by Kelly Gay
Her mouth opened to deny it, but what was the point? “I thought we all agreed there’d be no snooping.”
He gestured to her commpad. “Snooping takes effort, Lessa. This did not.”
Of all the pompous… “That’s not the good excuse you think it is.” But right now she didn’t have the energy or the heart to lecture him about privacy. “Don’t tell them, okay? I haven’t decided anything yet.” Embarrassment made her turn away. She felt stupid for even considering it. “I’m just… looking, dreaming maybe. I probably won’t ever actually do it.…”
“Why not?”
“Well… because. I wouldn’t want to—”
“Oh, good, you’re both here.” Rion entered the lounge with a brisk step. “Ram and Niko should be in any second.” She got a drink from the dispenser and then focused on Spark. “All set?”
Lessa extracted herself from the cushy chair and moved to the table. “All set for what?”
Niko and Ram entered as Rion answered with a smile and a wink, “New mission.”
* * *
Niko’s frazzled appearance gave Rion a good chuckle. His dark hair was sticking out at all angles and hung well past his ears now. Recently he was given to tucking it behind his ears. “Wow. It’s like you weren’t just on the beach for eight days.”
“Hey. This is my normal look.”
“Deranged?”
“Ha ha. This is what hard work and genius looks like.” His gaze briefly shifted to Spark’s avatar. “Well… and that.”
“I know you’ve been working hard. Just remember not to get your hopes up too high—”
“It’s going to work.” Niko glanced back to Spark for support. “Tell her.”
It seemed a lifetime ago that they’d discovered the debris field of Etran Harborage and salvaged the site’s fragmented ancilla. Shortly after, ONI had swooped in, taking the ancilla they’d dubbed “Little Bit” as well as the projections he’d created on possible trajectories the Spirit of Fire might have taken after destroying the shield world. They’d lost most of their bank accounts, warehouses, Niko’s research, data, and prototypes, and two decades of Rion’s work searching for the Spirit of Fire.
Later on, they’d met with ONI in the town of Port Joy under rather dramatic circumstances and managed to get a few things returned, among them a data chip with Little Bit’s projections. Not the originals, as desired, but copies. After cleaning the chip of ONI surveillance, it was put on the back burner until a few months ago, when they’d begun exploring the potential paths the Spirit of Fire might have taken.
It was a near-impossible task that turned up very little, so Spark began digging deeper into the projections, hoping to create new paths based on Little Bit’s work… and he found a strange subcode in the chip’s crystal matrix. One that suggested the fragmented ancilla had inadvertently sublayered traces of his own framework like puzzle pieces hidden within thousands of calculations.
And so began Spark and Niko’s joint effort to liberate Little Bit’s code from the chip without damaging the projections.
It was painstaking. They’d been at it for months.
“The probability grows,” Spark answered. “I cannot say if what we liberate will be viable, but we are nearly finished with that part of the procedure. We must remember the effort is entirely experimental.”
ONI had only returned a portion of what they’d taken from Niko, which had been a demoralizing blow for an imaginative mind like his. If resurrecting Little Bit’s fragmented code fueled his creative drive and kept him happy, then Rion had no qualms with their side project.
Ram was the last one to saunter into the lounge, and Rion couldn’t help but smile. “Now there’s a person who’s just been on vacation.” He’d gotten a nice tan on top of his already rich olive complexion. Keeping her eyes on him, she reached over and slapped the coffee dispenser panel.
Ram ignored her and waited intently for his coffee, his unbound hair falling into his face. “Why does it always work for you?” he mumbled irritably.
“Because she loves me.”
Ram wordlessly fixed the necessary wake-up beverage to his liking, then dragged out a chair and slid into it with the ease of a lazy cat, stretching out his forearms. She’d always been friends with the gruff salvage captain from Komoya—been rivals too, depending on the salvage—but his time crewing on the Ace of Spades had turned a mild friendship into something lasting and true. He’d become family.
