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Halo: Contact Harvest – extracts

Author: Joseph Staten

Scenes mentioning Sangheili (not many) – there are no Sangheili point-of-view scenes in this novel.

Chapter 9

Now that morning had come, it was easier to pick out individuals in the commuting swarm: Unggoy packed together on hulking barges; San’Shyuum in chairs similar to Fortitude’s; and here and there, strapped into sleek anti-gray backpacks, tall and muscular Sangheili. These blue-skinned, shark-eyed warriors were the San’Shyuum’s protectors—though this had not always been so.

Both the San’Shyuum and Sangheili had evolved on planets rich in Forerunner relics. Both species believed these highly advanced pieces of technology were deserving of their worship – clear evidence of the Forerunner’s divine powers. But only the San’Shyuum had been bold enough to dismantle some of their relics and use them to make practical objects of their own design.

To the Sangheili, this was blasphemy. But the San’Shyuum believed there was no sin in searching for greater wisdom and, moreover, were convinced that such investigations were critical to discovering how to follow in their Gods’ footsteps. This fundamental difference in the practical application of religious ethics sparked a long and bloody war that began soon after the two species made contact on a disputed reliquary world inside a Sangheili-occupied system.

In terms of ships and soldiers, the Sangheili started the fight with a distinct numerical advantage. They were also better warriors – stronger, faster and more disciplined. In a straight-up infantry clash, one Sangheili was worth at least ten San’Shyuum. With most of the fighting taking place in space and ship-to-ship, however, the San’Shyuum had their own advantage: a single, semi-operable Forerunner Dreadnought that decimated the Sangheili fleets with hit-and-run attacks.

For a very long time, the Sangheili took their knocks, ignoring the obvious fact that victory would require committing the sins of their enemy – desecrating their own relics and using them to improve their warships, arms, and armor. Not surprisingly, millions of Sangheili had died before the proud and hide-bound species decided abnegation was preferable to obliteration. With heavy hearts, their warrior priests began their work, eventually assembling a fleet capable of fighting the San’Shyuum and their Dreadnought to a standstill.

As devastating as this decision was to most Sangheili, the wisest of their leaders knew they hadn’t sinned so much as finally come to terms with their own desire for deeper understanding of the literal articles of their faith. And for their part, the San’Shyuum had to make their own painful admission: if there were other creatures as dangerous and dogged as the Sangheili in the galaxy, their chances of survival would be greatly increased if they allied with their enemy – had the Sangheili watch their backs while they went about their holy work.

Thus was the Covenant born. A union fraught with mutual suspicion, but given a good chance of success by a clear division of labor codified in the Writ of Union, the treaty that officially ended the conflict. Now the Covenant’s most important piece of scripture, the Writ began:

So full of hate were our eyes
That none of us could see
Our war would yield countless dead
But never victory.
So let us cast arms aside
And like discard our wrath.
Thou, in faith, will keep us safe
Whilst we find The Path.

The treaty was formalized with the decommissioning of the Dreadnought. The ancient vessel was stripped of all its weapons (or at least all the San’Shyuum knew it possessed), and permanently installed at the center of High Charity’s then-partially constructed dome.

Chapter 12

Maccabeus tore off his tabard and tossed it to an Unggoy steward standing beside a second set of steel doors opposite the kitchen. The passage beyond shared none of the feasting hall’s traditional craftsmanship. Like those in most every other Covenant vessel, it was all smooth surfaces bathed in soft artificial light. The only difference was there were more obvious imperfections: some of the light-emitting ceiling strips were burned out; holographic door locks flickered; near the end of the passage, coolant dripped from an overhead duct that had gone untended for so long that the greenish liquid had run down the wall and slicked across the floor.

Then Maccabeus reached the gravity lift. It was out of service, but more to the point, it had never been in service – not since he had taken possession of the ship. The lift’s circular shaft ran vertically through all of Rapid Conversion’s decks, but the circuits that controlled its anti-gravity generators had been removed by the Sangheili, as had circuits for the cruiser’s plasma cannon and a host of other advanced systems.

