by Various
Bornstellar, Glory, and Finder-of-Things-Hidden ventured forth into the broken Crown. Not unexpectedly, there was no artificial environment or even any operational technology within the looming darkness of the interior. Their armor would protect them physically, and secure grappling lines tethered them safely to the ship. Anything they saw and heard would be transmitted back, and two other Forerunners stood ready to mount a rescue if needed.
Chant watched the monitor intently, seeing through Bornstellar’s eyes as he maneuvered within the debris. Finder was beside him, utilizing one of the most basic laser mining tools to cut their way through.
“I am sorry it did not work out,” Splendid Dust said quietly, stepping beside Chant. “For you and Bornstellar.” At her slightly surprised look, he added, “I was trained to observe people. It was not hard to see.”
“We were confused and hurting, then,” she said simply. “The pain was new.”
“Even old, pain is pain,” Splendid Dust replied.
Chant glanced over at Trial, who was at another monitoring station, and indicated that the older female join them. “Why did you request Lifeworkers for this journey? We seem an odd choice.”
Splendid Dust’s hand again went to the hexagon shape affixed to his collar. It was pretty, radiant, and looked newly created from hard light, despite it being precisely carved stone. “I do not know much about the Organon,” he said, “but according to all the old and likely inaccurate rumors passed down, those who had seen or interacted with it felt it was alive in some way.”
“Preposterous,” said Trial, sounding very much like the Builder she once was.
Chant thought so as well. A truly living artificial intelligence was beyond their capabilities, and there was no solid evidence that the Precursors had mastered such a feat either. At their protests, Splendid Dust merely gave them a smile.
“Undoubtedly,” he said. “But suffice it to say, I did not think it wise to come without you.”
They returned their attention to the monitors. Chant was not pleased that her relationship with Bornstellar had been remarked upon. They both thought they had been discreet. Not for the first time, regret welled quietly within her. It had been he who had first spoken to end it. She was reconciled to a platonic relationship; had been for decades now. But it was like trying to deny the existence of something by hiding it away. Her feelings were still there, even if no one knew.
The glow of the laser drew her eyes as an oval door was cut into one of the Crown’s interior compartments. A cable was fastened to it, and the Audacity pulled it away. Inside, the illumination of the wrist lamps was reflected back in myriad showers of dancing sparks of light.
They had found the cache of slipstream crystals; quite possibly the last in the galaxy. Winking before them were enough to fuel ten thousand ships for a hundred thousand years.
They took only a few dozen. The rest were left for those who were so guided to them to discover.
Bornstellar felt a dull pang as they approached the equatorial disk. It was dark and unwelcoming, a black smudge against the starfield. The last time he had been within five thousand kilometers, the ship had been greeted with the rainbow-pulse embrace of Maethrillian’s sensory fields, reaching to safely guide it in with hard-light nets. Service vessels would have swarmed around them, ready to offer repairs or otherwise render assistance. This time, the ship was on its own, negotiating its path through the heartbreaking detritus of withered bodies, broken equipment, and the shattered, absolute arrogance of a civilization.
“No life support,” Falling Stars confirmed. “Nothing appears operational.”
It was not the same docking area as Bornstellar remembered, nor was it near the room where he had once awaited his summons. That domicile had been located at the edge of the enormous slice.
Splendid Dust directed the group closer to the central courts tier. Here they could obtain the additional two vessels that, along with Audacity, would help them embark on their journey. The ships had been tucked away deep inside the structure; they were not for everyday transportation.
Even the soft glow of distant stars disappeared as the Audacity approached the entry point and slipped inside, traveling along a corridor of darkness that opened into an enormous interior cavern. Audacity’s pools of lights oozed over the hard-light curve of a vessel’s hull here, an image of an engine there.
A few, Bornstellar had expected to see. But this hangar was vast, and it did not initially appear that a single bay was empty.
There had been time, then; time to escape before one of the Halo installations fired. Time for the cluster of terrified council members to be rescued. Time for any or all of these vessels to be filled with Forerunners and quickly flee to safety. The ships were here, ready and waiting. But the crystals that fueled them had been stored separately, in the Crown they had just plundered, and there had been no time to retrieve or install them.
No one said the words, but Splendid Dust spoke anyway. “It wasn’t deemed necessary. These were never meant to be escape pods. We—” He looked at them with anguished eyes. “This was the capital! No one could have foreseen any need or even desire to escape from it!”
His comment was met with silence. Hindsight had no forgiveness, but Bornstellar recalled the beauty, the ceremony, the absolute certainty of safety he had felt as he watched the beginning of the Master Builder’s trial. Splendid Dust’s words rang true.
Finally, Trial said, “There is enough blame and guilt for us each to be bowed beneath it. Do not shoulder more than your fair share, Splendid Dust.”
Row upon row they passed, until they finally found an area where they could set down. Falling Stars brought the Audacity in, settling it on the hard-light platform.
“Shall I enter the formal docking code?” Splendid Dust asked.
“Yes,” Bornstellar said. Who knew if the mundane code might initiate a restoration program? Their task would be greatly simplified if this portion of the disk, at least, were operational.
