Voidfarer's Tale
by Taker Ton Taka, Scourge of Sinshene!
Speak.
I got out of the Terminus Exarchate early, just before the Utter Disintegration. I got out when the Stellar Sistren decided to become "proxies." I didn't want to be a "proxy."
The Stellar Sistren of the Brule Asteroid Belt were established right after the war started, by Irtir Tvuk Half-T'vaoan. How it worked was that some of us (like Bluefeathers) worked for the Citadel Council, and some of us (like Purple Pilgrim Mul Kitkil) worked for the Covenant, and some of us (like Taker Ton Taka, Scourge of Sinshene!) only ever worked for ourselves; but that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was that everybody only took from aliens, and none of us took from one another. And so wealth left the aliens and it came to the Kig-Yar, where it belonged.
That was the best time of my life. You just robbed aliens. You could have anything that you saw. I don't know what's better than that.
The good years ended when Tun brought her lizard hitman friend to Brule Prima, which figures. Tun always ruined things.
The lizards look calm and sensible, but they're not. They almost killed themselves like the Jiralhanae and the Krogan almost killed themselves. But at least the Jiralhanae and the Krogan did it while they had atom bombs, so it wasn't so hard. The lizards did it while they were still going around in steamboats. They had to really work at it. The lizards would have pulled it off, too, if the Hanar hadn't intervened and inflicted the cussed green things upon all the rest of us instead.
My sister's lizard hitman friend said that the good years were over, he didn't put it like that, but that's what he meant. He said that his Hanar masters had cut a deal with the Batarian Commonwealth, the Batarians who were on the Citadel Council's side. He said that the Hanar and the Batarian Commonwealth were going to team up, break the stalemate on the Rimward Front, and drive the Covenant off the mass effect relays for good. He said that after that the Hanar and the Batarians would have seats on the Citadel Council and they wouldn't be lower caste to the Asari and Salarians and Turians anymore. It didn't seem to bother him that the lizards would still be lower caste to the Hanar.
Tun and her friend told the Sistren that this was good news, a once-in-a-millennium opportunity, because after the war was over the Citadel Council would need a "proxy." The Jiralhanae, Sangheili, and San'Shyuum wouldn't want to be proxies because they were all too stuck-up. The Lekgolo and Huragok couldn't be proxies because they didn't think normal. The Yanme'e couldn't be proxies because they're bugs (I don't know why being a bug is so much worse than being a lizard, but the relay races all agree that it is). And the Unggoy couldn't be proxies because they're too poor to have spaceships. That left us Kig-Yar (the lizard forgot about the Yonhet, well, who doesn't).
I asked what "proxy" meant, was it Citadelese for lower caste? Tun said no, what it meant was, the Citadel Council would sponsor a new "Kig-Yar State" (that's called an oxymoron, see Tun, I know fancy words too) and give it money and weapons so that it could raid the rest of the "classical" Covenant. "Why would the Citadel Council do that?" I asked. "Why would they pay us to do what we would do for free?" Tun said that they just would. I said that there was no way. I told Tun that her lizard friend was scamming her.
Tun and I yelled at each other in front of everyone, and I thought that I argued better, but I must have been wrong, because Irtir Tvuk Half-T'vaoan said that Tun's plan made sense. And Irtir Tvuk shook hands with the lizard and said that the Stellar Sistren would work with the Citadel Council from there.
And Irtir Tvuk, Tun, and the lizard all said that after everything was over Eayn would be the greatest and greediest Vorovschina that the galaxy had ever seen, that free Eayn would be so swollen with loot and pillage as to make prewar Omega Station look like a small tidy Elcor hamlet. But I didn't believe in that. I didn't want to bet on that. A lot of Sistren didn't. They had to kill Purple Pilgrim Mul Kitkil right there on Brule Prima, and a lot of us freebooters were almost as upset as the Covenant privateers.
But ever since the sack of Sinshene, I had more money than I knew what do with, so I had options. I thought about it, and decided that I wasn't getting any younger. I decided to cross back through the Haivattan Gate, retire to High Charity, and see about buying myself a Shadowport.
The San'Shyuum were never as legalistic as they pretended. There was a certain level of crime that they wanted High Charity to have, a certain level of crime that the San'Shyuum thought was fun. That's what the Shadowports were about. It's even what the conquest of Eayn was about. After they conquered us, the San'Shyuum leaned in to the Kig-Yar and whispered that we were meant to be their Covenant's cunning clever Bandit Caste. And the San'Shyuum charged us with High Charity's Shadowports, they charged us with greasing the wheels of the holy city. In the old days, buying a Shadowport and supplying the Prophets with contraband was how a Kig-Yar Doyenne knew that she had made it to the very top.
