Author's Note-This prologue is the end of Halo 2, the fight with Tartarus rewritten to better work with this story. All dialogue from the ending cutscene is verbatim.

Any of the characters, technology and such appearing in Halo, Halo 2 or any of the novels are property of Bungie and Microsoft.

Delta Halo, Control Room

The Arbiter backed off as Tartarus came charging at him. He ducked a swing from the Brute's hammer, and then thrust with his two-pronged plasma sword. It bounced harmlessly off of Tartarus' overshield, as the Brute smiled wickedly. He slammed the Arbiter with his body, and the Elite fell to the ground. He raised the hammer, preparing to deal the death blow.

"Now you pay the price of your treachery, Arbiter." the Brute growled. He started to bring the hammer down, but the Elite was quicker. He rolled out of the way, feeling the vibration of the hammer's impact on the ground. He leaped to his feet, and the Brute spun to face him. The Arbiter looked around the platform, seeing the broken bodies of his brothers. He looked back at the Brute with a look colder than the vacuum of space.

"No Tartarus. Now you pay the price of yours." A shot from Sergeant Johnson's Particle Beam rifle pierced the Brute's overshield, and the Arbiter dashed forward. For a brief moment, a flicker of fear flashed across the Brute's face. That look was replaced by the glazed expression of death, as the Arbiter pulled his sword out of the ape's chest, and the body collapsed to the ground.

"Now, ma'am!" Sergeant Johnson shouted. Commander Miranda Keyes leaped from the focusing platform she had been waiting on for Johnson's mark. She rolled as she landed on another platform on the lower tier moving in the opposite direction. She ducked as a platform on the upper tier passed right over her, missing by mere centimeters. She dropped onto the main fire control platform, and snatched the Index crystal right out of the air it was hovering in.

The platform rumbled as a cancellation pulse discharged from the generator powering up Halo's main weapon. It screamed into the vacuum of space, towards the center of the ring where the raging firestorm, the massive amount of destructive energy that could exterminate a large portion of the sentient life in the galaxy, was preparing to fulfill its deadly purpose. The pulse hit the center of the energy mass, and with a large explosion that filled the vacuum surrounding the ring, the energy dissipated, and Halo was once again silent.

On the fire control platform, a hologram appeared in front of Keyes. Two half-spheres were slightly apart, but she couldn't decipher the tangle of images sandwiched between them. She turned to look, as the Sergeant came floating down, hanging off of 343 Guilty Spark.

Commander Keyes addressed the glowing Monitor. "What's that?"

"A beacon." The Monitor seemed to stare at the pair of humans with it's light bulb-like eye, as if they should know what was happening.

"What's it doing?" she urged the increasingly obnoxious AI.

"Communicating at superluminal speed, with a frequency of…" Keyes cut the construct off.

"Communicating with what?" she persisted.

"The other installations."

"Show me."

The image began to resolve. The tangle separated into individual Halo installations. "Fail-safe protocol- In the event of unexpected shutdown, the entire system will move to standby status. All remaining platforms are ready for remote activation."

"Remote activation? From here?" Keyes asked, an edge of worry in her voice.

"Don't be ridiculous," the Monitor retorted.

Sarge stepped forward, pointing at the construct."Listen Tinkerbell, don't make me…"

Keyes stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. She was feeling the Sergeant's impatience, too, but there were more important things to worry about. "Then where? Where would someone go to activate the other rings?"

"Why, the Ark," the Monitor replied. "Of course."

The two humans started as they heard Arbiter come up behind them. "And where Oracle, is that?" the Elite asked reverently.

Earth Orbit, Forerunner Ship

Master Chief felt the Forerunner ship rumble as it decelerated abruptly out of slipspace and emerge into normal space. He ran a status check on his MJOLLNIR Mark VI armor, finding everything was operating optimally. He ran his suit's limited sensors, hoping to discern his location, and when he picked up radio signals, he knew where he had arrived.

Earth. The Covenant invasion had begun.

"We've got a new contact," a garbled transmission came. "Unknown classification."

"It isn't one of ours," Admiral Hood said. "Take it out."

"This is Spartan 117," the Master Chief broke in. "Can anybody hear me?"

"Isolate that signal," the Admiral ordered. "Master Chief, mind telling me what you're doing here?"

The Spartan straightened up. "Sir. Finishing this fight."

Covenant Holy City of High Charity, Mausoleum of the Arbiter

The Covenant holy city of High Charity was silent, as debris from the Flood bodies floated about. Tentacles snaked through the gaps in the malfunctioning door. "Silence fills the empty grave," the evil voice of the Flood Gravemind echoed through the quiet Mausoleum. "Now that I have come. But my mind is not at rest, for questions linger. I will ask, and you will answer." A tentacle reached for the small figure on the holographic display.

Cortana reached out a holographic hand to stop the appendage, not that it would do any real good, but the tentacle stopped anyway. "All right," she said warily. "Shoot."