Broken Circle (28 page)

“I speak only the words you permit me, High One,” rumbled the Jiralhanae.

“My discretion is well known to you, Your Eminence,” said Exquisite.

“Yes. One must be careful. Matters are in flux. Regret is gone . . .” Truth seemed to muse over the realization. “Quite gone . . .”

Truth, Zo noted, sounded impassive about Regret's death—and was there even a touch of glee? Had not Truth and Regret, alongside the High Prophet of Mercy, served together as the triumvirate of Hierarchs?

Despite his feelings about all that had occurred in the wake of the Fleet of Sacred Consecration's demise, Zo himself had some sadness at the loss of Regret—as the former Vice Minister of Tranquility, Regret had treated Zo well.

Perhaps G'torik had been right, and Truth had abandoned Regret as punishment.

“And who failed to protect Regret, High One?” sneered Tartarus. “Is it not clearly the Elites?”

“An Honor Guard made up of Elites, as you well know, was there to protect him. This regrettable death has opened the door for us all, however. Already the forces around the human world have been . . .
changed
; the Brutes now control those fleets, and the Elites suspect nothing at all. Their myopic focus on this newly discovered Ring has blinded them to our movements regarding the human homeworld, Earth.”

“What comes next will not have the same effect—it will open their eyes,” Exquisite pointed out.

“No matter. Our plans will be put into action, and the Jiralhanae will have their rightful place. But let us say no more here, even this place . . .”

Zo gnawed again on a bony knuckle. Did Truth suspect Zo of eavesdropping? Perhaps it hadn't gone that far. But it seemed suspicion was in the air. And if Truth acted on that suspicion, Zo might be exposed. Perhaps he might undergo torture. Certainly death.

Zo sat back, expelling a long breath. His hands were shaking on the arms of the chair and he clasped them for steadiness, as what he'd overheard now began to sink in.

The High Prophet of Truth had been highly secretive of late. And now he was discussing what sounded like a kind of decisive action with Tartarus and Exquisite Devotion. A change of the Covenant guard? Such a thing was unheard of. The Sangheili had always served as the iron fist of the Covenant; that arrangement was the very foundation of the Writ of Union. This proposed new order was clearly something Truth had not wanted the other Hierarchs to know about, nor the Council.

And now one of those Hierarchs was gone.

Zo had often observed Truth's well-veiled impatience when the other two in the triumvirate thwarted his wishes. It could be that the High Prophet of Truth reckoned the Covenant could be governed by only one Hierarch. But why now? Why at the end of all things, and the consummation of the Journey?

And whom would Truth sacrifice so that he could reach that goal?

Quite possibly, whomever he had to, and in any way he could.

The Refuge, the Ussan Colony

Primary Refuge

2552 CE

The Age of Reclamation

Bal'Tol ‘Xellus, leader of Sangheili Ussans, sat in his oval meditation chamber, gazing out through the viewport at the asteroid belt, with its dull gray metallic fragments of the ancient Ussan colony. The view was enhanced by magnification nodes impregnated in the glass—usually the asteroid belt was not dense enough to see with the naked eye. Bal'Tol watched as gigantic chunks of stone and ice slowly spun in their endless danceline, an orbital circling of the system's sun, broken moons, shattered planetoids,
fragmented comets, an unruly belt yet overall in a perfect ellipse around the sun. It signified chaos within order.

At intervals in the asteroid belt were intact sections of his colony, most of them not turning in place at all, though they followed the curving trail of the belt's orbit. All but a few were kept from spinning by stabilizers. But like the asteroids, the colony sections were part of the dance of chaos, which found unitary equanimity in orbital grace. Counting Primary and Combat Section, there were fifteen areas to the Refuge—fourteen that were intact enough to be occupied—the largest being Primary Section.

There had been only a little more than four hundred Ussans who'd come here centuries earlier; their descendants now numbered 3,210. Primary Section had almost four hundred Sangheili living there. The other sections ranged in population from one hundred to just under two hundred. The colony's sections—odd geometrical shapes formed of cuboids and rectangular segments and the occasional cone—had once been connected, unified by the stone of a planetoid and the cohesion of Forerunner engineering. The Disassembly process initiated long ago had taken everything apart—exactly as the Forerunners had hoped it would—and scattered the sections throughout the asteroid belt. The asteroids were camouflage, a hiding place from the ancient threat older than the Covenant, and later from the Covenant itself.

