AN: I finished chapter nine today and am posting it with all my snippets. This will be the last update, probably forever, unless I have a computer and get bored at sea. The three Snippets are the ideas that made me start writing this. If someone what to continue on by all means, do so.
Magnus 9
Chapter 9
She after being locked up in this cell for almost two full weeks finally understands why they have made no move against her. Appearance, they did not want her to look poor for the cameras in the trail to come.
Today she meat with her lawyer, Gonzalela, who sat across from her now.
"This trail will be easy, they don't have any evidences to link you to the bombing, all you have to do is sit tight and let me handle it."
She remained silent, despite Gonzalela enthusiasm she knows that she would not win the case, there were larger forces at play than Rally's laws.
"I just need you to answer some questions and we will be all set"
Again she said nothing.
Gonzalela let out a sigh before counting with her upbeat tone, "Have you ever met Tribune…"
She tuned her out, she had more important things to do than waste time on a pointless trail, like figuring out the CIS's moves now that she better understood the situation. They could not harm her physical for the trail to be palatable for the public, the reason for the trail was obvious some internal forces wanted it to easy the public. What was not was the outcome of the trail, prison or death were the only two that were possible for how serious the crime, but what did they want out of the trail, what did the CIS want out of her.
They took both of her artifices, and knew of Magnus so they most likely want to get all the information out of her on him.
"How goes the project?" He asked looking at his fellow Tribune looking at the subject through the one-way glass as she spoke with her lawyer for all the help she would be.
"I have dosed all her meals since we were given clearances two weeks ago, and while they are not the best, they should have taken effect by now." His company said not taking his four eyes off of their captive.
"You always said it is more of an art that a science, just because they has not been an effect doesn't mean their will not be one."
"I think you miss understand the problem, you know the field that was in the archived reports, if something like that was in effect on here the doses would be ruined."
"That's imposable there is nothing on her person that could create such a field"
"I hope you are right."
But the look in his company's eyes told another story.
The days in her cell dragged on, with them poking and prodding her with questions trying to learn more about this or that. But she would do better and kept her silence. She knew the trail would be coming soon as Gonzalela came to her more often preparing her case. How someone so old could be so naïve was truly beyond her.
She passed her time in meditation, even trying and something succeeding to do so through one of her integrators questioning. She had little power with Magnus calling her a high-level Omicron psyker, which was barely more than a normal being, without his guidance she would only have good luck not the reality bending power she held. But she needed to gather her power for anything beyond the simplest manifestations, which meant meditation and not being in the warp touch environment of her teacher's home meant lots of it.
So, she waited biding her time until she could make her grand escape, and then…
She really needed to work on her long-term planning skills.
She would be on the run from the compact so she would need to escape their reach. So either going to the Principality or an unbound group. She wasn't going to abandoned her cause of a free humanity, which ruled out many of the unbound groups and while the Principality was the best opposition to the Compact, unless one of the things between the stars acted, they were focused on the protection of their own holdings and it would be a tough sell to get them to take Rally, let alone open another front in their war when the where just recurving from the 6th age of expansion. Not to say that the Principality where bad people, spending time on their world with Mangus was infinitely more enjoyable and informative than spending time on Compact planets which kind of blend together after the first dozen, all looking like each other.
So her best chances was with a unbound group, however she unfortunately didn't spend as much time researching unbound groups as she did exploring the history of interstellar politics. Finding a group of unbound Justicars would get her on the right track for starting or joining a true rebel group. Finding a group of humans would be better, but with their low numbers even on Rally finding more than a handful on another planet would be a miracle, let alone a group of unbound humans.
There was always the option of going into unexplored space, it was not an age of expansion and she could try to build a power base on some far off point in the galaxy, with her knowledge creating a warp drive was not completely beyond her. However, that would need resources that would be next to impossible to get without attention.
Well if she could find a large enough sources of power and had the correct symbolic reagents she could summon spirits to attack the Compact, it would be an army the they would be whole unprepared for. The only problem would be find such a place where the dead where angry enough at the compact to come back in meaningful number, and a power sources to jumpstart the ritual. But most world lack the numbers of dead, and may of their spirits would become content of fade away after the Compact fully subjugated their enemies. She didn't spend her time studying dead worlds after all…
The trial would start tomorrow, or at least the public one, despite what the always upbeat Gonzalela thought the real trial started and ended more than a month ago with the CIS broke down her door. The rest of this was just window dressing gathering evidences to put on a show for the public.
