Troy Denning - Halo: Divine Wind

The New York Times Bestselling Series

Halo: Divine Wind

New York Times Bestselling Author

Troy Denning

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For Matthew McCarthy

This story takes place in October 2559, a year after the events of Halo 5: Guardians, as the AI Cortana commands a host of Forerunner Guardians and uses them to impose martial law on key interstellar civilizations across the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. It begins a few hours after the events depicted in Halo: Shadows of Reach.

2205 hours, October 12, 2559 (military calendar)

Banished Lich Pegoras

Translocation Interstice, Reach/Ark Slipspace Portal

A sliver of flame creased the darkness ahead. It did not roil or roll or swell in front of the viewport. It merely hung in the black opalescence of slipspace as though it had always been there, a long red ember trapped in the folds between space and time.

Castor had never seen such a thing, not in a thousand transits. Slipspace was a collection of nonspatial dimensions, where complex matter existed only inside carefully tuned quantum fields. Battles were impossible because location was indeterminate and weapons could not be targeted, and because energy radiated back into the spatial dimensions the instant it was released.

But he knew a plasma strike when he saw one.

Disappointing. The comment came from the blademaster Inslaan Gadogai, who was standing with Castor near the back of the open flight deck. A sinewy Sangheili with a gray-blond hide and gangly limbs, he was tall enough to peer over the shoulder of the pilot standing at the control plinth. I had not expected to die until after we reached the Ark.

We will not die, Castor said.

He and forty of his followersthe Keepers of the One Freedomwere aboard a Lich transport craft stolen from the Banished warmaster Atriox, transiting a slipspace portal that connected the human planet Reach to Installation 00also known as the Ark. Like most beings in the galaxy, Castor had never been there. But he knew from the Psalm of the Journey that, with a surface area many times the size of most inhabited worlds, it was the largest and most sacred of the remaining structures left behind by the holy Forerunners. It is too soon.

A dokab commands many things, Gadogai replied. Fate is not one of them.

Fate favors the worthy, Castor said. As do the Ancients. They will not let us fail, so long as we do not fail ourselves.

What a clever way of saying we are on our own, Gadogai said. Have you ever considered that the Forerunners are simply gone? That the only remnants of them are the constructs and antiquities they left behind?

Never. Their presence is the fire in my heart. It burns within me now more fiercely than ever.

And so it did. They were mere days from doing what the Covenant had failed to do in nearly three and a half millennia: initiate the Great Journey by lighting the Sacred Rings that had been arrayed across the galaxy by the ancient Forerunners.

The very prospect seemed enrapturing to Castor, and the grace of the gods permeated his entire being. His massive frame felt swollen with divine might, his perceptions sharper and his reason more piercing than at any time in his life.

The Faithful of the galaxy will soon know Divine Transcendence, he continued. And we are the Chosen who will deliver it to them.

Slayers of the infidel quadrillions, Gadogai said dryly. What an honor.

Castor bared a tusk. Do not mourn the unbelievers. He had seen Gadogai taunt death often enough to know he had no fear of it, so the Sangheilis only concern had to be the untold number of heretics who would perish when the Halo Array was activated. They must die so the worthy may ascend.

Yes. The galaxy will be cleansed by a Divine Wind, Gadogai noted, quoting from the Psalm of the Journey. I do remember the teachings of my youth.

Then you must embrace them, Castor replied. It had long troubled him that Gadogai did not honor the Forerunner gods of the Covenant. Instead, the blademaster placed his faith in the mysterious power that he claimed all beings carried inside themselvesand extolled it as the source of his incredible fighting prowess. There is still time to turn from the Path of Oblivion.

I wish that were so. Gadogai turned his gaze forward again. But here in slipspace, there is no time.

Castor started to demand an explanation, then realized what Gadogai was looking at. The plasma strike had changed from a sliver to an oval, not growing any larger or brighter, just rounder. The flames remained as still as mountains, their ragged edges now silhouetted against a royal-blue crescent on top and a dirt-brown crescent on the bottom.

Sky and ground.

We are about to emerge from the portal, Castor said, straight into the fire.

And I was afraid you hadnt noticed, Gadogai said.

What? The question came from Feodruz, who was standing on the right side of the viewport. Wearing blue-and-gold power armor, the stocky Jiralhanae was commander of Castors personal escort and one of the Keepers most ferocious warriors. He was also one of Castors oldest surviving war-brothers, having fought at his side for more than a decade during the War of Annihilation. We are flying into a plasma strike?

Obviously, Gadogai said. That is what were looking at.

I mean how? Feodruz asked. Who could do such a thing? Who would dare?

The Banished, of course, Gadogai said. The multi-species confederation of raiding clans and pirate bands had counted the Keepers among their number until just a few hours earlier, when Castor and his dwindling group of followers had stolen Atrioxs Lich and fled into the portal. The warmaster did warn us that we would find only death on the Ark.

I have not forgotten. Feodruz gestured out the viewport. But how could they know we were coming? Or when?

Atriox alerted them, Castor said. That can be the only answer.

It is certainly the likeliest answer, Gadogai allowed.

As remote as it was sacred, the Ark was located more than a hundred thousand light-years beyond the galactic edge. Swift communications across such far-reaching distances were not normally possible, but only three months earlier, Atriox had somehow contacted his former mentorwhom he had left in charge of Banished forces still inside the galaxyand ordered him to open the slipspace portal on Reach.

Could Atriox have discovered something on the Ark that allowed him to transmit messages across such a vast distance almost instantaneously? It would hardly be the first time someone had unearthed a sacred Forerunner artifact capable of doing what mortals deemed impossible.

After a moment, Gadogai added, Death is the price of betrayal in the Banished.

And it was Atriox who betrayed us. Never forget that, Castor said. He had been promised that after the slipspace portal on Reach was found, the Keepers of the One Freedom would join two other clans in using it to travel to the Ark. But when the moment of truth came, Atriox had a different plan. He betrayed the