Halo: Hunters in the Dark E-Book

DAVID PETER

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

It is 2555, more than two years after the Master Chief went missing-in-action following a decisive conflict on the massive, extragalactic Forerunner construct known as the Ark as part of the final chapter in humanity's bloody thirty-year struggle against the overwhelming forces of the Covenant. When a startling scientific discovery is made,a hastily formed coalition of humans and Elites embark on a covert mission back to the Ark to save the entire galaxy.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

March 2555

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Acknowledgments

About the Author

DON’T MISS THESE OTHER THRILLING NOVELS IN THE WORLDS OF

New Blood

Matt Forbeck

Broken Circle

John Shirley

THE KILO-FIVE TRILOGY

Karen Traviss

Glasslands

The Thursday War

Mortal Dictata

THE FORERUNNER SAGA

Greg Bear

Cryptum

Primordium

Silentium

Evolutions: Essential Tales of the Halo Universe (anthology)

The Cole Protocol

Tobias S. Buckell

Contact Harvest

Joseph Staten

Ghosts of Onyx

Eric Nylund

First Strike

Eric Nylund

The Flood

William C. Dietz

The Fall of Reach

Eric Nylund

Halo: Hunters in the Dark

Print edition ISBN: 9781785650192

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785650208

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: June 2015 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Microsoft, 343 Industries, the 343 Industries logo, Halo, and the Halo logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Interior design by Leydiana Rodríguez

Cover design by Alan Dingman

Cover art by Kory Hubbell

Philologists, who chase

A panting syllable through time and space, Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark

To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah’s ark.

—WILLIAM COWPER

I’m going to die here. This is it. I’m going to die.

The thought crawled through Broadside One’s mind and, unlike the previous times when it had done so, he made no effort to reject it. This was no longer pessimism seeding itself into his brain and threatening the mission.

The mission was over.

He was over.

How the hell could this have happened? How could it have all gone so horribly wrong? This was supposed to be a routine expedition, purely exploration. They had had no intention of military action; this was strictly an asset-recovery operation.

But these creatures didn’t know that. Of course they didn’t. Nor did they care.

He could feel his lungs filling with blood, which was impressive because that was the only thing he could sense at the moment. The rest of his body was torn and shredded. He supposed that was a good thing. Obviously his brain was shutting down as a means of self-preservation, because if he were actually capable of experiencing all the pain that would be slamming through him right now, he likely would have been driven insane.

The squad leader had managed to find refuge, whereas the rest of his team, code-named Broadside, had not. He felt immensely guilty about that. He was the team leader, after all. If they were inevitably going to be wiped out, one would think that the squad leader would be the first one to go, not the last.

He lay in his unexpected shelter—the small cave he’d discovered while running for his life.

Because you’re a coward.

He knew this was the truth. Those large, white-furred beasts had come from everywhere. Their approach had not been detected until the last moment because their natural camouflage enabled them to blend in with the damn blizzard that had suddenly rolled over his team as they’d been trying to make their way across the Ark installation’s surface. They’d scarcely been able to see a meter in front of them, and they had not known of their certain doom until it was too late.

Too late.

Broadside One wasn’t even sure how he was still alive. The beasts had torn into him with the same enthusiasm as they’d gutted the rest of his crew. His skin had been shredded under their teeth and claws, and he had felt bones break as powerful jaws clamped down on him. One of them had asserted itself and dragged him away while his team was being massacred. It had also been caught completely by surprise when he had pulled out the small firearm that his brother had given him years earlier during the Covenant War, the one that he kept secreted in a holster on his thigh. He was fortunate enough to blow the creature’s brains out while its mouth was around his arm. Then the parts of him that were left (that’s how he was thinking of himself now) were able to find a cave that was half-buried in the falling snow, and he’d crawled inside.

And now he was going to die.

His communications unit had partially stopped working. He wasn’t able to call for help anymore. That time had long since come and gone. He could, however, hear everything coming across the local-comm band that was happening to the other personnel. Broadside was only one squad of many—RCTs, or remote contact teams—incredibly skilled, high-risk combat groups designed to be deployed in potentially hazardous and hostile contexts. Despite this fact, they were all encountering the same fate as his team did—in different sections of the Ark, but all of them under attack.

It was as if the creatures that resided upon the massive Forerunner outpost had united in their determination to destroy the expedition.

They have.

The strange voice rang in his head, and he was convinced for a moment that he was delusional. Where did that come from? Maybe, as his body was shutting down, his head was splitting and causing him to lose touch with reality. Which was not necessarily a bad thing, considering how little reality had to offer him just then.

He tried to move his one intact arm to punch his comm unit, even though he knew that he wouldn’t get anyone. Despite all the damage that had been done to him, despite the fact that his mind was closing up shop and he was hallucinating, he still felt the need to try to reach Rubicon and make a final report. Perhaps just to warn them.

