Broken Circle

by John Shirley

  “Your death approaches! Beg for mercy, but it will not be granted!” Melchus bellowed, rushing at G’torik.

  G’torik sidestepped and let Melchus by, slashing at the Brute as he thundered past. He drew blood again, cutting deeper into the Jiralhanae’s side.

  Melchus roared in pain and fury, and spun about.

  G’torik readied himself to try the tactic again. He was, at least, faster than Melchus.

  Melchus raised his hammer as if about to charge, but made a quick adjustment on it instead. Grinning nastily, Melchus slammed the gravity hammer down so hard that it blew debris from the battle into the air.

  It was as if a giant invisible hand slapped at G’torik. He felt himself spinning through the air with an irresistible gravitational-force shock wave. The interior of the control room whirled and blurred—and he kept flying, strangely far . . .

  He realized he’d been knocked off the bridge, his fall eventually broken by the heap of bodies beneath him.

  G’torik lay injured and stunned, and darkness soon closed in. The last thing he heard was Melchus laughing.

  High Charity

  The Hanging Gardens, Pod of Esthetic Musing

  2552 CE

  The Age of Reclamation

  “The Elites have failed to protect the Prophets!” So boomed the voice of the High Prophet of Truth from the announcement system. A couple of diminutive Unggoy, faces hidden in their methane breathing masks, stopped to listen to his words, as if in rapture.

  Inspired by Mken ‘Scre’ah’ben’s example, Zo Resken had been attempting to walk through one of the Holy City’s many Hanging Gardens without antigrav belt or chair. He had donned the belt, but it was dialed to almost no support, and though the gravity on High Charity was lower than what would have been considered normal on the homeworld of Janjur Qom, he was finding it hard going. Puffing, he stopped between two low, grassy hills, to listen to the High Prophet’s announcement, feeling a chill at the booming voice, despite the heat of exertion.

  “Let no warrior forget his oath. Thou, in faith shall keep us safe, whilst we find the Path! With my blessing, the Jiralhanae now lead our fleets! They ask for your allegiance, and you shall give it!”

  The little Unggoy skipped excitedly. A passing Kig-Yar, who probably hadn’t been paying much attention to the announcement, scuttled irritably onward, as if spurred by Truth’s voice.

  Let no warrior forget his oath. “So it has begun,” Zo murmured, turning away from the happily scampering Unggoy. “And where will it go . . .”

  Now what am I to do? Zo wondered, switching on his antigrav belt and hurrying toward the exit. It was clear now that the rebellion had already begun—word of skirmishes on High Charity and even the surface of Delta Halo had reached Clarity. The Elites had at last left the Covenant. Even some Mgalekgolo were said to have sided with them, though others remained loyal to the Covenant. Zo suspected that the changing of the guard had been implemented and the Elites responded in force. It was just as he had discussed with G’torik.

  The choice was now before him: Zo could either remain loyal to Truth and Exquisite, or openly turn against them. The High Prophet of Truth was a Hierarch, and he held what was left of the Covenant in his hand, but he knew the difference between obeisance to evil and noble devotion. Truth was not on the side of nobility.

  It was rumored about Delta Halo that it would be activated soon—but that was before, when the Covenant wasn’t tearing itself apart at the seams. Zo had received word that the Elite High Councilors had gone on before the Prophets to prepare the chamber for the consecration of the Sacred Icon, but according to the displays set about High Charity, Tartarus had already retrieved the Icon and given it to the High Prophet of Truth personally. What had remained of the Elite Councilors? Were they caught up in the carnage of this great schism?

  A large, gray, metal-gloved hand slapped painfully down on Zo’s shoulder. “Prophet of Clarity,” rumbled the Jiralhanae. “You will come with me.”

  Zo turned around angrily, but all words of defiance died on his lips as he saw the Mgalekgolo bond brothers standing behind the Jiralhanae captain. The giant hulking Hunters, equipped with enormous weapons and shields, said nothing—they never needed to speak. They were all brooding antagonism, which communicated itself quite effectively. Clearly these were loyal to the High Prophet of Truth.

  “Prophet of Clarity, the Prophet of Exquisite Devotion wishes to discuss certain matters with you immediately,” declared the Brute. “This is all I know. However, if you don’t come with me willingly, I am content to let the Hunters bring you by force. You know well enough of their kind: Hunters are not gentle.”

