Legacy of Onyx

by Matt Forbeck

  Director Barton was balding and pale, worn but determined. He wore a dark suit and tie but seemed uncomfortable in both. This was clearly not his favorite part of the job.

  The man chose his words carefully as he spoke to the assembled passengers on the Milwaukee, a large Poseidon-class carrier that had been repurposed for shuttling facility personnel, civilians, and goods back and forth between Onyx and the rest of the galaxy. Yong, Asha, and Molly were on board, along with a few hundred other people. Altogether, the passengers barely filled out half the transport’s main cabin, which had been fitted with comfortable, roomy stadium-style seating that let them all have an unobstructed view of the large display at the front of the cabin.

  When Molly had been rescued from Paris IV and transported to Earth, all she remembered was being strapped into a soldier’s jump seat in a much smaller craft, and it had taken what felt like forever to get there. Part of that had likely been because she hadn’t been allowed to go straight from Paris IV to Earth due to travel protocols. Taking the direct route would have left a trail in the ship’s nav system and made it far too easy for the Covenant to follow them back home and launch an attack directly against Earth, and no one wanted that. Not until a few years later did the aliens finally track down humanity’s homeworld.

  The Milwaukee had been fitted with the latest slipspace drive technology, something reverse engineered from some machines recovered on Onyx, Yong had explained to Molly earlier. This would cut down on the ship’s travel time substantially, which meant that the transport didn’t need large stasis bays for cryostorage or even private berths for the passengers. Instead, Milwaukee had been fitted with enough comfortable seats for the several-hours-long trip to their new home. This was a sharp departure from decades of extremely long space travel that had demanded harsher measures.

  Yong and Asha, sitting on either side of Molly, each reached out to give her hands a gentle squeeze. She was not sure how, but they knew immediately what she was thinking. Evidently, she didn’t mask her disappointment well.

  “I got confirmation from our contact back in Aranuka. There’s actually a full detachment of Spartans stationed on Onyx,” Asha said with a knowing smile. “You’ll probably see them around all the time. They gave all authorized employees an extensive briefing on what to expect when we got there. This one is for everyone else.”

  Molly sat back and took a deep breath to mask her excitement. She was going to see Spartans after all!

  She tried to focus her attention on what Director Barton said as a number of holographic spheres representing a solar system rose in front of his own projection. Even though he was speaking to many high-level academics, Molly could tell that Barton was keeping his explanation fairly simple so that the rest of the people aboard the ship would be able to understand it.

  “You’ve reached the Zeta Doradus system, which puts you about thirty-eight light-years from Earth. The fourth planet here was known as Onyx for decades, and the UNSC eventually used it as a large-scale research site and a training ground for Spartans.”

  Training? Molly wondered.

  Obviously she knew the Spartans didn’t just spring into existence, and she had read much of the published information about their augmentations and armor, but she hadn’t given a lot of thought to how they had been educated or field-tested. It made sense that they would be trained for years in a classified location, forged into an unstoppable breed of soldiers before being deployed into the wild. A lot about their origins was kept shrouded in mystery, likely part of ONI’s design, both to keep their cards close to their chest and to create an aura of formidability around the legendary heroes.

  “As we investigated further, it turned out that Onyx wasn’t a normal planet at all,” Barton continued. “Many years ago, when it was first discovered, Onyx was simply a remote but habitable world and was even considered a good candidate for human colonization. When a number of Forerunner structures were discovered on the surface, however, it was quarantined, and it underwent extensive research—that has only recently been declassified for you and your research teams.”

  Molly knew this wasn’t the full story. Even though everyone aboard the ship had been aggressively vetted with a dozen background checks and granted top-secret clearance to this realm of UNSC jurisdiction, she was completely confident that ONI still tailored everything it revealed to anyone, even its own employees.

  In fact, she would have been disappointed to learn otherwise.

  “Toward the end of the war,” Barton continued, “the planet ended up tearing itself apart for reasons we have yet to fully understand. As it disintegrated, however, Onyx revealed that its physical mass had been composed almost entirely of Sentinels—the automated Forerunner drones that many of you have already interfaced with in your research.”

  In front of Barton’s own projection hovered a holographic representation of a strange alien-looking machine with robotic sensors and grapplers, including a glowing series of lights on its central mass. Three large, booming arms were connected to a larger chassis, with what appeared to be a firing mechanism fixed to its undercarriage. Molly wondered if that was intended to be its weapon.

  “All that remained of Onyx after this cataclysmic event was a twenty-three–centimeter object that had housed a secret slipspace enclosure for over a hundred thousand years. This enclosure was like an invisible pocket in realspace, where things could exist completely outside reality . . . literally. Within the enclosure was a massive Dyson sphere with a diameter roughly the size of Earth’s orbit around Sol. All of this had been spatially compressed in slipspace and then buried at the center of the world of Onyx since the time of the Forerunners.

