Halo: Primordium (33 page)

The Lord of Admiral’s voice gathered certainty and strength.

“Now that the Forerunners have succumbed, either in battle or from the Shaping Sickness, they have left behind just a few confused servants—and many, many humans, awaiting a new time, a new mandate.

“And that mandate is: avenge the falen. Rise from defeat, rise from the dead!”

A great resonance hammered us with ancient instincts, reawakened emotions—and a desire to rectify ten thousand and more years of death, misery, and near extinction.

“The promise is simple,” the Lord of Admirals announced.

“Freedom. Support. Weapons unimagined in al our previous wars.

Humans will fight Forerunners again—and defeat them!
”

WHAT A RABBLE
these words were addressed to! The elders and the few young stood alike in stunned silence, staring at the ghosts, projected and contained by machines much like those that had once populated Genemender’s reserve.

We had al carried one or more of these warrior spirits; we had al become acquainted, more or less, with their natures and opinions. Now we were being asked to accept them as commanders—to folow them into battle.

My first question was, why? What value, these old ghosts, to Forerunner machines? What value could I have?

Worse, I knew that the green-eyed master of the wheel was not actualy in command—had not been in charge of the wheel for many decades. I knew, but could not act on my knowledge.

To do so would be to remember the encounter that had cost me a chunk of flesh and bone. The encounter with
the child
.

The Lord of Admirals seemed to hold the highest rank in this unnatural assembly. His ghost stepped forward and addressed me as if we were both physical.

“It’s our final chance to reclaim history,” he said. Had he been real, I think he would have tried to grasp my shoulder. As it was, his hand swept empty air. I saw in his faltering expression that he perceived himself fuly capable of reaching out and touching. . . .

And I felt pity.

For a moment, the ilusion broke.

I knew that the green-eyed machine was itself evil, and not just to humans. It had betrayed its own creators. It was in league with the Primordial. But how was that possible? In the years since the devastating test at Charum Hakkor, how could the Primordial have done so much to subvert this wheel-shaped world and its mechanical servant?

A few meters away, Riser faced off against the projection of a blocky-looking female, stout as a bul. Yprin Yprikushma, no doubt. From his wry, white-lidded expression, I could tel he was not impressed.

I always trusted Riser’s judgment.

The unreality of it al made me sick. We had been through too much to fal for more ilusions, Riser and I. We knew that before now, al Forerunner magic—al of the tricks and wonders they called
engineering
or
technology
—had been used to reduce and then destroy humans—yet we were now being asked,
commanded
, by our ancestors, these old ghosts, to believe that in this
one instance
, we would carry out the wil of a greater Forerunner machine, simply because it had gone mad and set out to destroy its masters.

My weakness almost brought me to my knees. I wobbled before the projection, holding out my hands to keep my balance. “You aren’t real,” I told the Lord of Admirals. “I wonder if you were
ever
real.”

Suddenly I could not hear what the others were saying. The air around us became tight and stil. We—the projected ghost and me

—seemed locked in a box.

“I’m as real as I have ever been,” Forthencho told me.

“Since you died?”

The air became harder and harder to breathe. The wals of the

“box” were getting misty as if from the fog of my breath. I couldn’t see the others, only this one projection, and his monitor in shadow behind him.

More tricks—more persuasion. Would I be suffocated if I did not comply?

“Why do they need us?” I asked.

“Not even a machine as powerful as the wheel’s master can do its work alone. You are alive. You can serve.”

“Humans? The last dregs of us that remain after so many Forerunner victories? We became animals. We were devolved—

and only the Librarian thought enough of us to raise us back up again!”

“It doesn’t care!”
the Lord of Admirals said. “The machine wil do everything it can to destroy Forerunners. It knows that I have fought Forerunners before.”

“And lost.”

“But also learned! I have spent my time within you going over and over old battles, studying al our past failures, and now, I have ful access to their new strategies! This wheel is but one of the weapons at our disposal—if we join.

“Out there, awaiting our commands, in many orbits around thousands of other worlds, in other star systems, are reserves of tens of thousands of ships of war—and more Halos. We wil be irresistible!”

The spirit’s enthusiasm had an acid tinge that almost made suffocation preferable to agreement. So be it, I thought. I held out my hand and then fel against the moist barrier that hemmed us in.

I seemed to see through this sham to the Captive, the Primordial itself. . . .

I was fading. Ilusion passed into ilusion—and I preferred my own.

