[IC] The Cradle

[Cath]

“This is the brain scan.” Freyr replied levelly, gesturing with an open hand to the holographic cross section. “You can see here...activity on the cube’s top face, but that’s obfuscated by this dome-like field.” She used a finger to highlight what she was talking about, sketching the dome which sat next to their rig.

“I predict the rest of the cube’s faces won’t have this kind of field. Why bother, when this mountain acts as a natural firewall, with no permanent connection to the object? So, we need Rübezahl to trace a path through the mountain system and create a strong connection between us and the cube. From there, we can gently nudge the being and hopefully make contact in some way. We won’t be modifying it, just observing and talking.”

Freyr paused and thought for a moment. 595’s plan did actually have a lot of merit. Outremer’s high command had forbidden their top scientists from leaving the rig, where they could be extracted at a moment’s notice. The Sacred Band had also been explicitly ordered not to leave them alone. But as far as she knew, this mandate didn’t extend to 595 and Vreta.

It also got both of them out of her hair for the most crucial part of this mission. The part where Freyr planned to search for evidence that this entity was telling the truth about its origins and the threat Humanity faced.

The two of them might even find something useful on the top face of the cube. Freyr supposed they would be more discreet as well; there was always a small chance an abrasive anti-jammer like the one Marae was creating might set off unknown failsafes. They could keep it in reserve as a Plan B, perhaps…

“Ok, i don’t hate the idea. But what about the swarm outside? We haven’t analysed their biology yet, but creatures of that profile may be waiting for some of us to separate from the group before striking as a swarm.”

“Well, I actually had a plan for them.” 595 asserted. “Now hear me out...we use Vreta as bait! While they’re busy eating him to death, I could make a run for it.” The Agent grinned broadly, winking at Vreta. Freyr could hear a couple of suppressed chuckles from her team before they muted themselves, and a raucous belly laugh from the Norse.

“What about some kind of sensory overload? If they operate with sonar, we could prepare a package that disorients them. Or we could try bright lights to scare them off?” Dr Chanthara suggested - 595’s joke had been lost on him.

“Or, uncle Kjartan can just shoot them all!” Kjartan boomed from the swiveling ball turret on top of the rig. “With coordinated fields of fire, we could suppress or kill enough of them to clear a way through.” Thebes chipped in - it seems this had become a free for all.

[EliteCommander]

Vreta found himself unsurprised by 595, though he could have done without Rhia laughing inside his head. He let out a brief sigh, then gave the Agent a brief pat on the back as he approached alongside her. “Why does that not surprise me? You seem to make such a habit of being so rough with my body.” He commented, eliciting even more of a laugh from Rhia.

Fortunately, most of the team were more focused on the mission. Eti’Prar was still listening in, and took only a moment to consider the situation before speaking up. “My team will join them. If your Sacred Band perform to expectations, then they should be able to protect the rig without us for long enough to ensure an extraction, in the event of an attack.” She suggested. The Rothian team was not bound by Andersen’s orders, so they could do whatever they felt was necessary for the mission.

“If I may, I do suggest waiting a few minutes.” Marae interjected. “We do have the mobile transit stations, but I can’t be sure that the jamming field won’t interfere with them. Just give me a few more minutes to finish my program. Once that’s finished, I should be able to open up enough of a gap in the field around you to let you extract if you are attacked.”

Vreta looked down at 595, this time with a more serious expression. “I can agree to that. We’ll have Eti’s team for protection, and we’ll be able to extract from the sim quickly if we need to.”

[Cath]

“Hoo fuckin rah.” 595 purred through a wide smile. Her Cradle-light eye augmentations switched on, bathing Vreta in a sickly blue glow. “Lets deploy from the bow loading bay - I’ll head down there now.” She turned and clanked down the ladder they’d arrived up, holding both handrails with her gun magnetized to her chest.

Freyr looked up at the ceiling, mulling over her low-tech solution one more time before voicing it. “Marae, how confident are you we can open a hole without triggering any potential countermeasures? The thought has occurred to me that we could try physical cabling to capture the data and tandem the transit station with the rig. Might leave less of a footprint on the cube?”

