Broken Circle

by John Shirley

  “You can trust me to report to you.”

  If you survive, Bal’Tol thought. But aloud he only made a discontented grunt of dissent.

  He turned again to look at the rows of monitors—and saw something a sentry had been watching to amuse himself and forgotten to take down. It was footage of a floatfight tournament. There were several great floatfighters competing, whirling, hurtling, hurling themselves through space, pitching headlong through zero gravity in the Combat Section.

  Combat initiated not by order of the kaidon was never legal in the colony. But Sangheili needed conflict—the necessity of some form of combat to maintain their sanity, their identity. So over time the floatfights had evolved, a sport that could be deadly, one that was always dangerous . . . and which gave a Sangheili, watching or taking part, a chance to satisfy that innate hunger for battle.

  The atmosphere in the big hemispherical zero-gravity room was already splotched with floating, warping billows of gore. It was striped with stretch-lines—taut, flexible vertical bands that were used by fighters to realign their trajectory, to rebound, to swing about for an attack.

  The judges usually removed a fighter before he met his end—if a judge decided a competitor was too torn up from the throwing blades, the quartermoons, and the spiked gloves, then a beam of intense red light was projected onto the wounded Sangheili and he was forced, by the rules, to “curl up,” to take a fetal position, which then made him extraneous to the fight. Referees would fly out, mildly propelled by jetpacks, and take him out of the competition. If he was pulled out, the audience, lined up in the straps along the walls, would hoot derisively at the fighter, or groan with sympathy if he happened to be a favorite.

  There: V’urm ‘Kerdeck, the greatest surviving floatfighter, was rocketing through the middle of the echoing arena, slamming spiked gloves as he passed through, knocking adversaries spinning. Then he did a tuck and roll in midair so that his feet could propel off the netting that protected the audience, sending him back in for another fly-by.

  It was a vicious sport—but it had been found that over the centuries, it provided the outlet that kept relative peace on the colony. At least, most of the time it did. Sometimes fights broke out between sections. And now, with ‘Kinsa, social unrest had become hostage taking, blockades, exploding shuttles, shrieks unheard in the insulation of the Primary Refuge.

  Bal’Tol watched the match unfold, every fighter against every other. They grabbed the stretch-lines and swung about like some primeval tree beasts, coming back at their enemies; they rounded from the stretch-lines and the nets, they collided, they shouted in fury and pain. On and on it went. First one and then a second and third eliminated. Until only two were left . . .

  The floatfight commission tried to prevent deaths—sometimes unsuccessfully. And it was not unheard of that the last two competitors might kill each other.

  Bal’Tol felt a shiver down his spine. This recorded unfolding of a floatfight might be a foreshadowing, with its trembling globules of blood in the air . . . a dire omen of what was to come to every part of the colony.

  The Journey’s Sustenance, a Supply Ship for the Fleet of Blessed Veneration

  Ussan System

  2553 CE

  The Age of Reclamation

  Zo Resken kept them at it, but it was becoming difficult. Somewhere, their enemies were still fighting their allies. And they were here, endlessly searching a forbidden solar system. Their vessel was not equipped with long-range scan equipment. It had not been devised for surveying. So commenced the traveling and scouring of this large system . . . looking for the forgotten.

  They were on a treasure hunt that encompassed millions of miles. Seeking out the relics that Zo insisted would lead them to a stunningly rich reliquary, they prospected rocky moons, planets where the skies screamed with methane winds; they searched through the asteroid belt; they flew close to comets and examined them, looking for clues . . . finding all too much and yet all too little.

  Their food supplies were close to exhaustion; so, too, was their patience. Arguments broke out over trivial matters.

  Only surface exploration of the moons, the planetoids, the asteroids, alleviated their restlessness. Time wore on; time slipped away.

  But the asteroid belt was as large as the orbit of a planet halfway to the farthest reaches of this system. There was much to see, and much that was difficult to see.

  And chance had kept them in the wrong part of the asteroid belt . . . the opposite end, with the sun between them, on the plane of the elliptic, and the Ussan colony.

