The bridge was quiet, lit only by the steady glow of restored consoles. The hum of the fusion core resonated faintly through the deck, a reminder that the ship was alive again. Obsidian stood at the central station, the gem in his chest pulsing in rhythm with the Mother of Invention's systems.
They had rebuilt the vessel piece by piece: skeleton, breath, heartbeat, mind, and eyes. Now, for the first time, those eyes turned outward.
"Church. Begin long‑range scan. Let's see where we are."
[LONG‑RANGE SENSORS: ACTIVE. INITIATING STELLAR SURVEY.]
The console brightened, streams of telemetry cascading across the screen. The sensors reached outward, parsing radiation signatures, stellar emissions, and gravitational fields. Slowly, a map began to form: stars plotted against the void, their positions triangulated by parallax and spectral analysis.
Obsidian frowned as the chart was resolved. He recognized the patterns—not from navigation charts, but from the astronomical starmaps stored in the ship's archives. These were the distant constellations catalogued by telescopes centuries ago, long before slipspace drives had carried humanity outward. The Mother of Invention's database contained them as scientific curiosities: stars measured, catalogued, but unreachable.
[CROSS‑REFERENCE: DATABASE MATCH. REGION IDENTIFIED: OUTER ORION ARM. STATUS: UNCHARTED. NO COLONIAL RECORDS.]
Church's voice was clinical, but the implication was clear. According to the UEG's records, this was a region humanity had never touched. The stars were familiar only as points of light on a telescope's plate—distant, theoretical, far beyond the reach of any UNSC vessel.
And yet, the sensors told a different story.
[ANOMALY DETECTED. SIGNALS PRESENT.]
Obsidian leaned closer. The long‑range array was picking up faint emissions: structured bursts of radio, microwave, and laser traffic. Not natural noise. Not background radiation. These were transmissions—artificial, patterned, deliberate.
"That's impossible," he muttered. "This region was never colonized."
[CORRECTION: THIS REGION WAS NEVER COLONIZED BY THE UEG. CURRENT DATA INDICATES ACTIVE CIVILIZATION.]
The console brightened as the comms array came online, sweeping across the spectrum. At first there was only static, the hiss of the universe. Then the patterns sharpened: encrypted packets, routing headers, compressed bursts of information. A network of communication, faint but undeniable.
[COMMUNICATION GRID DETECTED. NODE IDENTIFIERS PRESENT. SOURCE: MULTIPLE STAR SYSTEMS.]
Obsidian's jaw tightened. The Mother of Invention's archives had no record of colonies here. No slipspace routes, no UNSC designations. And yet, the evidence was clear: this place was not empty. It was inhabited. Colonized.
He scrolled through the intercepted fragments. Most were indecipherable, encrypted beyond his reach. But some were clear: navigational beacons, system identifiers, timestamps. Enough to orient themselves.
[LOCAL NETWORK IDENTIFIER: OUTER COLONIAL GRID. NODE: SYSTEM DESIGNATE "EIDOLON."]
Obsidian exhaled slowly. They had a name now. A place. The nearest star system was called Eidolon, part of a wider grid. The ship was not lost in an uncharted void—it was within reach of civilization, though not the civilization it remembered.
But the deeper he probed, the stranger it became. The packets that weren't encrypted carried fragments of language—headers, error codes, system pings. The characters were unfamiliar, angular glyphs that shifted in ways no UNSC code ever had. Some resembled phonetic syllables, others mathematical operators, but the structure was alien to him.
"Church, can you translate?"
[PARTIAL. LINGUISTIC PATTERN UNKNOWN. PROBABILITY OF HUMAN ORIGIN: 62%.]
"Human?"
[STRUCTURE INDICATES HUMAN‑DEVISED ENCODING. HOWEVER, LEXICON DOES NOT MATCH ANY UEG DATABASE.]
Obsidian studied the glyphs as they scrolled across the screen. They were human, but not his human. A language that had evolved outside the UEG's reach, shaped by colonies the UNSC never knew existed.
"So they're like us," he murmured. "But not us."
[AFFIRMATIVE. THIS REGION APPEARS TO BE COLONIZED BY HUMAN POLITIES OUTSIDE UEG AUTHORITY.]
The realization settled over him like a weight. The Mother of Invention had woken in a galaxy where humanity had spread farther than the UEG ever dreamed, carving out civilizations in regions the UNSC had written off as unreachable.
He rested his hands on the console, the gem pulsing in rhythm with the ship. The Mother of Invention had woken into a galaxy it did not recognize. The stars were familiar, but the civilization among them was not.
Church's voice cut through the silence.
[LOCATION: CONFIRMED. REGION: BEYOND UEG EXPANSION. STATUS: COLONIZED. NEXT PRIORITY: DECISION.]
