by Peter David
N’tho didn’t acknowledge the comment and just continued ahead. Kodiak didn’t really know what to make of it. It could be that he didn’t think they were actually even, or perhaps the Elites didn’t even have a concept like “being even” or any real debtor’s ethic to begin with.
They headed down the corridor, all of them now far more cautious. But they encountered only twists and turns as they made their way. There was nothing notable about their location, and it was starting to piss Kodiak off. It was clear they were underground, far below the surface, but where exactly? N’tho had tried his wrist-mounted cartographer, but it wasn’t working, likely due to the lack of a clear signal from Mayhem.
And where were Luther and the others? It was hard to believe that only moments ago they had all been in the citadel’s main hall. Now they were separated, yet again, and this time he didn’t have a clue where the others had gone. He didn’t even have a clue where he’d gone, for that matter.
N’tho suddenly stopped. At first Kodiak assumed that there was another problem, but the Sangheili appeared to be listening.
“Do you hear that?” said N’tho.
“No,” Kodiak said.
The Elite continued to listen to empty air. “I heard her voice. I heard Olympia Vale. She is talking to someone.”
“Are you sure?” Kodiak strained to pick it up, but he still couldn’t detect anything.
“It would appear my hearing is sharper than yours.”
“Yeah, you’re terrific,” Kodiak said sarcastically.
“Thank you,” said N’tho, either missing the barb entirely or just allowing it to pass. There was a crossway ahead of them, and N’tho pointed to the left. “That way.”
The Elite walked forward with confidence, and the others followed.
The corridor in front of them was opening up. There were well-lit holographic displays lining the sides, and Kodiak considered that a good sign. It at least meant that wherever they were, they were in a section of the Ark with power flowing through it. Lights glowing overhead provided them the ability to see, even though he wasn’t exactly sure of what they were looking at.
Above the holographic displays and panels, the walls stretched high into the air, the ceiling veiled in thin mist, hundreds of meters above them. Small pocks of light darted back and forth from wall to wall in the upper reaches of the room. Kodiak enhanced his visor’s magnification and could see that they were small, flying machines. Although they were composed of the same material as the earlier Sentinels, they didn’t have anywhere near the same shape.
“Constructors,” N’tho said, though he seemed unconcerned.
“What are they?” Holt asked.
“They are Sentinels, but they were built by the Forerunners to exact repair where needed,” N’tho replied, dropping his attention to the displays.
“So they’re not a threat, like the others?” Kodiak asked. He already had his weapon aimed and readied. He was not planning on seeing a repeat of the situation they’d just come from.
“No,” said N’tho. “These are Constructors, the others were Aggressors. They have completely different purposes.”
Kodiak slowly lowered his battle rifle, and his head followed shortly after. Now that he felt comfortable, he began to explore the room they were in. It was rather large and spread across a series of dogleg-like intersections, with a number of doors on the opposite end from where they had entered. Along the walls were countless displays and panels, many of which bristled with light and color. Kodiak noticed, however, that on the walls above the displays and stretching as high as he could see, hexagon shapes with various keys on their surfaces could be defined. Their shapes allowed them to slot in between each other, covering the wall in a perfectly honeycomb-like network. Each was identical and looked as though it represented an individual and separate artifact, and there were literally thousands upon thousands slotted in the walls.
N’tho was studying the area very carefully. “This is a data center,” he said. “All of these? These are resource and operation files for a distributed intelligence of some sort. Perhaps the Oracle of the Ark, as the other human believes.”
“How do you know it’s even a data center?” Kodiak asked.
“These remote stacks,” he said, pointing up the wall, “are identical to those on other installations.”
N’tho was studying one of the consoles but refused to interact with it physically. Kodiak didn’t know if that was because he couldn’t or because he didn’t want to risk anything. Instead he simply read and observed what appeared to be words. At least he assumed that it was words. It looked more like symbols, although Kodiak couldn’t remotely decipher what they meant. “Can any of you read it?” he asked N’tho.
Slowly N’tho shook his head. “The Huragok would have been most helpful here.”
“So if this is the Ark’s monitor,” Kodiak began, “like Doctor Mann said, then this activity here, above us, is an indication that he was right? That the AI’s alive and active?”
“I would say it is a very good indication of that, yes,” N’tho responded.
“Then where’s the AI?”
“It could be anywhere. This data center, I presume, can remotely communicate with any other part of the installation. Just like the others.”
“Damn it,” Kodiak muttered, almost too low for the others to hear.
“What?” Holt asked. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s nothing. It was just an empty hope.”
“And what would that be?” asked N’tho.
“Forget it. We should be moving,” Kodiak said, heading toward the doors on the far side. “Especially if you really did hear Vale’s voice.”
“Let’s walk and talk, sir,” Holt said, not wanting to let go what his fellow Spartan was referring to.
Kodiak let out a heavy sigh as the group moved. “I had a younger brother. His name was Bobby. He served in the Fifteenth MFR. An Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. He was a tough kid, a real killer. He got linked up with ONI about three years back and apparently worked on some highly classified ops. I don’t even know what the hell they were.”
