But we need all we can recover. Otherwise, I have little hope of bringing back the human race. My message to Chant-to-Green was brief but clear: Bring your keyship to Erde-Tyrene, secure whatever humans might remain and await further instruction.

My choices, too, are narrowing. My story seems to be shrinking down to a single black point in the immense skein of possibilities I had planned for when first I put the Didact into a Cryptum, then hid that Cryptum on Erde-Tyrene. How clever I thought I was. How devious and clever to outwit the Council, confound the Didact, cut deals with the Master Builder … all to save my specimens. All to keep a diversity of life ready for whatever might come in our galaxy.

We are drawn in to Requiem’s outer shell. Sentinels and Despair-class fighters swarm around us like wasps.

Now comes another disappointment … for the Didact. So few of his Warriors have arrived to join him! The gateways through the shell that could have received hundreds of thousands of vessels are still open, but reveal only a handful of dreadnoughts and one Fortress-class ship of war, plus a few dozen smaller, older transports that may have been residues of Builder stocks, intended to serve as scrap. Audacity confirms that there are no Forerunner signatures on any of these. They’re all empty. Abandoned. Word of his difficulties—of his shameful capture and treatment by the Gravemind—might have eroded the last of the Didact’s support among even those who revered him. I feel embarrassment for him. Even shame. But no pity. Not after what he has done.

Is anyone here with him now, other than me?

I have heard nothing from the greater Ark since our departure—and nothing whatsoever, for years, from the protected lesser Ark. The silence of the greater Ark can mean one of two things—either communications have been blocked again, or it no longer exists.

Based on what I saw, I suspect the latter.

Catalog is now almost fully revived, and says it has no problems interacting with the Juridical network, using channels reserved, out here, for a much larger demand, so far almost unused. Indeed, Catalog has been happily updating all of its caseload. Staying out of my way as I brood in the command center.

We follow Mantle’s Approach through the outer shell and then through fifty kilometers of cold, inactive layers, past great columnar supports and archways visible in the stray beams of sentinels, emplacements where weapons were to be mounted by the thousands, but which stand only as stripped-down shadows …

Through outrushing clouds of gas …

Into more active layers, lit in cold blues and greens.

Deeper still, hundreds of kilometers.

I do not yet see a chance to board Mantle’s Approach.