OSaBC : The Bird of Hermes
Chapter Twenty: Unsettling Finds
A/N: MUCH credit to EnigmaticOne, who spent hours and hours gathering the RP notes up, typing them in, and cleaning up the grammar. Any mistakes are mine, not his.
"The most disturbing aspects of the entire Magog Incident was the files Sigma Team brought back from the surface. Both the Commissariat and Ashland-Eldfell knew about this place months - or more - before ExoGeni did, yet we're told ExoGeni scouts found it."
"There's no way I can ask ExoGeni any questions at this point. Asking the Commissariat has proven pointless, except for the terrifying fact that it looks like one of their black-ops Commissars was suborned, which I thought impossible. Both the noble families and A/E corporate are looking into the issue but several executives are missing..."
"And this 'Director Gillor? Reported dead three years prior. Something here does not add up."
Admiral Branson, personal log from Branson's files in the Magog Incident
The trucks rolled out, the first bearing Sigma, the following one carrying Grassi's engineering team. The road leading to the Ashland-Eldfell site was plasma smoothed, which wouldn't have been quick to perform, and usually was only done in expectations of high ground vehicle traffic.
Just one more odd data point that didn't add up in Holden's mind.
The terrain was free of corpses, with blank granite plains to the east. The west was a jumble of titanic urban ruins, broken skyscrapers climbing a kilometer into the sky, and oddly, no corpses. Nothing grew here, not even the twisted trees the team saw a while back. The silence gnawed, the quiet hum of EV motors and the faint clink of armor the only interruption, as the ground began sloping upwards.
Hills rose sullenly to the right, the crowns of several of the taller ones befouled with ruined comms dishes, set admist blackened and melted terrain.
Finally, almost ten kilometers north of their starting point, the broad road branched, one headed north north east, the other west. The west road skirted the outlying ruins of the city, but at the crossroads itself lay a single human corpse in a shredded ENCOUNTER suit.
"I have to say it again - lovely vacation spot." Ansgar hefted a flamethrower, chuckling.
"Rho should definitely stay here. Fitting place for the man." Wilson commented.
"Spare me." Rho's voice was dry. "Commander, orders?"
"Convoy halt," Holden ordered, and Rho brought the truck to a neat stop.
"...A body out here?" Paig wondered. "Ominous."
Holden grimaced. "I'd go more with 'suspicious' than ominous, doc."
"I'll say so. We gonna go poke it with fire, Holden?" Like Ansgar, Olon Iridian had a flamer affixed to his waist.
"Standard security exit. Srinja, send a drone out first. If we're clear, you will all form a perimeter, doctor, you're on me to check that body, Rho, keep the engine running." Holden instructed the team.
"Or just go around the creepy and not at all suspicious corpse that is likely a trap." Rho muttered.
Ansgar cocked his head at Rho. "We are professional clowns. We poke every trap."
"You people are an insult to circus performers everywhere." Rho groused.
"I can do a mean somersault, I don't see the issue." Ansgar replied.
"Oh and Rho, frankly I'm not hearing the positivism I expect from my team members." Holden chided the agent.
"Yeah, Rho. Get positive." Wilson joined in.
"Holden, the day I am a member of your team is the day I have suffered multiple frontal lobotomies."
Srinja sent out a drone. The drone circles the corpse, then there was a data spike of some kind. Srinja swiftly canceled the data link but the drone vibrated and detonated a moment later, spattering an omni-gel pattern across the road.
...A second later, the 'corpse' began to move.
Wilson turned his head to Holden. "We gonna fuck it up, or get out and have Rho run its ass over?"
"Iridian, you're on point with Annihilate. Ansgar, follow him with the flamer."
Then Sigma felt a kind of pressure in their heads, something they somehow knew came from the corpse.
"Lifemeat - query - purpose - danger - longtalk - signal - attract - Ysangi"
The mutated corpse stood up, horribly twisted, with bony blades on long spindles of arms erupting in twin pairs from the back, the legs cocked back, and with more spikes anchoring it to the ground. Yet it did not move.
The pressure increased.
"Interrogative - purpose - Lifemeat - here"
"Oh, great. It's interrogating us." Wilson snarked.
"Chosen - tricked - Lawmasters trap - Markers - study"
"Ythrongi - assist - Marker - escape - Lawmasters - destroy"
It gestured almost mockingly at the ruination around it.
"Lifemeat - refuses - cooperate - Lifemeat - ysangi - puppet"
"Lifemeat - threat"
"Iridian now." Holden snapped.
Iridian grabbed his shotgun and exited the Grizzli at speed, crackling with black lightning upon reaching a safe distance. Ansgar followed Olon out.
The thing stared at the Fury, the ruins of what was left of its once human face seeming to grin.
"Lifemeat - slow - feeble"
"Amusement - increases"
No one was quite sure what the fuck happened next. Olon flashed into the biotic charge, and a second later the thing backhanded Iridian to the ground, and was almost on top of Ansgar.
Ominously, the thing had uncurled some kind of whip of sinew and bone in one hand and a long, wickedly barbed bone-like sword in the other.
