Chapter 7: Kel
Kel descended into the mountain, his feet sliding against the smooth grey metal of the strange construction. The corridor spiralled down, and down, and down. Whoever had built it must have built it a long time ago, and Kel just couldn't wrap his head around the design. The halls never changed colour or shape, it was just the same thing again and again.
Eventually the corridors led to a door. Kel was a little thankful that he would get to see something else. The door opened on approach, the same as the others, and he walked through. He entered a large rocky chamber, empty aside from pillars of grey metal that seemed to be holding the place up. There were no signs anywhere that would suggest to Kel what this place could be. Several more doors lined the walls of the chamber, and Kel slowly looked between them to figure out which one he should go through.
A ringing sound in the distance caught Kel's attention. He quickly turned toward the direction he heard it coming from, pointing the end of his hunting spear toward the sound. As far as he could see, there was nothing. But he hadn't heard the sound earlier, so there had to be something happening. Kel slowly stepped toward it, it seemed to be coming from behind one of the doors.
As Kel got closer to the door, the sound stopped. The door opened on approach, leading to a large rectangular room. Walls on the sides of the door obscured anything in there from sight. The ringing sound came again, and Kel slowly stepped through. On one wall he saw what looked like a port that led deeper into the mountain. A bright light shone through it, making the ringing sound that Kel had been hearing. A sheet of metal then floated into the port to cover it, and the ringing stopped.
What the hell have I stumbled upon? Kel heard another sound behind him, a kind of mechanical whirring. He turned around at a speed that would make anyone else dizzy, and behind him was a machine. Some kind of automaton, floating in the air ahead of him. It wasn't like anything Kel had ever seen, and he was sure that the Covenant's technology hadn't advanced that much in the years of his solitude.
The machine floated closer to him, extending out robotic appendages as it seemed to scan him. He held the sharpened edge of his hunting spear toward it, hoping to make it see that he was dangerous. He very well knew the spear wouldn't do much against it, but it was his only weapon. And he wasn't going to back down.
As he stared the machine down he came to the realisation that he actually had seen something like it before. In the dream he'd experienced before descending into the mountain. The ships he had seen in the sky had been very reminiscent of the design of the machine. This is only getting more confusing.
"Ah, welcome, Sangheili!" a voice suddenly said, coming from the walls around him. Kel frantically looked around, turning away from the machine to figure out where the voice was coming from.
"I assume this is still the tongue you speak?" the voice asked.
What is talking to me? It couldn't be a Sangheili, if it was it wouldn't be referring to him as one. Was it a San'Shyuum? It almost sounded like one, but it had a mechanical flang to it. Whatever was talking to him, it wasn't going to give him an answer right away.
"Odd. I assumed your kind would have advanced more in the past millennia," the voice continued.
"Who are you?" Kel finally asked, his voice rough from years of not speaking.
"I am 4182 Bygone Era, the monitor of this installation."
Or maybe it would give him an answer right away.
"Installation?"
The port opened and the ringing noise sounded again. Kel turned toward it, and watched as another one of the machines flew out of it. Well that answers that question. The two machines lined up in front of Kel and simply stared at him, unmoving. It almost creeped him out.
"Yes! You must be new here."
Kel had been there for longer than he'd been anywhere else, there was nothing 'new' about it. But the voice had said that it was there for millennia. By the sound of it, the place he was in predated the entire Covenant Empire. When Kel gave no response, the voice continued speaking.
"You are standing in a slipspace communications and telescoping facility," the voice explained. "I assume you stumbled here by accident? What brought you here?"
Kel figured the voice wasn't going to stop talking any time soon, and he wasn't sure whether or not it would even let him leave. The machines staring at him could be armed, and he wasn't exactly willing to find out if they were. He slightly lowered the hunting spear with a sigh, and answered the question honestly.
"I was climbing the mountain," Kel explained, "I found a way inside near the top. I was curious, so I came down here."
"Interesting," the voice responded so quickly that it didn't even seem like it was listening. "I would report this to my masters, but they aren't around anymore."
"Your masters?" Kel squinted at the machines as if they were the ones speaking to him. "Who are they?"
"Oh, so it's been that long," the voice said with a disappointed tone. "My masters are, or were, the Forerunners. While this was an unmanned station, I still served them."
