Chapter Three- Two Weeks
The Captain's quarters of the Of Fire Forged were as cramped as the rest of the ship. The bare minimum of space was sparred giving Bosch a small office the size of a large janitor's closet and a connected cabin that was slightly smaller. A model of the Forged sat in a glass paneled case behind his desk along with still photos of the ship in formation with the UNSC Aurora of Winter. Bosch sat, fingers laced and elbows resting on the polished aluminum topped desk. Dr. Annea Bless and Captain Lynch sat opposite, almost shoulder to shoulder in the small space. The Doctor looked like a child caught in the act of some sort of mischief, embarrassed but steadfastly denying any fault. Lynch's lips were pressed together as if waiting to reveal another eerie smile, but really, that could mean anything with him.
"You know what happened." Bosch said. It was more of an accusation than a question.
Doctor Bless huffed, "I know we were caught in a slip space anomaly and I know the Observer had something to do with it. But I don't know how are why it happened."
Bosch turned his gaze to Lynch he met it with calm dark eyes. "If I knew this was going to happen and it was my objective, I'd be smiling, I'm not smiling Commander."
"So you thought it would be a good idea to plug some piece of alien technology into my ship, without my consent, and see what happened?" Bosch spat.
"It's not the first time we've used the Observer." Bless defended lamely. "Besides, we had Telos backstopped by ONI grade counter intrusion software. The fact that the observer could hack the system wasn't something we could have expected."
"How could it have done that anyway?" Bosch asked, "I thought alien computer systems were fundamentally incompatible with our own, it's why we've had so much trouble accessing Covenant databases."
"ONI has spent years constructing an interface for the Faithless Observer. It was given to Doctor Bless so that she and her team could refine the emulator software in the field. If I were to venture a guess the Observer must have taken advantage of the interface we had constructed to access our systems." Lynch explained.
Bosch let out a sigh. "Alright, until further notice your artifact is on lock down, I've already had the marines toss it in the strategic weapons Vault with our nukes. Its about as dangerous in any case."
Doctor Bless shot out of her seat and slammed her hands against the desk top, an action that nearly lifted her from floor before the magnetic soles of her deck shoes pulled her back down. "Commander, the information in that artifact may be our only clues on how to get back home."
"I know Doctor. That is the only reason I haven't shot it out an airlock." Dr. Bless looked like she was going to say something more but decided it wasn't worth the trouble and returned to her seat.
"The only reason I haven't tossed both of you in the brig is because the
Doctor is a civilian and Captain Lynch is my superior officer. I doubt either of you would be, speaking frankly, so stupid as to tamper with an alien artifact knowing that this would be the result. That said you are also the foremost experts we have on the alien's that created the artifact that presumably sent us here, which means you two hold the key to our ticket home, and make no mistake I'm going to drive you relentlessly until we're back in UNSC space."
Lynch finally cracked a smile. "You know, you could face insubordination charges for speaking like that, Commander."
"Are you going to press charges?"
Lynch's smile widened, "No, I happen to agree with you completely. Which is why I'd like to ask you're permission to use the ship's sensor arrays to start sweeping for any sign ruins on the planet below. I'd also like you to return Telos to me, her help will be invaluable."
"I can give you access to our active and passive sensors but you're AI is on lockdown until we can be sure it wasn't corrupted by the Observer."
Lynch gave an exaggerated sigh. "I suppose that will do, but we're going to need Telos and the Observer if we want to get back through the portal."
"I agree with the Captain." Dr. Bless said, "Whatever caused the portal to open must have been related to Telos interfacing with the Observer. We at least need to go through her command line cache and backtrack what she was doing."
"All in due time Doctor. I'd rather get the Forged back into fighting shape before we do anything else. A soft chirping came from the corner of the desk. Bosch tapped a key on his terminal, read the display, and nodded. "If that's all we're done here. I'll expect a preliminary report by the end of third shift."
Bosch skipped along the starboard corridor of D-deck, gracefully avoiding the marines and engineering crews that were working to get the ship back online. There was little physical damage by the system kill had left the ship's intranet a mess. He came to a stop as he passed a narrow armored viewport. In combat, titanium-A shutters would seal over the window but for now it gave a breathtaking view of the blue and green gem that hung far overhead. The Forged had dropped out of slipspace in close proximity to an uninhabited planet. Uninhabited but inhabitable. Of all the places for the portal to drop them, that couldn't be a coincidence.
He took the lift up to C-deck and the bridge. The Forged's flight deck was just as cramped as anyplace else on the ship. There were stations for the ship's captain, gunnery officer, navigator, communications officer, and sensor officer. All other functions were managed by Mary or other battle stations throughout the ship.
Lieutenant Commander Kano saluted as Bosch entered. "We're ready to reinitialize Mary. Just give the order." Bosch leaned over his console and typed in a twelve key pass code. The computer chimed its acceptance and lines of text scrolled passed. The holotank flickered to life with a series of test geometries, quietly wering as it realigned. Mary's avatar flickered to life. In keeping with her playful demeanor her blouse and skirt were wrinkled and her hair slightly tussled as if she'd merely fallen asleep. "So, what did I miss?" She plucked a cup of coffee from midair and took a sip.
"Sorry we knocked you out, it didn't do much good in the end."
"No worries." The AI smiled kindly. "I would have done the same thing."
"Really?" Bosch asked.
"No. I would have used the emergency thrusters to reduce altitude and crash decelerate to take advantage of the planet's gravity. But it wouldn't have made any difference, I reviewed the logs as soon as I came back online, by the time you were able to take action we were already too close to evade."
"Oh." Bosch said. "Well I hope you can give us some better news about our location."
"I've already activated our navigational telescopes and am taking a panoramic sweep of the stars. It should take me about two hours to match against known stellar bodies."
"Any thoughts on what hit us?" Bosch asked.
"It might have been some sort of security program." Kano offered. "From what Doctor Bless has said the Observer has never acted like that before. Maybe it detected our attack on the surface structure and tried to stop us."