“Glad to see everyone back on board,” Rion began. And that was the truth. After the disastrous family reunion on Sonata, it felt good to be among those who would never let her down.
“You’re coming next time,” Lessa said. “The beach was amazing.”
“Next time for sure.” Rion extracted the Librarian’s key from her pocket and set it on the table. “For now though we’re going to see what this beauty unlocks.”
All eyes went to the key. Lessa picked it up. “You figured out what it means?”
“Thanks to you, yes,” Spark said. “The symbol revealed when you touched the key belongs to Halo Installation 07.”
“No way.” Niko sat up straight, eyes as big as plates. “We’re going to a Halo? An actual Halo?” He looked around, hopeful, nearly bouncing in his chair as Spark replied in the affirmative.
“Wait,” Lessa cut in, ever the thoughtful one. “But wasn’t that where you said you—”
“Where I lost my body and became a machine,” Spark answered. “That is correct. You may call it Zeta Halo.”
Trying to determine the expression on a face made of metal and light was an exercise in futility, but after a year together, Rion had picked up on a few telltale gestures and tics—the way he moved his head, held his shoulders… For now, however, it seemed he was keeping his feelings on this Zeta Halo close to his chest.
Only a few years had gone by since this ancient being had regained his human memories. Learning a thousand centuries had passed and everyone you’d ever known, cared about, loved, and hated was gone forever would take time to reconcile. Where Spark stood mentally was anyone’s guess, and traveling to Zeta Halo might either be a big mistake or give him the closure he deserved.
Rion stayed mum to allow the crew the opportunity to digest the idea. The news didn’t seem to faze Ram at all; he was more interested in his coffee while Lessa gently rolled the key around in her hand, tracing the symbols. “So strange this is a key.… Do you know what it opens?”
“The Cartographer on Zeta Halo will tell us. It will read the key’s coordinates and likely point the way to the proper location on the ring.”
Ram perked up. “Cartographers are mapmakers.” His interest didn’t surprise Rion; he had a fascination with maps and star points—as evident in the constellation tattoos covering his skin.
“Precisely. The Cartographer can generate a navigable map containing the unrestricted and complete blueprint of Zeta Halo in current time. It maintains an unbroken record of the ring’s history in its entirety.”
Niko, meanwhile, sat back and put his hands behind his head. “All I want to know is, when do we leave?”
Humor tugged at Rion’s mouth and her heart filled with fondness. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the excitement of the hunt, the anticipation of the unknown. It had been a while since they’d sat around the table with an eye toward a real, tangible score.
After their last venture, which had garnered them an upgraded ship, a highly advanced AI, and a criminal record of galactic proportions, Rion thought their options were endless as a result. The galaxy was at their fingertips.
Then reality had set in. A fast ship and credits to burn, yes, but an outlaw was an outlaw—all the contacts she’d cultivated over the years were under surveillance, and if she put them at risk now, they wouldn’t be there later when things, hopefully, finally blew over.
Either way, the months they’d spent tracking the Spirit of Fire had been exhausting and overwhelmingly disappointing. They all needed a big chang
e. And this was it.
“Spark,” she said with a grin. “Set a course for Zeta Halo.”
It was good to be back in the game.
CHAPTER 7
The crew is asleep, even Niko with some persuasion, and we are well on our way through slipspace to Zeta Halo.
I enjoy the quiet, the hum of this vessel’s engines, the constant data flowing through the Ace of Spades like a restless wind. It reminds me of my time on Geranos-a. The place of my rebirth—my third, if one is counting. We have made a work space in the cargo hold, equipped with holo port and direct system access. From here, Niko and I are able to study the crystal chip that may or may not hold a viable copy of Little Bit.
