The look of awe and longing on Keeper’s features was instructive. Clearly he had been schooled in Builder mysteries. He was being prepared to move high in Builder society. Which was likely why he had been sent on this mission.

Reluctantly, as if unveiling a new nakedness, he magnified and shifted the images for all to see. Thousands of ships were arrayed in clusters around the wide-vaulting star roads. These old ships were massive enough—most in the range of one or two kilometers—yet sleek in their obvious power, and, to my eye at least, thoroughly aggressive, deadly looking. Yet indeed of an oddly familiar pedigree, as if even what the most ancient Forerunner voyagers had wrought was still recognizable to their descendants millions of years later.

“It must have been horrendously expensive to bring them here,” Chant-to-Green said.

“Almost certainly—if just moving our tiny ship nearly bankrupts the ecumene!” Keeper said. “But why? What were they doing here?”

“Cheaper to abandon them once their work was finished,” Clearance said, breaking from his trance.

“But what was their work?” Keeper asked, clearly frustrated, conflicted.

“Any dozen of them could have surveyed an entire system,” I said. “But we see hundreds of thousands.”

“A tremendous fleet—and clearly a battle fleet,” Clearance said. “Sent here to kill on a massive scale.”

Indeed, a fleet of this size could have targeted myriads of stars and planets—and how many of those worlds had once been inhabited by Precursors?

Keeper flashed from frustration to anger. “We don’t know that! Builders would never have ordered such a thing!”

Clearance took this opportunity to agree, but with a twist. “Rates weren’t the same back then,” he said. “Warriors might have served at the top. Builders would have worked for them.”

“And Miners?” Keeper prodded. “Where would they fit in?”

Clearance did not take the bait.

“This is not what we came to study,” Chant-to-Green said. “We’re here to learn the origin of the Flood. Forerunners are not responsible for that … are they?”

Silence.

“We have to get closer,” I said. “Ship, move us downstar to within a safe distance.”

“How safe?” Audacity asked.

“Ten million kilometers. Send greetings in earliest Digon. Perhaps Keeper can instruct you in some sort of clandestine Builder grammar.”

Keeper agreed before he caught himself. Our eyes met. Curiosity trumped any fealty to secret societies. “Builders will want to know the truth as much as any of us,” he said.

“If those vessels turn out to still be active,” I said, “jump us back to the outskirts of the system. If necessary, jump us to the margins of the cluster.”

“You don’t trust our ancestors?” Chant asked.

“She understands Warriors,” Keeper said in an undertone. I do not enjoy having my thoughts spoken for me, but could not disagree.