But to Bal'Tol, now the separated sections of colony seemed to symbolize individual Sangheili going through life in their own chaotic orbits, trying to find centeredness, their self-awareness, stability, functionality, harmony . . . orbital grace. The method was said to have come from a prisoner from a far planet who had stumbled on their colony long ago. The meditation had been handed down for numerous generations and taught to Bal'Tol by his uncle, N'Zursa ‘Xellus, the previous kaidon.

And at N'Zursa's death, Bal'Tol had become kaidon. He had taken the oath—he, too, could allow no contact with other sentient species. No others had ever found their way into the colony. If they did, they would be imprisoned or, more wisely, immediately executed.

Who knew? Perhaps those few contacts had caused the Blood Sickness. The blight had taken his Limtee. Bal'Tol himself had found her, his intended mate, dead in her sleeping chamber . . .

Bal'Tol sighed. The memory of Limtee's passing disrupted his meditation. He could now not return to an unblemished contemplative state.

Instead, he would go and consult C'tenz to see if there was a report on the ‘Greftus Faction.

If there was a rebellion, a rebirth of the Way of ‘Greftus, then Bal'Tol had another oath to fulfill. The rebellion must be ruthlessly put down.

Bal'Tol stood, stretched, and went broodingly through the door, out into the corridor. He nodded to a pair of guards, who saluted him as he passed, and then fell in behind him, as per security protocol.

As he walked to the Hall of Strategy, Bal'Tol noted a certain unevenness in the distribution of artificial gravity in this outer edge of the Primary Refuge. One had to step carefully. He must have the repair team examine the graviton generators. They did not understand the underlying principles well enough to create new ones; they were merely able to sometimes repair individual parts, and there was a diminishing store of spares, to be found in some places. Some of the Refuge sections had been deserted, and their parts could easily be cannibalized. The ‘Greftus Faction had been right about one thing: the colony was giving way to entropy, as all things must in time. Thousands of solar cycles had passed
since the Disassembly. Ussa ‘Xellus's account of it, now difficult to read due to the ancient dialect it was written in, seemed to imply that the colony's sections had once been part of a great sphere, created by the near-mythical Forerunners, who had constructed it as the last of a series of protective worlds. They had made the Refuge distinct from the others—hidden within the sphere had been a new reordering, an altered blueprint for survival, should its destruction as a sphere become necessary. But the constant gravitational stress as the sections spun through the camouflaging asteroid belt, the inner exertion of artificial gravity, the exposure of section panels to solar radiation, as well as simple alloy fatigue, had gradually weakened parts of what had once seemed almost indestructible. Without repair, the sections would fall apart, and the colony would perish.

It would seem that even the Forerunners were not infallible.

The ‘Greftus Faction, named after the long-dead rebel leader from the Fifth Section of the Refuge, ‘Insa ‘Greftus, had cried apocalypse when the decay had become evident, had declared that the Forgotten Gods, as they called them—supposed entities channeled psychically by ‘Greftus—wanted the Sangheili to depart the colony. Ancient ships still survived in the Primary Section. Why not use one to explore and find the fabled homeworld Sanghelios? The Forgotten Gods supposedly told ‘Greftus of the way back to that ancient place, which some thought of as purely mythological.

Bal'Tol's uncle N'Zursa had dismissed all ‘Greftus's claims as the ravings of a Sangheili addled with the Blood Sickness. It was known that the Blood Sick were subject to madness, to hallucinations and paranoia.

There were no Forgotten Gods, N'Zursa declared, and ‘Greftus did not know the way to Sanghelios. One day, perhaps, the path to the homeworld would be discovered—but until then, the
colony must remain intact. The Refuge must tend its farms in the eco levels; it must cleanse its atmospheric filters; it must engage in such battle competitions as were decreed in the Combat Section; it must enhance travel between the various sections of the Refuge so that proper breeding could take place. Abandoning the colony was not an option. And so declaring, N'Zursa had sent guards to seize ‘Greftus, had him ejected from an air lock into the void, in the manner of execution long favored by Ussan kaidons wishing to make an example of someone.

