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The Path of the Ring by Cthulhu117
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The Mind and the Master
Date: 23 October 2005, 3:41 pm
The mind hung in its antigrav bubble on the bridge of the vast cruiser and watched as the Yanme'e workers toiled ceaselessly at the fortress-world in the void below.
He watched in satisfaction; the construction of the rings was going well. For over 690,000 local years, the slave races had worked painstakingly on the rings that they so foolishly believed to be imbued with divine power. The man snorted in disgust. There was no divinity in the universe that he knew. There was only truth, untruth and the gray area composed of both.
He was momentarily distracted from his observations by the arrival of one of the higher-ranking slave races. He studied the creature quickly. It was one of the rodent-like creatures that the Sangheili called the Prophets: emissaries from the divine and messengers from the Leaders themselves. He was always disgusted by their rank, meaty smell and their limited minds. Yet they were the only one of the slave races that he could relate to.
They were not so cowardly as the Unggoy, not so savage as the Kig-Yar, and not so mindlessly destructive as the Lek'golo. But they were still narrow-minded, foolish creatures.
He turned back to the creature as it spoke, glad it could not comprehend his look of disgust. Its sibilant voice further contributed to his loathing of the thing.
"The construction goes well, my lord. Soon, if all goes well, this ring, the last of the seven that the gods commanded us to build, will be ready."
"And it will go well, Hierarch," pronounced the mind. "If it is not ready within the next five rotations of the world, then my superiors-and myself as well-will be most displeased."
He saw the unabashed terror in the thing's eyes. He reveled in it. He hated them. He hated all of the slave races. He wished that he had never been forced into contact with these undeveloped races. He hated the parasite for causing the construction of the rings to commence.
It had been untold ages since his race had dared to venture outside their own galaxy. They had the technology to, and they had no fear of the unknown. The only thing they feared was the parasite. On their grandest exploration of what lay beyond their own territory, they had encountered it. The creatures you could kill and watch as they returned to the assault. The things that crawled, walked, leapt and killed. The things that had even infected his own race, building sinister Graveminds on their stronghold-worlds.
He had always hated them worse than anything else. For all their technology, his race simply couldn't hold out forever against the Flood. The plasma blades that they'd developed recently were destroying the Flood faster than any other weapon they'd ever employed, but it was still too slow to stave them off permanently.
And so they had built the rings. For eons the slave races had worked on them, and they were nearing completion now, but they were still too slow and laborious to build. They could not construct enough to wipe the universe clean of this parasitic abomination.
He wheeled around, irritated. The Hierarch was still standing there.
"What?" he spat furiously.
"There is a...slight matter...regarding the rings," said the Prophet quietly. "We don't know how to activate the pulse."
"Pulse?" queried the mind. If only the thing would stop wasting his time.
"The purpose of the rings, lord. The reason they were built."
"Oh," said the mind. "You don't need to know. The Reclaimers will go through the process with the Monitors if the need should arise."
"Is that wise, my lord? The Reclaimers have been known to have rather unstable loyalties in the past."
"Get out of my sight," hissed the mind.
The Prophet scurried to obey.
"And on the way out, send in the Reclaimer leader."
"The-the Master, lord?"
"Yes, idiot. And hurry."
The Master lay in the cryo-freeze tube that had been prepared for him when he came on board. His dreams had ended, but he had not yet been thawed out.
He pondered how long it had been since he saw another one of his species. The Reclaimers, his race was called. But only by the Forerunners. That name was an old Reclaimer invention. The Reclaimers, the command and combat race of the Forerunners.
Nobody else called the Forerunners by this name. They did not dare. The Reclaimers did. The Forerunners could not punish them. They weren't expendable in the same way as the Unggoy, or even the Sangheili.
They were rare enough already. So many of his soldiers had died fighting the Flood. The Forerunner technology protected them better these days, but they had never been very numerous as a race.
His cryo-tube slid open. A Prophet was standing there. Squinting, he recognized it as a Hierarch-the Prophet of Regret. Like his masters, he detested the slave races. He wrinkled his nose as their stench, knowing that his helmet's faceplate would hide him from the Prophet's gaze. He sealed his helmet, unwilling to suffer their musty odor.
"What does the Commander want?" he asked the Prophet. No one but the Commander had authority to disturb a Reclaimer.
"Don't ask me. He just told me to fetch you!" There was an edge of panic in the creature's face.
The Master sighed and rose from the tube to head to the bridge, if only to pacify the Commander. Or perhaps, for something more important. He knew that the rings were almost complete.
He stopped himself. It wasn't his job to think. It was his job to obey the Forerunners. And he would do his job to the best of his ability, whatever the cost might be.
The Mind and the Master Part 2-The Intangible Avenger
Date: 29 October 2005, 12:29 pm
Section 1: Rise and Shine
The Master hurried down the winding corridors of the Forerunner battle cruiser Intangible Avenger.
He didn't know what the mind controlling the ship wanted, but if a Reclaimer like himself was involved, you could bet it was important. He was certain, though, that it would have something to do with the Halos.
He knew a bit more the next second, though. There was a huge explosion that rocked the whole ship and a terrible scrape of metal from the ship's chassis. He knew what would happen next. He'd seen it all on the holovids, and what happened after it.
The Flood were on board.
He cursed. If the parasite learned that a Reclaimer was on board and brought that information back to their Gravemind, he'd have all the Flood in the sector heading after him. He didn't want that. He didn't even have a gun.
As he pushed through the ship to the bridge he saw with horror that the Flood were getting there first. If the Forerunner on the bridge was captured and turned into a hellish Gravemind, he wouldn't stand a chance, and neither would the Halos. The Flood could use a ship this size to destroy them easily.
He pushed past a cowering Unggoy crewman only to see three Infection Forms greedily devouring the screaming creature. A Sangheili down the hall howled in agony as a Combat Form snapped his backbone like a twig, yet got up again as the Flood infected him. He was interrupted from this pageant of terror by his arrival at the bridge.