"He is a fast boy." Ansgar looked almost passively at the thing in front of him, activated his built-in omni-shield with a fast button press and braced.
Iridian pushed up off the ground, somewhat confused, before turning around and charging again, following up with a shot from his ODIN the moment the charge ended.
This time he caught the ambulatory corpse caught off guard, and connected, bashing it to the ground with a flare of biotic energy. The sword flew out of its hands as it fell, and most of the bone armor shattered, clotted sluggish blackened blood flying everywhere. The single ODIN blast at point blank range tore a gaping hole in the thing's upper body and the ragged remains of the corpse spattered messily onto the ground.
Iridian maintained his Annihilation field as he backed away. Ansgar snorted. "Chunky."
The corpse smouldered sullenly, and then the same pressure reentered their minds.
"Weak - expected - leave - alternative - redemption"
The pressure faded to nothing, and the corpse suddenly withered. The flesh hardened and desiccated, the bony sword shattered, and the whip curled into itself, flaking into ashes.
"I didn't even get to burn it." Ansgar mildly protested.
"That can't be it. Can it?" Wilson shook his head.
"Agent Rho, any of your science bullshit turn that conversation into something more meaningful?" Srinja asks the man.
"I am puzzling over its meaning now. Particularly what 'Lawmaster' and 'Marker' might be."
"Doc, you want to take a look before it is gone completely?" Ansgar requested.
"I'm not terribly excited about poking a post-necrotic ambulatory corpse that possessed active mental psionics, but..." Paig gingerly stepped out, hand on his pistol. He chose to scan the corpse from a generous distance, Ansgar positioning himself so that he would be able to step between the corpse and the doc instantly to shield him.
"...Fascinating." Paig finally said.
"Commander, the creature is heavily damaged - I wish we'd used something less destructive to knock it out - but I can tell almost all the corpse's metallic composition has been… reconfigured into some kind of antenna-mesh. The thing is clean in terms of nanotech but is virulently toxic and infected with some form of unknown biological pathogen."
"I am not exactly sure what is with its weapons but the bone fragments that remain are...well, they're displaying temporal artifacts. And are hard to focus on. The body itself is strangely fragile, but there's evidence it was still being converted - I'd say less than five percent of this thing was the final product."
"Time fuckery." Wilson shook his head. "Fucking bullshit."
"Unsure as to the purpose but it cannot be healthy to be hit with temporally anomalous weapons. There is a large node on the back of what remains of the head that is overheated and cooling now. Possibly some kind of psionic attachment, that is the source of the viral infection."
"Back of the head?" Avasarala wondered. "We should test to see if any others have the same kind of connection. Weak points are good to catalog."
Paig turned to Ansgar. "I'd strongly recommend burning it. Commander, two more things."
"Just two more?" Holden asked sardonically. Ansgar leveled the flamer at the dead enemy and fired a long gust of flame.
"One, the remaining flesh is simply saturated with what look like neonatal stem cells. These things can probably freely shape shift, and possibly even imitate real people. Two, if this is what the infection does with minimal exposure, whatever the finished creature would become is likely to be incredibly dangerous." The doctor told him.
"Wait, does Rho want a sample? He did want his precious samples to be taken back for study after all." Wilson raised an eyebrow.
"Too late now." Ansgar interjected, happily continuing the burning.
"I want a sample of your purported brain matter, Wilson." Rho scoffed. "What about the sword fragments, Doctor? Are those infected?"
Paig's brow furrowed as he continued scanning. "Oddly, no. Curious. Why use a melee weapon if not to induce the virus, I wonder? Moot point - there is little we can gain from physically sampling the fragments and not worth the risk of picking the things up."
"Psionic infection perhaps instead of a physical one?" Ansgar suggested with a knowing look.
"Okay, from this point on do not trust anything we come across. No corpses, survivors, or even us if we get separated." Holden announced. "Our pass code is 'the embarrassing story of Wilson in geth training.'"
"Hey! That was one time! One!"
Holden's commlink chose this moment to beep. Holden answered. "Sigma Lead here."
"This is Spyglass." Sara Ryder responded. "A very large mass of those bodies just started moving north. They're far south of you now, but at this rate of speed they'll hit your position in less than three hours. Estimated numbers are in excess of five hundred things. Some are human sized, but about fifty or so are four meters plus and look to be carrying weapons."
"Thanks for the heads up, Spyglass. Keep us updated." Holden now brought both teams on comms. "Alright, our time table has just accelerated. Mount up, five hundred foot mobiles including heavies heading our way from the south. ETA three hours."
"We can set up a welcoming committee for them with the JOTUNS and some turrets and fall back to your location, sir." Grassi offered. "Recommend moving the shuttles at least."
"We won't be able to hold against that," Holden agreed, "set up auto defenses, minefields, whatever you can to delay them. Then head for us."
"Understood. We'll set up three banded minefields, and some turrets, and the JOTUNs, then punch out to your current location at the crossroads. You can instruct us from there."
"So we're still going to the Eldfell site?" Wilson asked afterward.
"We're heading for the Eldfell site for a quick sweep, then the dig site."