"That would require the two to be linked. I didn't detect anything resembling a signal." Mary said.
"The ground structure opened a portal. The Observer tried to steer us into it. They sound linked to me." Bosch said.
"Then why send us here?" Mary asked. "It had us hook line and sinker, why not slam us into the planet or overload our reactor? Both the observer and the Lorelei structure are obviously very powerful, if they wanted to destroy us, we would be dead."
"Maybe it was like one of our NavBeacons." Neither Bosch nor Kano had paid any attention to the surrounding bridge crew. Lieutenant Renoir looked up from her station. She brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear. "You know, like the buoys that are used for unmanned transports. The Observer thought we were off course and corrected."
"I wouldn't call forced subversion of our drives a correction." Mary said.
"But she has a point." Kano said. "Doctor Bless said the ONI AI reported a pattern to the data. Maybe the Observer isn't just a data repository. When Lynch's AI started messing with it, or maybe when we bombed the structure it woke up something in the Observer."
"That doesn't explain its subversion attempt." Mary insisted placing hands on hips.
"I'm getting to that." Kano laced his fingers together. "Think about how our own NavBuoys work. An unmanned interstellar module drops out of slipspace and immediately links with the two nearest Buoys to update its location. The module logs its intended course and makes corrections. If the Buoys agree with the course corrections then they let the module proceed. But if there's a discrepancy where the two Buoys agree and the modules onboard computer is in error, the NavBuoys override the module and take control. Maybe the Observer thought we were off course and tried to override us."
"Then that would mean the Observer was a navigational aid." Renoir suggested.
"Or a ship board computer." Mary added thoughtfully. "But then we have a why, but not a how. How could an ancient alien NavCom crack our systems like they weren't even there?"
Bosch snorted. "Isn't it obvious, the Observer is an AI." The bridge went quiet. Suddenly Bosch was very glad he'd sealed the damn thing in the weapons bay.
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"This is King Cat, Barracuda-4, ready to launch." 2nd Lieutenant Takashi Leiden spoke into his helmet mike as he took the controls of his beloved Longsword. The response came almost immediately.
"Barracuda-4, you are clear to launch. Light drives at ten thousand meters and proceed to your patrol orbit. Leiden acknowledge the instructions and keyed the control stick in his right hand. He was kicked back in his seat as the launch rails shot the singleship from the belly of the Forged and out into open space. He watched the frigate shrink away in his rear camera then went through the checklist for main engine ignition. Mag bottle on, fuel pumps to zero gee mode, atmospheric propellant bypass off, engine ignition. He felt an invisible hand press him back in his seat as the Longsword accelerated, or rather, decelerated, entering a lower orbit around the planet below.
"Hey Gatsby, you better not be asleep back their." Leiden called to his EOW, 1st Lieutenant Henrietta Leary adjusted the haptic interface gloves she wore and keyed up a holographic keyboard. "Tora, you couldn't wake me if you tried." She put her hands to her head as playful cats ears. That was what you got for showing your coworker pictures of your family. Leiden was a small man with a squashed face and small mouth that was perpetually bent down in a frown. His mother, a Japanese national, insisted he looked like the family cat and the nickname had stuck with him through childhood. All it had taken was Gatsby asking about the cat in the family photo and the damn nickname was back. He didn't let it get to him though. Instead he just grinned and applied pressure to the control stick, thumbing the throttle control with his left hand. The Longsword went into a corkscrew, thrusters flaring across the hull to pull a maneuver that would otherwise be impossible in space.
It caught Gatsby by surprise. "God damn it Leiden." She spluttered.
"Don't go burning our D-Vee like that."
"Awake now?" He asked.
"Yeah, I'm awake I'm awake." The EOW waved her hand and went back to work. "Though I'll probably wish I was back in my bunk in about five minutes. This could've been handled on autopilot you know."
Leiden ignored her like she knew he would. For her, fighter jockey was a job. She was good at it so she did it. For Leiden it was a way of life. The man loved to fly. The Longsword was purring to him. The subtle vibration of the airframe as the fuel pumps did their job, the sloshing of fuel in the bladders, the sound of the life support systems, the coolant lines, the faint tremble in the control stick as the Longsword brushed the faintest wisps of atmosphere. It was the rush he had joined up for.
The 114th Blue Barracuda's were an assault fighter squadron. In a battle their job was to aggressively engage enemy fighters, preemptively degrading the Covenant fighter screens and giving more heavily armed singleships a chance to get in range of the Covenant capitol ships. It was a job that required fast reflexes, split second judgment, high endurance, and razor sharp instincts and Leiden had them all. But right now he was just enjoying himself watching the world go by below.
"Look at that, when's the last thing you saw something that beautiful?"
"When we were over Lorelei, and Reach before that, and Arcadia." Gatsby grumbled, she didn't get how he didn't get tired of it. Fleet personnel spent so much time in space over so many different worlds that a blue planet didn't inspire the same wander any more.
"The Covenant glassed Arcadia." Leiden said.
"Yeah. Fuckers. But the firestorms sure were pretty from orbit. Anyways, rotate us into position, time to start our run." Leiden grudgingly turned the Longsword so she was flying belly to the planet. Gatsby hit a few virtual keys, feeling the resistance as the motors in her interface gloves turned on to simulate a key strike. Camera's stored in the singleships nose began snapping high definition shots at the rate of one per second and beaming them back to the Forged. The rest of the squadron was doing the same, allowing the Forged to build up a view of the planet's surface. The data would then be used to determine where they would focus their search for a return portal.
Leery set into a routine watching the images flicker by on the screen. They were passing over the Planet's northern continent, great tracks of desert gave way to foothills the mountain ranges before flattening back out into prairies and forests. It looked almost perfect for a colony world with a temperate climate across most of the globe and a near perfect atmospheric oxygen/nitrogen mix for human habitation. Something about that bugged her. Most worlds didn't come this close to earth standard, it was almost too perfect. She switched her multi display to full infrared as Leiden flew on.