Mongoose, the trickster, I remembered, had been responsible for creating humanity. It was Mongoose who had convinced Mud to mate with Sun and breed worms, and then teased and angered the worms until they grew legs to chase him over the grasslands.

Worms became men.

The wheel’s green-eyed master was a bit of a trickster, like Mongoose, playing jokes upon the humorless gods known as Tree and River, Rock and Cloud.

I choked out some words, I don’t remember what.

The mist and the closeness flew up and away, and al around I again saw stars—but no other people.

No other machines. The old spirit’s projected image and I were alone under the stars.

I could not help but suck in a breath as cool air swirled around me.

“I have told the great machine that you are wiling,” the Lord of Admirals said.

“But I’m not . . .
willing
!” I cried. Maybe I
had
agreed. Maybe I did not want to suffocate. Maybe I was just curious. I have always been too curious, and Riser was not here to correct me.

“Thirty others who carried warriors have chosen to join us in taking command of the wheel. Their courage reminds me of the—”

“Riser?” I interrupted.

“Very canny, that smal one,” the Lord of Admirals said. “I would have enjoyed having his kind serve under me.”

“You don’t understand him at al,” I said, voice rough. My deep unease had intensified. I did not feel at al wel.

“He wil play this game for as long as it amuses,” the Lord of Admirals said, “and for as long as he has a chance of causing Forerunners dismay and pain. He also wishes to attack the Didact personaly. This has been conveyed to me by my old opponent, Yprin.”

I knew that was a lie. In my weakness, I did not much care. I took a few stumbling steps around the platform, then straightened and focused on the red and gray world.

It seemed about to brush the sky bridge.

“We wil be stationed at key controls to help maneuver this Halo.

We have much work to do, yet even then, our chances are slim.” The Lord of Admirals seemed to be having misgivings. His hatred, he must have known, was blinding him to the strangeness of this bequest.

“So . . . do we have a deal, young human?” he asked. “For now?”

“What wil happen if we survive?”

“We wil spread out to the fleets and launch an attack against the heart of Forerunner civilization, in the Orion complex. Never in al our battles did we come within fifteen thousand light-years of that prize!”

Madness, pride, shame, the delusion of a new opportunity . . .

What ghost, I asked myself, could pass up such a thing?

“You lied to the machine,” I said. “You told it I was wiling.”

“The least I can do, young human,” the Lord of Admirals said. “I need you. And if you ever wish to go home again—you need
me
.” And why else, I asked myself—why else did the Lord of Admirals or the master of the wheel need me? One possible answer: everything here might stil center on the future actions of the Didact. I had met the Didact himself, had helped resurrect him from his Cryptum on Erde-Tyrene. I had spent many hours in his somber company. I had watched his ship dissolve and the Didact himself be captured by the forces of the Master Builder—captured and, very likely, executed.

But the Didact had also served as a template for Bornstelar.

When we parted ways, Bornstelar had been looking more and more like the old Warrior-Servant. I wondered how that had turned out. He had not seemed happy at the change. Had they taken Bornstelar aside, carved a chunk of flesh from his back, and instaled the Didact’s ghost into a machine?

Would we encounter that ghost and that machine, somewhere out there among the uncountable stars?

Surrounded by this magnificence, this power, this deception and cruelty, al I wanted was to reach back to our days on Erde-Tyrene

—to shield myself, my naïve, young self, from ancient grudges and eternal evils.

In a dream, one can never go back. It took some time for me to realize it was already too late. I can’t put into words al that I felt.

To be truthful, I no longer
feel
much of anything.

Al that I was, but for reflections in a cracked mirror, has been lost for a long, long time.

THIRTY-ONE

STANDING BEFORE THE
image of Forthencho, I knew that something inside me had also changed. I felt weaker, older—fading.

I pinched myself hard and felt almost nothing—no strength in my fingers. Very likely, we had been deceived into believing we were alone, so as not to witness the destruction of the braver individuals around us—those who refused to go along with the old ghosts and the green-eyed machine. Just another level of ilusion.

My whirling thoughts settled into immediate questions.

“Why would Forerunner machines let themselves be run by humans?” I asked. My voice sounded thin and weak.

“Maybe they can be fooled,” the Lord of Admirals said. “Some say that deep in our flesh Forerunners and humans are related.” I did not believe that, not then. “Have you received your orders directly from the machine?”

“There are many duplicates of command monitors, just as when humans fought Forerunners.”

My vision seemed to flick in and out from clarity to bright but foggy bars of light. “What convinced it to turn on its masters?” I could not stop my damned curiosity from working even if it sapped my last remaining strength.