Eos is a desert planet, with red soil and an orange sky. It is also boiling hot due to its mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere and close proximity to its red star.
The Tempest dropped them down at one of the failed outpost, Site 1. After investigating the site, securing data left behind and identifying the bodies for later burial, they moved on to their mission. Scott drove them in the land rover named the Nomad to the location of the alien structure, kicking up dust behind them. They passed by giant pillars of rock, weathered but standing tall and stark against the mirage shimmering on the horizon.
The wind blew softly, sending sand floating through the arms of a giant, blue coral-like plant. Green bugs skittered from shadow to shadow, then buried themselves on the sand.
"Good to see something is still living here, because nothing on Eos looks good," Scott remarked.
"It looked better before," Cora said from the back, reading on her omni-tool the studies they collected from the failed outpost. "Or at least, that's what the science team at the outpost found. According to them, Eos used to have oxygen. It also has water. It's not as plenty as Earth, but there were lakes and rivers big enough for life to thrive. They have samples of giant plants and animals. All dead and dried out, of course."
"Did they found out what caused its climate to change?"
"No. They just said that hundred of years ago, carbon dioxide suddenly increased in concentration. This resulted to surface temperatures rising and water evaporating until it became the planet we have now."
Yet another dead planet, Scott thought. And this is supposed to be our home? He looked over at the barrenness of the landscape and pondered on how they could live here. Since their arrival at Andromeda, there was no shortage of trouble. Half of their team dead, their leaders dead and the rest were on the way to joining them if he cannot make this rock habitable soon enough. That they were all counting on him was daunting on its own, but the fact that he never asked this in the first place was increasing his resentment.
The Nomad bounced, bringing him out of his thoughts. He need to focus on the present and so he banished those feelings for now and concentrated on the road ahead.
At the back, Cora finished reading the report on Eos and tapped at her omnitool to check for the location of the monolith. As she did, the Nomad hit another pothole and she winced. Then her scanner beeped and she called their attention. "I think it's at the left, near the cliffs."
The Nomad swerved, sending a cloud of sand into the air. It sped up until they arrived just at the base massive structure jutting out from the ground whereupon it stopped abruptly. There was a silenced sound of cursing before the doors opened.
Marcus got out first, wincing and rubbing his shoulder where the belt ate into it. "Awesome driving, Ryder," he said to Scott. "You managed to hit every rock here in Eos."
They swept the area. The structure was dark-colored as the ones they saw back at Habitat 7 but it seems to have no opening. There were three main parts. One looked roughly like an isosceles triangle, with fins at the hypotenuse, running up and into the sky and where its endpoint was overlooking the other structure. The other one was composed of three pillars situated in points of a perfect triangle and whose ends nearly meet at a space above the center, overlooking the central hub. There were also octagonal shapes, some standing up and spread out in a pattern they could not discern or embedded in the ground like a mosaic. The dark floor was raised above the sand, grooved with lines glowing green and angled at corners same as the walls except some portions have glowing glyphs inscribed on it.
At the center stood a console similar to the one Alec has used back at Habitat 7.
Nothing popped out from the dunes or pillars so they put their guns away. They scanned the structures, but their scanners were telling them nothing.
"It looks inactive," Marcus observed. Scott approached the console and stood before it.
He remembered that his father worked on one to activate the structure. Maybe it would do the same thing here. He held his hand just above the surface of the console, mimicking what his father did at Habitat 7. Its surface rippled and then octagon buttons rose up to meet his hand. He was about to ask SAM what to do next when a shadow appeared over his hand-
"Look out!" Cora yelled. He spun quickly, reaching for his gun but too late, a figure dropped on him from above. His back slammed hard against the floor and a sharp pain exploded on the back of his head as his helmet made contact with the hard floor. He winced, and when his vision cleared, he saw an asari girl sitting on top of his chest, her face close to his. Too close.
"How did you do that?" she chirped. 'I've spent months trying to activate that thing and-"
"Get off him," Cora barked, shoving her gun's muzzle in her face. The asari turned to her, putting her hand up and rose slowly off him. Cora gestured at her to back away and keep her distance so Marcus can lend a hand to let him up. Scott accepted the hand and winced when he was pulled to his feet. He looked at his attacker.
She seemed to be an asari on her maiden stage, wearing a worn, puffy jacket the color of the desert and a hood pulled back from her head. Tight, dark pants and scuffed boots completed the look. She was holding up her hands, which were covered by tattered gloves. Her baby blue face peeked from her hood, the pinkish across her cheeks stretching as she said petulantly, "I didn't mean any harm. I was just excited because no one has activated that console before," she said, speaking rapidly.