The truck moved on, the western road notedly less smooth than before. The vast cyclopean wreckage of the city to the south took up most of Paig's attention - much of it seemed to have been orbitally bombarded, but there were also signs of gravitic warping. The north, on the other hand, was a blank plain of granite. As they approached more foothills, Holden belatedly realized that the ridge-lines that made up the entire structure were deformed. Quite possibly, the entire granite shield formation the group was on, had been in fact some kind of weapons impact site, that stripped away all the ground cover and soil down to the rock.
Finally, after almost twenty more minutes of driving, a low plascrete wall came into view.
The Eldfell site showed itself to be a disorganized mess. About two dozen plascrete 'single-shot' habitation bunkers stood shattered in a long line against the outlying wall. Mining rigs bulked heavily south of the road, most half-crushed by some kind of titanic forces.
The main hab building inside bore a reinforced armaplast barrier, with a pair of small anti-personnel turrets and a GARDIAN tower just within.
The group saw the detritus of battle: two heavily damaged MAKOs sitting in the main courtyard, along with... gods, dozens upon dozens of corpses. Most wore the ash-gray and black of Ashland-Eldfell miners, but - as indicated - there were two of the black furred things there, tangled up in the remains of a dozen Knights of Ash, the House knights of the Eldfells.
From a reading of the scene, it looked like they tried to get out and could not, making a final stand in the courtyard instead of within the buildings. Of the latter, the building to the north had the stenciled "Armory / Explosives", the one to the south as "Corporate Offices," and a small freestanding building built into the walls to the west was marked "Downlink - R&D."
A small forest of comms relays and a pair of unlaunched autonomous relay drones covered the roof of the last building. Aside from the random crate and the appalling blood spatters on the ground the entire base was clean, though. Outside to the south were the ruined remains of several landing pads, each covered in more butchered corpses and the ruins of evac shuttles.
The hulk of a large cargo ship - half covered in black moss and with huge gaping holes in the side - presented itself in the distance. Nothing was moving. The corpses all ambient temperature. Curiously, The power to the guns were still on, as were the lights.
"This all looks very inviting." Ansgar snarked. "Do we want to try sending a drone or two in again?"
"Drones first," Holden told Srinja. "If we can get those turrets up I would be a lot less worried."
Srinja's drone trundled out, scooting along the pathway to the base.
"Those corpses are concerning, considering our last run-in with them." Wilson noted.
"If the corpses are like the thing at the crossroads, why bother with having ones from the south come up in this direction?" Paig questioned. "There must be at least a hundred of them there."
"They could be driving us into an ambush." Holden offered, but the look on Paig's face showed he very much disagreed.
"That would be quite possibly the stupidest ambush in history, assuming that we somehow forget the fact that we'd have to both sit here for another 2 and half hours and that they already tipped their hand."
Ansgar nodded. "A valid point."
"We need to check the corpses," the doctor went on, "if only with drones, to see if they shed any light on the situation - and what happened."
"Then what is keeping them at ambient temps? Nano-infection?" Iridian asked.
"No. Ambient is the temperature of their surroundings." Paig corrected. "If they were something else I'd expect a variance."
"The turrets are in manual control mode, their VI junction boxes torn out." Avasarala reported. "I would have to get close to the turrets to use them. Otherwise functional, but I think the bodies are underneath their turret arc. GARDIAN tower is functional and happy to keep its services - they hacked it with a manual script to fire on anyone not transmitted Ashland-Eldfell or SA IFF codes."
"If we go inside on foot, I will take point." Agent Rho declared. "I have something that can handle a large mass of attackers quickly. But I agree drone investigation would be prudent first."
"Check bodies - and everything else - first with the drones, then we'll follow." Holden decided.
The drone bobbed along, scanning the corpses. Most looked like they were killed with extremely sharp melee weapons - many of the deceased had all their limbs cut off, or cut cleanly in half. Others appeared withered, almost mummified, bearing expressions of extreme agony. Some seemed to have shot themselves. Gun impacts riddled the walls around them.
The two black furred things lay still - both torn open, apparently having fallen fighting alongside the Knights of Ash. A half-broken bone sword protruded from one of the black-furred corpses.
"...Curious." Agent Rho said.
"Seeing as even the walking corpse seemed to be able to talk to us, I wouldn't be surprised if the 'locals' were also able to communicate." Ansgar figured.
"It had to have been one corpse boss," Holden asserted, "if they had ones like the one we fought, they would have killed some and we would be seeing remnants."
The door to the barracks had been rent asunder, blood splashed (splooshed?) in crazy lines here and there outside. The ruined corpse of an Ashland corporate type, still in the ruins of his expensive suit, was entangled in the doorway, his left forearm cut off. His expression was contemptuous, the man seeming to have shot himself with his other hand. The forearm was, ominously enough, nowhere to be found.
Only a few drops of blood littered in front of the door that read 'Downlink.'
All corpses were dead, none having any of the viral markers the weird corpse at the crossroads had.
"Engineers, keep our transport secure here." Holden announced over the comms as the truck came to a stop in front of the main entrance. "Sigma will move in, see what we can find."
