Chapter 3: Excavations

Locatation: Seras system, UNSC-Controlled Space
Date: March 7, 2539 CE
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Sarah Montark's communicator buzzed. They'd strung broadcast nodes around these bare tunnels, as the normal, built in network nodes obviously hadn't been installed yet. They'd been digging for almost four days, none stop, on the orders of Major Cypress. The tunnels, once full of purpose, now sprawled parallel to the suface of the object. The damned AI had insisted that they weren't allowed to make contact with the surface of the object until they'd found an opening. The scanners had to stay closer to the surface than 31.4 metres, too, and the object wasn't a perfect plane. It had been sloping downwards at an angle of 60 degrees from the vertical, meaning that they'd had to follow up the mining equipment with tracks and ropes. The banks of mining lasers digging the network, their suction pumps, removing the superheated silicate plasma from the holes, were overheating; they'd had three break-downs in the last two hours, and numbers 04 and 10 were apparently reaching shut-off level. She'd been working on both this and the main project, and was just trying to rest.

She flicked on the switch behind her ear, activating her implanted communicator in her neural lace.

"Yes," she said, accompanied by a yawn.

"Sanjeev Bhati here. The slope's come to an end. Scanning down, we've found a… well, it looks like a floor below the slope. You know, it's like a pyramid, maybe, with an entrance at the base. No, that's not right. Basically, as far as we can see there's like a pyramid, on top of a cuboid, and then there's something underneath that. There's certainly a recess that could be a door in the down wall." The miner sounded excited, although his capacity to make sense seemed to be somewhat hurt.

"I'll look at the raw data, M. Bhati." She paused. "Have you told the military yet?"

"Yes, ma'am. I have."

Sarah winced. "Good, good."

"They've already moved the marines in," Sanjeev added.

"Don't let them get in yet; delay them. This could be a priceless archaeological ruin, and I don't want it to be shot up or blown up. Use the chance to give all the lasers a cool-off period; we've been working them too hard."

She flicked the communicator off. Finally, she had some progress. If this was an entrance to the object, then they could actually find what it was. At the very least, the change in the structure might persuade the ONI major to let them examine the surface of the artefact. Her communicator buzzed again.

"Yes?"

"Doctor Montark, please report to the Mining Control Centre." It was another one of the ONI representatives, a sub-ordinate one.
Sarah sighed. "Which control centre? There are three."

"Doctor Montark, the interim one, as opposed to the normal ones for the main installation. This is with regards to the classified object of interest."

"I'm one of the people who discovered this "object of interest"," she replied, with a hint of sarcasm. "I've already been briefed by Major Cypress about the classified nature of it. And," with added weariness, "the classified object is in a classified facility on a classified planet in a classified system. I'm fully aware of the need for secrecy."

The ONI operative had disconnected. Wearily, only giving herself enough time to grab a caffeine pill and down it, Doctor Montark headed further into the bowls of the planet.

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Twenty minutes later, Sarah entered the Control Centre to glares from multiple individuals. The ONI Major was there, a large vid-screen on the wall was split four-way between the captain of the cruiser in orbit and the commanders of the frigates, and three six-man marine squads were staring at her. Only, two of the squads weren't normal marines; their matt black armour, looking slightly bulkier, separated from the other squad, in normal urban camo.

The thought shared by all the civilian scientists when they saw the soldier in matt black was "Why are they here? What are special forces doing at a breeding facility?"

"Why, thank you for showing up, doctor." It was Major Cypress. "I was afraid that I would have to send the marines to find you."

"I was trying to get some sleep, Major, and my quarters aren't this deep down."

"Well, now that you're finally here… Gabriel!"

The holoprojectors, hidden in the corners of the room, activated. The AI used the opportunity to make the most of it, with the higher-resolution projectors enabling him to upgrade the cherubim into fully fledged elohim, singing out a brief note of praise.

Up in orbit, Captain Hunter put his head in his hands. The slight smirk on the angelic face told him everything he needed to know.