[EliteCommander]

Marae tilted her head when she looked at Freyr. “A physical cable, that…I’ll be honest, that’s not the kind of solution I would usually think of.” She admitted. Given that Rothians had the technology to solve a great many of their society’s problems, low-tech solutions did often go under their radar. It took her a moment to consider the logistics of Freyr’s suggestion, but she did end up giving a hesitant nod. “I…think that will work. Potentially. It depends on if the jamming field is designed to be able to block a signal through a wire. And provided we actually have that kind of cable. It will need to be pretty long, and I certainly didn’t requisition it. If not, we can request it be sent in, though I do still suggest waiting on me to finish this program. Just a few more minutes. We’ll want to have it as a backup, in case something goes wrong with the cable.”

Meanwhile, Vreta followed after the Agent, only mildly groaning at her attitude. He squeezed his way through the rig’s passages down to the loading bay. He was already fully equipped, so he had no reason to delay. The Rothians were taking every precaution they could for this mission; even the scientists were equipped in some measure of combat armor. Vreta’s armor was of mostly the same quality as that of Eti’s team, just fitted to his smaller stature. His shield strength was not quite as good, since the power source and emitters were smaller, but it was not a great difference. He was armed with a standard issue Rothian rifle, a sidearm magnetized to the holster on his thigh, and a plasma sword holstered on his hip. He and the Agent still had to wait for their transit station to be prepared, so they simply stood across from one another in the loading bay for the moment.

“We’re in the loading bay at the moment. Do you want to join us with your team, Eti?” Vreta asked.

“My team is still up top. We’ll join you on the ground once you’re outside.” She answered.

After a few moments, Vreta finally looked up from checking his rifle to make eye contact with 595. “So, what do you expect us to find? Your Institute is supposed to know quite a lot about the Cradle, yes? Is there anything in the Cradle that might be similar to this entity?”

[Cath]

“Yes, of course. Once you’re happy with the program, we’ll set it ready to go in if the cabling doesn’t work. Fortunately, there’s miles of the stuff in storage. We can feed it through to reels on the front of the rig.” Freyr explained, taking a holo-pad from its mount to check inventory. She deftly scanned through and selected the necessary cabling, along with a spectrometer and two mobile transit stations. “Nirann, can you activate the cargo conveyor and send that down to the team please?”

“Rübezahl ready to launch, Doctor.” Zimmermann reminded her. Freyr looked up quickly from her holo-pad. “Launch it.”

---

595 firmly thrust her sidearm back onto its mag-plate after checking the battery and looked over at Vreta, a sly look on her face. “Really, Vreta’Sori…Your reverence is flattering! But I’m afraid I'm just as clueless as you, sweetie.”

The agent flexed her fingers, arms and neck vigorously at this point. Strips along the thinner points of her armour pulsed the same blue colour as her eyes. Electricity crackled softly between her digits, and 595 inhaled deeply through her nose while biting her lip. “Ooh, wow…These upgrades are magic...”

The loading bay lights switched from bright white to deep red. Klaxons sounded from everywhere as the equipment around them was brought online. A compact conveyor belt began whirring frantically in one corner of the room.

Freyr’s voice crackled over the team chat. ”Loading bay - you should see the spectrometer and transit stations arriving now. Take it. In a couple of minutes we’re going to lower the ramp. Head outside and hook up to the cable housing.

595 moved over to the conveyor belt as a few bulky objects appeared. The first was the spectrometer, a spherical device contained within a lightweight metal cage with a handle on the top. The other two were modified transit stations, with handy arm straps. She grabbed a transit station and bashed it against Vreta's chest so he took it off her. Then she strapped the other station on her back and held the spectrometer in her off-hand.

"Ready."

[EliteCommander]

The Agent was certainly a curious one, but Vreta saw through the facade she tried to put forward. Friendliness, levity, it was a mask she wore over her true self. In many cases, that was exactly what Vreta himself did through the course of his missions, so it was easy to recognize his own tricks. Of course, it would be naive to expect that she could not see the same in him. Indeed, he supposed it was funny, in a way, that they were both obligated to continue to lie to one another in ways that both of them were aware were entirely ineffective.


After a few minutes, the loading ramp lowered to allow them outside, once Marae was able to finish her work. Vreta deployed his helmet, then stepped out just behind the Agent. Rhia monitored every sensor available to him to keep watch for danger. The flying creatures were still certainly present, but as of yet, they were not making any moves to approach the rig. Once the pair were outside, Eti and her team jumped down from the walkways far above to join them. Their suits’ thrusters slowed their falls to a safe descent to set them down gently, and without too much noise.

“We should make this as quick as we can. Your concerns about the creatures are valid. I will take point, and my team will form up around you. Stay between us as we move.” Eti instructed.

[Cath]

The noise outside was eerie after the reassuring hum of the lab. The wind and snow howled, and a loud ‘ftftftftftfft’ sound swooped and ducked around them in the dark.

Keeping her cool, 595 jogged heavily to the cable housing, just off-centre from the rig’s vast front elevation. She put the spectrometer on the ground, unfurled a thick cable from one of the massive reels, firmly spun Vreta around so his backpack was facing her, then plugged the cable into his transit station. She then motioned for him to do the same to her, while she dealt with the spectrometer.

Once she’d received the green light from the bridge that all the equipment was working, 595 pulled out a thinner cable from the cable housing and handed it to Vreta. “This one goes in your butt.” She explained, before retrieving another cable which went into the small of her back, just underneath the transit station backpack.

595 had already created a sterile compartment for the video and sensory data to run through, taking out all metadata from her suit or biology. She gritted her teeth when the cable went in, with her suit fighting to reject it. “Enough!” She hissed under her breath, overriding its complex defense mechanisms. “Got to play nice with the friendly Doctor, haven’t we?”

Once everything looked functional, Dr Chanthara took the lead. “Ultrasonic package primed. Search lights?”

“Standing by.” Knossos confirmed, standing by an external control panel which gave him control of the rig’s large work lamps. He looked up the enormous swarm of flying creatures in the air around them.

“Ok. Deploying.”

[EliteCommander]

Lacking an actual explanation from 595, Vreta took a moment to figure out what to do with the cable. Rhia performed a quick scan, then adapted a compatible input on his suit. Though, any data sent back to the rig was first filtered by her to cleanse it of anything they might not want to share. With a nod from Vreta, Eti started to lead the way towards the ruins of the structure.

Vreta followed the plan closely. He kept up a slow, steady pace and took particular caution not to allow the cables to become caught on anything. The other two members of Eti’s team moved close on either side of himself and 595, trailing just slightly behind them. Like Rareth, the three of them towered over the pair, and they had far more than just their eyes with which to keep watch on their surroundings.

High above them, the swarm of creatures were starting to fly more erratically. The rig had started to shine its lights to the sky and deploy ultrasonic countermeasures. Vreta even had to tune his own echolocation sensors to use a much different frequency for them to continue functioning. However, with the measures that they were using, none of the creatures seemed to be flying any closer to the group, even as they moved farther from the rig. With all that was disrupting their senses, it seemed that they had not actually been noticed. At least, not yet. They still had to complete their objective, and make the walk all the way back.

[Cath]

595 shuffled through the snow in formation with the others. The transit station on her back and the spectrometer in her left hand were heavy and unwieldy; she had to lean slightly to her right to maintain good balance. The Agent could probably have moved faster if she’d gripped the sensory equipment in both arms, but then she wouldn’t have been able to wield her sidearm.

At any rate, her load became noticeably easier to bear once they crossed onto the top face of the cube. Either something was making the objects she was carrying lighter, or something was making her suit stronger. 595 smiled under her visor and pressed on with renewed vigor.

“Ground team, can you read me? Come in, please.” Freyr crackled and hissed over comms, kept open purely via the cables connected to Vreta and 595. “I read you.” 595 answered, looking at Vreta to check he’d heard it too. “Good. We’re getting readings from the spectrometer now too. Proceed to the structure - we’re going to check the field for booby traps.”

“Copy that. Good work on the countermeasures, boys. Keep it up.” 595 purred, looking up at the fingers of light stabbing the chaotic swarm of creatures above. A few of the things had peeled away from the pack and were flying about frantically at a lower altitude, seemingly confused. 595 observed that they definitely weren’t bats. She’d never seen anything like them before.

“Is your gear still working?” She asked the team around her.