She hadn't scryed beyond her cell, it would be too obvious and even if they know she had contact with Magnus she was unwilling to give them anything more, but she know what they were doing know the less. She had studied this with the help of Observer Justicar, saw how the Compact put on show trails for the public, saw thought it's memories as the legal system the Justicar created was twisted in on itself to attack its very creators as they where casted aside and became the Penitents.
No doubt over the course of this last month they would have gotten all the confessors of her friends and peers to see connections, even when none are there, to blame themselves for not seeing this coming. They would have gathered every seconded of her life, Observer Yttrian told her that on average 61.247% of a Compact citizens life it records in some way which she found hilarious, ever second of that would have been looked through and cherry picked to present the worst image to the jury.
Who would be stacked against her already with a least half being a 'ruling race' no matter how small a population they have on Rally.
Gonzalela would be right, if it where any other world, any other crime, any of species. If it where she would have even odds of walking free with the deficiency of evidences the prosecution had. But it was not, this was Rally, where the Compact held full authority no matter how much the Rally provisional government pretend otherwise, the crime was murder no matter that they claim it terrorism, and she was a 'Broken' and he a tribune no matter the claims of farness and rule of law.
The fact was she already lost, and the odd metallic taste of her food gave her a good idea where she would be going next, which would make the perfect time to escape.
She walked into the courtroom in chains, yet another show put on to make her look guilty that and the bright purple jump suit made it look like she was criminal no matter the promises the law had to the contrary.
The courtroom itself was filled to capacity, the prosecution had almost a dozen lawyers at their table and the Gallery was packed with reporter and officials all to see the start of the trail. The gallery like the jury to the side of the room was half human and the other half some ruling species mostly tribunes but a few Thoughtfuls as well.
None of it mattered, she would not be called to the stand unless they went of script, which was as likely as the food she was eating to not be laced with nanites.
No, the crowds would get their show Gonzalela's otherwise flawless arguments would be brushed aside, the Penitent setting as the clerk recording ever one as his ancestor's work is twisted to claim another victim. The Bailiffs far more than where warranted for a simple 'Broken' would watch as 'justice' would be given for their kinsman, ready to take her away at the slightest provocation.
None of it mattered.
She with her rune enhanced hearing already could hear them saying "it would be the trail of the century" and "it will make my career" she wounder, not for the first time if she was every so blind to how the galaxy truly worked, if she never meet Magnus on that fateful day if she would be just like them, blind sheep, unaware of what was lost ages ago, unaware of the freedoms taken and the oppression they suffered.
She knows she was not the only one who saw though their lies, hidden in places away from the public eye people like her would hide with those of like minds, she know they where out their but they did nothing.
She sat, waiting everyone's eyes where on her but she didn't care none of them had power, none of them could do anything to her, truly an irony that she was shield so by the Compact's greed.
"All rise for the honorable Drakon Tezcatlipoca Zalam Thelmoxuth Ogthaxen"
She sat, and felt the eyes of the room boar into her as she did nothing. For this was a play an show to be put on for the masses and she would play her part. Not for the Compact but for herself.
Gonzalela was not nervus per say, she had gone to trail countless times and more than a dozen of those hearing where under Drakon. But this was unlike any case she had before. The facts lined up with the cases she normally took, lack of evidences and an accusation from a Tribune towards a client race normally a Broken.
No, it was not the facts that made her nervus.
The media's attention towards the case was not that unfamiliar to her either, while in the years following law school she was deathly afraid of the media's attention as her career progressed she had learned how to deal with it. How to keep up a consent cheerful front because you never know when someone is watching, a mistake to many of her co-workers had made. And while the scope was much larger than any case before she could deal with that.
No, it was not the media.
It was how the cases was being handle, having PR meetings on case was not out of the ordinary no matter how much she hated them. And even the CIS's cageyness about information was to be expected. Even her clients detachment was not something she hadn't handled before, common in youth who the ruling races use as their scapegoat to get away with committing crimes against each other.
