Star roads grow thick beyond the sky bridge. They may soon crush the Ark and the Halo, and with it, all humans, all Forerunners. Forerunner history may be at an end. I do not know whether to feel gladness or sorrow.

“Take us up!” the Lifeshaper orders Audacity, her face stiff with fear. We rise above the Halo’s atmosphere, to see everything more clearly. Mantle’s Approach sweeps low over the Halo compound. The ship’s silhouette has changed. Something protrudes from its front.

The Composer.

A great star forms above the compound—the Composer’s targeting beams. I can do nothing to stop it!

At the Lifeshaper’s command, Audacity shoots forward. She hopes to insert herself into the path of the Composer, to stop her husband from harming her specimens. But the Mantle’s Approach makes the slightest, deftest of maneuvers, throws out a torsion field, and Audacity is brushed aside like a gnat.

The Didact’s ship freezes above the center of a compound. Below, the humans must see what is happening, even through the cloud-wracked atmosphere. They have stopped whatever they are doing to look up and shield their eyes against the brilliance of the targeting beams. A blood-colored pall falls over the compound, over their faces. Surely this is a crime! Catalog will see it all, record it all. Is the madness beginning again? Have I given up everything for another betrayal?

“Tell the sentinels to kill him!” Lifeshaper cries out.

But I cannot. The Didact has assumed control of them all. Mantle’s Approach is too strong, too powerful. The Lifeworker forces are too weak and too few, and cannot stop it.

The Composer has locked onto its victims. Translucent, oily waves of energy spread across the compound, echo from the walls of the Halo, then slide down like folding sheets to wrap the crowds below.

Suddenly, everywhere, across hundreds of square kilometers, bodies twist and fall. Hundreds of thousands are composed before my sensors can make an accurate count.

The information flows back to the Composer in a reverse wave. Men, women, children … all taken in moments.

The Lifeshaper moans deep in her throat. Then the moan intensifies, until she screams, “That’s all he ever does—kill my children! Why? Why?”

Audacity tells us that we must move closer to the compound or outside the great wheel.

The Didact’s ship withdraws the Composer, seals itself for transit, pushes away from the compound and the Halo, departs. Audacity moves under its own volition to a safe position, near the outer perimeter. But safety is no grace.

The next atrocity will soon begin—the firing of the Halo itself. Audacity prepares for an immediate jump.

String 32

STRING 32

MONITOR CHAKAS • HALO VICINITY