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The Didact stood erect at the center of the bridge, arms crossed behind his back as the map of the local star system rotated before him. His armored hand, layers of armor and nanites covering his skin, stretched out and gripped the tiny yellow star at the center of the amalgam of worlds, moons and gas giants. But his hand fell through the holographic image and the hand fell to his side, waiting. "Show me," he said his voice unnaturally grave. The Ancilla obeyed and the bridge shifted, walls of hardlight pushing and pulling over the moldable interior to make room for the hologram as it grew larger until the star itself was just half the size of the Didact.
The Didact stared into the star as it burned before him, his eyes never blinking behind his visor. He stared into the star, just one star out of the thousands that he had seen and destroyed. It was only after a brief moment that he tore his eyes from the mesmerizing triumph of the Universe to the tiny pinpricks and explosions occupying the vast vacuum between the star and its closest orbiting celestial body. The world had once been a lush Eden of life, an artificial construct twice the size of the average Ghibalb-type planet built as an experiment in creating life for one of the Lifeworkers. Three thousand years ago it had been abandoned when it became clear that the experiment had run its course and the creatures that had been transplanted to the world had been allowed to roam and continue its course of evolution as the Universe demanded.
The Builders who had shaped the world to the specifications of the Lifeworker had taken great care to minimize the effect that the artificial world would have on the other bodies in the system. As much as he detested the Builder Caste for what they had done to the Warrior-Servants hundreds of years ago he couldn't deny that the Builders had turned the tiresome work of shaping worlds and the Mega structures that defined the limitless potential of the Forerunners into a work of art. Simply looking at the holographic image alone made him feel awed at what it represented - at the greatness that his people had achieved.
Then a blue-white explosion marred the blue-green surface.
Again he found himself distracted, embarrassed his inability to focus. Now was not the time to be distracted, not when so much was at stake. He could scarcely believe that he had allowed himself to be distracted at such a pivotal moment. It was like him and yet moments like that were becoming all too common. Perhaps it was a side-effect of his bond with Bornstellar? He wasn't sure and he didn't have the time to check, not now and not for some time in the foreseeable future, not when he had so much to do. He brought his visor-covered gaze down to the raging battle displayed before him, lances of light and streaks of plasma crisscrossing millions of kilometers of space. Elements of the Sanctuary and Suppression Fleets were present as were several behemoth Fortress-class vessels.
"Status," he inquired.
A blue-gray Forerunner stepped out from nowhere, an emotionless look on his face as he stepped through the holographic star and rested on one of the two cold red worlds in the system. Primitive races would have cried out for their Gods or screamed tales of spirits or apportions but to him, he knew the Forerunner as his Ancilla given Forerunner-shape.
"Two hundred eighty-six of three thousand vessels have been lost," his Ancilla reported somewhat lamely. "As per your expectations, we have lost significantly less vessels than the usual engagement with the parasite would take. The new Disrupter Cannons have a greater chance of penetrating the tissue of corrupted ships than Destructor Beams. But this comes at the cost of a noticeable increase of power to be diverted to the weapons systems."
It was a necessity, Didact knew. To win the war he had to make choices and against an illogical and utterly alien foe like the Flood he was willing to give up the comforts of their shields and layers of hardlight in exchange for more sophisticated and devastating weaponry.
Another explosion flared on the burning world.
The advent of the Flood coincided with the resurrection of the prestige and power that the Warrior-Servant caste had lost following the end of the political war between the Warriors and the Builders. His return from had heralded the fall of the Builders as well as the escalation of the war against the Flood. Ironically it also brought an end to the long dominance his caste held in the battlefield. The tactics he used against the Humans were useless against the Flood and it had taken him a century before he realized that. By then the Flood had infected billions of Forerunners and wielded the assimilated knowledge as a blade to be used against him. Thus he had changed his tactics, preferring to lay waste to infected worlds relying more on the Sentinels to handle the bulk of the fighting while he evacuated worlds.
