by Various
Like most of his voyages, this last one had been wrapped in secrecy, and communications to and from his cruiser had been tightly constrained. But his wife had gotten one message through: We two are now three. And every day away from High Charity after that had seemed like an eternity.
The Prelate had instantly understood her cryptic message’s meaning. He was desperate to see his newborn child, as any first-time parent would be. But Tem’s urgency was amplified by the fact that he had never thought he would be a father.
San’Shyuum society was incredibly strict about which genes passed from one generation to the next, and the Prelate’s bloodline had fallen out of favor ages ago due to overbreeding. He was officially listed on the Roll of Celibates, and once designated as such, it was impossible to be removed . . . or so the Prelate had thought. After he had been selected to enter the Sacred Promissory—after the Minister of Preparation had used the Promissory’s Forerunner machines to alter his genes and enhance his mind and body—the Prelate was able to petition for his removal from the Roll and was matched with a suitable female: Yalar’Otan’Elat. And she was more than he had ever hoped for.
Yalar was beautiful, long-necked, and delicately limbed. While her family members were wealthy owners of mining concerns on a handful of Covenant worlds, Yalar was noble and humble in equal measure—a rarity in San’Shyuum high society, which was rife with snobbery and striving. Tem fell instantly in love with her clever tongue and guarded smile. But over time, what devoted him body and soul was that Yalar accepted the three things that he could never be: home more often than he was away; honest about his ongoing service to the Minister; and confident that the experimental alterations to his genes wouldn’t somehow ruin their chances for a healthy child.
Yalar accepted all of these conditions. But she was anything but demure.
When her pregnancy was confirmed, Yalar had refused confinement, a precaution embraced by most expectant San’Shyuum mothers. Instead, long after her belly began to swell, Yalar continued her work in High Charity’s lower districts, ensuring the Unggoy, Kig-Yar, and other “lesser” species (a categorization she rejected) had all the resources and services they were owed as loyal members of the Covenant. She was an irrepressible champion of the alliance’s ideals, and the Prelate knew their child would thrive even if it inherited just a small part of its mother’s spirit.
As the Prelate soared higher into the dome, so did his anticipation. After years of secrecy and sacrifice, he was about to reap the only rewards he had ever wanted: a child, a family. He maxed power to his anti-grav belt and sped toward a future that was as bright as the fireworks bursting above him. . . .
And then the nightmare began, like it always did, with a sphere of shimmering light that appeared near the apex of the dome.
The sphere remained stable for as long as it took High Charity’s citizens to look up from their revels and draw a collective breath. Then the slipspace portal imploded with a thunderous crack louder than any firework. It rang High Charity like a bell, jerked the Prelate from his flight of fancy, and reminded him of the real reason for his haste:
Tonight does not have to be the same. Tonight I can save them!
Out of the collapsing portal a ship emerged that the Prelate instantly recognized as a human frigate. The lightly armored vessel was essentially a MAC cannon sandwiched between two engine pods. What frigates lacked in defensive capability, however, they made up for in speed and agility. So even though it emerged from slipspace at high velocity, the frigate was able to pull up hard and bank to avoid the wall of the dome. Then, in a cacophony of crumbling stone and wrenching metal, the ship buried itself up to its engines in one of the floating towers. It hung there, shuddering and burning, like a flaming arrow plunged into the heart of the Covenant.
In the stunned silence that followed, the Prelate wanted to scream: Go, you fools! Flee the city! While there’s still time! But in this nightmare his voice failed him, as it always did, and he watched in mute horror as the ruined vessel unleashed its horrible cargo.
A thick cloud of Flood spores spewed through the rents in the frigate’s hull, flowed around the damaged tower, and quickly spread to the two adjacent spires, swallowing them whole. The ship’s engines sputtered inside the miasmic cloud, giving it a dim and dreadful pulse—a semblance of life that turned the Prelate’s blood cold.
