Four: Founding of the Robot Nation
They returned to the Milky Way, but told no one of what they had discovered. Not even Nethalia or Venera or Kenera knew, though the Librarian did commission them to find John a crew, steadfast and trustworthy, while she arranged for even one ship.
Silver-Moon-of-Fortitude more than came through for her in that respect. She hated the Master Builder more than ever, for reasons that she refused to share, and she acquired not one, not two, but twenty design seeds for ships through a network of Builders that shared her enmity. They could not openly oppose the Forerunner in question - he had too much power - but they could aid and abet his enemies in secret and did so with relish.
Still, it took time to arrange for the seeds' delivery to Epsilon Eridani, which they had taken to using for their staging ground. It was a relative backwater, at least compared to the rest of the ecumene, which meant they were mostly safe from the Master Builder's spies. But John, Nethalia, and the twins used that time to scour the ecumene for trustworthy Forerunners, people who would use what they had to oppose the Flood.
The Lifeworkers came first. The Librarian knew her rate well and sifted through countless personnel records, choosing the best and brightest to join him, no matter how young or old. Lightness-of-Being was the youngest at the time; she was only a scant two years out from her second mutation, but both her imprints made her wise beyond her years.
The Warrior-Servants were next. Nethalia and the twins reached out to old contacts, even those now called "Builder Security", sent feelers out through the whole of the ecumene and brought in fighters just as varied as the Lifeworkers before them. Shattered-Shields was a no-nonsense Forerunner who had served under the Didact's command for millennia, one of the first who joined up, and she brought an entire division of nearly fifteen thousand Warrior-Servants with her, including Sharp-Wind-from-the-North, Sight-in-Darkness, and Empathy-for-Neutrality, along with an old but still strong supercarrier called Blue Moon.
The Miners followed after. As much as they needed fighters and healers, the fleet also needed people who knew planets, raw materials, how and where and when to acquire them, how to read entire star systems and know what was strong and what would crumble. There were many who pledged themselves to the fleet, but maintained their positions in the ecumene; though they were one of the most valuable rates after the Lifeworkers (can't Build if you don't have anything to Build with), theirs had always been one of the smallest, and they could not afford to abandon their duties until the Flood was on their very doorstep.
The Builders were the trickiest of all. Silver-Moon-of-Fortitude, her husband Peace-in-the-Deep-Sea, and her companions jumped at the chance to join up, to use their skills in opposition to the Master Builder and his patsies, but for those high in the ranks, they also could not leave - not without appearing suspicious, drawing even more attention than the Miners with their departure. Still, they pledged themselves as well and provided valuable intelligence about the inner workings of Builder politics, as well as new technology, updates for the design seeds, the better part of their ships yet unbuilt.
They would remain so until first contact. But the ancillae came before them, purpose-built for the fleet. No Contenders like Mendicant Bias and Offensive Bias after him, but they did receive two metarch-class ancillae named Shadow of All Night Falling and Light from Distant Suns, along with a handful of others to work in concert with them.
The Librarian, meanwhile, threw herself and her team into research on the Flood and the Conservation Measure, but John could see in her heart of hearts that she had abandoned any hope of finding a cure. Resistance, perhaps, maybe even partial immunity if whatever gods existed decided to have mercy on them, but there would be no cure for this nightmare.
But as the indexing of species began in earnest, a thought floated forward. He approached the Librarian, but she seemed to already know.
"You want other species for your fleet as well," she said, "Not just Forerunners."
He was surprised but nodded in agreement. "Other people - other species - have different insights, tactics, different ways of seeing things that we all might find valuable. The Graveminds will be focusing on Forerunners, built on a primarily Forerunner base; it might give us at least a little bit of an edge. But how did you…?"
"Believe it or not, someone else suggested it before you did. Come and see. There are people who would like to meet you."
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Dragons.
Fucking dragons.
His eyebrows nearly shot into his hairline when he found thousands of dragons - wingless, bipedal, but unmistakable - tending countless nests of eggs and younglings with the aid of juveniles of their species, under the careful eye of the Librarian's Lifeworkers. They were being held in a temporary facility, pending the completion of the Ark, but they had made it into a home - better than the Forerunners' attempts at duplicating other species' habitats, at least.
Some of them looked up towards him and the Librarian before they had even entered their area; they knew they were there, but waited patiently for them to come visit. When the human finally stepped into the habitat, one of the dragons - the Gultanr, they called themselves - rose and came to meet them.
Déjà translated for him. "I am Ferial," said the dragon, "Last Primas Uperbia of the Gultanr before the End. We have come to aid you in your fight against That Thing, if you will have us."
"You know what's coming?" John only half-asked. He could almost see it in her mind.
She knew, but she confirmed it aloud anyway. "We do. All of my people know. It is…" She shuddered, and her spikes quivered. "It is why we have done what we have done. As a people, we competed amongst ourselves to find whose abilities are the strongest, and when the Mother came-" She gestured to the Librarian. "-we who were strongest brought all our people's young to the Safe Place, so that our people may continue after the End. Those who were left behind will commit suicide, one and all, to deny the Enemy our gift. Though we must also tend our young and teach the Ways to the new generation, we who are here and grown wish to aid you in your fight."