[EliteCommander]

Vreta gripped his rifle tightly, his eyes scanning the area ahead of him. While the structure had not been reduced completely to rubble, it was still in much worse shape than the recordings he had seen. Unless this was a particularly elaborate ruse, it did seem like the entity was genuinely at risk. Whatever the truth might be, they needed to play this very carefully, not only for their own sakes, but fore the sake of the mission as a whole.

The soldiers, naturally, had their attention more on the living parts of the simulation. Eti herself was focused on the path ahead, while the others she directed to cover other angles. “Mar, eyes to the sky. Kelest, you’re on ground-level threats. This energy field is interfering with comms. Seems like we can still communicate over short distances, but I don’t want to risk a blackout at a critical moment, so we’ll need to do things analogue. If something attacks by surprise, shoot first and defend yourselves. Same goes for you two. I know you’re both trained, so I’m not expecting to have to pamper you like hatchlings.” She said in an even, commanding tone.

Before the group could move too close to the structure, Marae quickly interrupted. “Wait! Hold on just a…moment. I’m getting something through the spectrometer just under the surface ahead. Hard to say what it is, exactly, just from this data. Still, probably best just to go around, to be safe. Here, let me plot you out a route to avoid the anomalies.”

With a brief acknowledgement, Eti changed her course, then continued to press ahead. Since Rhia was taking care of watching for danger, Vreta focused more on the mission itself. “I don’t like this. If there are actually traps, then we clearly would not be welcome here. Perhaps we should call this off?”

[Cath]

595 awkwardly changed course in line with the rest of the team. Part of her wanted to investigate the patch of snow Marae had warned them of, just to see what happened. But she restrained herself, and tried to focus on the mission. She had been tasked with running interference on this expedition, but she could sense there was still so much for her to learn from the Navigator. This might be the last chance she got, before handing over to the Institute back on Outremer…

---

“Sorry, ‘traps’ might not be the best word for them in this context.” Freyr chuckled over comms, closely watching Rübezahl's progress on the holo-map at the same time. Their creation was trickling through the mountain structure, heading towards the underside of the cube - the part Freyr suspected wasn’t being protected. It had detected a couple of symbiotic organics inside the mountain, which were causing low-level vibrations they’d been querying. “There are just a few spots we can’t access that we’d best steer clear of for your safety.”

Freyr then switched to the rig-only channel, to avoid distracting the ground team. “Marae, can we isolate those dark pockets with your program, to avoid messing with them?” She looked at Artek, who had joined her on the bridge to work more closely on the alien structure. “Any thoughts on the architecture? It looks different from the recorded video, right? Damage excluded.”

---

The temple ruins loomed over them in the blackness. The roof had collapsed, and 595 saw piles of debris through the open entryway. “Woah…” She whispered, when she noticed the mess of vine-like growths winding their way over the masonry. The temple had lost its clean lines and classical shape, to become more...organic. They made their way toward the front steps. "Are you seeing this?"

[EliteCommander]

With a flick of his wrist, Artek moved a screen showing the structure just in front of him. You are right about that. “These vines, they’re not just growing over the structure, they’re…becoming a part of it. Normally I would have to try to get past the plant life to learn something about a ruin, but the same rules might not apply here. The building is part of the simulation, of course, a part of the world around it. The difference between the ground, the vines, and the stonework is simply in how the code makes it appear, and there is no rule here that prevents one from becoming the other.”

Artek brought up several more images comparing areas from the previous expedition’s recording to what their away team was seeing now. He seemed no less than enthralled by observing every detail of every carving or crack in the stonework. “Ruins, historic buildings, their form and structure usually tells many stories about what it took to bring them into existence. Especially for large, intricate buildings like this, it normally takes not just a person, or a team, but a society to create them. It takes people with both the means to construct, and a reason to want to build. It takes many different people with different capabilities, personalities, and goals. A lot of moving parts to consider. The story of a building is the story of the client or organization that ordered its construction, the architect who has to balance their artistic vision with the limitations of technology, time, and budget. It is the story of the workers and craftsmen who build it, and of the artists whose self-expression is carved into the stone through the lens of the desires of the client who commissioned the work. That is the story I usually try to uncover, but this…this may be different.”