His head still hurt so he hunched and put his hand on his hips as he talked to her. "Sorry. Who are you and how did you get the drop on us?" he panted.
"Oh that, I'm K!" she said, extending a hand, which they just stared at pointedly. A second passed then she took it back and placed it behind her. "I'm part of the team from Site 2 Resilience. I've been here for weeks studying that console and avoiding the kett wandering in the site, generally," she said, gesturing vaguely and lamely at the distance. "As for your second question, I was up there," she pointed at one of the overhanging structure, "I thought you were the aliens and so I hid. When I heard you talk then when the console reacted to you-"she pointed at Scott, " I couldn't contain my excitement. I had to go down and ask you how you did it!"
She said she was a scientist, but she seemed more like an overexcited gerbil. "How do we know who you say you are?" Scott asked her, still winded.
"Oh, that! I have an ID. Here," She opened her omnitool and tapped on it. Their omnitool beeped to alert them that it has received her credentials.
"Kannathea D'yseris," Scott read. "Tech researcher."
"I go by K. Kannathea is too long, you know?"
Scott looked up to stare at her and agreed. By the way she fidgets as she stood there, it really was too long for her. "Ok…K. I'm Scott Ryder, human Pathfinder. This is Cora Harper and Marcus Zola," he said pointing at his companions with his thumb.
"Nice to meet you," she said and shook their hands rapidly, almost grabbing their hand. "So, can you get on with the console now?" she asked Scott.
"Hold on," Cora interrupted. "We've never met anyone who survived from the two outposts. Are you alright?"
"Yes, yes, yes," she said, annoyed, waving her hand rapidly at her. "I'm fine. Now can we get on with working on the rem-tech?"
Scott looked at Cora who looked surprised then hurt. He turned back to K. "Rem-tech?"
"Short for Remnant tech. It's what we call these for now," she said, waving at the structures.
"What can you tell us about it? Like how it works and what it's for?"
"Eh, there's nothing much I can tell you. For months, we haven't been able to crack this console. But it's reacting to you so," her face turned eager at him, "how did you do it?"
He exchanged a look with Cora and Marcus. "Well, it was not actually me who's doing it. It was SAM. SAM did most of the work back at Habitat 7."
"SAM? Habitat 7?"
"Hello, K," SAM greeted.
She snapped her head up and looked around for the source of the voice, then turned slowly to face them. "That's an AI isn't it?" she asked suddenly.
They looked at each other then at her. "How'd you figure that out?" Scott asked.
"I'm a tech researcher. I work with machines for most of my life. I am pretty sure I could tell an AI apart from a VI. A VI would never initiate an action independent of its controller."
"Correct. I am an AI," SAM said. "I was designed by the Andromeda Initiative to assist the Pathfinders in finding new homes for the colonists."
They were worried how'd she react. Artificial Intelligence was illegal back in the Milky Way and they feared she might be carrying the same attitude of those who banned it. But she only said, "That's fair. You'll need help trying to colonize this rock" and asked about Habitat 7.
They told her what happened at the planet. After they finished, K fell silent, thinking, then she looked at Scott with a somewhat manic expression. "If what you say is true, then something about SAM is making these structures react. We've run VIs on this console and we've never had success like yours."
This kept getting stranger and stranger. Scott assumed that it was SAM's advanced processing that was making the consoles work but now that she told them it wasn't...
Scott turned to the console and looked back uncertainly at her.
"Well? Go on," she urged, flipping her hand rapidly at it.
"So, like this?" he said, hovering his hand above the console. Suddenly, bots appeared from thin air. Some of them remind them of a black colored jellyfish, with a tail running below them as they levitated off the ground. They seem to have one optical sensor, which they used to scan at the ground. One looks like a mechanical crab, with pinchers at front and levitating while one type hopped on the ground on two legs with a big round head.
"Remnant bots. Kill them fast, they respawn," K said as she ducked behind cover and the bots started shooting lasers at them. The three scrambled to find cover and started shooting.
"Did you know they will appear?" Scott shouted at her. He looked around his cover and managed to nail one of the hoppers mid-hop. It went sprawling on the hard, dark floor.
"Sometimes! They always reappear at intervals," she shouted back. She swept her hand up and a hopper went floating in the air.
"Could you have told us that earlier?" he shouted, firing on one advancing on their flank.
