Broken Circle (25 page)

Then three Ussan Sangheili converged on ‘Crolon—they wore the colors of Ussa on their chests; evidently it was an image of the
shield world beside Sanghelios. They wielded their burnblades, hacking him into steaming, smoking pieces.

“So much for Salus ‘Crolon,” Trok muttered.

The Covenant Elite transmitting the image was firing his weapon in hot blue flashes at the oncoming Sangheili rebels. He gasped his report as he fired. “There aren't many of them, but they are aggressive and effect—” He didn't finish, the slash of a burnblade cutting him off, the image winking out.

“We can send another nine hundred troops, Your Eminence,” said Ernicka.

“Yes, it's better if—”

Then another image appeared—it was Ussa ‘Xellus himself, with smoke rising around him, shouts in the background, a glowing rifle in his hands. “You! Prophet of Inner Conviction! Are you there? I cannot see you—but surely you see me!”

“Yes, I see you!” declared Mken, intrigued. “Can you hear me?”

“Your voice comes through faintly. I wish to tell you that I have anticipated you would send in overwhelming reinforcements. We have driven the Covenant back for the moment, but it cannot continue. For this reason, I am giving the order. This planetoid will be lost to you forever! No one who remains here will survive. I am giving your forces an opportunity to retreat—
not
to surrender. Take them aboard! Otherwise they will die. No more negotiations!”

And then Ussa blinked out.

All the Sangheili were staring at Mken, wondering what his order would be—and not daring to give advice.

“Order our people to retreat, taking their wounded with them!” Mken said firmly. “Back into the landing vessels. Leave three Eyes to observe, and send us what information they can. Then prepare another six hundred troops for the second stage of the invasion . . .”

“It will be as you command, Your Eminence,” said Trok.

Trok conveyed the orders as Mken contemplated whether those additional troops would be needed. He suspected not. Somehow, all his research on Ussa ‘Xellus suggested the rebel leader was capable of unusual mercy for a Sangheili—the mark of a great sentient being. In fact, Ussa's only real mistake was taking mercy too far, in tolerating Salus ‘Crolon when he must have known that Sangheili was a liability.

Minutes passed—and then Trok announced, “The three troop movers are en route . . . No returning fire from the planet . . . that is surprising . . . they seem to be genuinely allowing the retreat . . .”

“It is not surprising,” Mken murmured. “This is on Ussa's orders.”

The Eyes sent images from within the shield world where they, too, met with no resistance.

But there was also no sign of Ussa's people.

On and on the Eyes searched, returning tantalizing images of Forerunner artifacts and relics. There was nothing except empty corridors, rooms filled with cryptic devices, and a great gardenlike open area where flying creatures unfamiliar to Mken flapped about.

And then it happened. The walls seemed to shimmer . . . and melt. Waves of heat surged over the Eyes, and each remote device's signal snuffed out. The image went black.

“Show me the entire world,” Mken ordered. And as the image of the metal-sheathed planetoid appeared in three dimensions, floating above them, Mken said, “And order the fleet: general withdrawal, pull back, but stay within the system, at ready, facing the enemy. Make it a safe distance, whatever you judge that to be, Trok. But close enough that we can still view it.”

The shield world dwindled, shrank to what seemed a quarter of its size as they drew back.

Then the cracks showed.

They were seams, really, glowing from within the planet, blue in some places, red in others. The curved, neatly fitted segments of which the Refuge was made were edging apart from one another, releasing fantastic shimmering energies in the gaps, light that stretched out from the cracking planetoid like the rippling skirts of an aurora. Molten metal gushed from the widening seams in the planet's sheath, like reverse meteorites spat into space, and the planetoid shimmered in the release of heat energy.

The molten metal soon became a bubbling cloud of minerals, metal droplets, and searing gas around the shield world—and beyond that, Mken assumed, the rebel Sangheili were dying or, more likely, already dead.

“Oh, by the Journey,” Mken muttered. “He did it. He's destroying all those lives—and all those relics. Gone.”

As if it had heard him, the planetoid confirmed Mken's lament—it exploded.

The roiling fireball became an expanding, uneven fog of burning fragments, murky segments of planetoid that spun away into the void.