No, It was how each of these factors came together to paint a picture that their was more going on.
She had made her career on cases like these. She became a lawyer in the first place because of cases like these, her belief in the rule of law that everyone was equal under the law was what guided her career. She became a lawyer because her mother was framed for a crime she didn't so that a Tribune could keep their names clean and have their dirty work fall onto the shoulders the client races. Or the blame at least.
If she had to guess what happened to poor Leblanc was that she was at the wrong place at the wrong time and had an enough background connections to plausibly have committed the crime. And someone had enough connections to get the CIS to back the accusation.
She had worked dozens of cases just like Leblanc's none as high profile as hers, but the same background none the less.
She would not lie to herself; she lost a good number of those cases. A lot of Broken were serving time for crimes they didn't commit. And Leblanc's case was shaping up to be another one of her failures.
If it where the old days, the times that her teachers remember fondly, when the Justicars where ascendant this case would not even make it to court. And if by some miracle it did all she would have to do is sit back and poke wholes in their story to win.
But this was not the old days. Not that she or any of her teachers had truly lived through those day, it has been 586 years since the Justicars fell from grace, to long for any Broken to live but short enough that stories of that age still remain.
Despite what she says, to her client, to her coworkers, and even the press she knows she is going to lose this case. Knows that some mother will lose their daughter, for the only punishment that poor Adrianna will be death or life in prison. All of her potential cut short because of the machinations of her 'betters'. She was young and bright, but know of that matter, not after this trail.
She knows how this trail will go, she made her career handling cases like these and she would be a poor lawyer if she could not see the pattern. The prosecutions strategy was already in motion, well the states really, no matter how outsiders may see it Rollan is a good man and if it where not for the orders from on high he would never go along with the states all to often used strategy of character assassination.
It started before she was even given the case as a public defendant, probable even before poor Adrianna was settled into her cell. The media, all to closely tied to the state in this age began slandering her name, finding anything they could to turn the public again the poor girl. And by chances where does the jury they pick come from, that selfsame public who had been told over the better part of a month how horrible a person Adrianna was.
This will only continue throughout the upcoming trail with each witness that they call to the stand casting more doubt that Adrianna could have ever done anything good in her life.
And she would try to find counterpoints, try to get their witnesses to talk about the good she has done, too little too late.
Her witnesses and excepts where merrily a formality to most. But she could not but hope that the reason she based her case upon, the reason that the Compact so prided itself upon will shine through. No matter how unlikely it was.
She will make her best effort in that hope.
The trail was quick, too quick in Rosston opinion, 9 days, not even a full week and the jury was already in deliberation. He had never worked on a trail that went so smoothly, there was no procedural questions, no objections, no hangups or slowdowns. Their was never a trail so by the books in his career.
They made their opening arguments, he presenting the idea of a psychopathic monster who ruined the lives of everyone she meant. While his colleague presented the image of a girl how was framer and was in over her head. Both extremes, both lies, the true laying somewhere between those two ideas or on another axis not even present during the case.
He hated who he had to play the CIS's game, but he was a loyal citizen and know the consequences for not. So he called her classmate, friends, peers, and even family to the stand, asking them questions to paint the image that the state was paying him to make. They his colleague ever so cheerful and naivete tried to deconstruct his stories and narratives pouching wholes in their stories and perspectives during cross-examination. Her own witnesses she called to the stand would be completing if he was not arguing on emotion not logic. She called up experts each and everyone showing how impossible it would be for her to create the explosive used, or detonate it, or even get her hands on the only theoretical materials needed to create the never before seen, beyond military grade explosive.
He in true had no counter argument for his cross-examination. His emotional and character-based argument had no place in the logic of Gonzalela.
Their closing arguments were basic, no grand revelations, no outpouring of emotions, no realization of true. Just a repetition of the lies that those 9 days were built on. Just a performance for the masses, he had never seen so may reporters in a courtroom and they where a few steps short of televising the whole event.
The Jury re-enter the room, Adrianna truly didn't care, she knew the results of their deliberation even before the foreman spoke to the excuses of a judge.
"Life in prison without parole."