  Zo glanced at the Hunters.

  “May I get my chair first?”

  “If it is nearby.”

  Zo cleared his throat. “So, then. Let us go and see what I can do for his holiness the Prophet of Exquisite Devotion.”

  CHAPTER 17

  * * *

  The Refuge, the Ussan Colony

  Section Five

  2552 CE

  The Age of Reclamation

  Escorted by Tirk ‘Surb, the priest Tup’Quk, and six heavily armed protectors, Bal’Tol and C’tenz were walking side by side through the sculpture garden in the plaza outside the Hall of the Godminds on Sublevel Four. They were looking for the Blood Sick who clustered about ‘Kinsa. Tup’Quk, a Sangheili bent with age, bristling with the odd hairs the very old sometimes sprouted from various crevices, came shuffling slowly, the ceremonial jewelry jingling from his pierced mandibles. He wore a robe sewn of fragments of holy objects, shiny cloth, and the skin of glebos, a small furred animal that hopped about in the eco levels.

  So far Bal’Tol and the others had seen only a few softly chanting pilgrims traipsing for the Hall of Godminds, wending in the sacred pattern between the statues. The sculpture garden included three-dimensional images of the legendary Ussa ‘Xellus and Sooln; nearby were Tersa and his warrior mate, Lnur; there were portrayals of Sanghelios held in Ussa’s protective arms; there was an image of the spherical form of the Refuge, bursting apart, its dividing sections, in the sculpture, held in place by transparent wires; sculptures of Ussa’s son and grandson; there were mythologically posed renderings of the gods; sculptures of Ernicka the Scar-Maker and others slashing apart the slithering semisaurian rendering of Salus ‘Crolon; images of popular Combat Section warriors grappling in floatfight.

  They reached the far side of the sculpture garden and Bal’Tol looked through the entry to the wall, a high archway painted with figures from myth, where pilgrims sat, communing with the changing geometrical forms in the great chamber. They intoned the names of each figure, as given to them by the priests. What would Ussa ‘Xellus think of all this? Bal’Tol wondered.

  Within that hall, three-dimensional translucent forms quivered, sometimes chimed, and seemed to whisper without words. Ussa’s records suggested the Hall was in fact a device for observation and communication within the original shield world. It required the Flying Voice to fully activate it, and Enduring Bias was still silent and perhaps defunct. The Hall of Godminds was held in reverence; this name for it had been handed down for generations. Some went there to pray to the gods. It had its own priest, as did the Combat Section and the Place of Blessed Passing.

  Privately, Bal’Tol regarded all this as just so much accreted superstition; he assumed a cosmic reality, a cosmic mind. He had glimpsed it, contemplating the dance of chaos in meditation. But it was no good talking of such things; the Clans needed to believe in their gods and priests. Even Ussa ‘Xellus had believed, once upon a time, in the gods, the divinity of the Forerunners, and had believed the relics of the Forerunners sacred. But Bal’Tol was his own Sangheili; he believed what he chose, at least privately. Publicly, he believed in all the gods who’d come to haunt the minds of the colony since Ussa’s death: the Flying Voice; Ziggur, who had been a nearly forgotten nature spirit from old Sanghelios, and was said to inhabit the gardens of the eco level; Mora
phant, who carried spirits of the dead from the colony to the Sacred Ring, where they would await the bridge of light that would take them someday to the primal paradise that was Sanghelios; the lower spirits who animated the machinery of the colony and inspired the repairers’ guild; Forerunner Sun and his consort, Forerunner Moon, who governed the other gods . . .

  Forerunner Sun and Moon were the primary focal point of worship now in the Refuge. It had not been so for the Sangheili ancients—they had primarily worshipped the sacred artifacts and those who made them.

  Bal’Tol turned to Tup’Quk as the old priest hissed, “Look. There are your defilers!” He pointed.

  In the corner of the statue garden, where the wall that housed the entry to the Hall of the Godminds cornered with the plaza’s wall, eight Sangheili were sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to ‘Kinsa. One of the rapt listeners, Bal’Tol saw, was a floatfight hero, Norzessa.

  “Do you see who that is, there on the right?” C’tenz whispered.

  “Yes,” Bal’Tol muttered. “Most disturbing.”

