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Though it did not understand how, all but the most basic forms of its kind talked to each other. Their thoughts, hardly more complex than animals, were babbling, confused, without order until it had imposed order. Theirs were cries of anger, confusion, fear, and hunger. Usually hunger.
A host would temporarily become a source of clarity, provide focus for the forms around it. A fire in the darkness, slowly dying as the fuel was consumed.
And yet, the species had hit a critical mass somewhere along its wanderings. On instinct, three hosts had sought the deepest shelter and merged. Three minds became one.
As it surveyed Halo through ten thousand eyes, plotting the myriad paths of the future, the metamorphosis continued. Like a bar magnet surrounded by iron filings, the countless forms about it were drawn into alignment. Their minds melded into the whole, their bodies became extensions of the central will. Memories and knowledge pooled, too fast and too furious for immediate categorization. And yet it devoured the memories with an insatiable hunger, plundered knowledge from the hosts before it could be lost to decay.
Even as it categorized the memories into a vast library, there were some it couldn't place, some whose origins were uncertain. There was the unshakable purpose of its species, that it was the venture forth, consume entire worlds and span the galaxy with its consciousness... again? As it passed over the knowledge of the self-styled Covenant, learning what it could about the species that had built this relic, why did it feel it could sort truth from dogma so easily? What was the source of its unease toward the Humans present, when by all accounts they were nearing extinction?
It was under no illusions. It knew more about its hosts than itself, but that would change very soon.
For now, it would have to survive. Forces were mobilizing against it, some blind to the unified intelligence of the species as they fought the parasite's incursion. The automatons that guarded this relic, however, were burning a path through bulkhead and biomass, seeking the nexus of the species' consciousness.
The Sentinels were entering through the hangar, killing the hosts with surgical precision. It ordered the hosts to rally and counter, plasma weapons to the fore.
Cover. Focus fire.
Potential hosts had set up a barricade in a ravine leading to the ship, fighting off the flood of parasites. Their position was weak, but defeating them would be too costly.
Retreat. Scatter.
A group of Covenant were fleeing the engine rooms where they had sought to block entrance into the ship. One was a ranking officer, knowledgeable about troop deployments across the relic.
Pursue.
A cluster of infection forms had found a number of Human corpses from earlier skirmishes aboard the ship, most too badly damaged or decayed to retain their memories.
Gather. Conserve.
The Sentinels were halted, seeking another avenue of entrance. A number of hosts had been killed, but a few could still be of use to the nearby infection forms.
Consume. Reanimate.
The officer cleared a doorway and found himself flanked by a pair of carriers.
Birth. Overwhelm. Consume.
The defenders of the barricade burned the dead hosts once the infection forms had retreated, forgetting or not knowing that the parasites could scale sheer walls, and were even now bypassing the barricade on the cliffs to either side.
Flank. Converge. Consume.
A host, gathering the broken bodies from a crashed dropship, spotted a flight of new dropships on the horizon, speeding for the ship.
Survive.