Obsidian stared at the map, the highlighted system pulsing faintly on the display. The UEG's telescopes had seen these stars from afar, but the Mother of Invention had never been meant to stand among them. And yet here it was, surrounded by signals of a thriving constellation of worlds.
He let out a slow breath. "So, Church… we're in someone else's backyard. And they don't even speak our language."
[CORRECT. RECOMMENDATION: CAUTION.]
Obsidian's lips curved into the faintest of smiles. "Caution's not really our specialty, is it?"
The ship was no longer blind. But what it saw was not home.
Obsidian let the map fade, the pulsing glyph of Eidolon lingering in his mind. The stars were no longer distant curiosities on a telescope's plate; they were inhabited, alive with signals, and utterly foreign to the Mother of Invention's memory.
He stood in silence for a moment, weighing the revelation. Unknown space, unknown language, unknown powers. The ship had eyes again, but eyes alone would not keep it safe.
"Church," he said at last, his voice low. "We know where we are. Now I need to know what we still have."
[ACKNOWLEDGED. INITIATING ARMAMENT AND ARMORY INVENTORY.]
The console shifted, the stellar map collapsing into columns of text and status reports. The ship's gaze turned inward once more, away from the stars and toward its own teeth and claws.
The weapons inventory scrolled across the console, line by line:
[PRIMARY ARMAMENT: 1 × HEAVY MAC — OPERATIONAL. POWER REQUIREMENT: HIGH.]
[ARCHER PODS: 24 OF 32 FUNCTIONAL. PAYLOAD: MIXED.]
[POINT‑DEFENSE GRID: 68% COVERAGE. MULTIPLE TURRETS OFFLINE.]
[STRATEGIC ORDNANCE: 2 × SHIVA‑CLASS NUCLEAR WARHEADS.]
Obsidian nodded slowly. Enough to fight, but not enough to waste.
Then the list shifted, pulling from the shipboard armory:
[INFANTRY ARMORY: STATUS — PARTIAL.]
[MA5 SERIES ASSAULT RIFLES: 112 UNITS.]
[BR55 BATTLE RIFLES: 64 UNITS.]
[M7 SMGS: 48 UNITS.]
[M6 SIDEARMS: 200 UNITS.]
[SHOTGUNS: 22 UNITS.]
[SRS99 SNIPER SYSTEMS: 14 UNITS.]
[M41 ROCKET LAUNCHERS: 10 UNITS.]
[M247H HEAVY MACHINE GUNS: 6 UNITS.]
[M9 FRAGMENTATION GRENADES: 1,200 UNITS.]
[M2 INCENDIARY GRENADES: 300 UNITS.]
Armor and equipment followed: Marine combat harnesses, ODST drop gear, demolition kits, breaching charges. Even a handful of Gauss cannons, meant for Warthog mounts, sat in storage.
"Enough to outfit a battalion," Obsidian murmured.
[CORRECTION: ENOUGH TO OUTFIT A BATTALION AT 72% CAPACITY. MULTIPLE CRATES DESTROYED IN DAMAGE.]
Obsidian's gaze lingered on the list. Rifles, rockets, grenades — the tools of war. The Mother of Invention had been built to carry soldiers into battle, and even half‑crippled, she still carried the means to arm them.
He exhaled slowly. "So we're not just a ship with teeth. We're a ship with claws."
[AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, WITHOUT PERSONNEL, THE ARMORY IS REDUNDANT.]
Obsidian's lips curved faintly. "Then I'll just have to be the battalion."
The console still glowed with the grid of intercepted transmissions, each node a pulse of alien‑yet‑human traffic. Obsidian studied the map in silence, the gem in his chest pulsing faintly. They had names now, coordinates, proof of civilization. But no paths. The Mother of Invention had no slipspace routes to reach them — only the void between.
Church broke the silence.
Obsidian's brow furrowed. "Drones?"
The console shifted, schematics unfolding in clean lines of light. Church was already drafting the design: compact hulls, slipspace drives scaled down from lifeboat systems, sensor arrays tuned for gravimetric anomalies. Each drone would leap into the dark, mapping the turbulence of slipspace, then return or transmit its findings.
Obsidian leaned closer, scanning the schematics. "And if they don't come back?"
The schematics unfolded across the console, lines of light sketching out hulls that did not yet exist. Church's voice was steady, clinical, but there was an undercurrent of momentum in the way the designs iterated, refining themselves with each pass.
The first draft was little more than a cylinder with a drive core, but it grew quickly into something more elegant: compact, angular hulls armored against micro‑debris, with sensor vanes extending like wings. Each carried a miniature slipspace drive, scaled down from lifeboat systems, and a gravimetric sensor suite tuned to detect the turbulence of slipspace currents.
But the true innovation was not in the hull. It was in the mind.
Obsidian tilted his head. "You're giving them pilots."
