Maker tried to sound optimistic. “It’s possible we’ll be able to maneuver within this system, but only for a short time. And no great distance—less than a hundred million kilometers upstar, twice that downstar. Better sensor response is now possible, however.”

A sharp tone rang out as a small gray circle appeared in the display, above the limb of Uthera but in line with the plane of the ecliptic. The circle surrounded an almost invisible blur emerging from star-specked darkness. Neither we nor the ship could discern what this blur might be. Nor did it become more obvious as both the blur and the gray circle expanded.

All we knew was an unidentified mass was closing fast from a distance of about two hundred and fifty million kilometers.

“It’s a dark sun,” Sharp said. “Has to be.”

“Nowhere near enough mass,” Maker observed.

The object was at least fifty thousand kilometers in diameter. Not solid. The closer it approached, the more compact it appeared.

“Some new form of Halo?” I asked Maker.

“Much too large,” she said. “Also not enough mass. The mass reading is puzzling. It changes.” She listened to her ancilla. “No fresh light signatures. No entanglements. It’s not made of ordinary matter. But it isn’t trying to be deceptive.” She held up her arm as if to move the circle—and succeeded in spinning the display around and magnifying it.

Now we could make out thousands of slender, interwoven threads, none more than a few kilometers thick. The threads squirmed slowly, majestically, and then compacted, like a snarl of snakes trying to stay warm in the cold.

Maker frowned. She tapped the circle with an extended sixth finger, as if she might flip it out of the system and away from this planet, the ship, our orbit. “Probably not made of matter,” she said, second-guessing herself. “But it does resemble…”

She looked at us. At me.

She and I were thinking the same thought.

“We’ve seen its like before,” I said.

“Neural physics,” she said. “Precursor structures.”

“That’s impossible!” Sharp said. “They’ve been dead for millions of years!”

I knew otherwise. I had interviewed a being that claimed to have survived from those hidden times. A being that had sworn vengeance against Forerunners for the extinction of its kind.

“Dead or dormant,” Maker said, her armor darkening.

As if astonished into new vitality, the ship made an awful sound, like the clamor of broken bells. “Unknown construct approaching at one-third light-speed,” it said. “Instructions!”

Sharp still refused to believe. The expanded gray circle outlined an irregular ball of coiling and twisting star roads, Precursor artifacts that had been around for as long as any Forerunner could remember—unchanging, unresponsive. Revered by both Forerunners and humans as the remnants of our Creation.

“It’s going to arrive here about the same time as those ships,” Maker said.

“Can we outrun it?” I asked.

“No,” she said.