by Kelly Gay
The campsite on the edge of the sea had been staked by Rion a long time ago. A few of the locals knew where to find the place, but for the most part they stayed away. She was seriously considering going to live with them, though—who would have thought she’d get run out of her own ship by an annoying AI obsessed with her mental and physical well-being?
Derry Peg showing up was just the thing she needed to get out of her own head.
She was sweaty and down to her tank and swim bottoms, hanging in a harness off the side of Ace’s aft starboard thruster, giving the deflectors a good cleaning, when Derry called up. “Hiya, stranger!” He lifted two large and stuffed cloth bags. “Got your supplies!”
She swung around and lowered herself to the ground. “I didn’t order any supplies, Derry.”
He took a finger and pushed up his wide-brimmed hat, the confusion on his slim weathered face evident. He pulled a dusty, cracked datapad from the pocket of his cutoff shorts. “Says here you did.”
She held out a hand. “Let me see that.” Scanning the list revealed some food staples, local greens, a six-pack of Ginnie’s, a four-pack of Greedy Mead, and two bottles of Clips… Sweat dripped into her eyes. She used her forearm to brush it away, skipping down the list to the bottom. “LB,” she said darkly.
“Yeah. Real nice fella, a real talker. Prepaid with delivery tip included, so you’re all set. You can return the bags next time you come into town. Oh, and be careful with this heavy one—Freya made you a jug of homemade citrus-berry tea.”
“That’s the best news I’ve had since I got here. Tell her I said thanks.”
He handed over the bags. “You have a good one.”
“Same. Thanks, Derry.”
He ambled down the trail and disappeared around the rocks in the bend. Rion carried the bags inside the ship and up the stairs to the lounge, depositing them on the counter, near the food stores. “You wanna tell me what all this is about?”
LB’s voice echoed through the comms. “What is what about?”
She pulled bunches of local greens and herbs, a purple tubular, along with rice and noodles, from the bag. The drinks, however, were spot-on, especially Freya’s tea.
“The fresh goods are necessary for a healthy immune system,” said Little Bit. “Your vitamin deficiency is making you crankier than usual.”
“Oh, it’s not the lack of greens making me cranky. And I don’t have a vitamin deficiency because I take my supplement every month.” Like all good space travelers did.
“Clearly, they are not working.”
She filled a tall bottle with Freya’s tea, then downed a few gulps. Cold, lemony, and sweet berry, so good… It tasted a little minty this time, which was a new twist. After a hot day though, it was thoroughly appreciated. “Pick up any progress on the SATCOM today?”
“Nothing, Captain. I am sorry.”
“I’ll be in my quarters, then.”
After a quick shower, Rion dressed and sat on the bed to comb through her wet hair. Yep, she was officially going stir-crazy. Just a few more days to go, and if the crew didn’t arrive, she’d start making tracks to find them.…
A yawn built in her chest. As soon as it came out of her mouth, a wave of exhaustion hit. She blinked hard. The room faded in and out. Her body swayed. And realization dawned. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“It is for your own good.”
“What did you do?”
“I convinced Freya to add a sleep tonic to the tea. After our lengthy discourse, she was quite worried about you. I assured her you would be extra-appreciative. And I only paid her five thousand credits.”
“Little Bit…”
“Yes, Captain?”
“You’re fired—”
“You may thank me later. Nighty night, Captain.”
Rion fell onto the mattress and the world went dark.
* * *
Rion’s subconscious had worked so hard to avoid this moment. She doesn’t want to know; tells herself she doesn’t care. Path Kethona should stay in the past where it belongs.
But the rift in the valley wall calls to her.
The faint sun rises at her back, its rays warm as shafts of light glide past her, between her feet, and up the smooth stone of the cliff wall, making a shadow of her small form, and a tall one of the Librarian, who walks beside her.
Sunlight illuminates the dark opening and spills inside the rift.
Her hand is in the Librarian’s, and Rion realizes the nervous energy she feels is a force shared between them. They move forward. Their shadows block the light as they step through the rift. She can’t see what’s inside until they are both within.
The Librarian leads her to the side, out of the path of light.
Sunlight returns, bathing the area and revealing a cavern over fifty meters long and just as high.
Rion’s gasp echoes in the space.
