PART THREE: HIGH CHARITY

Chapter 3-1

The Prophet of Sagacity summoned me to his offices shortly after I arrived on High Charity. "Qelet B'Norai! He who laid the Revenant of Man to rest and drove the synthetic peril back beyond the Perseus Veil!" I stood straight and did my best to look like somebody who really did all of that. Sagacity looked at me from his hovering throne and smiled warmly. "It is good to meet you properly at last. Would you like to know my plan?"

I was still unused to thinking of myself as somebody who might have a private audience with the Prophet of Sagacity. "What plan, my Prophet?" I asked him.

"My plan. Our plan! The plan that will win our Covenant its war. Relax! You can relax around me! You know that the Rimward Front is vulnerable. You know that the Martollans are running circles around our gendarmerie. You know that the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae have no love for one another, and blame one another for every setback. It must fill your heart with unease. How could it not? You do not know the plan."

"I am not a military strategist, my Prophet."

"That is quite all right. Qelet B'Norai, what can you tell me about the Inusannon?"

I couldn't see the relevance of that question. "The antecedents?"

The Prophet of Sagacity nodded with satisfaction.

"I haven't read one thousandth of the scripture that you have, but I understand that the Inusannon were one of the many peoples annihilated in the Leviathans' Flood. I don't know anything else about them."

"Very good," said Sagacity. "What can you tell me about Ilos?"

"Is that a planet? I've never heard of it."

"It is a planet. Good guess. Ilos was the homeworld of the Inusannon, or at least we think it was. Now, you have personally silenced perhaps a dozen xenoarcheologists, along with many xenoarcheologist retainers. But have you ever asked yourself why?"

"To win the Relay Dissension. To prevent the Prophet of Diligence from gaining the political capital which he would use to lay waste to the mass effect relays, the relays which our Covenant needs if it is to rule all the known galaxy."

"Yes. But how do you suppose that we know that the suppositions of the Prophet of Diligence are basically correct? How do we know that the mass effect relays were in fact built by the Reapers?"

"I have never asked, my Prophet." And in truth, I had never wondered.

"Read this, if you will." The Prophet of Sagacity passed a text to me. "Tell me who you imagine wrote it." I looked down at the text.

The Avatar of Discovery plunged into the Serpent Nebula. There he found the Citadel which lay at the heart of the mass effect relays, and he was filled with wonderment. The Citadel was locked, and so the Avatar cracked it open. The only living things inside the Citadel were green arachnids, and so the Avatar Untranslatable. He learned nothing from that, for the Citadel Keepers were and are things of no free will. But there were dead things inside of the Citadel as well, and so the Avatar Untranslatable. From this the Avatar learned that the bones were Inusannon bones, yet the Citadel and its Keepers were not of the Inusannon. The Citadel and its Keepers were of the Reapers. The Reapers had been things like Zha'til, things which were rightly destroyed as Zha'til are rightly destroyed, but that was long before the Inusannon were born. The Inusannon of Ilos were instead born in the era of the Worldcrafters. Text Lost. With the relays gone and the Gravemind closing in, the Inusannon sought a means of escape to uncontaminated space. That is why they built the Conduit, which carved a superluminal pathway directly from Ilos to the Citadel. Only a few thousand Inusannon lived by the time the Conduit was completed, and even these were killed in the Worldcrafter Suicide afterwards, but still, their Conduit was completed. That is how the Avatar of Discovery found the Citadel filled with Inusannon remains. We call the Citadel the Inusannon Citadel, and we call the mass effect relays the Inusannon Relays, because even though the Inusannon did not build these things we admire the Inusannon for their tenacity and we admire the Reapers for nothing. The Reapers were like Zha'til.

"It's a Prothean text," I said to Sagacity. "Avatar is the giveaway; they were always talking about Avatars. Where did you find this? I don't understand all of it, but I understand that it's saying the Protheans didn't build the mass effect relays. The Citadel Council governments still won't admit to that."