The schematics shifted again, this time displaying the VI cores: stripped‑down cognition engines, each imprinted with a fragment of Church's protocols. They would not think, not in the way he did, but they would act — reflexive, obedient, able to interpret sensor data and make micro‑decisions in the turbulence of slipspace.
Obsidian studied the diagram. "So you'll be everywhere at once."
The console displayed the deployment plan: each drone would leap to a different node in the matrix of intercepted transmissions, mapping the corridor as it went. If it survived, it would return with a chart. If it failed, its last telemetry would mark the hazards to avoid.
Obsidian smirked faintly. "Cold, but efficient."
The schematics hovered in pale light, half‑formed hulls and drive cores waiting to be defined. Obsidian leaned against the console, arms folded, while Church cycled through design permutations at machine speed.
Obsidian considered. "They're expendable, but if they burn up too fast, we learn nothing. Split the difference. Enough plating to shrug off debris, not enough to slow them down."
The schematics shifted, plating thickening slightly, vanes extending like wings.
Obsidian's silver eyes narrowed. "If they fail, we lose them. But if they can't reach the nodes, they're useless. Give them the micro‑drives. Risk is acceptable."
The schematics updated, drive housings shrinking, power conduits rerouted.
Obsidian tapped the console. "If they're our eyes, make them sharp. Enhanced arrays. I'll feed them power myself if I have to."
The schematics flared, sensor vanes extending, arrays glowing faintly.
Obsidian smirked faintly. "You want to scatter pieces of yourself into the dark."
Obsidian nodded once. "Then give them VI. Better they act on instinct than wait for orders that come too late."
The schematics solidified, the drones now fully realized: compact hulls, experimental drives, enhanced sensors, and VI minds tethered to Church.
The console dimmed, leaving only the skeletal outlines of the drones, waiting to be born. The Mother of Invention had eyes now, but soon she would have fingers — reaching into slipspace, probing the unknown, guided by fragments of Church himself.
The forges deep within the ship had not stirred in years. Now they glowed with heat, reshaping scavenged plating and stripped conduits into new forms. The hum of fabrication echoed faintly through the decks, a heartbeat within the hull.
On the bridge, Obsidian watched the progress bars crawl upward. One by one, the drones took shape in the schematics: compact hulls, armored just enough to endure, drives humming with experimental cores, sensor vanes extended like wings. At their center, each carried a VI shard — a fragment of Church's logic, tethered to him by invisible threads.
[FABRICATION COMPLETE. TWELVE DRONES ONLINE.]
The console shifted to a launch schematic. In the hangar, bays opened like gills, exposing the void. The drones hovered in their cradles, their hulls gleaming faintly in the light of the forge.
Obsidian stood with his hands clasped behind his back, silver eyes fixed on the display.
"Send them."
[INITIATING LAUNCH SEQUENCE.]
The first drone detached, drifting free of its cradle. Its drive flared, a brief pulse of blue light, and then it was gone — swallowed by the black.
[DRONE ONE: SLIPSPACE ENTRY SUCCESSFUL. TELEMETRY LINK ESTABLISHED.]
The second followed, then the third. Each vanished in a flare of light, each leaving behind a thread of data that tethered it to the ship. Church's voice tracked them with clinical precision.
[DRONE TWO: COURSE STABLE. SENSOR ARRAY FUNCTIONAL.]
[DRONE THREE: MINOR DRIVE FLUCTUATION. CORRECTED.]
Obsidian listened, silent, as the litany continued. One by one, the drones leapt into the dark, scattering like sparks from a forge.
By the sixth, the console began to fill with data: gravimetric readings, turbulence maps, radiation spikes. Slipspace unfolded in fragments, jagged and incomplete, but real.
[DRONE SIX: CORRIDOR MAPPING UNDERWAY. RETURN VECTOR CONFIRMED.]
The seventh vanished into silence.
[DRONE SEVEN: SIGNAL LOST.]
Obsidian's jaw tightened. "Gone?"
[AFFIRMATIVE. DRIVE FAILURE. NO RECOVERY.]
He exhaled slowly. "Then mark the path. We know where not to tread."
The launches continued. By the twelfth, the console was alive with data streams, each thread weaving into a growing web of routes. Some were jagged, unstable. Others shone with clarity, corridors of relative safety through the chaos of slipspace.
Church's voice was steady, but there was a faint undertone of momentum, as though he were stretching himself across the void.
[MULTIPLE ROUTES CONFIRMED. INITIAL CORRIDORS TO EIDOLON AND ADJACENT SYSTEMS ESTABLISHED.]
Obsidian rested his hands on the console, watching the map expand. The Mother of Invention had eyes now, and fingers — reaching into the dark, probing the unknown, guided by fragments of Church himself.
