Legacy of Onyx

by Matt Forbeck

  “That’s a lot of our people getting their asses kicked!” Spartan Lucy-B091 shouted in response.

  Tom had to admit she was right. If they didn’t get down there fast, there wouldn’t be any civvies left to save. He hated leaping into an environment he didn’t understand though.

  “Not them! The big guy!”

  “The sculpture?” Lucy asked, confused.

  “If that’s what it is!”

  “According to the briefing—which you clearly didn’t read—”

  “How did you have the time?”

  The ramp opened up on the back of the Pelican, and Lucy started edging toward it. Tom followed right behind her.

  “That’s part of what the researchers call Project: GOLIATH,” Lucy said. “They’ve been cropping up all around the galaxy lately, and a couple have even come alive and started moving around on their own!”

  Tom popped on his helmet and squinted at the one below them. “This one looks pretty damn buried!”

  “For now! But that’s not our problem at the moment! These armigers crawled out of the ground earlier today and have been trying to shoo our researchers away. With their weapons.”

  Tom hefted his assault rifle. “We have a solution for that.”

  Lucy smiled at him and then fitted her helmet on and checked the action on her assault rifle too. “We are the solution for that.”

  She leaped out the back of the Pelican and let the jump jets embedded in the back of her Mjolnir armor slow her fall. Tom went right after her.

  They hit the ground running and started taking down armigers straightaway. They had fought such machines here before, more times than Tom cared to count. That went all the way back to the first time they’d been stationed inside Onyx with Spartan Kurt-051, training the Spartan-III Gamma Company.

  Back then, the machines had outnumbered the Spartans by exponential numbers. This time around, although there were six armigers for every Spartan, the odds didn’t bother Tom a bit. This they could handle.

  The Forerunner soldiers seemed to have come to some kind of tacit détente with the UNSC forces inside Onyx over the past few months, almost as if they’d simply agreed to ignore the people who’d taken up residence there. Something about getting too near the Project: GOLIATH site, though, had apparently set them off. Fortunately, it hadn’t triggered the appearance of a full-fledged army of them.

  “Watch your nine!” Lucy shouted.

  Tom spun to his left and gunned down a pair of armigers who’d been charging straight at him. She spun to her right and did the same.

  Although Tom didn’t talk about it much, he actually enjoyed this sort of dance. He and Lucy had performed this choreography so often over their years working together—since they’d been kids—that little felt more natural to him. The rhythm of their feet, the bullets, and even their reloads all seemed in perfect sync.

  Behind his helmet’s polarized face shield, he smiled.

  In a handful of moments, it was over. The armigers had all been blasted to pieces, and Tom and Lucy had sustained little more than a few scorch marks on their armor.

  Lucy scanned the horizon for more trouble on the way while Tom motioned for the grateful archaeologists to head for the Pelican, which had landed a short walk nearby. As they filed up the ramp and into the safety of the aircraft, Tom reported in.

  “Chief,” he said into his comm. “All clear. Looks like we got here in time. The diggers had no major casualties.”

  “Glad to hear it. Good work,” Director Franklin Mendez said on the other end of the comm. “And that’s Director Mendez these days.”

  “Right,” Lucy chimed in. “Doesn’t look like the armigers damaged it at all. If anything, it seems like they were trying to protect it.”

  “Any sign of life in that damn thing?” Mendez asked.

  “Negative, Chief,” said Tom.

  The old man breathed something between a weary groan and a sigh of relief. “For all our sakes, let’s hope it stays that way.”

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  * * *

  Not long after Yong dropped the name Onyx and provided a handful of new details, Molly’s Newparents received an important call over the comm from their director, probably connected to the relocation. Molly retreated to her room for the rest of the afternoon, trying to process what they had told her. Beyond the name, she didn’t have any details, but . . . if she was honest, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Molly was not exactly thrilled about moving, especially offworld, and she wasn’t planning on being shy about telling Asha and Yong. Most of her life had been about adjusting to a move. She was tired of it.