The nerve center of the ship was in lockdown. The doors were shut, the blast doors were shut and the DNA forcefields that prevented Flood access were up as well. He was stymied. He looked at the security pad and entered his serial number-code: 04708792711. Although this clearly confirmed he was a Reclaimer, the mind obviously wasn't taking any chances. The doors stayed shut. He scowled, and punched through the door.
The regulator crystals in his suit were setting off alarms in his helmet as he stretched tham to their limits and tore through three feet of titanite bidruniavate. The door parted before his fury like a knfe before butter.
He stepped onto the bridge. The mind was still there. The Flood weren't. The mind turned around as he approached.
"My Lord," said the Reclaimer. Not out of respect or inferiority, neither of which he had much of, but out of sheer reverence for the mind. A wonderfully impressive creature. Even for a Forerunner, it was surpassingly intelligent.
"I am glad you are here, young Naij," came the voice of the mind. The Master shuddered. Naij. It was the Sangheili word for his kind. It meant, quite simply, "claims-again" or reclaimer. It was the root of his race's name, but it seemed crude coming from the lips of a Forerunner. Assuming they had lips, which he was pretty sure they didn't.
"What do you need me for?" asked the Master.
The mind paused for a second and then said, "Look at the ring below. It would be the perfect trap for the Flood, don't you agree? Trap them on there, and if they ever escape from the ring, there won't be anyone left there to stop us from activating the Halos and wiping them out."
"Yeah," said the Master slowly, "but there is one problem."
"And what would you call that?"
"The Flood aren't on the ring. They never were on the ring. They never will be on the ring. In fact, at the moment they are on the ship."
The mind seemed to sigh. "I know," it pronounced.
"So what happens now?" the Reclaimer wondered aloud.
It was a long time before the mind spoke. "Do you see this?" he said, showing the Reclaimer a strange shard of crystal.
"That looks like a slipstream field aggresor."
"It is the prototype," said the mind, half to himself. "The prototype of a new breed of them, that will be able to pass our knowledge on to those who come after.
"The Flood want it. They know that the coordinates of the Halos are recorded on it. Anyone who carries it will be pursued by the Flood for as long as they can chase him.
"So you see, the Flood will be on the rings."
The Master could scarcely believe his ears.
"I have to be Flood-bait?" he said incredulously.
When the mind spoke again, you could almost think it was smiling.
"No, Reclaimer. The shard is the bait. You are the hook."
Section 2: Make Way For the Shard
The Master was not pleased. If it weren't for the genetic modification that forced him to obey Forerunner commands, he might have flat-out refused. But he couldn't say no. So he didn't.
The Forerunner's long whiplike arms reached over to an armory rack. A plasma double-blade and a Reclaimer MX160 Shotgun were deposited in his arms.
"Standard anti-Flood armament," the mind said. "Besides, I happen to know you like the MX160."
It was at times like this that the Master smiled. He did so now, glad for the billionth time that the helmet concealed his emotions.
"Good luck," said the mind. "You'll want it."
And so the Master drew the shotgun, stepped through the hole he had made, and was immediately attacked by a trio of combat forms. He was glad he had loaded the shotgun on the bridge. He pulled the trigger. There was an incredible recoil and a earsplitting bang as a 4-gauge shell tore the Flood apart.
A lone Infection Form meandered toward him, so he quickly used his double-bladed plasma sword to hack the bodies up so they could not be reanimated.
He walked into the main recreation area and saw a Lek'golo warrior. Only it wasn't anymore. Some Flood had succeeded in controlling it. The Reclaimer quickly backpedaled, hoping it hadn't heard him.
But it had. He had no time to dodge as it leapt thirty feet to reach him and struck him a savage blow across the face, nearly breaking his neck. He went sailing through the air, coming to rest against a bulkhead, pasted to the wall upside down. He saw a heavy M34 AVB Rocket Launcher lying nearby. He dropped the Shotgun and hefted the launcher, but the Flood Hunter was too quick. It was upon him before he could fire, and the launcher was struck from his hands.
He fell to the deckplates, spitting blood into the inside of his helmet. The Flood Hunter stepped on him with one immense boot.
Any other living thing would have been crushed instantly by the 3500 pounds bearing its weight down on them. But the Master's type 12 armor was strong enough to protect him from instant death. Even so, the man could feel the breath being crushed out of him. Drawing the the plasma blades, he hacked three times at the beast's leg. The thing howled in torment before smashing the Master into the air once more and through an exercise bench.
The Flood Hunter had made a fatal error. It had knocked the man across the room, and landed him right on top of the M34 Rocket Launcher.
The Master got up, grinning mercilessly.
"Heads up, bastard," he spat through his bleeding mouth.
There was a hiss of air releasing.
There was an explosion.
A trail of Reclaimer footprints headed through the yellowish gore to the lifepods.
As the Master walked into the empty lifepod and plotted a course for the Halo beneath him, he was thankful that the lifepods were right next to the bridge.
The Mind and the Master Part 3-The Ring
Date: 14 November 2005, 12:11 am
Section 3-Eastwood Style
The Master was wondering if his descent was ever going to end when it did.
There was a thump muffled by the sound dampers in his helmet, and his teeth rattled painfully. He touched the door control pad. The door smoothly slid open, showing him Gamma Halo.
The sight was a beautiful, panoramic scene. He would have taken shore leave there, if there had been any such thing as shore leave anymore.
The Master sighed. During his drop towards the ring, he had been doing what the Reclaimers were never supposed to do- contemplate their lot in life. The Forerunners had forbidden it to his race after the Naij Rebellion. The revolt against the Forerunners was over two thousand years in the past know, and even the oldest of the Reclaimers had no memories of it anymore. It was better that way.
2,326 years ago, one of the Reclaimer leaders had started thinking about the situation his people were in. If the Flood won the century-long war that was taking place, he had realized, they would certainly destroy or infect his species. But if the Flood were defeated, the Forerunners would no longer require a combat-race. They would eradicate any race they didn't absolutely need, it was said, due to their experience with the Flood.
And so this one Reclaimer had gathered others to his cause and rebelled. They had been unsuccessful, of course. But it had taken the entire group of slave races and some unwitting Flood intervention to do so. Even now, the Forerunners didn't want the Reclaimers to start thinking. The Master knew why. They weren't sure they could defeat the Reclaimers again.