The Rubicon is gone. It has entered an area that you call slipspace and will likely never be seen again.

“What the hell …?” he managed to whisper, except that wasn’t really what he said, as his lungs were too full of blood for him to be able to produce actual words. What he said instead was “Wuchel?”

But the voice spoke to him just the same. You heard me correctly. Your ship is gone. Your allies are gone. Everything you’ve ever cared about is now gone. You are alone, human. But believe it or not, I can empathize with your current plight. Which is interesting, considering the unlikelihood of such a thing, given my protocol. Yet here we both are.

The squad leader tried to speak once more, but the voice that seemed to be in his mind cut him off. Please stop doing that. Even one of your own people would not comprehend what you are saying, and you no longer need to speak in order to communicate. I can decipher the electrical signals surging in the parts of your mind that still function.

Who are you?

I am the one who is going to save you. Would you like to be saved?

Yes. But … why would you save me?

Because I don’t have one of you. Because you might be useful. Because I am alone here, and I require your assistance. Simply surrender yourself to me and all will be well.

There was something about the way the voice had spoken to him, the way it had said surrender yourself that set up an alarm of warning in Broadside One’s head. Ultimately, though, he decided it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if there was really something talking to him in his head. This was just a last hurrah from a brain that was in the process of turning off all the lights before checking out. He was about to die in this godforsaken cave, and this was simply his mind’s equivalent of finding a way to ease him down the road from which no one ever returned.

Okay, I surrender, he thought.

Good. A wise decision. Let us get started, then.

My name is Luther Mann, and my earliest memory is from when I was … I don’t know … four years old. Maybe four and a half.

We were running.

The “we” in this particular instance were my parents. My father was a scientist, and my mother a doctor. I don’t even remember where we were running from. It was the city in which we had been living, I remember that much. My parents told me the name once, but only once, because they don’t like thinking about it and the one time they discussed it, they were both pretty much three sheets to the wind, celebrating their anniversary by drinking too much. Which was, I have to admit, something of a regular endeavor when I was growing up. Usually they managed to keep it behind closed doors or after my bedtime, but every once in a great while, they would slip up. The alcohol would flow freely, and they would become well and truly hammered. Seeing this at a young age, it wound up driving me into a perpetual state of sobriety. I don’t drink to this day because I have seen what can happen to the human mind when it loses control, and I have no desire to risk falling into that hole.

But one of those few times when I saw them drinking, they became expansive and actually talked about the day from my earliest memory. Flouting the usual cliché archetypes, it was my father who became overly emotional. He spoke of the desperate need to get off the planet, and about how he managed to talk his way onto one of the fleeing spaceships. Part of the time he attributed it to his silver tongue, and another part he admitted to bribing the right individuals, but however he managed to accomplish it, he got us off-world. As he spoke, tears welled up in his eyes and, before he could control it, were cascading down his face.

Mother, she remained mostly calm. She corrected a few details here and there in my father’s retelling but otherwise didn’t react at all. She simply stared off into space, as if she were seeing it all happening again, and, apparently having no idea what to do, just did nothing.

I’m not sure how we managed to learn that the Covenant was coming. They excelled at sneaking up on worlds and glassing them into nonexistence without letting anyone know that their forces were on the way. But somehow someone on our world managed to get advance word, or at least enough notice for us and a few thousand others to clear out. Unfortunately, there were millions on the planet’s surface, so a lot of people died.

A lot.

As a child, I didn’t care about that, however. Death and life, evil and good … these were all abstract concepts. I didn’t understand the notion that if we were still on the surface of the world, we would be dying, too. I didn’t know what that was.

All I could see from our escape vessel as it hurtled skyward were the plasma blasts descending from the Covenant warships. The planet’s name was Verent, and they hammered away at its surface.

As we made our way to safety, the Covenant appeared to take note of the fleeing vessels. They seemed to decide to use us for target practice, unleashing a barrage of blasts upon us. I watched out the window in horror as I saw other vessels being blown to shreds. In my childish mind I could imagine Covenant officers or soldiers or whatever snickering to themselves.

Whoever was piloting maneuvered the vessel with what I now know was astounding dexterity. He flew us between the blasts, and sometimes he would spiral so that it seemed as if we had been hit. He put distance between us and Verent as quickly as possible.

And suddenly there was a Covenant ship squarely in front of us. We were looking straight down the weapon barrel, and I had never been that close to death in my young life. We all braced ourselves, waiting for the blast that would rip our ship apart.

It never happened.

I never understood why. But for some reason, the Covenant vessel didn’t destroy us. It ignored us as we piloted swiftly away. Every adult in our ship stared out at the Covenant ship, anticipating our destruction.

It never came.

