by John Shirley
The air smelled like exotic plants, and water, and minerals, and there was a smell of ozone somewhere, too, carried on the artificial breeze.
Suddenly the platform they were on detached itself, startling Ussa and Sooln, before descending, slowly, to the ground. They were in an area that looked too haphazard to be a cultivated garden, but too orderly to be wilderness.
Ussa walked to the stream flowing nearby. Its perfectly transparent water showed no algae—but something swam by, and was gone.
“This place is so . . . intact!” Sooln whispered, in awe.
“Yes,” said ‘Crecka. “The machine told me it has been here for many, many millennia. He called it the ‘eco level.’ It is built to last. And it is safe for us to live in—for your people to live in.”
A shadow passed over them—Ussa glanced up, hearing a soft male-inflected voice, speaking the language of Sangheili.
“I welcome you to Shield World 0673. I am Enduring Bias.”
A floating, roughly hexagonal mechanism, with three lenses glinting on its nearer side, moved easily about in the air, bobbing, shifting to get a better view of them. It was about the size of a Sangheili’s chest, in some parts intricately surfaced, in others elegantly simple.
“I am Ussa ‘Xellus.” There seemed no point in trying to maintain an alias. “And this is my mate, Sooln. You know ‘Crecka, I believe.”
“Yes. I might have prevented his escape, but I’m afraid a sort of existential fatigue slowed me—a desire for company, really. My original bias, my general programming intent, is fogged by the ages, and, to the extent I’m aware of it, apparently irrelevant now. I perceive that you are genetically related to one of the races reseeded by the Librarian . . . and so it is not inappropriate for me to permit you shelter here. Now . . . you will inform me of your intentions.”
Sanghelios
Southern Nwari
851 BCE
The Age of Reconciliation
Young and strong but without a mature Sangheili’s musculature, Tersa ‘Gunok had difficulty keeping up with Ernicka the Scar-Maker, but he was thrilled to be allowed to be of service to so great a warrior.
They were carrying crates of dried food from the drays into the vessels perched on the rocky floor of the volcanic crater. Snow skirled down from time to time, blown from the edges of the crater by the frigid winds of Sanghelios’s south pole, and Tersa’s lungs ached with the cold; his knuckles burned with it.
But he hurried after Ernicka and into the ship, proudly stepping onto a lift beside the Scar-Maker. Usually silent though he was, Ernicka emanated respect for everyone who did their tasks. They were all united, after all, in the blood oath of Final Decision: We are prepared to die fighting beside Ussa ‘Xellus, in the struggle against the Covenant. This is honor, and honor is meaning.
Every one of them had spoken that oath—and every one of them had heard it spoken.
The lift stopped and Tersa, arms aching, carried the crate to the hold and placed it with the others.
“Commander,” came a voice from the grid on the bulkhead. “We have news of Ussa ‘Xellus. He returns with important information. Come to the bridge for a full briefing . . .”
Both of Tersa’s hearts beat in pattering tandem. This hiding in the caverns would soon be over. Ussa would take them from shadows and into the bright solar glare of renewed honor.
Perhaps it was foolish to make Ussa ‘Xellus his hero—his mother had warned him not to follow Ussa. But she had been back home in their own keep; she had not seen what Tersa had witnessed . . .
The memory was still sharp, burned into his mind.
Tersa had been training in Ussa’s keep because his small clan had an ancient pact with the ‘Xellus family. And there Tersa had seen what happened to those who did not hold with the Covenant.
He had heard, the cycle before, Ussa speaking to a crowd in the flagstone plaza of the keep: “If you wish to follow the Covenant, then leave here now! For myself—I will not surrender to the San’Shyuum! Nor will anyone loyal to my clan! And do not be deceived—the tale that this is alliance and not meek surrender is a lie! What is a Sangheili but his honor? His honor is equal to his soul, and his soul to his honor! We cannot submit to the Covenant. It is better to die than to live without dignity.”
Deeply moved, Tersa had joined those shouting in agreement and hailing Ussa.