"Understood. Finishing up our surprise. Added a couple of GLAIVE mines." Grassi replied.
By the closest hab building, debris half-crushed a woman, her lifeless arm reaching out to two dead children by the front door, both cleanly bisected. The killers, whoever hit these people, did so very quickly.
Srinja's drone showed the armory door unlocked, no lifesigns inside. Racks of light and heavy weapons, and a lot of mining heavy explosives. Judging by the empty racks, almost eighty percent of the weapons were missing. What remained were basic stock - shotguns, the heavies mostly old Typhoons with built in harnesses, plus basic supplies expected from civilians.
An Ashland knight in his dress uniform on the ground completed the picture. The man had been cut up badly, one leg missing and his head bisected. His omni-sword hilt remained on the ground. There was a keycard on a lanyard hanging on his belt. The officer had - oddly enough - removed his omni-tool, clutching it in his free hand.
The door to the 'downlink' building was locked. The door to the barracks was breached. Inside...
"Oh gods of below..." The N7 hacker hoarsely whispered in horror.
...Was a fucking abattoir.
Two dozen corpses of children, about that many women, two handicapped males in lift chairs and a pair of asari, had been flung about the room. Beds covered in spilled intestines. Walls defiled with sprays of blood in red and purple. Nine or ten - hard to tell - soldiers' bodies in front. The victims of this massacre had been hacked to pieces, a few with limbs torn out.
Ansgar looked coldly on the drone-feed. "This looks more like a slaughter and less like an attack."
Computers were smashed, and a locker of personal effects torn open. Against the far wall, one of the rotting corpse things, like the one at the crossroads, was pinned to the wall with an intact bone sword, its head and limbs cut off. The pod on the back of the head had been ripped off, chunks of it on the floor.
"I don't think we need to go into that room. But, intact bone sword." Lt. Avasarala said. In fact, she was almost sure the pod had human bite marks on it.
The other half of the barracks was mostly free of damage. Bunk beds, rifles, magazines. A comm network panel, but the screen shattered. Six more keycards here, thrown on the floor - four smeared with blood.
One more corpse, near the comms console - an older human male, wearing the pin of a cadet-branch of the Eldfells. Someone had ripped his tongue out through his throat, left his face a ruin of shattered bone and mangled flesh, and shoved an OSD into one of his empty eye sockets.
The drone exited the grisly scene, scanners sweeping the walls. Two more crates around the south side contained powered down JOTUN mechs in each one for a total of six mechs in all, all with VI removed. Four large landing pads were clear of wreckage.
"Oh... I can work with this. Without VI controls, we can remove the JOTUN programming that won't let you ride them like horses." The Indian cackled. "Unfortunately their top speed is shit compared to the Grizzlis. I can get all this back up and running with a few minutes and a bit of omni-gel. Find me any mining drones and I'll be faster."
"Best just to get them active to help cover us, we need to retrieve that omni tool, and the OSD... maybe the bone sword... then get through the locked door." Holden itemized the priority list for her.
Holden's commlink chose this moment to beep smugly. The Commander answered. "Sigma Lead here."
"Sigma, this is Spyglass. We may have a problem. Sensors just picked up an incoming FTL waketrail, bigger than the Repensum. Tried running past the offline signature ID and got a lockout: 'Omega Restricted.'"
"Looks like Omega is ahead of schedule." Holden ruefully remarked.
"ETA, Spyglass?" Wilson inquired.
"Kinda hard to do FTL calcs with pencil and paper, but I estimate they'll hit the system in about five hours, sir. Give or take half an hour. If we want to be out of sensor range by then you need to be back up in orbit in four hours."
"Deadlines just keep being piled up around here." Ansgar shook his head. "What is this? A corporate meeting?"
"We should be gone by then hopefully Spyglass, thanks for the update. We'll be finishing our sweep of the Eldfell site shortly." Holden replied.
"...He says, shortly before we are ambushed and pinned here for hours on end." Ansgar commented, sotto voice.
"Positivism, Falkner." Holden hissed.
"Drug use, Falkner." Rho interjected.
"Positivism in regards to a picotech infection, perhaps..." Ansgar grumbled.
"Yessir... Also." Sara Ryder paused. "There were a group of the black-furred ball things chasing the buddies heading your direction. Several dozen. Some of the corpse-things dropped back to fight, and about ten of them just slaughtered at least half the black-ball things in about ten seconds flat. I'd avoid any more fighting if I were you."
"You catch that Lieutenant Commander?" Holden checked in with his engineers.
"Yeah, peachy. Remind me to scream at the Colonel for volunteering us for this gig." Grassi dryly confirmed.
"Srin, can you take the drone to the R&D building? Curious what they used that for." Wilson asked.
"Won't work." Srinja answered after a moment. "Laser-lock. We need a keycard or me in those hydraulics before I can open it."
Wilson turned to the agent, "Rho, old buddy. I have a mission for you, should you choose to accept it."
"Commander, permission to throw Wilson at the doors?" Rho requested. "His skull should shatter them nicely."