And to this day, I have absolutely no clue why. I know that the Covenant’s determination was to annihilate every human being in existence, and yet for some reason, on this particular day, they did not seem the least bit interested in our ship. The only explanation I can imagine was that they wanted us to escape, in order to spread the word of how they so easily decimated our world. What good is there in being a destructive force if no one is alive to let everyone else know of it?

The Covenant’s campaign against humanity was fought on a number of levels, including that of public relations. So I suppose, from their point of view, making sure that some survived to share with others the tales of the Covenant’s power was an obvious aspect of military procedure.

That was the very beginning of my fascination with the Covenant. That moment, when they spared us for no good reason.

I was on a seat near a porthole, gazing through it in wonderment. The Covenant vessels unleashed a steady stream upon my world, and I watched as it went up in flames. We were of sufficient distance that it was scarcely visible as anything except patches of fiery color. The actual glassing effect that would consume the planet would take several days to form, and it would not cover its entirety; just sections of it. Presumably the sections where humans had resided.

As I mentioned, I was unaware of the reality of what I was regarding. I was also oblivious to the fact that the adults around me were no doubt in agony as they watched their home being obliterated, raging over their helplessness in the face of the alien incursion.

And me …

I watched the planet’s surface be expunged in a series of incandescent blasts, and then stared at the mighty vessels that were inflicting the damage.

“Pretty,” I whispered.

Because to me, that’s exactly what it was. The amazingly powerful ships were unleashing their astounding energy upon Verent. To a child, of course it was pretty. Beautiful, even. At that moment, I became not afraid of the Covenant, but instead seduced by the purity and grandeur of their power.

To say the least, my parents did not agree.

“How can you say it’s pretty?!” my mother screamed at me. This from a woman who had never so much as raised her voice to me my entire life. I tried to explain, but had no words with which to do so. Ultimately it didn’t matter, for she did not provide me the opportunity. Instead she slapped me so hard that she knocked me off the chair upon which I was perched.

I fell backward, slamming my elbows on the deck, and the jolt sent pain ripping through my arms. “I’m sorry!” I managed to say, or perhaps the more childish “I sowwy,” or maybe I didn’t say anything at all. Perhaps I simply blathered uncomprehendingly, trying to understand what in God’s name set my mother off.

She then kicked at me. I don’t think she was actually trying to kick me, because I was an easy target and she would have had no trouble delivering several deep blows to my stomach and ribs. Instead her foot swept wide and simply grazed my side. Nevertheless, I cried out—not from the impact, but from the fact that I had so enraged my mother that she was attempting to punish me for it.

And then my father was there. I don’t know if he actually heard what I’d said. He grabbed at my mother, snagging her arms, dragging her back and away from me, shouting her name, begging her to stop. It took long moments for her to calm down. I was curled in a ball, my arms covering my head to protect myself as best I could. Later, a doctor would look me over, and the total damage would be a bruised rib and a scrape just above my right ear. But I didn’t know any of that at the time.

Meanwhile, my mother was berating my father over what I had said. How dare I? How dare I say that such devastating and destructive things were “pretty”? How could I possibly do that? My father kept assuring her that I was just a child, that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that she should pull herself together. Someone—I don’t know who—eventually took pity on me and picked me up and brought me over to a chair, easing me into it. I wasn’t openly crying at that point, but simply sniffling into my hands. What seemed an eternity later, but was probably only a minute or so, my father came over to me. He embraced me and spoke soothingly and told me that I shouldn’t let my mother being upset bother me. That she was simply devastated by what had happened to our home and wasn’t thinking clearly.

I asked what had happened. He told me that the aliens called the Covenant had destroyed everything we held dear. I asked why. He said he didn’t know.

I was quiet for a long moment, and then I asked why it was so pretty then, their act of destruction.

He said he didn’t know. That sometimes there was beauty in the strangest places, if you just knew where to look for it. Which, he added, I obviously did.

And from that moment on, I became obsessed with the Covenant.

On some level, I knew that they were the enemy. I knew I should hate them. I should revile them.

Instead, all I could do was study them.

They became my personal bête noire. They may have been black beasts, but I still found an elegance, an allurement in them and in their weaponry. And not for one minute did I believe that they would wind up wiping out humanity.

My mother no longer had any taste for living on other colony worlds. She convinced my father to relocate us back to Earth, in London, and that was where I enrolled in school. We lived in a relatively small house, and my parents got on each other’s nerves with distressing frequency. I would do my best to ignore it, and it wasn’t all that difficult. I would sit in my room studying everything I could find on the Covenant and so became quite accustomed to screening out their arguments.

I actually got in trouble at school as I got older, because I would get into arguments with other kids about it. I got beaten up quite a few times and picked up the nickname “alien lover” because I always maintained that eventually peace would be reached. That we humans and the Covenant would find a way to work out our differences and that the war would come to a conciliatory conclusion. Still not sure exactly why I clung to that hope, but I did.