He pulled his weapons off the wall of the pod and stepped out. The Flood were not here yet, but he was fairly certain that they'd be here soon enough.
He checked the shotgun he'd taken. To his disappointment, it was out of shells. He wondered why the mind had given him a gun with only three shells in it. That was very much like it wanted him to get killed. He liked the MX160 line, but he had come to prefer Forerunner weaponry lately. He didn't have to reload for most of their weapons, and all he needed to worry about was the gun overheating.
As he dropped the shotgun and activated his double energy sword, three more pods dropped to the ring and a Sangheili climbed out of each. The biggest he recognized: it was Garva Kontolee', an Ultra. The others were both major Elites who he didn't know by name. Kontolee' strode up to the Master.
"Is the parasite here?" he asked in his gravelly voice.
"No," said the Reclaimer after some thought. There was a smell of metal in the air, but not the characteristic stink of Flood forms...yet.
He looked at the other side of the ring. It looked completed. It was complete. As he watched, a pulse came from points on the Halo's circumference and met in the middle. The Halo was ready to fire.
Which was something that the Flood must have guessed, because they immediately turned their ships away from the crippled Intangible Avenger and headed for the ring.
The Master looked back to the three Sangheili. There was a slight rasp to his voice as he commanded the trio.
"Warriors!"
"My Lord?"
"We're going to the control room of this place. We are going to destroy the Flood. We are going to activate Halo."
Section Four- Crusade
The Flood were leaving the doomed Forerunner ship. They had attacked it so heavily that even they couldn't repair it.
But on the bridge of the ship, the mind lay weak and dying in its antigrav bubble. The Flood had exposed the bridge to space. They didn't need to breathe. But the Forerunners did.
The Flood were abandoning the ship.
Yet on the ruined bridge, something was moving. It wasn't the mind.
It was a Flood Infection Form.
Or rather, several dozen Flood infection forms.
The mind wanted to do something about it as the tiny assassins crept towards him. Yet he couldn't. He couldn't even scream as they impaled him with half a hundred neural penetrators. He couldn't even think the word 'Gravemind' as the Flood made itself a part of him. No, not a part of him. The Flood made itself him.
On Halo, the Master was making progress. He was less than a mile away from the structure they called the control room. The Flood had started to land about an hour ago. Since then, he had been fighting ridiculous amounts of Flood without a pause.
One of the major Sangheili, Juva Temisolonee', had been killed by a Carrier form just seconds before. His shields had dropped from the pounding of a Plasma Rifle just as the blobby thing exploded behind him.
The other two Sangheili, Kontolee' and Hexa Potoyee', had piled into a Sangheili vehicle that the Master had dubbed a Spirit. It had a driver's seat, a passenger seat and a pulse laser that could destroy a Sangheili Seraph fightership in two hits.
At the moment, Potoyee' was on the turret, and he was losing it. He was wildly firing at anything that moved, even if it was only a tree swaying in the breeze.
"Make each shot count, fool!" howled Kontolee'. "That happens to be the last power cell we have!"
The Master neatly hopped into the Spirit and rode shotgun, blasting a Combat Form out of his way. "Do as he says, idiot!" he berated Potoyee'.
But the Elite was beyond listening. His sanity had snapped at the same time as Temisolonee's back.
There was suddenly a huge explosion. A Lek'golo infected by the Flood had fired a Fuel Rod beneath the Spirit, blowing it to shrapnel and chunks of Sangheili flesh. The blast had apparently removed Potoyee's midsection.
Kontolee' threw his Enforcer Needler aside and drew two energy blades from his back, grasping one in each big hand. As he ignited their blades, the mutant Lek'golo charged him. He dodged its strike and lashed it twice in its back.
The Hunter Form was too quick for him the second time. It lashed out backwards with incredible force. Kontolee' was slung sideways into the air and skidded into a rock. He glared at the Flood beast and charged it, injured, without an energy shield and weaponless.
The hellish Lek'golo thing was suspicious of some kind of a trick. When no such trick presented itself, it met Garva Kontolee' head on. The Master winced as purple blood splattered his armor. There wasn't a piece of Kontolee' left bigger than a hand grenade. The Flood Hunter had fired his fuel rod cannon at the furious Elite somewhere during their meeting.
As the Master picked up a dropped Plasma Rifle to try and deal with the monstrosity, he was surprised by a small glowing purple sphere, which appeared to be watching the action. As he looked at it, it spoke in a voice that grated on the Master's nerves.
"Oh, hello, Reclaimer. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Monitor of Installation zero-seven. I am one-one-seven-six-four-nine Reproachable Instigation. We must activate the ring. But the Flood are too numerous already on Gamma Halo. On Alpha Halo, you will have a better chance of retrieving the Index and activating the pulse. This way."
The Master dissolved into a field of golden shimmer, and as he felt himself traversing a vast distance in interstellar space, his last thought was a hope that Alpha Halo didn't have a Monitor as well.
The Mind and the Master Part 4-The Monitor
Date: 18 November 2005, 10:03 pm
Section Five-Quirky, My Ass
On Alpha Halo 04, there was, contrary to the Master's hopes, also a Monitor.
He was called 343 Guilty Spark. He had two personalities. When the Huragok had made him a hundred years before Halo 04 was completed, they had, to put it mildly, screwed up. Badly.
Making an AI is not in itself a difficult thing for a Huragok, but it's just that there are a thousand places where you can make a mistake. For example, the algorithm that governed a Monitor's personality had a space left for multiple personalities. It wasn't difficult for even a Huragok to make an error in the personality quantity without noticing it. The one that had created 343 had made just such an error.
One of the Monitor's personalities was perky and irritatingly user friendly. The other was demented. It hated the Forerunners for ordering it to be brought into being and being too careless to notice its flaws, damning it to an eternity of insanity.
Since Installation 04 had been completed over two thousand years ago, the Monitor had been sitting in Halo's Library and muttering to himself, and, on occasion, his Sentinels. When they would listen. Which they never did.
