Broken Circle (5 page)

Their disguises had held up: departure from the spaceport was granted. Within a few minutes they were in orbit, burning their way into the slipspace aperture that was like a glowing wound in space-time.

They passed through and into slipspace, where time is not easily reckoned. There was opportunity to rest, eat, and hear stories from ‘Crecka about the Clan Battles of Sanghelios. By degrees, Ussa increasingly came to trust the old fellow.

But still—he could be on a fool's mission. He had failed to recruit more converts, unless old ‘Quillick could be counted as such.

Perhaps this voyage was just a desperate stab in the darkness of space.

An Uncharted World

851 BCE

The Age of Reconciliation

They were in orbit over something extraordinary.

Ussa waited, his fingers hovering over the controls, ready to begin high-acceleration evasion maneuvers. He half expected defensive measures of some kind to be fired at them from the colossal sphere of silvery-gray alloy. But though there was a regular pulse of internal energy signatures from the shield world, as ‘Crecka called it, no attack was forthcoming.

“Come, let me show you the portal,” ‘Crecka told him. “It's on the farther side . . . the only one I know of.”

They accelerated into a faster orbit and homed in on the coordinates. They descended, spiraling down carefully, Ussa still wondering the whole time if this was some kind of trap—but he was far too intrigued, too caught up in a sense of inexorable destiny to turn back now.

The metallic hide of the planet loomed, details defining through thin mists of a pseudo atmosphere. Seams showed; here and there curiously shaped antennas sprouted.

Ussa ‘Xellus shivered as the
Clan's Blade
approached the rectangular object, almost flush with the curved surface, which ‘Crecka identified as the portal. Ussa felt a superstitious fear as he settled the ship into the rectangle. Its outlines seemed to grow within themselves, walls rising up around the spacecraft, rather than from inside the planet.

In a few moments, a ceiling had formed over them—and the ship's instruments soon showed pressurization and breathable air. There were no indications of dangerous microorganisms.

“Come along,” said ‘Crecka, looking almost excited. “Bring weapons—the intelligence has access to them. It may be annoyed with me. But it also may have been bluffing.”

“If it is still operating at all,” said Sooln.

“I may be along in my cycles, but not by that much,” said ‘Crecka. “I was not quite young when I found this place. But it is unbelievably ancient. You will see. How many times I have wanted to return. But I felt it unwise to come alone—and until now there was no one I trusted. And no great need. It is the cause—that is the need now . . .”

“Wisdom is the fruit of age,” Ussa said, quoting a Sangheili homily and briefly placing a hand on the elderly warrior's shoulder.

Ussa and Sooln carried plasma rifles, ‘Crecka a pistol Ussa had given him. Together they emerged from the ship's hatchway and descended the ramp to a flooring that was more than mere metal.

A door opened, as if beckoning to them. They passed through it, finding their way down a series of gently descending corridors, to a platform that overlooked an awe-inspiring sight: a world enclosed within a shell, like the tank that scientists sometimes kept small animals in, back on Sangehelios. But this “tank” was on an unthinkably gigantic scale—it could house a planetoid itself. Light shone from shafts in the ground below, and from panes in inverted structures projecting from the convex artificial ceiling; they were tapered formations like giant artificial stalactites.

Below the craggy remnants of some ancient planetoid, it bristled with plant life, gleamed with streams and waterfalls. Flying creatures he couldn't clearly distinguish flapped through roseate mists, which thickened at the distant horizon. A mechanized transport flew past, just a sort of aeronautic wagon with what looked like pieces of machinery piled in the back. A freight mover of some kind. It was there, and suddenly gone.

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.