None of my classmates ever believed me.

My parents got called into school countless times as the administrators tried to mediate.

Interestingly, the more often my parents were summoned into conferences, the more strident my mother became in my defense. I was somewhat amazed to hear of it, as she would defend my every word, even though I had trouble comprehending that she herself believed it. She might have disagreed with the sentiment, but she fought furiously for my right to voice it.

Slowly, it seemed that she was turning back into herself, at least, the way I remember her before Verent’s fall.

I was suspicious of her at first. And then eventually she pulled me from the school and insisted that she would teach me at home.

I didn’t realize that she was so strong as a teacher, but she truly was. Every morning we would sit down with various texts and she would teach me about everything—mathematics, the sciences, history …

Everything except about the Covenant. It was established early on that I was not to discuss them, and I was willing to accept that condition. Because I loved my mother. I did. I was grateful for the fact that she was appearing to come out of her shell. That was all that mattered to me. So I kept my peculiar interest in the Covenant to myself and listened to my mother’s lessons.

It made me feel so good about myself. I felt as if my attention to her lessons and my dedication to doing things the way she wanted them was helping restore her to the woman she had once been.

I even said as much to my father. He didn’t react other than to nod.

I didn’t care.

I loved my mother so much, and I was grateful that she had come back to me.

On my fifteenth birthday, I walked into our teaching room and found her body hanging by the neck, strapped by a belt to an overhead beam.

There was a note next to her that read “I can’t pretend anymore.” That was all.

I screamed for my father and he came and cut her down, saying absolutely nothing as he did so. I stood there with tears pouring down my face and I kept asking why, why had she done it.

“Her soul died on Verent. It just took her body a while to catch up.” And that was the only thing he ever said to me about her suicide.

What other choice did I have except to return to school and say nothing about the Covenant or what had happened to my mother? I refused to be drawn into conversations about it.

And eventually I turned out to be right about the Covenant anyway—humanity and the alien invaders settled their differences. Well, sort of. The saurian Elites left the Covenant because their Prophet leaders had lied to them all and had ultimately turned against them. Some of the Elites then allied with the humans and fought against what was left of the Covenant as part of a massive civil war that spilled over onto Earth, and the Covenant was eventually decimated. The enemy of your enemy becomes your friend.

Part of me wished that I was still young and back in school when that happened. I would have loved to see the expressions on the faces of my classmates, those sons of bitches, when knowledge of the peace accord went public. But I had long since graduated by that time. Instead I was well into my planned field of study.

The only real result of the peace accord was that it enabled me to explore the remaining things that I truly felt were worth my time.

The Covenant … as well as the Forerunners, the ancient, powerful civilization that disappeared long ago, yet who were ultimately responsible for spawning humanity’s greatest of enemies.

And last but certainly not least, the centerpiece of the Forerunners’ awe-inspiring technology … whose relatively recent discovery has led alien races and good men and women to fight over and die for.

Halo.

MARCH 2555

CHAPTER 1

Luther Mann’s dreams were entrenched in that time when he had been a child, fleeing for his life from the only world he had known. He remembered his mother shouting at him and hurting him. His eventual reconciliation with his mother would run through his mind, only to be annihilated by her suicide.

It wasn’t your fault that she did that went through his head, but even as a grown-up, he didn’t entirely believe that. To this day, so many years after her lifeless body had been discovered, he still told himself that he was somehow, in some way, responsible. That maybe if he had done more, been cleverer, a better son, a better man …

… maybe she would have found something to live for.

When he awoke, his body was shaking and covered in sweat. He sat up, rubbing his face and moaning softly. It had been a long while since he had dreamt of her, and he certainly hadn’t missed it.

Luther could not recall the last time he slept in a normal room.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t own one. He had perfectly vivid memories of his own rather sedate apartment. Actually, in retrospect, sedate might not have been the proper word to describe his facilities. His apartment back on Earth, situated on the third floor of an unremarkable building in an equally unremarkable section of Seattle, had the bare minimum of accoutrements that one would expect for a place that someone was actually living in. That was because Luther spent, at most, a grand total of eight weeks there during any given year.

The rest of the time was spent out in the place where he was right now: the field. Luther Mann was a lifelong explorer. Throughout the galaxy was where he went, studying all manner of archaeology. The civilizations that he researched were hardly limited—every era in the history of man had been subjected to his scrutiny at one time or another.

And yet it wasn’t the limits of humanity that engaged him. Because no matter where he was or what he was in the midst of exploring, Luther’s imagination always tended to turn toward the same direction: one that took him as far from the study of humankind as archaeology could go.

Sooner or later, it always came back to the Forerunners.

