Battle for Gyre 11

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Previous:	Fate of Maethrillian
Next:	Battle of Kan Pakko
Battle for Gyre 11
Conflict:	Forerunner-Flood war
Date:	Several years prior to 97,445 BCE
Location:	Gyre 11, Wolf-faced planet's system
Outcome:	Decisive Forerunner victory Gyre 11 suffered severe damage, but recaptured and salvaged Mendicant Bias captured Execution of the Primordial Presumed death of Faber
Details Belligerents Forerunner ecumene Flood Automated systems on the Halo Builder Security Commanders IsoDidact Primordial Mendicant Bias Master Builder Faber Strength Lifeworkers Warrior-Servants Gyre 11 humans IsoDidact's fleet Numerous Flood Numerous Sentinels War sphinxes Builder Security Casualties Heavy Gamelpar Chakas (human body) Heavy Primordial Heavy

The Battle for Gyre 11 was a major conflict fought in the final years of the Forerunner-Flood war. The conflict took place on Gyre 11, the Halo ring controlled by Mendicant Bias and the Primordial. It was part-civil war between the Forerunner factions loyal to the ecumene and Master Builder Faber and part-battle with the Flood forces commanded by the rouge contender-class artificial intelligence and the Primordial.

Background

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Battle

After Master Builder Faber had a Halo used to sterilize Janjur Qom in retaliation for the San'Shyuum rebellion, many of his closest allies felt he had violated the Mantle with his actions, and a political revolution occurred, with many Councilors resigning in protest. Meanwhile, many Lifeworkers and Warrior-Servants on Installation 07 violently rebelled against the Master Builder, but this revolt was mostly suppressed by Faber's loyal Builder Security forces.

Following the battle at the capital, Installation 07 retreated into a slipspace portal, reappearing in a distant star system near the galaxy's edges. This was part of a security measure beyond Mendicant Bias' control—in order to prevent the ring from falling in the wrong hands, it had been programmed to enter a course which would result in a collision with a planet in several days. As the primary, automated control systems had been sabotaged, the Primordial and Mendicant Bias were unable to direct the Halo's movements. Instead, they began to gather humans in a last-ditch effort to use them to manually steer the ring away from its destructive course.

After its successful retreat, Installation 07 began automated measures to repair the damage it had taken. Over the next few days, entire plates of the ring's superstructure were replaced and rebuilt. However, the installation was still low on power due to many of the power stations being down, and entire sections kept experiencing power outages. Meanwhile, the Halo's human and Forerunner occupants were caught amidst the chaos. Mendicant Bias used its all-encompassing control to corrupt most ancillas and Forerunner armors on the ring, turning the armors into death-traps for their wearers. This forced Forerunners on the installation to remove their armor in order to survive.

The Lifeworker beacons across the installation, used to transmit orders to the local humans via their geas, were giving conflicting commands which kept changing as the various factions fought for control of the beacons. Similar beacons were used to transmit orders to Lifeworkers and their ancillas across the ring, and although they believed the orders came from the Librarian, there was no definite certainty of this. Acting under these orders, a Lifeworker known as Genemender-Folder-of-Fortune extracted and stored the consciousnesses and ancient personality imprints of any humans he found, doing the same to himself, believing it would save him from having to serve the Master Builder.

During the battle above the capital, two Earth humans, Chakas and Riser, who had been captured by Faber and were aboard ships headed to Installation 07, crashed in different parts of the ring. Chakas landed near a village, where a young woman known as Vinnevra found him and later took him to see her grandfather, Gamelpar, who had been brought on the ring from Earth by Faber's minions long ago. The group then proceeded to travel under the guidance of Vinnevra's geas, which had activated upon Chakas' arrival, but upon arriving at the destination, they discovered it to be a "Palace of Pain", where the Primordial itself and a number of war sphinxes were herding numerous humans inside. After traveling in the opposite direction for several days, the group reunited with Riser, who had landed in a Flood-infested region nearby. Eventually, they came across a rail transport which brought them to Lifeworker Central, where a monitor instructed them to enter another transport.

The humans were then taken to the facility where Mendicant Bias' core was housed. There, humans from Earth were separated from the Tudejsa, and their ancestral personality imprints were removed by Mendicant Bias and the Primordial. They were given a choice to cooperate with Mendicant Bias and have their revenge against the Forerunners for destroying their civilization ten thousand years earlier; however, they would first have to help save the Halo from colliding with the approaching planet. Those who accepted Bias' offer were sent to various control stations spread out across the Halo, including the Cartographer. However, humans alone did not possess the knowledge necessary to properly interface with the ring; instead, Flood-infected Forerunners processed by the Composer were brought in and connected with each human to the Halo's control systems. As Installation 07 approached the planet, the controllers successfully managed to reorient the ring in a way the planet would pass through the center; this way, the ring would take heavy damage but had a chance of surviving.