But Guilty Spark didn't care. As long as it didn't distract him from his hatred of his makers, it was fine by him. Well, half of him.
"The Forerunners hated us. They wanted us to suffer like this. They had created our hell for us and put us in it."
"No! The Forerunners care about us! They honored us by putting us in such an important place."
"Important! A place we can never leave? A place where there is nothing to do but what they tell us to do? If that was an honor, we hope we never see a punishment!"
The Monitor had no idea that the Forerunners might ever use the Halos. He had simulated over three thousand Halo-firings without ever actually believing he'd need to practically apply this.
He paused in his constant mutterings to note that life forms were arriving on the ring. He recognized their lifesigns. The Forerunners had called them Flood. They were coming to the rings, just as his orders had told him that they would.
But one of the lifesigns wasn't Flood. It wasn't even Sangheili, the mighty servants of the Forerunners. It was a Reclaimer.
Until now, the Monitor had only told his Sentinels to trap the parasites in containment centers. But a Reclaimer was an emissary of the Forerunners, and he didn't want anyone reporting his insanity to his creators.
So he decided to kill the Reclaimer. His perky half insisted that he couldn't, he had to prepare for the ring's activation, and that he had to clean up the Flood so that the Reclaimer would not have to fight for his life. He paid it no attention until he realized it was right. His programming did not allow him to kill the Reclaimer personally, and he knew that any Reclaimer could easily overwhelm his Sentinels.
However, there was a vast supply of slavering zombies arriving on the ring every second. They would be more than happy to do his dirty work for him, however unwittingly.
He quickly adjusted the plan of the Index retrieval to suit his goal. He would bring the Reclaimer into the Library to be overwhelmed by the Flood, rather than straight to the Index. If the Reclaimer died, Spark would take the Index himself and activate Halo, regardless of protocol. If not, he would activate Halo with the Reclaimer quickly before the Reclaimer could figure out what Halo did.
He would do this. He could not fail.
Section 6-Fourth Floor: Reclaimers, AIs, Strange Lack of Flood
The Master hated teleportation. It made him sick, dizzy and entirely unfit for combat. Nevertheless, he was dropped into a war zone as soon as he arrived on Halo 04.
If this is less overrun with Flood than Gamma Halo, he thought, I shudder to think what Gamma Halo looks like by now. He used his Plasma Rifle to cook an unwary Combat Form. He looked around as he fought furiously. He was in a swamp. A swamp swarming with Flood. In the skies, his keen eyes pierced the foliage and fog to spot the Intangible Avenger emerging from slipspace overhead.
As he battled the Combat Forms with a rapidly dwindling supply of ammunition, a Monitor descended from the trees nearby with a slew of floating robotic warriors. The floating blue orb was apparently humming animatedly to itself.
"La da diii, la da da da dum," it mused loudly. "Ba bi da da da duuuum, la la la diiiii, da dum," it concluded its irritating ditty.
The Master was on the verge of shooting the thing. Here he stood, fighting innumerable hordes of parasitic beasts with the paltry help of the Sentinels' lasers, while the Monitor of Installation 04 floated there, composing an easy-listening tune.
It started as if noticing the Master for the first time. "Oh, hello!" it said even more loudly, and then returned to its mindless humming.
The Master could stand it no longer. "HEY!" he howled at the AI. It looked at him again and identified him.
"Ah, Reclaimer! I am glad you are here! The Flood is spreading! We must hurry to retrieve the Index so that we may activate Halo. The Index is in the heart of the Library, which is covered in Flood. This way, if you please."
The Master dissolved into golden vapor again. He rematerialized in the Library. From what he'd studied of the rings' layout, he wasn't anywhere near the Index that was required to activate the rings. Apparently, everyone was inadvertently placing him in harm's way today. First the mind had given him a gun with three shells in it. Now he'd have to fight his way through the Library. He couldn't count on the little AI for assistance; it was fairly obvious that Guilty Spark was...erm, mentally challenged.
He was running out of patience. He had no time for this.
On the back of his suit was an emergency thruster pack. When he had donned his armor, he had been told to never, ever use it unless he was prepared for pain and nausea.
Well, he told himself, he couldn't get much more nauseous than he already was. And activated the thruster pack.
With a thump, some sort of control stick slid out of his left gauntlet. It molded itself into the shape of his right hand. He pressed the red button on top of it.
There was a sonic boom as he shot straight up so fast that when he hit the ceiling, he kept going. The same thing happened at the next ceiling, and the next, and the next. The thruster pack didn't peter out until he hit the roof of the facility. He found himself near an elevator that had a huge bluish-green energy beam shooting through it.
The small AI flitted up through the hole he had made and tsked. "That was inefficient, Reclaimer," he pronounced. "You could have asked me first before wreaking unimaginable devastation on my facility." It did not seem unduly worried, despite what it said.
"The Index is down there, at the bottom of the elevator shaft. When you reach the bottom floor, the energy field guarding it will deactivate," it continued.
The Master looked askance at the AI. "Why aren't there any Flood here?" he asked the Monitor.
"The Flood are too occupied with my Sentinels to cause much trouble," Spark responded. "But more importantly, even the Flood are unable to jump through the hole that you created. That floor was titanium manganate, Reclaimer. You are quite durable! Hee, hee, hee, hee!" he admonished the bemused Master.
The Reclaimer was a little bit creeped out to be nearby Guilty Spark, so he walked to the elevator. It began to descend as soon as he walked onto it. As he reached the ground floor, he noticed a luminous green object int he elevator's center. It was the Index. He took it and stared at it for a second, before it was sucked by a xaser beam into the innards of the Monitor.
"Hey!" barked the Master. "Give me that back!"
The Monitor was evidently surprised. "Reclaimer, protocol dictates that I must transport the Index to the Control Room."
The Master knew that the AI was right, but he didn't want to trust Spark with anything that was even mildly important.
Then he teleported again, and the Library dissolved before his eyes. He knew then that they were headed for the control room of Alpha Halo.