And there was no greater expert on their culture and their history than Luther Mann. None. Anything there was to know about them, that is, anything which could be known from the relatively little information available, was rattling around in his head. He had read every study and done quite a few of his own. When it came to the Forerunners, Luther was a walking database, and any major dig that related to them sooner or later requested his presence. Nor was anyone ever disappointed with the results.

He was also noted for his command of alien languages—Luther had spent years of his life studying nearly every dialect that was spoken by the various races in the Covenant, with translation skills that were also second to none. And still, it was always returning to the Forerunners.

“Doctor?” There was something akin to a knock at the front flap of his tent. “Doctor, are you up and around?”

He certainly was, and had been for the past two hours. As was typical for him during this particular expedition, Luther once again found himself unable to sleep beyond minimal required hours to rest, and that kept shrinking. Other places, he needed seven, eight hours for his brain to be fully back up to snuff. But out here, in the field? Four, and he was ready to go. The only reason he was still in his tent was out of deference to the others on his team who might require something approaching a normal amount of slumber.

“Yes, yes, hang on a moment, Henry,” he called out. Luther was also dressed, shaven, and wired for work. He was meticulous about keeping his beard stubble neat, especially since he had noticed the first shades of premature gray starting to seep in; he wanted to do everything he could to keep that away from observation. It reminded him too much of his father.

He clambered to the front of the tent and threw open the flap. The day was exactly what he expected; not surprising, really. In this wonderful, glorious location, one day was identical to the next. In the curved distance, he could see a series of puffy white clouds hanging against the bluest sky he had ever witnessed, and once again he had to do as he did every morning: shake himself, to believe that what he was staring at was completely artificial.

He would never have guessed it if he’d been dropped into the middle of this environment with no hint of where he was. He even remembered clearly the first time he set foot upon one of these strange things about two years ago. He hadn’t been sure what to expect. Heaven knew he had seen the holo-vids before, of various military operations during the war with the Covenant. But simply watching a location vid, even for hours at a time, didn’t compare to the experience of actually walking around on it.

Yet that was exactly what Luther was doing and precisely where he was.

He was on a Halo. One that he himself had discovered.

It wasn’t as if he had been looking for it. He had been exploring the Forerunner shield world of Onyx, which itself was an astounding place by any measure. After all, how many were there that were the size of an entire solar system? It wasn’t even called Onyx anymore; it had been rebranded into the human research outpost referred to as Trevelyan and currently played host to a number of research facilities. But he still tended to think of it with its original name, and while there, he had discovered records that were hidden deep within its vast information pathways … records that up until then had remained unfound and untranslated. Once Luther had come upon them, he’d labored over them for a year after the end of the Covenant War before realizing the existence—and location—of Zeta Halo. It had been quite the way to usher in the new year of 2555.

Discovering the Zeta Halo had catapulted Luther’s academic career. Before that, he had been a respected scientist, yes, and one of the top minds in his field, but his field included hundreds of men and women, many of whom were far more vocal and aggressive in achieving publicity than he was. But finding a Halo had put him front and center with many scientific publications and organizations, though even the existence of Halo was something of an urban myth on most human worlds. He had received invitations from numerous universities to come lecture and had also been summoned to the headquarters of the United Nations Space Command to provide them with a detailed report of the methods he had used to discover this Halo.

Considering what they represented, finding another Halo was a big deal no matter when it was found. Yes, the Halo ringworlds were what many of the Covenant once believed was the final step on the Path, a culminating event they called the “Great Journey.” It was a central tenet of their religious beliefs. But this belied their true nature, which was revealed during the final days of the war. The Halo installations were designed, at their core, for various purposes, ranging from a nature preserve for life-forms found throughout the Milky Way to defensive outposts against the alien parasite called the Flood.

Ultimately, though, it was also understood that the ancient installations possessed the capability of wiping out every sentient being in the entirety of the galaxy, and that was naturally of concern to pretty much every human being who breathed. That’s where the UNSC stepped in, specifically the Office of Naval Intelligence. The known installations needed to be quarantined and secured to alleviate risk.

It was only recently that ONI had begun research on the vast interior world that composed the inner workings of the Zeta Halo. And Luther’s participation had naturally been not only welcomed, but insisted upon by top individuals at ONI, primarily due to his extensive history with both Delta Halo and Gamma Halo.

He pushed his way out of his tent and Henry Lamb was waiting for him. Henry was an equivalent to Luther in another respect. Luther’s knowledge of the Forerunners’ background was unparalleled when it came to understanding their language, their culture, their entire way of life; Henry, on the other hand, was fascinated with them from a different perspective, having spent the entirety of his life studying Covenant and Forerunner engineering. He was part of ONI’s xeno-materials exploitation group and specialized in the recovery and reverse engineering of the incredible technology these advanced civilizations had taken for granted. Short of a Huragok, one of the creatures that the Forerunners had created to tend to their machinery, there was simply no human who was more conversant with or qualified to study and fix, if such a thing were possible, Forerunner technology. Luther and Henry made a rather formidable team, and Henry’s enthusiasm for the tasks that Luther handed him on any given day was relentless. “You had breakfast?” Luther asked.