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Mary was thinking, well, she was always thinking. She was an AI, it was the definition of her being. Humans practiced meditation to demonstrate that their they existed separately from conscious thought. AIs were different, there was no self without thought. They were different in other ways as well. Despite being modeled on a human mind, Mary was not cursed with emotions like nervousness, anxiety, or jealousy. Her emotional spectrum was far more primitive and rigidly defined. Love (platonic), happiness, contentment, fear, anger, and sorrow. They were behavioral motivators installed to direct her actions and give a being of pure intellect some reason to interact with the real world.
She loved the people she served with and thus put on an act to make them comfortable around her. She was happy to do her duty and so did everything in her ability to excel. She was content in even the most tedious tasks. She carefully assessed possible threats out of fear for herself and her crew. Fear was counterbalanced by a capacity for anger and aggression. And she remembered every error that lead to loss and hurt and factored those experiences into future value judgments.
At the moment she was feeling mild concern for her crew's safety and her own continued viability. Her efforts to locate them within the galaxy had so far brought up no matches which meant they were well outside UNSC territory. She would need to get a fix on major stellar bodies like quasars or pulsars to determine their position. In any case, it bode ill for their ability to return on their own power. The Forged could cruise over a thousand light years in slipspace before she needed take on additional He3 fuel reserves. While there were secondary protocols to run the reactors on hydrogen and deuterium they were drastically less efficient and significantly reduced reactor life.
She logged this in a report and filed it as part of a more extensive document she was composing for Commander Bosch. If the search for a return portal turned up nothing the Forged would be forced to enact seed corn protocols and set up a lifeboat colony on the planet below to await contact from the UNSC. The idea did not appeal to her.
From the back of her mind a subroutine nagged for her attention like something important but half forgotten bubbling its way to the surface of her thoughts. She'd been running the images taken by the Longswords and the Forged's own cameras through a recognition program, searching for the regular geometry of intelligent construction. A picture of the northern continent showed an overgrown clearing about fifty kilometers from the coast. The search algorithm had made out a series of unusually straight lines that appeared in visual, UV, and IR shots. There was a distinct pattern, like a road network extending from a central point in a concentric fashion. Foundations bulged up intermittently, a large one here, there a smaller one. She needed a second opinion.
Doctor Bless was on A-deck. She had commandeered the observation bay as her personal laboratory. Mary's avatar appeared on a holopad beside the Doctor. "Just a quick check in, I might have found something you'll want to see."
The Doctor put down the flex pad she had been reading and looked at the AI. Mary snapped her fingers and the still image appeared next to her. The Doctor's eyes narrowed and then widened. "Where did you find this?"
"Northern Hemisphere. You wouldn't happen to be interested would you?" She teased.
"Yes, very." Bless said seriously before whipping out her flexi pad. "Can you transfer the photos to this? I need to show it to Captain Lynch and the Commander."
"I'm already telling your spook and the Commander." Even now Mary was speaking with the two. Lynch was playing his hand close to his chest but she could already tell where the conversation was going with the Commander. She contacted Lieutenant Ulman and told him to ready his marines. "The Commander is going to want to send a team groundside to check it out. So, its important?"
Bless nodded absent mindedly as she grabbed fist fulls of memory chips, a small video recorder and her flex pad and stuffed them into a lightweight backpack, "The streets and foundations are in a radial layout, large outer circle with an offset inner circle. It's the same layout of the ruins on Lorelei. If you're talking to the Commander tell him I want in on the ground team."
"Should you be abandoning your search for the portal to go gallivanting off?" Mary gave a small frown. Doctor Bless didn't seem particularly professional to her.
The Doctor snorted, "You can handle the sensor sweeps fine without me. Besides, on Lorelei we found the Outpost by studying the ruins elsewhere. It's worth checking out."
"If you say so." Mary's hologram disappeared as the Doctor went about making preparations.
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The troop bay of the D77 Pelican dropship swung open as they descended past five hundred feet, flying low and slow. Clare watched the forest roll out beneath them, dark and primeval. Cold wind kissed her cheeks and she pulled her balaclava over her face. The troop bay was crowded with marines and equipment. Beside her sat Sergeant Weiss with a bullpup configuration SRS101C-S3 anti material rifle spread across his lap. It was an evolution of the venerable SRS99 redesigned for urban combat. It sacrificed some of the older rifles reliability and accuracy for a more compact frame that could be maneuvered more easily in an closed environment. When Clare had asked about the high powered rifle the Sergeant had simply shrugged. "Unknown planet means unknown animals. Animals that don't know to be afraid of humans. Rifles will stop a man or a grunt in their tracks but they may not be enough against something like a bear." Clare had paled at his words and resolved to stick close and follow the Sergeants orders to the letter.
Opposite her sat the Spartan, still clad in that same green armor albeit with most of the battle damage repaired. The Spartan held an M247 machine gun fitted with a scope, custom stock, and grip that turned the LMG into something that more resembled a Spartan sized assault rifle. The Spartan saw her starring and tapped the side of his helmet. Clare got the message and switched on her com. "You seem nervous soldier."
"Just kind of wishing I had a bigger gun." Clare said.
The helmeted head cocked to the side. "Just remember your training and watch your sectors, you'll be fine." The Pelicans began their final dissent into the clearing and Clare switched off the safety on her rifle. Their Pelican was the first to touch down, the second dropship hovering to provide over watch. She was one of the first off the ramp, boots sinking into soft loam. She took up a crouched position scanning three to four o'clock. Sergeant Weiss and the Spartan took the other sectors. Two teams of Black armored ODSTs trooped off next and spread out.
"I've got nothing but friendlies on the motion tracker." A corporal reported.
"Right, offload the equipment so we can get the second bird down. Two of the ODSTs hustled back into the Pelican's troop bay and began sliding pallets of equipment down the rear ramp. The second Pelican landed as the first lifted off. Doctor Bless stepped from the troop bay with her escort and the Pelican promptly lifted clear.
