DT 2022: A Private Memorial

A survey team for the Solid Ground Commission in 2560 stumble upon a strange rock formation on Merken.
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2560. Merken was a glassed waste-rock, one among a hundred other scorched worlds in the local stellar neighborhood. The world’s sun rose and fell each day over smoky, ashen skies filled with amber clouds tinted by undying plasma fires. Every day played the same way for nine years and on.
Despite hopes to reclaim their sickened worlds after the Human-Covenant War, human prospectors froze at another lost cause as they stepped down the ramps of their landers onto some cooler, safer patch of molten ground. It took months to claim a deed from the Unified Earth Government to fund reclamation digs beneath the Project Rebirth bureaucratic umbrella. It’s another three days of waiting, hovering above the planet and scanning for safe landing spots away from active burn pits and fragile magma chambers.
It took a minimum of fifteen minutes to lower down into the gravity well and risk the heavy-metallic atmosphere. The pilot viewscreens always appear obscured by the smoke.
Those faint of heart don’t come here. There are better and more reasonable worlds to toil for and rebuild. Even hardy survivors who might return to their homeworlds to reclaim them with more gusto than others, Merken was too new and a place of bad memories. A place abandoned by the UNSC military in dire times and resources stolen to protect other worlds, but not Merken.
In this challenge and loneliness, surveyor captain Bran Toal felt a comradery with the forgotten world. He whispered to himself, and the planet, through his breathing mask as he completed the prospector cycle, “You and I, aye? Not so different.”
The captain stepped down into the glassy, fine-grit gravel which stuck at the surface of his freighter Lugh’s Suncrest. She would need a burn treatment before living, possibly adding three more hours to the roundabout Merken trip.
“She’ll need a burn wash now… you’re a toughie, Miss Merken. Don’t want us to leave so soon? Not to worry, we’ll be here for a bit. The Created want to remember and rebuild you, they say. The Cortana lady and the Solid Ground Commission just want us to take a closer look at something.”
Two pairs of boots stomped down the ramp behind Bran. “What are you telling the dirt, Mr. Toal?”
The captain’s mask slowly spun around to face his compatriots, clumsy-white environmental suits like his own with name plates on their sealed backpacks and beneath their fishbowl helmets. Reagan, and Dr. Seamus. From the Commission.
The feminine voice, Miss Reagan as the captain called her, asked once more, “What’s piquing your interest?
Bran waved her off, “Smoke and burnt soil. Just something agreeable between me and the planet. The way how Merken’s glass sticks to my ship. Seems she’s taken a like to me already.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Reagan chuckled softly over live audio and the shared radio link. “We best keep it quick here. We’ll be making seven more stops before sundown but we don’t want to stay too long in the lower atmosphere or your engines might clog up.”
“Very good, Miss Reagan!” Bran confirmed, he glanced down at his AR wrist map. “Our destination should be half a mile to the west. The ambient ground temperature near the alcove is not so bad but its softer than here so we’ll have to walk a bit and watch our step, in case of any active magma tubes.”
“Doctor, please point the way and warn us if there’s any risky terrain.”
“Of course,” Dr. Seamus responded curtly and began the difficult trek as Bran gave him a short breadth to take the lead.
There was very little of interest from Merken’s sky and horizon. More smoke, a hint of amber-in-gray cloud cover. Petrified trees and rebar from buildings turned to metal sludge and rock. For their safety, the surveyor crew kept their eyes to the ground, tracing each other’s footprints and footwork to avoid stepping on uneven ground or fragile cracks billowing with steam and active ash.
To keep the group at least somewhat entertained, Dr. Seamus offered some noteworthy observations about Merken. “Merken is your typical glassed world. She fell to the Covenant Navy in the last year of the war. But the glass beam heat has not fully cooled yet, so the residual heat still burns as if the planet has a mantle-within-a-mantle. The sunlight that hits the planet does not retreat slowly but in the dark regions, storms are more volatile and the ambient weather temperature cools quickly away from the surface so you get mild-winter like winds comparable to a normal, terraformed world. Unfortunately, with the heavy metal particulates – it is dangerous to take your helmets off.”
Bran huffed at the exposition. “So, is that a definitive ‘no’ or a risky ‘maybe’?”
The doctor responded without looking back, “That would be a risky maybe. But professionally, it’s a definite no.”
“I’ll take your doctor-prescription and just not take my helmet off then.”
“Not a bad idea,” Reagan agreed with only the polite emotion needed for a boring mountain trek.
