“They have a temple,” Jul said. “They never relinquished it. They kept the ancient rite and they have adherents al over Sanghelios.”

“Backward idiots who love their secret societies and primitive rituals. If they’d had any potential to be dangerous, the San’Shyuum would have wiped them out long ago.”

“But they’re idiots with a network, and they now appear to be using it militarily. Prepare to do business with them, brother. And try to behave piously.”

By the time Ontom loomed in the haze, Jul had begun to rediscover old skil s and the flight was much smoother. He felt a certain satisfaction at being capable. It was like a coming of age, that same heady sense of transformation from child to warrior that he’d delighted in as a boy. He could refresh his piloting skil s and the Sangheili could thrive without the San’Shyuum exactly as they had before the two species first met.

“Mind the turrets.…” Forze murmured. The skimmer made enough height to swoop low over the city. Jul looked for the landing area nearest to the Servants’ temple. He found it easier to land by sight than by instruments. “This is a very smug state. I never enjoyed visiting here.”

Jul understood what he meant, Ontom was very old, very rich, and very keen to remind other states that it was superior in every way. The buildings were a blend of pre-Prophet magnificence and modern architecture that didn’t even attempt to mimic a traditional style.

Let’s see how superior you remain without the San’Shyuum providing food and technology.

Jul landed the skimmer, suddenly anonymous in a sea of random vessels and vehicles that had simply been withdrawn from the fleet or commandeered from factories. Everything he looked at seemed to be a summary of the Sangheili’s predicament, arms and vessels reduced to soft idleness, the nation orphaned and needing to grow up fast. He felt in his pocket and realized he stil had the arum he’d taken from one of the keep’s children.

“It’s a pleasant walk,” Forze said, lifting his chins to squint into the distance. “If you like complacent architecture.”

They strol ed through the elegant gateway of the landing field and along an avenue of ornamental trees that were in the process of being trimmed and fussed over by a team of Jiralhanae. It was strange to see the brutish creatures doing something so painstaking, but at least they were obedient. Most of their kind had joined the uprising and turned on their Sangheili masters. Old hatreds and resentment had boiled over, and Jul barely trusted those that remained at their stations.

The Ontom residents who were going about their business in the avenue took no notice of the Jiralhanae or of Jul and Forze. The avenue was noisy, busy, preoccupied, oblivious of two insignificant elders from an unsophisticated rural state. The place smel ed of blossom and interesting, rather foreign food. But dining would have to wait.

“Is that it?” Forze tilted his head to indicate direction. “Over there.”

They stopped at the end of the avenue. Jul could hear water, so the river was close. Facing them across a crowded plaza, set back from the access road behind a modern wal , was a flat-topped, crumbling sanctuary with a curved facade and two cartouches of stylized creatures above an arched doorway.

It was a Forerunner building, hal owed ground. It didn’t look like the angry, pulsing heart of a revolution. It looked like it wanted to be left alone to die in peace. Jul found himself with his hand in his pocket, rol ing the arum between his fingers for comfort.

Easier to charge into battle than knock on a door.

“Let’s see if the holy brothers are at home,” he said, and set off across the plaza. As he wove between the locals, ignored, he realized where the sound of the river was coming from. The huge plaza was in fact a bridge. He stepped over a grating and found himself staring at a rushing white torrent a long way below. By the time he and Forze reached the other side, he felt as if he was in a wilderness and that the mil ing crowd was a continent away.

There was a heavy silence that seemed to seep from the outer wal s. When he crossed the threshold and stood in the courtyard of cracked paving, the silence felt as if it was sucking the sound out of the air. Jul suspected it wasn’t so much the effect of mystic devotion as some rather recent technology, a touch of theater to convince the doubting faithful. But even knowing that, he stil felt he was in a new world that was beyond his grasp. When he glanced at Forze he could see his own wavering resolve mirrored in his friend’s face.

“Wil they get upset if we touch the door?” Forze asked. “You saw what they did to poor old Relon and his brother. If they maintain the old faith, they won’t exploit Forerunner technology.”

Jul decided that if the monks lived in a Forerunner relic, then they’d probably declared knocking on doors a theological gray area.

“It’s a building,” he said. “Not technology. We shal risk it.”