"Yes, Major. I shall proceed with the presentation." His voice was echoed by the lesser angels that floated around him; each voice interlinking in a way that made sure that none of the words were unclear. He waved his free hand vaguely in the air. A separate projection appeared; the accumulated input data of the mining lasers.

"As can be seen, the object, insofar as we know, is made out of a dense material; denser that lead. As we do not know the overall size of it, we cannot give you a precise figure, due to the fact that gravitation is functioning not as it should in the vicinity of the object."

"AG generators?" It was Commander Wu Xian of the Monstrous Regiment.

"Possibly Commander, possibly. However, there is another active factor. After the news that an anomaly had been detected in the planet's crust, I went over the data from Slipspace probes that I had been tasked with examining." The angel smiled at Captain Hunter and the other naval officers. "Don't worry, captain. I did it in my spare time. And I, ahem… borrowed the Slipspace data from the frigates. Commander Mbula; you have a backdoor open in the systems you use to communicate with landing craft. I'm not sure why; you're using the same software as the other frigates, so I sent a report off to the Fleet requesting an examination of frigate ping software."

The Major nodded at Gabriel. "Well done, Gabriel. Nevertheless…"

Gabriel waved his hand in the air again. An image of the moon, and its accompanying planet appeared, floating near his head. A second gesture overlaid a thin blue haze over it, one which was disturbed in parts and absent in others. Noticeable was a an area of red distortion linking the moon and the gas-giant, and a patch in the crust of the moon.

"What are we looking at here? I can see that the red patch is roughly where we are, but what does that mean?" Daniel Vega asked.

"This?" The AI, and its lesser angels, made a florid gesture. "This is the accumulated Slipspace overlay of the sum of the probes which have been sent out over the construction of this facility. The blue areas are bits which have been triangulated by three or more probes. The distortions are the effects of gravity."

"And the red?" asked Sarah.

"The red is only there to draw your attention, my child," said the AI, his eyes glittering as he watched the slight tensing of her jawline. "It was the data from the Monstrous Regiment which allowed me to even notice the link, Commander Xian. When I noted the higher-than-average attrition rate of your Slipspace probes, and cross-examined their repair logs and collection locations, I found an… interesting possibility."

The angelic figure closed its eyes.

"One which neither I, nor most of the UNSC Academy of Science, seriously considered possible."

Gabriel opened them.

"There may be a directed, focussed, artificially created Slip-Stream current, carrying data in the form of high energy photons inside Slipspace. It links this moon and the centre of Seras Alpha, extrapolating from available data. From the damage to the Slipspace probes, the data is going from here to the gas-giant."

The room erupted in an uproar, as the scientifically-minded individuals and the naval personal immediately began shouting at the AI, each other and, for those actually in the room, getting up and looking at the overlay and the attached data.

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The noise went on for several minutes. The vid-screen split, and the navigation officers from orbit joined the conversations. Gabriel had split the lesser angels off from himself, and was engaged in multiple conversations, streams of data and numbers flashing into existence as he explained how he came to the conclusion. The arguments were not a surprise; the idea that the currents of Slipspace could be shaped in that manner, to conceal any communications within so that they could only be intercepted or blocked by interposing a thick object in Slipspace between the receiver and sender, had been theorised at the Academy. What was a problem was that such an achievement was thought to be impossible; the application of the second law of thermodynamics to Slipspace in Shaw's Law meant that creating a sustained, precise current in Slipspace was an impossibility. Unachievable.

The sharp retort of a pistol echoed through the room. One of the lights went out, as a 12.7mm HE round blew a hole in the ceiling and a bunch of power cables snaking across it.

Major Cypress looked momentarily surprised, but quickly recovered.

"So, Gabriel," he said, in a pleasant voice, over the hushed whispering of the crowd, "you would say that there is no way that this is not the work of sentience. Of aliens." The last word is said with an almost palatable sneer.

