Chapter 1: The Discovery

10th August, 2558
1400 MILITARY STANDARD TIME
UNSC INFINITY – UNNAMED STAR SYSTEM

Captain Lasky brings himself to attention, exhaling one deep breath, before reaching out an activating the comm panel. Within Infinity's secure superluminal comms room, there is no place he could hide from the view of those he was in conference with. Lasky is no coward: one cannot have commanded the USNC's flagship through the battles with Jul M'dama's Covenant Remnant without the capacity to overcome their fear. What he faces now is somehow worse: an uncertain ally. Of course, he would never describe the Commander-in-Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence like that aloud to anyone, but he had been Navy long enough to know that ONI played their games, and usually people like himself were the pawns.

The holo-display blinks, and the form of CINCONI Admiral Serin Osman appears, sitting at her desk. Though light-years away on Earth, the holo-display gives Lasky an unnerving feeling, like he has interrupted her by stumbling into her office at a crucial moment. This, of course, is nonsense. No-one stumbles into Osman's office unannounced: if they tried, they'd be leaving in a body bag.

'Captain Lasky. It's a pleasure to see you again.' Her voice is clipped and professional, her years of military service carried in each word. A ploy to put him at ease, Lasky thought.
'Admiral.' Lasky salutes.
'At 0811 this morning, Infinity arrived at the edge of the system containing the set of coordinates received by the UNSC The Full Monty three days ago from the as-of-yet unknown source. Preliminary prowler reconnaissance showed a star system of three rocky planets, with the coordinates between the orbits of the first and second. Prowler sweeps found no hostile contacts or evidence of recent Covenant activity. Infinity entered the system and moved to the coordinates. On our approach, sensors picked up an object, held perfectly at rest relative to the system's star, exactly at the coordinates. Further sensor sweeps showed the object to be a small Forerunner vessel.'
Lasky motions, and a holo-image appears off to his left. The vessel is small and rounded, a smoothed clam shell with angular joists protruding from its equator. The remarkable symmetry is distorted by the crater in one side: a gaping rent in the otherwise perfect surface.
'Science teams think it might be a cargo freighter of some kind. We haven't yet been able to fully access internal memory yet; we think that might be due to the damage sustained. Initial sweeps show that most of the ship is empty. However, we did find this in what we think is the bridge.'
A second holo-image appears, this time to Lasky's right. A monstrous form appears. The child of a tortoise and spider, yet the artefact is clearly not biological. A black carapace, hollow within, suspended on five delicate legs, entirely alien. Osman's eyes light in recognition.
'A Forerunner Catalog.'
'Yes ma'am. As you can see, the biological remains are long gone, but the carapace itself seems to be undamaged. When Science teams brought it aboard, something… well, something unusual happened.'
Lasky was loath to delay for dramatic effect, especially with the CINCONI, but given what he had been shown by the scientists working on the Forerunner carapace, he felt that Admiral Osman could wait a moment before he continued.

Osman sits, clearly not attempting to interrupt Lasky's report. Her impassive expression either hides great curiosity, well concealed, or sheer contempt for the captain. He can't tell which is more likely.
'Science teams attempted to interface with the carapace, in order to assess whether any data could be extracted. On doing so, the carapace began to upload huge quantities of information directly to the interfacing drive. Luckily, the team thought it best not to directly connect it to Infinity's mainframe. When they looked at the information, they found a file that seemed to open itself, no matter what other they tried to look at first.'
Osman finally raises an eyebrow.
'Unusual.'
'Yes ma'am. The file itself appears to be some kind of account, and the author claims to be the Forerunner AI, Mendicant Bias.'
Osman sits upright, making no attempt to hide her surprise.
'Show me this account, captain.'