Pausing a moment, Artek pushed away most of the images, save for one. He brought Freyr’s attention to the most complete image they had of the structure, as it was during the first team’s encounter. “What do you notice about the structure in this picture? I’ll tell you, it’s in great condition. Pristine, actually. Like it had just been built. For a building of this size, construction through normal means would take many years for the type of civilization we have witnessed in this simulation, and it would be quite an unlikely coincidence for it to just happened to have been finished shortly before we arrived. The logical assumption, then, is that it was the entity itself that created it. Not through mining and carving stone, but through manipulating its own power over the simulation. If that is true, and I will say ‘if’, since I cannot give guarantees, but if it is, then that means the story of this structure is the story of the entity itself. It did not have to worry about budget, paying workers, or…physics, for that matter. The entity is the architect, is the builder, is the artist, and so on. Even if it barely put any thought into what it was making, it is still a creation of its mind and a reflection of its own self-expression. What we can learn just from this building tells a story about the mind of this entity we are trying to understand.”

Marae, through it all, simply grinned and allowed Artek to talk. She had her own task in front of her. She continued tweaking her program in an attempt to make it as subtle as possible to avoid tripping failsafes, though she always made sure to keep a stable build on-hand and ready, in case the away team needed it.

[Cath]

595 hauled her cargo up the stone stairs, pistol raised to cover a gap between two of the Rothian soldiers. The bottom edge of the spectrometer bashed against each step with a muffled *thud*. No one made a sound; each of them were completely focused on their surroundings.

The rig’s lighting didn’t penetrate the temple interior. Apart from a few long shadows in the doorway, the contents were bathed in blackness. The Agent let her Cradle-tech augments adjust to the changing conditions as they crept inside.

The place was a mess. The roof had been torn clean off, and great chunks of masonry had fallen into the grand rectangular hall. Most of the pillars on either side of the central causeway had collapsed, with the few that remained looming out of the dark like watchful sentinels.

“This will do.” 595 murmured, putting the spectrometer down on the floor a few metres inside the temple. She pulled her main gun off the magnetised holster on her chest and turned it on. Ever so slowly, she brought it up to her eye, scanning up where the walls used to meet the roof. “You sense anything here with us?” She asked over comms.

---

“Hmm, maybe. There is a strange energy profile in the back. Can you check it out?” Freyr replied, a consolatory ‘I want to talk to you about your interesting idea’’ finger raised to Artek. She then looked at the ceiling while addressing the whole rig. “Any chance we can clean this feedback up, guys? It’s all over the place.”

Freyr watched the grainy video coming in from Vreta and 595 for a few seconds, before turning back to Artek. She spoke quickly: “But why not use this energy in a more useful application? Why build a temple instead of, say, teleporting the first expedition right to it, rather than have them trek cross-country? Why did it even need to see them in-person anyway? It was likely speaking through that worm, couldn’t it have explained the situation there and then?”

[EliteCommander]

“Do you think it was the storm that collapsed this place?” Vreta commented as they moved inside the temple. It was a large, open space, though Eti was still keeping them in a tight formation. While 595 was setting up the spectrometer, Vreta knelt down and picked up a small piece of the rubble in his hand. He did not know exactly what could be gained from studying the temple, but recording in greater detail could help someone else figure out the kind of damage the building had sustained. “This place didn’t exactly seem to be poorly built last time, so it must have been quite a strong storm. That, or the stonework wasn’t the only thing holding it together.”

After a moment, Vreta stood back up and started to walk slowly towards the energy profile Freyr had mentioned. “Our host, are you, or your avatar, still here? Can you hear me?” Vreta shouted through the temple.

---

Artek tapped one claw to his cheek as he stared for a few moments in silence at one of the consoles. “Hmm, I can’t really guess at how much energy it would have taken the entity to construct it. It’s possible that it was trivial compared to teleportation, but…I can’t think of why it just wouldn’t speak through the worm, you’re right. There would had to have been something that would motivate it to want to bring them to this spot, specifically.”

As soon as Freyr had brought up the point, Marae had paused in thought herself, and Artek only strengthened her suspicions. Eventually, she interjected. “We…don’t really know much about this jamming field, do we? It is jamming our comms, but that well could be a side-effect, rather than its primary function. We should pull back the away team. My initial readings haven’t revealed anything dangerous about it, but we should study it more before we let them expose themselves to it for an extended time.”