  “The sphere is called a shield world, as some of you already know. It was built by the Forerunners as a refuge: an immense shell-like construct, the interior surface of which resembles the surface of natural worlds—but this one spans two full astronomical units from one side to the other. It has some fascinating elements within it—at least, now that the sphere has transitioned into realspace.”

  A scruffy-haired boy a few rows ahead gasped at this information, but his father shushed him before he could start asking questions about it. Molly had felt the same exact impulse, but she’d been able to control it. Whatever Onyx was, her Newparents’ description had not accurately painted the picture. She found it strange and slightly frustrating to begin feeling a genuine curiosity about something she had so vehemently protested, but there she was, looking forward to seeing this new place.

  “We actually had UNSC personnel inside the sphere when it transitioned to realspace. And while they were inside, due to a time-dilation effect of the slipspace container, what had only been days and weeks for them passed as full months for those of us on the outside. That all changed when the sphere left the slipspace enclosure and physically entered realspace with the rest of the galaxy. Actually, a number of other amazing things happened all at once.”

  The previous hologram vanished, and a new one took its place. This one showed the Sentinels that had formed Onyx dissolving away from the planet like a cloud of dust, and then it zoomed down to an impossibly small sphere that coursed with energy. It hung there in empty space for a moment, and then began to grow so fast it almost seemed as if it were exploding.

  “First, of course,” Barton explained, “the sphere expanded out into realspace, fully enveloping the star system it was in, Zeta Doradus. Obviously, it actually didn’t change its size at all, just its spatial location. To give you a rough idea of what we’re dealing with in terms of size, its interior surface area is the equivalent of half a billion Earths. Not all of it has been terraformed—in fact, evidence indicates its construction was never fully completed by its original architects—but a substantial percentage of the interior surface appears to be habitable.”

  The image changed then to show the sphere swallowing the rest of the system’s planets as it spread out rapidly to take up most of the star system. Molly realized that this wasn’t
how it had actually happened, but just a computer simulation. What really took place would have been too far beyond human comprehension for it to be clearly conveyed through images.

  “Second, during its expansion process, the sphere gathered Zeta Doradus’s three inner planets through a complex kind of gravitic system. It wove them into the vast space inside itself, and they now orbit around the Dyson sphere’s own internal sun. Yes, you heard that right. It has its own sun, although we’re not quite sure if it’s artificial or was somehow pulled from another system. The data we have is inconclusive. Either possibility is plausible for the Forerunners, as some of you know, despite our inability to understand all of the mechanics at play.”

  The sphere that represented Onyx now hung there in space, and a smaller star hovered next to it. Molly gasped at this. It was incredible to see an artificial structure utterly dwarf a star that had fed an entire system of planets with heat and light.

  “Third, the sphere’s expansion path, precisely anchored to Onyx’s original orbit, put it right alongside the system’s real star, Zeta Doradus, in a stable and consistent orbit. Though significantly smaller than the sphere, the sun sits just outside the exterior of the shield world. We’re not exactly sure why or how this happened either, but one of the results is that Onyx is able to gather energy from the sun from a fixed siphon located on its outer surface. It’s a pretty remarkable feat of engineering, even after years of seeing it in action.”

  A thin, red-haired woman raised her hand to interrupt but spoke before Director Barton could even acknowledge her. “Doesn’t it seem miraculous that putting these two massive objects into such an orbit didn’t somehow tear one or both of them apart?”

  “When it comes to the Forerunners,” Barton said, “miracles are a normal, everyday thing. Spend enough time on Onyx, though, and you’ll quickly come to the conclusion that there’s really no such thing as a miracle. Just science so advanced we can’t currently comprehend it. But that’s obviously where you fine people come in.”

  Molly glanced around the cabin. Her family was seated toward the rear, so she could only see the backs of people’s heads. Of the couple hundred people assembled, most were adults. But there were plenty of children too, ranging from infants all the way up to teenagers her own age.

  She’d been watching some of them throughout the trip. Picking a researcher out of a crowd wasn’t all that difficult, although this group was heavy on that vocation. Still, they stood out from the ship’s crew and from the military personnel for all the reasons one would expect, generally because they weren’t quite as fit, having spent most of their time on academic studies. They often seemed to be ruminating about something rather than paying attention to anything directly in front of them. They were obviously preoccupied with what lay ahead of them metaphorically instead: whatever they had been called to Onyx to do. And they always wore this look of wistful, dreamy anticipation, something Molly frequently saw with Asha and Yong, especially recently.

  The researchers’ companions, however—the normal people, as Molly thought of them—weren’t quite as serene about all of this. To them, and to Molly in many respects, this voyage to Onyx was clearly less of a grand adventure and more like an ominous mystery. For most people, the Forerunners were a concept they had only recently become aware of, and they hadn’t given much contemplation to advanced alien races doing good things, especially in the wake of the Covenant War. The idea that a species had existed a hundred thousand years ago and had created machines the size of worlds was understandably frightening on a lot of levels. Despite this, all of these people had been at least dedicated enough to their loved ones to accompany them on this voyage.

  But just like Molly, what choice had they?