"They may not admit to it, but they know it," said Sagacity. "Or the Asari Republics do, at least. The Asari know far more about prehistory than they are willing to share, though it is possible that the other Citadel governments really don't know any better than the nonsense they spout. It was an Asari defector who turned this text over to the Anuranite Lustration, and then it was Janza Arqorit who showed it to me. The first thing I did was order Arqorit to silence any xenoarcheologist who might offer Diligence an advantage in the Relay Dissension. The second thing I did was organize a search for Ilos."

"And why would…" I scanned the text again. "Because if this Conduit on Ilos is real, it would allow us to bypass the Fronts and attack the Citadel directly?"

"Yes!" said Sagacity, looking delighted that I had put that together. "Yes, that is exactly right."

"Prophet…" I did not want to adopt any kind of pessimistic attitude in front of the Hierarch. "Even supposing this Conduit exists, we have no way of knowing where Ilos might be."

"The Yonhet scrappers I commissioned have found Ilos already. And they found the Conduit with it. All the easy work has already been done."

I stared at the Hierarch.

"I'll show you," said Sagacity, and he projected a holographic map of the classical Covenant. "We are here." He pointed to an icon representing High Charity, floating in the middle of the empire. "You have just come from here." He pointed to an icon representing Haivat, on the trailing border of the empire. "And Ilos is here." He pointed to an unmarked star on the spinward side of the empire, on the opposite side of the map from Haivat. "My Yonhet discovered Ilos one year ago. My Emeriti and Huragok report they can activate its Conduit, but first they need to make the machine much bigger. It will need to transport a great deal more mass than the Inusannon intended. Our Covenant will only have one chance at this if it is to have the element of surprise, and the Conduit only offers transport in one direction. Once in the Serpent Nebula, we will not be able to leave it conveniently."

"But you do think that you- that we- can drop a battleship right on top of the Citadel?"

"My plan," said Sagacity, "is to drop High Charity itself right on top of the Citadel."

I should pause a moment to describe High Charity to the reader.

High Charity looked a little like a titanic purple metal mushroom. The early Covenant hollowed out an asteroid and then spent over two thousand years plugging salvaged Forerunner cannons, shields, engines, and who-knows-what into the celestial rock. Through the Wings of Malygus the city could move at sublight speeds, and through the Sefom Invictus the city could enter and exit Slipspace. Its long metal stalk, the Spine of the Gods, incorporated hundreds of docks, all receiving an endless stream of pilgrims and tribute. On the inside of High Charity's mushroom dome were the homes of several billion, yes billion, people. On the rim of the dome was a concentration of firepower equivalent to… equivalent to nothing, it surpassed anything else in civilized space. Everything else in civilized space.

The capital of the Covenant was both the largest city and most powerful weapon in the known galaxy. But High Charity had no mass effect drive, and so it had never been possible for the Covenant to take High Charity through the Haivattan Gate and bring it to bear against the Citadel Council.

"There are two things that must be done," said the Prophet of Sagacity. "Firstly, my Emeriti and Huragok must finish their work expanding the Conduit, so that it is capable of transporting a flying city weighing one hundred trillion tons. Secondly, we need to kill the Prophet of Diligence and anyone else who lacks the imagination to appreciate this kind of vision. We need to be smart about that, obviously. Do that wrong, and it could backfire quite spectacularly. But that is what I have my Anuranite Lustration for."

I had difficulty conceptualizing Sagacity's design. Perhaps I lacked imagination myself. "How would High Charity be protected after we took control of the Citadel system?" I asked. "It would be in the dead center of the Relay Ecumene, surrounded only by enemies, with no path of return."

"There won't be any enemies left. We will decapitate them all at a stroke," Sagacity said. "The Councilors of the Citadel will be our prisoners, and their governments will be compelled to surrender. Moreover, High Charity doesn't need protection from alien fleets. Alien fleets need protection from High Charity. Path of return? Why should we need, or even desire, a path of return? Our Covenant will rule everything. It may as well rule everything from the Serpent Nebula." Sagacity's eyes took on a dreamy expression. "The Throne Stars. I'll rename the Serpent Nebula the Throne Stars. Can you see it, Qelet B'Norai?"

