Clash of Gods

[Lord Hierarch]

Part 1 of 3

"Never before had we encountered a race with powers that rivaled our own. Never did we imagine that the sins our past would come to haunt us again. In our overconfidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered."
---- Melia



The Didact stood erect at the center of the bridge, arms crossed behind his back as the map of the local star system rotated before him. His armored hand, layers of armor and nanites covering his skin, stretched out and gripped the tiny yellow star at the center of the amalgam of worlds, moons and gas giants. But his hand fell through the holographic image and the hand fell to his side, waiting. “Show me,” he said his voice unnaturally grave. The Ancilla obeyed and the bridge shifted, walls of hardlight pushing and pulling over the moldable interior to make room for the hologram as it grew larger until the star itself was just half the size of the Didact.

The Didact stared into the star as it burned before him, his eyes never blinking behind his visor. He stared into the star, just one star out of the thousands that he had seen and destroyed. It was only after a brief moment that he tore his eyes from the mesmerizing triumph of the Universe to the tiny pinpricks and explosions occupying the vast vacuum between the star and its closest orbiting celestial body. The world had once been a lush Eden of life, an artificial construct twice the size of the average Ghibalb-type planet built as an experiment in creating life for one of the Lifeworkers. Three thousand years ago it had been abandoned when it became clear that the experiment had run its course and the creatures that had been transplanted to the world had been allowed to roam and continue its course of evolution as the Universe demanded.

The Builders who had shaped the world to the specifications of the Lifeworker had taken great care to minimize the effect that the artificial world would have on the other bodies in the system. As much as he detested the Builder Caste for what they had done to the Warrior-Servants hundreds of years ago he couldn’t deny that the Builders had turned the tiresome work of shaping worlds and the Mega structures that defined the limitless potential of the Forerunners into a work of art. Simply looking at the holographic image alone made him feel awed at what it represented - at the greatness that his people had achieved.

Then a blue-white explosion marred the blue-green surface.

Again he found himself distracted, embarrassed his inability to focus. Now was not the time to be distracted, not when so much was at stake. He could scarcely believe that he had allowed himself to be distracted at such a pivotal moment. It was like him and yet moments like that were becoming all too common. Perhaps it was a side-effect of his bond with Bornstellar? He wasn’t sure and he didn’t have the time to check, not now and not for some time in the foreseeable future, not when he had so much to do. He brought his visor-covered gaze down to the raging battle displayed before him, lances of light and streaks of plasma crisscrossing millions of kilometers of space. Elements of the Sanctuary and Suppression Fleets were present as were several behemoth Fortress-class vessels.

“Status,” he inquired.

A blue-gray Forerunner stepped out from nowhere, an emotionless look on his face as he stepped through the holographic star and rested on one of the two cold red worlds in the system. Primitive races would have cried out for their Gods or screamed tales of spirits or apportions but to him, he knew the Forerunner as his Ancilla given Forerunner-shape.

“Two hundred eighty-six of three thousand vessels have been lost,” his Ancilla reported somewhat lamely. “As per your expectations, we have lost significantly less vessels than the usual engagement with the parasite would take. The new Disrupter Cannons have a greater chance of penetrating the tissue of corrupted ships than Destructor Beams. But this comes at the cost of a noticeable increase of power to be diverted to the weapons systems.”

It was a necessity, Didact knew. To win the war he had to make choices and against an illogical and utterly alien foe like the Flood he was willing to give up the comforts of their shields and layers of hardlight in exchange for more sophisticated and devastating weaponry.

Another explosion flared on the burning world.

The advent of the Flood coincided with the resurrection of the prestige and power that the Warrior-Servant caste had lost following the end of the political war between the Warriors and the Builders. His return from had heralded the fall of the Builders as well as the escalation of the war against the Flood. Ironically it also brought an end to the long dominance his caste held in the battlefield. The tactics he used against the Humans were useless against the Flood and it had taken him a century before he realized that. By then the Flood had infected billions of Forerunners and wielded the assimilated knowledge as a blade to be used against him. Thus he had changed his tactics, preferring to lay waste to infected worlds relying more on the Sentinels to handle the bulk of the fighting while he evacuated worlds.