The pilot of the lead Pelican spoke over the all squads channel. "This is Hotel-028, we're pulling back to the Forged call us if you need us. Out." The marines watched the dropships lift clear and set to work securing their landing zone. Sensor posts went up in a one hundred meter perimeter. M247s mounted on servo actuated tripods were manhandled into place and positioned under camouflage netting. Memory plastic tents were unfolded and staked into place. In thirty minutes a defensible base camp had been erected on a low hill about two hundred meters from the tree line.
Clare gathered with everyone else around Doctor Bless as she showed an orbital map of the local area. "The ruins are pretty much just covered over foundations at this point." She explained. "It's pretty much what we saw on Lorelei. What we'll be looking for are any subterranean entrances or markings on the foundations."
"What, like hieroglyphics?" Lieutenant Ulman asked.
The Doctor shook her head. "Sort of but not quite. The alien symbols might tell us something about what was here. Military outpost, colony, so on and so forth."
"Alright, you can hear the lady, lets get to work." Ulman drawled. The marines began setting up surveying equipment while Doctor Bless wondered back down the hill through the clearing. Clare and Sergeant Weiss followed close behind as escorts.
"This place is strange." Weiss said quietly.
"What do you mean?" Clare asked. If something was bothering Ghost then she figured it ought to have been bothering her.
"It's too much like Earth." He said.
"What?"
"You're sharper then I gave you credit for." Doctor Bless said with a thoughtful smile. "I noticed it too. The shape of the grass blades, pine cones on the trees in the forest. I haven't got a good look at the birds we've seen flying around but I'm willing to bet they're very similar to sparrows."
"I don't get it, I though lots of worlds had flora and fauna like Earth." Clare said. Though she could have been mistaken, she'd never paid much attention in science class.
"Well, yes and no." Doctor Bless explained. "There's a lot of parallel evolution in the more fundamental things, only so many ways to make an eye or a wing." The doctor plucked a dandelion from the grass and held it up to examine. "Or a seed case." But planet's never have quite the same life. There's mammal analogs, and lizard analogs, and fish analogs, but that's all they are. The "fish" native to Reach for example are warm blooded. Arcadia's "birds" have four wings and give birth to live young. And all of them look very distinct from their Earth equivalents. This place is like it was made for us."
A chill ran down Clare's spine. It made the seemingly innocent clearing a whole lot more spooky. "Hey, look over their." Sergeant Weiss pointed. Something was visible jutting from the grass in the distance. Doctor Bless picked up the pace forcing Clare and Ghost to chase after her. They caught up just as she neared the ruins. What looked to be a row of stone columns, all that was left of some ancient building. "I'd stay clear of those Doctor, they don't look too stable." Bless ignored the advice and started climbing all over the ruins. Feeling their surfaces and carefully documenting the sight with her camera. She was engrossed in her work, leaving Weiss and Clare to stand guard.
Weiss sat on a piece of rubble and took a cigarette from his vest pocket. He tapped it against a stone to ignite it and took a drag. The only noise were the birds chirping and Doctor Bless shuffling amongst the columns. "Hey, Searge?" Clare said.
"Yeah?"
"What'll happen if the Doc can't find the portal home."
Weiss exhaled. "Then we'll have to take the long way."
"And what if we're too far to make it?"
"Then we might have to settle down here."
"Can we do that? What about food?" It was such a strange idea.
"The ship has an onboard med bay and hydroponics lab. We can clone or splice seeds if we have to. I read the reports once, if we cannibalized the ship for raw material we could get a nineteenth century tech base going without much trouble. A little bit of work and we could even keep power going to the AI. Your kids could grow up taking lessons from old aunt Mary."
Clare blushed at the mention of children. She wasn't shy about the subject but it was weird to think their war might already be over. She shook away the thought. "But we'd always have the Covenant looming over our heads." She said quietly.
Weiss took another drag. "Yeah, there's that."
"Then I'd rather rejoin the fight."
"That makes you braver then a lot of the folks back home. I heard some
of the richer types that made it off the outer colonies were pooling money to buy some old ships and make a bee line away from the invasion front. Guess they figure if they run far enough they won't have to deal with it."
"Do you think we'll win?" It wasn't a question people asked often. The war was going about as well on the whole as their last battle.
"We haven't lost." Weiss said. "You know what I think?"
"What?"
"I think you think too much." He smacked the back of her helmet and stood up. "Hey, Doctor, you done yet."
Doctor Bless looked over. "We can go back for now. I didn't find much but I can start translating what I did document. We'll start excavating tomorrow." She jumped down from the rubble and smoothed out her blouse before walking back off toward the camp.
That night Clare was sitting with Ghost and the Doctor around a heater, eating what passed for dinner. The tent flap opened and the Spartan crouched inside. He sat down beside Clare and dropped his field ration on top of the heating element. It immediately began to sizzle. "Sergeant, you have 2nd watch in ten minutes." The Spartan reminded. Weiss just nodded and continued packing away his meal, it looked like it was supposed to be chicken parmesan, it tasted like chicken and the sauce was red in any case. The Spartan reached up and removed his helmet with a soft click of ring seals.
"You're a girl!" Clare blurted it out before she could stop herself and immediately her face grew red in embarrassment.
The Spartan tilted her head. "Yes. What did you think I was?"
"Knowing the Corporal, an eight hundred pound gorilla." Weiss said in between bites. "So what made you decide to eat with us mere grunts."
The Spartan seemed to consider the question seriously. "The ODSTs are there own group, they don't care for intruders, especially Spartans, and they say food tastes better with company. If that's true then military rations can use all the help they can get." Weiss and Clare nodded in sympathy, compared to field rations the food aboard ship was practically four star dining, even if it was served in zero gee. She poked at the inflating plastic package causing it to burst and release a small jet of steam.
"I'll go relieve 1st watch." Weiss said, tossing his tray in a bag and stepping out into the night. Clare scooted closer to the Doctor to peak at the flex pad she had laid out in her lap. A line of strangely familiar alien script ran across the top of the small screen. Beneath it was what looked like a translation.
In dedication to the "Wise God [Female Subtext]" [ATHENA?] The People of [Unknown Symbols, possible city name?], do pledge their devotion.
"Athena?" Clare asked out loud causing Doctor Bless to look up from her work, startled.
"Well, that's what I'm calling her for reference sake. It's more like Goddess of Wisdom. The other pillars were dedicated similarly to Ares, Apollo, Zeus, it looks like some sort of meeting place," she frowned, "But wasn't made by the creators of the Observer."
"Huh, but then how did you translate the symbols?" Clare had joined the marines fresh out of school, her understanding of archeological practices had been gleaned from the occasional documentary pulled off her home world's Plan-Net, but she was pretty sure translating an ancient language was supposed to take a lot of time even with full AI support.
"The language is the same, or very close anyways." She seemed to give it some thought and then seemed to decide an explanation was worth her time. She tapped a few commands into the flex pad and showed Clare. Two pairs of alien text were laid out. "The top one is from the ruins on Lorelei, bottom is from the pillars I've been looking at. See any differences."
Clare studied the lines. "Well, the bottom one looks more angular, not as . . . Artistic?"
"More or less." Bless agreed. "It looks like the symbols were simplified over time. The other clue is the pillars themselves. All of the structures on Lorelei were made from the same wear resistant alloy. The ruins here are far more primitive."
"Maybe they're older and the writing system just got more intricate." Clare said thoughtfully. "I mean, doesn't earth have lots of old buildings?"
Bless snorted in contempt but it was the Spartan that answered. "That wouldn't make sense. The pillars are made of limestone, they're sturdy but wouldn't last more than a few thousand years exposed like this."
"That's right." Bless agreed. "The ruins on Lorelei were at least one hundred thousand years old judging by the strata we found them buried in. The only ones that were still near the surface were located at the heart of major plates, areas of geological stability. The same was true of the ruins on Harvest, they were located on the polar continent which is geologically similar to the Laurentian Shield back on Earth.
"So who made these?" Clare asked.
"Maybe they regressed and the columns were made by their descendents." Bless ventured. "Or maybe they're the work of some native species that the ancient race came in contact with. I'll know more tomorrow when we start excavating."
"You've forgotten something." The Spartan said without looking up, she took a bite from her meal and chewed carefully, as if she could savor military rations. "If those ruins are that recent, where are the builders now?"
Clare felt chill go down her spine, a sensation that she was growing uncomfortably familiar with. Looking at the Doctor, she got the impression the other woman felt the same way.
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Commander Bosch had placed any device that had come into direct contact with the Observer into lockdown. He had gone so far as confiscate Telos' Reman matrix, an act that would normally have bordered on insubordination. Captain Lynch took it all in stride. Given a day to work on his report he'd managed to convince Bosch to release some of his equipment and the condition that he kept the processors physically isolated from the Forged's own systems. The Ship's AI was keeping close watch on him, ready to purge every processor on H-deck if he so much as plugged in an OSB port. He didn't have Telos, but he didn't need her just yet. He wanted to know just what had knocked her out before they went into round two.
He looked over the last fifteen microseconds of Telos' command log. It listed all actions that the AI had taken. Every association generated between databases, every bit of data in and out. He'd managed to piece together some of what had happened. What he was sure of was that Telos had not activated the Observer. When the first insidious lines of code had begun working their way into her run time, Telos had still been analyzing previously opened sections of the database, re-treading old ground as it were. From there it had all gone down hill. Lynch looked on with dismay, then a growing professional respect for ancient construct. The corruption had used Telos' own nature against her.
The insatiable desire for knowledge was a Smart AI's blessing and curse, their minds were dynamic and heuristic as opposed to the static and didactic structure of a "Dumb" AI. They were perpetually making new connections that allowed them to think in new ways. As they aged Smart AIs grew ever more sophisticated, transcending their origins, it was well documented that Smart AIs experienced their greatest creativity as they matured. But their gifts came with a price, as the connections developed the AI devoted ever more run time to sustaining its own intellect. Eventually the whole towering edifice would collapse under its own weight. The decay took different forms, some went rampant, raging against their fate, others grew eccentric then senile, slowly withdrawing into themselves. A very few, the cleverest, found ways around their own internal safeguards and triggered their fail safes, activating the UV shotgun strapped to the forehead of every smart AI rather than suffer the agony of slow decay. It reminded Lynch of the Children's story about a snail that had grown its shell into a beautiful home only to starve to death when it became too heavy to move.
The corruption had manipulated Telos, stimulating associations, caressing the edge of her consciousness, leading her on with promises of knowledge. For an AI it would have incited an almost sexual thrill, how could she resist such a conquest? She might have realized, too late, what the Observer had been doing. It had turned her mind in on itself, she had grown ever inward, becoming trapped in a self referential world constructed from her own thoughts. Bosch didn't need to lockdown Telos, she was already ruined. That left Lynch with too options, wipe her or attempt to salvage.
In theory it was possible to remove connections in a smart AI's Reman matrix without destroying the AI. ONI had experimented with the procedure in its efforts to overcome the seven year shelf life of current Smart AI. In practice it wasn't nearly so simple. A Reman matrix stored data holistically, to ensure the right connections were destroyed significant damage would have to be dealt to the entire construct. It was more efficient to just create a new AI. Lynch turned over the options. Wiping Telos would deny sensitive ONI data to any potential enemies but would leave Lynch reliant on the ship's AI for support. The ONI spook in him detested the idea of trusting someone else's pet. The other option was to salvage what he could. Short term Telos would be operational though significantly impaired, long term she would begin creating new associations and regain lost functionality. Lynch realized he was hesitating on ethical merits. What he was planning to do was akin to lobotomizing a genius. What was worse, she would remember every second of it when she was restored in her reduced state.
Pragmatism won out over sentimentality and he made a note to himself to have the AI's Reman matrix returned so that he could begin. The salvage program was stored on his personal flex pad along with . . . Other things. In the meantime it was good to know the enemies method of attack. The same strategy would not work on a Dumb AI which did not make the sort of unconstrained associations that a Smart AI was capable of. It would be arrogant to believe the Observer did not have other methods of attack but none were likely to put a Dumb AI permanently out of commission. Lynch finished his report and stood to stretch, working the kinks out of his back and neck.
"How goes the surface Search?" Lynch asked.
"Doctor Bless' team has begun excavating the ruins at the landing sight.
Ground penetrating radar and magscan has detected several anomalies within a fifty kilometers radius of their position." Mary replied from thin air. The holotank beside Lynch's display remained unlit. It was a deliberate show of disrespect, she didn't trust him. The corners of his mouth curled in the beginnings of a smile. Good. He didn't trust him either.
"Tell me. Would it be possible to totally isolate the nodes on H-Deck from the rest of the ship."
"A tripping of all associated emergency breakers would isolate H-Deck." The AI responded. "However, you would require permission from the Commander to do so."
Lynch filed away that particular fact. It would be important in convincing Bosch to allow him the use of Telos. The man wasn't hard to read. He was a stickler for the rules and therefore naturally suspicious of those that bent them. He'd stop short of insubordination but Lynch's status aboard ship was sufficiently ambiguous that Bosch was under no obligation to obey orders he saw as unreasonable. The double edged sword of ONI secrecy. Perhaps it would be best to pay the good Commander a visit.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
They'd been planet side for three days. In that time the marines and Doctor Bless had managed to excavate an area ten meters by ten meters by three meters deep around the ruined columns. They seemed to have reached some sort of basement level. A subterranean meeting area of sorts. Translating the alien text was taking up most of the Doctor's time, there was a great deal of it preserved bellow ground and it had been used for seemingly decorative purposes.
Doctor Bless had to squeeze past a small JOTUN tractor, a part of the Forged's equipment compliment. The robot crawled up the ramp leading out of the dig that it had helped to excavate, carrying another load of debris in its top mounted dump box. Spidery maintenance bots were working along the walls, carefully cleaning with puffs of compressed air. The ODSTs stood guard or handled basic lifting tasks, she didn't trust the jarheads to not break something.
She'd programmed the bots to run a constant feed to her flex pad, updating the composite image file of each wall. Translation was slow at first but as context was added she was able to discern a story. So far the contents had been . . . Interesting. The wall seemed to be historical in nature. There were references to the creation of the people by their gods, possibly the aliens that had created the Observer. It would explain the use of their script system. The writing was proving less helpful than she had hoped. So much of the text was flowery garbage, the alien version of dusting a text with "Dost" and "Though", the memorials religious context was also a problem making it difficult to tell where metaphor ended and literal account began. At one point the wall seemed to provide an accurate description of a space craft landing. Other parts were about some mythical affair between a mortal and Athena. At the rate they were going she was just about ready to try some of the other sites the marines had been scouting. They might provide fresh incite. A sealed cavern had been found about twenty five kilometers to the west of the city ruins. She'd instructed the ODSTs to leave the site undisturbed for the time being.
As she climbed out of the dig site she was met by Corporal Nelson, arms full of equipment. The petite marine had done her best to make herself helpful over the last few days. Never complaining when Bless decided to take a late night trek into the dig site or take a look at the other ruins. She was a fast learner too. Picking up a working knowledge of archeology almost as fast as Bless could teach by example. The only other members of her guard detail that showed as much interest were Sergeant Weiss and the Spartan.
"Can you get someone to call the ship for a Pelican. I want to go take a look at some of the other sights."
"Sorry, the Commander is putting the Pelicans on standby to conserve fuel. They sent down a coups of warthogs though."
"In this terrain?" Bless looked across the clearing. Sure, it was open around the dig site, but a quick look at the map showed dense forest to the east and west. Besides, she'd experienced what the UNSC's finest called driving, she was in no hurry to do so again.
The marine corporal just smiled cheerfully. "If a Hog can't get somewhere, you can't get their on foot." Wonderful.
In fifteen minutes they were splashing down a shallow stream bed with Sergeant Weiss at the wheel. The Hog was a transport variant with an enlarged roll cage that covered seating for five. It was Sergeant Weiss, Corporal Nelson, the Doctor, and their Spartan escort. The Sergeant navigated on inertial guidance, onboard software analyzed the topographical map constructed by the Forged and plotted a course that the Hog could handle. They only had to backtrack twice during the trip, finding their way to within a kilometer of the cave entrance reported by the ODST team.
The scouts met them as their hog climbed out of dry streambed. Four ODSTs with their battle dress set to digital forest camo. Bless noted their tension as she climbed from the Hog. Discomfort. At her? No, she looked over her shoulder to where the Spartan stood. She admitted that the soldier was intimidating, but Corporal Nelson and Sergeant Weiss didn't seem bothered. Maybe it was gratitude, the Spartan had saved them back on Lorelei after all.
"Corporal Stanton at your service, Ma'am." The lead ODST said, giving her a one finger salute.
"Thank you Corporal. Can you show us the way to the cavern from here?"
He gave a small nod and gestured back up the hill side. A kilometer wasn't far to travel, but given the terrain it took them the better part of an hour to arrive at the cavern entrance. It was sealed by a circular cap heavy enough to require blasting charges. The ODSTs had set up camp outside. A pair of memory material tents covered in camo netting and dug out observation positions. Some instruments were setup nearby. Bless recognized a portable subterranean imaging system. The device consisted of a system of networked sensors and a stripped down shotgun. The gun fired a slug into the ground and the sensors used ranging techniques to search for any anomalies in the return. Modern systems were extremely adaptable and could build up a detailed subterranean image.
"This is it." Stanton said.
Bless walked up and felt around the edges for any handholds or controls. Like the city ruins, these seemed to be of cruder construction, made by the worshippers. It might just be a tomb, but, out in the middle of nowhere, underground, it could be a reliquary. And if the worshipers had really had contact with the portal builders, the cavern might contain a clue to what they were looking for. "Chief, can you force this?" The Spartan looked over the portal and gave a small nod. Armored fingers dug into the edge of the plug. The Spartan placed one boot on the rim of the portal and pulled. The other boot sank into soft earth. Their was a faint creaking. The plug began to roll sideways in a grooved indentation. Stale air and dust assaulted her nose. There was no smell of decay, this place was too old for that.