“What about caves?” Bran inquired.
“Depends, but probably safer. Less wind to pick up particles but you are probably risking a few low-grade cancers, rust lung, or some other sickness since the mixed particles in the cave walls left by the glassing are both hazardous and radioactive.”
Reagan let out a hiss of disgust at the idea. Bran hummed. “Maybe Merken will give me a fair chance.”
“Hmm, maybe. Sounds like you’re a braver one, Captain.” Dr. Seamus agreed.
“I like feeling something under my fingers when I touch down on another world. Makes it feel more real.”
“I’ll see if I can find you an opportunity today then.”
“I appreciate it, Doctor.”
“Of course, of course. We’re all here to do a little good… We’re here in fact.”
Doctor Seamus raised his hand a little late in warning to stop. Bran stopped but Reagan failed to see the hand motion passed the captain’s large suit frame, crashing softly into his sealed backpack.
“Ow.”
“Careful there, miss.” The captain turned to check on the survey commissioner.
“Right. Right,” Reagan grunted. “Doctor, what can you say about the formation?”
“It’s a dormant magma tunnel,” Dr. Seamus noted while waving a scanning wand at the cave mouth. “Looks like it formed at the base of an old industrial building or megastructure. I’m detecting high concentrations of titanium and fused carbon bindings.”
“Interesting I suppose? Should we enter or what’s the interest in this site?” Bran asked with some uncertainty.
Reagan answered, pointing to deep pot marks in the sediments around the group. “There’re recent signs of visitation despite the malleable terrain. And the old Navy navigation buoys registered multiple transits to this location by undeclared craft since 2554. Our assignment from the Created is not to leave any stone unturned. We survey and record every notable feature on lost worlds for the good of future generations, and eventually for when we do reclaim these worlds.”
Bran nodded in understanding. “So, this is an active site of some kind. Maybe a pirate den or smuggler’s storehouse?”
Reagan nodded, glancing at her wrist tablet. “The last reported visit was eight months ago. This is an opportunity to check while no one is home.”
“Reminds me of one of my fairytale stories as a kid. A lonely knight and his horse wander into a dragon’s cave to get out of a storm. They get cooked alive.”
Bran shot Dr. Seamus a stink eye not that the doctor could see it behind the captain’s half-polarized visor.
“If you’re so concerned, that is why we brough weapons.” The captain shifted his MA5B rifle slung over his shoulder, he lowered it from the sling and brought it to an alert carry position. “Better?”
Dr. Seamus shrugged, “A little.”
The trio slipped into the cave mouth, into the darkness and out from the wind storm of metallic sand.
“These walls are sturdier than I expected from a recently dormant magma tube.” Reagan noted as she ran her hand along the cooled rock surfaces.
“Molten material can be unpredictable. Depending on the atmospheric conditions, the rock can cool faster or slower depending on factors like wind, temperature, and nearby elements like the affects of rain or supercooled methane ice.” Dr. Seamus noted.
“Doesn’t look much like a secret hideaway though.”
Reagan grunted in agreement at the captain’s comment.
As the trio slipped further into the cave-turning-into-cavern, Bran began to twist the wrist seal clamp on his free arm. Once free with a quiet ‘pop’, he peeled away the six-pound glove and experimented with the cold, foggy cave air around them. He waved his hand around slowly feeling how the air itself felt with a vague fabric-like tension.
“The particulates down here are still quite thick,” the captain noted.
“Indeed. How does it feel?” Dr. Seamus remarked as his auto light beams glared deeper into the darkness, scanning the walls.
“Smokey. Thick. Like water vapor but spongey a little bit. Like little bugs are flying everywhere and bouncing off my fingers.”
“Interesting, I went ahead and noted that down in my notes.”
“There’s also a stench. I barely smell it through the breach in my suit, but it smells like human urine and rotted cheese. Maybe the smell of some weak flowers too?”
“There’s a lot of hazardous chemicals in the walls from our own industrial materials but also from the chemical interactions caused by superheating and rapid cooling by the plasma bombardment. It probably isn’t safe to keep your arm exposed for very long in here.”
“Well that probably means nobody stays down here very long. I don’t see any signs of long-term visitation down here.” Bran continued. He reached his arm towards one of the cavern walls and felt a mostly solid, sturdy surface… but odd ridges in the surface too. The captain pointed his shoulder and gun lights at the wall.
“Uh… guys?”
The two commissioners turned to look at what stole Bran’s attention.
A name carved into the wall. No. Not one name. Multiple names.
