Cath

The Cradle

Despite her concern, Freyr was actually very interested in seeing how this gambit panned out. Rothian AI technology was obviously very advanced, and she was the first to admit there was a learning opportunity here. “It doesn’t make me happy...but your plan could work. And it’s the best we have so far.” Freyr admitted. “Strap in. I’ll get you the schematics.”

---

The envoys tilted their heads and listened to what Rareth was saying. They chatted together, and then tried to replicate the words she kept repeating. “RAHJAH”. The slightly more cautious villagers soon followed suit, until the entire group were chanting the two syllables. Some of the envoys crept closer, arms stretched out as if to touch Rareth’s armour.

“Sorry to interrupt, but we have an insert queued from base. One Nirann, it seems. Want me to bring them in?” 595, who was acting as the floating resource within the fighting group, came over. She figured Rareth was slightly indisposed. “I’m surprised they haven’t sent more. That could mean they’re having issues too. I think we have things under control here, bring them through.”

The Cradle

Freyr sighed. “Alright! Lets try it. Just be sure to isolate the fragment you send in. We can check for signs of corruption when it’s downloaded back from the simulation. With any luck, you’ll be able to circumvent some of the issues us organics are having on exit.” She looked worriedly down at Dr Dlamini, who was being scanned for brain function and given fluids by the medic.

“No, it’s not normal. Nirann if you’re set on going in, i will stay here and to work the problem from this end. Look for deviations in notation that could be causing these malfunctions. Until we can figure this out, no one else comes back out. I’ll send in my systems engineer to help you, but holistic research will have to wait for now.

---

The aliens stopped in their tracks when Rareth began approaching; Some of them even retreated slightly. When she spoke, they all fell silent as one before looking curiously at her and among themselves. And then, they began chattering again, conspiratorially pointing and shaking the objects they held in their hands. Some of the creatures near the front pushed and jostled each other in some kind of heated debate before three of them edged forward.

These envoys began talking at her in their own tongue, slowly and carefully. They were all studying Rareth in great detail, moving forward sideways on, so they could dash away at a moment’s notice. The lead creature beckoned at Rareth specifically, and then at the armoured figures behind her. “Lots of potential weapons.” Knossos grunted over comms. “Hold position, eyes on a swivel.” Thebes ordered.

Ignoring half of that directive, 595 peeled off and walked slightly back toward the transit station, checking all around them for anyone sneaking up on their position. Everything seemed clear, for now.” She gave a thumbs up to the two scientists watching from inside the shield bubble.

The Cradle

“Senty Dlamini, can you hear me?” Freyr asked loudly, opening the girl’s eyelids. Her pupils were almost completely dilated. “Can I have a medic in here now please!” Freyr shouted. Dr Dlamini moaned suddenly, struggling within the harness. Freyr quickly worked to unplug the junior researcher from the device, and helped her sit up.

“Senty, do you know where you are?” The girl didn’t acknowledge her, instead abruptly slumping to one side. Freyr managed to catch her before she hit her head on the floor, awkwardly holding her up. “Medic!” Freyr yelled. One of the Barbarossa’s doctors sprinted over with a satchel in hand. Together they maneuvered Dr Dlamini back onto the harness table. “You’re alright.” Freyr soothed.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” She shook her head once the medic had taken over. “These objects are much more adept at controlling artificial systems than organic ones. We don’t want to give it open-ended access to your mind, especially at this early stage. We could lose you in there. In fact, I have half a mind to scrub this mission altogether until we can adjust our equipment. Although we’ll need to run diagnostics on my colleague first before we can even consider pulling everyone out.”

---

“That’s done it. They’re coming up here now.” Athena confirmed. Her feed showed a few of the shapes had broken ranks and were making their way up the slope toward the ridge. “Looks like they may be heading for level ground before approaching us.” More of the group were following behind the first figures, while some stayed behind at the village limits. “I count...maybe one hundred?” Athena offered helpfully. The sound of an alien chattering registered on the group’s sensory net for the first time as they drew closer.

