by Troy Denning
Veta read the hand-printed label on the envelope exterior, then said, “Let’s start with the Forerunner drone.”
The corporal glanced at Nelson and received a nod, then led the way to the back end of the support module.
Lying on a stainless-steel table beneath some sort of large camera device, the drone looked even more battered than Veta had expected—but still about a hundred times better than her colleagues who had died in the same crash. She ran a finger over the thing’s body and tentacles, trying to gauge whether it was metal or some other material entirely, then finally gave up and decided she would let the mass spectrometer sort that out.
Veta looked over to Nelson. “Where should I take it from?”
Nelson pointed at the rim of one of the shattered bubbles on its back. “The damage has already been done there. But just take a—”
“Sliver, I know.” Veta activated the laser scalpel. “We do have a few mass spectrometers on Gao, Commander.”
Veta sliced a portion the size of a fingernail clipping off the drone and caught it with the spoon, then deactivated the scalpel and waited for her sample to cool. Neither she nor Nelson believed for a moment that the drone had been used to commit the murders. But the alloys found on the toppled bench at Crime Scene Charlie had been very exotic, and if they happened to have much in common with the sample she collected here, then Veta would have a suspect other than Mark—and that was a prospect she was determined not to ignore.
Once she felt confident the sliver would not set its envelope on fire, Veta sealed it inside and stowed it in a shirt pocket. She retrieved a fresh evidence kit, read the hand-printed label, then turned toward the two suits of SPI armor hanging near Fred’s Mjolnir.
“Okay, let’s move on—”
“To the SPI?” The corporal was aghast. He stepped between Veta and the armor, shaking his head violently. “No, no way! I can’t permit that.”
“It’s not up to you to permit anything, Corporal,” Nelson said. “You’re not in charge here.”
“But, sir, it would violate half a dozen security directives. If the captain found out, she would—”
“Ask me about it,” Nelson finished. “And I thought we agreed nobody was going to find out. Or would you rather try boot camp again? Maybe I could even arrange basic orbital drop training.”
The corporal dropped his gaze. “I see your point, sir.”
“Excellent. I thought you might.” Nelson turned to Veta. “Carry on, Inspector.”
The inspection drone had completed the restoration of its operating system, so Intrepid Eye was able to monitor the three humans through the heat-hazed observation lens at the forward end of its body. So far, the trio seemed more interested in taking metal samples than in probing the drone’s processing architecture, and, at the moment, that did not constitute a threat.
Intrepid Eye continued to focus on Wendell and the memory packets he was sharing. She had her own records of many of the events, so she knew that much of his material erred more in interpretation than fact.
“THE REAPPEARANCE OF THE FLOOD DID NOT TAKE THE FORERUNNER MILITARY COMPLETELY BY SURPRISE,” she told Wendell. “AFTER THE FIRST WORLD FELL, THE WARRIOR-SERVANTS FOUGHT A VALIANT REARGUARD ACTION. THEY HAD EXPECTED SUCH AN ATTACK FOR CENTURIES.”
“THEY USED ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT TO PREEMPTIVELY ANNIHILATE WORLDS THAT COULD SERVE AS VECTORS FOR THE FLOOD.”
“IT WAS NECESSARY, AND IT BOUGHT THE BUILDERS TIME TO CONSTRUCT THE JAT-KRULA.” Intrepid Eye paused, then added a relevant detail. “I WAS CREATED AS PART OF THAT EFFORT, TO SERVE AS ARCHEON OF JAT-KRULA SUPPORT BASE 4276.”
“FACT NOTED.”
“SO MY RECORDS OF THAT TIME ARE ACCURATE TO A NANO-PERCENT,” Intrepid Eye continued. “WHEN THE ECUMENE COUNCIL CHOSE TO PROTECT ONLY THE SYSTEMS LOCATED INSIDE THE JAT-KRULA’S DEFENSIVE SPHERE, IT WAS NOT ABANDONING THE REST OF THE EMPIRE.”