"Good," he said quietly. "Now we're not just watching. We're moving."
[CORRECTION: WE ARE PREPARING TO MOVE. DECISION REMAINS YOURS.]
Obsidian's silver eyes lingered on the pulsing glyph of Eidolon. The drones had opened the first doors. The question was whether to step through
The console glowed with a framework of new corridors, slipspace routes traced by the drones like veins of light across the dark. Some paths were jagged and unstable, others steady enough to trust, but together they formed the beginnings of a map — a way forward where none had existed before.
Obsidian studied the lines in silence, the gem in his chest pulsing faintly in rhythm with the ship. They had eyes to see, fingers to reach, and now the first threads of a road to follow. But the map alone was not enough.
The transmissions still scrolled across the console, glyphs and fragments of code tumbling in an unknown tongue. The voices of this hidden frontier were everywhere, threaded through the mesh, but they remained muffled, half‑understood.
Obsidian straightened.
"We can chart their stars," he said quietly, "but until we know their words, we're deaf."
The stellar map dimmed, collapsing into streams of symbols. Church turned his focus inward, shifting from the geometry of slipspace to the cadence of language. The next task was not to plot paths, but to break codes — to give meaning to the voices that filled the void.
The intercepted packets scrolled endlessly across the console, glyphs and fragments of code tumbling in a language that was human in structure but alien in form. Obsidian leaned over the display, silver eyes narrowing as the symbols repeated, shifted, and re‑emerged in new combinations.
[LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS: 67% COMPLETE. PATTERN RECOGNITION: ACTIVE.]
Church's voice was steady, but there was a tension in the cadence — the strain of a system stretching itself across too many threads. His VIs were still scattered through slipspace, mapping corridors, and now he was dividing his focus again, parsing language.
Obsidian tapped the console.
"You've got enough fragments. Stop brute‑forcing. Look at the redundancies. These glyphs repeat in every packet header. That's not syntax — that's routing."
[ACKNOWLEDGED. RECLASSIFYING SYMBOL SET: NETWORK IDENTIFIERS.]
The glyphs shifted, half the clutter falling away. What remained were shorter strings, repeated in bursts. Obsidian traced them with his finger.
"These are timestamps. Look — they increment in a fixed rhythm. That's your anchor."
[CONFIRMED. TEMPORAL MARKERS IDENTIFIED. ALIGNING REMAINING SYMBOLS.]
The console flickered. The glyphs began to resolve, their angular shapes giving way to phonetic approximations. Words emerged, halting at first, then flowing with greater clarity.
[TRANSLATION PROGRESS: 82%.]
Obsidian exhaled slowly.
"So what are they saying?"
The console brightened, and for the first time, the transmissions spoke in words he could understand:
["Eidolon Relay Node active. Packet transfer complete. Outer Grid synchronization stable."]
Obsidian's jaw tightened.
"Relay node. Synchronization. They're not just talking — they're networking."
[AFFIRMATIVE. THIS IS A DISTRIBUTED COMMUNICATION GRID. FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT TO UEG DATA NETWORKS. HOWEVER, TERMINOLOGY AND STRUCTURE ARE DISTINCT.]
More fragments resolved, scrolling across the screen:
["Traffic rerouted to Meridian Cluster."]
["Docking clearance granted, Port Authority Eidolon."]
["Outer Grid census update: population increase, 2.3%.]
Obsidian leaned back, the weight of it settling over him.
"So it's not just chatter. It's infrastructure. Civilian, military, administrative. A whole civilization, running on a language we've never seen."
[CORRECTION: A LANGUAGE WE HAVE NOW DECODED. TRANSLATION CAPACITY: 100%.]
The console shifted again, displaying a clean interface: intercepted transmissions now rendered in fluent Standard, their alien glyphs stripped away.
Obsidian stared at the words. Docking clearances. Population reports. Trade manifests. It was mundane, almost banal — and that was what made it staggering. This wasn't the chaos of pirates or the noise of scattered colonies. This was order. A network of worlds, speaking in a tongue the UEG had never known, running a civilization parallel to his own.
He rested his hands on the console, the gem in his chest pulsing faintly.
"So they're human. Or close enough. They built this out here, in the dark, while the UEG thought these stars were unreachable."
[AFFIRMATIVE. CONCLUSION: WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS ARM OF THE GALAXY. HUMANITY HAS SPREAD BEYOND UEG EXPANSION. INDEPENDENTLY.]
Obsidian's lips curved into a faint, humorless smile.
"And now we can listen to everything they say."
[AFFIRMATIVE. TRANSLATION CAPACITY: COMPLETE. CONTINUOUS MONITORING ENABLED.]
The console continued to scroll, a steady stream of translated transmissions. The Mother of Invention had eyes, fingers, and now ears — and for the first time, the voices of this hidden frontier spoke clearly.