Halo: Primordium

Greg Bear and the team at 343 would like to

dedicate this volume to

Claude Errera

in gratitude for ten years of faithful support for the Halo universe.

HALO/SHIELD ALLIANCE 631

Record of communications with Autonomous Mechanical Intelligence (Forerunner Monitor).

SCIENCE TEAM ANALYSIS:
Appears to be severely damaged duplicate (?) of device previously reported lost/destroyed (File Ref. Dekagram-721-64-91.)

Machine language records attached as holographic files.

Incomplete and failed translation attempts deleted for brevity.

TRANSLATION STYLE:
LOCALIZED. Some words and phrases remain obscure.

First successful AI translation:
RESPONSE STREAM #1351

[DATE REDACTED] 1621 hours (Repeated every 64 seconds.)
What am I, really?

A long time ago, I was a living, breathing human being. I went mad.

I served my enemies. They became my only friends.

Since then, I’ve traveled back and forth across this galaxy, and out to
the spaces between galaxies—a greater reach than any human before
me.

You have asked me to tell you about that time. Since you are the
true Reclaimers, I must obey. Are you recording? Good. Because my
memory is failing rapidly. I doubt I’ll be able to finish the story.

Once, on my birth-world, a world I knew as Erde-Tyrene, and which
now is called Earth, my name was Chakas. . . .

Multiple data streams detected. COVENANT LANGUAGE STREAM

identified.

SCIENCE TEAM ANALYSIS:
Prior contact with Covenant likely.

Break for recalibration of AI translator.

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER to MONITOR:
“We realize the difficulty of accessing all parts of your vast store of knowledge, and we’d like to help you in any way we can, including making necessary repairs . . . if we can be made to understand how you actually work.

“What we’re having difficulty with is your contention that you were once a human being—over a thousand centuries ago. But rather than waste time with a full discussion of these matters, we’ve decided to proceed directly to your narrative. Our team has a dual focus for its questions.

“First question: When did you last have contact with the Forerunner known as the Didact, and under what circumstances did you part ways?

“Second question: What goals did Forerunners hope to achieve in their ancient relations with humans? . . .” RESPONSE STREAM #1352 [DATE REDACTED] 2350 hours (first portion lost, nonrepeating):

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

RISER’S STORY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY-TWO

. . . LOOKED ACROSS THE
deck of the star boat at the Didact—a massive, gray-black shadow with the face of a warrior god. He was impassive, as usual. Far below, at the center of a great gulf of night filed with many ships, lay a planet under siege—the quarantined prison world of the San’Shyuum.

“What wil happen to us?” I asked.

“They wil punish,” Riser said gloomily. “We’re not supposed to be here!”

I turned to my smal companion, reached to touch the long, dry fingers of his outstretched hand, and shot an angry glance at Bornstelar, the young Manipular that Riser and I had guided to

Djamonkin Crater. He would not meet my eyes.

Then, faster than thought or reflex, something cold and bright and awful carved up the distance between us, splitting us apart in blue-white silence. War sphinxes with passionless faces moved in and scooped us up in transparent bubbles. I saw the Didact and Bornstelar packed away in their own bubbles like trophies. . . .

The Didact seemed composed, prepared—Bornstelar, as frightened as I was.

The bubble sucked in around me. I was caught in sudden stilness, my ears stuffed, my eyes darkened.

This is how a dead man feels.

For a time, surrounded by senseless dark or flashes of nothing I could understand, I believed I was about to be ferried across the western water to the far grasslands where I would await judgment under the hungry gaze of sabertooths, hyenas, buzzards, and the great-winged eagles. I tried to prepare myself by listing my weaknesses, that I might appear humble before the judgment of Abada the Rhinoceros; that Abada might fend off the predators, and especialy the hyenas; and that his old friend the Great Elephant might remember me and nudge my bones from the dirt, back to life, before the time that ends al.

(For so I have seen in the sacred caves.)

But the stilness and silence continued. I felt a smal itch in the pit of my arm, and in my ear, and then on my back where only a friend can reach. . . . The dead do not itch.

Slowly, with a flickering rhythm, like the waving of a fan, the stiff blue silence lifted, scattering visions between shadows of blankness and misery. I saw Riser wrapped in another bubble not far from me, and Bornstelar beside him. The Didact was not with us.

My ears seemed to pop—a painful, muffled echo in my head.

Now I heard distant words . . . and listened closely. We had been taken prisoner by a powerful Forerunner caled the Master Builder.

The Didact and the Master Builder had long opposed each other. I learned as wel that Riser and I were prizes to be stolen from the Didact. We would not be destroyed right away; we had value, for the Librarian had imprinted us at birth with ancient memories that might prove useful.

For a time, I wondered if we were about to be introduced to the hideous Captive—the one my ancient ancestors had locked away for so many thousands of years, the one released by the Master Builder’s ignorant testing of his new weapon-toy, a gigantic ring caled
Halo. . . .

Then I felt another presence in my head. I had felt this before, first while walking over the ruins at Charum Hakkor, and then later, witnessing the plight of humanity’s old alies, the once beautiful and sensuous San’Shyuum, in their quarantined system. Old memories seemed to be traveling across great distances to reassemble, like members of a tribe long lost to each other . . . struggling to retrieve one personality, not my own.

In my boredom, thinking this was merely a strange sort of dream, I reached out as if to touch the jittering pieces. . . .

And was back on Charum Hakkor, walking the parapet above the pit, where the Captive had been imprisoned for more than ten thousand years. My dream-body—oft-wounded, plagued with aches and motivated by a festering hatred—approached the railing and looked down upon the thick-domed timelock.

The lock had been split wide like the casing of a great bomb.

Something that smeled like thunder loomed behind me. It cast a shimmering green shadow—a shadow with far too many arms! I tried to turn and could not. . . .

Nor could I hear myself scream.

Soon enough I lapsed back into a void filed with prickly irritations: itching but unable to scratch, thirsty but without water, muscles both frozen and restless. . . . Viscera trying to writhe. Hungry and nauseated at the same time. This long, weightless suspension was suddenly interrupted by violent shaking. I was faling.