“Sacred band, shield wall. Keep your weapons down.” Thebes ordered, before pointing at Dr Wetherall and Dr Ngata, who were desperately trying to fix the comms mast. “You two, go in the transit station shield and stay there. Be ready to jump out on my signal.” The Sacred Band jogged over and formed a loose line between the array of equipment and the approaching mass of heat shapes. That included Athena, who detached the scope from her rifle to continue tracking the life forms. 595 shrewdly arranged herself behind the shield wall.

The Cradle

Freyr shook her head. “We don’t have the infrastructure in place to support a hologram inside this thing. He’d need to come down here and go in person, I'm afraid. How far away is he? If it is a re-code they need, I could go and oversee this personally. I may have more luck inside, where i can analyse the equipment directly.”

A low humming sound interrupted Freyr’s train of thought. “Transit plate is live, and we have Dr Dlamini queued to RTB. Want me to bring them back?” One of the technicians asked from behind a row of holo-screens. “Yeah, hit it. Someone start loading the transit plate, please!" Freyr called, jumping over boxes and jogging to Dr Dlamini's side. "Come on, honey. Come back to us."

---

“Good luck my dear." Dr Wetherall presented two thumbs up to his assistant as she stood on the transit plate. "Tell them to bring spare parts and a good engineer, would you?" She nodded, crouching into a brace position. After a few seconds, there was a bright flash and the junior researcher disappeared. Dr Wetherall put his gloved hand in front of his visor to stabilise his vision again.

“If by some miracle our new friends hadn't spotted us yet, they definitely have now. A whole bunch of them are coming this way.” Athena reported, sharing her feed again. A mass of heat shapes quickly flowed to the edges of the village, which the sniper tracked with her scope. They stopped before the incline of the valley increased, and fanned out so they presented a broader face. “Looks like they’re signalling at us....” Athena mused, as some of the shapes wiggled at her. “Bit of arguing and pushing going on too.”

The Cradle

“Ok. Still getting the hang of this…” Dr Wetherall replied. Even through the interference, his voice seemed nervously excited by it all. He began sending pulses, referencing a Morse code guide.

“Non-threatening is our specialty.” Saddam chuckled from his post on the opposite side of the transit station. “There’s someone up there, watching us.” 595 reported calmly, pointing into the dark up the valley. “Where?” Thebes asked. “Let me try and mark it.” 595 replied. A waypoint appeared on everyone’s HUD at a point in the distance, but it quickly began jumping about, moving hundreds of metres each time. 595 removed it after a few seconds.

“Fucking hell, what is going on with our gear?” Carthage growled. “How can you even see that far anyway? I can’t visualise half that distance.” 595 shrugged. “My eyes are adapted for the Cradle.” was her opaque reply. She waved into the blackness at the faint figure high up the valley’s edge, beckoning for them to come forward. The figure promptly disappeared from view.

“A few of them are leaving town.” Athena reported. “Which way are they heading?” Thebes asked. “Away from us. Looks like they’re riding something warmer. The rest are still milling around.”

---

“New message from inside: TS test in five. They didn’t respond to our last hail.” Freyr nodded in acknowledgement. She was deep in thought, planning out what would go over in the first shipment. The transit station area set aside in the lab was a four metre square. They could scan and send people and materiel much quicker this way than programming equipment into the harnesses.

Freyr was using a datapad to simulate what they could fit into the transit station space; it was vitally important not to actually enter the area until it was confirmed to work. So far, with the help of a systems engineer, she’d sim-packed a third of the available space with spare parts and repair equipment for the comms mast and transit station, and more deployable cover, personal issue. Lab assistants had been running to fetch the required items and arrange them close by the transit plate. Freyr projected there was enough room for two Rothians and two Humans to squeeze in without touching each other.

Freyr looked up when Marae approached her. “Well, we need a wide variety of skills. My three so far span Genomics, Artificial Systems and Xenobiology, but they’re all trained how to survive in environments like the Cradle. They also all know to some extent how to maintain equipment and learn from their surroundings. I’m going to send in one of my other systems engineers in the next wave. It seems like the team are having some trouble with the equipment in there. My working theory is that this could be down to a divergence in language between this object and the Cradle over time. Oh yeah, and I’m also going to send two of my all-rounders to begin holistic study.”