  Norzessa was quite possibly the most adored of the floatfight heroes. Bal’Tol had himself given Norzessa the Relic Medal to wear for one swing about the sun; he had been impressed by Norzessa’s energy and resourcefulness in the zero-gravity arena.

  The entire Combat Section possessed no gravity—several centuries earlier, its artificial gravity nodes had collapsed on themselves, and the section, at the time mostly a storage area, became a chaos of floating crates, machines, and frightened workers. On every visit to Combat Section, Bal’Tol had wondered what would happen to the colony if all the artificial gravity failed in the other sections. How long would they survive in zero gravity? Many of the machines would stop working, their mechanics no longer meaningful. Hysteria and mass panic would be the result. And then would come clan fighting, always something ready to break out, and much bloodshed . . .

  But so far no other gravitational node panels had failed, and the Combat Section alone was gravity-free. It had become a place where Ussans could exercise their thirst for combat, without butchering one another—it was their site for athletic competition. A violent competition to be sure, but slaughter was usually avoided.

  As a childling and then a youngling, Bal’Tol had gone there, between scheduled floatfight combat competition and practiced free-fall acrobatics. He’d broken his left arm that way once, damaging nerves, and that had ended his dreams of becoming a floatfight competitive hero; his arm had lost some of its responsiveness with the injury.

  “Come, Tup’Quk, we’ll see what is being spoken, and how much defilement is at hand,” said the kaidon.

  The patrollers closed around Bal’Tol as he approached ‘Kinsa and his group, but Bal’Tol gestured for them to move aside. Close by him was C’tenz, who had a hand on the hilt of his sheathed burnblade; he could hear old Tup’Quk huffing along behind him, taking tiny steps, breathing hard. A good many of the colony’s medical resources had been used up, and not enough new medicaments were being made. The art had been partly lost. The elderly suffered for it, and the young were too few.

  “The corrosion is everywhere,” ‘Kinsa was saying. “It is the wrath of the Forgotten Gods!” He was a brutish Sangheili with wide-set mandibles and a heavy forehead. There were cryptic symbols inscribed into the skin of his bare arms. He wore a homemade cuirass of sewn-together pieces of metal from old broken machinery—countless connective bits from the Disassembly floated around the sections, held for centuries by gravitation. Sometimes small fragments of it were scavenged by shuttle pilots and bartered as keepsakes of the Forerunners.

  On ‘Kinsa’s head was an old, dented copper-colored helmet. He jabbed his hands, right and left, with stabbing motions to emphasize the words as he spoke. “The corrosion spreads from our souls into the very walls! The drinkfluid generators are failing, one by one; the atmosphere cleansers will be next. Why did it all work for centuries and suddenly came this cascade of failure? Why? I’ll tell you! Because of Sangheili like him!”

  He jabbed an accusing finger directly at the kaidon. ‘Kinsa’s listeners turned, startled, and saw Bal’Tol and his retinue. Two of them quickly rose and edged away.

  Norzessa, however, stayed where he was, glaring at the priest, if that was his intent—his face was so scarred by floatfight battle it was difficult to tell.

  “The true spirits of this place are displeased with us,” ‘Kinsa snarled. “Punishing us for losing the ancient way back to Sanghelios!”

  Bal’Tol saw it then—the webs of scarlet pulsing on ‘Kinsa’s face and hands. It showed up when the third-phase excitement came upon the Blood Sick.

  “You are defilers of this sacred place!” Tup’Quk quavered from behind two heavily armed protectors. “Defilers!” As he spoke, the ornaments on his jawbones jingled furiously. “Go to your homes and pray for forgiveness!”

  “Defilers, you say?” ‘Kinsa spat. “Of what is already hopelessly defiled? The Forgotten Gods refuse to be erased! They have told me the way; we shall take the vessels you hide away in Primary! We shall take them and all our people to Sanghelios.”

  “First of all,” said C’tenz, “the way to Sanghelios is lost to us. We no longer have that data. The way was erased from the memory devices in the vessels—perhaps Ussa ‘Xellus did that on purpose, after the betrayal of Salus ‘Crolon. Second, there is not enough room on those ships for everyone. And third, we are not sure they will fly. In fact—I’m sure they wouldn’t, since like so much else, they’ve had many parts cannibalized—”

  “Cannibals!” raved ‘Kinsa. “You are the cannibals! You are like the Blue Mandibles of Section Two!”