Suddenly the city snapped out of its stupor. Celebrations ended in a rolling panic as the Flood cloud spread both ways around the dome. San’Shyuum abandoned their towers, crowded onto barges, or simply flung themselves toward the stalk and its waiting ships, trusting their anti-grav thrones and belts to break their fall. Many who moved too slowly disappeared into the spores. The Sangheili Banshees broke formation and began strafing the Flood cloud, but their firepower was woefully inadequate, and soon the Prelate found himself fighting upward against a tide of screaming, wild-eyed evacuees.
The tower Yalar had picked for them was old; a black marble obelisk with crenellated balconies that was one of the first carved from the mammoth hunk of the San’Shyuum homeworld that served as the dome’s foundation. In a habitat where the status of one’s living quarters was determined by three criteria—size, altitude, and proximity to the Forerunner Dreadnought—their cramped, low-slung tower near the wall of the dome was decidedly low-class. But while they could have lived somewhere better, Yalar wanted to be near to her work in the lower districts, and they both soon realized there were advantages to close quarters. The tower’s tight hallways and narrow gravity lifts gave them license to press close together in full view of their neighbors, touch and whisper and begin the tender intimacies of their reunions before they reached the privacy of their chambers.
But now the Prelate cursed their tower’s claustrophobic conditions as he was forced to lean power to his anti-grav belt and decelerate into its low-ceilinged entry hall. His feet grazed the hall’s polished stone floor as he swung to avoid a trio of San’Shyuum in their thrones, so laden down with personal possessions that they didn’t see him coming. Having avoided this collision, he angled up a ramp to the gravity lifts, chose a tube that served his apartment, and boosted into its shimmering field. Ten, twenty floors went by in a blur. But then the whole tower shuddered, slamming the Prelate against the tube’s glassy walls. Sliding and tumbling upward, he almost missed his apartment, but managed a wild thrust with his arms, caught a railing, and levered himself into the entry passage.
“Yalar!” the Prelate shouted as he palmed the lock on the apartment’s door and shouldered through before it split fully open. “Yalar, I’m here!” He cut power to his belt, landed hard on his feet, and sprinted across the bare floor of their common room, hurdling a low wooden table, and then knifed through a curtain strung with garnet beads into the triangular hall that led to their sleeping chamber. A few steps into the hall and the tower shook again—more violently this time. Motes of lavender light burning in alcoves that ran the length of the hall sputtered out, and suddenly the Prelate was in total darkness.
This was the moment in his nightmare when Tem’Bhetek became fully aware he was dreaming. All that came before—the fireworks, the frigate, the Flood—these were inevitable. But now, with the tower trembling around him, Tem was conscious of his ability to alter what came next. He held his breath and listened . . . and heard a mewling in the dark.
The Prelate stepped toward the muffled cries, hands groping along the walls. As he entered the sleeping chamber, he stopped and let his vision adjust to a wan light seeping through the curtains drawn across the balcony window. Slowly the shape of his wife resolved, sitting in the middle of their padded sleeping pallet. Yalar was draped in a diaphanous pale-yellow nursing gown. Their child was cradled in her arms, swaddled in a copper blanket. As the babe redoubled its wail, Yalar began to sing:
This path, where does it lead?
Take my hand, walk with me.
Into the light, forever free?
Take my hand, walk with me . . .
It was an old San’Shyuum lullaby, and as Yalar hummed its sweet melody, the Prelate’s mind raced with all the things he’d said before—all the ways he’d tried in previous dreams to get his wife to leave their bedchamber before it was too late. But as always, the nightmare didn’t wait. And before he’d landed on something new to say, Yalar stopped singing, raised her large, long-lashed eyes, and said:
“We waited for you.”
“I . . . I was close.” The Prelate’s voice was ragged. “Just outside the city.”
Yalar lowered her gaze to the child crying in her arms. “But you weren’t here.”
The Prelate felt a change in the air; something old and patient and powerful stretching out from the deepest shadows of the room. “Please, my love.” He stepped forward, hands outstretched. “Come with me. Now.”
But Yalar shrank back into the folds of her gown and began to sing again:
This path, where does it lead . . . ?
A single Flood spore wafted past the Prelate. It took all his strength not to reach out and crush its ragged spines, its ugly, pulsing core. He had tried once before, but fighting back had only accelerated what was to come.