On the cavern floor thousands of green teardrop plants as large as melons awaken with the light, unfurling wide leathery leaves that fan gently over the ground with the grace of a bowing dancer, and exposing a glowing starburst of delicate white blooms dangling from groups of lantern-like stems. The spectacle is breathtaking.
The cavern is alight with stars, like a tiny universe laid out on the ground.
The Librarian kneels down, her face awash in the blooms’ soft luminescent glow.
Truly she is dreaming.
“In a manner, yes,” the Librarian quips. “They are remarkable, are they not?”
Rion crouches. Words, thoughts, feelings, fail to encompass the rarity and deep significance here.
“They are fragile beyond compare, delicate glass in the middle of a maelstrom.”
Rion is overwhelmed with emotion. How can something so small provoke such pain and joy, sadness and wonder, regret and hope? She thinks she understands. “They are like the moss outside, living history?”
“Yes. Just so. Living history, an entire genetic code.” The Librarian sits, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her chin on top of her knees. Her dark eyes are lit with a thousand points of light. “But they are not Forerunner,” she reveals in a quiet tone. “They are Precursor.”
Time stands still.
Rion hears the words, feels the sharp punch of shock to her gut.
“Two found shelter here during the genocide in Path Kethona. The Forerunners hid them—tried to heal them. But they were beyond their ability to save. The Precursors possessed the ability to heal, though they chose to let nature take its course; their path was set.
“They died here and became samples, studied and encoded; seeds that germinated for a million years. Sprouts that climbed to the surface took even longer. Only in the last million years have they bloomed.”
“But the Flood… the dust and spores… aren’t you afraid these might give rise to—”
“To understand the Flood, one must understand that the concept of one-mind unity inherent in the Flood was not an aspect inherent in the Precursor race as a whole. There was corruption, yes. But there was purity. There was division, and unity. Inclusion and exclusion. All Precursors were not created the same. Just as the last living Precursor, the Primordial, relished in suffering, so did others celebrate joy.
“The Primordial, and later the Flood, went against the very nature of the Mantle, its First Rule to preserve the balance of Living Time. Incalculable destruction, gratuitous slaughter, and suffering on a galaxywide scale create a distortion and restriction in the flow of Living Time, putting it at risk of collapse.
“My people erasing our Creators and continuing the hypocrisy of holding ourselves worthy of the Mantle set the stage for the greatest imbalance Living Time had ever seen. And then the Flood continued this imbalance.
“These blooms are not corrupted with vengeance and misery, they are clean and beautiful and right, and they have a great purpose.
“I was born, like you, with an imprint in my own genetic code, a geas given long ago to my ancestors by t
he Precursors. I was driven by moments, my nightmares, my human traits, my study of Theoreticals, and dozens more, each a nudge in a certain direction, leading me here to this, to make things right.”
“To fix the path and right what your kind turned wrong.” Rion remembers Spark sharing those words.
“That is correct. I took these specimens from Path Kethona, returning to the ecumene, where I made my final and incomplete report to the Council. We had not found the origin of the Flood or a way to stop it. In public, my mission was considered a failure by many. In secret, a new mission began. To make preparations to heal the imbalance in Living Time.
“Like the ancient Forerunners who had committed genocide against the Precursors, I and my crew of the Audacity found it difficult to return home with the weight of what we had discovered. We were forever changed, and my crew were the only ones I trusted to keep this secret and to take on another task—to transform a small shield world in its construction phase and make it what it needed to be in order to nurture this eventual new species.
“As the Flood began sweeping across the galaxy, the wound on Living Time grew. The war was fought on many fronts, and my preparations intensified. Humanity, our true genetic sibling, had to survive in order to assume the Mantle, to care for the galaxy, adhere to its laws, and in doing so help tend the flow of Living Time.”
“Bastion is the shield world you created. Eden the ship you had built to…” Rion pauses to think it through.
“To carry the Precursor seeds and blooms to a place outside of our galaxy, to an ideal world for planting and growth. A place where the Flood could not reach them. In some distant future, life on that chosen planet will emerge and eventually grow sentient, following the complete genetic code of the Precursors; however, it will be utterly free of genetic memory. A new civilization. A clean slate, if you will.”