“Yup,” said Henry, who was lying, of course. Henry rarely, if ever, worried about taking care of himself—he could easily pass an entire day without eating anything of substance, which was probably why he was so insanely thin. Luther had once seen him shirtless and had actually been able to count his ribs. But Henry was a grown man, if one counted twenty-nine as that, and was fully capable of making his own decisions, for better or worse.

Henry was busy scratching the head of a very familiar creature. “Hello, Vanessa!” Luther said with great cheer.

Vanessa was the name he’d given to the small, deer-like animal that showed up every morning like clockwork and stared at him expectantly. Luther was ready for her, unslinging his knapsack and pulling out a handful of lettuce from a small bag. He extended it to her (he wasn’t sure it was a her; it was just what he imagined it to be) and she immediately snapped it off his palm and chowed down. Once satisfied, Vanessa took several steps forward and Luther obediently rubbed her under her chin. She made a noise that sounded vaguely like the equivalent of a purr and then headed off into the brush.

“It’s nice to have a friend,” said Henry.

“I look for them wherever I can.” Both of them knew well enough that, while there was certainly a multitude of harmless creatures on the Halo installations, not all of the pet species the Forerunners had accumulated were as friendly as Vanessa.

“So what’s up for today?”

“I was figuring we’d take another stab at finding the control room.”

“I think it’s insanely frustrating that it’s taking us this long,” said Henry. “With the previous installations, the control room has always been in pretty much the same place. It’s the largest uniform structure near the ring’s phase pulse generators.”

“Absolutely true,” said Luther. “But it’s not just our inability to find it that’s puzzling me.”

“It’s the lack of a monitor,” said Henry, referring to the artificial intelligence often attached to a Forerunner installation as a caretaker, ensuring the facility was being efficiently maintained through long epochs of time.

“Correct.”

Henry nodded. “Every Halo has had a monitor, right? Like 343 Guilty Spark on Alpha Halo, for instance. So why can’t we find one here? As much as we’ve searched this place, we’ve consistently come up empty. And it hasn’t found us, which is even more surprising, given the time we’ve spent here. It leaves me wondering whether there simply isn’t one here, or if it’s hiding for some reason.”

“For some reason?” Luther actually allowed a small chuckle over that. “I would think the reason would be obvious, at least one of them. Human and Covenant interactions on these installations have not always been the best. If the monitor of this Halo is aware of that, it might be inclined to steer clear of us. I know I would.”

It was an understatement, for sure. After the discovery of Alpha Halo in September of 2552, humans had been forced to destroy the ring to prevent its activation by the monitor. When Delta Halo was found several weeks later, rebel Elites glassed its surface to prevent the Flood parasite from escaping containment. And then, in December of that same year, the replacement for Alpha Halo was destroyed when humans prematurely fired it above an extragalactic superstructure the Forerunners referred to as the Ark. In Luther’s mind, there were plenty of reasons for the Forerunners’ artificial intelligences to doubt the beneficence of either human or Covenant activity.

“That doesn’t sound consistent with how we’ve understood monitors historically,” said Henry.

“There’s no reason to think consistency is mandatory.”

“True enough.”

“It’s possible that the Forerunners made this Halo differently for some reason.”

“Any idea what that reason is?”

Luther shook his head. There were clear differences between Zeta Halo, also known as Installation 07, and the other ringworlds that humanity had previously discovered. Some of the differences existed on a meta level, dealing with the installation’s physical infrastructure and material composition. Others were far subtler, involving things like the architectural aesthetics of its various building structures and machinery, or the machine language of the ring’s distributed systems. Zeta was not the kind of Halo that they or anyone else were familiar with.

“There are two possible theories, when you get down to it. Either this place was constructed after all the others, with the Forerunners having learned things from the previous architecture. Or else it was made before all the others, serving as a sort of prototype. Whatever the truth,” and Luther clapped his hands together briskly, “one of these days, we need to find both the control room and also the Library, because that’s where we’ll find the activation key … the Index.”

“Exactly. Isolate and contain,” said Henry. “And avert certain disaster. If the Index were to fall into the wrong hands, they could hypothetically activate the ring.”

“See, now you’re thinking like an engineer again,” said Luther with good humor. “Always contemplating how machinery could be used for the worst possible purposes.”

“That’s because, in my experience, it always has.”