Freyr spoke quickly, trying to translate her complex thought process on the fly. There was still a lot to prepare, but first they needed to confirm the transit station actually worked. “There should be room for four Rothians. Who do you have so far?”

The Cradle

“They might be watching us right now. We’re not exactly hidden up here.” Knossos remarked, peering through his rifle scope at the multitude of crags further up the valley from a prone position. 595 scanned the higher elevations too, her hands so far still free from weapons of any kind. “Not loads of cover up here either, apart from the transit shield.” Carthage muttered, picking up a small rock near where she knelt. It crumbled into black dust and fell through her fingers. “Keep the line clear.” Thebes ordered. “We’re trying to reach base.”

---

“I’m getting something!” A Rothian manning the auxiliary comms console called. Freyr rushed over and listened in. “It sounds like some kind of code.” He reported. Freyr only needed to listen to three pulses before she realised what it was. “It’s Morse code, an ancient Human form of communication. Plug it in, let's see what it says.” The transmission was unbearably slow, with words gradually forming on the screen. After about a minute they had their first phrase.

“LZ set up….safe”.....

Then another.

…..”mast jammed”

Then a sign off.

“TS in ten…life found…..stop”….

“They found life!” Freyr shouted, for the benefit of the people not huddled around the console. “The transit station will be ready in ten minutes. We only have limited space as it sounds like they need spares. We’ll need an anthropologist to go. Who else?” She’d resigned herself to being the vicarious co-ordinator in this expedition for now, but had already briefed the members of her team who were staying behind what to do when she did finally go in.

---

“I’ve got a lot of activity down here.” Athena crackled, sharing her feed again. Lots of heat blobs were emerging from the long, flat building shapes to congregate together and mill around. “Think they’re coming out for a look. Maybe we should tell the civilians to stay put.”

The Cradle

595 sighed. That was the boring, correct way to handle the situation, yes. “Fine. We wait.” With all the power coursing through her right now, she had to make a conscious effort to stay rational. She lowered her visor; it crawled back over her face and bright blue eyes.

---

Far away, further up the side of the valley, two creatures watched the twin lamps disappear. After a short exchange, one of them set off back down into the valley’s basin at a run.

---

“There...that...should do it.” Dr Wetherall groaned as they maneuvered the last of the mast’s supporting legs into position. “Start on the transit station, would you please?” He asked his two juniors, before turning the comms mast on. He stayed by the control panel while he tried for home. “This is Olive Branch calling base. Come in, over.” No answer. Dr Wetherall made a few changes to the configuration and tried again. “Base, this is Olive Branch, come in please.”

---

Back in the real world, aboard the FOB, the lab was suddenly filled with a whirlwind of white noise. Freyr jumped out of her seat and approached the comms console where one of her team was already sat. “Isolate that signal, clean it up!”

---

“I have one foot-mobile moving into town.” Athena reported after about ten minutes of Dr Wetherall trying unsuccessfully to get through to the real world on comms. She shared her view through the scope with the group. A faint, red and yellow blob was quickly traversing through the black canvas of the landscape toward a cluster of shapes identified as buildings.

“Great, there goes the element of surprise.” 595 commented, just as Thebes and Saddam successfully deployed the shield around the area being prepared as a transit station.

The Cradle

“Five minutes.” Dr Wetherall responded to Rareth’s question directly, lying next to the comms mast to fiddle with one of the control panels. “Why are comms so patchy? Sounds like you lot are inside a ration packet.” Memnon asked, carrying his massive repeater like it was a beloved pet. “Not sure. I’ll try to clean up some of the background noise in a minute.” Dr Dlamini grunted, tugging at one of the levers controlling the mast’s base.

“Athena, go and check out what our Rothian friend has found.” Thebes ordered the Sacred Band’s sleek, grey armoured sniper. He activated the first node in their deployable cover, which was actually a misleading name for an acorn shaped energy shield. Once the other two nodes were in place, it would envelope the transit station in a bubble which resisted ballistics and supercharged energy alike. They could even camouflage it against the background, making it almost invisible.