I tried to see it. "Yes, my Prophet," I said.

Sagacity looked carefully at me and shook his head. "You can't," he said. "Not yet. It's all right. It's all right, Qelet B'Norai! This is no small thing. It is a sudden solution to the Council War. It is more than that! It is a miracle. The Conduit of Ilos is a genuine miracle. They happen, sometimes." He turned his head and looked carefully at the unmarked, plain holographic star he had indicated on the empire's spinward frontier. "Twenty-five years ago, I felt just the same way as you do now. It took me longer than I would like to admit, to accept that those Kig-Yar surveyors were right, that the mass effect relays were real, that two-thirds of the galaxy had suddenly opened up just… like…" he snapped his fingers- "that." He continued to look at the holographic star. "And then I felt the same thing again, when my scrappers brought me Ilos. I don't think that I will ever see a Halo. Not in this lifetime. But I do think that I have an idea of what it would feel like. The Forerunners have blessed me."

I couldn't think of what to say.

"Take a moment," Sagacity told me, still looking at Ilos. "First Molzhure, now this. You have been absorbing quite a lot. We are not in a hurry. I won't need you to kill Diligence for me until the Conduit is ready."

I left Sagacity's offices with my head whirling. Janza Arqorit was waiting for me outside. I saluted him.

"B'Norai. At ease. Do you know?" He looked me over. "You look like you know."

"Sir."

"There are a lot of moving parts here, B'Norai. Making it work will be difficult. Even more difficult, now. For us, that is, for the cartel-kin. You know what the homeworlders are up to?"

"They've worked something out with the jellyfish."

"They've done more than that." Arqorit looked more grim than usual. "If Bassavi's Rimward Offensive goes well, the Citadel Council has promised the homeworlders a seat."

"Oh." I mulled that over. "Which means that we…"

"Which means that we look like absolute frauds! Welcome to the Terminus Systems, we told the Covenant. We're so happy to have you here. Interspecies caste system? Sign us right up. Yes, as a matter of fact we do represent the Batarian race. No, it is true that our homeworld must seem a little misplaced, it is on the other end of the galaxy, but you don't need to worry about that. The shabby mean people there aren't worth a moment's consideration. Put us in charge. Make us important. Make us your secret police. You won't regret it. B'Norai, your grandfather was some kind of genius. Powers hold his soul. I don't know how he pulled that off. But it isn't stable anymore. That nomenklatura freak Bassavi and his slave bitch Aftir could ruin us. The Sangheili are looking at Batarians now, they're looking at us now, and they're seeing the same thing as when they look at Salarians or Turians. They're seeing enemies. You and me, here on High Charity deep in the Attican Blank, we're naked. We don't have any protection at all. The Sangheili might just slaughter every last Batarian in this city. Diligence would egg them on. I'm telling you this because I want you to know that I was doing you a favor, holding off on your promotion, telling Sagacity that you were doing more worthwhile work on the other side of the Haivattan Gate. I thought I owed it to your grandfather to keep you away from the massacre hanging over all our heads. But Sagacity has decided that you did some kind of wonderful thing on Molzhure, and he didn't listen to me, and you're here in High Charity now. On the knife's edge with the rest of us. We have one path forward, and that is Ilos. Do you understand?"

It was the most Arqorit had ever said to me. I hadn't realized that he'd had any relationship with my grandfather. I had never minded working underneath High Charity, I always found hands-on work more interesting, but learning Arqorit's motive for keeping me away from the city still insulted me. I dropped into a thief cant. "Never have I dwelt in the dark security of the Hegemon's shadow. Only have I dwelt in the hazardous stars where opportunity may always be seized."