  But where they wanted to take her? That was what caused Molly the most concern. The idea of living at some UNSC research site inside an enormous Forerunner sphere the size of an entire solar system? That part was worth her revulsion alone.

  Even if Earth wasn’t the safest place in the galaxy, at least it wasn’t a hundred-millennia-old Forerunner installation, where you walked on the interior surface like the inside of some strange alien shell and thousands of scientists were trying to figure out what it actually did—in case it went completely bad and killed them all.

  At first Molly objected that there wouldn’t be any place for her there, but Asha and Yong assured her that wouldn’t be the case. In fact, there’d be more residents in their research site at Onyx than in all of Aranuka. ONI had been there for years and had already constructed a large-scale research colony that had all of the workings of a major metropolis—something Asha referred to as “state-of-the-art in civil engineering and urban infrastructure.” This new city would apparently house thousands of researchers and their immediate families, all in brand-new homes as fine as those in any urban colonial site.

  It had shops, restaurants, gyms, and all the other trappings of civilian life—even if the city was set on an artificial world holding a star at its center, something Molly had a hard time conceiving. From what Asha and Yong had told her, the city inside Onyx had only been around for five years and existed alongside remarkable Forerunner living facilities and structures—something that had never before been managed in human history.

  They even had a school with others Molly’s age, with larger classes than those she’d grown used to on Aranuka. This came as a shock, albeit a pleasant one . . . but that’s when her Newparents dropped a bombshell. This one was the most difficult to fathom, and it made Molly livid.

  Humanity wasn’t living there alone.

  Onyx had aliens too. Sangheili. Unggoy. Both ex-Covenant species.

  This wasn’t a complete surprise, but it didn’t feel right to Molly and probably never would. The logic was pretty straightforward: who better to help ONI research the Forerunners than former members of the Covenant? After all, the Covenant had evidently studied and worshipped the Forerunners as gods for generations. That had been the whole premise for their war against humanity, or so the story went. Ultimately, the Covenant had been entirely wrong about the Forerunners, which had led to a massive civil war in their ranks. According to the newsfeeds, they called it the Great Schism, a shocking split that helped the UNSC win the war against the Covenant.

  In any case, the facts were pretty straightforward: these species had spent more time researching and reverse engineering Forerunner artifacts than any human ever had. To ONI, working alongside them was a necessary evil.

  But the thought of living next door to such creatures—much less actually going to school with them—made Molly sick to her stomach. Their kind had been responsible for nearly thirty years of brutal warfare, some of which she had experienced firsthand.

  Some of which she still had nightmares about.

  This would be different, Asha and Yong had tried to assure her. There were supposedly “good” Sangheili who had worked under the leadership of the Arbiter, the alien warrior who’d formed an alliance with humanity to put an end to the Covenant after discovering the truth about the Forerunners. A numb
er of other alien species had evidently flocked to his banner, and—along with the legendary Spartan, the Master Chief—helped overthrow the Prophets, the group of aliens who had led the Covenant.

  This band of Sangheili eventually became known as the Swords of Sanghelios, the name of their homeworld. These Sangheili warriors now worked alongside humanity for the purposes of peace . . . or so the Newparents had explained.

  To Molly, though, all that background was irrelevant. The fact that she’d have to live alongside aliens was enough for her to outright refuse to go. She would most definitely put up a fight.

  And after what had happened on Paris IV, who could blame her?

  Molly and her Newparents ate dinner in silence that night, in part because she was still trying to absorb everything Asha and Yong had told her. Also, in part, because there was no way in hell she was going to live next door to the monsters who had murdered her family. Once the meal was over, though, they adjourned to the living room again.