The Mind and the Master Part 5-The Firing of the Rings
Date: 21 November 2005, 1:15 am
Section 7-The Control Room
When the Master reappeared, he was in the Control Room. To his annoyance, Guilty Spark was still with him. He realized a second later that the Monitor was carrying the Index, so it was a good thing that he had stuck around. He wouldn't have put it past Spark to forget everything and simply teleport himself across the ring and sit there humming to himself while the Master had no Index.
The Monitor was, as always, humming. He was not paying any attention whatsoever to the Reclaimer, but he had the Index, floating in front of him on a xaser beam, evidently meant for the Master to take it. The Master took it, unwilling to leave the precious Index in the Monitor's grasp longer than was absolutely necessary.
The Monitor stopped humming and looked at the Reclaimer, his blue light pulsing slowly and somberly. The Master gathered that the AI was in a serious mood.
"If you will now re-unify the Index with the Core, Reclaimer, we will, for the first time, activate this station. Need I remind you, though, that there is a possible risk that the pulse will not activate. I have simulated the firing of the Halos exactly 3,187 times, but I may have been incorrect in one or more variables taken into account in the firing." The little Monitor's voice had lost all trace of insanity.
"What would happen if you were wrong?" The Master's harsh bass rang out. It echoed ominously in the cavernous room.
"Quite likely, you and all other organics in the region will go to a fiery doom! He, he, he, he, he, he!" The Master groaned. This was more like the Monitor he knew and hated.
He walked up to the control panel. This task was so simple. Put the Index in the terminal, and the Flood were gone. The wars would end. There would be nothing but peace. He hoped so, anyway. The Forerunners might be tempted to eradicate the Reclaimers once the Flood were gone. If that happened...he tried not to think about it.
He turned his head to look at Spark. His words burned themselves into the AI's unreliable memory.
"343 Guilty Spark?"
"What is it, Reclaimer?"
"If- if it were your choice, would you do it?"
The AI was silent for a few seconds. Then, "I'm- I don't- I am not sure, Reclaimer," it said quietly. "It is your decision, but you must activate Halo."
The Master turned back to the control panel. He placed the Index into the slot that was made for it.
There was a sound of a system powering up.
The Master looked back at the Monitor.
"How long will Halo take?" he asked. "To eliminate the Flood, I mean?"
The AI had no face, but if it had, the Master could tell it would have been wearing a puzzled expression. What he couldn't tell was why. At last, the Monitor of Installation 04 spoke.
"Eliminate the Flood?" the AI said incredulously. Now the Master was sure that Spark was confused.
"This station, Reclaimer, was not designed to kill the Flood."
The Master's voice was quiet, disbelieving what he had just heard.
"What?"
"You did hear me, Reclaimer. The Halos do not kill the Parasite. They kill the Flood's prey."
The Master's heart skipped a beat as he snatched the Index from the console. The Flood's prey-that was anything sentient with sufficient biomass to sustain a Flood infection. In short, it was every intelligent race in the galaxy.
His voice rang out loud again. "Why wasn't I told of this before?"
The Monitor was now thoroughly perplexed. "I assumed you already knew, Reclaimer. Have not the Forerunners instructed you in the purpose of the rings you were sent here to activate?"
The Master's voice was bitter. "I wasn't sent here to activate a ring. I was sent to Gamma Halo to be bait for the Flood, and your pal Instigation sent me here before I could tell him I wasn't supposed to be firing any Halos."
"The ring must be activated, Reclaimer," said the AI. "If you are unwilling to aid me, I must --replace you-- with another Reclaimer who is more willing to activate the ring."
The Master raised his Plasma Rifle to Spark's level. "What do you mean, replace?" he said. His voice had a subtle touch of fury to it.
The Monitor was adamant. "What do you mean, what do you mean?" he responded sharply. "The ring must be activated, whether you are willing to help me or not."
"They'd all die. Everybody. The Reclaimers, the Forerunners, the Sangheili, everyone! And the Flood wouldn't even be dead! They wouldn't have anyone to infect, that's true, but there wouldn't be anyone around to appreciate it! Doesn't that bother you even the slightest bit?" the Reclaimer raged.
"To be quite honest, Reclaimer," said Spark with a terrible glee, "no, it doesn't bother me. I would be quite happy to see the Forerunners meet a miserable fate. Your Sangheili matter nothing to me! And the Reclaimers will be unnecessary once the Flood are harmless, although I may miss your edifying conversation," he ruminated. "Besides that, the Monitors will be around to appreciate it, and so--"
But the Master had had enough of the evil little AI sitting there musing on the extermination of all life in the galaxy. He aimed his Plasma Rifle for Spark's 'eye' and fired six shots at point-blank range.
Section Eight- Halo
The Monitor bounced to the floor, plasma-fire hissing along his polymer chassis.
"That was absolutely uncalled-for!" snapped Guilty Spark in a loud bossy voice.
The Master held up his hand for silence. "There will be no activation of Halo unless there is some way for me to save the races of the galaxy from total extermination."
"Deviation from protocol, Reclaimer," warned the Monitor. "No specimens on any Flood vector can be preserved, or the Flood would once more start to spread."
The Master pulled out the slipspace aggressor shard that the mind had given him on the bridge of the Intangible Avenger. The mind had told him that it was the way that the Forerunners would pass on their knowledge to the races of the future. He knew now how the shard could do that. It could hold a set of slipspace coordinates, but it could also hold a consciousness.
"This is not a Flood vector, is it?" the Reclaimer growled.
"It is not," the Monitor was forced to admit as he stared at the shard.
"It will carry the races safely through the firing of the Halos," pronounced the Master.
It was the work of a few minutes for the Monitor to teleport several specimens of Prophets, Sangheili, Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Yanme'e, Lek'golo and Huragok from the Intangible Avenger. Unbelievably, Spark had managed to locate the two frozen Reclaimers, Jaira and Kulitsan, that had been on the cruiser, and teleport them here, still in their cryo tubes. He woke his soldiers from their sleep. The Master considered abandoning the foolish plan he'd dreamed up, but he couldn't think of any other way to preserve sentient life.
When the slave races were assembled before him, he told them briefly the truth. He wished them good luck and told them not to tell their descendants of this truth. He wanted the races to forget Halo and the Flood.
