“Let’s put an end to our hideous mistakes. But when we’ve survived, when we’re finished with our awful task, forced on us by the iniquity of Warriors ten million years ago—who among us will ever be able to face the Domain?”
None of the others meet his haunted eyes. Deliberately, I avert mine as well.
“Who, Forerunners?” he cries, then pushes through and departs the Cartographer.
The commanders stand in respectful silence, then turn, as one, toward me.
“The Master Builder’s fate is here. And so is ours,” Examiner says. “Someone must go to the other Ark and prepare for the unthinkable.”
My task is now clear.
“The Graveminds know they still face a tremendous threat,” Bitterness says. “They know of the existence of the greater Ark. But they may not yet know the whereabouts of the lesser Ark. You must go there and take command. The Flood cannot be allowed to claim victory. They must be stopped, if not for our kind, then for others who may come later.”
The commanders look out beyond the image of Halo and Ark, toward the great dim spread of stars that is our galaxy.
The star roads are coming.
We can all feel them.
STRING 30
THE LIBRARIAN AND THE UR-DIDACT
MY HUSBAND … HAS become a child again.
But not any sort of child I’d be proud of. Not any sort of child I would trust.
He has stripped off his armor and wanders about our quarters, looking at the things his duplicate has gathered, artifacts and objects of study, remembrances of the time when he was away, in exile or lost, and I briefly had another husband—very much like him.
But no longer. There is no question of him making any attempt to reconcile, of that I am certain. I hardly recognize what he has become.
Still, he has requested this meeting, with the implication that it will be our last.
I sit on a suspensor that takes color and shape beneath me, and he sits beside me, his great head dropping between his thick knees. “Can you know what it was like to be in the Cryptum, leaving our situation to you, while all this spun out of control?” he asks.
I take up his great hand and unfold it, running my own smaller finger along each muscular digit. The hand reflexively closes. Our bodies still carry instructions built in from times long before memory.
“No,” I breathe. “I hope it was peaceful.”
“Quiet, as much as there can be sense or sensation. The Domain can only tell the living what they already know,” he says. “Or what they’ve stored in its expanses. I wandered through all the corridors … so they appeared, anyway. Centuries of wandering through hallways and caverns and even deeper, darker places, lined and fitfully aglow with ancestral records and memories, upwellings of past visits, rarely by me, sometimes by our ancestors … on occasion, our descendants.”
“Descendants?” I ask.
“The Domain keeps its secrets only with difficulty. It wants, it needs, to spread knowledge. It wants to tell us when we’re being foolish, but it can only replay the emotions and memories of those who came before. Still, rarely, it violates its own rules.”
“What about our descendants?” I persist.
“I felt their touch, their love. And yet, they were fading. The Domain is filled with sadness. A deep shadow has fallen over everything Forerunner. When I was pulled up from all that, pulled out of the Cryptum and revived … I couldn’t remember. But now I do—in part. Horror brought it back. The Gravemind returned it to me. It forced me to listen.”
My husband swiftly removes his hand from mine and stands to summon his armor, stretching to allow it to surround him. “I need to fight against what it told me, what it has done to me, to all of us. I need to fight with all of my might and will, and everything I can gather … every weapon and resource. But I have been undercut from the very beginning by that Manipular, Wife. The worst thing I’ve ever done was imprint him. And so, forgive me in advance for what I must do. And know why I do it.”
I am about to ask what this is, that requires any forgiveness, let alone mine—but alarms sound before I can speak. The Didact starts up, and for a moment, there is that old, brutal sharpness, that old readiness for battle. The ancillas gather around, foremost the image of the Offensive Bias.
“The Ark is under attack,” it says. “Large concentrations of star roads are emerging in near space.”
“How much time?” the Didact asks.
“Hours, no more,” the metarch responds.
The IsoDidact is doubtless already taking action, in concert with the Builder commanders—putting the entire Ark on full alert. I need to get to the Halo! My specimens, the last humans …
But what I see in the abyssal night around the greater Ark is enough to freeze me through and through. Somehow, the old artifacts have been transported in such amazing density that the galaxy beyond is barely visible, as if viewed through a weave of shadowy bars.
The Ark is surrounded, and every second the star roads squeeze in. Already our radius of action is down to a few million kilometers.
I can’t bear the thought of the loss of all my specimens, of the greatest concentration of our lifelong efforts, of all our work!
“How can we repopulate the galaxy if we lose everything here?” I cry.
The Didact’s look is strangely sly. Devious, as if he has a delicious joke he wishes to tell, but not yet. An expression I’ve never seen before. Horror compounds upon horror.
“After I finish my task, I will depart in Mantle’s Approach,” he says.
My mind races. I can expect no assistance from the Didact, that much is obvious. The Ark is far too large to move. The Halo might be able to escape. But there are not nearly enough functional vessels to rapidly shift our Forerunners there. They could have been moved if we had begun shuttling them weeks ago! Or if we had put them on the Halo in the first place.
Our mistakes have finally compounded.
The trap is closing.
“How can we save them all? How can we ever get free?” I ask. “And where do we go?”