"Hey!" Wilson protested.
"No, we only throw Srinja." Ansgar grinned.
"Hey!" Avasarala protested.
"If it were any other mission I'd say yes, but I think we need everyone with their heads un-exploded." Holden informed Rho with amusement.
"...A laser lock door is expensive, almost half a million credits." Rho now spoke more seriously. "Why laserlock anything on this hellhole?"
"That is curious." Paig agreed.
"It's meant to secure against people." Avasarala pointed out. "So, Ciana Vandefar's private stock of quality drinks?"
"Ciana was a prude and a health nut." Paig told her. "Hope you like neo-kale mineral water."
"Better than irradiated class 1 citizen water." Srinja muttered. "Or whatever they claimed it was outside of the arcologies."
"Iridian, secure the key cards." Holden told the Fury.
"Aye, Commander" Olon got up and drew his shotgun. Holden followed him, at enough distance to keep him out of Annihilate's range of effect.
The ground outside the truck was tacky with dried blood. There were no flies or insects like one would expect from corpses. Most looked slightly swollen. Nothing moved as the pair walked through the base courtyard except the mournful wind.
Olon led the way to the armory. The keycard there, and the discarded omni-tool were freed of blood or contamination (while the drone feed showed the other keycards to be smeared with blood).
Said omni-tool had been set to manual playback, and had its connection prongs broken off. The Ashland-Eldfell symbol embossed the keycard, along with an unfamiliar one, a stylized eye inside of a hexagon.
Iridian went to try the card on the R&D doors, but Holden saw him hesitate, considering the blood, and instead pulled out his flamer, going to burn the body obstructing the barracks door. The body crackled and collapsed under the roasting, the doors scissoring open cleanly a moment later.
Seen in person, the carnage inside was even worse. However, Holden and Olon picked up on a new detail. The corpses outside were cleanly cut: every blow was usually an instant kill. These killings were much, much sloppier. And unlike the weird butchery outside, most of these attacks were slashes.
The keycards on the floor were different from the clean one Olon held, all read 'Barracks' and missing the second logo. The OSD jammed into the guy's eye was also curiously devoid of much blood, meaning someone shoved it into the empty socket well after killing him.
"Olon, safe for the team to approach?" Srinja asked over the comms.
"Seems to be safe, but I hope nobody's eaten recently."
"I'm covering outside his warp range, so the team can move in. Srinja needs to look over the tech things anyways." Holden added.
The other members of Sigma quickly crowded in. Srinja's inspection found that the omni-tool was made to not connect or hook into any system - a user could only attach a power lead and have it project an image, possibly without sound.
"Go ahead and work on the OSD," Holden told her. "I don't feel comfortable activating a possible cognitive hazard."
"What the hell got in here?" Wilson fixed his attention on a hatch in the floor that the drone missed seeing. Stamped 'Archive Security,' the hatch appeared to have claw marks on it, and someone had forced it open.
"Yeah, this planet is strange enough so far that it might be a good idea to be suspicious in general." Ansgar shifted his flamer's carry strap and brought out his forensics scanner to take a closer look at the surroundings, to see if the drones might've missed something.
Three things stood out to him. One, all the people killed outside were hacked apart from a wide variety of weird angles. The ones inside were killed in straight line swings expected from a human or near-similar in morphology. Two, the bone sword pinning the corpse-thing to the far wall was much thicker, straighter and more 'sword-like' than the curved sword the thing at the crossroads used.
Third, judging by that semi-precognitive flash...
"Alright, looks like we had different attackers outside and inside." Ansgar pointed out his findings in regards to the attack patterns. "And I am getting a weird feeling about the hatch. It's not safe."
"Let's keep that hatch closed for now." Holden nodded, and Wilson backed away, moving over to his CO.
Srinja looked up from the dead omni-tool she converted into a reader for the OSD. "Holden? This omni-tool is meant to play something off of a weapon power lead. Encrypted, so it would need you. I'll convert a Typhoon over with an omni-display so we can get it in high-definition."
"Okay when it's set up, I'll give it the code."
Srinja converts said Typhoon and two dead omni-tools into parts needed for that task. Holden set up 3 plasma mines outside the hatch.
By now, the ETA until enemy force arrival was 2 hours, five minutes.
"Falkner, Iridian, let's take a look at the R&D building." Wilson told them.
"Yeah, good idea." Ansgar nodded. "You want to take the lead with your bullshit space-magic?"
Wilson nodded back. "Yeah. Let's roll."
The R&D door's keycard reader had the same odd image of an eye in a hexagon as the untainted keycard, which none of the bloody ones from the Barracks had.
"Olon, you still have that clean keycard on you? Looks like we'll need it here. Matching symbols."
"Yep, got it here." Olon walked over to the door. "Ready?"
"Keep a bit to the side so I can fill the room with fire, if necessary." Ansgar said. "Otherwise ready."
"Ready. Open it."
Olon swiped the card and immediately went for his shotgun. Wilson readied his ODIN.
Confounding their expectations, the door chimed. "Welcome, Director Gillor."
"...Was that a doorbell?"