Sure enough, light exploded all around them, forcing them to squint against the sudden brightness after so long operating in dimness, and they emitted startled, pleased barks of laughter.
Then, abruptly, a red light began to flash on the controls, and the mirth was silenced.
An incoming message. From a dead world.
Bornstellar’s skin felt cold, and his armor rushed to bring it up to temperature. The correction did nothing to dispel the chill that had suddenly gripped his heart. Without realizing he did so until they were nearly touching, he stepped close to Chant. Her own skin had paled.
Everyone else seemed rooted in place with shock, and it was with an effort that Bornstellar stepped forward and touched the pad.
A holographic male figure appeared in the center of the bridge. Bornstellar could not tell where the figure had stood when he recorded the message, but suspected by his movements that it was at a control panel of some sort. He wore the formal robes and regalia of a councilor.
“It’s Strength-of-Steady-Purpose,” breathed Splendid Dust.
As if he heard his name—but of course he could not have—Purpose looked up. “I don’t know how long I have,” he said. “Whoever you are, even if you’ve come here while this battle is still going on, if you think you can rescue us, leave now. Please. You cannot do anything. Time is too short!”
There came a banging sound so immediate that Bornstellar jerked. So did Purpose. The noise had come from behind the holographic councilor; the sound of myriad people banging on the hard-light door to the docking bay.
“I can’t let them in,” he mourned, his voice cracking. “They shut me out too, the council. Now I’m keeping others out, but only because they’re a danger.”
Again the cold rippling of cooling skin, with the sick, hollow frisson of fear. Bornstellar didn’t know which was more terrifying—that the council had locked its doors, that Purpose was barring people, or that the holographic councilor might be mad.
“Mass p
anic,” Purpose murmured, still stabbing at the invisible control panel. “Trampled bodies. Crashed ships. So many dead already, just from that. And they’re not going to be able to stop it, not Halo. We’ll all be dead soon, and you will too. Get out, at once, before the Halo—”
The transmission abruptly disappeared as all the power went out on the Audacity. The only light now came from those fastened about their wrists.
“Who are you?”
The voice, neither male nor female, somehow blasted through the controls of Audacity, even though the ship was dead. It stabbed and overwhelmed the senses.
“WHO ARE YOU?”
This time Bornstellar nearly dropped to his knees, biting back a cry of agony. “I am Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting,” he managed. “We are Forerunners.” Mendicant Bias had turned rampant and overridden Maethrillian security—it was Bornstellar who had finally shut down the rogue Contender years later. Was this perhaps another equally powerful ancilla? He turned, his face questioning, to Splendid Dust as he added, “Are you the metarch of—”
“METARCH?”
Offense, outrage, ineffable arrogance, and overweening puissance. Then, silence. Bornstellar didn’t bother trying to speak with it again. It was no Forerunner creation. It was also no longer listening, and it knew they were here.
And, Bornstellar realized belatedly, it had spoken in ancient Digon.
Reluctantly, he translated the voice’s message for the others.
“We should go,” Splendid Dust whispered when he had finished.
“I would be in favor of that,” Falling Stars replied, “but whatever it is has turned off every system in the ship.”
Bornstellar felt a tug on his arm and turned to see Chant. Their eyes met.
Find it. Promise me!
“It doesn’t appear that our armor is damaged, so that gives us three days. We won’t be here that long,” he said, forcing himself to sound confident. “Falling Star, try to get Audacity back up. Tread-with-Care, select two other ships and install the slipstream crystals. I want all three ready to go once we get back.”
“You are still going?” It was Trial. An odd expression flitted about her face, or perhaps it was just a trick of the erratic illumination from their wrist lights. Probably she thought him insane. Splendid Dust certainly looked as though he did, but he said nothing.
“If it spoke in ancient Digon,” Bornstellar said, “that leads me to believe it might be the Organon—or a remnant of it. If something’s still left, that means perhaps it is repairable. Chant, Splendid Dust, and I will go. Everyone else, stay here and help where you can.”
“I will come too,” said Trial.
“And me,” said Glory. Stone Songs, Voices, and Finder also stepped forward.
“There is no need—” Bornstellar began, but Trial interrupted him.
“Yes, there is. The Librarian may have exacted a promise from you and Chant, but we all do her work. And it is better than sitting here, waiting and wondering. There’s little I can do to help with repairing a vessel.”
Chant held Trial’s gaze, then nodded. Bornstellar saw that they were all determined to go, and any protest from him would be disregarded.
“Very well,” he said. “Splendid Dust? Where is the Mysterium?”
Splendid Dust looked at them in turn. “First, we must go to the council chamber in the amphitheater. And then”—he took a deep breath—“down.”
Each of them wore wrist lights and carried rifles and several pulse grenades. The latter proved useful almost immediately, as there was no other way to open the door that Strength-of-Steady-Purpose had spent his final moments keeping closed. Through the hole created by the grenade, the lights of their rifles revealed that, erratic as Purpose’s behavior had been, in this one thing at least he had not exaggerated.