As punishment for your Failure of Clan Integrity, we submit you to the outer emptiness . . .

And so ‘Greftus had died, flailing for air as he floated away, in sight of all Ussans who chose to witness.

Now it might be that he, Bal'Tol, must himself submit someone into the outer emptiness. He had ordered imprisonment before; he had ordered assaults on a band of criminals. But he had never ordered a public execution via air lock. It wasn't an honorable way to die.

Passing through the plaza outside the Hall of Strategy, Bal'Tol came upon the Homage to Enduring Bias. The remains of the machine, also called the Flying Voice, had been secured in a sphere of glass, where they floated, unlit, evincing no intelligence. It had remained thus for centuries. The glass was reverently cleaned every cycle, and the repairers peered at the remains of Enduring Bias, hoping that perhaps there might be a sign of life. Because Ussa ‘Xellus, in his writings, had declared,
Though the Forerunner construct Enduring Bias has fallen silent, never assume that it will not speak again. It was damaged when the Primary Section was struck by a comet fragment, but it may be that it is slowly repairing itself inwardly. It may someday come to life to give voice once more . . .

“My Kaidon,” said C'tenz, coming from the Hall of Strategy. Bal'Tol saw the tension in C'tenz's hands—he had a way of clasping them in front of him when he was concerned about something. But C'tenz was a strong, intellectually vital Sangheili who had more responsibility than a youngling normally did. He wore ancient leather battle armor nearly everywhere, and one of the still-functioning burnblades in a scabbard on his hip. Bal'Tol knew of the whisperings that C'tenz must be his own offspring, because of the young Sangheili's quick elevation to second-in-command, but in truth, it was not so.

C'tenz glanced about and spoke in a lowered voice. “I was reluctant to interrupt your meditation but . . . I was just coming to find you. A new group of the ‘Greftus Faction has been confirmed. And some of its members seem to have passed recently into the second phase.”

Bal'Tol grunted acknowledgment. The phases of the Blood Sickness were simple. First there was a period of disorientation and malaise, easily misdiagnosed. Then the Blood Sick became querulous, paranoid, and prone to long, wildly inarticulate speeches, punctuated by howls of fury. ‘Greftus had been deep in the second phase when he had gathered a considerable following, and was just into the third, most violent phase when he was arrested—he had murdered two patrollers as he was taken prisoner.

“It's curious,” C'tenz said. “The pattern these Blood Sick fall into, when they are near one another. With everyone else, they're either quarrelsome or imperious. But with one another they seem to silently choose a leader—there are five of them, at least, who have clustered around this ‘Kinsa. That is the only name he gives, but our records suggest he is Oska ‘Meln. He claims to be sharing his body with the spirit of ‘Greftus, who advises him in all things.”

“How a rational Sangheili can believe such a thing . . .”

“Superstition is rife on the colony. And you know what Tirk says.”

“Indeed. All too well.” Tirk ‘Surb was the head of Refuge Security, a descendant of the legendary Ernicka the Scar-Maker. “He grows more conservative and backward-looking by each cycle. I suppose he asserts we have not enough religious fervor?”

“Essentially, that is his litany.”

“We certainly have more than enough religion.” All Ussans were summoned to Intonement once a section turn. “But nothing is enough for Tirk. Still, call him here and we'll investigate this ‘Kinsa. And as for the Blood Sickness, we must prune away the infection wherever we find it.”

He felt strange, as he said it.

Limtee.

“We will need to act quickly, Kaidon. We need to let people know that ‘Kinsa is no visionary—he is just a glib victim of the Sickness. What do we do with all those who fall sick?”

“We have discussed a place of isolation for the Blood Sick,” Bal'tol mused, thinking again of Limtee. “It should be attempted. Then we can redouble our efforts to find a cure.”

C'tenz gave a snort of skepticism. “Probably a hopeless effort. I'm very much afraid that the five latest of the afflicted must be put to death . . . That might quiet this lunacy.”