The Unggoy, Yanme'e, Lek'golo, Kig-Yar and Reclaimers would each get their own planet. The Master would leave the Prophets, Sangheili and Huragok on the same planet; he hoped that they would be able to form some kind of civilization between them, even if the others couldn't.
He took the shard and smashed it. It splintered into other shards. Each race got their own piece. The Master prepared for the dissolution of the races as they each touched the shard, and, one by one, were absorbed into the gem, simply fizzing into their component molecules, which imprinted themselves upon the shard. Onto each and every piece the Master scratched a crude order- to re-manifest in exactly 75,000 years.
He looked last at his own species. Jaira and Kul had been together for years; it was fitting that they should continue the existence of the Reclaimers. He only had one order for them before they dissolved.
"Don't call yourself Reclaimers. We have already reclaimed. Call yourselves by the secret name of our race. Call yourselves...humans."
Then they were gone. The Master stood alone in the control room of Alpha Halo, surrounded by pieces of the shard. He ordered Guilty Spark to send the different species to random planets. He didn't want the crazed AI to send any race to a gas giant or something.
He wondered what would happen if he divided his mind. If one piece was not found, the other might be. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the plan.
He told the Monitor to put one half of his consciousness in the Core of Alpha Halo. Spark was about to refuse, but something in the Master's voice suggested to him that this might be a bad plan. If he had known the Master well, he would have realized that the Master was ready to rip him limb from limb, so to speak.
The Master was all alone now. He placed one hand on the shard and one on the console as the Monitor made the necessary arrangements for his absorption into the Core. Then he felt himself separate. He looked back at himself. His body stood there, but there was nothing in it. It was an empty shell now. Even as he watched, the shatter mechanism activated and the battle suit that had seen him through the whole war disintegrated into atoms. In a way, it broke his heart.
And then, from inside the Core, the Master of the Reclaimers, the one who knew the truth, activated Halo.
On the Reclaimer homeworld, on the Sangheili homeworld, on the Unggoy homeworld, on the Yanme'e homeworld, on the Lek'golo homeworld, on the Prophet homeworld, on the Huragok homeworld, on every colony, in every ship, everything simply fell dead. Those who were watching the sky might have been lucky enough to see a light band of ethereal blue energy transfix the sky before they fell soundlessly, unprepared to scream.
Then there was nothing. In the control room of Alpha Halo, there was no sound except for the humming of 343 Guilty Spark.
Suddenly words materialized out of the shifting holograms above the Core.
YOU WILL TELEPORT THE SHARDS AWAY, WON'T YOU
"Of course I will," said the Monitor. For some strange reason, he did.
SEND ME TO A RANDOM PLANET, AND MAKE SURE YOU CONTAIN THE FLOOD ON THE HALOS FOR THE REST OF THEIR MISERABLE EXISTENCE
The AI was affronted. "I am not so negligent as you seem to believe, Reclaimer."
I'M LEAVING YOU IN CHARGE HERE. DON'T WAIT UP FOR ME.
The AI hummed to himself for a second, then sent the shards on their way. He didn't particularly care where, but he did send them to planets he felt they could survive on. Last of all, he send the shard with half of the Master to a backwater little planet called Javaki'je. Eventually, it would be designated Sigma Octanus IV.
Lastly, Spark teleported himself away. He had orders to give to his Sentinels and the other Monitors.
Then the control room of Alpha Halo was silent.
It stayed that way for 101,217 years.
The Mind and the Master Part 6-The Master
Date: 25 November 2005, 3:14 pm
Section 9-- Seen and Unseen
The Master stayed around for a hundred millennia, and more. Occasionally, 343 Guilty Spark showed up to speak to the human, but was repelled time after time until, around 75600 BC, he stopped coming, much to the Master's relief.
The Master often thought he should have given himself a new name. He wasn't 'master' of anything now. But he didn't. He never could remember names. Besides, all the languages he knew had probably disappeared by now.
After ninety thousand years of boredom, the Master started to observe the races he had painstakingly prolonged the existence of. He noticed that the Sangheili were on the same planet as the Prophets, but the Sangheili had been thrown into a vast range of mountains that spanned a full 30% of the planet's surface area. To cope with this, they had evolved interestingly. Their piercing claws had become blunted, and they had adapted a second thumb. The Master was most interested.
The Huragok were completely unchanged. That was just like the Huragok. The Unggoy were even stupider than before, he noted. The Kig-Yar's wings had finally atrophied on their inhospitable desert planet. The Lek'golo roamed free on their homeworld. The Yanme'e lived on a cold, airless planet where they could fly more freely than in any atmosphere. He watched with interest as new races evolved on their worlds, such as a huge, brutal mob of apes in a jungle that he was sure the Prophets would call the Jiralhavag. When he thought of the name, he realized that 'big, furry monster' was hardly a wise thing to call such a deadly creature, but he knew that the Prophets would dream up some variation of the name. He became a sort of naturalist. At least, the Halo-bound half of him did. The piece within the shard had no ability to perceive beyond its own area.
His race were in many ways the most intriguing. They constantly fought among themselves, killing each other with no regard for their species such as the Reclaimers had had. Still, they were his descendants. He was bound to them.
And then, of course, there was the day that the Sangheili and the Prophets encountered each other. Contrary to the Master's expectations, they immediately started killing each other. The Master didn't really care, but he hoped that they wouldn't wipe each other out completely.
Soon after that, he observed the formation of the Covenant between the Sangheili and the Prophets. They believed in a mode of worship of apparently non-existent gods and belief that the Forerunners were, to quote a Prophet, 'holy bringers of the truth'. Upon his investigations of the 'truth', he discovered that the Covenant planned to activate a 'sacred ring' wherever they found one. Now the Master was disgusted. Were these fools really ready to kill everyone again? He watched as they slowly spread throughout the galaxy, incorporating first the Huragok, then the Unggoy, then the Kig-Yar, then the Lek'golo, then the Yanme'e, and finally the Jiralhanae (much to the Master's amusement, they had chosen a name that meant 'big, furry champion') into their Covenant.