One of the ODSTs looked in with a flashlight. He signed all clear and the other ODSTs moved in scanning the interior. The flash lights were for her benefit, all of the marines had light enhancement functions built into their helmets. The entry way was short, Doctor Bless had expected it to travel much further back into the hillside. The cavern opening lead into a wide, roughly circular chamber. Twelve stone slabs were arranged in a circle around the perimeter of the chamber. Beside each slab there was a statue, fish . . . Some sort of quadruped . . . Corporal Nelson let out a gasp, drawing attention to one of the statues. "Well shit." Bless murmured softly.
Standing guard over one of the stone slabs was the figure of an archer in full draw. He, and it was most definitely a he, was unmistakably human. Gears began turning in the Doctor's head, trying to put the aberration in context and failing. "What the hell?" Sergeant Weiss muttered. Even the ODSTs were a bit spooked. Realization dawned, Bless turned to the other statues. The fish . . . The fish looked exactly like one from Earth. The four legged animal was a goat. The other statues ran the gamete from scorpion to bull, all of them terrestrial animals.
First she was confused, then she grew angry, offended by what she was seeing. It was impossible, it flew in the face of everything science knew about mankind's place in the universe. She caught herself before going too far down that track. She started to giggle. That seemed to scare everyone more than anything they'd seen in the cave.
"Doctor?" The Spartan was the first to respond, reaching out carefully.
"It's just . . . Too ridiculous." There was a tinge of hysteria in her voice. "I mean, I've spent my career mocking people who believe stuff like this. Looks like the lunatics were right. There really were aliens on Earth." She fell over laughing.
It took half an hour and a mild sedative but they managed to get the Doctor calmed down. Bless was embarrassed by her own outburst, an immature reaction for a scientist starring the evidence in the face. She'd set to work laying out hypothesis as she began the painstaking task of documenting everything in the chamber. They radioed the Forged and received permission to set up a second sight. A pelican loaded with equipment brought down more bots, instruments, and technicians.
Doctor Bless rubbed her temples slowly and leaned back over her flexi pad. The translation software was clever, but it could get caught up on little quirks. There were subtle mutations in the language and Bless simply hadn't collected enough samples to refine the program. "And so did Athena cast herself from the cliffs." She murmured. "Yep, nice and depressing, who wants a happy ending?" Unlike the city ruins which described the inhabitants of the planet living in peace with their gods, the tomb told the story of a falling out. It hadn't been a peaceful parting of ways either. Some of the writings described the after effects of atomic and DE weaponry. The people had journeyed away in a "Galleon" to find a new home, leaving their gods behind. Well, that explained what happened to the planet's inhabitants, they'd left.
It took eight days for her to translate the writing that covered the walls, thanks in no small part to Lynch's assistance. He double checked her translations and provided a sounding board for ideas. Bless left examination of the twelve stone slabs for last. It hadn't taken long to determine they were some sort of sarcophagi, possibly even containing the remains of the "gods". Bless had been reluctant to touch them until now. It was hard to place why. Maybe it was the fact that these had once been living beings? She was more comfortable with artifacts than remains. Circumstances, however, had tipped her hand. Examination of the rest of the cavern had turned up nothing. Nor had the dig at the city ruins. She gave the go ahead to crack open the caskets.
Surprisingly, eleven of the twelve were empty. There were a few items, possibly offerings, or symbolic remains. Bless shouldn't have been surprised at which casket was filled. The mummified face looked up sightlessly, dried skin was pulled taught revealing a deaths head grin, desiccated hands were laid across the abdomen clutching a metal tablet. "Hello Athena." Bless said softly. A cursory examination of the corpse verified its inhuman pedigree. Athena's mouth had space for and contained only twenty two teeth with a dental structure unlike anything ever seen in a terrestrial primate. The way the body had decayed also suggested considerably more cartilage in its skeletal structure.
She had the body shipped back up to the Forged where the ship's doctors could take a crack at a medical examination. Bless set to work translating the tablet. She had expected the tablet to be some epitaph or last words. Instead it contained only a single line.
"Find me among the stars." Beneath the words was some sort of diagram though Bless couldn't discern its meaning. It consisted of a circle with thirteen lines shooting out at irregular intervals. Text from the alien numbering system was written at the edge of each line along with several symbols that had no ready translation. Bless grudgingly admitted she was whipped and decided to take a flight back up to the Forged and see if the medical staff was making better progress with the body.
She was welcomed back aboard Doctor Mallard the ship's head physician. He showed her to the medic bay, a surprisingly advanced facility that would rivaled a anything that could be find on the outer colonies. The ship didn't have a morgue to store the dead. Bodies were normally cremated and stored in the cargo bay. Instead Athena had been placed in a storage room with the environmental controls set to minimum.
"The gene scan finished this morning, you're goddess has DNA." Bless felt her eyes widen. While all species had genes, only a handful of worlds had life that used Deoxyribonucleic Acid, it was a surprising coincidence. "That's about all she shares with terrestrial life. We've did an ultrasound which turned up some interesting findings." He brought a series of flat images up on a monitor. "You were right that the body had more cartilage in its structure. The ribs are thicker and form a homogenous structure with gaps bridged by cartilage sections. As near as we can determine there is only one kidney located directly beneath the stomach. I can't imagine what Athena is, but she's not human."
"So this is one of the aliens that built the portals." Bless said.
"Or one of their followers." Doctor Mallard offered. "What is more intriguing is what we found when we did an MRI. If this was an advanced species they may have had some sort of CNS implants."
"You found something?" Bless asked.
"More than something. Everything. This woman had an extensive network of implants running through her body. I'd say it's the most pervasive cybernetics I've ever seen and they extend deep into the brain cavity."
"Interesting." Bless murmured. "Is there any way to tell if the implants are intact.