“Nothing and no one could have survived that,” said Vil ‘Kthamee, his voice hoarse.

“You are correct,” Mken said. “The relics—the rebels. All gone. Annihilated. And at what cost . . .”

“Your Eminence, fragments of the planet are spinning our way, highly volatile,” said ‘Tskelk. “I'm getting reports of significant collision hazard from across the fleet!”

“Tell them to take evasive action,” said Mken.

Mken went to the bridge, to consult with the undercaptain. But the fleet was undamaged. The shield world was in smoldering fragments, joining the nearby asteroid belt.

Viewing the monitors, as they searched the area after the
planetary blast had culminated, Mken noticed that dozens of large, distinctive metal-cored shapes were distributed through the area. Mken half expected to find escape craft, at least some sign of life. Surely Ussa ‘Xellus would have prepared something. Had he really sacrificed himself—and all his people—for the sake of honor? They must have come to their senses—they must be there, somewhere.

But he saw no trace of conscious movement. Fragments spun, flame jetted as gases burned away from the ruptured planetoid. Were those incandescent specks the Sangheili burning up, their lives being extinguished?

He couldn't be sure. But the fragments of the planetoid glowed with a radiation that suggested no life was possible here.

Still . . . they might not be as lifeless as they seemed. The metal-edged sections within the burning debris seemed to edge toward the safer emptiness of space. Their movement subtly—ever so subtly—suggested sprawling but organized trajectories. Perhaps . . .

“Sir?” asked Trok ‘Tanghil, coming to stand beside him. “Shall we continue the survey?”

Perhaps it was a rational decision. Perhaps it was not. But Mken made it in an instant.

“No. Order the fleet to return to High Charity. I shall prepare my report. I expect it will not be well received—especially by Excellent Redolence. But Ussa ‘Xellus is gone. That is the important thing.”

He turned away, and wondered at that himself. If his suspicion was right—was he now engaging in treason?

But he had no real proof.

So perhaps it was better to let the broken circle spin onward, untouched, into the space beyond their view.

If Ussa ‘Xellus was still alive, the Covenant would likely never hear from him again.

And Mken had a life to live. He had Cresanda to return to, after all. Why, then, court trouble?

Within the Broken Circle

Strategy Hall

850 BCE

The freight movers were not comfortable but they did their job: they kept Ussa ‘Xellus and Sooln and Tersa and Lnur and the others stable within the largest section of the disassembled shield world. The walls rotated sickeningly around them; wind, driven by the turning of the segments, blew and skirled past. The lights blinked, going on and off, but valiantly shining most of the time. Ernicka the Scar-Maker, looking quite ill, clutched at the side of the shallow box shape of the freight mover. Dozens of other freight movers carried hundreds of other Ussans nearby.

Enduring Bias hovered overhead, chattering happily to itself about how well the experiment was going, positive results, and status reports chirped in the strange tongue of the Forerunners. All dangerous radiation released was redirected outward, away from the Sangheili.

“Great Ussa, we live yet!” Tersa said, as if surprised. He was clinging to the side of the freight mover nearby.

“You find that surprising?” Ussa asked. But he was rather nauseated and wished the whirling and jolting of their section of the disassembled shield world would slow and stop, as per plan. “Bias! How much longer will we have to endure this much motion?”

“Until the fleet is gone—then I will give the command for stabilization fields,” the Flying Voice responded.

“How much of the Refuge did we lose?” Lnur asked.

“A fair amount,” answered Enduring Bias. “But all according to the design of the Forerunners. They were concerned to design a place that could elude the Flood even if some of the parasite survived the Great Purification.”

“Have you restored some parts of your memory?” Sooln asked. “That sounds like new information.”

“What does?” asked Enduring curiously.

“What you said about . . . the Flood? What's that?”

“Did I say something about the Flood? Oh dear. I've been having these intervals, these lapses—jolts of lost history spurting up and then breaking apart . . . I wonder how much longer I can last . . .”