In life, he had walked among men and angels for all three thousand years of his existence. Now, time had no end...no beginning...no purpose. He had wandered the galaxy, seeking revenge for his horrible crimes. He lived to see death and destruction over the light, but the light could not be extinguished.
Now he was in a prison of his own demise.
Now he was lost in time...
Section 10- The Master (Chief)
By the year 250 AD, the Master was almost desperate to be found. The Covenant would utterly eliminate all life in the galaxy if given half a chance, and this time, the Master wouldn't be able to help. The thing was, he was fairly sure that the Monitors would not allow the activation of any Halo without a Reclaimer who had the Index in hand. 343 Guilty Spark he wasn't so sure about, but he thought that even an insane Monitor would still insist on rigid adherence to protocol.
Finally, he watched his own race extend into space, expanding their borders. He watched with great surprise as the SPARTANs were trained. The training program was quite similar to the one he had gone through as a child. One of them he liked in particular. The soldier they called Samuel-034 reminded him of himself at that age. The one called Kelly-087 was almost as fast as he had been without his armor. The one called Linda-058 was an even better shot than he had been. But their leader, their 'Master' the one they looked to when they were losing, was called John-117. He was like the Master in every way.
Then, of course, the Covenant had to come and attack the humans. It perplexed him that they should do so. They usually incorporated a race, or at least tried to, before they destroyed it.
The MJOLNIR Mark V armor really surprised him. Stolen from Covenant technology, it was so much like his own armor that he started to reconsider his skeptical ideas on genetic memory. Of course, it was so much more primitive that he almost laughed at it. It was heavy, lightly shielded, and didn't have much in the way of simple protection value, but it was better than anything that the Covenant had ever thought of.
Then, exactly 101,217 years after he'd fired Halo, the shard containing him was retrieved. As far as he knew, it had been put in a museum, and then two Lek'golo had attempted to remove it. As he wondered what they wanted with the shard, he was picked up first by SPARTAN 087, and then by- unbelievably- SPARTAN 117. These days, they even called him a Master. Well, a Master Chief. The rank conveyed nothing to the Master.
And the Master perceived, in the few seconds that John held him, his time to leave the shard had come. If he entered John's MJOLNIR armor, he could hide in the liquid-crystal layer, and John would never notice.
That was what he did.
No one ever detected him in the crystal. Soon he moved into John's nervous system. He liked to be able to tell what the SPARTAN was thinking. Besides, in John's mind, even Cortana couldn't detect him. He stayed with John all through the incident on Sigma Octanus IV. He stayed with him all through the Epsilon Eridani system. And then he realized that, despite the supposedly random slipspace jump, they were headed back to Alpha Halo. It seemed very much to the Master that, against all odds, the two pieces of his mind might be reunited.
He just hoped that John didn't have to encounter Guilty Spark as well. John had more self-control than the Master had had, but a completely insane Monitor might be enough to send the Master Chief on a killing rampage.
Although, frankly, it wouldn't piss off the Master much to see 343 Guilty Spark torn to bits.
The Mind and the Master Part 7-The Mind
Date: 11 December 2005, 9:33 pm
Section 11- Delta Halo 05
The mind had not stayed on the Intangible Avenger.
The gutted ship had remained in the proximity of Alpha Halo for as long as the mind wished. Nonetheless, the Forerunners had never been patient and the Flood were much less so. When it became clear that the Halos were activating and his Flood would be corralled onto the Installations, he headed for the one where the fighting was the most intense--Installation 05. The Flood there were putting up a fierce fight. Their Juggernauts, mighty forms that could be spawned from the Sharquoi beasts of the nearby world, were simply too much for the Sentinels too deal with easily.
It was really the only Halo where the Gravemind saw any future for the Flood's twisted remnants of life. He had a plan for them, but it would only work there on Installation 05. He would have to wait for someone to attempt to retrieve the Index, and then use them to claim it himself. It was a simple and straightforward plan, except for one detail: There was no sentient life in the universe, and certainly no Reclaimers. Furthermore, there wouldn't be for quite a while.
But the Gravemind was not so ravenous and mindless as his minions. He could wait seventy-five millenia, or longer, if he knew he could accomplish his goals by doing so. The Sentinels and Enforcers of this ring would be surprised and unable to defeat his Flood. The only problem would be the Monitor. 2401 Penitent Tangent. The name came into the creature's mind unbidden. His old self had known the names of the seven Monitors. 1 Reprehensible Provocation...7 Apologetic Impulsion...49 Culpable Impetus...343 Guilty Spark. The Gravemind struggled to remember the next after Tangent. 16807 Remorseful Incentive, he thought, and then 117649 Reproachable Instigation. He wondered why this had stood out in his brain, but could not find an answer.
These Monitors had powers of their own. He remembered containment protocols. In event of an outbreak large enough that no Reclaimer was available on any ring, hidden programming in the Monitors would activate and they would scour the galaxy killing any living thing they could find, Flood or no. So the Gravemind, along with all the Flood he could locate, retreated to Delta Halo.
On board the Forerunner ship, Gravemind's tentacles stirred, directing the crippled warship down towards the ring's surface. He would crash the ship in an area near to the Monitor. The ship's sensors could still pick up the identification beacon on 2401 Penitent Tangent. He aimed the ship for the beacon and accelerated the Intangible Avenger to a maximum realspace velocity of five hundred and twenty-one thousand miles per hour. If the ship needed to, it could go faster, but at velocities of more than a million miles per hour, even if the shields were up, a rock the size of an Unggoy could punch through the shields and quite a few decks of the ship, and a collision with a Halo would break the ring and simply vaporize the ship.
On Delta Halo, the Forerunner cybersoldier Enforcer-class, designation number 0565484125, was observing the sky. It was doing so because seven units ago, a ship had been spotted and all units had been put on alert. The Enforcer was now close enough to the area that it could scan the ship.
Intangible Avenger. Erinyes-class warship, reported disabled in recent skirmish above Installation 07. All well, then. It had escaped and was now in orbit above Delta Halo. The Enforcer suddenly remembered something. Early that revolution, it had received a transmission from an unknown source, but with clearance one- the Monitor's clearance. The transmission had made reference to the Halos firing. The Enforcer had been underground searching for a collapsed access junction at the time; it hadn't seen a thing. Still, if the ring had activated, then only the Flood could be controlling the warship. An ozone stench started to fill the thin air as the Enforcer charged its weapons.