  “Okay.” Molly readied her opening salvo. “You said it was safe. How do you figure that? Especially with ex-Covenant there?” She tried to hold back any frustration in her voice, although she was pretty sure she’d failed. “If it’s the most important Forerunner asset in the entire galaxy—and ONI’s classified it and is doing everything they can to understand it—then someone else is sure to want it, right?”

  Yong spoke first, with an even tone. It was the linguist in him. He would try to socially engineer the situation because he thought if he could find the right words, he could make any problem go away. “Molly. You don’t have to stay there any longer than you want. After you turn eighteen, you’re legally an adult and can make your own choices about where you live. Until then, we’re your legal guardians . . . so you have to come along with us.”

  “Legal guardians?” Molly shot back. “What about what’s right for me? What about what’s fair?”

  “Would it be fair for Yong and me to give up the greatest professional opportunity of our lives?” Asha said. “Would it be right to walk away from the chance to help do humanity some serious good? Potentially even save millions of lives?”

  “Can’t I have a normal life without constant changes for once?” Molly didn’t care if she was raising her voice. “What about something normal for me? It seems like every single time I get settled somewhere, something falls apart. I’m so tired of it. I just want things to stay the same! I want them to be normal!”

  “Look, Molly, we know our careers have taken a toll on you,” Yong said, still maintaining his composure. “Change isn’t easy, and you’ve seen more than your share of it, especially painful change. If this wasn’t important, it wouldn’t even be on the table. One of the main reasons this is the best possible opportunity for all of us is that, unlike our current positions here, which are very temporary, this would not be. This would be a permanent and lifelong investment for me and Asha—and for you it would be a life without having to worry about any more changes. This is what you need, Molly. And we obviously can’t leave you behind. We need to do this—and you need to come with us.”

  “What if I found a family to take me out here? I’m sixteen, I’m not a kid anymore. I could come visit you. Or you could come see me.”

  “Molly, it doesn’t work like that, okay? You can’t just zip in and out of Onyx like it’s a run-of-the-mill spaceport. This place is serious. The research facility is top secret and under the complete control of the UNSC. It’s the only way they could guarantee the researchers’ safety. People are not free to come and go as they please.”

  “So what you’re saying is that, if I go with you, I’m effectively just stuck there?” Molly shrank into the couch she was sitting on, falling more into despair about the whole idea with each passing moment. There seemed to be no way out. Once again, her life was being completely uprooted by circumstances beyond her control—and it seemed as if no one really cared about that. Worse, she’d be forced to live around creatures whose kind had less than ten years ago been bombarding the surface of Paris IV.

  “You make it sound like you’d be a prisoner,” Yong said. “But it wouldn’t be like that.”

  Molly folded her arms across her chest and suppressed a sob. “How so?”

  Yong shrugged. “Onyx is a wonderful place, Molly. There’s nothing like it in the galaxy. It’s filled with things no one on Earth has ever seen before: machines, creatures, technology, and many worlds’ worth of uncharted, unexplored territory. You would be one of only a handful of humans in all of history to have ever set foot on this world. That’s a big deal. Sure, you can’t just leave at the drop of a hat, but that seems like a small price to pay for an experience like this. It’s the single greatest discovery of our species. Period.”

  “You’re not getting it. I don’t want to be a linguist or an archaeologist,” Molly finally snapped. “I don’t want to be what you two are. I have other plans for my life.”

  “We know,” Asha said solemnly. “You’ve been quite clear about that for a long time now.”

  “Just leave me here then,” Molly said through gritted teeth. “Can’t you just release me into the foster-care system or something? I’m sixteen now. I could survive fine. Then I’d be in line to become a soldier when I turn eighteen. That’s what I want anyway.”

  “Molly, that’s enough. It’s out of the question, so I don’t want to hear that kind of talk,” Yong said with an edge she’d rarely heard in his voice. “We’re not going to abandon you. Ever. And I really wish you’d drop this fantasy about becoming a soldier.”

