that she was expecting a very expensive thing.
Maybe she’d felt guilty about that, and was too embarrassed to come home and admit it until she’d worked out a way to change her mind without sounding like she felt her dad had let her down.
Come on, she’s smart, but she’s still five- okay, six. On the other hand . . . she’s like her grandma. She’ll pretend she didn’t really want it after all.
Staffan couldn’t afford the doll’s house, but he could certainly make one like it. How hard could it be? He worked in a machine shop. If he could cut and grind metal to fi ne tolerances, he could make a wooden house and all the furniture that went in it. And he could make it special and personal for her.
But that would take time. Naomi needed something special right now. He unwrapped the planetarium lamp and put it on the table next to her bed. She opened her eyes just as he switched it on and filled the room with drifting stars.
“There,” he said. “You’ve got the whole galaxy now. And all the galaxies beyond it. See that one? And that? Can you remember what it’s called?”
Naomi gazed up at the ceiling. She seemed mesmerized. “No. But it’s pretty.”
She could normally name the constellations. Staffan put his hand on her forehead, but she didn’t feel feverish. “We got it for your birthday. But you deserve a treat right now.”
“Thank you, Daddy. I’m sorry for not remembering.”
“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. You’ll be right as rain before long.” He turned the dial to the rainbow setting. If she woke in the night, the first thing she’d see would be the soothing play of lights. He stroked her hair as she watched the ceiling. He had his little girl back, and right then nothing else mattered. “Just enjoy the stars.”
HFFL: Wow, this is a crushing account of the abduction of Naomi, without actually detailing the abduction itself. Reading the dread that her dad goes through gave me an uneasy pain as well. This book seems much more “real” than previous Halo novels. January 21st can’t get here soon enough!
-Sal