Halo: Contact Harvest (27 page)

Fortitude had a few candidates in mind, but none he was willing to trust with foreknowledge of their plot. Without a third, they would seem less legitimate. But the Minister had resigned himself to making his selection
after
their announcement. It would have to be a San’Shyuum with popular appeal who could help deflect accusations of premeditation and ambition. And as such he was even willing to consider the Prophet of Tolerance or the Prophetess of Obligation. There were precedents for such a holdover. But while keeping one of the current Hierarchs on their throne might allow for a smoother transition, it wasn’t an ideal long-term solution. Bitterness endured, even amongst seasoned politicians. Better to clear the boards and start fresh.

On the far side of the air lock was a door to the Dreadnought’s hangar. This giant, round portal’s overlapping shutters were irised almost completely shut, leaving just a small heptagonal passage in the center of the door. Two final Mgalekgolo guarded this choke point from a scaffold that rose from the air lock’s deck, far below. These sentries displayed the shoulder spikes of a bonded pair—a colony with such a large population that all its worms could not fit inside a single suit of armor. The spikes rattled as the divided colony communed, confirming the two Prophets’ identities and appointment. Then the pair shuffled apart with low groans—the noise of the worms’ rubbery flesh knotting and unwinding inside their armor.

The hangar beyond was an immense, triangular vault. Unlike the Dreadnought’s bleached exterior, its walls shone mirrored bronze in the light of countless holographic glyphs. These explanatory and cautionary symbols (arranged in tight, vertical lines) floated near small holes in the hangar’s angled walls. Although Fortitude knew what the holes were for, he had never actually seen them put to use.

Hovering near the holes were hundreds of Huragok. The buoyant, bulbous creatures’ tentacles looked much longer than usual. But this was because they held individual Lekgolo and were busy either stuffing the worms into the holes or pulling them out. The Minister watched as four Huragok worked to muscle a particularly stout specimen from its hole, then carry it—like a fire crew on a hose—to a barge manned by white-robed and long-haired San’Shyuum.

These ascetic priests helped the Huragok feed the Lekgolo through a cylindrical scanning unit before returning it to one of many metal basins on the barge that contained its colony. The unit retrieved data from micro-sensors inside the worm that had collected all manner of useful data during its wriggle through the Dreadnought’s otherwise inaccessible processing pathways. These sensors caused the invertebrates no discomfort. The creatures ingested and passed the tiny devices just as they did their gritty food. The priests were nonchalant as they supervised the process. But there had been a time when the Prophets looked on the Lekgolo’s eating habits with angry condemnation.

Soon after the Covenant’s founding, San’Shyuum experiments with early copies of the Dreadnought’s Luminary led them to a gas giant planet in a system near the Sangheili’s home. The San’Shyuum had hoped to find a treasure trove of relics and were disappointed when all they found were the Lekgolo, huddled in the planet’s rings. But when the Prophets realized what the intelligent worms had done, they were appalled.

The icy rocks that made up the rings were in fact fragments of some obliterated Forerunner installation that once orbited the gas giant. And the reason the rocks were no longer rich with relics was because the Lekgolo had spent millennia ingesting them—chewing them up and spitting them out—as they carved their tight and twisting burrows. The odd thing was, the Lekgolo had discerning palates. Some colonies would only ingest Forerunner alloys; others dined exclusively on rock rich in crushed and compacted circuits. And a few, very rare colonies would avoid such foreign objects altogether, carefully cutting around battered remains of relics like paleontologists would a fossil.

Of course the San’Shyuum believed any unauthorized contact with Forerunner objects was heresy, punishable by death, and ordered the Sangheili to eradicate the worms. But the Sangheili were ill-equipped to fight creatures that had no ships or soldiers to speak of and whose fortifications were the very things they were trying to save. In the end, a particularly insightful Sangheili commander—one of the species’ revered Arbiters—suggested it might be better to “tame” the Lekgolo and put their and habits to good use. As eager as they were to assert their moral authority, the Prophets begrudgingly agreed that the worms, properly trained, could be very useful in future reclamations, and they forgave the Lekgolo’s sins.