  “Why’s that?” Molly spread her hands wide. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument, and it wouldn’t be the last. “Didn’t soldiers save us all from the Covenant? In fact, the only reason we’re still here—and you can do the kind of work you do—is because soldiers fought those aliens off this planet. The only reason I’m alive is because a soldier came and found me.”

  Asha and Yong exchanged sad and frustrated glances for a long moment. Then Asha finally sighed and said, “Humanity needs all sorts of people to protect it. Not just soldiers. Our work on Onyx, for instance, could unlock secrets to help protect everybody. Maybe even put an end to war completely. Think for a minute about the kind of power required to build something like Onyx. This is an installation the size of a solar system. There are secrets there that could keep humanity safe for thousands of years.”

  “Or consider the alternative,” Yong said. “If people like us don’t try to figure these things out, imagine if some hostile group with a vendetta managed to unlock the secrets of a facility like Onyx first. Where would that put us then?”

  “The fact is that science is a vital part of humanity’s efforts to defend itself,” Asha continued, “even if we still have soldiers. That’s why the Onyx research project is being sponsored and overseen by the UNSC. The Office of Naval Intelligence knows this and they intend on using Onyx and its secrets to prevent anything like the Covenant War from ever happening again.”

  “That’s what I don’t get,” Molly said. “ONI and the UNSC exist to fight wars. If they find a weapon on Onyx, they’d use it if they needed to, and you know that. And so you’re just going to dig these things up for them?” It was a fair question given ONI’s reputation as a shadowy government organization with mercenary activities, but Molly knew she was crossing a line, effectively accusing her peaceable Newparents of working for the people most inclined to leverage any discoveries they made in hostile, war-oriented ways.

  “ONI may be pulling the strings on our projects,” Yong said, “but we don’t work for them directly, nor for the UNSC either. We’re going to Onyx on a peaceful mission, for purely academic purposes. It has to be this way, especially given the different kinds of people we’ll be working alongside.”

  “The UEG-contracted researchers actually occupy a different territory inside Onyx, entirely separate from the ONI facilities,” Asha said. “We’ll obviously be working with ONI, but not for them. Like we
mentioned earlier, we’ll be working alongside the Sangheili and other species, and the UNSC is obviously reluctant to give them any of kind of direct access to its own bases.”

  “That right there sounds like a perfect reason for me to not go then,” she said, trying desperately to make her Newparents see the light. “To you guys, this is just another job. To me, it’s a nightmare. Think about it for a second. This isn’t just another project. You’re asking me to live next door to the same monsters that killed my family!”

  Molly shocked even herself with how raw it felt to say that. Most days, she didn’t think about the destruction of Paris IV at all. She’d buried it deep in her heart, in a place that could only be reached by her. Asha and Yong’s proposition had reopened wounds she’d wanted to keep locked forever.

  To live with the same kinds of aliens who’d taken away her mother, father, and sister—that was too far. That should have been enough for them to say no to ONI, or to just let Molly do her own thing. They were being selfish after they had made the commitment of raising and taking care of her. Given all of the things that had happened to her, a move like this should have been completely out of bounds.

  After a moment with her head down, Molly looked up and could see that Asha and Yong wanted to come over and hug her, but they kept their seats.

  “These are not the same beings who did that horrible thing,” Yong said in an even, yet sympathetic, tone. “Do you think ONI would ever let anyone like that into Onyx? Trust me, Molly, the people we’re working with here are safe and like-minded, no matter their species. Every single one of the aliens who will be there comes highly recommended by the Arbiter and his Swords of Sanghelios first. ONI’s got dozens of security filters to weed out any and all threats. They’ve likely been scrutinizing even our family for months as well.”

  “He’s right, Molly,” Asha said. “No one gets in without ONI’s sanctioning. Onyx is effectively impenetrable from the outside. And even if you’re worried that some ex-Covenant terrorists might somehow find a way in, the UNSC has installed the toughest security protocol ever created. We’ve been told that they may even have an actual fireteam of Spartans there.”