The Ancilla magnified the planet, allowing him to see the individual clusters of Sentinels as they ravaged the world of the taint, to see the legions of Forerunners burning the world. This was one of the rare occasions where he needed to send in his warriors to augment his Sentinels. A Lifeworker, presumably the one who had ordered the construction of this world, had come to the planet in the hopes of rescuing the beasts on the planet. He and his small force had been the closest armada to arrive but no longer after they came did the parasite, having heard the distress signal through Slipstream, arrive.
The atmosphere below was a withering blanket of swirling clouds of fire; ash and smoke obscuring the surface. To the naked eye the burning ground, twisted and overturned mountains dotted by the fiery fields over the wasted forests would have been indiscernible to the sky which churned angrily as if in reflection to what was going on the surface. Hundreds of thousands of Seekers and their present day successors, Devastators, cleansed the land around them with lances of superheated plasma. Around them darting between and around their silver frames were billions of automated weapon-drones no bigger than his fist, burning away at escaping Flood spores or picking away at the carcasses of infected beasts. Great explosions ravaged the ground, brilliant globs of blue-white light as floating Strato-Sentinels, repurposed mining drones, vaporizing a thousand kilometers of land in all directions.
When he lost the political battle against the Builders and was forced into exile with the knowledge that the Promethean Corps, the highest and most respected group within the Warrior-Servant Caste, was to be disgraced, he went to a Deep Sleep believing that the entire Caste was going to be stripped of their rights. But since his return, since he merged his personality with that of Bornstellar just before his execution at the hands of the Master Builder, he had discovered he was wrong. Disgrace hadn't weakened the Warrior-Servant caste; it had only served to strengthen their resolve and furthered their studies in improving their war machines so they would be ready when their people called on them again. Because the Forerunners would always need them even as the Builders tried to take over the job of defending the Ecumene with their Super weapons and Sentinels. Before him across the entire surface of the planet, he was now witnessing what a thousand years of technological innovation and progress had wrought and it frightened him.
He zoomed the map closer to a monumental building eight kilometers in length and twice that size in height, an ornate and beautifully constructed construct that was adorned with ancient symbols from a long-dead Forerunner dialect. At one point, the Didact was sure; the building had glinted under the light of the great star, a beacon that would outshine the star itself. But now it was marred with plasma scorches and pulsating Flood pores, eldritch growths snaking across the surface.
Despite its appearance, the building was safely within Forerunner control, the growths the remnants of several attempts by the Flood to overwhelm the staunch warriors within the walls. The many bodies that encircled the monument were a testimony to that. Try and try as the Flood would his warriors would never abandon their duty. Not until the Lifeworker was properly secured and any data in the research building was downloaded into the Network or destroyed. The Lifeworker had endangered her life by coming so close to the frontline – whatever it was that was on the planet was worth her life in securing.
"The Flood is relentless."
The Didact simply nodded.
There was a shuffle of armor-clad feet behind him, two pairs of feet he now realized, and he felt a flicker of recognition wash over him. "They were relentless six hundred years ago too – yet you found a way to not only destabilize their biomass but also attack their gene imprints. My people have discovers many new things since then yet we cannot find a way to do the same. The High Prophet was the only one who knew the key but he's long since dead."
"I doubt it would have worked."
"The Flood has evolved since then," the other said. "We fought the spores, the mutated remains of an older plague. What you face… you face something that our kind never fought before. This Flood is intelligent – it's being directed, controlled, faking assaults across the galaxy only to strike at others. If our ancestors fought this Flood during the war, I doubt that even the combined might of Human and Forerunner would have been able to turn the tide."
Didact grunted; "A pessimist as always."
"It's new."
"What do you want, Chakas, Riser?"
The two humans, one a Chamanue and the other a Florian, walked up to his sides to view the raging ground-side battle. There was a time, Didact recalled, when the two humans would have been awed by the great battle going on between the Forerunners and the scourge. There was a time when the knowledge that the great world below them was just another construct to his people, would have awed them. But the old Chakas and Riser were gone, their simple deconstructed minds replaced by the memories of ten thousand humans that he and others had fought during the Forerunners war against their kind.