  Many of them had probably been through knockdown, drag-out arguments like the ones she’d had with her Newparents. How could they not have? Molly thought. That was a lot of misery and second-guessing to bundle into a single transport, but they all seemed to be managing it for the moment.

  She began to wonder how well that would last once they had all settled into their new houses—homes situated next to the same aliens whose species had spent the better part of the last three decades trying to eradicate humanity from the galaxy. No one would have even thought of such a thing during the war, and for some people—apparently only those rational and logical such as Molly—the basic concept still seemed insanely dangerous. She was curious if anyone else in this room had ever seen a planet being glassed up close, as she had.

  “Are there any other questions?” the real-time projection of Director Barton asked.

  With that, at least a hundred hands shot up, including Molly’s.

  “I mean about the sphere itself,” Barton said. The majority of the hands went down. “And I further mean, anything that I can answer quickly that might be of interest to the entire group.” Most of the remaining hands slipped away this time.

  But not Molly’s. She was one of only a few who persisted, and she realized she might actually get to ask the ONI director a question. She might finally get the answers she wanted—the ones she deserved.

  And then Director Barton nodded toward her.

  Molly almost choked. She had so many queries clashing in her head that she could barely figure out where to begin. For a few seconds, she just sat there in silence, before Yong gently nudged her in the ribs with an elbow. She finally gave up trying to parse all of the different things she wanted to ask and just blurted the first one that came to mind.

  “Why is the sphere called Onyx?” She blushed as soon as the words left her lips. It seemed like such an inane question. “I-I mean . . . wasn’t that the name of the planet that was already here?”

  “An excellent point. What’s your name?”

  “Molly. Molly Patel.”

  “Well, Molly . . . when the Dyson sphere expanded into realspace, the planet Onyx had already been destroyed. Remember it disintegrated as the Sentinels sheared away from the planet’s original superstructure. Since the sphere occupies the space where the planet once was—and since it was at the heart of the planet to begin with—most people called the sphere Onyx by default, and since then the name has just stuck.

  “Officially, the Office of Naval Intelligence named the sphere ONI Research Facility Trevelyan, after a Spartan by the name of Kurt Trevelyan. He gave his life to single-handedly prevent Covenant forces from entering the sphere and taking control of it, at the same time saving the lives of all who were with him. In fact, that number actually includes a couple of the Spartans stationed inside Onyx right now. If you run into them, maybe they’ll be willing to share more.”

  Now that was a story Molly desperately wanted to hear—especially if she could get it from the Spartans who were involved.

  “The Forerunners called this place Shield 006. And, yes, that implies that there are at least five other shield worlds out there somewhere. Most of you know, however, that evidence points to there being literally hundreds of these installations of varying shapes and sizes. Onyx is the most significant—in both scale and scope—that we’ve found, and I’d personally wager that this is the single greatest discovery humanity has ever made.”

  An older woman with silvery hair and skin like old leather raised her hand. “What does it look like? Onyx. The sphere. From the outside, I mean.”

  “Another excellent question, although it’s hard to explain something like that in words. Instead, I think you’re at the point in your journey where I can just show you.”

  The director reached forward and pressed an unseen button outside the holographic projector’s range. The roof of the cabin depolarized, turning transparent. As one, everyone in the cabin craned back their necks to take in an unobstructed view of outer space stretching out before them.

  Or at least they tried. Molly only saw utter darkness.

  “I don’t see anything at all,” the old woman said.

  “That’s because you’re looking directly at the outside of Onyx. If you
turn to look behind you, you might be able to see a field of stars.”

  Every one of the passengers that could manage it twisted in his or her seat and looked through the aperture toward the stern of the ship. Molly saw just what the director had noted: a black sky blazing with unblinking dots of light. But when she turned back toward the space in front of them, everything was entirely dark once again.

  She followed the massive shape up and noticed a faint line that stretched across the rear edge of the cabin’s ceiling, at which point the stars seemed to disappear. The passengers around Molly started to murmur in amazement—including Asha and Yong—and they all began piecing it together at the same time.

  “That’s right,” Barton said, anticipating the collective reaction. “You’re close enough to the sphere now that it blocks out a large portion of your view. From this distance, the surface’s material actually has a deep brown hue. Think dark chocolate, but since we’re approaching Onyx from its dark side—opposite Zeta Doradus—it’s practically impossible to distinguish from absolute blackness surrounding it.

  “Even on the opposite side of the sphere, you can’t see much of it either at this distance. This place is so large and lacks significant detail, and its dark color tends to absorb the light from any angle. Generally, the only way to tell it’s there with the naked eye is the fact that you actually can’t see anything else where it is. No stars, no sun, nothing else, because it’s completely blocking them out. From a far enough distance, the sphere would, of course, seem like a point or perhaps a small globe with dimensional imaging. From here, though, it looks like an immeasurable wall that takes up most of your field of view.”

  Another hand went up. This one was attached to a boy about Molly’s age. He had dark hair cropped short and large, brown eyes, and he was sitting next to a couple who bore such a striking resemblance to him she assumed they were his parents.