Completing that survey, that analysis, encouraged her to believe she completely understood human psychology and culture. Yprin had advanced to Political and Morale Commander of al human forces.
I disagreed with that advancement, her rise to power. I had severe doubts that Erda was our planet of origin. Other worlds in other systems seemed more likely. I had been to many of them and had viewed their ancient ruins.
And I had seen evidence that Forerunners had also visited these worlds, were also interested in human origins—not just the Librarian and her Lifeworkers, but the Didact himself.
We defended Charum Hakkor against the Forerunner assaults— which came in an unending sequence, one after another—for three years.
My own ships swept back and forth hundreds of times across the star system, pushing back pinpoint orbital incursions before they could establish corridors of least energy dominance.
In al such battles, within the vast reaches of a stelar system, hyperspacial technologies give only a slight advantage; tactics in such close quarters depend on stable positions established near planetary objectives, where triangulations of fire can focus on mass- delivery portals and turn them into logjams of debris and destruction.
Occupation of vast reaches of space means nothing. It is control of population centers and essential resources that determines victory or defeat.
But our ships were depleted month by month, our battle positions worn down year by year, as Forerunner ships ranging in scale from fortress-class behemoths to squadrons of swift and powerful dreadnoughts opened brief entry points and attacked from briliantly surprising angles, with sweeping, erratic arcs that reminded me of the scribblings of madmen—briliant madmen.
The hand of the Didact himself drew those reckless and daring entries and orbits.
Forerunner dominance of the advanced technology of reconciliation—repairing the causal and chronological paradoxes of faster-than-light travel, so crucial to journeys across interstelar distances—slowed and even blocked our own slipspace channels and interfered with the arrival of reinforcements.
The crushing blow, long anticipated, even inevitable, was agonizingly slow to arrive. The final Forerunner assault was staged from seven portals opened at one-hour intervals to disgorge the massive fleet of the Didact himself, along with his finest commanders, many of them veterans of the battles that had been fought from our colony worlds along the outer rim to Erde-Tyrene itself.
Yprikushma and a special forces team of seven thousand warriors and seventy vessels were assigned to protect the timelock that contained the Primordial.
It was ironic that among the last surviving humans gathered in the Citadel Charum, the greatest Precursor ruin left on Charum Hakkor, she and I were brought together. We shared this space among the ancient Precursor structures with the last survivors of the Admiralty—listening to the hideous noise of Forerunner fleets sweeping over and breaking down our last resistance.
Forerunners captured the timelock and the Primordial. Yprin was withdrawn against her fervent objections—this much I heard. I also heard that she had hoped to be captured by the Forerunners themselves, so that she could warn them about a fate you would not wish on your worst enemy.
To warn them about what the Primordial had told her.
At the last, separated by only a few hundred meters, we tracked the concentrated assault that colapsed our last orbit fields, eliminated our planetary defenses, and brought down the Citadel.
The sounds of death and dying, my warriors being vaporized while I yet lived . . .
Confined. Awaiting the inevitable.
The inevitable arrived.
I died.
The Composer and the Lifeworkers did their work. . . .
And now I was here, in this boy’s body.
Am here!
Still here!
AI TRANSLATOR: PRIMARY LANGUAGE STREAM RESUMES: RESPONSE STREAM #14401 [DATE REDACTED] 1701 hours (nonrepeating)
Chapter Twenty-Two
THERE. THAT WAS restful, wasn’t it? I do so enjoy being subverted from within. If I can carry more than one memory stream, then I may not be so badly damaged after al. Crazy, but not damaged!
But I apologize if our ancestor, or our predecessor (it is so difficult to determine descent and lineage for any human species), has caused you difficulties. For Lord of Admirals and Yprin were very strong individuals in their time, and when Riser and I finaly managed to resume our own lives and thoughts, we were wrung out. . . .
Riser was a curled-up, matted bal of sweat and stink. I was not much better. Mara and Vinnevra were sleeping at some distance from us, in their typical attitude: both lying on their sides, Vinnevra curled up within the protective arms and drawn-up legs of the shadow-ape, looking peaceful enough.
Riser had some difficulty unknotting his muscles, and was embarrassed by the state of his grooming. “I don’t like being ridden like a horse, even by a female.” He quirked his whole face, an expression that always fascinated me. “Makes me smel older than I am.” He lifted his arm to sniff his armpit. “Pretty damned old. And you!” He looked at me and twitched his nose. “You’ve looked better.”
I was furiously hungry. Being ridden by spirits was more than just exhausting: it used up al the fuel in my furnace. I stumbled across the curved top of the mound, around the triplet of poking rocks, looking for a fruit-bearing tree, a beehive we could raid—anything.
Riser folowed, rubbing his shoulders. “Nothing to eat,” he said.
I smacked my lips at him.
“Don’t look at me, young ha manush!”
We were joking—I think.
“We might find some water down there,” he said. “But it hasn’t rained for a while—since the spirits rose up and argued.”
I squatted on the highest curve of the slope. “The ape might find something. She did before.”
“She’s out of her country,” Riser said with a clack of his teeth.
Vinnevra seemed to pop up right behind us. She had moved so quietly she startled even Riser, who jerked around and growled.
She curled her lip, and that made him lean his head back and chortle out the oook-phraaa sound that was one kind of cha manush laughter. Riser always appreciated a good joke, even if the joker didn’t know that what she had done was funny.
She sat beside us. “I know where to go,” she said, and nodded across the hummocky terrain.
“Again?” I asked.
“Again,” she said. “You think al the Forerunners are dead. I don’t think they are. I think . . . Wel, I don’t know what to think, but it’s teling me there’s food and water nearby.”
“Back at the ghost vilage?” I asked, perhaps too sharply.
Vinnevra shook her head and wrung her hands, as if squeezing her fingers dry after a wash. “It’s what I’m being told.” She looked at us without much hope we would listen to her.
“I don’t think I want to take any more chances,” I said.
“I don’t blame you,”Vinnevra said. “Neither do I. I’m going to ignore it, too, this time.” Vinnevra was no longer the sparking young female who had rescued me from the broken jar and taken me to meet her Gamelpar.
“We need to decide what we’re going to do,” she said. “Mara is wiling to listen to me—”
“You haven’t disappointed her,” I said, again too sharply and quickly.
Her wince saddened me. “True. I was about to say, Mara wil listen to me—and I’m wiling to folow both of you. Whatever you decide.”