“There is no way out, only through,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “If you wish to survive, you must leave now. When the Flood is finished, there will be nothing left of this place.”
The Didact stretches a long arm in the direction of Path Kethona. “The star roads will keep clear of Halo’s firing path. That will open an escape route,” he says. “But it will not remain that way for long. You must escape in Audacity while you have a chance.” He sucks in his breath, staring at the Ark’s surface. “Traitors. And yet … even in the midst of our most monumental failure, I will seize another solution.”
The Didact locks his helmet and leaves with hardly a backward glance. He does not even offer to escort me to Audacity.
I am lost in a sink of misery and confusion. If the Ark is destroyed, and all my specimens, what is the point of my own existence?
And then I know. We must move everything—as much as we can—to safety. It is our only solution. I send the briefest of messages to Chant-to-Green who is hidden within a keyship on the far side of the Burn. If her vessel is capable, she will obey. She cannot fail.
I then contact the only presence on the Ark that I know can help.
STRING 31
MONITOR CHAKAS
SENTINELS AND ATTACK harriers rise in swirling clouds around the Ark, like flocking birds over the plains of my birth. I make inquiries, but the Ark’s channels are consumed with preparations for evacuation as well as for combat. Yet how can so many different species be evacuated? And to where? There are not nearly enough transports.
I have not been kept fully informed. I only know that the Ark has been handed over to the Master Builder, and of course, given his luck and skill, is now under immediate threat.
My new mandate is to protect the Lifeshaper and her work. Once I was a human, but received such wounds that the Bornstellar Didact stored me in a machine. The Lifeshaper allowed me, after their gathering
on the Ark, to look after her human populations. She saw it as part of my recovery, and part of my reward for serving them so well. And I have done my very best.
The Lifeshaper’s plan was to keep humans on the Ark, outside the range of Halo destruction, until the scoured planets are free of the Flood and ready for reseeding. But they have now been moved to the Halo, I presume on the orders of the Master Builder, to make room for Forerunners. Nothing is ever simple, and great plans too often meet awful conclusions.
Now she asks of me a final favor: Save everything we can. I query the Ark monitors assigned to Lifeworkers. Only a few respond. They have no instructions with regard to the Halo. The others have shifted service to Offensive Bias. Must I turn against my fellow machines to fulfill the orders of the Lifeshaper? I now await her instructions, as I cannot act without the Lifeshaper’s command and imprimatur.
Catalog, why do you attend a mere monitor, if not to keep me informed of what I must do? I have no testimony to give. I am no longer human. You should seek out the little one called Riser and ask him. He would offer you his opinions freely.
He is still what he was. Wake him up, and he will give you an earful.
* * *
Finally, I have received my orders. The Lifeshaper has instructed me to take a Gargantua-class transport from the Ark to the Omega Halo. Onboard, stores of indexed organisms from the Ark’s population have already been placed by Lifeworkers. Many of these are living specimens, others are simply genetic composites originating from the Librarian’s Conservation Measure. I wonder if this relatively small number will be sufficient to rebuild these many species after Halo fires?
The Halo faces a great curved wall of star roads. Humans placed on the last ring weapon have barely had time to settle in their compounds. By the tens of thousands, they walk over crude hills, shallow lakes, and rivers, and between low mountains and through thick forests. The brightness of an artificial sun moves in familiar rhythm, and the people down there may hope that their most recent darkness and dreamless sleep, in the holds of Lifeworker ships, will be but prelude to the chance to regain all they have lost. They may hope that they have finally reached a home where they can live in peace for centuries, if not thousands of years.
* * *
As we make preparations to transport the humans, the original Didact’s enormous warship thunders down, taking up a position above the human compounds. It’s followed by thousands of sentinels not linked to Offensive Bias, apparently intent on isolating and controlling this section of the Halo. With access to only so much Forerunner knowledge, I have no explanation for this display of force.
The Lifeshaper’s ship comes alongside our transport, hiding in its massive shadow. We link. She is frantic; and for the first time in years, I’m afraid. But why is the original Didact here?
Star roads grow thick beyond the sky bridge. They may soon crush the Ark and the Halo, and with it, all humans, all Forerunners. Forerunner history may be at an end. I do not know whether to feel gladness or sorrow.
“Take us up!” the Lifeshaper orders Audacity, her face stiff with fear. We rise above the Halo’s atmosphere, to see everything more clearly. Mantle’s Approach sweeps low over the Halo compound. The ship’s silhouette has changed. Something protrudes from its front.
The Composer.
A great star forms above the compound—the Composer’s targeting beams. I can do nothing to stop it!
At the Lifeshaper’s command, Audacity shoots forward. She hopes to insert herself into the path of the Composer, to stop her husband from harming her specimens. But the Mantle’s Approach makes the slightest, deftest of maneuvers, throws out a torsion field, and Audacity is brushed aside like a gnat.