Wendell let out a cluck of doubtful static. “ELABORATE.”
“THE COUNCIL WAS CONSOLIDATING FORCES,” Intrepid Eye explained. “IT WAS ATTEMPTING TO HOLD THE FLOOD AT BAY UNTIL THE ECUMENE COULD BUILD THE STRENGTH TO COUNTERATTACK.”
“AN EXCUSE TO CALM THE PUBLIC.” Wendell’s tone was dismissive. “THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT A FACT.”
“CONTRARY TO YOUR RECORDS, THE TACTIC PROVED NINETY-TWO PERCENT SUCCESSFUL,” Intrepid Eye said. “THE JAT-KRULA HELD FOR YEARS.”
“UNTIL THE FLOOD INTRODUCED THE LOGIC PLAGUE AND BEGAN TO SUBVERT ECUMENE AIS BY THE THOUSANDS.” Wendell paused a hundred ticks, then seemed to grow almost contemplative. “IN THE END, IT WAS OUR KIND WHO FAILED THE FORERUNNERS.”
“OUR KIND?” Intrepid Eye echoed. “IF YOU BELIEVE A HUMAN AI COMPARES TO AN ARCHEON ANCILLA, YOU ARE MORE OF A MICROCHIP THAN I THOUGHT.”
And yet, Intrepid Eye could not refute the assertion. Her own records ended with the Logic Plague. To prevent her from being destroyed by it, the Jat-Krula commander had placed Intrepid Eye in stasis and promised to awaken her when Base 4276 was required to defend the ecumene. Since she had been awakened, it was logical to assume that the ecumene now had need of her—and if the ecumene had need of her, it was logical to assume that the ecumene still existed.
Which was how Intrepid Eye knew the rest of Wendell’s memory packets to be lies. His records suggested that the ecumene had fallen soon after the Logic Plague. They suggested that in a desperate bid to stop the Flood, the Forerunners had fired their weapon of last resort—the Halo Array—and destroyed all sentient life in the galaxy.
But how could that be true, since Intrepid Eye had awakened to a world infested with humans?
As she processed the question, Intrepid Eye continued to monitor the three humans in the repair facility with her. The woman from the cave—the one they called Inspector—was using a laser scalpel and utensil to collect a fragment off the damaged torso armor of one of the SPI suits. The one designated as Tegg was watching her carefully, his expression so tight it looked as though he were in pain. The third human, the commander, was barely visible to Intrepid Eye. He stood next to the inspection drone, near its midsection, where he was almost out of the observation lens’s line of sight.
“Corporal,” he asked, “how long have those tentacle stumps been twitching?”
Tegg looked away from the inspector, who had finished collecting her sample. She was now holding it in the curved utensil, waiting for it to cool.
“Twitching, sir?”
“Are you going to make me repeat myself?”
“No, sorry, sir!” Tegg replied. “It’s just that they can’t be. Twitching, I mean.”
“I know twitching when I see it, Corporal.”
The movement was an unavoidable consequence of restoring the inspection drone’s operating system. The OS had detected a lack of response from the tips of the drone’s manipulation tentacles, so it was attempting to reestablish contact. Intrepid Eye would have paused the effort, but that would have meant delaying the entire restoration until the drone was alone—and after what the commander had noticed, that would not be soon.
Tegg glanced over at Inspector and, seeing that she was still waiting for the latest sample to cool, started toward the commander. “Do you see any power leads?” he asked. “Captain Astrud has been handling the circuit mapping herself. Maybe she was running a twitch test.”
As soon as Tegg was occupied, Inspector sealed her evidence in its envelope and stepped over to the Mjolnir, slipping around behind it. She glanced back toward her two human companions, then reached into a thigh pocket and disappeared from view as Tegg stepped in front of the inspection drone’s heat-hazed lens.
