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| - "Commander." Umbra had handpicked each and every one of the Cleansing Fire's bridge crew for their skill, loyalty, and utter dedication to their posts under even the most dire circumstances. The warrior manning the sensory station didn't waver so much as a moment as he brought up a visual of the cruiser bearing down on their corvette. "It's the Salvation's Voyage." Standing at the center of the bridge, Shinsu folded his arms and nodded. "Hail them," he ordered. "They came," Umbra murmured, crossing from his station to stand beside his commander. "They actually came." "Of course they did," Shinsu replied. "Now we answer the real question." Umbra nodded. "Urei 'Cazal." He had never risen high enough in the Fallen ranks to ever meet Urei 'Cazal in the flesh. He hadn't even known the name of the last Fallen leader until Shinsu had revealed it to him. It hadn't been long after that revelation that they had deserted the Fallen above Famul, slaughtering every warrior aboard the Cleansing Flame who would not join in their defection and severing all ties with the separatist group. "He will remember Famul," Shinsu reflected. "And he will not think kindly of us for it." "The Flame is worthy," Umbra reassured him. "They will underestimate it at their peril. One show of treachery from them, and we will match it with force of our own." "Yes," Shinsu said quietly, his eyes fixed on the hologram of the Path Walker flagship. "We would fight. One of us would undoubtedly be destroyed, while the other was left to limp away to a place where the government would hunt it down and finish it off." He turned away and gestured to the communications officer. "And so it would be with the Cleansing Blade and the Path Walkers, were our factions to come to blows. One would destroy the other and in doing so it would pave the way for the victory of our true enemy." "So you say. But will Urei 'Cazal see things that way as well?" "Do not underestimate him, Umbra. The Fallen may have died under Urei, but he is still a cunning strategist. He was manipulating the pieces in this game before I had even begun to take up my blade against the Vadams. He will not put petty vengeance over this alliance." Umbra shook his head. "And if you overestimate him?" he asked, lowering his voice. "What if Urei has no use for us or our bargains?" "He will see reason," Shinsu said calmly. "I will stake my life on it." "Commander," the communications officer reported. "The Salvation's Voyage is hailing us." "Patch them through," Shinsu ordered. A moment later the Voyage's image was replaced with that of a warrior clad in dull, featureless armor. The Path Walkers had evidently learned the same lessons that the Cleansing Blade had gathered from the Sangheili's past wars: bright and flashy suits of armor brought death far more often than honor to those that wore them. "Shinsu 'Refum," the warrior said coldly, ignoring the rest of the bridge crew. "The Path Walkers have received your supplications." Several of the bridge officers bristled at the Path Walker's patronizing tone, but Shinsu cocked his helmeted head and addressed the envoy with an indulgent tone a kaidon might take with a presumptuous child. "So you have," he said. "And we are very grateful to see you answer them. Tell me, acolyte, will Urei 'Cazal receive me?" The envoy paused, clearly thrown off by the cordial reception. He quickly regained his bearings, along with his imperious attitude. "The supreme commander will address Shinsu 'Refum aboard the Salvation's Voyage." he declared. "You will come alone, while your ship stands down and withdraws all fighter escorts." Umbra blinked, his body tensing even before the envoy was finished speaking. He bit back a furious snarl, but the Fire's weapons officer sprang to his feet. "They do not even disguise their treachery," he spat to Shinsu, waving an arm at the envoy's hologram. "They dishonor you and the whole Cleansing Blade by thinking you could be taken in so easily!" "Is this the discipline of your warriors, Shinsu 'Refum?" the envoy sneered. "Were one of our own to speak to the supreme commander so out of turn, he would be disgraced and replaced on the spot." The weapons officer blanched, drawing back his arm as if to strike the formless image. But Shinsu reined him in with a casual flick of his hand. The angry warrior stepped back and slid furiously back into his post. "I would think Urei 'Cazal would be touched that his subordinates possessed such passionate regard for his honor and well-being," he told the envoy. "But perhaps the Path Walkers hold their commander in a different regard." "Do as they say," he said, turning to Umbra. "We will honor their wishes." Umbra nodded, but even as he bobbed his head he opened a private link to Shinsu's helmet communicator. "Do you really think you understand Urei 'Cazal's intent?" he asked. "You are crippling us even while you step alone into his lair!" "Like I said," Shinsu replied, rising to leave. "I will stake my life on it."