"Sorry. It slipped my mind!"
The one with a laser eye was protected by a shield so Scott shot at it with an electric bolt. It fried up, twitching in the air as Scott pumped it full of bullets until it crashed. A shot zipped past him and he ducked back into cover. The hopper jumped over the blocks to chase him when suddenly, it was floating in the air. Then something flashed and it burst into pieces, Cora setting back down gently. The one near the pillars swiveled to shoot her when Marcus appeared behind it and buried both his omni-blades in its back, sawing it in half. Two more bullets in its face and it stopped twitching.
"I don't know how they work or how to turn them off," K panted. "But shooting at them always stops them."
Marcus chuckled. "Almost everything does when you shoot at it long enough," he said.
Scott smiled at his quip and resumed working on the console. "SAM?"
"One moment," it answered. "I cannot interact with it. It appears that you need to manually input a specific set of glyphs."
"Glyphs? Where would we find that?"
"There are glyphs at the walls all around you. Scan the walls and I will run its probabilities of being the right glyph against the console."
Scott went around and scanned all the glyphs they found. Then he went back to the console and tried again.
"I have identified the necessary glyphs and set it. To activate the console, a puzzle using the glyphs need to be solved. It is composed of a three by three grid, with each grid containing a three by three box. The glyphs are scattered on each box where each glyph do not repeat by either row, column or grid. This is the puzzle."
SAM showed it to Scott internally.
"You're kidding me," Scott said as soon as he saw it. "You mean to tell me that the key to a mysterious, advanced alien structure is Sudoku?"
"Oooooooh!" K said, nearly jumping as she clapped her hands. "Think about it Ryder! We may have moved to a new galaxy, but we aren't sure if the rules we have still apply here. The laws of physics still does of course, but what you did now confirms that our rules of logic are also being followed by inhabitants here! I'm so happy to be here even though I spent months of work without success. I don't even mind that you've made the first discovery."
"I'm feeling very honored about it, believe me," Scott said dryly. "So, these glyphs. They are...numbers, not letters?"
"Unknown," SAM replied. "However, the arrangement of the glyphs appears to complete either a password or a code phrase within the grid as a whole. From the little I understand of it, they appear to form an almost palindromic "Sator Square" sentence, but the finer meaning would require detailed explanation from the grid's designer."
"Well, they're not here now," Cora remarked.
"I have the solution to the puzzle. It is-"
"I got it SAM. I think I can handle a simple Sudoku puzzle," he said. Just because he has an AI in his head meant that he can now afford to be dumb.
Scott took a few minutes, even longer when he felt Marcus' gaze on his back, silently criticizing him for not using the easy way out and K's palpable excitement. Finally, he put the solution in and SAM confirmed it to be the right one before running it through. A sound from somewhere deep sounded then the tip of the larger pillar went bright. A ray of light emanated and pointed somewhere past the mountains.
They stared at it then Scott said, "Huh. Anyone taking my bet that that's where we're going next?"
"C'mon, let me come with you!" K said, tripping behind them as they walked towards the Nomad. Scott reached the driver's side and opened the door. "Sure. get in and we'll drop you off Site 1. We'll fetch you later after we're done dealing with the monoliths."
She held the door open as Scott was about to go inside. "No, I meant let me come with you following the monoliths."
Scott shook his head. "It's dangerous. You saw what happened when we activate the monoliths. Besides, we can't protect you all the time." They can't afford to have even one of them distracted by protecting a civilian while going through their mission.
She just laughed. "I've been through worst. You think those bots can kill me? Besides, you saw I'm not a slacker at fighting. I'm pretty sure I can hold my own if we come under fire."
Scott was silent, weighing her arguments so she begged, "Please. This is what I came for Andromeda for. To discover things. And now that I found something just beyond my wildest imaginations, you're not letting me."
"We aren't sight-seeing. We'll take you there as soon as it's safe, I promise."
"It'd be too late for that. What if there's something you need an expert for but you had to pass it quickly and so you can't go back there? Someone like me? Look, I know it's dangerous but I never pretended that discovery does not involve danger. I'm not that naive. And I can take care of myself."
Scott eyed her. He doesn't want her to go and endanger herself with them but he knew from the determined look in her eyes that she would follow them anyway. So he shrugged, smiled and said, "Get in then," which she did with a whoop of joy. She sat at the back and saw Cora beside her. "Hi," she said giddily at her.
"Hello," Cora replied, her smile strained. Then she looked ahead and her eyes connected with Scott's though the mirror. Scott caught it, and shrugged. And then they were off.