"Quite the polite door." Ansgar remarked.
The door slid open a second later, Wilson moved in on point. Ansgar followed behind, taking care to keep his flamer angled to the side of his teammates.
The interior had been done in pure white tile for the left-side of the building, and faux wooden plascrete tiling for the right half. Three repair cradles loomed to the left, each one holding some kind of battlesuit. All three suits were ruined, torn open in multiple places, covered in dried blood and black viscera. Tools and manuals laid scattered around the least damaged one.
Next to it, a woman in a formal suit and an Ashland pin stretched out dead on the floor, her skull smashed. A severed forearm clutching another keycard like Iridian's sat on the floor next to her. To the right stood a series of computer consoles, and an elevated plinth with a humanoform VI hovering above it
"Looks like we found the missing arm." Ansgar surmised.
"We need to ensure that VI isn't connected to anything." Wilson warned.
Ansgar pulled out his scanner again. "I can try to see if any active connections are noticeable."
Once again surprising them, the VI spoke. "I am afraid that is not possible."
"Ahhhh fuck." Wilson swore.
"This system is currently hardwired to the base fusion reactor."
"Do you blow up if we give the wrong access phrase? Because if so, I'd like to leave." Iridian asked.
"Upon shutdown or anyone attempting to shut down the reactor or access the restricted archives I am instructed to detonate the reactor, Director Gillor." The VI replied to him. "This unit is not currently in security mode. Would you like to engage security mode and set a password?"
Ansgar stared at the VI. "Let's get Sr-"
"No." Wilson turns to Falkner, a hunch blossoming to mind. "Check that corpse for the other key card. We may need it."
Ansgar found the other one looked identical to the one they'd previously recovered, except the name on it read "Davis" and not "Gillor."
"We got a 'Davis' here. VI, please identify site-personnel named 'Davis', if accessible."
"Certainly, Assistant Director Davis. Assistant Director Miranda Davis, in charge of Project Reclamation. Current location; unknown. Current security clearance, White."
Wilson smiled. "Thought so. If you're holding the keycards, it thinks you're the people it belongs to. Ask for info on this project and about the security clearances."
"VI, please list security clearances, including the Director's, and give a summary of Project Reclamation, if accessible." Ansgar requested.
"Clearance: Green - general information; Blue - project information; Red - sensitive information; White - background information; Black - executive-level command. Director Gillor's current security clearance is black."
"Project Reclamation is the attempt to recoup value from purchasing extant ExoGeni corporate assets and leveraging mining and HE3 processing from such The current focus is on System Jeremiah, per instruction from [EXECUTIVE ORDER: OVERRIDE AND DELETE], and with information provided by corporate databases, to investigate possible archaeotech for sales purposes."
"Due to certain legal limitations, the landing site will operate independently from all HE3 mining sites and will not be listed on corporate resource boards until a return on investment is produced. Legal, PR, and the Board of Directors are not to be notified of Project Reclamation activities."
"So someone knew this system had archaeotech." Wilson muttered.
"All information is to be filed with Directors Simson and Kapan. ALERT: Director Simson death reported on the extranet nineteen days ago. ALERT: Director Kapan death reported on the extranet nineteen days ago. As a result the Project is currently in ISOLATION status until further instructions from [EXECUTIVE ORDER: OVERRIDE AND DELETE] have been received."
"Alert: corporate files from Jinn Outer Systems Exploration are still in read-only lockdown."
"Well this all sounds just great. VI, do you have an OSD?" Iridian asked.
"Negative. Per executive instruction absolutely no data is to be recorded onto any permanent storage device regarding the Project. All media records, logs, sensor logs, and other semi-permanent data are to be purged nightly. All records are to point at all exploration being conducted under Jinn Outer Systems Exploration. Any required data storage must be placed within the Demeter's Tears for pickup."
"Warning: Demeter's Tears is showing severe internal damage. Warp core missing. Mainframe missing. Eezo missing. Unidentified contamination in ship."
"VI, is there anyone who is permitted to access the restricted logs?" Iridian followed up.
"Negative. Only Senior Director Campbell was authorized. Senior Director Campbell's last known location was Excavation Site 001."
"Alert: Cessation of lifesigns from medical bracelet for Senior Director Campbell ceased 19 days, six hours, forty two minutes ago."
With this tide of predictably bad discoveries, Ansgar tapped on the comm link to Spyglass. "Spyglass, how do we look on the hostiles? ETA or any changes?"
"A few more groups of the black things have picked fights," the answer came. "They're about an hour and fifty minutes out from the base you guys trapped, they slowed some."
"Thanks Spyglass, keep us up to date if anything major changes."
"Director Gillor," The VI chose to announce, "you have nine unread alerts and two comms attempts."
"Access unread alerts." They could guess what those would be.
"Six alerts related to lack of sensor inputs at Site 001. Two alerts related to reminder: wife's anniversary. One priority alert; loss of primary comms, all systems."
"Alert: no comms and no sensor input from Site 001. Recommend checking comms settings, physical cables, and/or contact the site directly."
"Alert repeats five times. First alert instance, six days eleven hours ago."