That seemed to surprise the Librarian as well. These 'Gultanr' knew about the Flood, despite their comparatively primitive culture - they had technology, some limited spacefaring - and they knew about the Forerunners, too, and the Librarian in specific? Despite having never actually encountered any of them before?
"Your 'gift' gave you this knowledge?" When she nodded, he asked, "What is your gift?"
She grinned, or something like it. "We call it 'predictive resonance'. Our people have some small ability to see the future. Rarely anything concrete, more like intuition, but the greatest of our resonators have been known to receive true visions on occasion." She sobered. "It is how we know about the Thing. We have seen its coming. Even now, it draws perilously near."
And distance gives false hope of safety, but for the grim tidings this messenger bears - the enemy is almost upon us.
Unless you're gonna help, shut up.
Ferial looked him dead in the eye. "We know you carry that same Sickness within you. We who are here are not afraid - we will take your Sickness inside ourselves and join your Hive, give you our gift, so that we all may fight with equal footing against this Enemy."
The idea had occurred to him before. The Flood's armies worked in concert, all controlled from a central intelligence, the Gravemind, within a certain region of space; if they could have that same advantage... But he hadn't thought someone would just walk up to him and say, essentially, 'hey, I want you to infect me.' He glanced at the Librarian, who gestured; 'Your infection, your choice.'
Then he turned back to Ferial. "You know that once it's done, there's no going back?"
She nodded and held out her hand, scaly hide bare. The Spartan sighed, then reached out. They gripped one another's forearms, and he let his talons sink into her flesh.
The Flood reared its ugly head the instant the infection penetrated her brain, Ferial's awareness appearing alongside his own, and it reached for what it perceived to be a weaker mind. But both of them turned on it at once; Ferial "hamstrung" it while John "punched" it in the face, then together they threw it back into the hole it came from. Her presence actually made it easier to keep it down, and when they both "resurfaced", they found themselves grinning at each other.
"I think this might just work out."
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The rest of the adult Gultanr followed their Primas Uperbia, their elected queen. Though for the most part he worked hard to let them keep their thoughts to themselves, John still got unavoidable snippets of their lives, their histories, folded into his own - memories of places he'd never been, foods he'd never eaten, families he'd never had. He also knew their languages now, could speak to them properly, without the aid of a translator.
But more importantly, they communicated mind to mind essentially instantly, even halfway across the galaxy from each other (they checked). Somehow, something was different with them, and more than just the obvious. Still, it took time to figure out how to work together, but they did it.
Other species followed: the Lituni, a cat-people from the Gultanr's neighboring system; the Tuavan, a telepathic bat-like species, with the telepathy in question born out of their sonar; the Adonte, a race akin to the "Grays" of Earth stories; and the Saavaasi, essentially a Naga-like race of half-humanoid snakes. John also wanted to pick up some humans and some Sangheili, but there was no telling who they could safely take, whose descendants would be those he knew - if indeed they would be born at all now. He let them and all the other Covenant peoples be, with reluctance.
Ironically, the first to join the fleet were the last to get infected: the Forerunners. The twins, then Shattered-Shields, everyone else, and last of all Nethalia.
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"It is your choice. If this is not what you want, then do not force yourself. There are other ways."
"I know that." Nethalia continued to stare at his outstretched hand, Flood talons on full display. Her helm was opaque to his eyes, her breathing even, but Déjà told him her heart rate was elevated, her hormones signaling stress and anxiety despite her own ancilla's efforts to keep her calm.
At last, she said, "My wife was taken by the Flood during the Human-Forerunner War."
John stayed silent, let her speak, but he did not retract his hand.
"It was early on, before whatever the humans did that made it retreat, and it happened right in front of me, because of me. We were trying to contain an infestation on one of our outer worlds, buy time for an evacuation - working with the human forces, even, to sterilize what we could - but it was too much. We were falling back, and falling back - being driven back, and… Two of the combat forms attacked me. One jumped at my face, the other at my waist, and they knocked me off my feet. I thought my time had come.
"My wife saved me. Kicked them off of me. But she left herself vulnerable… and the Flood took advantage."
"It always does," he agreed quietly. Both of them knew that all too well.
They sat in silence for several long minutes. Then, at last, Nethalia retracted her armor and laid her hand in his.
He did not ask if she was sure.
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It took longer than he would have liked to coordinate their minds, figure out how to all work together. There were previously hidden grudges to settle, secrets that had to come out, traumas to soothe. But not all of it was bad; they shared knowledge as well, information exchanged at the speed of thought, memories of family and friends, culture and community, history and happier times than what was to come.
The Librarian and her Lifeworkers continued their studies of the Flood. In secret, the rest of the Infected Forerunners continued their work as well, mindful of their own infections and careful not to spread it.
The infection proved a boon, though; the Miners and Builders got quite clever about concealing requisitions for the fleet - swarms of seekers, harriers, hunter-killers, to supplement their armada. They were still small - their actual fighting force barely topped eighty thousand all told, with only twenty ships; the ecumene had more than a million times both those numbers - but they hoped their numbers would grow as the Flood threat was realized.
It was realized sooner than they would have liked.