He walked through the arch and rapped his knuckles on the first wood he could find—a decorated screen mounted on metal runners blue-green with the patina of age.

He waited.

“Pilgrim,” said a voice. “What brings you to look upon on the gifts of the gods?”

Jul wil ed Forze to keep a piously straight face. Maybe the vivid memory of Relon’s guts spread across the courtyard would do the job.

“We are Jul and Forze, elders from Mdama,” Jul said. “Blasphemers are everywhere, as you’ve seen. We want to root out the poison that’s weakening the Sangheili.”

And none of that was actual y a lie. It was merely phrased sensitively. Jul waited.

He was expecting an old monk in an archaic robe, at the very least. He wasn’t expecting a ful y armored field master to step out of the shadows with a rifle across his back. Behind the field master, shapes moved and metal clicked. Jul suspected the entire holy order was armed to the teeth.

“Wel , pilgrims,” the field master said. “Faith is a most powerful thing.”

Jul had once thought of himself as devout, but he feared making some doctrinal or ritual error that would enrage the orthodox here and he would end the same way as Relon. So he wasn’t going to attempt anything clever. He would tel the truth.

The partial truth, though.

“I plan to oust the Arbiter,” Jul said. “He’s responsible for this pitiful state in which we find ourselves, and he must die before we can restore Sangheili to their rightful place. He denied the gods. We have common cause, I think. I have some arms and a wil ing keep.”

The field master stared into Jul’s eyes for a few moments, then looked at Forze, jaws jutting.

“The Arbiter let the humans put him on a leash,” Forze said, as if he couldn’t take the glowering silence any longer. “No good wil come of it. The humans wil be al owed to swarm through the galaxy again. I have a wil ing keep too.”

The holy field master studied both of them for a few more moments, then beckoned them to fol ow.

The deeper into the ruined building Jul walked, the more he saw. The armored devout huddled in recesses, gathered around tables over charts and datapads. Every open space in the mazelike building seemed to be stacked with crates of rifles and ordnance. It was a sanctified munitions store. Jul looked to Forze to gauge his reaction. The expression on his tight-clamped jaws was more than surprised.

The field master pul ed out a couple of chairs at a table and gestured to them to sit.

“I am Field Master Avu Med ‘Telcam, Servant of the Abiding Truth,” he said. “And I have many brothers.”

CHAPTER SIX

LEARN SOMETHING FROM THE HUMANS. RELIGION IS NOT SYNONYMOUS WITH GODS.

IT’S A MORTAL’S CONCEIT. LOOK AT THEIR GREAT RELIGIONS, HOW CORRUPT AND POLITICAL AND IN LOVE WITH POWER THEY’VE BEEN THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY, AND SEE THE TRUTH—THAT THE PROPHETS LIED TO US, BUT THEY DID NOT SPEAK FOR THE GODS, AND THE DESTRUCTIVE NATURE OF THE HALOS TELLS US NOTHING ABOUT WHERE THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEATH TAKES US.

(AVU MED ‘TELCAM, SERVANT OF THE ABIDING TRUTH)

FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE—LAST DEFINITIVE POSITION, ONYX: LOCAL DATE NOVEMBER 2552.

Three Engineers floated in midair, tentacles entwined as if they were clinging to each other in terror.

Lucy wanted to make them realize she meant no harm, but it was hard to explain that when she couldn’t speak and when the creatures had just seen her kil one of their comrades.

She decided to take the risk that they were the only life-forms in here with her, and slung her rifle over her shoulder with slow care. Laying it on the ground was a little too trusting when she couldn’t assess the risk. She held her arms away from her sides to show them she wasn’t going to shoot.

Did they understand that?

The Engineers hung there like a bunch of brightly colored bal oons, blue and magenta with bioluminescent beads. Lucy held her hand out, palm up. It was the only thing she could think of. It had always worked with horses. She remembered one vaguely from her childhood, looming above her with a warm velvety nose and the strong malty smel of grain. The Engineers suddenly unlinked their tentacles and drifted toward her. Maybe it worked with Engineers too.