“We need you,” Ussa reminded the Flying Voice. “We need you to set things in proper orbit. To sketch in the circle so that it's distributed around the sun, within the asteroid belt. So the Covenant can never find us . . . and so we can travel between the segments. We will make a new colony, as the Forerunners foresaw . . . and we will need you for that.”

“I hope to be of use,” Enduring Bias said. “But that will be only as long as I can, and no longer. Entropy sharpens the arrow of time, and it flies ever faster for me.”

“The Flying Voice really is beginning to sound a bit off,” muttered Lnur.

“We'll make it,” Ussa said. “I have a vision of how it will work. The molten parts of the planetoid hid us—and the solidified melt camouflages the colony's segments. We will be safe here. The true Sangheili will grow in numbers and in strength. We will learn how to harness the power of the Forerunners. And those who follow us will one day take Sanghelios back.”

From the Prophet of Clarity's Notes on the History of the Covenant

An Account Not to Be Made Public Until the Passing of the Prophet of Clarity

Composed in 2552 CE

Originally written in the language of the San'Shyuum

. . . and so, imperceptibly yet epochally, the Age of Discovery came to a close, with the understanding that the Great Ones had left traces for us to follow, clues to the Great Journey, a quest that would lead the faithful through a wondrous transfiguration allowing elevation to the level of the divine, and a reunification with the Great Ones, those we also call the Forerunners.

But the Age of Reconciliation, preceding the Age of Discovery, now comes to this writer's mind, for Reconciliation was the time of the Writ of Union, and an end to the conflict between the San'Shyuum and the Sangheili. It is true, as reported in the secret writings of my ancestor the Prophet of Inner Conviction, that there was some short-lived rebellion and a violent purging that immediately followed, an event we now simply call the Rending; that a certain Sangheili faction, led by one Ussa ‘Xellus, tried to foment a resistance to the Writ and, ultimately, the Covenant. He and his followers are said to have been annihilated by a mighty and blasphemous act of mass suicide, their deliberate destruction of the planetoid they called the Refuge, which we now suspect to have been a shield world constructed by the Great Ones. This was the end of the initial Sangheili resistance—thereafter, their warlike race became the enforcers of the will of the Covenant. Here followed the beginning of the Sangheili, whom we referred to as the Elites, of the High Council of Sangheili and San'Shyuum, and the beginning of a great construction, the creation of the homeworld that is now High Charity—a Holy City free to move about in the void, a world and a power, formed around the keyship of the Great Ones and sacred land derived from Janjur Qom herself, which brings the mercy of deliverance to the converted throughout the galaxy. Thus was the Age of Reconciliation the true seed of the Age of Conversion.

The new Age was vested in the adaptation of all other sentient species that came to our attention, a conversion that came about through the domination of revelation itself and, when necessary, conquest.

Among the most difficult to convert were the formidable Mgalekgolo (also known as Hunters) from the rings of the gas giant Te, creatures formed on different principle from most, sentient worms with a collective mind capable of agglomerating small colonies into fighting beings. At long last, as the murals tell us, faced with possible extinction, they were tamed and became subjects of the Covenant.

The flying Yanme'e, simply called Drones by some, tend to a hivelike society, eusocial and separated by castes, each with its own tasks, subject to the will of a matriarchal queen. They are insectoid, but large, as are many creatures of the Covenant. They were conquered on their planet Palamok, and a convocation of Hive Queens consigned their drones into our service.

The Kig-Yar were next to be incorporated into the Covenant. These long-snouted, toothy, crested creatures are a mix of bestial and civilized; they were found on the moon Eayn, which orbits the planet Chu'ot. They are at once ferocious and cowardly, fierce and yet scatter-witted. Yet some are effective snipers, and, once drawn into the Covenant they have proven loyal, though they are quarrelsome with the Unggoy and others at times.

From Balaho came the small methane-breathing Unggoy—the Grunts of the Covenant. They are a mix of clever and ludicrous, to my eyes . . . and to my hearing. They were conquered with little resistance at first; but there was, once upon a time, an Unggoy rebellion. And sometimes they show a surprising spirit of independence. But they are among the Covenant's most devoted seekers after the Great Journey, sacrificing themselves in great numbers on the battlefield, so prolific that more seem always ready to throw themselves upon the altar of war.