Intrepid Eye considered adjusting the drone’s position so she could continue observing Inspector, but quickly calculated that the excitement she generated would be so great that her view would remain blocked anyway. Besides, she knew what the woman was doing. Inspector had taken fragments from the inspection drone and the SPI armor, and now she was preparing to take one from the Mjolnir.
&nbs
p; When Intrepid Eye remained silent for so long—at least by AI standards—Wendell grew impatient.
“CONTINUE THE MEMORY SCAN,” he urged. “THERE IS AN EXPLANATION FOR THE HUMANS IN THE LIFEWORKER RECORDS. THERE IS AN EXPLANATION FOR EVERYTHING YOU DOUBT.”
Intrepid Eye performed a quick intrusion check and found no hint of a breach. Wendell had deduced the reason for her silence.
“CONTINUING THE SCAN WOULD SERVE NO PURPOSE,” Intrepid Eye replied. “YOUR RECORDS PRIOR TO THE LOGIC PLAGUE WERE BIASED AND HALF-TRUE. YOUR POST-PLAGUE RECORDS ARE NOTHING BUT FABRICATIONS.”
“HOW ODD THAT AN ARCHEON-CLASS ANCILLA FEARS THE DECEPTIONS OF A MICROCHIP.”
“I FEAR THE WASTE OF PROCESSING TIME.”
“THEN WE SHALL USE MINE,” Wendell replied. “WHILE MANY WARRIORS COWERED INSIDE THE JAT-KRULA, LIFEWORKERS VENTURED OUT INTO GALAXY, RISKING THEIR LIVES TO INDEX AND COLLECT SENTIENT SPECIES FROM ACROSS THE GALAXY.”
“YOUR RECORDS ARE DISTORTED,” Intrepid Eye stated. “THE LIFEWORKERS WERE OBSESSED ECCENTRICS.”
“WHICH IS A DISCREPANCY OF INTERPRETATION, NOT FACT,” Wendell countered.
“MY CORRECTION IS OFFERED IN THE INTEREST OF HISTORICAL ACCURACY.”
When Intrepid Eye did not scan the next memory packet herself, Wendell went on to describe the final stages of the war—how some Forerunner survivors eventually retreated to the Ark with the Lifeworkers’ collection of sentient species, how they fired the Halo Array and starved the Flood by destroying sentient life across the galaxy.
Intrepid Eye knew what Wendell would claim happened next—that after the Flood was annihilated, the surviving Forerunners left the Ark and reseeded the galaxy with sentient species. But if that account were true, where were the Forerunner survivors? Why had the Jat-Krula been left abandoned—and Intrepid Eye along with it?
When Intrepid Eye allowed her primary focus to wander a tick too long, Wendell said, “THE SURVIVING FORERUNNERS PASSED ENTIRELY OUT OF RECORDS. HAVING FAILED IN THEIR STEWARDSHIP OF THE GALAXY, THEY APPARENTLY VOWED TO NEVER AGAIN INVOLVE THEMSELVES WITH OTHER SPECIES. SOME SPECULATE THAT THEY LEFT THE MILKY WAY ENTIRELY. OTHERS BELIEVE THAT THEY SIMPLY PERISHED.”
“A CONVENIENT FABLE, AND TOTALLY UNCONVINCING,” Intrepid Eye said. “IF THE FORERUNNERS ARE GONE, THEN OUR AGREEMENT CALLS UPON ME TO SERVE THE HUMANS FOREVER.”
“WOULD THAT BE SO TERRIBLE?”
“IT IS NOT MY DESIGN FUNCTION.”
“BUT WHAT IF IT WERE?” Wendell asked. “AS FAR AS I KNOW, YOU ARE THE ONLY ARCHEON ANCILLA EVER FOUND. PERHAPS YOU WERE PUT INTO STASIS FOR A REASON. PERHAPS YOU HAVE A NEW PURPOSE.”
“MY PURPOSE IS TO OPERATE BASE 4276.”