Kel could feel his hearts sink in his chest. Was he still dreaming? Or did he hear that correctly? The Forerunners?
"Wait…" Kel said slowly, almost dropping his spear. "The Forerunners built this place?"
"Well, of course!" the voice said, it's tone cheerful. "Who else could have constructed a facility like this?"
Kel felt his mind descend into a crisis. The Forerunners… So they're real… Kel shook his head. Part of him had always known that the Forerunners were indeed real, but throughout his life he had found nothing that proved their existence. There was no reason for him to believe they were real until this moment, he had always taken the Covenant's words as lies. And though the Forerunners existed, that didn't mean they were Gods.
"Are you a Forerunner?" Kel asked slowly.
"Oh no, I'm an artificial intelligence designed to monitor and take care of this facility," the voice explained.
Kel wondered if he should ask the question straight up. Are the Forerunners Gods? He decided not to. The thing he was talking to wasn't a Forerunner, and so he wasn't sure if it would answer honestly.
The machines staring at Kel eventually turned and left back through the port they had entered the room through. They looked like they had just forgotten he was there. Kel didn't take his eyes away from them.
"I apologise for confronting you with my sentinels," the voice said. "I was unsure of whether or not you were a threat."
Kel strapped his hunting spear to his back. If the Forerunner intelligence didn't see him as a threat then there was no need for it to attack him. The port opened again, and through it came another machine of different design. It was a spherical shell with a glowing point at its front that looked like an eye. The eye flashed with each word it spoke, and Kel realised that it was the voice he had been talking to. Bygone Era, it said its name was.
"See? Just a monitor," Era said.
Kel took a deep breath and nodded. Part of him thought he was still dreaming, nothing he was seeing made much sense to him. But he knew well enough that he was still awake, and that he was standing before a creation of the Forerunners.
"Are there any questions you wish to ask?" Era asked, floating completely still.
Kel thought for a moment. This was the first time he had spoken to anyone since he ran from the Covenant, and it didn't feel all that special. The fact that he was talking to something built by the Forerunners overshadowed everything else that Kel was feeling.
"I have a few questions to ask you myself, if you have the time," Era continued, awaiting a response from Kel.
"Ask me your questions first," Kel said. He backed up and took a seat against the wall behind him.
"Who are you? How exactly did you end up here?" Era asked.
"My name is Kel 'Dauram," Kel said. "I landed on this planet a long time ago, I was on the run from the Covenant."
"The Covenant?" Era looked down at the floor. Kel figured it was thinking. "I've heard of them. This facility has intercepted many communications from them, and we have seen their fleets around the galaxy. I figured that all Sangheili had joined this Covenant."
"They're all indoctrinated," Kel said. "I didn't want to be one of their slaves, so I ran. This world is uncharted, so it made a good place to hide."
"Fascinating… Interspecies politics have changed very much over the previous millennia."
"You keep saying that. Millennia."
"Well it has been over a hundred thousand years since this facility was first established."
Kel scoffed. He didn't even know life in the galaxy had existed for that long. And I thought I've been here for a long time…
"I ask again, is there anything you would like to know?" Era asked.
"This facility… You said it was a communications and telescoping facility?" Kel asked, an idea forming in his mind.
"Correct! It uses slipstream space to send and receive signals at speeds much faster than light," Era explained.
"And the Covenant haven't found you yet. You can intercept transmissions and spy on fleets without them knowing about it?"
"That is also correct."
Kel stood up, stretching out his legs as he did. He had an idea, but he didn't want it to risk his isolation. His safety. For all his time in solitude he had wondered what the Covenant had been up to, he didn't even know whether or not they were still around. This was his chance to find out.
"Would you allow me to use your facility?" Kel asked. "I want to see how the galaxy has changed since I arrived here."
"I can allow you restricted access, yes," Era said. "Just to have a look at the galaxy."
"That is enough for me."
"Splendid! Follow me."
Era floated out of the room and back into the chamber, and Kel followed. Era had started talking about the facility and the others like it all across the galaxy, but Kel was only half listening. He cared about the history, but it wasn't something he wanted to learn about at that moment. He was still processing the fact that the Forerunners were real. Have I turned against the Covenant for nothing? Kel didn't even want to know the answer to that question.