* * *
They are back in Africa once more, sitting together on the familiar rock overlooking the plains. Far behind them, the sun breaks the eastern horizon, spilling its first rays across the continent, and setting the sky awash in a rainbow of muted colors.
Rion knows in mere days or even hours the Librarian will meet her end. To have done so much and fought so hard… it doesn’t seem fair. “Are you afraid?” She doesn’t know why she asks it and immediately wants to take it back.
A small shrug lifts the Librarian’s shoulders. “A little… If time is kind, I will see my children. And finally know my mother.”
For all the good the Librarian has done, Rion feels her personal regrets.
“Everything is connected. Yet, to truly see those connections one must pull things apart before putting them back together. It was not always a… gentle or fair or kind process.
“Long down the world-line, there will be another me—whether saurian, human, avian, reptilian, male, female… it matters little. There will be another Primordial, another Didact, another Chakas, another you, Rion. Living Time needs her champions and her villains to keep the balance.
“I have been both villain and champion.
“At times I did too much, tried to fly too close to the sun. The goal was never power, only knowledge and understanding. But these are great powers unto themselves—the greatest in the universe. I thought I could circumvent the Laws of Nature and bend Time to my will; that is often the nature of strong imprints and geas—the drive can be insatiable for some. It was for me.
“And now the smallest possibilities are all that is left.
“One day, if I played my cards right, these small things will emerge and make infantile ripples in Living Time. Those ripples will become waves. And those waves will cleanse the galaxy.
“In this, I have no regrets.
“For as my husband is ever fond of saying, ‘You are what you dare.’ ”
EPILOGUE
Bastion / Slipspace to Unknown Location
Bastion is now through the portal.
We have not been followed.
I will initiate another slipspace jump after this one to ensure we are far from any Guardian’s reach.
My feet sink in the sand. Waves crash gently. Sunlight glints off the water in dazzling bits of light. She has created Djamonkin Crater here with its sharp, jagged peaks ringing a merse-filled lake. In the center rises a mountainous island where a cryptum once lay.…
Keeper-of-Tools was not wrong.
There is more here than I understood. The voices in my core are practically singing.
I do not fully understand why, but there is plenty of time to find out.
The work done here in secret is utterly astounding. The studies and samples and developments and theories make Bastion rarer than bottled time.
There is so much to learn, oceans of precious data to dive into and feed my appetite for millennia.… I have only scratched the surface. But that scratch itself is staggering, the Librarian’s topics of study and experimentation broad and breathtaking. Ancient humanity. Forerunner. Precursor. Ingenious observations and trials. Studies with Living Time, working composers, cryptums, endless mysteries…
Bornstellar’s words have come full circle. I am indeed the keeper of the most dangerous components of the Librarian’s experiments.
I have become both keeper and key.
It will be some time before I settle in, before I breathe easy and begin to make a life for myself here. I know this place will heal me in more ways than one, and instinct tells me that I am not alone.
This is my purpose found. Bastion is mine.
I went looking for a gift, and I got one.
Are you ready, Reclaimer?
This is how my story begins.…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks to the readers for the friendship, conversations, and support. To the outstanding folks here at home for their ongoing encouragement: Jonathan, Audrey, Jamie, and Kameryn, thank you. And to those super people farther afield: Miriam Kriss, Ed Schlesinger, Jeremy Patenaude, Tiffany O’Brien, and Jeff Easterling—my gratitude. It was such a pleasure to take this trip with you through the Halo universe.
More from this Series
HALO: Renegades
Book 25
HALO: Oblivion
Book 26
Halo: Shadow of Intent
Halo: Saint's Testimony
HALO: The Fall of Reach
Book 1
HALO: The Flood
Book 2
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kelly Gay is the critically acclaimed author of the Charlie Madigan urban fantasy series. She is a multipublished author with works translated into several different languages. She is a two-time RITA nominee, an ARRA nominee, a Goodreads Choice Award finalist, and a SIBA Book Prize Long List finalist. Kelly is also the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council fellowship grant in literature. Within the Halo universe, she has authored the widely lauded novel Halo: Renegades, the novella Halo: Smoke and Shadow, and the short story “Into the Fire,” featured in Halo: Fractures. She can be found online at kellygay.com.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Kelly-Gay
SimonandSchuster.com
@GalleryBooks
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.