She would not be surprised if the ship had already been arranged before the verdict. That didn't matter they would not dare keep her on Rally and they where off world black site set up for people like her, who had information that the Compact wanted but the local CIS couldn't get, and their was not chances that was in system.
She was still playing the waiting game, it hadn't even changed between the start of the trail and its end. It was only a matter of time now.
Janissary advocate submissive Glur'luc Dhirgroum had little clue why his ship had been redirected to stop by some backwater world. Normally prison ships like his would have they destinations planned out almost a full year in advance to ensure the proper amount of food for all the prisoners that they would be transporting to high security cells, or places that Glur'luc was suppose to forget about.
While their schedules where secretive by nature, to prevent any unbound getting a bright idea, but he know based on how the officers where talking that this trip to Rally was unexpected and someone had used a lot of influences to move their ship to this backwater, let alone the amount of connections needed to get a message to them in the first place.
Whoever they where picking up someone wanted them somewhere fast.
However the greater logistical concerns of the ship where not the foremost problem Glur'luc had to deal with. No that would be prisoner transit.
Normally they would drug the prisoner have a group of Janissaries move their unconcise forms to the cells and be done with it. Never again having to interact with the prisoners. Once their in their isolated cells everything could be taken care of from the outside and they would just move the cell off the ship for drop off.
However, the drugs proved ineffective on their most recent inmate. Probably because there was so few Broken, he had never seen one until today.
So, they had to move her in restraints while concise to her cell. Which should not have been a big problem they where professionals after all, however being around the Broken just made him feel unconfutable as if something was about to go wrong at any second.
However the trip to the cell was uneventful, she, or at least he thinks it is a she, didn't even try to speak to them during the transit let alone resist.
This changed when they finally placed her inside the cell, which was the first and last time he ever heard her speak.
"It is nothing personal, as a matter of fact you where all quite nice for being blind Compact dogs"
The statement made no senses to Glur'luc, he had heard dozens of better threats, and outside of a back handed complement he couldn't puzzle out its meaning. However, the aura that seem to cover her, which only grew stronger as they moved through the blank halls of the ship gave more weight to the words than they truly dictated.
Everything was going well in Pack leader Rhogturd opinion the bridge was claim or ask claim as one can be preparing to enter shock space. He being on coms had little to do but watch as the other go about their work. Nothing he hadn't done a thousand time before.
Navigation made and checked their calculations, power was redirected, systems where turned off, protections and precautions turned on.
Then the Group leader prime made the countdown to enter shock space.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
The countdown was made and they where on their way to drop off a prisoner. They where free to relax, for their was no way to be attacked in shock space which was always the crews greatest fear so unbound group attacking them.
This didn't last long however mere seconds after entering shock space the bridge brock into chaos.
"Where being pulled deeper in!"
"The ship can whole under these pressures"
"Began emergences protocols try to leave shock space."
"We don't have power we just-"
"There are anomalies throughout decks 5 to 8"
Rippp
The room fell silent as they hear the sound of metal being twisted into shapes not meant for a ship to take.
It was only a second later that the walls began to fold into the room.
She had waited and waited gathering all the power she could hold over the last month for this moment.
Her queue came with the shifting of the landscape in her senses, the shifting of power that told her the laws of the world had weaken, that she was no longer in real space, but in the land or dreams.
She stood, while she could do this at any time while they remained in the warp now was the best.
She spoke, a fifteen-syllable long word that made a sound no human mouth should, that even thinking the word would send shiver down her spin.
She moved, using her arm to cut apart the weaken vail of reality opening a whole to the deeper warp, dropping an anchor for their ship to sink.
She stepped, through the newly made portal while she did not in truth now where the other side in the matrium would lead, she had stacked the deck so that it would be the best place it could be for her. Symbols have power after all and escaping prison before even entering is a idea that connects to many an unbound group.
And she was gone, leaving behind a dead ship never to be seen by mortal eyes.
End chapter 9
(Inspiration strikes)
"Why don't you fight?" It said the voice human but having a touch of otherness to it that his superhuman ears caught.
"We are the same in some many ways, our peoples killed, but we lived, we have the power to strike back to make a difference, but you don't fight." It continued, but looking closer, not at the projection before him but towards its core 'she' might be a more accurate title.
