Broken Circle (39 page)

He came out of the blood cloud, straightening up in midair, still floating with momentum.

Perhaps now is the time to get to C'tenz, set him free . . .

Blood and struggling fighters blocked his view of C'tenz
. Find him!

Then Bal'tol saw V'urm coming toward him, one mandible half broken off, fresh wounds making his face almost unrecognizable. Bal'Tol could only see that one eye glaring out of a mask of purple gore.

Beyond him floated the body of Z'nick.

V'urm was flying at Bal'Tol head-on, body stretched out behind him, quartermoon blade sweeping up, roaring out a battle cry: “Death to the false kaidon! Long live ‘Kinsa!”

Bal'Tol swam in the air to one side, brought his knees up, and kicked at V'urm.

V'urm grabbed at the kicking foot and used it to pull Bal'Tol close. “An amateur's move!” he sneered. He swung his blade at Bal'Tol's neck. The kaidon writhed back, so the quartermoon
struck a glancing blow but rang resoundingly on Bal'Tol's helmet. A spike of pain lanced through his skull. Anomalous lights danced in Bal'Tol's eyes, nausea swept through him, and his hearing seemed to twist itself in a knot of unintelligibility. He struggled to get into a fighting position, to strike his enemy with his cudgel, but V'urm was positioned over Bal'Tol, quartermoon blade set to rip through the kaidon's neck. V'urm leered in triumph.

A bolt of red light from somewhere behind Bal'Tol seared into V'urm's face, and instantly charred it to a crisp.

The Refuge, the Ussan Colony

Combat Section

2553 CE

The Age of Reclamation

A
hole as large as Bal'Tol's hand was burned through V'urm's face—a tunnel of blackened flesh, right through the middle of his head and out the other side.

The dead floatfighter then drifted by, entering a cloud of blood, and seemed to turn languidly in it, as if bathing.

I'm having strange thoughts.
And then Bal'Tol considered, more to the point:
Who killed V'urm, and how did they do it?

“Greetings, Kaidon of the Refuge,” said a lilting voice, vaguely male in tone.

He felt himself grasped by invisible hands—a tugfield of some kind, turning him around. He saw that the other surviving fighters were all pushed back against the walls. Gawking, staring at the thing that held Bal'Tol in place.

The legendary Enduring Bias was hovering before Bal'Tol, almost in reach, glass lenses glowing, whirring with machine health. The AI was in perfect control of its position, seeming at ease in zero gravity.

“Am I dreaming?” Bal'Tol wondered aloud.

“As to that, I cannot testify,” said Enduring Bias. “You were struck a good blow on the head. Your helmet was damaged. Thus you could be concussed, and subject to hallucinations from brain injury. However, I can attest that I am quite objectively real.”

“You are truly here?”

“Yes. I am restored and fully functional. More than once I requested that Sooln acquire a Huragok. But she was never successful. Then I suffered damage when we were struck by the comet fragment, and for centuries, I was quiescent. I was sometimes able to listen, as much time passed. Now the Huragok has come at last, and I can proceed with my duties once more. I am frankly grateful to the visitors from Sanghelios and High Charity.”

“Sanghelios . . . It exists? It is real?” Bal'Tol felt queasy, and not quite himself. The whirling blood, the bodies, all seemed to blur together.

“Yes. I have never been to Sanghelios, but I think we can reasonably infer that it is objectively real. High Charity is real, or at least was real according to their testimony.”

“High Charity? I don't know . . . that place . . .” The room was swirling around him. He blinked hard and tried to focus. The swirling receded. And then he heard a shout of warning. Was that Xelq's voice? Bal'Tol looked around—and saw that ‘Kinsa was aiming his mec-missiler, and from not far away. He was aiming it not at the kaidon, but at Enduring Bias.

“No!” Bal'Tol shouted. “ ‘Kinsa, don't! He is from the gods! It is—”

The bolt flew directly at Enduring Bias, and deflected in midair. The crude missile snapped, and its pieces spun away.

