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ISODIDACT

THE TIME HAS come. The installations have been sent to their strategic positions within the galaxy.

A looming citadel on the Ark is now working as a command entity, sharing all resources with Offensive Bias. Once the order is given, it cannot be rescinded. The communication pathways are remarkably clear.

Almost nothing is moving out there.

Many questions remain unanswered. What we do know to a virtual certainty is that the power of the Flood and the reawakened might of the Precursors will be extinguished. The beam energy of the installations cannot travel slower than light, and ultimately, will propagate at near-infinite velocities. Already, two of our Halos report pre-echoes that suggest the combined discharge has already happened.

What choice remains to me, then?

Somewhere, sometime, I have already given the order …

Offensive Bias passes along more messages. Broken, fragmented, desperate—from individual ships, the survivors of decimated fleets, outposts finally able to send data, now that slipspace has resumed its mysterious liberation.

One purports to be from the Lifeshaper, but there is high probability it is fake. After all, it is signed Librarian. She would not willingly use that name to sign a message, not to me.

There is nothing to say, no way to respond to their cries for assistance, for attention, for one last chance to connect with what remains of the ecumene. No way to respond to their cries to give them time to make repairs, to move.

I take complete responsibility. It is my decision.

“Do we delay?” Offensive Bias asks.

“No delay,” I say.

“Check point for final abort, ten seconds. Installation 04—Alpha Halo, it shall be called—will initiate discharge, followed sequentially by the remaining installations. The rings will fire once their fields intersect.”

And then follow so many details, all handled superbly by Offensive Bias. The metarch has taken its final fleet back to the Line, running ahead to meet Mendicant Bias and the Gravemind—and a fleet of Flood ships larger than has ever been witnessed. That battle will delay our foes long enough to finish what has already been set in motion. Ironic that in this deadly act there is such grace and perfection of execution. This will be the greatest combined operation in the history of Warriors, in the history of Forerunners. It is proceeding flawlessly.

We will feel side-effects, how intensely, no one can tell. There has never been such power unleashed all at once. I press the activation plate and close my eyes.

“Forgive us,” I say.

Have said.

Will always say.

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343 GUILTY SPARK • INSTALLATION 04

FOR A FEW hours, after I do my duty, I try to listen to all the communications, the final sounds. The channels are remarkably free and clear.

Would I fire Halo, if it were my decision?

Not my decision. It has been done, but the effects are out of sequence, smeared in time—ghostly.