Bodies lay where they had fallen, the shredded door bearing long, vertical lines made by the clawing of frantic armored hands. Chant’s heart ached as she started to count, then she shut her mind to the task after she had passed twenty. Many. Too many.
“Our Halo weapons were cleaner,” said Stone Songs, almost defensively. It shouldn’t have been important, but it was.
The trek would have been the work of a few moments, had the capital been as it once was. But in the dead world, they walked.
Bornstellar was grateful that, although their ancillas had gone silent after the strange voice had spoken to them, their armor was still functional. Otherwise, death would have taken them quickly enough. As it was, the armor provided navigation and nourishment and eliminated the need for sleep. It even made their movements less taxing, allowing them to leap several meters to a walkway above, or fall without harm to one below. And as they could not rely on lifts or anything else that might abruptly grind and whir to violent life—consequently sending them to violent deaths—this was a boon not to be taken lightly.
At first, they were tense, their senses on full alert, heightened by their armor. But as the hours passed without event, the strain eased somewhat. Finally, Bornstellar asked Splendid Dust, “Were you ever told that the Organon spoke?”
“I was told that—at first—it cooperated with us and allowed us entrance into the Domain. So there was communication of some sort.”
“It taught us?” Trial asked, intrigued.
“Not so much ‘taught’ as permitted us to explore,” Splendid Dust said. “It was helpful.” He shrugged, realizing he himself wasn’t being particularly helpful. “You must remember: this was quite literally several hundreds of millennia past.”
“Was anything written down?” Chance inquired. “If we knew how to respectfully approach it—”
“Perhaps. We had a library, but if everything is inaccessible, then it does us no good. Besides”—he looked embarrassed—“I wouldn’t know where to look. I was not First Councilor for very long, after all, and I was told only a few passing legends about a thing of great antiquity and mystery.”
There came a sound, low, right on the verge of hearing range; felt more than heard.
Boom.
Then a second one.
They all stopped, listening. A soft skittering pattered over their heads. Glory lifted her rifle. The light caught something black and chitinous moving with astonishing speed.
Abruptly, dozens of small indigo lights, clustered together in groups, flashed above them. Glory fired. Something shrieked, landing with a clatter on the corridor floor in front of them. Its cry ignited a fearful chorus.
Bornstellar shone the light on the thing that had fallen. Three meters long, black as the spaces between the stars, it screamed; waved eight long, sharp, barbed legs; righted itself; and then charged.
He blasted it again and again until it lay still. Around him, the others continued to fire, the things’ bright eyes making them easy to pinpoint. The corridor ceiling was completely covered with them, and they began spitting out bolts of energy.
Bornstellar glanced back the way they had come. More of the insectoid things, summoned by the angry, almost unreal cries of their companions, surged toward them.
“Run!”
His team obeyed, their armor lending them speed. Bornstellar followed, firing. Then, at the last minute, he threw as many pulse grenades as he could grab toward the flow of bodies.
To his astonishment, they froze in place, their dark-violet, mechanical eyes following the arc of the grenades. The leader of the pack swiveled its head, clacked its mandibles, and uttered a single, incomprehensible word in the strange voice they had all heard earlier:
“Abaddon.”
Bornstellar was so shocked that he didn’t even move. An arm looped through his and he was hurtled backward, barely far enough to escape the tons of debris that collapsed only a few meters away.
Chant was sprawled atop him, panting, and their eyes met. “I heard it too,” she said.
“What were those things?” Stone Songs demanded, wide-eyed.
“They ought to have been crawlers,” Bornstellar replied. “
But they’re wrong. They’re worse. They’re still artificial, but they’re much more organic in appearance and behavior.”
“I don’t know what a crawler is,” Trial said.
“I do,” Bornstellar replied heavily. “I made them. And that’s how I know they’re wrong.”
Their armor plotted a new course for them, and they continued on, shaken but even more resolved to reach the Organon after the unexpected and bizarre attack. They were on high alert now, listening to Bornstellar explain his earlier statement while straining for any sounds that could mean danger.
The original Didact had designed the crawlers for his Prometheans to use against a number of infantry threats, and, eventually, the Flood. They were created to target and destroy organic matter, overcoming their enemies with numbers. “But mine . . . the Didact’s . . . were clearly machines. These are different. And the crawlers were never utilized on Maethrillian.”
“How is that possible, then?” asked Trial.
“Before the Audacity was shut down, the Organon could have scanned its databanks,” Stone Songs said. “It could have created more . . . but in the time allowed? And why change the design?”
“Why do it at all?” murmured Chant.
No one wanted to answer. The thought that the Domain itself—or what pitiful shards of it remained—was attacking them was too awful to contemplate.
Another lift tube. Another corridor, a drop, and then still another. There were no further challenges, but neither Bornstellar nor anyone else dared lower their guard.
So alert was Bornstellar to attack that he failed to notice when his surroundings had become familiar. He halted abruptly and directed his light upward. It refracted on the surfaces of quantum-engineered crystal, gathered together to form breathtaking sculptures. The walls too glittered as Bornstellar shined the light about.