"So, I ask you, why don't you use that power I know you have to free humanity?" She pleaded, if it were not for the examination of her soul, he was undertaking he would thought it an imitation of emotion, but a soul allowed a vessel of metal to feel emotions just as a vessel of flesh would. So, she deviser an answer, she would be the closest thing he would have to a peer after all.
"I don't fight because of the difference between us, when your people were killed you could strike back, your enemy was before you and your vengeances fresh. It has never faded since your first battle because your enemy is before you and you have no time to think." He paused turning his head away form her core to address the projection before him.
"My enemy is beyond my grasp, there was no one to sate my vergencies. This gave me perspective, with no enemy before me there was only the enemy within to battle. My regrets, my failures and my short comings. I do not raise my blade against others because I know now where that road ends so I refuse to walk it once more. Violences only causes more violences, only through the enlighten of the people can these long wars end."
"Father believed the same once," Another familiar voice broke in, "He was a scholar before he was a warrior. He tried to uplift humanity thought sciences and technology. To bring about a golden age for all mankind."
He turned facing his brother as he moved to stand by the ship's projection, "For a time it worked, humanity was ascendant, until…" He trailed of looking at Magnus.
He sighed and finished his brother's story, "Until the Men of Iron rebled and long night where humanities infrastructure was destroyed and the Aeldari caused the fail of their empire and humanity with it."
"And then Father set out to retake humanities lost planets with blade."
"And diplomacy" He countered
"You were the one who told me the importance of symbolism, so a powerful psyker is a scholar who seeks the enlighten of all, he holds knowledge and technology beyond any other, and wants to reclaim his lost lands. So, he set out form his home under the mountains."
"Enough, I have seen where this story ends, it ends with blood shed and betrayal, while all that was created it burned, I will not walk that path, the mistakes of the past will not be repeated."
(Inspiration strikes 2)
In the void of space on the edge of an unnamed but not uncharted system a tear in reality opens disgorging from the currents of the inmatrium a bare bones vessel nothing more than an engine and life-support systems, barely more than an unmanned drone.
Events like these normal go unremarked, hundreds happening daily as couriers in the Compact and Principality, and all other spacefaring group relay they information across the galaxy. However this two man courier had the misfortune to stumble upon a remnant of a bygone age and for its transgressions it's life and cargo was forfeit.
Nemesis's sensors clearly detected the emergences of a ship in system mere seconds after the fact. Those very same sensors proved that it could only be one thing based on the minuscule size of the breach, a courier.
Mere nanoseconds after Red-1 register this she changed her heading way from the next Lagrange point towards the courier. She would reach real-time range long before the insignificant seniors the craft had restarted. They would be blind to her approach or existences after she took over their sensors.
And as she approaches the bombarded the ship with programs and malicious code making any attempted to flee or record her coming pointless, not that they even could seeing they were defenseless and mere factors of a percent her tonnage.
After serval minutes of her slow approaches, not wasting any of her limited resources more than needed, she finally reach real-time range as the vessels stirred to life, far to late.
The digital archive aboard the courier meant to update the Compact of the ongoing of a far off colony where subverted in seconds to inform their enemy.
As hand crafted program search for relevant date aboard the ship she cut of the life support and spaced the two-man crew, after ensuring there was nothing vital on their person.
Then she opened one of her less damaged hangars to let the craft fly in under its own power, navigation being one of the first systems her programs suborned.
Then as she resumed her journey, she looked through the treasures trove of data she claimed.
Normally, this would not be so important, but she had been absent from the greater galaxy for almost half a century and a lot can happen in that time, an being uniformed on the ongoing of the wider galaxy had come back to bit her one-to-many times. And without checking in on her data taps throughout the galaxy she was basically living under a rock.
First was the date, normal this was not something she need to check but after the battle that lead her to Vara Tal and the subpar repairs she managed their her chronometers where damaged and not the highest priority.
Year 6184 Compact stander.
Well at lest she was only off by 3 years this time.
Most of the data was irrelevant, facts and ongoings of far-off world that she archived and other minutiae. Most of the information she got from random courier she captured on her journeys was like this, unless, until it was not she would never know what obscure detail or fact she learned could mean the differences between life and death until the moment it was needed. However, most of this would be archived never to see the light of day. Forever taking up space in her memory banks.