Reagan read aloud upon seeing the first name, and the associated statement, in the spotlight. “Joshua-G024. Missing since October 28, 2558. Who is Joshua-G024?”
Bran and Dr. Seamus shrugged lightly as they glanced along the other names and phrases on the walls around them.
“Morgana-G018. Missing since March 8, 2558. There are many more… A few hundred I’d guess? Maybe more?” Dr. Seamus noted as he glanced through other names, some etched higher on the walls and others closer to the floor. “It’s some memorial maybe? Missing colonists?”
“Maybe for robots?” Reagan suggested.
“A bit too personal to be robots… The nomenclature reminds me of Spartans…” Bran muttered.
“I’ve never heard of a Spartan named Joshua-G024. I just know the famous ones… John-117 and stuff? There was only like a hundred of them, right?” Reagan asked in slight confusion.
“Wasn’t October 28 the day Cortana…shutdown the UNSC?” Bran mumbled back.
“It was. I know these names.” A new feminine, and commanding voice echoed from Reagan’s suit and over the shared communications network.
“Huh-who?” Bran began but was cut off by the voice.
“Reagan. Please cutoff the rest of the Merken itinerary for forty-eight hours. This cavern takes priority.”
“Ma-ma’am?” Reagan stammered back in response to the female voice. “Grytha? What is going on?”
A slight-transparent hologram of a young woman in a red dress flashed to life amongst the surveyors using their shared suits’ augmented reality. “My apologies. This is important for many reasons but it seems we have stumbled upon a Spartan memorial of sorts.”
“Spartan memorial?” Bran squeaked in excitement and slight confusion.
“Yes. Spartans…” Grytha’s hologram came to stand next to the captain. Bran stepped back, giving the artificial intelligence space out of respect, and additional fear. The hologram planted its hand against the name of Joshua-G024 as Bran had beforehand.
“How are you certain, if you mind me asking?” Dr. Seamus inquired uncomfortably as he directed his flashlights around the cavern some more but without looking to his AI director.
“I spent a lifetime in the minds of Spartans … I dream of being on missions with the Spartans… Watching them die over and over … again and again. I watched them all die.” Grytha seemed to whisper within audible range. Every action from AI were deliberate but most seem to have this wistfulness about their human creators and compatriots, attempting to involve the slow biologicals in their activities and behave in their imperfect mannerisms. A wistfulness to be biological, to have physical forms, or for acceptance as humans possibly? Who knows…?
“Who was Joshua then? Morgana?”
Spartan-IIIs. Gamma Company. Some died in the fighting against the Created. A pitiful fate. None of them deserve any of their fates.”
“Grytha… I don’t think we’re following.”
“That’s alright, Reagan… I don’t need you to understand, but this is a sort of homecoming for me. But it feels wrong. I just…need someone to be here, even for an AI like me, while I figure out what all this is, and what to do about it.”
Dr. Seamus instinctually reached for his radio button but stopped realizing the foolishness of such an action. “Well, should we contact the Created for assistance or something like that then?”
“No. Not yet please. I need time…”
Grytha’s hologram lowered her hand from Joshua’s name and started to glance around the walls. She pointed up at a set of hard-to-see prints that Bran adjusted his rifle light to point toward. The AI spoke up, “Alpha Company…”
The AI pointed towards another wall. “Beta Company…”
Reagan inquired, “Who were they?”
Grytha did not speak for a few moments, as if looking for the right words. Or just looking for the right timing and emotional reaction from her human audience. “Innocent children, who deserved better lives. And in my dreams … my friends.”
The AI paused again before speaking, her eyes looking up toward the cave ceiling and seeming beyond it.
“I was made to understand, and then help them. What a messed-up universe, and messed-up circumstances we find ourselves in…”
Grytha’s red-dress-clad hologram vanished from the space, once more abandoning her human charges but her voice still flowed over the communications channel.
“Reagan,” the AI ordered. “Get a dozen high-mix scanners in this cavern. I want every inch of these walls recorded and saved. I need to think on this place.”
“Miss Grytha, ma’am? If you mind me asking one more question before you go to think on this thing, we’ve stumbled on…” Bran mumbled off, not sure where to put his eyes or where to aim his voice in a respectful and dutiful manner considering he was talking to an equivalent of a modern-day god now, at least with how the Created seem to carry themselves.
“Go ahead, captain.”
“Why does this cavern exist? What is it doing here?”
“An excellent question. I do not know, but I can understand why… Directive 930. Spartans never die…”
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories