Forerunner crystal

For the Forerunner slipspace drive component, see Slipspace flake.

The Forerunner crystal, referred to by the Covenant as the Fragment of Divinity, the Shard of the Gods, or the Holy Light, was a Forerunner artifact that was discovered in the underground Menachite Forerunner complex on Reach by Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey and the surviving Spartan members of Red Team in 2552. The artifact was of incredible potential, capable of warping space, energy, gravity, and even time and slipspace. It was hardly understood by the UNSC forces who found it, but was a prize that the Covenant were extremely eager to obtain.

Bubble effect
When it entered slipspace, the crystal began emitting radiation, producing an effect that caused a ship to move hundreds of times faster than it would during normal slipspace travel. The realm that it opened was not normal slipspace, in which nothing can be seen, but rather an anomalous bubble region of blue mist. In contrast to "normal" slipspace, weapons fire is possible, as opposed to regular slipspace. Energy weapons will be horribly misdirected, and their shots will pop in and out of existence seemingly at random, causing them to be just as dangerous to the shooter as they are to the target.

The extreme strength of the crystal's radiation made it impractical for the UNSC to carry it through slipspace for a prolonged period of time; it would kill the crew in under seventy-two hours, even if shielded.

Description
The artifact was a fist-sized crystal with a thousand facets that is tapered at both ends and glows with a blue light. When originally seen by Dr. Halsey and the SPARTANs in the underground facility, it was floating upright and the area around appeared spatially distorted (this may have been caused by a Baffler or Dazzler rather than the crystal itself). The crystal reacted with a burst of neutron radiation at Halsey's touch. When exposed to a Covenant gravity beam, the crystal nullified it, reshaping itself in the process. Its new form was created as the top half split along its facets and opened like a flower blossom. The petals undulated, and the crystal's glow changed from sapphire to a cool green. When Ascendant Justice jumped into slipspace it rearranged itself into a starburst of edges and refracted light, emitting radiation even after it was stored in the Pelican's reactor compartment.

Appearance
When the Ascendant Justice jumped into slipspace, the crystal again rearranged itself, emitting radiation during the entire jump, and caused gravitational distortions. The location of the ship at the end of this jump was somewhere near the Eridanus system, a distance that, from Reach, should have taken several days to traverse instead of a few minutes. By comparing timestamps from several missions Dr. Halsey discovered a three-week average time difference. Her conclusion was that the crystal bent both space and time. Halsey later gave the crystal to Corporal Locklear, who covered it with C-7 Foaming Explosive and destroyed it to avoid another slipspace radiation spike, killing himself in the process.

Three shards of the crystal were recovered by the Covenant, which were presented to the Prophet of Truth by Tartarus in an orb-shaped container. Truth then ordered the Brute to reward the pilots that had recovered the shards, then kill them. The UNSC also possesses pieces of the crystal. It is unknown what has happened to the shards that were possessed by the two factions, although the three Covenant-recovered shards were likely lost when High Charity fell to the Flood invasion, or were kept aboard the Dreadnought with Truth.

The rift that was projected when the ship went into slipspace may be similar to the Portal found at Earth.

Trivia

 * At the end of the novel Halo: First Strike, Prophet of Truth is given three chips from the crystal. He then says it "may yet be enough for our purposes". The exact implication is open to speculation; he may simply have hoped to harness its effects as a weapon, or was simply bluffing so as to not seem without knowledge of Forerunner artifacts.
 * The amount of radiation it produced in slipspace was too great to be contained. In Halo: First Strike, the Master Chief ordered Anton to place it inside a Pelican's reactor, but the radiation leaked didn't noticeably diminish.
 * The crystal occasionally releases a large number of neutrinos, an unknown type of them, possibly a 4th generation or higher lepton.
 * The crystal may have been a slipspace flake used in Forerunner slipspace drives, though it possessed time-bending properties beyond simply enabling faster slipspace travel.

List of appearances

 * Halo: First Strike