Arqorit looked at me a moment. He slowly raised his hand and gently took me by the shoulder. He pressed his forehead to mine. "Vice is not decadence," he said.

"Vice is the Terminus," I answered back.

"And through the Terminus we cartel-kin are freed," we said together.

Arqorit released my shoulder, and we drew our heads back. "B'Norai. You're right! Your grandfather got us into this! Stands to reason that you should be here to get us out of it! Ilos is a thin hope. Ilos is the graveyard of an obscure squid-headed people that no one today remembers. But Ilos is what we have. Do you see this?" He gestured around to the cityscape around us. From outside the elevated palaces of the Hierarchs, we could see all of High Charity. "We are going to take all of this and cram it right down the Citadel Council's throat. The Covenant wins. The Prophet of Sagacity wins. The Anuranite Lustration wins. The cartel-kin take the wheel and drive the destiny of the Batarian race."

"Through Ilos."

"Through Ilos."

"I understand."

Arqorit nodded. He looked a little happier. "Good. I have an idea of how to use you. Sagacity is our patron. Diligence can be killed. Intrepidity can be bought. The San'Shyuum are all accounted for. But we need the one who can drag the Sangheili to Ilos along with us. We need the Arbiter onside."

"Him? Not the Fleetmasters? Shouldn't the Arbiter be in the Exarchate, fighting?"

"The Arbiter is on High Charity now. They recalled him to deal with a cell of Sangheili fundamentalists. The Brotherhood of the Striking 'Skelln."

The reader may not understand why a theocracy like the Covenant would be opposed to religious fundamentalism. It went back to the foundation of the empire. The San'Shyuum and the Sangheili had both worshipped the Forerunners even before they ever met one another, but they had different attitudes concerning what to actually do with recovered Forerunner relics. The San'Shyuum believed they should be studied and used, whereas the Sangheili believed that it was an act of blasphemy to do anything with the relics besides place them in a shrine and admire them. The San'Shyuum won the subsequent disputation, which had something to do with how one of their Forerunner relics was a colossal warship.

That warship, the Forerunner Dreadnought, was then built into the center of High Charity. It was the city's main source of energy, and an important symbol of the empire that the San'Shyuum and Sangheili had decided to build together. But fundamentalist minorities of Sangheili had always stubbornly clung to the idea that their culture's original position on the usage of Forerunner relics had been right. Covenant histories recorded hundreds of Sangheili fundamentalist conspiracies and risings, all of which had been complete failures.

"The Arbiter could use the Anuranite Lustration's support rooting out the fundamentalists," Arqorit went on, "but so far the Arbiter has declined our offers of aid. We are understood as a partisan institution, and the Arbiter feels that partisan politics are not his place. We need to change that. Matter of fact, we need the Arbiter to come around to the viewpoint that the Prophet of Diligence should be murdered."

"Does he know anything? Does he know about Ilos?"

"No. The Arbiter knows that his three masters have spent years now bickering about Reapers instead of trying to win the war they started. He knows that the Sangheili have paid dearly for that. He knows that something must change. That is all he knows."

"Where do I fit in?"

"We need to offer the Arbiter an agent of the Anuranite Lustration who has distinguished himself in some non-partisan way, so that feels he can accept the agent's support. B'Norai. What is the least partisan issue in the galaxy, the thing that the Covenant, the Citadel Council, and every other living being agrees upon?"

"That… that organic life needs to stick together against the synths. I see."

"Yes. I want you to go the Arbiter and offer to help him root out the Brotherhood of the Striking 'Skelln. Tell him about your deeds of valor on Molzhure. Don't play yourself down. You know how Sangheili are. Don't go talking about how that colony of mutant eels really deserves the credit."

"Is there anything more that I should know about the Striking 'Skelln?"

"There's nothing worth knowing about any Sangheili fundamentalist. The Krogan will cure the Genophage before the Sangheili fundamentalists ever win anything. By all means help the Arbiter destroy them, but they're not important. What's important is that you sound the Arbiter out. Get him to understand that Diligence needs to go if High Charity is to conquer the Citadel. Once the Arbiter realizes that we'll tell him about Ilos."