Athena wordlessly complied with the order, jogging over to the edge of the ridge where Rareth stood. She lay down on the pitch black ground and unpacked her weapon. Originally a rectangular block, it quickly unfolded in her hand, elongating into a high powered rail gun with a bulky scope. A bipod flicked out from the end of the barrel, which Athena rested on a stable platform before peering through the optics where Rareth had indicated. “Shit. My picture isn’t clear.” She put her hand in front of the scope and flicked it back and forth, trying to focus it. “That’s a bit better. Hmmm. Yeah, I can see something. Heat sigs. Looks like some buildings too.”

595 jogged over. “Where?” Athena pointed, her eye still trained down the sight. “Interesting...We should do a recce, see who or what lives there.”

The Cradle

“Everyone alright?” Thebes sent over comms once he’d regained his senses. He quickly located the outlines and IFF tags of the group in the low-light even before his enhanced vision came online. Memnon and Carthage were still on their knees, hands either held up to their helmeted face or resting on the ground. Knossos, second in command and the Band’s medic, rushed over to them while Saddam and Athena moved into protective postures, weapons raised and looking out into the darkness.

“Permission to lift my visor?” Memnon, the Band’s marksman, asked from his kneeling position. His voice arrived over comms noticeably crackly. “Atmosphere is breathable, no sign of any dangerous elements.” The scientist named Dr Ngata offered helpfully from nearby, also crackly. “Alright...Make it quick.” Thebes replied, pulling the energy rifle off his back and establishing a sensory grid from his suit. His team’s suits quickly integrated and amplified the field, creating a wide net to monitor motion, heat and other tactical data.

The front of Memnon’s helmet slid back and he promptly threw up between his hands, onto the featureless surface they all found themselves on. Knossos patted his shoulder. “You’re alright.” He chuckled gruffly. Memnon waved one hand around behind him to move the old soldier on. Knossos shuffled over to Carthage, who was having trouble as well. Memnon watched the ground greedily suck in the matter he’d ejected before grabbing his heavy assault weapon and standing up.

595 opened her visor too, standing on the edge of the group. It crawled back over her face, revealing her pearlescent teeth in a Cheshire grin. She sniffed loudly, sampling the air with her nose as three bright blue dots cycled up in each of her eyes. “This place smells different to the Cradle.” She noted, looking around.

“Ok, let's get this comms mast in the ground first.” Dr Wetherall announced, turning Dr Dlamini around so he could access the equipment attached to the back of her suit. Carthage finally stood up with Knossos’ help, unpacking her SMG. “Well, that was rough.” She crackled. "Good to have you back. Join the wall, look sharp.” Thebes ordered. “Doctor Ngata, may I take those deployable cover modules?” The short, stout suit with ‘CRD’ printed on the front nodded, chucking three containers over before rejoining work on the comms mast.

The Cradle

After a short huddle, Agent 595 and the Sacred Band made last minute checks to their equipment before letting the science team secure them into their harnesses. Dr Apalkov quickly and carefully readied a pre-load file for the three deputies Freyr elected to go inside. As they wouldn’t be carrying weapons, they had a bit of room on their person for vital equipment, like the components for a new transit station, a comms mast and deployable cover modules. Once they were all kitted out, they too strapped into waiting harnesses and prepared to go under.

Freyr was deep in thought when Vreta approached, and flinched slightly at his touch. She looked at him, and smiled distractedly. “I hope so.” She said, before getting up and moving over to where her team were finally settling down. “I’m sorry to leave you behind, kiddo. We’ll get you in as soon as it’s safe, ok?” 595 called, her hand craning forward to see Freyr while the rest of the agent’s body faced the ceiling. “Just focus on keeping everyone safe, alright? Don’t worry about me.” Freyr asked.

She then moved across to Wetherall and the other two scientists, who were looking noticeably less cavalier. “Remember, if everything is quiet: comms mast first, then transit station, then deployable cover. If anything happens, it’s the other way around. Do you understand?” Dr Wetherall gave her a thumbs up. Freyr nodded. She stepped back and looked at Dr Apalkov. “How are we looking?”

“We’re looking as ready as we’ll ever be. I can make adjustments based on entry feedback we get.” Freyr nodded again and looked over at Nirann, who was attending Rareth’s harness. “Ready?” He answered in the affirmative. “Okay. We’ll insert in thirty seconds; start the clock, please. Good luck everyone!”