"To watch," Chakas grunted. Didact didn't reply, content with watching the battle rage before him. From the corner of his eye he saw a conglomerate of infected beasts, winged reptiles and a number of infected pods scurrying over the upturned ground make for a new attack on the building. Several dozen infected bipeds, hairy creatures augmented with Flood veins and decayed body parts, clambered over the rails, their mutated claws scratching against Forerunner steel. "We fought these things before – perhaps we can help now."
"Perhaps," Didact said evasively as he reached out, tapped on the icon representing a cluster of drones which was in the middle of sterilizing a forest. I dragged the icon towards the Flood horde. Softly, to no one but himself, he whispered: "Sterilize the region."
The drones turned, their shells combining into an oblong-shape as the fires billowing at the edges of the expanding circle burned away what trees remained on the edge. These drones hadn't existed when he fought the humans, Diadect remembered. Their ancestors had, though only in the service to the Builder Security Forces and even then they only served as extravagant mining tools. But now they were city-destroyers, each one capable destroying a city with a single blast. They rivaled the War Sphinx's of old in terms of destructivity but they were so much smaller.
The three, humans and Forerunner, watched as the combined fire of the amalgamation of drones cut a needle of silver light across the continent, glowing arcs of light that expanded into enormous fires miles wide. The needle splashed over the building, bisecting part of its extended superstructure and enveloping the Flood hordes in its fiery maw. Silver shields flared over open gaps in the structure holding back the murderous bursts of fire.
The Didact's finger drifted down towards the multitude of icons within the structure. "Have you accomplished your tasks yet," he asked, pushing the planet back to take a better look at the furious space battle.
Several Dreadnaughts led by a Fortress-class vessel slipped out of an enormous slipstream portal dragging with it a small moon from one of the more distant gas giants in the system. They broke their formation apart and allowed gravity to propel the celestial body forward, crossing kilometers within seconds towards the Flood Fleet. Great chunks of the heavenly body were torn and sliced apart by the scourge. Each shot fired at the moon meant one less shot fired at his own vessels, meaning one more vessel to send against the Flood in another time. Not even the shields of his people would be able to withstand the crushing impact of a runaway moon, and the Flood seemed content to await their-
Several slipstream windows sliced open before a dozen infected vessels, melding together as the moon darted into the entangled web of slipstream windows and vanished from sight as the edges of the Slipspace window clamped down on themselves, vanishing a in a brilliant display of light. The Didact stared at the hologram, dumbstruck by what he had just seen.
"The Flood is smarter than I thought," said Chakas. He reached up and grabbed his helmet, pulling it off in one fell stroke. He was taller than before, Didact recalled as unwanted memories from Bornstellar were dredged up from the lowest pits of his mind, and he had more decisive appearance to the Old Humans rather than the newer de-evolved humans that remained after the Forerunner-Human War. "That was an ingenious tactic."
"Don't sound so impressed," Didact said bitterly.
~Lord Didact, ~ a voice said echoing in the reshaped bridge. It was the Chilarch, one of the few remaining Prometheans that had been offered a Cryptum of their own. He too had been with him during the war against the humans and had been there when they discovered the horrible truth about the Prisoner of Charum Hakkor. ~Forgive me for the wait. ~
"Time is relative. Speak quickly my friend."
~Yes. We have recovered the Lifeworker and are in the process of beaming what keys the database holds. There is something strange though Lord Didact, there is something strange about this entire world. The surface, it's just a shell, a shield encompassing another world. ~ That surprised the Didact – why would the Builders build over another world? The answer came immediately – to hide something they didn't want to be found, and at the orders of a Lifeworker. ~There are Forerunner markings but they're of an ancient dialect, one not spoken since our earliest origins. There are also… Precursor artifacts. ~
The words had a different impact on the three.
Riser whispered a prayer.
Chakas shivered.
Didact remembered.
I am the last of those your kind rose up against and ruthlessly destroyed. I am the last Precursor. And my answer is at hand.
"What sort?"
