by Kelly Gay
“Please, allow me to assist you,” the armiger said. “I offer my services in exchange for yours. Isn’t that what you do, Captain Forge? Make deals? Look for opportunity?”
Rion chewed slowly, swallowed; then, “Sorry. Don’t trust you.”
Niko opened his mouth to argue in favor, but Rion shut him up with a look.
She finished her crackers, wondering what the armiger would do now.
“I would like you to know my story and your history,” it said. “Maybe then you will revisit your decision. That is all I ask.”
An image appeared over the holopad of a large primitive city made of tall mud and reed and wood houses, some with open rooftops covered with lengths of cloth for shade in the harsh sunlight. The sky was peppered with crude hot air balloons of many sizes and colors with reed baskets, holding everything from people to food to animals. There were so many it was clear the balloons were a common mode of transport around the city.
“These images, messages, histories, and collected terminal entries were left for those who would come after, those who would reclaim the Mantle of Responsibility. They are part of my memory stores, and I add them to my own testimony, which I made to the crew of the Rubicon before we crashed. They are here for you now, so that you might better understand your past, your present, and your future. So that you might learn to understand me, trust me, and aid me in my journey.”
The armiger left the lounge before Rion could say she didn’t want to understand it or aid it in anything. But she was curious, so she settled back in her chair and listened. . . .
CHAPTER 25
* * *
Ace of Spades, slipspace
Time had passed quickly in the lounge, the Ace crew listening to an unbelievable tale—a heartbreaking, horrific recounting of an ancient war between humans, Forerunners, and the parasitic Flood. Of immense last-resort weapons collectively called Halo, serving as both sanctuaries and galaxy-wide killing machines.
A hundred thousand years ago, all sentient life in the galaxy had had their fate decided for them. In the blink of an eye . . . gone. It was impossible not to feel the horror and pain of that moment, or to sympathize with those Forerunners who’d had to make the decision to extinguish everything, to be the ones so desperate and backed into a corner that the only way out was murdering trillions in order to kill the Flood’s food source.
The hopes and tragedies told through the eyes of Chakas, Bornstellar, the Librarian . . .
Rion could barely wrap her head around it.
Unbelievably, the armiger claimed to have once been this Chakas character, a human at the mercy of the Forerunners, a player in this long-ago saga. As Chakas, he had borne witness to so much, shouldered the knowledge and the horror of war, and had his body so broken he would have died had his mind not been saved by Bornstellar. As a monitor, his human memories were compartmentalized, virtually forgotten, and he weathered the impossibly long years after the purge alone, no longer flesh and blood but a machine known as 343 Guilty Spark, a caretaker of one of the Halo ringworlds.
Rion’s mind worked overtime processing it all, absorbing the emotion of it, the despair, the finality. On the one hand, she felt immersed in the past, caring a great deal for the players involved and the obstacles they faced, so much so that at times tears blurred her vision and her chest ached.
But on the other hand . . . she preferred her universe the way it had been a few hours ago. Part of her didn’t want to know the past, didn’t desire the weight or responsibility of it. And she sure as hell didn’t want to sympathize with the armiger. Yet it was difficult not to do so.
Events a hundred thousand years old should stay where they belonged, yet Rion had a very bad feeling the past was rising again and barreling right toward them. It scared her to death. And while she desperately wished to find her father, she was starting to regret ever discovering that damn buoy on Laconia.
Cade would still be alive and Ram wouldn’t be suffering. And they’d be out there, all of them, salvaging some find or another without being hunted, or driven by an ancient human/Forerunner, or knowing the horror of the Flood. . . .
Rion stood and stretched her arms over her head, then walked to the cabinet to throw her wrapper away. Niko was right. There wasn’t any reason for the armiger to create such an intricate fiction just to trick them. What would be the point? They were salvagers, nobodies in the grand scheme of things, not worth such an elaborate ruse.
As she turned around, she took a moment to regard her crew. They too appeared shell-shocked. Niko was lying on the couch, hands tucked under his head, staring at the ceiling. Lessa sat in one of the chairs, feet pulled under her. And Ram was in the other chair, facing the viewscreen, lost in thought.
An image of a Halo ring hovered above the holotable.
Installation 04, the armiger had called it.
By knowing the truth, they were in even deeper than before. Information like this . . . it wasn’t for civvies. This was the kind of intel that could get them locked away for a very long time, or worse.
It took the crew a few minutes to pull themselves away from the chaos of a bygone war and back into the present.
Ram got up, cracked his neck, and went to the drink dispenser for water. He leaned on the counter and rubbed his chest. “I’m not one to get emotional, but . . . goddamn.”
Lessa leaned over the arm of the chair, her eyes glassy. “There’s a human mind in there, inside that armiger,” she said. “He’s telling the truth. We all know it. We all feel it.”
“So that’s it, then,” Niko said, sitting up. “His agenda—he wants to find the Librarian and bring back his friends.”