The group left the data center through its rear door and moved into another corridor beyond it, their weapons raised and trained ahead as Kodiak told his tale. “So he goes on an op in late ’53. Said it was skunkworks stuff, ONI prototype testing in an Oort near Thales. But I checked up on him, and that wasn’t it. He was doing something else for ONI. Something he couldn’t talk about.”
They entered an incredibly large area, though it was still distinctly underground. Walking across what appeared to be some kind of platform, Kodiak could see the cavernous “natural” rock walls climb high into the darkness above, and between this and the other side of the room was an immense chasm connected by a single bridge. On this side, the platform was populated with large, squat machines shaped like blocks and enormous piping that dropped down into the chasm and out of sight. Approaching the ledge warily, Kodiak could see that the bridge was made of some ivory-like alloy and what appeared to be glass. It was an elegant structure, intricately designed, but entirely exposed to the environment. And it appeared to be the only real way to cross the massive gap. So they set out across it, and Kodiak continued.
“For a few months, I thought it was just a standard ONI scenario. He’d pop up after a bit. But as time went by, it was clear something had happened. Their official report was something akin to ‘lost with all hands,’ and that the ship they were manning—the UNSC Rubicon—lost its gravitic control systems and took a dive into a moon.
“Rubicon?” Holt asked. “Never heard of it.”
“Neither had I. It turned out that ONI had erased all formal records of it from the naval registry. From any registry, for that matter. So it’s pretty clear they were up to something.”
“And what, Spartan, does this have to do with the Ark’s intelligence?” N’tho asked, checking the sight on his weapon as they continued across the bridge.
&nb
sp; “I think my brother was sent on a mission to the Ark. The timelines match, the registry trail of the ship matches, the fact that Thales’s system was entirely vacant during this time,” Kodiak said, taking a breath. “And some things he said before he left, that he’d been doing something that really no one had done before, going somewhere incredible—they just point to this being a classified op that ONI spearheaded. An op that led here.”
“That’s a pretty big presumption, sir,” Holt said.
“It was . . . until Henry Lamb told us that his buddy knew of other expeditions to this place, ones that had been stricken from the records. Ones that ended badly. Ones that ONI didn’t want anyone to know about.”
“Lost with all hands,” Holt said sympathetically, clearly recognizing the connection.
“Everything matches too well,” Kodiak said, as they finally reached the other side of the bridge. “I was hoping that if there was an intelligence here, it might know if that was the case. Did the Rubicon ever come here? Did Bobby? It could put that part of me to rest.”
“Silence,” N’tho said, cocking his head as though he were listening to something. He had apparently lost interest in the story. “This way.”
The Sangheili were walking quite rapidly now, up an alloy ramp ahead of them and back into a tunnel, and both Kodiak and Holt had to hurry in order to not fall behind. By this time, Kodiak was able to hear what N’tho and Zon already had. It was Olympia Vale’s voice, all right. There was also a low humming of energy, but Kodiak didn’t know what that signified.
They turned a corner and stopped.
The corridor in front of them had come to an abrupt end, opening up into a much wider area . . . but the entire way through was cut off by a glowing field of energy.
The three of them approached the field, and N’tho stretched out his hand carefully. For a moment, he merely kept his hand close, sensing if there was any output from it. To Kodiak it smelled like ozone, but there was no sign of heat. Then the Elite touched the energy barrier, which fortunately did not generate any sort of kickback. But he couldn’t penetrate it, either. He pushed against it, tentatively at first, and then with greater force, but there was no reaction.
Kodiak came up behind him, his eyes widening behind his visor. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “We found her.”
Olympia Vale was inside the fielded area, fifty meters away, floating in the air, her arms at her sides. She was surrounded by some sort of golden, shimmering force field that was whirling around her, elevating her in the center of this large, cathedral-like room. Near the ceiling were slowly wheeling lights. They looked like star systems.
She was talking to someone as well, another golden image. Kodiak realized immediately what it was: an exact holographic recreation of her. What the hell?
“Vale!” shouted Kodiak. “Vale, we’re here!”
She didn’t turn around. “Hello, Spartan Kodiak,” she called back. “Is anyone else with you?”
“It’s me, Holt, N’tho, and Zon. What’s going on? What is that thing?”
“Stay where you are. Don’t move,” she said, completely engrossed with whatever the bizarre holographic replication of herself was.
“And what might you be doing?” asked N’tho.
She responded in a flat, almost detached tone. “I’m trying to stop him from killing everyone.”
And then the hum of the energy field increased aggressively, and they couldn’t make out anything else she said.
Vale was unaware of how long she’d slept. All she knew when she woke up was that she was still on the floor, in the same place where she had drifted off.
Then she saw Solitude.
“Do you feel rested?” it inquired, sounding remarkably solicitous. Had it just been staring at her this entire time? The thought made Vale uneasy.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said impatiently. “Why do you keep that shape? Cloaking yourself so that you look like me?”