But he saw some others walk away from the plaza that day. He spied two of them setting out in flyers for distant places.
Perhaps it was they who precipitated what happened next. Who spoke out against Ussa, doubtless to curry favor with the Covenant.
Tersa was on the wall, overlooking the plaza on one side and the rolling, austere hills outside ‘Xellus Keep on the other, when the attack came. He was carrying out an exercise with two friends, with distance glasses. As he raised the glasses to his eyes, he saw the black specks swarming the horizon. In the scope, the specks became nine low-level attack fighters, roughly shaped like the flying, leatherwinged predators called ‘sKelln.
“Shout the alarm!” Tersa yelled.
“Yes, alarm and so on,” his cheerful friend N’oraq called back, yawning.
Tersa realized N’oraq thought this was only an exercise—that Tersa was just fooling about. He hadn’t seen the attackers. “Look, there!” Tersa said, handing him the glasses. “Look!”
Tersa himself shouted an alarm, and startled faces turned toward him. Some scowled, thinking he was but a panicked youngling. But a moment later they knew who was mistaken, as the matte-black fighters dove in and loosed explosive charges on the plaza. Projectiles strafed, one of them tearing N’oraq in half.
Then pillars of fire rose; dark blue blood gouted up in fountains. Sangheili shrieked as they were tossed, broken, through the air, and others ran helter-skelter, looking for surface-to-air weapons.
Five sweeps the enemy made over the keep, and only one of the nine attack flyers went down, shot by Ussa ‘Xellus himself with a fire-wand launcher.
The keep burned . . . and hundreds died. The flyers simply departed without further incident. But everyone had seen the Sacred Rings sign of the Covenant on the wings.
Tersa spent a long day helping to cope with the dead and dying.
And from that day forward, Tersa vowed he would do nothing for the Covenant. Nor would he give them quarter.
Then the war widened, became a civil war on Sanghelios that in some places was of magnitude enough to damage Forerunner relics, sacred machinery kept underground. Ussa took his followers to Nwari, where they might seek cover. And it was there that the ships waited. Ussa had used most of the fortune of the ‘Xellus clan to pay for those vessels, to have them brought to the sleeping volcano.
Now, as he worked in the cavern, Tersa sighed. He had taken an irrevocable course that day. Follow a clan’s hero to battle, his mother had said, and you have a chance to fight honorably and return. Follow a rebel and you will be overwhelmed, shot down without a chance to return fire . . . or executed.
Would he see his mother again? Was she safe from the Covenant? He did not know, and he ached to realize he might never find out.
He mustn’t think of that. Especially not with Ernicka glowering down at him. “You, youngling—go back and help organize the weapons. I’ll bring you the news soon enough.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Tersa hurried off, slightly annoyed to be called a youngling, and wondering if Ussa had recruited the soldiers they needed for the revolt . . . or if he had some other plan entirely.
With Ussa, one never knew what was coming until it had already been decided.
The hills of Nwari were desolate, forbidding. But many of the caverns hidden beneath them were warm, bubbling with volcanically heated springs. Warmth, Ussa knew, was not enough.
He stood on a natural balcony of stone, overlooking the Sangheili clans as they milled below, his followers doing tasks he had given out mostly just to keep them busy. There was a pervasive restlessness among them,
and many times the clansfolk glanced up at him, as if wondering if he’d brought them here only to meet some ghastly end.
The Sangheili had evolved in tropical wetlands, and their instincts rebelled against extended stays in these dark, natural amphitheaters. The coldly reverberant spaces, the clamminess whenever one strayed from the bubbling pools, the shadowy reaches of the place that seemed resistant to their lamps—perhaps resistant because of the thick mist from the sulfurous springs—all this made any normal Sangheili look about the encampment with distaste and mistrust. But Ussa had led his people here, remembering that in ancient times the clans had often taken shelter in deep places under the mountains of Sanghelios.
Having retreated here, Ussa had ordered the subterranean approach from the north closed with plasma beams—melting the rock to seal it off as quietly as possible. The caverns were vast and labyrinthine, but Ussa knew that the Covenant authorities might well have guessed his general whereabouts; if they chanced upon the southern entrance within the dead volcano, all would be lost.