"The odds are approximately one times ten to the power of thirty seven against, Major," the chorus of angels answered.

"So, that's a yes. Good." The Major turned to face the soldiers in the room, who, throughout, had been completely ignorant of the advanced mathematics going over their heads, with the exception of two of the members of one of the Orbital Strike Drop Trooper teams, one of whom had attempted to join the navy as a navigator before ending up in the special forces, and the second who read advanced physics in his spare time for fun, and scared the rest of his squad somewhat. Those two had been full involved in the arguments, and only slunk back to their seats after the gunshot.

"We know that the object is a xeno artefact. The ODSTs will be leading the exploration of it. They'll be going first; the scientists will be following later, not too close. We have no idea what this thing is, or what it does…"

"Actually, Major, I rate it as a high probability that the artefact is not, that is clearly, not, Covenant in origin. The aesthetics of the construction, and the materials, neither are Covenant. Moreover, I also had something else to announce. I was forced to explain my analysis, and so could not finish my conclusions." He glanced at the Major. "Try to get everyone to sit down, without damaging the ceiling or any more power cables."

The scientists, with a general clearing of throats, returned to their original positions.

"That's better. The second red highlight is this area itself. I believe that there is a partially permeable membrane, wrapped around the object, mostly in Slipspace. And," added Gabriel, raising a hand, "before any fool says "mostly" in that annoying questioning voice that you seem to love so much," accompanying it with a glare at the audience, "I'll explain."

Large amounts of the audience contrived to look only slightly embarrassed.

"The barrier matches up almost perfectly, subject to the imprecisions of the Slipspace probe data I have, and incomplete measurement of the area from which it is detected, to the surface area of the detected anomaly. The bubble is impermeable to gravity. Somehow, it doesn't propagate past the boarder of the zone. Judging from the fact that people have passed through it, though, it doesn't do anything to the electroweak force or the strong nuclear force."

The Chief Engineer, Daniel Vega, raised his voice.

"I can't pretend to understand this level of theoretical physics, but wouldn't that have extra effects above what we have detected? For example, the grav-scans from outside it detected that the average density existed there, rather than an area where no gravity was able to pass. Moreover, we were getting normal seismic readings, and your idea doesn't do anything to stop the disturbances hitting the object, which only appeared when inside your zone."

Gabriel smiled broadly. "That is correct. I can't explain that. This hypothesis only explains the Slipspace readings I have combined. I felt that the fact that I was able to detect the disturbance using the Slipspace readings, when I combined that, meant that I had some support for my hypothesis."

"So, this is a purely interim hypothesis?" another of the scientists asked. Sarah frowned. She couldn't remember seeing her before. Nor, now she realised, quite a few of the people in the room, even if they were wearing the uniforms of scientists attached to her facility.

"Correct."

"I think we need some more data. Time to go in, then?" asked the same scientist, rhetorically.

"I've already decided we're going in," interjected Major Cypress. "Perhaps you were too busy squabbling, Liabelle," he added, coldly.

Liabelle Plaga's arm twitched, in an almost unnoticeable way, and she nodded. "Yes, Major."

Five hours later, the Marine squads were standing next to the entry tunnel that had been prepared. The demolition charges had been planted so that the weakened, thin layer of rock that separated the network from a hollow gap would blow cleanly. The ODSTs were going in first. At the recommendation of Gabriel, the number of squads had been increased to twelve, as the anomaly, according to his model, was almost a cubic kilometre in size. All that the Marines had been order to do was to secure an entry way into the object, so that the bottleneck of the tunnels would be less important. If the anomaly was found to not be immdieately hostile, the UNSC would flood the place with troops, so that the scientists could move in. The signs of hypertechnology, beyond that of the UNSC or what data had been found of the Covenant, indicated this was something strange. Something new.

They had no idea what it would mean or how it would change things.

The charges blew and the Orbital Strike Drop Troopers moved in. What greeted their eyes was something which had not been seen for over 100,000 years.