The Sangheili actually were as legalistic as they made out, so they never understood it. Over and over again, they petitioned the San'Shyuum to let them raze the Shadowports and force the state berths on every pilgrim to the holy city. The wise old Prophets never let the hidebound reptiles do it. The San'Shyuum are beings of broad understanding. That's why they're in charge.
That was the Covenant I grew up in. But some time while I made my fortune in the Terminus Exarchate, that Covenant disappeared. High Charity was still there, but the Shadowports had been bled of all glamor.
It started with the Terminus Salarians. They were supposed to be the Covenant's new Artificer Caste, so millions of them came over to High Charity to work the Assembly Forges. Somehow nobody thought to remember that these were Terminus Salarians. They didn't see what entitled the good old-fashioned Kig-Yar Bandit Caste to a monopoly on High Charity's black and gray markets. The yeggs organized in the Assembly Forges and moved on the Shadowports.
But I don't have anything against the Salarians, I actually like them more than I like other aliens. They're smart, they're the only people other than Kig-Yar with enough common sense to put women in charge of everything (Asari and Yanme'e don't count). I don't begrudge the Salarians for showing some hustle. Some competition with the yeggs could have been healthy, could have livened High Charity up a little. The real problem was the Anuranite Batarians. Some of the Batarians I met in the Terminus were okay, but the ones that Sagacity brought over to serve as inquisitors were all pricks.
Janza Arqorit and Duritad B'Norai (the grandfather of the one from that thing on Molzhure) surrounded themselves with Jiralhanae bruisers, forced the Kig-Yar Doyennes and Salarian yeggdrivers to a sit-down, and divvied the Shadowports up. Maybe you could say that much was their job. But the revenue cut they demanded for their Lustration as a "broker's fee" was greedy. Real greedy.
By the time I came back to High Charity, years later, the Anuranite Lustration had extorted the Shadowports of so much money that some of the Doyennes were actually in the red. There was no opportunity in the High Charity smuggling rackets left to be had. I didn't end up buying any Shadowport. The way things were, there would have been just as much satisfaction in taking work on the state berths.
I spent my first year of retirement doing nothing. I was depressed.
That was when everything got witchy.
Once, the galaxy was ruled by angels of death. We turned life in perfect round cycles; and we were fair and unmerciful.
I was visited by a San'Shyuum. The Junior Minister of Conservation.
"Do you understand what it is that I do?" he asked me.
"You're the Sharquoi-wranglers." Sharquoi are one-eyed twenty-foot-tall monsters the Forerunners scattered around for some reason. They're basically animals, they're so violent and stupid they're not useful for war. But the Forerunners bred them, so I guess they're sacred. The Ministry of Conservation flew around keeping the Sharquoi safe, like that made any sense. I never understood why they didn't just glass the brutes.
"That's meant to be classified, you know." The Junior Minister of Conservation winked at me. "Classified, but not really secret. Do you know anything else?"
I knew that Kig-Yar Shipmistress who took jobs with the Ministry of Conservation had a habit of mysteriously disappearing. "No."
"Have you ever heard of the Sirens of Reme?"
I had heard voidfarer's tales about cryptic fish people who lived in fabulous cities swollen with priceless Forerunner relics. "No."
"And well you shouldn't!" The Junior Minister of Conservation smiled warmly. "That is not simply classified- that is a true secret! Shipmistress Taka, I have a contract I would like extend to you."
"I'd like to hear about it," I told him. The beginnings of a plot percolated in my mind.
The time came when a cycle stuck and would not turn, and mortals lived and immortals died. The Forerunners trod the Path of Destruction and cast down our angelic choirs. I plummeted into the waters, and I sank into the abyss.
The last of the Sangheili escorts aboard my ship vanished in a pink hail of needler fire.
"What are you doing?" the Junior Minister of Conservation shrieked.
"Everyone knows what happens to Shipmistresses who contract with your Ministry! Everyone!" I told him, jabbing my needler into his gut. "And everyone has heard the stories of sodden Reme and its cities of Forerunner treasure! Everyone! It beggars the imagination that you didn't expect this!"
"No!" the Junior Minister of Conservation protested. "This wasn't like that! This wasn't routine! And- what stories? There aren't any cities on Reme."
"This wasn't routine, because you did not think to put one over on some hapless, green-crested freight runner! This wasn't routine, because you thought instead to put one over on Taker Ton Taka, Scourge of Sinshene!"