  It was long since Bal’Tol had thought about the Blue Mandibles, perhaps because it was a profoundly unpleasant memory. The dark blue blood of Sangheili had stained the mandibles of a savage group that had overrun parts of Section Two cycles before, during a food shortage. There had been a failure of irrigation systems on the eco level, a die-off of some of the flora, simultaneous with a breakdown of the protein synthesizer. A band led by a Blood Sick marauder had commenced feeding on “lesser” Ussans. Bal’Tol had himself led troops against them, and the Blue Mandibles had been overrun and slaughtered.

  “We are none of us cannibals,” said Bal’Tol. He was speaking more to the followers of ‘Kinsa than to the Sangheili himself. “We eat the same foodstuff you do, Oska ‘Meln.”

  “What did you call me?” ‘Kinsa’s hands balled into shaking fists. “Liar! I am ‘Kinsa! I am the voice of ‘Greftus! And through ‘Greftus, the voice of Forerunner Sun! His solar radiance will burn this place clean!”

  “I am allowing you an opportunity to surrender, whoever you may think you are,” Bal’Tol said. “I plan a special place of isolation for people with your sickness. I am inclined to offer it, until such time as a cure can be found.”

  “Sickness? It is you who have the sickness!”

  “Careful, you fool!” C’tenz shouted. “You have been offered a chance for life!”

  Now Norzessa sprang to his feet, facing the deputation, and then half squatted as if about to spring. He, too, wore a scrap metal cuirass across his chest. “You will not touch ‘Kinsa! He alone knows the way to Sanghelios! Death to anyone who approaches him!” One of his hands went to the handle of a long curving knife in his belt—a floatfighter’s “quartermoon” blade, not very different from the ancient curveblade of Sanghelios.

  Tirk ‘Surb then stepped in front of the kaidon, a burnblade suddenly in one hand and a plasma pistol in the other. “Stay back! You are all under arrest! I have heard seditious talk here! Talk of burning the colony? That is enough for me!”

  The patrollers had their weapons at the ready now, lined up in front of ‘Kinsa’s followers.

  There were frightened faces, along with those savagely defiant. But Norzessa knew no fear. “ ‘Kinsa is the voice of the gods!” he shouted. He drew his quartermoon blade and spun it in his hand so fast it looked like a whirling ball
of edges.

  What really alarmed Bal’Tol, however, was the appearance of cold confidence now on ‘Kinsa’s face. And the fact that ‘Kinsa was looking behind the deputation.

  Bal’Tol turned and saw fifteen Sangheili coming through the door from the corridor, lined up, all wearing similar scrap cuirasses that seemed the badge of ‘Kinsa’s followers. Some had pierced mandibles shining with spurlike adornments, the backs of their hands bristling with metal spikes. They carried homemade weapons known as mec-missilers—crossbowlike constructions that fired short, razor-sharp bolts, or spears. Each weapon had a rack of four bolts, made of hammered light metal and wood from the eco level, set to fall into firing position.

  Unexpected. There are far more of them than we surmised, Bal’Tol thought gloomily.

  Tirk ‘Surb and the others were turning about now as well, seeing they were caught between enemies. “What is this treachery?” Tirk sputtered.

  “And did you suppose,” grated ‘Kinsa, “that we do not know who arrives in a shuttle from Primary Section? We were informed, and we have prepared! The only prisoners here will be you.”

  “Dishonorable cowards!” roared Tirk, and he charged at this new group of fighters, the other patrollers right behind him. And forgetting, perhaps, about Norzessa, who took his cue to rush Bal’Tol and C’tenz.

  The Sangheili with the mec-missilers were surprised by the suddenness and boldness of Tirk’s attack, and hesitantly stepped back, only one of them loosing a bolt that flashed over Tirk’s shoulder.

  Tirk was already firing his pistol, almost point-blank into the face of one of the enemies. His target shrieked and staggered, dropping his weapon, as Tirk slashed into the one beside him with his burnblade. One of the patrollers bellowed in pain, going down with a mec-missile bolt in his abdomen; the others were then among the enemy fighters, furiously battering, slashing, firing sidearms.