Then a bolt of burning red light jetted out from Enduring Bias, and struck ‘Kinsa in the chest, burning its way through his hearts.

‘Kinsa went limp and drifted off, trailing smoke and blood.

He looked for C'tenz, and the priest who'd guarded him. The priest had fled—but someone was with C'tenz.
Hard to see . . . V'ornik!

Yes. V'ornik was there, floating over to C'tenz, cutting him loose.

“C'tenz . . .” Bal'Tol muttered.

“My scan suggests the one identified as C'tenz will need medical attention,” Enduring Bias remarked. “He must be attended to immediately. And so must you. Please come with me.” Bal'Tol found himself towed gently through the air. “You have two very capable clanfellows in Xelq and V'ornik, Kaidon,” Enduring Bias went on as he flew ahead, Bal'Tol behind him with a tug field. “They cooperated when there was no logical alternative. That is precisely when one should engage in such a risk. Xelq, on V'ornik's advice, allowed the San'Shyuum to enter—so interesting to meet him!—and three Sangheili, and the Huragok, from the outworld vessel, and it has been delightful to engage the services of the Huragok. So very talented. A beautifully bioengineered creature. It quickly restored me to working order. I knew Ussa ‘Xellus quite well, you know, and I am fairly certain of what he would want me to do now . . .”

“Ussa ‘Xellus . . .”

“Yes. I understand he is your ancestor. I am quite interested in learning the niceties of culture here. I have listened and heard a great deal, but I have many questions.”

They had reached the hatch to exit the floatfight chamber, and Bal'Tol saw someone blocking the way. ‘Kinsa's priest.

But the priest abruptly stripped off his cuirass, threw it aside, and knelt—that is, he formed his body in a kneeling position, floating that way in zero gravity. “O messenger of Forerunner Sun
and Moon! O Flying Voice! How many times did I walk beside your preserved form, supposing it an empty shell, not knowing you were but biding your time! I doubted and followed ‘Kinsa! Forgive me, O messenger of the gods! I cry out in contrition!”

“Certainly,” said Enduring Bias blithely. “You are quite forgiven, and you are thoroughly redeemed, if the kaidon wills it. Now, please move aside. I wish to get the kaidon to a place of medical assistance.”

The Refuge, the Ussan Colony

Section Five

2553 CE

The Age of Reclamation

They were in a decrepit but operational section-to-section shuttle, Zo Resken gazing out the front windows, as the craft silently approached the air lock. G'torik and Tul were back on the passenger deck with their armed escort, the Huragok, and amazingly, an Oracle, hailed as Enduring Bias.

Xelq was piloting, his motions smooth, in the seat to Zo's left. He glanced at Zo—his eyes lingered on what was, to him, an alien form. “Zo Resken, I'm concerned that even Enduring Bias cannot find a way into Section Five.”

Infected by Xelq's skepticism, Zo, too, doubted that the Oracle could relax the repellent shield and open the air lock to Section Five.

But gliding up to join them, Enduring Bias said, “I am integrated into the programming of this colony, even in its present form. Every system has a connected workaround, which I myself designed, that I can now implement. For example . . .”

The flickering shield over the air lock vanished; the doors unsealed and opened.

Muttering unintelligibly, but with a tone of wonder, Xelq flew the small craft neatly into its hangar. The doors closed behind them; the hangar repressurized.

“So what now?” Zo asked. “Isn't it likely there are still these rebels you speak of, even with their leader dead? That some won't want to give up the territory they've seized? I can assure you, there will be resistance.”

“Yes, that is likely,” said Xelq. “And there is some danger from the Blood Sick. But . . . we will send our patrollers out first, and the god messenger. We shall keep the Huragok in the shuttle until needed—why expose something so valuable to enemy fire?”

Something so valuable. What an understatement,
Zo thought.