  But then the day came . . .

  Zo Resken irritably glanced up as the hatchway hissed open and G’torik came into the pressure-suit storage hold that doubled as a laboratory. “I came to look at the latest harvest from the asteroid belt,” G’torik said. They called it the harvest—they were now using a weak gravitation field to scoop in anything they found in the asteroid belt that looked artificial.

  “Here,” Zo muttered, taking another fragment from the scratched and dirty metal table and putting it under the down-pointing cone of the analyzer. The three-dimensional image of the twisted metal fragment expanded, slowly rotated in holographic representation over the table. There was part of an ancient yet familiar ideogram on it. “You see that? Forerunner.”

  “Yes. But . . . it is the same problem: small fragments.” G’torik nodded at the relics on the table—a pile of rubble, really. “Is it not possible that there is nothing else out there? That the explosion destroyed the construct utterly—and even if it survived a while, in two thousand solar cycles it might well be gone . . .”

  “It has been more than two thousand solar cycles, in fact, by quite a bit, since its purported end,” Zo said, looking at another fragment of alloy. “Odd how this material is so metallic and yet is not mere metal. We have reproduced some Forerunner materials, but this may be one of their final innovations.”

  “You are holding it with your bare hands,” G’torik noted. “You did run this harvest through the radiation cleanser?”

  “Yes. It takes two cleansings. It is as if someone wanted to create a great deal of toxicity around these fragments—to deliberately give the impression that there is nothing to find here but deadly rubble.” He looked at G’torik. “You and the others want to give up the search?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, G’torik admitted, “It might be best—especially in light of news that is perhaps more exciting to a Sangheili than to a San’Shyuum.”

  “And what news is that?” Zo asked, trying to decipher the ideogram.

  “Tul decoded another set of subspace communications. We have had confirmation of what came to us only as inference, before. The Covenant is . . .” He pointed to the rubble. “Like that. In fragments. Shattered. The Flood destroyed what remained of High Charity . . . the Prophet of Mercy killed . . . the Ark shut down and the Halos silenced by the Demon . . . and the Prophet of Truth dead at the hands of Thel ‘Vadamee, may the Great Ones bless him for it.”

  Zo set a fragment aside and selected another. “So, Mken ‘Scre’ah’ben’s prophecy was correct. At last, the Covenant has met its end. Earlier reports indicated that the Elites had actually joined the humans?”

  “It is true,” G’torik mused. “The humans claimed that the Rings were not a means to achieve the Great Journey, but instead weapons of mass destruction, used by the Forerunners to purge the galaxy of all sentient life, cutting off the Flood from any source of continuation.”

  Zo sighed, wrestling with the paradigm shift, but feeling the weight of its truth. “My ancestor theorized as much—in secret, of course—based on evidence he had gathered from his time on Janjur Qom. Whether they were gods or not . . . it appears that the Forerunners were victims of their own design, committing themselves to self-annihilation for the sake of preserving sentient life throughout the galaxy.” His thoughts lightly nudged the intriguing parallel between the Forerunners and the Ussans. Both committed themselves to an end, r
ather than surrender to their enemies. Both appeared to have vanished from the face of the galaxy.

  “There is more. The Sangheili who once served the Covenant in the fleets are now beginning to return to Sanghelios and its colonies. It is a mixing of blood, however. Many still regard the Forerunners as holy and hold to some form of the Path; others believe they were only just another race, brilliant beyond measure but merely mortal. The Arbiter is being held by his people as the newly fledged leader of those who have truly abandoned the Covenant. They hope to lay claim to the spirit of Sanghelios keep by keep.”

  “Indeed?” Zo looked over at G’torik. He could see exultation in his friend’s body language and the sparkle of his eyes. “So—you and the others here have a homeworld to return to. I am glad of that, G’torik.”

  And, he thought, I’m a bit envious.

  “Why not come with us to Sanghelios? High Charity is gone. There is no place left for you now. We do not even know where the surviving Prophets went, if any survived to begin with.”