~A world, Didact. The Builders and the Lifeworker were hiding an entire world of Precursor artifacts. There are entire cities, intact beneath the shell. There are Vehicles and machines, monuments and relics from our past. By the Mantle, Didact, there are even Potentia's still active. ~
Didact quivered. "Take what you can," he said after a moment of awestruck silence at the discovery. A world of Precursor artifacts, untouched by any alien race just waiting to be dissected had been hidden away, but for what purpose? It couldn't have been by the hands of the Master Builder or at the orders of the old council - they would have sacrificed a dozen worlds to tear down the foundations of the world in their haste to study the achievements of their predecessors. Someone else had ordered it, a group beyond the control of the Council.
The Lifeworker…
"Interrogate the Lifeworker," Didact rasped, "subdue her Ancilla. Find out why she came here." It couldn't be a coincidence that a Lifeworker would come to a world hidden from the prying eyes of the Forerunner Ecumene. It couldn't be a coincidence that she would come to a world beneath a world brimming with untouched Precursor cities. There was something going on, something beyond his control and beyond the control of anyone.
Someone was playing games.
"Three hundred-eighteen of three thousand vessels have been lost," his Ancilla reported again. The Flood has sustained severe casualties however I do not detect any indication they will withdraw." He ignored a dumbstruck look from Chakas and added, "Nor did I expect to see any."
"I preferred the blue woman," Riser muttered softly.
If Didact allowed it a small remnant of Bornstellar would have felt amused at the words, recalling the distaste and discomfort that Riser had for the Librarians Ancilla at her vague answers and pompous attitude. But Didact didn't allow it – he couldn't allow old history and a past life to interfere in his work, in his effort to eradicate the Flood from the galaxy. "What do you plan to do, Forerunner?" Chakas asked arms crossed over his chest impatiently. He was the more patriotic of the two humans; the majority of the memories that had implanted in his mind had been those of ancient human warriors that had fallen in battle.
He ignored him.
~Lord Didact. ~
Before him a Slipspace entrance window split open in front of a Fortress-class vessel and it reappeared a second later in front of a cluster of Flood-controlled cruisers. The diminutive ships, each one capable of leveling a planet, shattered apart upon contact with the vessel's shields. The ovoid shields sputtered as jagged pieces of metal and flash were vaporized against the shields of the Fortress. The cluster of ships, each 4 kilometers in length were swatted away as if they were nothing (and indeed compared to the Fortress they were nothing more than pests) as the weapon clusters on the tail of the Fortress came alive in a blaze of weapons fire, overwhelming the shields of a dozen Picket Ships and bisecting a trio of mining ships.
A brief memory was dredged up again – the last thought Bornstellar had before he'd been drawn into the entangled web of collection and plans set by the Librarian, his wife. Before the fleet of corrupted vessels could retaliate even as it carved cavernous holes into dozens of vessels, the great ship slipped into another Slipstream window and deposited itself back at the center of its allied fleet, and without further due resumed its ferocious barrage at the distant specks of ships.
"What have you learned, my friend?"
~The Lifeworker has confirmed it – she was the one that had this cache of Precursor artifacts hidden. For a Lifeworker she is extremely proud and haughty, she isn't going along with our questions. ~
"Then force it out of her."
~I already have my Lord. She is one of the followers of the Order of the Many-Faced God, and so were the Builders that constructed this world. This shell was constructed long before the war, during the Charum Hakkor Campaign and even then they were beginning to build the last outer layer. ~
"Have you stripped the database of all its files?"
~Yes. My legions are scouring the world as fast as they can but there are so many riches in this tomb. Millions of years of technological innovation, technologies beyond even our own by the Precursors – I can scarcely believe it my friend. The cities look as if they were carved out of the mountains but I can see complex layers of metal and a crystalline structure beneath it. This is amazing Didact, my mind can hardly comprehend what I'm seeing. ~
"Do not forget what the Precursors are or what they mean to us," Didact instructed, an invisible frown creasing his lips. "The Timeless One brought the Flood down upon us for crimes we have yet to commit and instigated this war. He breached the accords of Time and augmented the Flood with Ancient technology. Those cities, those monuments – they are the works of the enemy, our ancient foe. Take what you can and evacuate, we do not have much time."