Ernicka the Scar-Maker approached Ussa, grimly gnashing his teeth—which indicated that the news was not good.
“Great Leader,” Ernicka rumbled, “the listeners have detected new perturbations. The searchers are probing the sealed passages. They seem to know where we are.”
“It is soon for them to know that,” Ussa observed, watching the silvery mist undulate, a low, hot fog churning in the lamplight over the milling clans. “What does that suggest to you?”
“Perhaps we were not as careful in our relocation as we had hoped?”
“That is a possibility. Another is . . .” He looked about them—no one was nearby. But he gestured for Ernicka to follow him to one side, close against the wall. There was a good deal of noise from the clans, and the sounds of springs; now that they had moved away from the ramp, no one should be able to overhear them. But even so, Ussa lowered his voice and Ernicka could just barely catch his words. “Another possibility is there are spies among us, with some means of transmitting messages.”
“How shall we deal with this?” Ernicka whispered urgently.
“I’m pondering that.”
“It would be a hard thing to interrogate our clansmen . . .”
“Yes—and which ones would we interrogate? Where are the suspects? Everyone? We have no time for such matters. And I would not lose the loyalty of innocents by torturing them—or their clanfellows.”
“Then what are we to do?”
Ussa paused for a moment, thinking, and then asked, “How close are we to having the transports loaded and fueled?”
Ernicka scratched thoughtfully at a battle scar on his chest. “All three are nearly prepared—indeed we could go now, leaving some supplies behind. But—we cannot go with spies aboard.”
“We might be able to bring at least one of our hypothetical spies out into the open. Perhaps there is only one, after all. That’s more than enough. Ernicka, if we leave quickly, taking everyone with us, we can see to it that no one reveals where we’re headed. Only three of us know the route. The San’Shyuum aren’t aware of it; those loyal to the Covenant among the Sangheili also do not know of it. The spies will not be given a chance to transmit from our destination . . . if any of them survive what I plan now.”
“And what is the plan, Ussa?”
He leaned close to Ernicka and whispered something. Then he added, “Stay within a few paces of me. Defend my back.”
Then Ussa turned to the crowds below the natural stone balcony and held up his arms, calling out in a carrying, resonant voice, “Clansfolk! I speak to all!” His words echoed from the stalactites jutting from the curved ceiling; below, mist-blurred faces turned toward him, their murmuring now silenced, all listening raptly as he went on. “Males! Gather up the armaments and convey them to the transports! Females! Those of you brooding eggs, take them up in your arms and do likewise!
“We will go quickly! I have a means with which to strike at those loyal to the Covenant! I will strike at the high clans who would force us to crawl for the San’Shyuum! Then we will take to the skies; we will conceal ourselves in the dark places of the galaxy, and we will create a new Sanghelios! We will restore the pride of our people! We alone will embody its pride! We alone will fight for its pride! Clansfolk—do your hearts beat with mine?”
The final invocation had a ritual response, as ancient as sunlight warming eggs.
And the response was given.
“With your hearts do ours thunder!” they cried out, in ragged but deeply felt unison. For Sangheili, with their binary vascular systems, each had two hearts working in tandem.
“Then I come to walk among you, and I will help you prepare for the journey! I will use my own hands to work beside you!”
Cries of joy and mutters of trepidation arose then, but already Ussa ‘Xellus was descending the ramp of stone from the balcony to the floor of the cavern. He smelled the happy reek of small offspring running about their brooders; he heard more cries of “With your hearts do our hearts thunder!” He heard exclamations of awe as he strode into the crowd—for some ironically regarded him as a kind of prophet as well, a divine being.
The throng parted for Ussa; he was aware of Ernicka, as per orders, a few steps behind him, watching warily.