The Didact’s ship freezes above the center of a compound. Below, the humans must see what is happening, even through the cloud-wracked atmosphere. They have stopped whatever they are doing to look up and shield their eyes against the brilliance of the targeting beams. A blood-colored pall falls over the compound, over their faces. Surely this is a crime! Catalog will see it all, record it all. Is the madness beginning again? Have I given up everything for another betrayal?
“Tell the sentinels to kill him!” Lifeshaper cries out.
But I cannot. The Didact has assumed control of them all. Mantle’s Approach is too strong, too powerful. The Lifeworker forces are too weak and too few, and cannot stop it.
The Composer has locked onto its victims. Translucent, oily waves of energy spread across the compound, echo from the walls of the Halo, then slide down like folding sheets to wrap the crowds below.
Suddenly, everywhere, across hundreds of square kilometers, bodies twist and fall. Hundreds of thousands are composed before my sensors can make an accurate count.
The information flows back to the Composer in a reverse wave. Men, women, children … all taken in moments.
The Lifeshaper moans deep in her throat. Then the moan intensifies, until she screams, “That’s all he ever does—kill my children! Why? Why?”
Audacity tells us that we must move closer to the compound or outside the great wheel.
The Didact’s ship withdraws the Composer, seals itself for transit, pushes away from the compound and the Halo, departs. Audacity moves under its own volition to a safe position, near the outer perimeter. But safety is no grace.
The next atrocity will soon begin—the firing of the Halo itself. Audacity prepares for an immediate jump.
STRING 32
MONITOR CHAKAS • HALO VICINITY
I HAVE SEEN this before. I remember the awful sensation. I cannot close down my sensors. I am a machine. The sensation is not optimal, but I do not feel what living things feel, in the presence of the Composer. Though I remember it too well.
The Librarian watches it all, her body seemingly in conflict with her armor, as if she would reach up and tear at her twisted face—beyond any expressible sadness. Such anger mixed with so much grief, both ancient and new …
Our path is cleared, for the time being. I wish I could feel despair. I wish I myself could grieve. My people are gone! All that remain from the Librarian’s collection are on the transport linked below. The last hope of my entire species.
The Librarian stops her contortions and recovers enough control to tell me that she and I will part ways. I will return to the transport and take the surviving specimens—including my friends—away from here. “You must find Bornstellar, he will take you to the lesser Ark. That is where we must hide the specimens.” But what about her safety? What does she plan to do?
I must obey. Still,
Something
Is being born in me. Something hidden is emerging. I feel its potential. It is not entirely obedient. Have I been affected by the logic plague? No.
I am still Chakas.
I am still human!
STRING 33
ISODIDACT • GREATER ARK, OMEGA HALO
THE SHEER POWER mounted by the Flood is staggering.
Well over a million Flood-infected ships have taken up attack positions about the greater Ark. Their arrangement is familiar enough—the peculiar gapped spiral sweep favored by my original, each segment capable of wheeling in three dimensions in response to attack from any direction. That tactic has been adapted by the Flood’s new commander—Mendicant Bias.
Mendicant Bias was deactivated and disassembled after the destruction of the Capital system, to the extent that any Contender-class metarch can ever be eliminated from the systems it once controlled. Its parts were spread throughout the ecumene for later study. But many of those regions where it was stored have been overwhelmed by the Flood, and the metarch’s fragments were apparently recovered, restored, reassembled—and reactivated by a Gravemind. The Flood’s forces are marshaled by a twisted machine, the first victim of the logic plague—and a creation, in part, of the Ur-Didact.
Father to son, I tell myself.
Against the tightening cage of reshaped star roads, the former Forerunner vessels are little more than a c
loud of mosquitoes pouring through a deadfall of trees.
Bitterness and the Examiner float beside me as our fleet transport carries us from the greater Ark to the parking orbit of the Omega Halo.
“At such a close range, in such limited time…” Bitterness says, all she needs to say. The one Halo ready for action will never be able to mount a broad sweep before the star roads and their escort of infected ships have closed in and destroyed the Ark.
“Get us inside the hoop and land us anywhere,” I say. “Keep a direct link with Offensive Bias. We’ll have to fire from its present angle. Send confirming signal to Audacity, the plan is under way, be prepared.”
“Lifeshaper does not respond, Commander. Audacity says that the Ur-Didact’s ship has conducted an unauthorized intrusion … and used a Composer!” Bitterness’s astonishment equals my own. “The humans … they’re gone. They’ve been composed.”
What would my original want with humans? Collecting them, composing them … Defying the most fervent wishes of the Lifeshaper. It’s beyond comprehension. My first instinct is to seek Mantle’s Approach and force it to return it to the Ark … Where the Ur-Didact will be destroyed, along with the rest of us, allowing only the Lifeshaper to escape. The best of us all.
But our transport would be powerless against Mantle’s Approach.
“My wife is safe?” I ask.
“Audacity reports all are safe, but experiencing distress. It is preparing to escape.”
“Good,” I say, though I cannot fathom the horror my wife faces—her life’s work swallowed up before her eyes.
We land on the Halo’s inner surface, near the base of the control center. We enter swiftly. Bitterness and the Examiner follow. In the far wing of the control room, a fully holographic readout of all Halo systems assembles.