But they sailed past, not interested in her at al , and clustered around the corpse of the one she’d shot, touching it and making faint groaning sounds. She didn’t need a degree in xenobiology to work out that they were upset. Kurt had explained during training that they were organic machines that could replicate and repair themselves, and that they were probably descended from the first ones built by the Forerunners. They didn’t seem at al machinelike now, though.

He’d also said that al they cared about was repairing machinery and computer systems. Wel , Lucy now knew they cared about other things, too. They were grieving. Lucy could only see them as strange, sad children. One of them ran a tentacle over the corpse and drew back. She could almost hear his thoughts: We’re too late to repair him. Lucy watched, racking her brains for a way to get their attention.

The Forerunners had left them here. They had to be the Dyson sphere’s maintenance crew, the latest generation of Engineers, fixing and tinkering and waiting patiently until the day they were needed.

Maybe they’d been the ones who put Team Katana in the cryo pods. Perhaps they’d found the Spartans wounded and tried their hand at repairing humans before finding that it was beyond them.

I need to get them to open the doors before they wander off again.

It was pointless trying to force them at gunpoint. They’d just cower and hide. The only thing she could think of was to distract them with a technical puzzle, and the best she had was her helmet. She held it out to them.

One of them turned to look, but the other two were stil more interested in their fal en comrade, moaning softly and making very precise gestures to each other with their tentacles. Then they lifted the body and drifted off between the vehicles.

The one who seemed interested in her floated over and put a tentacle—a hand—on the helmet, stroking the surface. Then it coiled its arms around it, making the reactive camo turn blue and mauve as the armor systems tried to match the Engineer’s skin.

That did the trick. The Engineer began dismantling the helmet at a breakneck speed, stacking the components—faceplate, lining, mikes, data processor, even microfans—on the nearest flat surface, a hydroplane-like structure on a smal vessel. Then, just as quickly, it reassembled them.

Lucy had heard that they couldn’t resist tinkering with things, but seeing them actual y do it was another thing entirely. It looked as if the Engineer was ripping the helmet apart like an angry toddler. It hadn’t even used a toolkit. But it held out the helmet to her with two of its arms, jiggling it a little.

Try this.

Yes, Lucy understood that much. She took the helmet and peered inside first, not sure what she was expecting to see. When she put it on and activated the HUD, everything looked normal. But there were a couple of icons that hadn’t been there before, two broken circles, each with a symbol inside that she couldn’t recognize. She’d seen the glyphlike style before in Covenant bases but she had no idea what it meant.

So … do I activate them and see what happens?

A couple of blinks would show her what the Engineer had added. It seemed to be waiting expectantly for a verdict, peering into her face and cocking its head. Yes, it real y did remind her of an anteater or an armadil o with that smal , smooth head. She was even getting used to the six eyes. She made the effort to stare into just two of them—the middle pair—and ignore the others.

Now it was a face. Now she could look it in the eye. Now she could connect.

Might as well try.

She activated one of the icons and braced for something weird. Engineers were clever, but that didn’t mean they never got things wrong, and the ones here couldn’t have had much if any contact with humans before. At first she thought the Engineer hadn’t changed anything, but then it moved, rustling with that leather noise, and she realized she could hear a lot more. It was almost like having no helmet at al : clear, unmuffled, perfect sound.

She couldn’t tel if the Engineer had modified the audio channels or the physical acoustics of the helmet, but it was one hel of a trick.

So let’s see … what does this one do?

Lucy blinked to activate the second new icon and waited for another minor miracle.

Nothing.

It didn’t do anything at al . She tried again, but the circle of glyphs just changed color from red to green. After a few attempts she shook her head in frustration and pul ed off the helmet to find the Engineer peering into her face.

It made a few precise gestures with its tentacle-hands, repeating them in a sequence. Lucy tried to recal everything from briefings she’d forgotten years ago. Sign language. Engineers used sign language. Wel , that was no use to her. She couldn’t speak that, either.

But this place was expecting us, or something like us. Wasn’t it?

The robotic Sentinels on the surface had attacked the Spartans, probably seeing them as just another threat to Onyx like the Flood or anything else. But Ash had said that one had reacted to him and tried to respond in different languages until it settled on English. It had cal ed him Reclaimer. Then he must have failed some unknown test, because the Sentinels had turned on the Spartans and nearly kil ed them.