Despite this, there was still a grave risk that the gravitational pull of the planet would tear the Halo apart. Plates of foundation material were moved over the exterior walls in preparation for repairs during the passage. Sentinels and other craft were positioned across the Halo, firing their engines in an attempt to alter the installation's course, with little success. The Halo's central hard light hub and spokes, typically used in the activation process of the main weapon, were activated to slow down the ring's passage over the planet, and to borrow some of the planet's velocity in order to alter the ring's orbit in an effort to prevent collisions in possible future orbital passes. However, the hard-light structures did not last long against the planet's surface, disintegrating shortly after the impact. The installation's outer walls quickly exceeded their capacity to manage the strain of the planet's tidal stresses, coming apart at various points. As the walls gave way, the foundational plates began to bend and distort, with massive gaps–some of them hundreds of kilometers in diameter–opening between them.

While the installation had already begun its passage, a fleet led by the IsoDidact appeared, and the Didact used his control codes to shut Mendicant Bias down. He immediately entered the Cartographer and connected to the installation's controls with Chakas, while dreadnoughts from the Didact's fleet moved to provide power via connections across the ring. Despite the additional power supply, the Halo could not be saved in its entirety. In order to relieve the tidal stresses exerted on the Halo, the Didact ordered that the installation be reduced by discarding the most damaged plates; this would also allow repairs to be made at the lesser Ark. To preserve the most important sections, they were locked into slipspace stasis, effectively rendering them invulnerable to damage from the outside. After the passage of the planet, the ring's central hub and spokes were activated to act as support braces for the intact sections while two-thirds of the superstructure was shed into space, contracting the Halo to a diameter of 10,000 kilometers. On its remaining power, the installation generated a slipspace portal and transitioned to the greater Ark.

Aftermath

Most of the installation's surviving biological specimens, including humans, were saved by the Lifeworkers and relocated to the Ark. Mendicant Bias' core on the installation was deactivated, while the AI itself was forced to undergo a process to "correct" its rampancy. The Primordial was captured and placed in a cage within a chamber deep underneath the installation's surface; there, the Didact interrogated the being with an injured Chakas, before executing it. The majority of the Flood, including ten inactive Proto-Graveminds and the infected Forerunners processed by the Composer, remained on the ring, watched over by a number of remaining monitors. By order of the Didact, the Halo, now shrouded in perpetual cloud, was eventually sent through a slipspace portal to remain as a memorial, a "sacred tomb" for the millions of beings that had died there, eventually becoming known as Installation 07. At the same time, it was intended to be used in concert with the final, newer Halo Array if mass galactic sterilization was deemed necessary.

After Installation 07 was reclaimed from Mendicant Bias and the Primordial, the Librarian spent time on the ring, creating the new Cartographer, setting the parameters for the Monument and giving the ancillas new purpose after so much of their original purpose had been lost. Following the firing of the array and per the Librarian's instructions, the ancillas of Zeta Halo spent centuries gathering the various essences, imprints and damaged submonitors left over from the civil war on the ring and gave them a new home in the Monument. The ancilla continued keeping watch over the Monument and the lifeforms living on Zeta Halo for the countless eons that followed as per the instructions of the Librarian and the IsoDidact. Their only deviation from these instructions was to purify the ring's atmosphere and end the shroud of mist over it because of the effect that it was having on the tullioc.

A hundred thousand years later, in late 2553, 343 Guilty Spark - who had been a part of the battle when he was still human as Chakas - related the story of the conflict to the crew of the UNSC Rubicon.

In August 2558, Spark visited Installation 07 in order to use its Cartographer to unlock the secrets of the Librarian's coordinate key. The visit caused Spark to revisit his traumatic memories of the events on the ring, before meeting Submonitor 091 Adjutant Veridity who revealed to Spark and Rion Forge what the ring's ancillas had done in the eons following the events, particularly their creation of the Monument using the overabundance of essences, imprints and ancillas that had been left by the civil war. Spark considered it to be surprisingly reverent and considerate and another worthy and sympathetic program emblematic of the Supreme Lifeshaper.

List of appearances

• Halo: Primordium (First appearance)
• Halo: Point of Light (Mentioned only)