  “Ah. To be the only one of my kind on a planet with countless natives who now thoroughly hate the San’Shyuum? It doesn’t seem wise. No new Writ of Union in my future, I’m afraid.” Zo felt as if the room’s gravitation was increasing. “Is there anything amiss with the grav fields?”

  “No. I feel nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “I just . . .” He let out a long breath and slumped back into a chair. It was not an antigrav chair. He had only his belt now. “When I think of the other San’Shyuum, I feel heavy, as if . . .” He grimaced, remembering the Sangheili captives flattened, crushed by Exquisite Devotion in the gravitational refinement chamber. The horrifying memory never left him for long. He felt somehow that it had aged him before his time. He revisited that place in his nightmares.

  “Your people are out there somewhere, Zo,” said G’torik, as gently as a Sangheili knew how. “Some must have survived. I am sure of it. But until you find them, you should come with us to Sanghelios.”

  “I will consider it. Perhaps. But I have not given up here yet.”

  “We have been searching for much of a solar cycle . . . We’ve found nothing but space trash.”

  “But you have forgotten the accounts D’ero turned up—the logs of other captains who had spoken to Kig-Yar pirates. They came upon larger artifacts in this system. One of them claimed that something in this asteroid belt had actually fired upon them . . .”

  “The Kig-Yar!” G’torik sniffed. “Who can trust their word?”

  “Mken ‘Scre’ah’ben suspected that the colony may have survived—may have used the explosion from long ago as camouflage. Put that together with the Kig-Yar tales . . .”

  Tul came in then, with the Huragok, Sluggish Drifter, trailing after him. The Huragok was like some weightless nelosh, an aquatic animal from his ancestor’s records of Janjur Qom, floating through the air, its long neck twitching, its coils whipping out, tendrils seeking here and there. It signaled to Tul, who said, “Sluggish asks if it can repair some of these items.” He pointed at the wreckage on the table.

  “These, I fear, are beyond repair, even by a Huragok,” Zo observed sadly. He sat back in the chair, and adjusted his antigrav belt to remove a point or two of his weight. But it didn’t help much; the pressure was all in his mind. “Maybe I should journey with you to Sanghelios . . . if you really believe I will not be summarily executed there upon our arrival.”

  “You will be under our protection,” Tul said. “When we tell them our story, you may even be revered there!”

  Zo grunted skeptically. “If the rest of you do not wish to continue the search . . . then I cannot insist. I have no authority here. And Sanghelios would be one of my very few options.” He looked at the twisted, blackened bits of machinery piled on the table. “I had hoped to find something else among asteroids and debris. Something that might connect me with my ancestor, the Prophet of Inner Conviction. He often lamented about the failings of his own people, as have I, and it seemed that we were brought here by sheer fate.” He refused to admit to himself that he might well be the last living San’Shyuum.

  D’ero’s voice crackled from a comm grid on the wall. “Zo Resken! There is something up here you will want to see. Come to the bridge.”

  Suddenly the excess weight lifted away from Zo and he sprang to his feet, moved quickly past Tul and G’torik, and almost collided with the Huragok, which just managed to jet out of his way.

  Soon he was entering the bridge of the Journey’s Sustenance. “D’ero, you called and I have come . . .”

  Tul, G’torik, and the Huragok had followed, arriving a few moments later, as Zo sat down in the copilot’s seat beside D’ero.

  “There!” grumbled the captain.

  He pointed at the holoscope, which showed a three-dimensional view of a crowded section of the asteroid belt. Great whirling stones, some rimed with ice, tumbled past one another; the light was stark, coming from the sun on one side; the dark sides of each asteroid were inky black.

  “What am I to see here?” Zo asked, puzzled.

  D’ero tapped at the scope’s controls, and the image magnified, zooming in. Still Zo saw nothing—until two gigantic ragged-edged chunks of rock rolled out of the way, revealing a sharp-edged silvery object. Clearly it was artificial, its shape odd and yet organized; it was forged material, at a glance, like the fragments piled on the table. But it was much larger than any artificial object they had encountered in the asteroid belt, and even the Journey’s Sustenance.