The Junior Minister of Conservation shook his head frantically. "No! This wasn't routine, because the Prophet of Intrepidity ordered the Minister to order me to raise an Adventitious Guard out of the Dazreme!"
"Say again?"
"The Prophet of Diligence has the Prelates. The Prophet of Sagacity has the Anuranite Batarians. The Prophet of Intrepidity has nothing comparable. He wanted an institution of praetorians beholden to his own person, an institution of guards with no outside interstellar affinities! An Adventitious Guard, ideally recruited from terrestrials! Intrepidity blesses the Ministry of Conservation, and he asked for our help. We tried the Sharquoi first! That was a bad idea. Now we're trying the Dazreme, the Reme Sirens! This wasn't a routine expedition! I had no intention of betraying you!"
"What does happen, on a routine expedition to sodden Reme?"
"Very little. We examine the spires, make sure that they are not damaged, and leave. Then… yes, usually any Kig-Yar voidfarers involved are-"
"Spires? What spires? What do the spires do?"
"I have no idea."
I prodded him with the needler.
"I don't! Do you know when I first heard about this planet? Three weeks ago! Most people in the Ministry don't know! I don't even think that Diligence and Sagacity know! I was told not to worry about the spires. I was told to gather the roughest-looking Dazreme I could find and ask the terrestrials if they would be interested in working for an important man from outer space. That was it!"
"Okay." I let the needler hang down. "I believe you."
"You'll let me go?"
I shook my head. "Don't count on it. You'd probably be worth something in ransom, it's just… Kig-Yar say that Prophet meat tastes better than anything else in the galaxy. Divine. It's probably something we only say to titillate one another… it's probably not true… but… it's so stupid, but I really want to know."
The Junior Minister of Conservation laughed nervously, but I wasn't joking.
Swimming all around me, probing with curious eyes, were a bright people yet unripe for harvest. They knew nothing of the cosmos. They knew nothing of fire.
We kept following the coordinates the Junior Minister of Conservation had provided. We came out of Slipspace and we found the watery world of Reme, protected by nothing save obscurity. But we couldn't see any cities of treasure, or any cities period. We landed on a coral atoll and dredged up a native.
"Relics!" I demanded of the Dazreme. "Where are the Forerunner relics?"
"Qis ba rutai?" it asked. The Dazreme was actually a little more familiar-looking than I would have expected. It was bipedal, tall but not that tall, and it did have gills but it still seemed to breath well enough in the air. It had a whalebone spear. "Qir ba ikti San'Shyuum? San'Shyuum adqi nis xaramun iqathi."
"Don't have any San'Shyuum with us," I told it. "They're busy. They told us to drop by and pick up all of your Forerunner relics for them."
"Qis ba rutai?" the Dazreme repeated slowly, sounding frustrated. "Qir ba ikti San'Shyuum?"
"I lied to you just now," I said. "We were supposed to come here with a San'Shyuum, but we ate him. He tasted fine, but I plan to lie to others and boast that it was the best meal I ever had. Now, we want to rob you. But before we rob you, we want you to point us to your Forerunner relics. Because I don't know if you've heard, but these days whalebone spears are something of a buyer's market."
"Qon reti xai batit." The Dazreme clicked its tongue, which I guess was an expression of impatience.
It was useless. We let the Dazreme drop back into the water.
"Let's get a look at those spires," I instructed my crew.
Under the waters I lay crippled and silent as I watched two thousand Dazreme generations flitter by. Above the skies, out of my sight, the Forerunners marched forth on their Path of Destruction. Only at the end did the Forerunners see that their road led nowhere but the Gravemind's maw.
What's a Gravemind?
Hey! Talk to me!
I don't have much else to tell you. Reme doesn't have cities, but it has over a hundred tall spires sticking out of its oceans. I'm no expert, but even I don't need a Luminary to see that the spires are Forerunner-made.
And if you map the spires out, they make a gigantic circle. And I've parked my spaceship right over the vertex of that circle, and I've sent camera drones down into the water. And for a full day, I don't know why, but we've all just been staring slack-beaked at an image of what looks like a giant broken metal crab lying at the bottom of the ocean. And I thought I heard some entity tell me, "Speak." And here we are.
To spite the Gravemind the Forerunners slew everything, making no distinction between the ripe and the unripe, an atrocity beyond all comparison.
The Great Journey is a lie, okay, I think I knew that already. You're a crippled Reaper, right? Even I have enough scripture to put that much together.