[Cath]

“Maybe.” 595 shrugged quietly, next to Vreta. They stopped in front of a downed pillar’s splayed segments when he addressed the whole room. The Agent listened with everything she had, but could only pick up the howling wind and ten thousand wings fluttering overhead...

Wait! What was that? “You guys hear that?” 595 hissed. She moved past Eti, vaulting the pillar to utterly focus on the soundscape. She could have sworn she heard two people whispering in the back of the hall somewhere. “Come on out! We just want to talk to you!” The Agent called, visor slithering off her face. Her naked voice echoed around the chamber, and the sickly blue light of her eyes shimmered off the masonry close by.

She inched forward slowly, gun half-raised in front of her.

---

“Not yet.” Freyr soothed Marae in the hypnotic voice a mother assumes with their fussing baby. She never took her eyes away from a dual display of the Rubezahl’s trail through the mountain and video from the ground team. “They’re alright for a few more minutes. Just let me know if the field changes in any way. Dr Zimmermann, initiate contact with the underside of the cube, please.``

“Very good.”

“Marae, I’ve defragged some of the data from that hotspot you found. You’ll want to take a look at this.” Dr Wetherall crackled from below deck.

[EliteCommander]

Vreta moved forward steadily along with 595. Following their cue, the soldiers kept close as well, weapons at the ready. The creatures flying above were still a concern, so they paid particular attention to any openings through which they might fly should they decide to attack. They would still do whatever was needed to guarantee their safety, but Vreta was still ultimately the one leading them.

“Be careful. That may not be who we want it to be.” Vreta whispered to 595.

---

Briefly, Marae turned her attention to the data Dr. Wetherall sent her. She ran a program to assist with quick analysis, but it did not take much to identify the basics of what it was: a conversation. It was an exchange of words, but not in any language that she could identify. They had brought along with them a sophisticated translation program, and plenty of reference data for it, but it was not yet identifying much beyond the fact that it was a language.

“Nera, I’m sending you a copy of some data we just uncovered. It seems to be a language, but our software can’t make sense of it. See what you can do.” Marae announced quickly to her team’s linguist. However, she did not divert her attention long from Dr. Lang. Despire Freyr’s insistence that they press forward, Marae answered back firmly. “I am going to have to disagree. Our people’s safety is paramount, and I will be giving my recommendation.”

Marae wasted no more time in contacting the away team. “Be advised, there has been some discussion, and I cannot give any guarantees that the jamming field is not physically affecting you in any way. For the sake of safety, It is my opinion that you should return to the lab until we can study the field in greater detail.

---

Vreta stumbled slightly when a tremor shook the ground. He could not see its source from his angle, but there was a column of blue light shining up from the ground just behind where the entity’s throne used to be. Though, Marae’s warning was a concern he took seriously. Vreta quickly turned his head towards 595. “What do you think?”

[Cath]

595 paused, but didn’t turn to look at Vreta. She didn’t want him to see the conflicted expression on her face, so she stared into the shaft of light before them instead.

It would be a technical triumph to escort the ground team back to the rig with very little to show for their efforts. She could jumble the spectrometer, and return to her low-level sabotage of scientific data from on-board the mobile lab. Out here, she suspected they were in danger of making a discovery even bigger than in their last expedition.

And yet, she still couldn’t bring herself to stop now. She could feel the Navigator calling to her. Even though the thought filled her with cold dread, the Agent had to know what it was saying.

“You head back to the rig if you want - I’ll be right behind you. In and out, two minutes max.” 595 answered in the end. She looked at Vreta, her whole face tense, and nodded encouragingly. “It’s ok. I have my transit station. Just make sure you get the civilians out of here if something happens.”

With that, 595 took a deep breath and began edging forward again, her chin resting on the stock of her raised gun. She understood if the death-averse Rothians wanted to retreat, but for the first time in a long time wouldn’t have objected to a bit of company.

---

Freyr bristled when Marae interjected, but held her tongue. They only had hours left to make contact with this thing - they couldn’t afford to be cautious anymore. As much as she hated herself for coming to this conclusion, Freyr was willing to risk the lives of everyone on the ground if it meant saving billions. But she was also beginning to realise how the Rothians operated. Despite appearing fully invested, they still believed they could survive this unscathed.