After ages of experimentation on lesser relics, the San’Shyuum had finally gotten up the nerve to attempt an unprecedented exploration of the Dreadnought. Since their departure from their homeworld (and even during the darkest days of their war with the Sangheili) they had limited their studies to the ship’s easily accessible systems. While the San’Shyuum had been desperate to explore the processing pathways in the Dreadnought’s thick hull, they were terrified they might damage something vital.

And so it was with great care that the ascetic priests had carved their first, tentative hole and slipped in a carefully chosen Lekgolo. They had waited in mortal terror for the worm to dig too deep—and more than that, for what the Dreadnought’s Oracle might say. But the Lekgolo emerged without incident, and the vessel’s most high and holy resident hadn’t said a word.

The Oracle’s silence wasn’t unusual. Fortitude had never heard of it speaking in his lifetime, nor had his father or his father before that. And when those pioneering priests had gotten no response, they gradually increased their Lekgolo probes until—as was now clearly the case—the once frightful process had become mundane. Following an angled piece of scaffolding to the very top of the hangar, the Minister watched as the San’Shyuum priests on the barge signed a series of orders to the waiting Huragok, and all parties made ready for the next retrieval.

High above the hangar floor was a dark and silent abbey, large enough to accommodate the entire Covenant High Council, more than two hundred Sangheili and San’Shyuum. But as Fortitude and Tranquility rose through a perfectly round hole in the abbey’s floor, they saw the room had only one occupant: the leader of the ascetic priests, the Philologist San’Shyuum.

Like the cleric that provided Fortitude’s remedies, the Philologist’s humble chair was made of stone not metal. His robes were so tattered they looked like strips of shredded cloth wrapped around his withered frame. The once-white garments were now so dirty they were actually a few shades darker than the Philologist’s ashen flesh. His eyelashes were long and gray, and the wisps of hair on his bowed neck were so long they draped almost to his knees.

“We have not met, I think,” the ancient San’Shyuum croaked as Fortitude’s and Tranquility’s chairs eased to a stop behind him. He was engrossed in a tattered scroll and did not turn to greet them.

“Once,” Fortitude replied. “But the gathering was large and long ago.”

“How rude of me to forget.”

“Not at all. I am Fortitude, and this is the Vice Minister of Tranquility.”

The younger San’Shyuum dipped his chair forward in a bow. But, as promised, he did not speak.

“An honor to have met you.” Rolling the scroll tight in his arthritic hands, the Philologist turned. For a moment he simply stared at his guests with his large and milky eyes. “What favor do you seek?”

The Philologist wasn’t feigning ignorance. For secrecy’s sake, Fortitude hadn’t told the priest his purpose, knowing that his Ministerial rank was sufficient to gain an audience. But while the Philologist’s words were cordial, their meaning had been clear:
State your business and let’s get on with it. I have much more important work to do.

Fortitude was happy to oblige.

“Confirmation,” the Minister said, keying one of his chair’s holo-switches. A wafer of circuitry not much bigger than one of his fingernails poked up beside the switch. “And a blessing.” He pulled the wafer free and extended it to the Philologist.

“Two favors then.” The Philologist smiled, exposing gums split with lines of serrated bone. He moved his stone chair forward and took the wafer. “This must be very important.”

Fortitude managed a friendly grimace. “One of the Vice Minister’s ships has discovered a reliquary of quite impressive size.”

“Ah,” the Philologist said, squinting one eye to better scrutinize the wafer.

“And if the Luminations are to be believed,” Fortitude continued, “an
Oracle
as well.”

The Philologist’s eyes widened. “An Oracle, you say?”

Fortitude nodded. “Truly shocking and wondrous news.”

With more speed than the Minister would have guessed, the Philologist rotated his chair and floated to a phalanx of shadowed machinery in the center of the room. As he drew close, holographies flicked on high above, revealing a cluster of onyx obelisks—powerful processing towers linked together—and before these: the Dreadnought’s Oracle.

