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Dr. Halsey's glasses automatically darkened.
Kurt's visor wasn't polarizing to compensate, so he manually stepped up the tint by 60 percent.
At first he mistook their location for an open plain of snow, somewhere on the northern polar region, but then he saw walls in the foggy distance. He estimated five kilometers.
He pushed the polarization to 80 percent.
The floor became visible, tiled with Forerunner symbols of silver, ruby, emerald, and amber. Each line and curve interlinked
in a precise Penrose geometry, although if there was a discern-able repeating pattern Kurt didn't see it.
The symbols seemed to sing in his mind, and he was frustrat-ingly close to understanding what they said… some larger galactic transcendent meaning.
Kurt shook his head to clear the delusion.
He fell back to his training. He scanned for motion. No enemies sighted. There were no visible defendable positions, either. He checked his rifle: ammo clip full. All SPI armor systems checked.
As his vision continued to adjust, a hill resolved in the center of this "room." There was a uniform slope to the floor that gently rose and then arced up hyperbolically a dozen meters. It reminded Kurt of an anthill. Around the apex of this hill sat a crown of fins raised to the sky; buttressed at their bases and pronged at their tips, they towered another ten meters above the structure.
"If this is the core of the planet," Kelly whispered, "there should be little, if any, gravity. It feels normal."
Dr. Halsey rechecked her laptop. "Translocation confirmed," she said. "We are at the center of Onyx. The gravity is artificial."
"Teams of two deploy, spread out, recon," Kurt said. "Doctor, Chief, Ash, we're going to that structure."
Green acknowledgment lights winked on.
"Sir," Holly said, "what about Team Katana? The pods?"
"Leave them on the platform. They'll block incoming Covenant translocations." It felt wrong to leave them here alone, so he ordered Holly "Guard them."
They moved off, and as Kurt marched over the floor, the symbols under his boots smoothed into a golden path. Static clawed along the inside of his SPI armor and the exterior was a riot of colors as the photo-reactive circuits attempted to blend into the local Harlequin terrain.
Mendez halted and held up a hand toward Dr. Halsey. "Watch your step, ma'am." He pointed to the floor.
A ridge rose a quarter meter, difficult to see because Forerunner icons glowed along its smooth side as well as the top.
Dr. Halsey knelt and tapped the frames of her glasses, glancing right and left. "A ring… circumscribing the entirety of the central structure." She then gazed at the hill. "In fact, the entire deformation is a series of similar concentric circles."
Kurt stepped onto the raised surface. He scrutinized the hill and counted the finlike towers: there were thirteen. He increased the magnification factor on his faceplate and noted the curved surface of the center formation was indeed a series of staircase rings.