“We can leave this place,” Tem said. “You and me and . . .” He looked blankly at the child. We two are now three, Yalar had said in her message. But she had told him nothing else—not revealed the gender of their child.
“Our son? Our daughter?” Yalar said. “I wanted it to be a surprise. But now”—she choked back a sob—“you will never even know its name.”
The Prelate winced, trying to keep his own emotions in check. “I fought through the Sangheili ships. I made it to the stalk.” But then his rage began to build, just as it always did. “But the dome was overrun! And the Minister told me that the Flood—!”
“Boru’a’Neem!” Yalar said with disgust. Her head rose up on her long neck like a serpent preparing to strike. “You went wherever he ordered you to go! Did whatever he needed you to do!” Her voice plunged to a whisper and then stepped back to a scream. “But when we really needed you . . . You. Weren’t. Here!”
Their child loosed a full-throated wail, wriggling its little limbs inside the blanket. Yalar rocked it close to her chest and continued:
Take my hand, walk with me . . . !
But she was out of tune now and frantic. Her body shook. She began to cough. Arms trembling, Yalar thrust their baby toward the Prelate. “Take it, Tem!” she gasped. “Take it and go—!”
Then her lips exploded open, releasing a cloud of Flood spores.
The first time the Prelate had this dream, this was the moment he woke, eyes wide and screaming. But he’d since learned to fight the urge to wake—coaxed his body to release some of the Promissory-implanted chemicals designed to enhance his combat capabilities to keep him focused on the dream. Each time the nightmare came, he was able to stay submerged a little longer. Like a diver with limited air, he willed his body to relax into the depths of his despair. . . .
Tem’Bhetek now snatched the wailing child out of his wife’s arms and leapt away as pulsing green boils rose on Yalar’s neck and shoulders. Flood tendrils, slick and sharp, burst from these sores, tore through her gown, and coiled around her body. She pitched backward onto their pallet, thrashing her arms and legs and shrieking as the parasite burrowed into her brain.
Just then, the balcony window shattered. Light stabbed through the curtains as a Phantom dropship hovering outside opened fire with its nose-mounted turret. The Prelate rolled to the floor and curled around his child, shielding it from the plasma bolts as they seared overhead and burned into the bedchamber’s walls. Even before the firing stopped, the Prelate heard the clang of armored feet, the telltale crack and sizzle of activating energy blades. He rose to find three Sangheili in silver armor circling the pallet, eyeing his Flood-stricken wife.
“Don’t touch her!” the Prelate roared, rising to his feet.
The Sangheili snapped their heads in his direction. The one closest to the Prelate snarled and raised its blade. . . .
But right as it swung to cut the Prelate down, tendrils shot out from Yalar’s body and wrapped around the Sangheili’s sword arm, stopping it mid-swing. More of the muscular Flood fibers whipped around the Sangheili’s neck. Then Yalar flung herself backward, pulling the warrior with her, using whatever part of her mind that remained in her control to try to keep her family safe.
But it wasn’t enough.
The other Sangheili went to work, slashing Yalar with their blades until there was nothing left but sizzling flesh and bloody cloth. Feet locked to the floor, Tem loosed a guttural, wordless cry that ended in a wail as the Sangheili prodded Yalar’s remains with the two-pronged tips of their blades.
Then the swordsmen came for him.
In the Prelate’s dream, the Sangheili’s eyes began to glow bright as their blades as they slid through the slanting shadows cast by the tattered curtains. Their limbs stretched, and they flowed around him like quicksilver, rattling their bony jaws.
“I’ll kill you!” The Prelate squared his stance, cradled his child with one hand, and made a fist with the other. “I will kill every last one of you!”
Then his baby laughed. The Prelate looked down into the infant’s eyes; one blue, one green, just like his own. The child gurgled a string of happy nonsense words.
Yalar’s voice echoed in the shadows:
Into the light, forever free . . .
And Tem felt a surge of hope: Tonight is not the same. Tonight I will save my child!