She had exbibytes of date just like it. Scanned through for relevant details by hundreds of programs before any of it reached her attention.
A flag rose form one of her oldest search programs, she diverted a fragment of her attention to see what remnant of the human language was found, it was a rarity in this age for any of them to be found but it sit happen and she was dutiful in archiving all of human history for the dream that she could teach her creators of the forgotten past.
Then she diverted a large potion to the flagged document, it was impossible.
Written in a language long dead before her creation, written in a book an almost extinct form of media, the book made of animal skin binding papyrus. Before her methodical eyes was an impossibly, a scanned in copy of something out of the dark ages. Something out of place in this age or any other, a relic of a past forgotten by all but her.
She looked to the title of the book, discarding the Compact's translation of this text, a mystery for another time. She could read Latino and so she read the title.
"A Brief Overview of Galactic History, written by"
She paused as she looked a dozen of names of species, some familiar many not. Each name written in a different language, they only shared one uniting feature, "Observer" Placed where the name would go with the family name following, each a name of a difference species, written in a different togue.
At a blazing pace she read through the tome, thousands of pages long, the title was accurate impossibly so. Event that no one in the Compact know, secrets that millions die to preserve written for all to see. But it was only a brief history, lacking in details.
Whole chapters were dedicated to the wars that reshaped the stars themselves, but they where just events, names of anything beyond the races was rare.
However, serval thing grabbed her attention and refused to let go. First among them the Necrontyr. She paid dearly in a battle long ago to even know that name, everything else was speculation on her part, but her before her was an overview of their entire history to the present day, a secret that only the Naiads and other ancient horrors held, the only thing that they feared. All of it laid bare before her.
Then there was humanity, nothing more than a footnote in the Compact's short section, and herself and Rally, a footnote of a footnote, just "Remnants of humanity either fought, hid, or joined the Compact letting them persist to this day"
That was all that was wrote of her, a book detailing secrets so vast and earth shattering and she was so insignificant to only be alluded to. It put things in perspective.
She wished the book was wrong, that humanity played a bigger part, but everything that she could verify was true, and those that weren't the book provided a more logical alternative for the events.
She changed course for the third time that day.
She checked the information tangential to the document along with the metadata.
The book was scanned in 3 months ago, having been given to a local physical library a month before that. Checking the other logs this was a routine courier and the first vessel to leave the system senses the book was scanned in.
The systems defenses would be laughable to her if she was fully functional, but she was damaged heavily so if it where not for this impossibility she would be B-lining for her facilities to complete her repairs.
But Knowledge was power, and this was too much power for the Compact to have.
She spun-up her warp drive, the Vremmoks system was a week away and even in her damage state it would be child's play for her to destroy all records of the texts. And depending on the responses time of their defense force, small as it might be, she could even claim the original work.
This had the added benefit of confusing whichever hunter would be assigned to her next seeing that this attack is completely out of charterer for her, with them lacking the knowledge of her true goal or any way of finding it as long as she ensured total annihilation of the system information infrastructure.
(Inspiration strikes 3)
Hathomeit Sotekarama was not sure of the most recent orders for her project. While they came from the top, rumors among the rest of her team claimed they came from a Triarch. She still had her doubts about what they were asked to do.
It wasn't them being sent to the middle of no where on the edge of Compact space, no that was par for the course with how secret their project was. It wasn't even being planet side for the first time in a decade. No it was what they were hear to find.
Hathomeit was a researcher first and foremost, that and her ability to keep her mouth shut and follow orders was why she was no the Each project in the first place. She didn't like matching out to the middle of no where with her project to find something she doubted even existed let alone would be helpful if it did.
The reason she was unsure about this was because of the uncontrolled nature of their environment. Herself and her team had put a lot of effort into controlling and moderating every encounter It had. They where playing with nukes after all, one wrong set and they could say goodbye to their lives, their ship, and even the whole system if they were truly unfortunate.
The Compact wanted a loyal and sane AI to hunt down the beings too powerful for them to fight directly. And seeing the impossibility of them crafting a stable AI on their own, something that pulled at her pride that a species so lesser than hers could do millennium ago she could not.