Even though Fortitude had seen many representations of the holy object, it was smaller than he had expected. Locked inside an armature that kept it head-height above the floor, the Oracle was tethered to the obelisks with strands of neatly plaited wire. These circuits connected to small, golden pads affixed to the Oracle’s casing: a teardrop of silver alloy not much longer than the Minister’s neck.

The casing’s tapered end faced the obelisks. Its round end angled toward the floor and held a dark glass lens. There was a gap around the lens and the casing, and through this, Fortitude could see pinpoints of light—circuits running at low power. These were the Oracle’s only signs of life.

“This is all the data?” the Philologist asked, slotting the wafer into one of the obelisks.

“From the ship’s Luminary as well as its sensors.” Fortitude edged closer to the Oracle. For some reason, he was overwhelmed with a desire to reach up and touch it. As old as the object was, its casing was absolutely smooth—had no dents or scratches. Fortitude gazed deep into the Oracle’s lens. “There are reports of a new species on the planet that holds the relics, but they appear to be primitives—a tier-four species. I don’t expect they shall—”

Suddenly, the Oracle’s circuits blazed. The lens refracted the light, sending forth a blinding beam.
Not a lens.
Fortitude gasped.
An eye!
He raised a sleeve before his face as the Oracle tilted toward him in its armature.

< FOR EONS I HAVE WATCHED > The Oracle’s deep voice reverberated inside its casing. Its eye-beam flickered with the cadence of its words as it pronounced in the San’Shyuum tongue. < LISTENED TO YOU MISINTERPRET >

Hearing the Oracle speak was, for any faithful member of the Covenant, like listening to the Forerunners’ own voice. Fortitude was appropriately humbled, but not just because the Oracle had finally spoken after Ages of silence. In truth, he was just as surprised to learn that the Philologist was not (as he had always suspected) an utter fraud.

Fortitude had made this appointment for formality’s sake. Luminations presented as evidence before the High Council required the Oracle’s blessing, which for Ages had meant convincing the current Philologist to affirm on its behalf. But these holy hermits were just as political as any other powerful San’Shyuum—equally susceptible to bribes and blackmail. Fortitude had expected he would have to make some sort of “donation” to the Philologist (a small share of the reliquary, perhaps) in order to get the blessing he required.

But if the old charlatan is putting me on,
Fortitude watched as the Philologist stepped from his chair and dropped feebly to his knees before the Oracle,
he’s certainly giving it his all.

“Blessed Herald of the Journey!” the Philologist wailed, neck low and arms spread wide. “Tell us the error of our ways!”

The Oracle’s eye dimmed. For a moment it looked as though it might resume its long silence. But then it blazed anew, projecting a hologram of the reclamation glyph recorded by
Rapid Conversion
’s Luminary.

< THIS IS NOT RECLAMATION > the Oracle boomed. < THIS IS RECLAIMER >

Slowly the glyph turned upside down, and its central shapes—the concentric circles, one low inside the other, connected by a thin line—took on a different aspect. The shapes’

previous arrangement had resembled the pendulum of a clock. Inverted, the glyph now looked like a creature with two curved arms locked above its head. The glyph shrunk in size as the hologram zoomed out to show the entire alien world, covered with thousands of these newly oriented Luminations.

< AND THOSE IT REPRESENTS ARE MY MAKERS >

Now it was Fortitude’s turn to feel weak in the knees. He grasped the arms of his throne and tried to come to terms with an impossible revelation: each glyph represented a Reclaimer, not a relic, and each Reclaimer was one of the planet’s aliens—which could only mean one thing.

“The Forerunners,” the Minister whispered. “Some were left behind.”

“Impossible!” Tranquility spat, no longer able to keep his peace. “Heresy!”

“From an Oracle?”

“From this
meddler
!” Tranquility leveled a finger at the Philologist. “Who knows what the old fool has done to this divine machinery? The perversions he’s accomplished with all his worms and sacks!”