“For your peace of mind.”
“What would give me peace of mind is if you stopped the activation of Halo and let me go,” she said, keeping her voice even.
“I would like to remind you that you and your friends were not exactly at peace when I brought you here. This installation is not a safe place for your kind. Not anymore.”
“But it could be once—”
“And even that was your own people’s doing.”
“If you have no interest in keeping my species alive, why did you take me? What is this all for?”
“Come up here,” it said.
“Up there?” She was craning her neck to stare up at the floating holographic version of herself as it rose from the ground. “How am I supposed to—?”
Suddenly energy was swirling like a small tornado in the air immediately surrounding her. She tried to move her arms but was unable to; the energy was keeping them pinned to her sides, facing her in the direction of Solitude. And then, very slowly, she began to lift off the floor. “Why are you doing this?” she called out.
“You are regarding matters from down there. If you see things from my perspective, perhaps you will better understand them.”
That made no sense to her, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She was dealing with an insane machine, not a person who could be reasoned with.
Moments later she was hovering in the air, facing the holographic representation of herself. Then another image appeared before her: the Ark. It was here, in its present damaged state. From this angle she could see the scorched surface, the mangled spires, and the pieces of debris from Halo strewn across its face. The damage had certainly been comprehensive and dramatic, but she doubted that the image had Solitude’s desired effect on her.
“If it’s of any use,” she said, “I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry that your home was destroyed by my people. But what I’m seeing is you taking extreme measures that are not necessary.”
“And you, human, are in a position to determine what is necessary?”
“These are people you’re talking about. Living beings with lives and hopes and dreams. There must be another way.”
“This installation is the foundation for all thinking life in the galaxy. Without it, your kind would have perished like the others. It is the single most important vestige of those my makers left behind, and they entrusted it to me. Without it, there is no life, no hope, and no dreams for anything. Yet, despite this, you still resist my will to restore and protect it.”
“The one who activated the replacement ring and damaged the Ark—we call him the Master Chief. He’s a hero where we come from, and he’s been missing for years. From what I’ve been told, he did this to stop the Flood, not to harm this place. He was trying to prevent Halo’s activation, but his hands were forced to do what was done. It was not his intention to harm you—”
That was when she heard a voice. She could not turn and look to see who it was, but she recognized it well enough. “Hello, Spartan Kodiak. Is anyone else with you?”
“It’s me, Holt, N’tho, and Zon. What’s going on? What is that thing?”
“Stay where you are. Don’t move,” she shouted.
“And what might you be doing?” asked N’tho.
She responded in as even keeled a tone as she could muster; the last thing she needed was the arrival of these friends to further complicate her situation: “I’m trying to stop him from killing everyone.”
And sounding almost sad about it, the monitor said, “It is already too late.”
Her attention snapped back to him. “What do you mean?”
“Your friends have meddled with the communications array and deactivated Halo, but it matters little. They will not survive what follows, and when their rebellion is brought to an end and you have submitted to me, it will be reactivated. But for now, I must restore what your people have ravaged. Your star system will be the first. The Retrievers have already been launched.”
“Again, why our star system? Couldn’t you go to other worlds? Uninhabite
d worlds?”
“I could. I choose not to.”
“It will still take them weeks to get through the portal,” Vale said defiantly, though she knew that it hadn’t taken her team that long at all. “You’re making a mistake. We’ll have an entire fleet there waiting for them by the time they get there.”
“Weeks? No. More like hours,” the monitor said. “The same as it took you. And do not threaten me with talk of human fleets. They are but a trifle next to the force that I have prepared.”
“I don’t understand.” She couldn’t believe what Solitude was saying to her. “How is it possible, given our distance from Earth?”
“I made it possible,” the monitor told her calmly. “I have, in the time since the Ark was injured, crafted legions of heavily armed Retrievers, preparing for this very moment. All of my time and resources have been allocated with this single purpose in mind, and they will be unleashed on your star system without clemency. I have also exponentially increased the portal’s power and astrogation systems to send and receive objects across the vast space that separates your world from here. It is an extraordinary exertion of power and information, and it very well could compromise a number of my systems. But I believe that to be necessary, and will gladly take the risk to undo the error of your people. So you see, it is—as I said—already too late. The Retrievers are even now rising from their bays, where they have waited long for this order. If you can take any comfort, it may be in this: at least no humans there will remain alive to perish once the Halo is reactivated.”
CHAPTER 16
* * *
Captain Richards flexed her leg and nodded in approval.
She was seated in the medical lab of the Mayhem, which was still suffering from the extensive damage incurred by its crash. However, they certainly appeared to have the tools necessary to repair her leg. Stretching it now, she felt like it was completely restored to normal, and it had not taken very long at all. The Elite who had worked on her didn’t bother to identify himself as a doctor or any sort of medical officer. Perhaps he was simply the weapons officer or an engineer pulling double-duty. But it didn’t matter, because he had been perfectly proficient in working on human anatomy.