Still in combat, and my notes always break down when we’re fighting.
Picking up mid-fight – we’ve found a net trace on Boomer, who’s in the same state as Umbra, on the far side of Tu’rosa at the site of a pre-Union battle. Hard contact as we enter the active ruins.
Enemy flier frame is down. Still dealing with a close-range melee fighter, invisible, that’s monowhipping Echo, and a long-range heavy artillery frame.
Task Group Brigand reports a whale’s-brain-sized organic mass in the downed flier. They are inclined to purify it with fire. I am inclined to agree.
Echo’s mimic gun terminates and discorporates the invisible melee attacker.
The artillery frame fires a massive concussive shell. I take a hit but stay on my feet. Echo is outside the damage radius but is shaken, also managing to stay up. I chase after it (it can’t stay away indefinitely), landing a glancing assault rifle hit. Hooray for reliable damage.
I move into engagement with the artillerist and pummel it. Echo finishes it off with the omnigun.
Fight’s over, but we haven’t seen a controller frame for the gate yet. Where is it?
As we move in, the radiation environment is hotter, as is the nanite infestation. Nanites are becoming aware of our activity and are getting active. They’re clumping together, visible as black snow rather than haze.
Echo attempts to hack the nanites’ shutdown processes. They’re temporarily diverted. Confirmed they’re not Union tech – most likely old-empire remnant WMD tech.
I can’t scan the gateway, but it is broadcasting. Same voice: “Why are you here? You’re clearly knights of some renown. State your house.” There’s a directional beam, almost a beacon, emanating from it.
(Glyndyr, first of my name of House Shaw, agent of the Free Peoples of Annwn, and we do not leave our people behind.)
Echo pings the gateway. His packets come back retransmitted – fragmented and out of order. He seems to have attracted attention: “There you are.”
Echo moves offline to draw the attention – and radiation – toward himself so I can make a run in to grab the casket. He throws Eye of HORUS at the gate – and perceives a massive complex dominated by a huge carven eye.
Frames appear to be materializing at the gate, as if they’re being printed without a printer. The eye scans Echo in return.
I make my run in. “Boomer, this is Editor. Stand by for turbulence.”
I get a response – Tu’rosan, shifting to our native Welsh-descended tongue. He can’t sense anything but the pain he’s in. Two charged blade strikes and the casket is disconnected.
Echo scans the gate, but he can’t get a reading on the entity. On the other side of the gate is the city that used to be here – but it’s not destroyed, it’s been taken over by the nanites here.
I fire a flash grenade through the gate as I’m moving away. The legion of grunt frames is momentarily inconvenienced.
I shift perceptions back to the other side. There’s some resistance as I’m bringing Boomer’s casket out. Something else is trying to keep it here – but I disconnected it from the gate, and we eliminated the frames that would have contested this, so I ultimately have control.
The landscape reverts to desert. The nanites vanish. The gate was never here (though I can feel its echoes).
Echo does nasty things to the gate’s stability, then blinks back.
We’re fairly sure:
- this gate is a primary anchor to our reality
- the casket was serving as a comms relay and gate controller
- my communication with Boomer was disrupting their control of the grunts
- the place Echo saw on the other side was a primary assembly and staging area
Code-name for the gates is STELAE.
We are notified: On the outskirts of the system, an effect similar to a wormhole transition in space has opened, looking suspiciously like one of these gates without the apparatus. A large starship has emerged through the gate, after which the gate closed. It is phasing between ancient hulk and pristine warship. In what was once the imperial tongue, it bears the sigil, “The Fires of the Emperor.”
This is the ship that glassed our current mission location. “Ashfall” was the nanite incident… who the fck names their org after something like that?