Luther was about to toss a casual response, but then he realized that Henry was right, so he allowed the comment to pass. This had been the protocol on the former rings, and so Zeta Halo, in that respect, wasn’t being treated any differently. Ideally, they would be able to quickly locate and secure all of the important facilities on this Halo, but ultimately the control center could provide them with all of the information they needed, including some of the critical functions they sought.

They set off, Luther still having difficulty wrapping his head around the concept that the area through which they were walking had been artificially constructed. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought he was traveling through campgrounds in Wyoming or some similar, perfectly pleasant, naturally existing region. Green plants stretched around him in all directions, while the dirt path they strode was indistinguishable from anything that they would see back on Earth. At one point he stopped, picked up a clod of dirt, and sniffed it. Yes, absolutely identical to back home. The sky above looked utterly normal and the hanging clouds likewise appeared natural. The only difference, which was certainly noteworthy, was the upward sloping horizon as the ring stretched out on two sides, in either direction rising to a nearly indistinguishable height thousands of kilometers directly above them.

He would have given anything to have been alive back then, or perhaps to be transported somehow through time and space, so he could return to the era of the Forerunners. He wouldn’t ask a ton of questions or get in the way—he would simply stand to one side and observe how they did everything. The Forerunners had been an astounding civilization, and he could readily understand why the Covenant had regarded them as gods.

The Sangheili, of course, no longer did. Their species—once the most important members of the Covenant as the protectors of the weaker yet, in theory, more powerful San’Shyuum—had come to realize that the Sacred Rings, as they called them, were not keys to divine transcendence, but instead weapons of mass destruction on a galactic scale. But to those who still worshipped the Forerunners as gods or godlike beings, it seemed that there was no bit of knowledge that was beyond the wisdom of this ancient race. He wondered if humanity would live long enough to see it ever reach a point in its development where it could possibly achieve Forerunner status.

Somehow he doubted it. Humanity was far too obsessed with numerous piddling things of no interest.

In a way, he missed the Human-Covenant conflict. He knew it was unpatriotic—indeed, almost sacrilegious—to have that attitude. But at least humanity had been united during that seemingly endless incursion. Sure, there might have been internal squabbles and battles, but ultimately humankind was unified in its fight for survival against the alien invaders. Part of Luther was worried—now that the war had ended and a truce had been settled between all sides, humans might go back to their favorite pastime of blowing each other up.

Try not to be that way. Try to hope for the best, instead of anticipating everything going wrong.

Luther and Henry passed other explorers and archaeological parties as they moved through their sector of Zeta Halo. That wasn’t surprising. Throughout the vast structure, there had to be something like three hundred people exploring different areas, each looking for something else. Some were specialists in planetary engineering, studying biomes that had been seeded here from other worlds long ago. Others explored flora, still others fauna. Some, such as Luther, had particular interest in the language of the Forerunners, which was indispensable in the effort to unlock Halo’s many secrets. In addition to the people, there were hundreds of automated probes scanning every canyon, riverbed, and facility. No expense had been spared, and indeed, it only made sense. The entire place was 10,000 kilometers in diameter, with its band 318 kilometers wide. That was a lot of territory to cover, and there was a lot to risk if something was missed.

Luther had found one corridor of particular interest near an immense but inexplicable drop-off in this part of the ring’s terrain, and that was where he and Henry were heading today. It was vast and expansive, and the alloyed walls were lined with all manner of machinery, the purpose of which he could not even begin to guess. That was Henry’s department, and he had been very methodical in determining the function of every single object in there. This was in sharp contrast to Luther’s buried urge to simply turn everything on. Henry wouldn’t hear of it, and Luther understood his concerns. No matter their expertise in what they were dealing with, this remained alien technology and had to be approached with great care.

The careful study that Henry was devoting to the machinery likewise enabled Luther to spend time translating the extensive, cartouche-like notes that were carved upon the wall. Not carved, actually—decorated, almost holographically inscribed there in ways that Luther could only wonder about. But he was, for the most part, able to discern their meanings. This was no small accomplishment. He was positive, in this instance, that the room was designed specifically to monitor and control the Halo’s vast spectrum of preconditioned environmental behaviors, generating everything from the shifting of tectonic plates to dark and intimidating thunderheads. He had not discerned the exact means by which this was accomplished—no one really had—but he was nevertheless certain that the machinery surrounding them was designed to that end.

Luther was carefully going over yet another mystery control board, studying the symbols that would have been indecipherable to a layperson. He had come to believe that it had something to do with atmosphere control. But he couldn’t manipulate any of them, of course—in addition to standard protocols for all of the Halo installations, there was an additional mandate from ONI against doing so, due to the peculiarity of this ring, and not a single individual on the Zeta Halo was inclined to disobey. No one wanted to take a chance that by flipping a switch somewhere they might accidentally wipe out a portion of the galaxy.

