Free Broken Circle by John Shirley Page A

Those few heretics had kept secret records, had shared their data in a kind of scientific underground, using codes, cryptograms.
    Then the San’Shyuum had come—had driven the Sangheili from their interstellar colonies, appropriating Forerunner relics, openly and blasphemously utilizing the artifacts for their own foul purposes, expunging many clansfolk, sending othersscurrying like a squealing pack of fur grubs. There was no honor for the Sangheili in being driven back and further back—and the San’Shyuum were looming ever closer to Sanghelios.
    It was impossible to effectively fight the Dreadnought and the gut-boiling weaponry of the San’Shyuum’s Sentinels, so the underground movement of Sangheili scientists had emerged, confessing their sins, and declaring that the secret lore of the Forerunners was the only hope for the Sangheili. If they did not utilize at least some of these discoveries to create weapons, to build new and better and faster attack fleets, they would lose the war, and the San’Shyuum would locate Sanghelios, would overrun it, loot it, and then, doubtlessly, commit an act of genocide, destroying all Sangheili on the homeworld. Warriors would die without honor, executed with remotely fired weapons, never having the opportunity to face their adversaries in battle; females and even childlings, fresh from eggs, would be burned away by the Dreadnought like troublesome microorganisms.
    The Sangheili were desperate—and the underground of Sangheili scientists were allowed to live; their secrets were put to use. A great interstellar war, with attacks on the Dreadnought and its array of lesser vessels, rolled explosively across the galaxy. But though they succeeded in holding the line, the Sangheili fleet could not triumph—the Forerunner keyship was too powerful.
    Yet the Sangheili sometimes gained ground, and hemmed the San’Shyuum in with a cunning use of slipspace and hit-and-run tactics—they kept the ancient Dreadnought from effectively deploying its full arsenal.
    And so something akin to a stalemate was reached, though the San’Shyuum still had the edge with the keyship, the gigantic tripod in space pulsing with power.
    The Dreadnought couldn’t be everywhere at once. The San’Shyuum, its numbers few, needed an army. So Ussa ‘Xellus had explained it. And so they turned to the Sangheili, and negotiated the Writ of Union. And why? Ussa demanded, when he’d first fomented his rebellion. So that we might do the San’Shyuum’s bidding! So that we might be the serpent-necks’ enforcers! We now become lowly caste!
    But only a few of the clans listened to Ussa. The rest, fearful lest Sanghelios itself be utterly destroyed, had submitted to the Writ of Union.
    Ussa, seeking a new homeworld for his followers in the wake of his own country’s destruction at the hands of the Covenant, had since found the uncharted shield world and led them all in delving into the secrets of the Forerunners, hidden technologies that they would use to escape the predation of those who had sold out to the Covenant, which would one day make possible a restoration of true Sangheili honor.
    That was how Tersa understood it, how he had fervently believed. But here was ‘Crolon, chattering on, casually sowing doubt. Salus ‘Crolon no longer voiced these doubts within the hearing of Ussa or Sooln or Ernicka the Scar-Maker. But on the outskirts of their new, small colony, ‘Crolon relentlessly asked his corrosive questions.
    â€œI merely mean, we can wonder at these conundrums,” ‘Crolon was saying lightly, as he turned his scancam to a new artifact, a floating pyramid as high as two Sangheili, intricately figured on each of its faces. The scanning camera hummed, and the holographic image of the interior and exterior of the pyramid was projected in blue and green light overhead for a moment, confirming its scan. “Either Ussa is