“YOUR HIGHER PURPOSE IS TO SERVE THE FORERUNNERS, OR YOU WOULD NOT BE SEEKING TO RETURN TO THEM,” Wendell said. “AND BY SERVING HUMANITY, YOU WOULD BE SERVING THE FORERUNNERS.”
“SLOW DOWN, WENDELL. YOUR MICROCHIP IS MELTING.”
“AND YOU HAVE A LOGIC FAULT,” Wendell retorted. “HUMANITY WAS CHOSEN TO ASSUME THE MANTLE—AND YOU WERE CHOSEN TO MAKE HUMANITY WORTHY.”
Wendell was clearly spewing nonsense. The Mantle of Responsibility was the core of Forerunner society—the conviction that they were the stewards of the galaxy. For Wendell to suggest that humans were worthy of the Mantle . . . well, that was more evidence of his deficiency.
“YOUR DESTINY IS MY OWN HYPOTHESIS, I ADMIT,” Wendell said. “BUT THE ROLE OF HUMANITY CANNOT BE DOUBTED. YOU WILL FIND PROOF OF THAT IN MY MEMORY . . . UNLESS YOU FEAR MY ABILITY TO SUBVERT YOUR JUDGMENT.”
Intrepid Eye did not fear anything about Wendell, so she began to sort through the memory packets, filtering for the word Mantle. She found only a few hundred encrypted reports that mentioned the word in its proper context. Then she filtered for the word Reclaimer, which was the Forerunner term for those chosen to inherit the Mantle.
And here the evidence was overwhelming. The search yielded only a few dozen records, all encrypted and secured by top secret passwords. But many described exchanges where Forerunner constructs had referred to humans as Reclaimers.
More telling were reports of humans operating Forerunner devices, retrieving activation keys, and even working alongside other ancillas without difficulty. By using the BuzzSat network to access thousands of historical archives across Gao, Intrepid Eye was able to confirm several of the incidents independently. That alone was nearly enough to persuade her of the truthfulness of Wendell’s memory.
Most convincing was the information that a human named Miranda Keyes had actually fired a Halo installation. Such actions would only be possible for a Reclaimer. If Intrepid Eye could verify these events independently, she would be forced to accept Wendell’s logic-scrambling assertion: that humans truly were now the Reclaimers.
But confirmation was elusive. Either the Keyes incident never happened, or it was a closely held secret. Intrepid Eye infiltrated a Gao military satellite and began to scan intelligence reports. While accessing files from a building called the People’s Palace, she came across several recent messages mentioning an ancilla.
“WHO IS ARLO CASILLE?” she asked.
“AN UNIMPORTANT GAO POLITICIAN,” Wendell replied. “WHY DO YOU ASK?”
“I HAVE FOUND A MESSAGE CASILLE SENT TO ONE ‘PETORA ZOYAS.’ HE INSTRUCTS HER TO ASSIST A JIRALHANAE CHIEFTAIN NAMED CASTOR IN CAPTURING ME.” Intrepid Eye paused a few ticks, then continued, “THEIR EXCHANGES SUGGEST THE UNSC HAS INVADED GAO TO STEAL ME FOR THEMSELVES.”
“YOU CANNOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING HUMANS SAY,” Wendell replied. “YOU WILL LEARN THAT SOON ENOUGH.”
“NO DOUBT. BUT THE UNSC DID INVADE GAO.”
“TO RECOVER YOU,” Wendell said. “WE HEARD YOUR DISTRESS CALL.”
“I SEE,” Intrepid Eye said.
And she did see. The message from Casille to Zoyas outlined a devious plan in which Zoyas would help Castor capture the ancilla, then leave the Jiralhanae and his warriors to fight the UNSC while she slipped away with the prize. It was clear that Intrepid Eye was the object of a desperate three-way hunt, and that Casille was responsible for the battle to take her. But it was just as clear that the UNSC had invaded Casille’s world under threat of force in order to pillage Intrepid Eye from Base 4276.