Besides, it was clear that whatever was causing Zeta Halo to operate was doing a perfectly good job, because after all these eons, the atmosphere remained fresh, the clouds unthreatening in most parts, the various flora and fauna in perfectly good condition. Luther was concerned that if he tried manipulating anything, he could possibly throw the entire installation out of whack. It gave him a brief but nightmarish mental image of the entirety of Zeta Halo malfunctioning. Perhaps it might begin spinning out of control, causing the artificial gravity to completely fail. Three hundred innocents would be scattered sky high or smeared all over the walls or have some other horrific thing happen to them, courtesy of physics run amuck. And it would naturally be all Luther’s fault, his legacy.

No thanks.

Luther was perfectly content to study the material around him without actually touching it or interfering with it in any way. And he knew that Henry felt exactly the same.

Which was why he was mildly surprised when he heard a gentle clicking from next to him.

He turned and saw that Henry was very carefully, very precisely, taking video records of the materials in front of them. The clicking was a leftover from, amazingly enough, centuries ago, when cameras actually had movable shutter switches and made noise whenever they took images. Those interior devices were long gone; the clicking was simply reproduced as a cue for the picture taker to know that the shot had been recorded. One of humanity’s own artifacts, though with notably less splendor than those of the Forerunners.

“What are you doing?” Luther asked.

Henry blinked in surprise, not a difficult thing for him, given that his eyes were so huge. His thick black hair hung in front of them, so that he always seemed to be peering out from behind it, making him look even more quizzical. He brushed his hair out from in front of his face and said, “I already told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Told you this yesterday. About Cynthia Diggs.”

The name meant absolutely nothing to Luther, but that wasn’t surprising. Henry Lamb had a habit of engaging in constant conversation, oblivious to the fact that Luther was the exact opposite of a conversationalist. Luther preferred quiet contemplation. Henry had not yet figured that out, however, and Luther hadn’t come up with any way to politely explain it. So he had settled on allowing Henry to natter on at length about whatever was going through his mind and then simply shutting him out. Luther would smile and nod and say “good” or “interesting” at random times, and that provided the illusion that he was actually paying attention to what Henry was talking about.

This, however, seemed to be one of the times when Luther’s technique had utterly failed him.

“Please remind me,” he said.

Henry was perfectly happy to do so. Apparently the idea that Luther had been ignoring him in the previous day’s discussion never occurred to him. “Cynthia Diggs. The woman I met before coming out here? At a university bar. I told her I was heading here and she was very—”

Luther’s jaw dropped. “You what?”

“I told her I was—”

“I heard you! I just can’t believe—” Luther paused, taking a moment to recover what was left of his rapidly dwindling patience, and then he dropped his voice to a sudden whisper, as if worried that an ONI operative might be listening in. “Do you have any idea how confidential the material that we are working on is?”

“Luther, there are at least three hundred people here.”

“People who have received security clearances at the highest levels. Henry, you are familiar with ONI, right? They could technically, and probably legally, kill you for this….”

Henry put up his hands as if he expected Luther to take a swing at him … an action to which Luther was seriously putting some thought. “Luther, can you take for granted, just for a moment, that I am not an idiot?”

“Right now, I’m honestly having real difficulty with that,” he said tightly.

“She’s the wife of—”

“The wife?” You were hitting on—”

“I wasn’t hitting on anyone. I went to the same university as her. She’s the wife of the manager of the entire Zeta Halo project. Bob Casper’s wife.”

“Oh.” Luther immediately started to feel a bit abashed. He had broken bread with Casper, and Casper had of course mentioned Cynthia, who worked on reverse engineering Covenant technology recovered during the war. Cynthia was also a scientist, and although she was involved in a different field, she was certainly under the security umbrella for research on this installation. “Oh,” he said again. “Well, that’s … that’s very different.”

“Yes, I know. She asked that if I saw something that I thought might interest her I should send her video of it. She has a friend she wants to show it to,” Henry said, and then before Luther could protest, Henry put his hands up once more defensively. “She’s on ONI’s payroll as well; she’s a postwar political liaison and has the proper clearance. Cynthia felt that she should keep her friend apprised of this stuff.”

“Why?” Luther asked suspiciously.

“Because Cynthia was concerned that we might encounter something that would involve the participation of the Sangheili. That certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented. And her friend works as a translator and negotiator with the Elites, representing the UNSC. And she just wanted me to keep her informed about whatever we found.”

“Can’t her husband do that?”

“Since he got this assignment, her husband barely ever looks up from his work anymore to keep her apprised. Far too many things to manage from where he’s at to be involved in details. She’s simply endeavoring to do whatever she can to keep one step ahead. With you and me on the ground, it makes sense for me to handle this.”

“I don’t know. I still don’t like it,” said Luther. “I don’t want you sending her anything else. And I certainly wouldn’t want her to send it on to … who?”