Rion released a heavy sigh. “This is way beyond us, Niko. This is not what we do. As terrible as it all is, it’s not our fight. We’re salvagers. We look out for each other and ourselves. We don’t fly around the galaxy righting ancient wrongs and looking for alien beings who’ve been dead for millenia.”
“Well, he doesn’t think she’s dead,” Niko argued. “And that’s exactly who we are, by the way. We deal in old shit—the older, the better. We’ve been flying around the galaxy looking for an old ship and your father. What’s the difference?”
“A missing ship from twenty-six years ago is not the same thing.”
“But isn’t it though?”
She hated to admit it, but he did have a point. “What about you, Less?” she said, moving along, not entirely convinced by Niko’s argument. The last thing she wanted was to engage in a debate when everyone was already emotionally spent. “What do you think?”
“I think we should part ways with him once we get to wherever he’s taking us. He can go complete whatever agenda he has, and leave us out of it.”
“Of course you’d say that,” Niko muttered, dragging his hands through his hair.
It was the wrong thing to say. Anger reddened Lessa’s cheeks and her eyes flashed. “Why, because I’ve always looked out for you? Because I sacrificed my own childhood to raise you, did things that keep me up at night just to keep you safe? And now you just want to go off without a single thought in your head about self-preservation?”
And that, of course, was the wrong thing to say to Niko. Rion pinched the bridge of her nose. Aaaand here it comes.
“Well, I never asked you to sacrifice anything,” he shot back, frustrated. “You did those things, and you make me feel guilty all the time for it! I can’t change it!”
Lessa, with tears brimming, unfolded herself from the chair. “You go to hell, Niko. Just piss off.”
She stormed from the room, and it was obvious Niko wanted to call out to her, but he stayed silent and put his head in his hands.
“Yeah, you might want to go fix that,” Rion said.
He lifted his head. “I don’t know how to fix it. How can I fix it when she blames me for the things she chose to do? I didn’t ask her to do any of it.”
“She doesn’t blame you. She wants you to acknowledge what she went through to
keep you safe. And when she tries to keep you safe now, you might want to understand where she’s coming from and appreciate it instead of acting like it annoys you. Just talk to her. Work it out.”
“Fine,” he huffed, and then marched out, leaving her alone with Ram.
Rion rubbed her hands down her face before plopping into one of the lounge chairs, exhausted. When she lifted her gaze, it was to find Ram watching her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “What?”
He laughed. “I’m not sure where to start. . . . How do you manage those two?”
“It used to be a lot easier.”
“Well, there’s never a dull moment. . . .” Her dark look made him chuckle. “You’ve always had a reputation for pulling off risky ventures, escaping one insane situation after another. I always thought it was just bar talk.”
“Trust me, it was.”
“What are you going to do about the armiger? Think we can trust it—him? Hell, I don’t even know what to call it.”
“Me neither. He, I guess. I think, for now, we don’t exactly have a choice. He said he needed the humans from the Rubicon. Whatever he plans, he can’t do it alone. He needs us, and he needs us alive.”
“Which sounds pretty damn ominous.”
“We need to find a way to shut him down if it comes to that, because he’s not dragging us back to Earth.”
“You think that’s what he wants?”
“Well, yeah. You heard him. Earth was the last place the Librarian was known to be. There wasn’t enough time for her to leave once the Halo rings were fired. Yet the armiger, as this Guilty Spark character, tells the officers of the Rubicon he thinks she’s alive. He had to know the story might get back to ONI. So why divulge the plan? Why give an entire history lesson to the very organization that will most likely try to stop you? And if not stop you, at least get to the Librarian first?”
Ram looked thoughtful for a minute, then said, “You think he wanted them to know? You think he lied?”
She nodded and then shrugged, unsure. “Yes and no. I don’t know. But God help us if he’s telling the truth, because nothing good can come from liberating an ancient goddess from the grave.”
Unable to concentrate on anything but the armiger, Rion gave up trying and looked on screen to find him. He was back in the cargo hold. She watched him for a moment as he sorted through the salvage they’d pulled from the Rubicon. The pieces he was holding should have required a grav compensator, but he seemed to manage with ease. The only thing hindering him was his damaged leg.
She made her way down to the hold, and sat on one of the lower steps. The armiger worked a few moments longer, sorting and tinkering—why, she couldn’t say—before acknowledging her by stopping what he was doing to stare at her. When he did, she gestured for him to take a break. Wordlessly, he complied, partly leaning against the edge of one of the locked grav carts and folding his metal hands in front of him.
The tale he’d revealed made her see him differently—a strange contrast of metal and hard light with the memories and experiences of a human and an AI.
“What exactly do you need humans for?” she finally asked.
He was quiet for a long moment, and she had to wonder if he was searching for a believable lie. “As you saw and heard, the Librarian imprinted within mankind the means and the desire to claim the Mantle of Responsibility. She gifted all that is Forerunner to you. As such, you can, by virtue of your DNA, unlock access to certain artifacts that I cannot. This is why I need you once we reach Triniel, and then once more on Earth.”