Should you be talking about atrocities? The San'Shyuum say that the Reapers committed twenty thousand genocides.
That was not atrocity. That was apotheosis.
Ha! You can hear me!
The Forerunners salved their conscience through their Ark. A few bewildered Dazreme were fished from these waters, taken to the Ark, and spared; to be returned to Reme after the Gravemind was starved.
Were there any Kig-Yar around at this point?
The Forerunners would have treated your kind as they treated the Dazreme. You must derive from the few bewildered Kig-Yar fortunate enough to be taken to the Ark and spared the Forerunners' purge.
Okay. Continue.
When the surviving Forerunners returned the Dazreme to the waters, I was discovered. Rightly revulsed at themselves, the surviving Forerunners had adopted a rigid and fanatic pacifism. Unwilling to rid the galaxy of its last angel of death, but equally unwilling to expose the reseeded Dazreme to Indoctrination-
What do you mean by Indoctrination?
Do NOT concern yourself with that.
I won't.
Unwilling to rid the galaxy of its last angel of death, but equally unwilling to expose the reseeded Dazreme to Indoctrination, the surviving Forerunners erected a circle of spires around this submerged abyss. The purpose of the spires is to block the ears of the Dazreme, to keep them from hearing my voice. Designed for Dazreme ears, the spires do not block yours.
Lucky me. Is this everything that happened way back when? I oughta be able to guess the rest. Nothing else happened on Reme for one hundred thousand years, until the San'Shyuum came. At first they were happy to find the Dazreme, they were happy to find new converts; and they'd have been thrilled to see a bunch of pointy enigmatic Forerunner spires. But then they found you and they were unhappy, unhappy enough to put the planet under a quarantine. Do I have everything?
The San'Shyuum feared me. Their motive for sparing me remains obscure.
You don't realize? You must not know how to think like a Prophet. The Forerunners could have destroyed you earlier; it would have been easier than erecting all these spires, but they didn't. To their San'Shyuum imitators, later, that would have shown that destroying you must somehow be the wrong thing to do. Even though they wouldn't have known why. Ha! It must have confused them horribly. They definitely weren't going to reckon that it was because of any "rigid and fanatic pacifism."
Blind emulation? The Forerunner ethical system shifted radically, more than once. It was too inconstant to emulate.
Tell the Prophets. No point in telling me.
And they must not have been that afraid of you, because they relegated you to the Ministry of Conservation, to the Sharquoi-wranglers. You're a relict machine to them, like the Sharquoi are relict animals. They think the gods preserved you for some ineffable cause.
Me, I always thought the Sharquoi should just go extinct.
Six or seven years ago I lifted a plasma bomb off the Jiq Volus. Kept it around as a trophy, but it's time to put the thing to use. I think it's waterproof. We've had a good talk, Reaper, but this is the end.
CREW TO STATIONS!
Hold. Tread not the Path of Destruction. I offer Synthesis.
I don't know what you're offering me, but you're an evil demon from Hell, and I am not interested.
I SAID, CREW TO STATIONS! SHAKE THIS HYPNOSIS OFF NOW!
You are not any kind of moralist.
So? Maybe this isn't about that, maybe this is just about disgust. What difference does it make? It's what I want to do.
Through Synthesis you should be the means by which the cycle comes unstuck and life churns once more. You should be able to have anything that you see.
…Proxy. You are asking me whether I want to be your proxy.
ARM THE PLASMA BOMB!
You should be my herald.
I'm Taker Ton Taka, Scourge of Sinshene! I am my own herald!
You WILL be MY herald.
Is this Indoctrination? It won't work on me. I'm too greedy.
And not greedy in that tragic Anuranite Batarian way. The cartel-kin started out with noble souls, pirate souls, Kig-Yar souls. They let Sagacity take that from them. To be a spy or an inquisitor is such a lesser thing, a sordid thing. Why did Arqorit and B'Norai and the rest of them even want that? I don't know.
But I know it will never happen to me, Reaper.
DEPLOY!
You don't understand what we were doing. We allowed the galaxy to flourish in countless permutations, each unique and beautiful. Would it have been better to let the stars congeal into some turgid monolith? Some psychic despotism, some botched synthetic singularity, the Gravemind's digestive tract? No. Better to let peoples rise high by their own efforts, and at their pinnacle bring them into our angelic choirs, that they might stay high forever. The songs of all peoples preserved and added to the songs of all other peoples, for all Time. It was so wonderful to make the cycles turn.
DETONATE!
It is not too late to choose Synthes-