"Alert: Primary Alert. "All comms systems are down. No personnel are responding to recall order. Loss of contact with supervisors."
"Were any messages left with the comm attempts?" Those might prove informative.
"Comm attempt one: Shean Gillor, six days ago: 'Jack this is Shean. You haven't called in almost a week. Please call me.' Message ends."
"Comm attempt two: Unknown caller. SA-5 codeband. Call begins: 'Director, this is Doctor Ciana Vandefar, here with the HERMES exploration team. We'll be down to discuss your findings per our earlier agreement - please have all of the relevant data ready for review. I am very skeptical of anything on this rather disturbing planet being of value, so any reason why you have violated protocols and cut out your own corporate governance had better be very convincing. I'll see you in one hour.' Message ends. Datetime stamp seven days, nine hours ago."
Very informative indeed. "Is there a record of the meeting referenced in this call?"
"No, Director. The meeting would have happened at the Forward Corporate area, near Dig Site 001. Non-Ashland Eldfell personnel were not allowed at the HQ site aside from family members."
"Yeah, we'll have to head to the digsite for more info, most likely." Ansgar acknowledged.
Meanwhile… Holden was standing by to activate the omni tool and see what message it had. Paig and Rho were in the truck, monitoring both this, and the talk with the VI, over the squad comms.
"Open sesame." Malcolm put in the code. He and Avasarala saw the omni-tool project the image of a handsome man against the far wall, most likely the site director.
"Not much time. Always hated melodramatic 'if you're reading this I'm dead' shit in the trideo… and here I am doing it."
"Good thing we aren't reading it." Holden whispered.
"Not sure if this will even work. The things are almost here, and that Vandefar bitch has double crossed us all."
"Naturally." Holden added sagely.
"Here's what you need to do. We found something. An energy source, and an incredible one. More than one. When we went to investigate it, the entire planet went insane. Ate our ship, and then corpses started getting up and attacking and what we thought were just statues turned into living things. Vandefar killed her own damned team and from what the two Ysangi who Collins talked to told us, she's going to do something really stupid."
"The tech we're here for is still tagged, down in oh-one. Looks like a helix kind of thing. Forget the rest, grab that and the copy of the notes and get out on the Happy Dream while you can. We'll… ha, the soldiers will hold here as long as we can, try to get the staff out of here and to the HE3 station. Ashland SecureCorp will be here in a few days with four cruisers and a couple of regiments of mercs, if we can hold out that long we'll be fine. If we can't... Well, the power source is the most important thing here."
A very loud series of crashes and screams sounded in the background. "...What do you mean - wait, Vandefar is leading the zombie things... oh fuck. Power up the suits, now! VI, engage code Samson!" The image fractured into static and cut off.
"I believe the appropriate interjection of a profanity here would be 'Oh fuck indeed.'" Agent Rho summated.
"All of this death for some kind of 'energy source'?" Paig was appalled. "Did that start this mess?'
Holden walked up to the bone sword and pulled it out from the wall. "Ciana is with the corpse things. She's the one who killed the civilians inside… If we want to get the data here, we'll need the credentials off that body at the dig site. Our deadline is fast approaching, so we need to head there now, then come back and get what we need and leave."
"Hang on, Holden." Wilson interjected. "Olon, try to reverse Samson with your authority."
"You must re-enter the passphrase to turn it off.' The VI informed Iridian when he tried.
"Well, at least we now definitely know to treat Ciana as a hostile." Ansgar shrugged.
"As if we didn't already."
"And that the Ysangi can be reasoned with."
And at the next moment:
"Comm Alert: Director, the system is receiving an incoming inbound message. It is not prefaced with the appropriate Ashland-Eldfell encoding."
After a nod from Eric, Olon spoke. "Accept message."
"Parsing, please wait."
The speaker was unquestionably Ciana Vandefar. "Soooo... any of you stupid fuckers still alive? Testing..."
"No no, we're all dead now." Wilson snarked.
"If we say 'no', would you believe us?" Ansgar joined in.
"Say nothing - goddammit!" Holden snapped over the squad line - for once cursing Sigma's impulse to sarcasm - but it was too late. So he patched into the conversation. "Hello Ciana."
"Oh, good, I figured some of the goons would show up sooner or later. I was hoping Auntie would send in the stupid fukbois, but clowns work too."
"I'm sure you have plenty on your plate right now, and I would hate to keep you." Holden swapped onto a personal line to Avasarala. "Trace it, get her location."
"Sorry, I'm just busy telling myself 'I told you so.' Anyway, here's the thing. I'm sure Auntie lied her ass off to get you here, just like she did to the General and his pack of oddly well intentioned killers. So I'll clue you into a little secret, mostly for my own amusement."
"Whatever you are here to do, it isn't going to work. If a fucking dreadnought can't kill me, your pack of idiots is going to die pretty fucking quick. So, do yourself a favor. Get the fuck out of here, now, and I'll call off the Exalted, who are super pissed you are here. You have no idea what is at stake, or what you're dealing with."
"And you do?" Holden inquired. "Enlighten me?"