They followed the light until they arrived at another monolith. After activating it, the same thing happened and the monolith pointed a path to them. They followed it again and found another monolith. Unfortunately, there's the hostile alien base at the bottom, its bulbous body built on the middle of the path to the structure, blocking the only way to it. The entrance to their destination can only be reached though the central room which was protected by a force field so they had to wade through its defenses and stop the generators on the walk ways. As usual, the aliens refused to talk and preferred to fire at them. They reduced the generators to slag heaps and entered the main room. They were mopping up there when they heard rumbling and shouts somewhere around them. They took positions and watched alertly for the source of the commotion.
Glass broke and fell all around them, followed by an alien dog which landed wetly in front of them. They looked up to where it came from and saw a krogan on a deck above them. The krogan made a rumbling laugh, then jumped and landed just beside the alien, the floor shaking with his weight. They scrambled from cover and surrounded him. His golden reptilian eyes glared at them, examining them from head to foot then he growled, "Who are you?"
"Could ask the same," Scott said, his rifle pointed at the krogan. The krogan had brown but dull looking skin, almost grayish. His dusty, nicked yellow armor was decorated with bones, with a pair framing his face. He had white spikes protruding from his chin and he looked old. But his eyes were still sharp as he looked at them, weighing them. Then he noticed the logo on their armor, a stylized A and I.
"Initiative," he sniffed.
"Yes. Exile?" Scott asked him in return.
He snorted. "Sort of. Still haven't told who you are," he said with a jab of his finger.
"We're not obligated to tell you anything," Cora said, her shotgun pointed at him.
The krogan looked at her and gave a guttural laugh. "I like you," he said in a low rumbling voice, pointing at her. "You're brave for such a squishy species." It seems Cora amused him enough that he sobered. "I'm Drack from clan Nakmor."
"Nakmor?" Scott asked, surprised. "Are you related to Nakmor Kesh?"
"Ah. I see you've met my grand-daughter. Yes, we're family. Now, mind telling me your names?"
They lowered their guns. "I'm Scott Ryder. The human Pathfinder," Scott said and introduced his team. "This is Marcus Zola, Cora Harper and K."
He nodded. "Good. I'll remember your names when you die out here like everyone else did," he said. Then he turned his back to them, lumbering to the side of alien animal without worry at their guns still drawn at him.
"Oh, come on. We're not that weak," Marcus protested.
"Sure," the krogan said, without turning around to face him. He drew out a knife, ignoring the gasps and clutching of guns behind him and sawed away at the fang of the animal. ""The Nexus knows shit about these aliens. They think they're safe, but they're just waiting to die out there in space."
"You've been a lot of fights then?" Scott asked, an idea forming in his head, as he walked near the krogan.
"I've been quads deep on a couple o' planets for a while now. Taking out these bases. Fighting ground troops. I know what they can do."
"Look, we're pretty new around here," Scott said carefully. "We could use a veteran like you."
Drack stopped his work, and turned around to eye him. Then he laughed again. "I'm flattered, but do you have any idea how many humans I've watched die? You're meat. You spoil. Besides, the day I help the Nexus again is the day the clouds part and these aliens keel over."
"Alright then," Scott said, rising up. "We won't be bothering you," he signaled his team to be on their way.
The krogan was still looking merrily at them. "Tell you what, kid. I've been looking for a squad of mine who got lost some time ago. They're a bunch of youngsters from my clan. If you give me some news of them, then maybe I'll help you."
They activated the monolith which gave forth light that joined the others, intersecting and pointed a way beyond the hills. They followed it and climbed on top, where they saw it was pointing at a lake where a tiny island appeared in the middle.
They stood looking at it for a few moments, then K said, "Well, then, I think it's back to the Beep-Beep."
Scott looked puzzled at her. "The what now?"
"The Beep-Beep. You know, the one we arrived in," she said, pointing at the Nomad.
Scott started chuckling. "It's called the Nomad, not Beep-beep."
"But Beep-beep fit it better! It's short for Beep-beep! We're coming through, especially if it's you who's driving, Ryder."
Marcus started laughing. "I agree. Your driving is a menace. It's single-handedly wiping out the local fauna."
"Keep that up and I won't allow anyone else to drive the Beep-beep," Scott threatened.
"You're cruel, you know that?" Marcus mock whined.
Scott smirked at the reaction of the petrol-head. "Alright, stop fooling around. Let's go see where this light is leading us."