There was a pause.
~At once Didact. ~
Chakas and Riser glanced at him, and through their silver-tinted visors he noted understanding. He had shared with them the first time he saw the Precursor in his prison, the misshapen creature that had once been as bipedal as them. They knew its last words before he and his escorts fled the dead world in panic, knew the words that had foreshadowed the ushering in of a new era of war.
'My answer is at hand'indeed.
The Flood Fleet was crumbling now, and his ships were advanced now, crossing the gap of space as they dived below the infected ships which cruised on above them, battering their undersides with multiple pulses. The two Fortress-class vessels in his force lugged themselves over the faux world and thin tendrils of golden-blue light crisscrossed the gap between them as they created a teleportation network akin to those used on the Halo's. His ship recorded thousands of power spikes between the two ships as they floated in place above the rotating world. "Fifty seven percent of all automated units have been recovered," his Ancilla said as his fleet began mopping up the remnants of the Flood. "Eight four percent of all Forerunners on the world have been teleported as well."
"Once the Flood is dealt with prepare the Stellar Engines," Didact said after a moment of thought. "We cannot allow anyone else, Flood, Forerunner or other to discover this world."
"Don't you think that's a bit rash," Chakas exclaimed.
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps? These are Precursor relics! These are the tools of the Gods."
Didact glanced at Chakas. Gods? The Precursors were hardly Gods – they were as mortal as any Forerunner or Human. Perhaps more so. What he had seen in the prison at Charum Hakkor was perhaps evidence that the Flood was more than just an extra-galactic anomaly - but a temporal one as well. The Prisoner was a misshapen parody of what he had once been, a precursor and successor to the Flood's current incarnation. He had long studied the history of the Precursors, piecing together their rise, the path towards their Golden Age and their eventual decline.
Since the end of the campaign against the Ancient Humans he had filled in many of the gaps that had plagued him during his tireless campaign against the Builders after the war. Early in their history, when they rose to dominate the galaxy, the Precursors had been intricate structures the likes of which dwarfed anything his people had achieved. Then, over a period of a few hundred years, they changed. From the grand world-bridges of Charum Hakkor they began downsizing, building monuments out of Naquadah and Trinium, abandoning or forgetting the skills that had allowed them to build their towering works of art.
Then his people rose up.
Then the Precursors fell.
Riser was about to say something but then he froze, his argument cut short as Didact's Ancilla, at his behest, suppressed Riser's Ancilla and locked their armor down. He didn't need to hear their arguments or shouts. Chakas was frozen in place, reaching out as if to throttle Didact. There were undoubtedly technologies on that world that could aid in the war against the Flood, but he had long ago abandoned his naïve trust in the tools of the Precursors.
His Ancilla communicated with other Ancilla's in his fleet and they began to pull back, pulling away from the engagement. The Flood pursued mindlessly as his fleet led them on a chase as his Fortress's slipped away into Slipspace with their cargo of machine and flesh. Several Keyships dropped out of Slipstream around him at his flanks, unnaturally thin in relation to his flagship yet they eclipsed him in terms of length. The Flood was still perusing the fleet but now, he saw, a quarter of their ships were peeling away from the rest towards him. They had to be quick, Didact realized. The Flood weren't dumb; he had underestimated them too many times before.
The shields flickered and failed as he diverted energy towards the Stellar Engines and the ship reconfirmed itself, layers of hardlight guiding the ship's hull towards to its new configuration as tendrils of energy shot through the eight ships. They glided towards the star and he stared back at it. At one point in early history, ancient Forerunners looked up at their star and whispered in reverence. It was majestic; a glorious spectacle of what the Universe could create. But now it was something that his people could replicate in all sizes and color. It was nothing to be amazed at. It didn't make him feel awed by its majesty. It was just another weapon to be used against the Flood now. It was just a weapon now.
Like so many others before it, this star would die.