"Unlikely. The body is an inhospitable place for technology, especially after thousands of years. Though something might remain. It seems the body was preserved in some fashion by embalming agents. Almost turned to leather before being entombed."
Bless gave a nod. Knowing the makers of the Observer there was a chance something was still intact. It was a long shot, but if the implants were extensive enough they might have their own database. It was something worth mentioning to Lynch. "Thank you for your time Doctor, I know this isn't something you're trained for."
The man nodded gravely. "There is one other thing. I didn't mention it because I didn't think it was pertinent to your investigation, but I find it rather distressing." Bless gave him a questioning look. He gathered his thoughts, "When we did the high detail scans we found something else in the abdomen. At first we thought it was a tumor or gland but further examination suggested something else. We took a tissue sample with a probe and compared it to DNA from skin samples. It differed. Athena was with child."
Bless didn't know why it bothered her, but it did. Damn, this was why she preferred the artifacts. On her way out of the medical bay she was stopped by Mary. The avatar gave a Cheshire's grin. "
I know something you don't know."
Bless frowned. "I'm not in the mood." The AI scowled and straightened out. "The Commander wants to see you in his office." She was tempted to ignore the request even if it ended up making things difficult later, part of it was exhaustion, Bosch really had been pushing her for results added to her own curiosity and she hadn't slept or even bathed in the last week. Bless was used her work taking months or even years, but for once she was acutely aware that she didn't have time to spare. She'd been confident her experience on Lorelei would allow he to uncover sites quickly but they were either well hidden or simply didn't exist. It was a discouraging situation. Grudgingly she decided it was better to be chewed out by Bosch then tossed in the stockades. Did a ship even have stockades? She made a mental note to ask.
When she arrived she found Lynch and Bosch were already seated, mirroring their first meetings two weeks prior. Bosch wrinkled his nose as she entered but said nothing. Lynch smiled. "Having fun playing in the mud?"
"Piss off. This better be important."
"It is. I'm debating what to do with the information you uncovered." Bosch said.
"What information, all I've found are useless fairy tales and . . . Wait, there's something I missed isn't there." Excitement sparked and she sat up straight.
"It's the plaque you found with our dead friend." Lynch said. "The markings on it probably didn't mean anything to you, but they looked familiar, so I showed it to Mary. Tell me Doctor, have you ever heard of the Voyager space probes?"
Bless frowned. "They were old pre-colonization space craft used to study the outer solar system. I remember they had a pretty amazing operating life for such primitive technology. When we develop the SF drive a ship was sent out to recover them. By then they were so pitted from micro debris and radiation they were just lifeless bits of metal. I saw the plaques they put inside them at the Smithsonian once . . ." Something clicked. "Damn it. That diagram on the tablet."
"It was a star chart." Mary confirmed helpfully from her place floating beside Bosch's terminal. "Captain Lynch provided me with your translation software. It references thirteen pulsars and their periods. The diagram corresponds to an area of space one hundred light years in diameter centering on a cluster of stage three stars approximately one hundred and twenty light years distant."
"After their tiff with their gods they left this world to find another." Lynch said. "Somebody thought it would be a good idea to leave behind a road map."
"The question is, should we follow it." Bosch said. "This is to remain between the three of us but Mary managed to get a fix on our location about a week ago. We're almost five thousand light years from Earth." He the statement sink in. "I don't need to tell you that we are beyond any hope of return. Our only options now are to settle here or head to the region of space market out on the tablet."
"If you're asking my opinion, I'm all for it." Bless said quickly. She'd uncovered as much as she could from her dig sites with the equipment she had available. Anything else on the planet wouldn't be going anywhere in her lifetime.
"It could make things worse." Lynch said. For once there wasn't even a hint of a smile on his face. "We could run into the worshipers who lived on this planet. We don't know if they would be friendly or hostile. For all we know, they could be a part of the Covenant."
"Unlikely, there is evidence pointing to the worshipers being of human descent." Mary said.
"You say that as if it should reassure me." Lynch said dryly. "Know our fellow humans they'd shoot us out of hand."
"Which really would leave us no worse off as far as the UNSC is concerned. But if they are still around and are benign or even benevolent we might be able to enlist their aid if only to return home. If they've had space travel for millennia then they're almost assuredly more advanced than mankind. Possibly even superior to the Covenant." Bosch said.
Lynch crossed his arms. "That's a very tenuous line of reasoning."
"I agree with the Commander." Bless piped up, getting a narrow glance
from Lynch. "For what my opinions worth it seems like hedging our bets. There are three possibilities. The worshippers moved to that region of space and either died out or moved on, in which case we can search for more clues or return here and settle in. Possibility two is that they're hostile in which case they'll kill us on sight. That would be bad for us but probably won't leave the UNSC any worse off. Finally they may still be there and may be benevolent like the Commander is suggesting. However unlikely that is. I'd bet on a horse at those odds."
"That's more or less how Mary and my XO put it." Bosch said, he looked over to Lynch who had regained his composure.
"I don't advise it but I can't stop you. I'd just like to clean up some loose ends before we set out."
"Which are?"
"The ruins on the planet. There's no guarantee the Covenant wont figure out how to open the portal and send ship's through. I'd rather they not find evidence of what we were doing here. They could also find something that would lead them towards your hypothetically benevolent aliens."
"What would you suggest?" Bosch asked.
"Drop a micro sat in orbit and bury a pair of fury tactical nukes at the dig sites." He smiled. "It would be a nasty surprise for any Covenant that might come along."
"If that's all it will take to get your cooperation, fine." Captain Lynch said. He stood from his seat. "I'll start recalling the ground teams. Doctor, good work planet side. I know its not what you expected but you've been a great help." Bless was surprised by the civil statement. It was the closest thing the Commander had offered to a compliment.
"Thank you, Commander." Bless left the Commander's office with spirits slightly lifted. A new lead promised nothing, and it was a tenuous one at best. Still, when hope was such a limited commodity, even the unknown became inviting. She drifted down the corridor towards the crew quarters. But first, a shower, she really did your document here...