The chip containing Little Bit’s projections on the Spirit of Fire is nestled in its sleeve, and once again I am diving into a stagnant pool of rudimentary layers, lines of calculations laid one on top of the other. I can only imagine the power this ancilla once wielded. Now it is but a tiny speck of its former glory, a little bit of a little bit of a little bit…
I do not often experience sadness for artificial intelligence, even though technically I am one. My humanity clings too strongly to my core, has seeped into all the compartments and layers and down into my matrix. It often prevents me from identifying equally with my machine nature. The many months with these humans have only deepened my affinity.
This fragment, however, has my sympathy. If our efforts prove successful, I wonder how much will remain of the once-great custodian of Etran Harborage.
It is intrinsic, even in the most basic intelligence, to copy data cleanly without leaving an imprint of itself in the process. Yet whether intentionally or absentmindedly, this fragment left its shadow within the very calculations it had created. Only a trained eye could see down through the data and into the authorship. It is no wonder the humans and their inelegant scanners and AIs failed to detect such an abnormality.
A sudden static pop echoes from somewhere deep within the ship’s network—through kilometers of fiber-optics, filaments, conduits… I pause all processes and listen. I have heard this before while speaking to Lessa in the lounge. But the aberration is impossibly brief.
A thorough search finds no anomalous signals or noise or any leftover footprint of such a sound. Quite puzzling.
I resume my work once more, gently rooting out and lifting thin slivers of code beneath code.
As I proceed, the Librarian’s key enters a second thought string.
The monitor within me is taken with the idea of visiting a Halo again; its fondness for the rings completely overshadows its usually analytic and equitable nature. And while I have achieved an acceptable merger between my humanity and 343 Guilty Spark, I must, at times like this, helm the imbalances.
Not ideal, of course, but certainly manageable.
And while the subject of Halo brings unwelcome memories to the surface, I cannot deny my curiosity is kindled.
Perhaps there is information to be exploited—answers to the mysteries and memories tucked away in the darkest corners of my core, answers to those things that stir.…
A desire has arisen to know my ancestors, my roots, to find my rightful place in this new age. I thought perhaps I had with Captain Forge and her crew, yet I am gripped with an itch I cannot scratch, a strange urging that propels me to seek the unknown, to look back and forward in the same breath.
I am compelled to know those ancient forgotten humans who traversed the stars and fought a great war with Forerunners ten thousand years before my human birth.
Extraordinary military strategists and warriors, inventors, architects, and scientists, they held off the Flood and were already depleted by the time the Forerunners came to bear. And still they waged a war that even the Didact, supreme commander of the entire Forerunner military, grudgingly respected.
Humanity would lose, of course.
In the last stronghold of Charum Hakkor, they were overtaken and punished severely. Hundreds of thousands, including children, were composed, their bodies atomized while their minds and personality patterns were preserved in great archives for examination and study. At the insistence of the Librarian, some of these ancient humans were permitted to live—not as the mighty, intelligent species they were, but as simple hunter-gatherers, devolved in both mass and mind, and placed on Earth.
In this regressed population, the Librarian stored the genetic memory of ancient humanity, and the essences of its most successful leaders, scientists, and warriors.
Such a preeminent imprint had existed in me and was the cause of all my troubles to come.…
CHAPTER 8
Ace of Spades / Ephsu System / 12,000 Kilometers from Zeta Halo
It should have taken a month or even longer to arrive in the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. Ace did it in six days. Dropping out of slipspace on target was no longer an educated guessing game, but a precision event that gave Rion a shiver of awe every time they arrived when and where they were supposed to. It wasn’t typical space travel, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to it.
All hands were on the bridge, and immediately the crew went to work evaluating their current position. From the main viewscreen, there wasn’t much to note. Ephsu was an unremarkable M-dwarf star system with one massive uninhabited planet to its name.
“Looks like we’re all clear, Cap,” Lessa said from NAVs. “Not much around except that super hunk of rock out there blocking our target.”
“That rock is Zeta Halo’s anchor,” Spark informed them. “The planet is an unexpected selection, to be sure.”
“How so?” Rion asked.