She watched Vreta and 595 talking to each other while her head worked on the new information they’d just received. Someone had been there before them. “Let me hear the voice clip.” Freyr asked. Soon after, an exchange of guttural clicks and growls assaulted her ears. She understood none of it. “So, we aren’t the first to tread this path. What were they doing here?” She murmured to herself, eyes still glued to the screens.

[EliteCommander]

Vreta let out a long sigh. His instinct was to follow Marae’s advice. As much as he wanted to learn about this being, he preferred to take the cautious approach. Given the Agent’s obstructionism in the days leading up to this expedition, he had expected her to support the retreat before he did, so her to continue to press forward came as a definite surprise to him. It just figured that the one time he was hoping for obstruction, she was willing to continue. Unfortunately, there was no way he could just let her go in on her own, so he had no choice but to join her.

“They have orders to evacuate as soon as there is trouble.” Vreta responded. He caught up with her quickly, then walked forward right along with her. “Hopefully they follow them. We’ll go in together, learn what we can, then leave together.”

---

Marae had given her recommendation, so at that point, it was up to the away team on whether or not they wanted to follow it. Until then, she had this mysterious conversation to take her attention. “Maybe, but we can’t really know the source of this conversation. I find it unlikely that something accessed the object while it was here on Rothia, though I suppose we can’t be sure. Especially early in our history. But, this could also be something from long ago in the entity’s history. We came prepared with a comprehensive library of known languages, but there is nothing we have that bears any similarities to this.”

[Cath]

Freyr nodded. “An audible fossil…” She murmured, deep in thought. From the unfocused corners of her vision, she vaguely noticed the Rübezahl clamped to the underside of the cube like a tic. Information had begun streaming back to the rig, indexed and prioritised by the program on the fly.

“Is it possible those creatures on the audio file are having the same conversation we are, right now? Or could this just be another expression of the entity’s psyche. An imitation of life...” Freyr mused, looking up at the mission timer. Her mind was whirring away at top speed despite her outward tranquility.

---

595’s boot crumbled a fragment of masonry into dust. They advanced in as tight a formation as the labyrinth of destruction around them would allow. The Agent’s heart was pounding in her chest, but her breathing was measured and deliberate. Her suit’s internal sensory suite was going haywire, detecting threats and changes in temperature around every corner. In the end, she switched it off, focusing on her own eyes and ears.

Unfortunately, they were just as provocative. The closer they got to the shaft of light, the more footsteps 595 felt around her than those of the ground team. Snatches of conversation drove 595 to manually scan dozens of dark nooks, only to find nothing there after all.

The throne the Navigator had greeted them from before had been destroyed by a large chunk of the roof. They carefully crept around it, forced to skirt almost to the side wall. 595 gulped to wet her dry throat when she finally clamped eyes on the source of the light.

A pool of liquid, lapping at the stone edges of a narrow hatchway that headed into the depths of the floor below. The shaft of light shone right through the liquid and into the sky. The flying creatures above flew all around the light, avoiding its narrow blade.

[EliteCommander]

“I can…confirm we’re getting telemetry from your device.” Marae commented. Among her team, it was common for members to cross-check one another, so it was natural for her to want to check Freyr’s work as well.

Another of Marae’s team, Nera, chimed in response to Freyr’s musings. “It’s going to take time to analyze this, if we want more than just guesses. Try to get as many samples as you can. If we do not get enough, it may not be possible to translate.”

“Regardless, it’s not our priority right now. Nirann is saving everything, so we’ll be able to work on the translation at our own pace. We need to focus on keeping our team safe.” Marae suggested.

---

Once they rounded the rubble that had once been the throne, Vreta lowered his weapon and slowly approached the hatchway alongside the Agent. It did not take long for Rhia to realize that many of Vreta’s sensors were giving false readings the closer they came. At the very least, being a part of his mind meant that she was not restricted to a purely electronic sensor suite. Her connections went into his neurons, so she could feel his organic senses just like he could. Except, she could also apply her analytical capabilities to his sensory information.

Vreta moved up somewhat close to the hatchway, but certainly not close enough to touch the beam of light, nor the pool of liquid. “Sensors are a mess right now. Whatever this is, it’s putting out a ton of interference. So, what are you thinking?”