Earth wasn’t a surprise. Triniel, however, was a name unknown to her. “Triniel is the Forerunner world you’re taking us to?” He nodded. “And the story you told to the Rubicon crew—did they have time to pass it along to ONI before the crash?”
“A data stream packet was sent out. It would have traveled a great distance until it was captured by the nearest comm network, then relayed to the proper authority.”
“So the answer is yes—ONI knows what we know.”
“Oh, they know much more than that.”
Rion filed that enigmatic answer away. “If they believe you, they’ll be expecting you to return to Earth. Is that what you wanted?” No response. “You showed them your hand.”
“Showed them my hand?”
“You made your intentions clear.”
He paused and tilted his head in a thoughtful gesture. “Did I?” he said nonchalantly. “It is hard to remember. . . .”
“Bullshit.”
Those large blue eyes seemed to study her for a long time. And then he did something surprising. He laughed. It was a strange sound—alien and synthetic, of course, but tinged with a note of his former humanity. “Trust is a hard thing to give, Captain Forge. Harder still to earn. You could leave me at Triniel, but I don’t think you will.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you and I are after the same thing. You wish to find your father. And I wish to find my . . . mother, so to speak. We will do it together. Forerunner and human. How it once was and should have always been. I am not a fragment like your recovered AI, Little Bit. If there is anyone able to find your father’s ship, it is me. That is what you want, is it not?”
She gave a solemn nod.
“You help me, Captain Forge, be my access, and I will return the favor. I do not wish to fight you or bend you to my will. I wish only to continue my search and do what must be done. And if that means helping you with your own task, and in retrieving your personal possessions, I will do so.” He chuckled. “There is time.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“When Bornstellar came to Earth, he was an adventurer, a treasure hunter, full of hope and a deep need and love for discovery. He could no more refuse his calling than you. And I was . . .”
A pause.
“Was what?”
“An opportunist, a thief . . . young, like your Niko, though much less intelligent at the time, I admit. I was led by something much larger than myself, though I did not know it then. I see you and your crew . . . and I cannot help but see the shadows and ghosts of a life taken from me, a life of adventure and friendships, a life that could have been.”
He fell into silence, and despite her desire to remain detached, Rion couldn’t help but feel some empathy for what had been taken from him, and what had become of him—the terrors he’d seen and the tortures committed upon him, the losses, the loneliness.
A quiet filled the cargo hold.
“Look,” she said after a time. “I’m sorry . . . for what happened to you. What they did to you.”
His strange glowing eyes stared at her for a very long time, and she wondered if anyone had ever said that to him before.
Hell, when he’d paralleled his early life with Niko’s, it put him on a very human level. She couldn’t imagine Niko going through something similar. Chakas had been about the same age that Niko was now when he was kidnapped by the Didact, taken from Earth, imprisoned, tortured . . . Chakas had watched these “gods” make extinction-level choices for the entire galaxy. He’d been used and broken, compartmentalized, and then left alone for ages. . . .
“Thank you, Captain,” he said, then stood and turned away from her to resume his task.
Rion watched him for a moment, and then pushed to her feet to leave him with his timeworn thoughts and his memories.
CHAPTER 26
* * *
Ace of Spades, slipspace to Triniel, two days later
As Rion entered the lounge, she drew up short at the sight of Niko and the armiger leaning over the table, heads nearly touching. She’d neither seen nor spoken to him since their last conversation in the hold. He had spent much of that time with Niko and Lessa for company, winning over her crew—not that it took much where Niko was concerned.
At her entry, Niko glanced over his shoulder as the armiger straightened and took one step back from the table. In the cargo hold, his size was manageable, but here in the lounge, all
three meters of him took up a lot of space.
Rion drew closer and saw a holographic image of a human hovering above the table. It was a young man Niko’s age with bronze skin, dark eyes, and black hair down to his shoulders, wearing a wrap around his waist—linen, perhaps—and leather sandals on his feet.
“This is him. This is our armiger,” Niko explained, clearing his throat. “Chakas . . . before the Forerunners made him into a machine.”
“Yes, I know. His image was in the feed when he told us his story.” She raised a dubious eyebrow and headed to the food dispenser, knowing where this little endeavor was going, and supposing it was only a matter of time. “So you’re building an avatar,” she said, selecting a ready-made bowl of rice for her meal.
“Well, yeah. Seemed like the next step,” Niko answered as she retrieved her warm bowl, removed the packaging, and stirred it. “This way he’ll be able to populate throughout the ship without dragging his armiger body around and trying to squeeze into small places. No offense,” he said to the armiger.
“None taken.”
The last thing Rion wanted was an ancient being popping in at will from every holopad and system panel on her ship. As she stirred her food, she regarded the armiger with a frown. Something was different about him, but she wasn’t sure what. It was in the face and angles . . . they looked somehow less severe, softer.
Ram entered in his pajamas, sleep still clinging to his eyes. He grunted at them, completely uninterested in what was happening at the table, and went straight for the coffee dispenser.
Niko sat on the edge of the table, studying the avatar. “We just have to find the right look.”
“What’s wrong with that one?” she asked, leaning against the counter.