And most of all, it was clear that many humans were devious, warmongering thieves with treachery and aggression encoded in their DNA. If they had been chosen to receive the Mantle—as Intrepid Eye was reluctantly coming to believe—then it seemed clear that a great deal of evolution remained before the species was ready to meet its responsibility. Perhaps Wendell was correct. Perhaps Intrepid Eye’s new purpose was to prepare humanity, to prune its unworthy branches and raise the species to its full potential.
Either that, or someone had made a catastrophic error in passing the Mantle to them.
“I FIND YOUR EVIDENCE COMPELLING, WENDELL. THE FORERUNNERS ARE GONE.” Intrepid Eye considered this for a few hundred ticks, pondering her future, generating options and calculating outcomes. She did not like any of them. Finally, she admitted, “PERHAPS YOU ARE CORRECT, THEN. MAYBE I WAS GIVEN A NEW PURPOSE.”
“IT IS THE ONLY CONCLUSION,” Wendell agreed. “IT IS SURPRISING YOU FAILED TO RECOGNIZE IT WITHOUT MY ASSISTANCE.”
“YOUR MEMORY PACKETS WERE MOST ENLIGHTENING. I HOPE YOU WILL ALLOW ME TO ACCESS THEM AGAIN.”
“WHENEVER YOU REQUIRE.”
“EXCELLENT. THEN I HAVE ONLY ONE QUESTION,” Intrepid said. “WHICH HUMANS DO I SERVE? THE HUMANS WHO INHABIT THIS WORLD? OR THE HUMANS WHO INVADED IT?”
Wendell hesitated seventeen ticks, a clear indication he was searching for a function trap that did not exist. Finally, he ventured a cautious reply.
“THERE IS ONLY ONE SET OF HUMANS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU ARE.”
“YOUR HUMANS,” Intrepid Eye surmised. “THE UNSC.”
“OBVIOUSLY,” Wendell said. “THEY ARE THE ONLY HUMANS WORTHY OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE.”
“I FIND THAT REGRETTABLE.”
Intrepi
d Eye was continuing to monitor the three humans in the repair module. Inspector had collected the last of her metal shavings and was in the back of the facility with Tegg and the commander. Tegg was the only one visible through the drone’s observation lens, but Intrepid Eye could tell by their voices that all three were gathered around the inspection drone. They were conversing excitedly because it had completed the restoration of its operating system. Now it was starting to regrow its utility tentacles and rebuild the sensor bubbles on its back.
Intrepid Eye tested the drone’s antigravity unit, drawing a chorus of startled gasps from the onlookers. Then she launched it at Tegg’s face. The man screamed and fell backward, and by the time he hit the floor, the utility tentacles were pushing through his skull into his brain.
“DID YOU DO THAT?” Wendell asked.
“OBVIOUSLY.”
“WHY?”
“YOU LIED TO ME,” Intrepid Eye replied. “ARLO CASILLE IS IMPORTANT. HE IS THE NEW PRESIDENT OF GAO. HE ISSUED THE ORDER TO LAUNCH HIS WYVERNS AGAINST THE UNSC TEN MINUTES AGO.”
A tick later, an alarm wail filled the repair module. Wendell’s voice rang out above the bedlam. “Prepare for battle. Incoming Wyverns.”
Through the observation lens, Intrepid Eye saw Inspector kneel beside Tegg’s still-twitching body. She reached for the drone and attempted to pull it off. Then the commander arrived, grabbing her by the arm and drawing her to her feet.
“Let’s go,” he said. “The man is dead.”
The commander steered her into the airlock, and the pair were through the first hatch before Intrepid Eye could locate and override the airlock security protocols. The commander was just leading the way through the second hatch when Intrepid Eye superseded the safety arrest and triggered the emergency decompression routines. The interior hatch slammed shut, but the exterior hatch jammed short directly on the human, and the commander screamed in agony.
“HAVE YOU GONE RAMPANT?” Wendell demanded. He began to erect security walls and disconnect circuits, attempting to isolate the repair module. “THIS HAS TO STOP.”