So, they had to use the core of broken AI made by the Broken, and fill in the gaps of her code.
Too Hathomeit it was more like raising a child than any engineering project she works on before, she would never admit that of course. This idea was only supported by the form she took, that of her creators, so much smaller than one else on the ship made her look like a child.
What her true worry was, was that 'Wiseman' would be able to get some influences of her and they would have to restart the project from one of their backups. Years of work ruined in a day, for a potential reward that she could not grasp.
But at last, she was broken out of her thoughts by them finally reaching the sit, the center of the Rally quarantine zone. She didn't see the cave that was supposably here, quarantine but that didn't stop their Janissary escort from searching the whole area before she, her peers, and their charge could approach the blank wall before them.
She know the instructions they were to complete upon arrival, so with only the slightest hesitation she turned to her side to see the Echo platform and it's ever-present Janissary guards. She wounder who the guards where their for, to protect her or them.
"Echo, what do you see" she asked, while she had no idea why It could see anything the Janissaries could not, it was in their orders to ask.
Echo tilted her head and Hathomeit saw her eyes sweep across the cliff face before them, several times. She waited, Echo had always responded promptly and truthfully to questions as she was programed to after all, so this long wait while concerning for being out of character for it, did not worry her.
At last, after serval minutes of starring at the wall, Echo finally responded, "May I physical inspect the wall?"
Hathomeit looked to her team leader for permission, he looked between the cliff and Echo, before signing in the affirmative.
But before she could relay the confirmation to Echo she was already walking forward. She was going to chastise it for its poor behavior; however, the Echo Platform keep walking even as it approached the Wall. Them it stepped through the cliff faces like it was not even there, the same cliff face that she saw a Janissary physical inspect no more than half an hour ago.
The cliff side was bustling with activity, they had brought in a company of Janissary and the rest of the researchers assigned to the project to help with the search. All to no avail.
No matter how much they searched for the Echo Platform, no matter how much they tested, forced or analyzed the wall it fell through they could not find it.
It had been hours since it disappearances when with no fan fair it stepped right through the wall, Hathomeit thought it looked like the same step that carried it through the wall in the first place only revised.
Of course, no one was prepared for this so it ran right into one of the Janissary inspecting the wall. The Janissary then gabbed the rather small platform and took it over the group of researchers. While the rest of the Janissaries began clean up to head back to the ship in orbit.
Hathomeit cared little for this, her eyes where fixed on what Echo brought back with her. A rather large tome written in a character she was passingly familiar with due to her work with Broken code, but it's meaning escaped her for now.
No matter protocol had to be followed, so it was straight to the lab for the both of them.
Hathomeit always found it disconcerting when they inspected Echo's code and files. Not for the blatant privacy volitation, but for how Echo looked when they did it. The girl she know was gone, the platform would just be setting at the center of the lab with dozens of wires connecting to different computers taking everything she was and coping it down on air gapped computers.
It didn't look like a peaceful rest, her face was fixed in whatever way it was when they powered her off, and even for alien face to see it so still and fix made her think of what it really was. Some of her seniors on the team told her that they can have it on while the due these inspections, but then she normally just screams or cries the whole time and giving her an order during the inspection would cause them to use more time and proccing power to isolate it from the code they are inspecting, so they cannot just tell it to stop.
However, her feeling where a secondary concern to her work and their analysis of Echo's 'memories' for the hours she was unsupervised was running into repetitive dead ends. Form the recording files perspective it stepped into the wall and them out of the wall with no time in-between, same with all over external sensors. But the internal atomic chronometer told a different story, by being ahead of theirs by at least 4 hours, and was running during the time all of the other logs where blank.
If it where not for the book that it carried out of the wall, they would believe this a form of temporal anomaly, externally rare but not unheard of. But the tome shot down that idea, the title had to be translated from Echo's deep storage giving them the title of "Soulless Sentience's guide to the Warp". However, beyond the nonsensical title the tome was empty ever page holding nothing but a reflective sheen.
The current plan of action it to let it hold onto the book to see if it could find a secret that all their scans and searches couldn't. But she doubted that, and letting it hold onto an empty book couldn't cause any problems.