That was why I met the Arbiter.

No Sangheili can ever really live up to the ideal they set for themselves. Thank the Powers, because the ideal they set for themselves is to be forever aggrieved, eternally pursuing vendettas over imperceptible slights. But they need a way to deal with their failure to live up to their own ideal, a way to deal with the shame of living in reality. The Arbiter is how they do it. They find a Sangheili who has dishonored himself in some way, and they torture him. They're really vicious about it. They torture him, and they believe that as the dishonored Sangheili submits to that torture, he assumes the collective shame of all Sangheili. Every moment of weakness and every act of wickedness is borne by the Arbiter, so that the rest of the race might be clean. Then they send the Arbiter out on suicide missions until he dies nobly. When he does, the shames of all Sangheili are redeemed.

Nobody knows why they started doing this, and nobody knows how to tell them to stop. The odd tradition is justified by what the Arbiters have achieved. Most of them manage to do some genuinely very impressive things before they go.

Arbiter Dras Natakueliti was the sixth and greatest Arbiter of the Citadel-Council war. He broke the Turian lines on Gallatin and put Legate Ussurian to the sword. Justicar Irasha Rakrina and Battlemaster Balkrut Rog challenged him together, and he outdueled them both. Supposedly he was a part of whatever happened on Danum Zojat. He had lasted five years since he became Arbiter. None of his five immediate predecessors had made it one.

"Sit, Qelet B'Norai, who laid the Revenant of Man to rest. Have some dinner," Arbiter Dras Natakueliti offered.

I sat with him. His servants had prepared barbeque.

"Is it true that the constructs on Molzhure clad themselves in pieces of Ossoona armor?" the Arbiter asked me.

I hadn't expected him to start with such a detail. "One did."

"I came up through the Ossoona," said the Arbiter. "I owe you a debt of gratitude for avenging my comrades."

I took a bite of the barbeque. It was very good. I wished that Ruz was there to share it with me. "High Charity is buoyed by the honor of all Sangheili martyrs."

"High Charity…" the Arbiter rolled the city's name in his mouth. "I do not like it here. I do not like its crowds, or its artificial sun, or anything else about it. I prefer to have a real sky above me and real soil beneath me. That expression has always bothered me. I have always wanted to imagine that a martyr's honor might lift something nicer to live upon."

"I still have the armor I recovered from the destroyed Geth. I could have it returned it to the Ossoona, if you'd like," I offered.

"I would. Thank you. To the matter at hand. I am here to hunt the Striking 'Skelln. What help could you be? It isn't that I mean to diminish you. But less than one million Batarians have moved to this city since the Haivattan Gate was opened. All are commonly presumed to be connected to the Anuranite Lustration, whether they are or not. You will not be able to move inconspicuously here."

"Surely that is also true of Arbiter Dras Natakueliti, greatest living hero of the Covenant."

"It is. I don't think that I'm the right tool for this either. But I do at least have a Sangheili's knowledge of the warrior lodges, the Brotherhoods, and a good sense how one might fall to fundamentalism. What do you offer?"

"I took part in the campaign against the Insh'Teass heresy. It was a similar case."

"I'm sure your work was creditable. But the Insh'Teass heresy took root among Sangheili youth stationed on Haivat, frustrated by boredom as they awaited their deployment to the Fronts. It is easy for anyone of any race to escape notice on Haivat. Again, it isn't a question of your competence. It is a question of your sticking out like a sore thumb."

"It is a manageable problem."

The Arbiter considered. "Very well, Hero of Molzhure. We'll try it. If only so Arqorit stops pestering me with his messages."

That was how I joined the Arbiter's hunt for the Striking 'Skelln. That hunt is what occupied me for much of the following three years. It is what occupied me as, on the other side of the Haivattan Gate, the Utter Disintegration began.