Ussa stopped at a warmer for brood eggs, lifted an egg up himself, and placed it gently in a carrier—though this was normally a female’s work, a great leader sometimes did it as a sign of love for his people. A general murmur of approbation followed. The applause of clashing jaws followed, and he walked on, patting the unhelmeted, scaly head of a Sangheili childling; stopping to closely examine a plasma launcher being prepped for transport; lifting a crate of dried meat onto an autodray. All around him, not to be outdone by their leader, his adherents busied themselves, frantically packing up.
“Great Leader!” called a lanky, helmetless male, carefully setting a box filled with burnblades on another dirty, scarred old autodray. The Sangheili kept one hand on the open box of swords as he turned to Ussa, ducking his head in respect. “May I inquire . . . ?”
Ussa recognized him: a known weapons dealer. “Yes, Vertikus, anyone may inquire of me. What do you wish to know?”
“On the world to which we go . . . how will we bring new weapons there? We have some here—these are genuine Qikost swords. Their blades are ever fine and true. But can we learn to make such in this new world? Is it so far that we cannot find a way to send a secret delegation from there to Qikost?”
“You wish to know if it is near or far from Sanghelios?” Ussa asked, glancing at the box of murderous burnblades. They were forged of metal, heated from within for extra destructive power. “It is indeed far—but I will not tell you, or anyone, where it lies. I will guide us all there. I will say only that we must go there immediately, for I take an action that cannot be reversed. This cannot wait.”
Vertikus made a resigned hissing sound, the equivalent of a Sangheili sigh, and then blurrily fast, he snatched a sword from the crate. Slashing viciously at Ussa’s throat, he snarled, “Truly this cannot wait!”
But Ernicka the Scar-Maker was suddenly there, leaping in front of Ussa, his own burnblade intersecting Vertikus’s weapon, so that red sparks spat at the contact. Ernicka’s weapon stopped the would-be assassin’s sword the width of a childling’s tooth from Ussa’s exposed throat; Ussa could actually feel the heat of Vertikus’s burnblade lightly scorching his flesh.
Larger and vastly more experienced, Ernicka forced Vertikus back with a single powerful thrust, so that the would-be assassin staggered and fell to the ground.
Other Sangheili rushed in, tearing the sword hilt from the traitor’s grasp.
“Fools!” Vertikus shouted, scrambling to his feet. “Ussa will lead you into damnation! The Covenant is our only hope for redemption!”
He tried to run, but the crowd closed in around him.
“Wait!” Ussa called. “We need to interrogate him! He might have knowledge of—�
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Jaws flashed, talons slashed, purple Sangheili blood spurted, and Vertikus—attacked by ten at once—was already torn to gouting shreds.
“It is too late, Ussa,” Ernicka said, sheathing his sword. “But you cannot blame them.”
“No, I cannot. So be it. Have the traitor’s body disposed. Load up the transports. We will depart before the Covenant knows we are gone.”
“You spoke of an action to be taken? Do you intend to strike before we go, or . . . ?”
Ussa made a rachitic sound that expressed dry irony. “No. That was merely to draw out the spy.”
“You took a terrible chance, Ussa, walking among them all so boldly.”
“I have great trust in you, Scar-Maker. I knew you would protect me.”
“I wish, Ussa, that we could strike at the Covenant’s slaves before we go—I am ready if you order it.”
“In a way, we already strike at those fools. We have escaped them—and when they learn of our escape, that will strike hard at their confidence. We go to the shield world that ‘Crecka found. In time we’ll use that world as a base to prepare a return to Sanghelios, rearmed and fortified by a new generation. It may be that the Covenant will find us in time. But if they do, they will lose us again. We will grow, we will build a new population, and with it a new army. And one day we will destroy the Covenant. So it shall be, Ernicka. Now . . . let us inspect the transports. It is almost time to leave Sanghelios.”
“To leave our home forever—it makes me ache inside, Ussa.”
“We may return someday, or our children will. For now, Sanghelios is wherever we go, Ernicka. We are its true soul.”
Then, together, they went through the stone passages to the transports that lay a short distance away, waiting on the rocky floor within the cone of an extinct volcano.
From here, gazing up, one could see the sky—Ussa saw the moons of Sanghelios, and a cluster of stars beyond the volcanic mouth.