Enduring Bias was priceless—a living relic of the Forerunners. Who knew what secrets it nursed within its memory banks?

And the colony itself! Each section was a magnificent Forerunner artifact. Yes, it was timeworn, and blotted by use. The air was musky and coarse. The walls were often dingy. But within those scarred and smudged walls lay the intact submolecular machinations of the Forerunners. Doubtless there were numerous functions the Ussans knew nothing about—power and entelechy, energy and possibility secreted away, unused but intact, within those panels.

In many places, Zo thought, the Sangheili's own innovations were a kind of technological crust over the Forerunners' design—the control center with its monitors, the pressure suits, the eco-level agricultural systems, were all added on by the Ussans. But even the Ussans' humble innovation was fascinating, tantalizing to Zo's historian soul. This new, peculiar Sangheili subculture could generate a hundred scholarly treatises.

What would Zo's ancestor, the Prophet of Inner Conviction,
think, if he could have seen all this? He would likely rejoice—there were lifetimes of study to be had here. And Zo Resken had only one lifetime.

If only he had another San'Shyuum to share it with, children to pass it all on to. But he was alone.

The thought sent a pang through him, and he forced himself to focus on the problem at hand. They had to enter this section safely, put down any remaining resistance . . . and try to save this dying colony any way they could.

Minutes later—led by eight heavily armed patrollers, and Enduring Bias—Zo, G'torik, Tul, and Xelq crossed the open space of the small hangar and passed through two doors. There were only four rocket launchers still working in the entire colony. They were normally kept locked in a small armory, rarely ever opened. Bal'Tol had given permission for two launchers to be passed out, with nine rounds each. There were only known to be thirty shells left in all of the Refuge. Most Ussans had never seen these weapons.

The two armed Sangheili patrollers then entered the main corridor ahead of the Ussan column, and brought the launchers into play as mec-missiler bolts flew at them from recessed doorways—the missiles were burned away in midair by Enduring Bias.

Several irregular pulses missed the Ussans, fired from a rickety, antiquated plasma rifle.

The patrollers, eager to use their newfound weapons, fired back at the doorways with rocket launchers. Twin fireballs suddenly appeared and expanded, startling the patrollers themselves. The enemy was flung burning through the air, dead before falling to the deck.

The column, with Zo, G'torik, and Tul at the rear, continued down the corridor, picking their way over smoking corpses.

Living history,
Zo thought.
I am a vector of history here, large and small. It is unsettling, exhilarating, horrifying all at once.

“Are we making a record of what is happening here?” Zo asked, looking up at Enduring Bias.

“Yes, I am recording all that happens here,” said Enduring Bias. “As per instructions, I am transmitting it via the devices the colonists refer to as ‘godminds,' sending the visual feed to all the colony spaces where living beings are found. They are now witnessing what happens as we proceed, so that they may modify their behavior accordingly.”

They reached the plaza outside the Hall of Godminds and entered the sculpture garden. Zo, for his part, was noticing the smell. The colony's air had seemed rank to him, from the moment he'd set foot in it. It was particularly bad here. The reek of unwashed clothing and even raw sewage came from the clotted corners of the room. Scrawled on the walls were writings, which Zo could not read. The florid red lettering suggested angry denunciation.

Some of the sculptures had been knocked down, too, he saw. A pity—he would have enjoyed assessing their cultural history.

“What has happened here?” asked Enduring Bias. It hovered over a pile of rubble, on which there were two broken heads shaped from some dark synthetic material. The heads had taken a beating, but the Bias recognized them. “Why, that was an image of Ussa ‘Xellus, and his spouse, Sooln ‘Xellus. Someone has vandalized their images! Why, I wonder . . .”

“Ussa ‘Xellus was a symbol of the ‘Xellus clan,” Zo said. “Bal'Tol is of that clan. So Ussa's images were purged by the enemies of his clan. That, anyway, is my surmise.”