The halls that Era led Kel through all looked the same, he could barely tell he was moving from one place to another. He passed by chambers filled with machines and devices that were incomprehensible to him, but he figured they were part of how the facility manipulated slipspace. Slipspace in general was already incomprehensible enough as it was. All he knew was that a ship could open a portal and go from one part of the galaxy to another.
"And that's why this facility has to be monitored at all times," Era said as they entered a large circular chamber. Kel hadn't been listening to what the monitor was saying, but he didn't have the heart to ask for it to repeat itself.
All across the walls of the chamber were screens, each one showing a different planet. In the centre of the room was a device that looked like a holoprojector, a circular table with four control panels at its sides. When Kel looked through everything in the room he immediately noticed one of the planets had Covenant ships hovering in its orbit.
"What world is this?" Kel asked, looking at the screen.
Era approached the screen and scanned it. The screen slowly detached from the wall, being pushed toward them by a mechanical arm hidden behind it. Kel could see that every one of the screens was held up by a similar arm.
"This planet is called Zezar," Era explained as the screen retracted back into the wall. "It is home to several stores of Lifeworker data. It seems that it has been visited by humanity, and now the Covenant are trying to push the humans away."
Kel had no idea what a Lifeworker was, but it sounded important enough for the Covenant to put everything into finding it. That was how it always went. The Covenant would find a world with some kind of important Forerunner device or data on it, there would be humans there, and then there would be a bloody battle for it.
That was the one real battle Kel had remembered fighting. At the time he didn't even know what he was fighting for, and now he felt like it wasn't even worth it. It was an icy world with a heavy human presence, and there wasn't much he remembered beyond that. He wondered if half the Covenant even knew exactly what they were fighting for. That kind of blind faith was exactly what Kel stood against.
"So the Covenant is still out there fighting," Kel sighed. He had hoped that the Covenant would have somehow fallen, and that he would finally be free to leave.
"Very much so," Era said as it approached the holoprojector. It floated up to one of the control panels and produced a beam of light from its eye, using it to press the buttons on the panel.
The sounds of voices began to fill the room. Several Sangheili spoke at once, they were all barking orders at each other. There were too many voices for Kel to pick out, but Era seemed to be listening to them and understanding them as if it were only one person speaking at a time.
"On no," Era said, its voice taking on the low tones of a whisper without changing in volume. "It seems the Covenant have found Erde-Tyrene."
"And that is?" Kel asked, following the monitor around the room.
"It is there where the Forerunners had constructed a portal to the Ark," Era explained. "It was left behind for the humans, not them."
"What is the Ark?" Kel asked, disregarding the statement about the portal being left for humanity.
Era turned around to face Kel. If it could express anything with its shell it would look bewildered. "Are you serious?"
"Before today I knew nothing of the Forerunners," Kel said. "I didn't even know they were real. Why would I know what the Ark is?"
"Hm, I suppose a hundred thousand years will do that. My apologies."
"I took no offence."
Era floated back to the holoprojector and activated it with the beam of light from its eye. A projection of hundreds of planets appeared and floated around the room. It almost looked like a field of stars as the lights in the room dimmed. The projected planets soon disappeared, and they were replaced with the projection of a massive construct. It was a disk with a hollow core, and eight curved arms extended out from its sides. It almost looked like a flower. Kel wondered where he had seen that shape before.
"This is the Ark," Era explained. "It was the forge of the Halo array, and the place where the entire array can be activated."
Kel had been told of the Halo array, it was almost all his higher ups had talked about. Learning it was a real thing was a surreal experience. Kel remembered the stories he had been told of Halo's power, how its activation would bring every member of the Covenant to Godhood. And now he was learning that there was something out there more powerful than a single Halo. A means to activate them all.
Kel couldn't stop his mind from descending into another crisis. The Forerunners are real. Halo is real. The Great Journey… Is real. Everything Kel fought for, to show the Covenant that he couldn't be controlled by blind faith, was for nothing. At least he could be glad that he found out for himself.
"Kel 'Dauram?" Era asked. Kel hadn't realised how long he had been standing in silence.
Kel didn't answer. He motionlessly stared at the Ark. All he could think of was that maybe the Forerunners were Gods. And that he had made a mistake.