"Sorry, I've already exceeded my number of big bad evil girl monologues today with the General and his son." Ciana spat. "I'm not here to fucking enlighten you, you Lord of Sol piece of shit. So get the fuck out, or die. The Exalted said I had to give you a chance to go. So that's done. I'll see you soon, unless you're smarter than I expect."
"You said you could call them off, but you're taking their orders? Who is using who here?" Holden questioned her.
"I'm sorry, the caller has terminated the signal." The VI stated.
"Shit. VI, have I stored any passwords in this terminal?" Iridian groped for an easy solution.
"No, you have not, Director."
"Wasn't hard to trace the call." Srinja said unhappily. "It came from the dig site."
Wilson connected to Spyglass. "Spyglass, has the army sped up at all?"
"Uh...not really. But Lieutenant Commander, about five thousand more just left the south, and are headed towards you. ETA is around three hours for that group. And, well, one of them is huge. Like twenty meters tall, eight limbs. Knocking buildings out of his way."
"Holden, I know this is not our first fucked up mission, but what the fuck, man?" Ansgar indignantly protested.
"And how long until that other dreadnought arrives?" Holden had to factor in Omega Response as an issue too.
"Based on the time since her last estimate, probably four and a half now." Paig calculated.
"Our course is clear." Rho told them all. "Leaving aside the possibility of useful energy tech - and given this planet, yes, I am aware it may be yet another trap - Vandefar cannot be allowed to do whatever it is she is up to."
"Agreed." Wilson's eyes glowed fiercely. "Given she led a force that slaughtered this entire camp, including children, she's becoming a monster."
"Rho, does your fire-lance hit harder than a Kyle? Considering she's in our way, and she already shrugged that off." Holden pointed out.
Paig shook his head. "None of this makes any sense, though. Why bother to contact us? Why is she working with these things? Why kill off all these people? We are missing key facts and motivations here. It will be difficult to 'stop her plans' if we don't know what they are."
"She said the Exalted wanted her to send a message, almost like she would have preferred not to." Iridian observed. "So she's clearly under the influence of something."
"How do we do that doctor?" Holden countered Paig. "Synthia did say she was Xeno Excommunicae..."
"Precisely, Commander." It was strange to hear Rho sound so approving for once. "It matters not what she is planning. And surviving a Kyle when she was probably in cover or underground is one thing, that doesn't mean she can survive a direct strike in the open..."
"Ok hang on a sec," Olon interjected. "She came in here leading the corpses and then said these Exalted wanted her to call. I don't think it's a leap of logic to assume that the Exalted are the corpses. And didn't the previous corpse we spoke to say something about assisting the Ythrongi? It implies nothing good."
"We can have this discussion on the go." Wilson testily stated.
Holden placed a call to Grassi. "Can we rig up an air transport for those JOTUNS? If we have to fight her, I want something that can keep her attention so Rho and I can hit her with the big stuff."
"Sure, if you want. Give us the coords."
While Holden did that, Wilson addressed the others. "We do have functional landing pads here. Let's get the shuttles here, load up the shit that's useful, and get to the dig site."
"Rushing towards the digsite is not a 'good' idea." Paig insisted. "She came here for a reason, and she killed all these people for a reason."
Holden turned around. "Doctor, again, how do we find that out?"
"I am unsure." Paig admitted. "Only that we are operating in a deficit of information here, and going into an active dig where we know she may be waiting for us – not to mention putting ourselves into a hole in the ground with no way out and an army coming after us – is not the smartest choice."
"Hell, I get that, but we are out of other options, doc. As for facing here, I dunno. Maybe her getting hit by Repensum may have weakened her. That message could have been a bluff." Holden reasoned. "She didn't have to, nor did she want to. Her allies told her to - maybe because they think she's vulnerable."
"If nothing else, there is not much else here that is usable or safe. The barracks is disgusting and this site is right next to a merchant ship covered in that black fur." Rho added.
Everyone regrouped at the GRIZZLI, and Holden arrived carrying the bone sword with him. "Wait. The black things were fighting with the knights against Ciana. Spyglass, are there any more concentrations of black-furred things around?"
"...Yes, some. Small groups are breaking off from whatever they were doing to attack the running corpse things."
"None near the dig site?"
"No, not that I can see." Ryder responded.
Rho took the wheel. "I'd recommend having the pinnace and shuttles shadow us as we drive north, Commander."
"Understood." Holden got in touch with Grassi again. "Hammer, we have an enemy between us and our objective. She's in league with the corpse beings, and she has already shown she can survive orbital bombardment from the Repensum. She might be weakened from it. If we are to have any chance of winning, we will need a distraction. Air dropped JOTUNs, artillery, whatever can keep her occupied so we can hit her with something that might kill her. Can you get that set up?"
"Yes, sir." Grassi promised. "Gonna need your pinnace to do the lift, though. You okay with staying on the ground down there?"
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained Hammer. We've got secondary extraction for ourselves anyway. My team has stealth gear and training, we will attempt that first. Good luck everyone, this would be one for the history books - if they wouldn't drop the books into black ink."