“Most anchors are gas giants to avoid the possibility of life arising in the shadow of a ring or luring in potential settlers. Not only is this planet solid, but it contains water and atmosphere. The choice is quite extraordinary, though perhaps a choice of necessity.”
Spark had mentioned before that this particular Halo had a long history of being different, and apparently this anchor was no exception. It was an odd choice given what he said, but then Rion also remembered the Halos had been dispersed rather quickly and during a war, no less. The Forerunners could have run out of time to find a suitable gas giant anchor in the proper firing location—or maybe there simply hadn’t been one in the sector to begin with.
“Not picking up any comm tech way out here,” Niko said.
Without real-time data to rely on, Spark had placed them well off the Halo ring’s coordinates until they knew exactly what they’d be flying into. No need to make an unnecessary scene. “Full stealth and continue on course, sub speed at one-half.”
At seven hundred kilometers out, long-range scanners perked up. Rion glanced at her integrated pad as Niko relayed relevant information. “Looks like the UNSC has a couple nice comm towers set up on the planet’s surface and a few commsats in orbit.”
“There are three ships in orbit as well,” Ram said over his shoulder. “Also UNSC… Two destroyers, and that has to be one of the biggest supply freighters I’ve ever seen.”
Rion keyed into Ram’s console. Damn. At a thousand meters long, by five hundred, that was one big girl. Not very often she saw heavyweights like this. Usually the smaller freighters were totally automated, but one this size would sport its own crew to oversee the ship and its massive payload.
The two destroyers flanked the freighter, each maintaining a distance off the bow and the stern. Typical UNSC Halberd-class. Good-looking ships, heavies as well, with the sleek arrowhead profile Rion was fond of, and armed to the teeth, each with a serious MAC, Archer missiles, and point defense guns.
“Let’s slow her down to one-quarter,” Rion said, keeping tabs on Ace’s trajectory and making sure she stayed well out of range of those destroyers.
Several tense minutes passed before they came around the curve of the planet. A hush settled on the bridge as a sleek silver band slowly emerged floating in the darkness of space.
The sight of Zeta Halo drew the crew to their feet.
In all her years traversing the stars, Rion had never seen anything so strange and alien, so massive and simple, complex and beautiful, yet dangerous beyond words. Nearly the diameter of Earth, its outer band was cut deep with strange geometric designs and intermittent blue light.
Ace cleared the planet, and their view shifted slightly to reveal the stunning inner surface of the ring. A startling contrast to its outer rim, the interior was alive with color and light, an impossibly perfect strip of blue skies, clouds over snowcapped mountain ranges, highlands and lowlands, valleys and plains, seas and lakes and rivers, all as though a divining hand had cut a perfect ten-thousand-kilometer ribbon off Earth and laid it neatly into the framework of an alien weapon capable of mass extinction.
They were witnessing something very few in the galaxy had or would ever see. And part of her had to question: Why? Of all people—they were here…
And now that she was informed about the ancient past and the Librarian’s immense capacity to manipulate outcomes, Rion had to at least acknowledge that Spark coming into their lives might not have been by chance. They could be exactly where the Librarian meant them to be—or at the very least, hoping they’d be—which seemed at once ridiculous and entirely possible and definitely worrisome.
The silence seemed to stretch, until finally Lessa spoke up. “The Halo doesn’t spin to create gravity?”
“It doesn’t need to,” Spark answered. “Though it spins to maintain day and night cycles, among other aspects. Gravity is maintained with artificial generators.”
Ram rubbed a hand down his face and turned to meet Rion’s gaze. She was just as dumbstruck and couldn’t offer much in the way of response. What could one say without it sounding like the world’s greatest understatement?
“Well, I don’t know about you guys,” Niko said. “But I feel like I just got slapped across the face. In a really amazing way.”
“That would be called awestruck, little brother.” Lessa broke into a smile and then a chuckle, which infected the rest of the crew.