*
* The Path Walkers sent their own dropship to retrieve Shinsu. The pilots did not even bother to boom out a command to enter over the Phantom's speakers; the dropship's doors simply lowered in silent invitation. Surely the whole of the Path Walkers could not hold him in contempt for his treason at Famul, Shinsu reflected as he sat alone inside the dark troop bay. These warriors were never Fallen, and Urei would not risk revealing his past to them by recounting tales of his betrayal. Perhaps this was how they treated all who did not adhere to their cult. It was a strange mindset, one that could not last forever. Even with the spies he had placed within the Path Walkers' ranks, Shinsu could not claim to know anything about what their ultimate goals were. Whatever they were, Urei did not share them. He was not one to allow despair at the Fallen's destruction turn him to something so simple minded as a return to the path of the Great Journey. So they are merely tools in his hands. He will cast them aside when he has no more use for them. Deception had become a part of Shinsu's world as much as the blade skills he had honed beyond mastery. He lied and cheated others every day; the Cleansing Blade wouldn't be a tenth as powerful as it was now without his calculated manipulation of everyone around them. But still, the Cleansing Blade itself knew full well what his goals and methods were. To surround oneself with the very ones you deceived on a daily basis... Whatever Urei's master plan was, it was known only to him. Shinsu had no doubts that his former leader believed he could break the Sangheili away from the rest of the galaxy. That was what the Fallen wanted. It was what he himself had wanted once, a lifetime ago. Isolation. A bitter nostalgia for the days of the Covenant, or even those before the Covenant was formed. Shinsu shook his head. It was a vain, empty thing, a mindset that wilted when faced with the reality of the wider galaxy. The old traditions he would have us cling to are rotting away. The Sangheili must renew ourselves or be swept aside by the tides of progress. The Cleansing Blade would outlast the Path Walkers, along with whatever vision of the Fallen Urei still held. They had to, if they were to ensure their race's dominance in the centuries and millennia to come. So we will do whatever we must to ensure the Sangheili evolution. The Path Walkers are Urei's tools, and quite soon they will be mine as well. The Path Walkers, the Jiralhanae, Unggoy, Kig-Yar, humans, and every other tool that presented itself for the Cleansing Blade's use. They were all stepping stones to the Sangheili future. Millions, perhaps billions of aliens mustered by greed, old grievances, or simple bloodlust, all played by a few thousand Sangheili. The Cleansing Blade's web stretched far across the galaxy and Shinsu himself stood at the heart of that web. The Phantom rumbled; it must be nearing the Salvation's Voyage. Shinsu closed his eyes and let all of his hopes and fears, his schemes and strategies, the unchecked ambition that had brought him this far, all of it slipped away into a pool of absolute reflection. He thought of the days when he had not been commander of the Cleansing Blade, but one amongst four Preserving Blades of the Sons of the Preserving Blade militia. He had been little more than a child then, a child marching to the Fallen's broken call, but more and more often Shinsu found himself yearning for those days. Then he had been wild and pure, driven only by his yearnings of vengeance and the urgings of his comrades. Then he hadn't needed master plans or cunning stratagems, just information on where he would lead his brothers on the next attack. But that reality was dead. It had been cut down in a small village on the homeworld, as human gunships butchered his brothers and hapless civilians alike. It had ended in a snowy mountain valley as he knelt, defeated before the warriors who had killed his friends, betrayed by the one he had sworn to love for the rest of his life. Maybe I died there, too. Perhaps Shinsu 'Refum really had died back in Nisa Valley, and he was simply a walking corpse, wreaking vengeance upon his killers until someone could come to put his out of his misery. A desperate beast who only knows how to indulge in destruction. That was what Tuka had called him, his own brother on the bloodstained bridge of Mallunus's flagship. The memory of those words felt as if it should cut him to the bone, yet all it illicited from him was a bitter smile. That had been his answer to Tuka's plaintive cries to abandon his path. Shinsu 'Refum gazed into the darkness of the dropship that might very well be ferrying him to his doom, and smiled. He was not the walking dead after all. Tuka's memory had saved him.
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