The reason for this wholesale stripping of technology was simple: the Sangheili did not trust the Jiralhanae. As part of the species’ confirmation process, some of the Sangheili Commanders had declared their strong suspicion before the High Council that the Jiralhanae’s pack mentality would invariably bring the two species into conflict. Dominant Jiralhanae always fought their way to the top, the Commanders argued, and they didn’t believe even the Covenant’s rigid hierarchy would be sufficient to moderate their natural urges. Until they proved themselves subservient, whatever peaceful urges they had should be “aggressively encouraged.” It was a reasonable argument, and the High Council imposed clear restrictions on the kinds of technology the Jiralhanae could use.

And so, Maccabeus thought, did we set aside out of pride for a higher purpose. Instead of pressing a holo-switch to call an elevator (one of the allowable replacements for the gravity-lift), the Chieftain simply turned around and slipped down onto a ladder – one of four evenly spaced around the shaft.

Like the feasting hall’s doors and beams, the ladders’ construction was relatively crude. Although the ladders’ rungs were worn smooth from frequent use, there were burrs along the rails that indicated a hasty fabrication. There were gaps in the ladders at every deck, but crossing these involved a simple drop or leap, depending on the direction of travel. For the muscular Jiralhanae this wasn’t so much an inconvenience as exercise.

Maccabeus knew the tank-encumbered Unggoy currently huffing and puffing up the ladders might disagree on this last point. But the shorter creatures were also extremely agile, and as the Chieftain began his descent to the hangar, an Unggoy leapt to another ladder and let him pass. This sort of flexibility made the ladders more practical than an elevator, which would have limited travel to everyone up or everyone down. But Maccabeus knew the ladders had one more advantage: they tended to keep you humble.

Before taking control of Rapid Conversion, the Chieftain had been obliged to give a Sangheili delegation a tour so they could verify he hadn’t repaired any of the proscribed systems. But the delegation had another item on their agenda. Immediately after the two Commanders and their Helios guards had come aboard, they began to call out all the reasons why the cruiser was “no longer worthy of a Sangheili commission.” Starting with the size of the hangar bay where the tour began, one Commander emphasized how small the space was – how it could only hold a “handful of craft” and even then “only those of lesser type.”

As the list of flaws grew, Maccabeus had nodded in polite agreement, slowly leading the party toward the shaft. The second Commander had boasted that gravity lifts were now ubiquitous on even the smallest Sangheili ships, and the first sniped that only on a vessel such as this – a thing best used for target practice – would one find a device as obsolete as a mechanical lift.

“Indeed,” the Sangheili Commander had disdained, delivering the next line in a rehearsed critique. “Given the limitations of its crew, I wonder how long even such a simple system will remain functional.”

“You are right, my Lords.” Maccabeus had replied, his deep voice earnest. “In truth, the elevator proved so beyond our capabilities that we were forced to remove it.”

The Sangheili Commanders had shared a confused glance. But before either of them could ask how Maccabeus intended them to inspect the upper decks, the Chieftain had used his powerful arms to pull himself up onto a ladder, leaving the Sangheili staring dumfounded up the shaft.

In his lifetime, Maccabeus had humbled many foes. But few victories were as satisfying as hearing those pompous Sangheili struggle up and down the ladders. Unlike the Jiralhanae (and all other Covenant bipedal species), Sangheili’s knees bent forward not backwards. This unusual hinging didn’t impede their motion on the ground, but it made climbing difficult. By the end of their inspection, the Sangheili were exhausted, mortified, and more than happy to have the crippled cruiser and its cunning barbarian of a Shipmaster out of their fleet.

This pleasant memory kept Maccabeus in reasonably good spirits even as he leapt past a passage marked with flashing triangular symbols. These indicated portions of the ship that had fallen into disrepair – in some cases dangerously so – and the Chieftain had been forced to lock them for his crew’s own safety.

In this respect, Maccabeus knew, it was the Sangheili who had the last laugh. His crew did have limited technical ability. They had struggled just to keep Rapid Conversion’s limited systems from falling apart, and the once-mighty vessel really was nothing more than the Ministry of Tranquility survey tug the Sangheili allowed it to be.

Notes

Some author’s mistakes :-). The novel gives a lot of details about the various Covenant species, which makes it a bit more interesting than the previous novels.

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