  The object remained relatively stable, not spinning like those around it. And along its surface was a shimmering coat of force.

  “Incredible,” Zo said breathlessly. “We were here all this time, and it still managed to avoid detection.”

  “It is operational, judging from the force field,” Tul said, looking over his shoulder. “And someone has kept it that way. Zo—we may have just stumbled upon the Ussan colony.”

  “Are we truly going there?” D’ero asked. “Because chances are, they will not be friendly to intruders. If we reveal ourselves, we may not receive a warm reception. We may have to fight for our lives.”

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  The Refuge, the Ussan Colony

  Primary Refuge

  2553 CE

  The Age of Reclamation

  Bal’Tol was pacing back and forth in front of the monitors. “Are they through the hull yet?” he asked, again, as Xelq ‘Tylk, the scout-eye operator, moved the surveillance bot in for a closer view.

  “They are now removing the plate, Kaidon.” Xelq was squat, stocky, powerful of arm. He had mandibles with a number of small metallic studs punctured into them—studs made from metal he’d found in the debris field. He had once been an up-and-coming floatfighter, but had given it up to work in Colony External Maintenance. His preference was being out in space, going on several expeditions to tug dangerously close asteroids to higher orbits, and was one of the few Bal’Tol trusted in the small maintenance vehicles.

  Bal’Tol looked at the monitor, could see the eight-legged maintenance vehicle, like an arachnoid of metal, clinging to the hull of Section Two. On either side of it were metal-and-crystal cylinders, field interruption stations, each producing a transmission wavelength that had allowed them to be magnetically fixed to Section Two’s outer hull. Expanded to interlace, the fields had provided entry for the external maintenance vehicle by breaking up the repellent field in that discrete area. It also extended a containment field over the gap opened in the hull, to keep the air pressure in. There was an internal air lock, as well, a pressurization fail-safe.

  Bal’Tol could just make out the rough square where C’tenz and the others had cut through the hull, using Forerunner technology no one quite understood, beams of light that seemed to move narrow lines of materials apart, as if the hull material was simply persuaded on a molecular level to move out of the way. But if a Sangheili chanced to put his bare hand in the beam of light, perchance, no
harm was done.

  Bal’Tol could see half of each of the three Sangheili on the mission—C’tenz, Torren, and V’ornik—on the mission, each one limned on the left side by the sun, the other half invisible in pitch-black shadow.

  “Cannot you move the scout-eye in a little closer?” he asked.

  “If I do, at that range, there is risk. It is one more anomaly to be spotted by ‘Kinsa’s followers,” Xelq said.

  “Very well . . .” Bal’Tol muttered. He had a dark foreboding about this mission. “I wish I had gone along.”

  “You, Kaidon? It is I who should have gone. But C’tenz said I would be needed here. Torren and V’ornik have almost no experience in pressure suits.”

  “How you do reassure me,” Bal’Tol said acidly as he resumed pacing. He had never admitted to himself, before now, how very much C’tenz meant to him. Truly, he felt that C’tenz was like a son to him. And yet he had sent him on a suicide mission.

  Bal’Tol stopped in front of another monitor that showed an internal view of the new isolation ward in the Primary Section. He could see Qerspa ‘Tel, the biorep, calmly noting symptoms in a voice recorder as he stood over one of the snarling third-phase patients strapped to a cot. His heart sank at the sight. Was there any hope for his people?

  Sometimes Bal’Tol thought he could feel the desperation of all the Ussan Sangheili like a tightening cable—each strand in the cable another Ussan—keening as it readied to snap.

  “We are entering the hull,” said C’tenz softly.

  The transmission spurred Bal’Tol to hurry back to the drone monitor. He couldn’t see any of them now. They’d slipped through the gap.

  “Shall I activate his helmet transmitter?” Xelq asked.

  “Not unless they are discovered. The enemy might detect the signal.”

  “We have located the air lock to the . . .” There was a moment of static. Then, “The air lock is opening from the other side. Torren! Back, get back to the . . . they are here, they—”