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They looked to one another.
Y'gar, the eldest bridge officer, stepped forward. His sole vanity was his left eye, which had been blinded in combat. He had refused to have the cataract repaired.
"Tano was devout to the end," Y'gar said. "But his reasoning, in light of recent events, was not sound. This was regrettable, but necessary… Ship Master."
There it was: Voro was Master now. All the honor his. All the responsibility his as well.
He glanced at Tano, spilling his lifeblood over the command console, and set a hand on his mentor's shoulder, a parting gesture. "Remove him," Voro whispered.
Y'gar made a chuffing sound and three Unggoy3 appeared and carried Tano off the bridge, sponging up the remains as they went.
Voro knocked one with a cleaning rag aside. "Let his blood remain there," he said.
The Unggoy scurried away.
The stain would forever remain on Voro's soul; it could stay on the deck as well, a reminder of the price he had paid for their survival.
Voro then stared at the central holographic viewer: at the insanity that surrounded the Incorruptible.
3 Unggoy: the Elite name for the Grunt race
The Second Fleet of Homogeneous Clarity was in chaos; more than a hundred ships maneuvered on random vectors, barely avoiding collisions, and in the distance the silver arc of the Forerunner Halo construct—ominous, breathtaking, and the source of this trouble.
It had made Ship Master Tano lose his mind. He belonged to a fringe sect, the Governors of Contrition, who believed all Forerunner creations were sacrosanct. This even applied to the parasitic Flood infestation on Halo. Tano had reasoned that the Forerunners had created a perfect life-form, and it was therefore their duty to protect, even embrace, it. He had ordered the Incorruptible closer to the Halo ring to allow the disease aboard.
That would never occur while Voro breathed. The Flood was an infection that had to be cleansed. There was nothing remotely "holy" about it.
The Incorruptible shuddered.
"Plasma on the port lateral shield," Uruo Losonaee said, leaning over his OPS station. His strained voice betrayed that he had only recently been initiated in combat. "Successfully deflected, but the shield has collapsed."
The hull reverberated once more.
"Strike on the aft shield," Uruo said. "It's holding."
"One-third power forward," Voro said. "Roll to present starboard shields." He turned to Zasses on NAV. "Trace those firing solutions and get me a target!"
"Calculating, sir," Zasses said. "Solution obtained. Two targets."
A holographic frigate pair appeared on the deck and sped toward them: the Tenebrous and the Twilight Compunction, commanded by the alpha Jiralhanae4, Gargantum.
This was Voro's other problem.
4 Jiralhanae: the Elite name for the Brute race
In the confusion caused by the departing Prophets, the Sangheili's ancient feud with the Jiralhanae had escalated into xenocide.
The frigate pair moved as one, accelerating, their lateral lines warmed, and released a second salvo of plasma that arced toward the Incorruptible.