Halo: Renegades by Kelly Gay

Author:Kelly Gay [Gay, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2019-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

* * *

Ace of Spades, slipspace

Time had passed quickly in the lounge, the Ace crew listening to an unbelievable tale—a heartbreaking, horrific recounting of an ancient war between humans, Forerunners, and the parasitic Flood. Of immense last-resort weapons collectively called Halo, serving as both sanctuaries and galaxy-wide killing machines.

A hundred thousand years ago, all sentient life in the galaxy had had their fate decided for them. In the blink of an eye . . . gone. It was impossible not to feel the horror and pain of that moment, or to sympathize with those Forerunners who’d had to make the decision to extinguish everything, to be the ones so desperate and backed into a corner that the only way out was murdering trillions in order to kill the Flood’s food source.

The hopes and tragedies told through the eyes of Chakas, Bornstellar, the Librarian . . .

Rion could barely wrap her head around it.

Unbelievably, the armiger claimed to have once been this Chakas character, a human at the mercy of the Forerunners, a player in this long-ago saga. As Chakas, he had borne witness to so much, shouldered the knowledge and the horror of war, and had his body so broken he would have died had his mind not been saved by Bornstellar. As a monitor, his human memories were compartmentalized, virtually forgotten, and he weathered the impossibly long years after the purge alone, no longer flesh and blood but a machine known as 343 Guilty Spark, a caretaker of one of the Halo ringworlds.

Rion’s mind worked overtime processing it all, absorbing the emotion of it, the despair, the finality. On the one hand, she felt immersed in the past, caring a great deal for the players involved and the obstacles they faced, so much so that at times tears blurred her vision and her chest ached.

But on the other hand . . . she preferred her universe the way it had been a few hours ago. Part of her didn’t want to know the past, didn’t desire the weight or responsibility of it. And she sure as hell didn’t want to sympathize with the armiger. Yet it was difficult not to do so.

Events a hundred thousand years old should stay where they belonged, yet Rion had a very bad feeling the past was rising again and barreling right toward them. It scared her to death. And while she desperately wished to find her father, she was starting to regret ever discovering that damn buoy on Laconia.

Cade would still be alive and Ram wouldn’t be suffering. And they’d be out there, all of them, salvaging some find or another without being hunted, or driven by an ancient human/Forerunner, or knowing the horror of the Flood. . . .

Rion stood and stretched her arms over her head, then walked to the cabinet to throw her wrapper away. Niko was right. There wasn’t any reason for the armiger to create such an intricate fiction just to trick them. What would be the

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