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Inside the box were flashing red, blue, and green lights and many buttons.
He knelt and touched a button.
A sound came from the box: a curious series of slurps, pops, and deep rumbles that made Kwassass giggle. A rare alien transition. Treasure indeed. He could perhaps trade this for a rare ASTHEWORLDTURNS he had heard was on M deck.
The noise stopped, so he touched the button, and the noise repeated to his delight.
He strained to decipher the sounds. Like all human transmission he understood many of the words, but very little of what it actually meant. This voice had a twangy accent.
He listened again, straining to understand…
"… I am Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, temporarily in command of the UNSC military base Reach. To the Covenant uglies that might be listening, you have a few seconds to pray to your dammed heathen gods. …"
"We have been betrayed by those we trusted most," thundered the Imperial Admiral and Regent Command of the Combined Fleet of Righteous Purpose, Xytan 'Jar Wattinree. He shook both fists as he spoke. "We have been betrayed by our Prophets."
The Sangheili stood over three and half meters tall and wore silver armor covered with the gold Forerunner glyphs of Sacred Mystery. In the center of the oration chamber aboard the super-carrier Sublime Transcendence, Xytan's image was holographi-cally magnified so he towered thirty meters before them, and image replications made his face present in four directions simultaneously to the crowd.
Xytan appeared no less than a god.
Ship Master Voro stood at attention and watched the legendary commander. He had never been defeated in battle. He had never failed at any task, no matter what the challenge. He was never wrong.
The Imperial Admiral's only flaw was that he had been so revered, some said even more so than any Prophet. For the sin he had been exiled to the fringe worlds of the vast Covenant Empire.
This had happened before; the former Supreme Commander of the Fleet of Particular Justice had never returned from the "glorious mission" the Prophets sent him on.
Xytan had summoned all the factions of the Sangheili to |oyous
Exultation. He was, in Voro's opinion, their best chance for survival.
Voro was one of thirty representative Ship Masters who had been called from the two hundred vessels in orbit to hear these words.
"I, like all of you, believed in our leaders and their holy Covenant," Xytan continued, his voice resonating off the silver stadium dome overhead. "How could we have been so willing to believe a Covenant of lies!"
Xytan paused and looked out among them. The thirty Ship Masters and their guards seemed to be swallowed by the empty space in the chamber, designed for a capacity crowd of three thousand.
No one dared speak.
"They have called for the destruction of all Sangheili. They have aligned themselves with the barbaric Jiralhanae," Xytan said. He hung his head and his four jaws opened slack for a moment, and then he looked up, a new determination burning in his eyes. "The Great Schism is upon us. The unbreakable Covenant Writ of Union has been split asunder. This is the end of the Ninth, and final, Age."