But was the ship doing something?
Surely it wasn't opening a slipspace-
And that was when the ship performed a seven-nanosecond-long slipspace jump, appearing again not two hundred meters above the Halo's surface, super-accelerated and carrying almost two hundred thousand Flood forms.
For a shattered instant just before the Forerunner warship hit the snowy Containment area of the Halo, there was absolute silence.
And then there was a huge gout of plasma flame rising high above the ring's surface and noise so loud that any organic being that heard it would certainly have been killed by sheer sensory overload.
But the Flood were not organic beings. Nor were the Sentinels that filled the air to combat them. They killed each other furiously yet silently, a silence broken only by the hissing of lasers, the muffled explosions of robots torn apart, and the ghastly gurgling of the Parasite.
The Flood and Sentinels fought like they had never fought before. Yet amongst them was something that stilled the combat wherever it went. The Gravemind skittered along on its countless tentacles like an overgrown spider. A foolhardy Enforcer turned a stream of missiles on the creature. There followed a terrible shrieking of metal as a dozen tentacles grasped the Enforcer and tore it to scrap metal. Several Sentinels, seeing their superior fall, turned lasers on the Gravemind. They left no impressions on the khaki husk of the Flood creature, but tentacles shot out and smashed the robots to the ground until they were unrecognizable piles of shrapnel.
The Gravemind moved on. The fight was the job of his soldiers, not him. And there was a Monitor to be captured. He moved through empty rooms of flame and shattered wreckage, stopping to eliminate the cybernetic guardians that barred his path. He moved through dark rooms, every one identical and barren. He moved into a sort of shaft in which two antigravity gondolas rested. He needed no such things. The Gravemind extended his tentacles to their full length and used them to pull his way along the walls of the shaft.
At last he rested in the Index chamber. 2401 Penitent Tangent was already there, looking at the Index.
"Marvelous, isn't it?" came a voice from the red-hued Monitor.
The Gravemind didn't answer. It simply extended its tentacles and grasped the Monitor. The machine was quickly absorbed by the Gravemind's arms.
"You are mine now," the Flood creature said. "I will wait, and you will wait with me."
And they waited for a long time.
Section Twelve-Family Reunion
The Chief and the Master set foot once more on Halo. As the Master Chief exited the escape pod, he couldn't shake a strong sense of deja vu, even though he'd certainly never been there before.
But the Master had. He started to wish that John would get a move on. Fighting the Covenant had no purpose. Well, anyway, not nearly as much purpose as getting back to the human homeworld, where the Ark was located.
However, John seemed intent on sticking around on the ring, and before the Master knew it, John was descending into a Forerunner containment facility. The Master knew that he could not yet reveal his existence to John, but he tried to send every negative emotion he could at John, which only manifested itself as a sort of irritability on the SPARTAN's part.
And then, of course, John just had to go around opening doors, and before John knew what was going on, the Flood were out again and life was hell. It took quite a while for the SPARTAN to get back to the AI he'd abandoned, and before he did, he ran into 343 Guilty Spark. The Master was annoyed that he hadn't thought of this flaw in his plans. Of course, the Monitor recognized the Master and started talking to him, causing John to respond, causing a whole lot of confusion.
Finally, John retrieved the Index. The Master almost showed himself to John in desperation, but decided that Cortana would set him straight. Much to the Master's relief, she did, and the Halo wound up being destroyed, but the Master knew that Spark's supertough polymer shell would have survived the shock wave, if not the explosion itself.
It took a while, but John got himself over to Delta Halo with intent to destroy that. The Master knew that it would be a stretch for John to eradicate the ring, but the SPARTAN could do it with a bit of luck. And then everything went horribly wrong. Getting out of a succeeded assassination, John fell a few hundred yards into water. The Master wasn't even certain that John would survive, but he did. He survived long enough to be picked up by a Gravemind.
It took maybe half a second for the Master to recognize the Gravemind for what it was. As he directed the question -Who are you?- into the creature's brain, Cortana asked "What is that?"
The Gravemind looked at the Master and spoke in deep tones exactly like that of the commander of the [I]Intangible Avenger[/I]. "I? I am a monument to all your sins."
In that second, the Master saw the mind he'd seen on the bridge of the Forerunner warship a hundred millenia ago. -Now what do you want?- he asked silently.
The Gravemind did not answer immediately, speaking instead to John and the Sangheili who was present for some reason. But just as the Master was despairing of being told, the Gravemind directed an answer to him but spoke out loud. "You will search one likely place-" the Flood form articulated.
-Search for what?- the Master asked. When the Gravemind answered him, it was as a voice in his mind.
-Nothing at all, actually- came the thing's mocking answer. -I simply need a diversion-
And then the Master dematerialized again. He reappeared on High Charity. He did not tell John of what the Gravemind had said. He planned for him to be out of the Holy City long before the Flood arrived.
It didn't work out that way. The Flood arrived ahead of schedule. John and Cortana were separated. The Master considered uploading himself into Cortana's patterns and staying with her, but decided he needed to talk to John. As the Forerunner ship Champion's Vengeance took off from High Charity, John heard a voice.
"Hello?" the SPARTAN said quietly. He felt like an idiot, standing there on a Forerunner ship talking to nobody. A voice from inside himself answered him.
-I am a human from the time that the Halos were built. They called us Reclaimers then. We're headed for Earth. On Earth there is a Halo master installation called the Ark. It can destroy all the Halos and all the Flood. We need to use it. I can direct you to it-
John went numb. He knew something now. He knew how to end the war. The Sangheili would be their allies. The Flood would be destroyed. The Prophets would be caught in the middle.
A voice spoke again. This time, it was Lord Hood, asking him what he was doing.
Thinking of what he had just been told, he realized, like the Master before him, that it was time to do his duty. "Sir," John announced, his voice growing in confidence as he spoke,"finishing this fight."
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