He activated his anti-grav belt and launched himself through the cordon of Sangheili, twisting to avoid their blades. As the Prelate hurtled through the window frame, the Phantom’s turret tracked him and opened fire. But Tem was already halfway into a dive that took him under the Phantom’s belly, beyond its field of fire. Flying with his back to the lower districts, the Prelate stared at his reflection as it rippled across the Phantom’s polished hull. Stay asleep, just a little longer. . . . Then he was up behind the dropship, where he maxed power to his belt and shot toward the holy city’s star.
The atmosphere was thick with spores now. The other towers, the arched walls of the dome—everything except the star’s bright disc had disappeared into the murk. Two empty barges appeared above the Prelate, trailing limp streamers and shedding flowers. He jerked hard right to avoid a collision. A tower somewhere off to his left groaned as its anti-grav systems failed. Tem waited for the crack and boom of exploding stone as the tower hit the lower districts. But instead there was only a wet, muffled crunch. He looked down and saw dark shapes moving in the sea of spores below: tendrils winding back and forth, like animals tracking his scent.
Then the spores began to thin, and the Prelate burst through the top of the cloud, no more than a kilometer below the simulated star. This close, he could clearly see how the illusion worked—how the star was really just a broad disc of many overlapping energy fields that filled a hole in the apex of the dome wide enough to accommodate the Forerunner Dreadnought, should the San’Shyuum ever need to move it. Viewing platforms hung around the rim of the disc, and the Prelate knew these were linked to passages through High Charity’s hull, emergency shuttle bays, and, finally, escape from the nightmare. You’re close! Closer than you’ve ever been before! Tem willed his belt to lift him higher, faster. . . .
A Flood tendril slashed up from below, striking him across the arms and pulling his child from his chest. The little bundle tumbled down and out of reach, a loose corner of its copper blanket fluttering behind it. The Prelate spun head over heels, kicking the tendril aside, and dove after his child, following its cries as it careened toward the undulating clouds of spores. An instant before the child disappeared, Tem caught it by its blanket. Then he arched his neck and spine and, straining against the g-forces, climbed once again toward the star.
The child was beside itself. There was no laughter now, only tears. The little creature thrashed its arms against the Prelate’s chest. He held
the infant tight, but this only made it more upset.
It screamed, loud enough to jar Tem half awake. He shut his eyes, took a deep breath . . . and sang.
There is a path, where does it lead?
Take my hand, walk with me!
Into the light, forever free?
Take my hand—!
But before he could finish the verse, tremendous spouts of Flood biomass rose from the clouds; pulsing stalks of half-consumed flesh; grotesque monuments to the holy city’s millions of devoured souls. Tendrils sprouted from these stalks, crisscrossing the air above the Prelate. He tried to maneuver through the gruesome thicket, but the Flood lashed around him, trapping his legs, his chest, his child.
Tem’Bhetek strained his anti-grav belt well past its operating limits. The device’s lifting pods buzzed a warning, growing hot and heavy on his hips. . . .
And then, through the fields of the simulated star, the Prelate saw a ship. A gleaming vessel with a hooked prow, the pride of the Sangheili fleet—Shadow of Intent, maneuvering into position above the holy city. For most Covenant in need of rescue, seeing this assault carrier so close would be a profound relief. At first, even the Prelate’s heart leapt. But his hope shattered as soon as he saw the carrier prepare to fire the plasma fountain in its prow.
“No!” the Prelate shouted. “We’re still alive, you Sangheili bastards—!” But the rest of the curse died in his throat as Flood tendrils coiled around his neck and plunged into his mouth. Tem bit down, trying to sever the fleshy cords as they slid rapidly past his teeth. But the Flood held his jaws open, keeping him trapped in a gurgling rictus of rage.
The capacitating torus of Shadow of Intent’s plasma fountain quavered as it built its charge. Targeting vanes irised into position around the magnetized muzzle, preparing to direct the superheated gases already flooding the breech. There was no sound when the fountain lit, but High Charity rumbled as a pillar of white-hot fire struck the holy city’s star, obliterated its fields, and then lanced into the dome. The Flood clouds ignited with a roar. A wall of pressure and heat rushed toward the Prelate. He struggled in the Flood’s grip, his child screeching in his arms, but just as the wall hit—