The Ancilla magnified the planet, allowing him to see the individual clusters of Sentinels as they ravaged the world of the taint, to see the legions of Forerunners burning the world. This was one of the rare occasions where he needed to send in his warriors to augment his Sentinels. A Lifeworker, presumably the one who had ordered the construction of this world, had come to the planet in the hopes of rescuing the beasts on the planet. He and his small force had been the closest armada to arrive but no longer after they came did the parasite, having heard the distress signal through Slipstream, arrive.

The atmosphere below was a withering blanket of swirling clouds of fire; ash and smoke obscuring the surface. To the naked eye the burning ground, twisted and overturned mountains dotted by the fiery fields over the wasted forests would have been indiscernible to the sky which churned angrily as if in reflection to what was going on the surface. Hundreds of thousands of Seekers and their present day successors, Devastators, cleansed the land around them with lances of superheated plasma. Around them darting between and around their silver frames were billions of automated weapon-drones no bigger than his fist, burning away at escaping Flood spores or picking away at the carcasses of infected beasts. Great explosions ravaged the ground, brilliant globs of blue-white light as floating Strato-Sentinels, repurposed mining drones, vaporizing a thousand kilometers of land in all directions.

When he lost the political battle against the Builders and was forced into exile with the knowledge that the Promethean Corps, the highest and most respected group within the Warrior-Servant Caste, was to be disgraced, he went to a Deep Sleep believing that the entire Caste was going to be stripped of their rights. But since his return, since he merged his personality with that of Bornstellar just before his execution at the hands of the Master Builder, he had discovered he was wrong. Disgrace hadn’t weakened the Warrior-Servant caste; it had only served to strengthen their resolve and furthered their studies in improving their war machines so they would be ready when their people called on them again. Because the Forerunners would always need them even as the Builders tried to take over the job of defending the Ecumene with their Super weapons and Sentinels. Before him across the entire surface of the planet, he was now witnessing what a thousand years of technological innovation and progress had wrought and it frightened him.

He zoomed the map closer to a monumental building eight kilometers in length and twice that size in height, an ornate and beautifully constructed construct that was adorned with ancient symbols from a long-dead Forerunner dialect. At one point, the Didact was sure; the building had glinted under the light of the great star, a beacon that would outshine the star itself. But now it was marred with plasma scorches and pulsating Flood pores, eldritch growths snaking across the surface.

Despite its appearance, the building was safely within Forerunner control, the growths the remnants of several attempts by the Flood to overwhelm the staunch warriors within the walls. The many bodies that encircled the monument were a testimony to that. Try and try as the Flood would his warriors would never abandon their duty. Not until the Lifeworker was properly secured and any data in the research building was downloaded into the Network or destroyed. The Lifeworker had endangered her life by coming so close to the frontline – whatever it was that was on the planet was worth her life in securing.

“The Flood is relentless.”

The Didact simply nodded.

There was a shuffle of armor-clad feet behind him, two pairs of feet he now realized, and he felt a flicker of recognition wash over him. “They were relentless six hundred years ago too – yet you found a way to not only destabilize their biomass but also attack their gene imprints. My people have discovers many new things since then yet we cannot find a way to do the same. The High Prophet was the only one who knew the key but he’s long since dead.”

“I doubt it would have worked.”

“The Flood has evolved since then,” the other said. “We fought the spores, the mutated remains of an older plague. What you face… you face something that our kind never fought before. This Flood is intelligent – it’s being directed, controlled, faking assaults across the galaxy only to strike at others. If our ancestors fought this Flood during the war, I doubt that even the combined might of Human and Forerunner would have been able to turn the tide.”

Didact grunted; “A pessimist as always.”

“It’s new.”

“What do you want, Chakas, Riser?”

[s09119]

Halo/SG crossover?

[Lord Hierarch]

Halo/SG crossover?

Yes.