{"id":2084,"date":"2026-09-03T02:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T07:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=2084"},"modified":"2026-08-27T20:45:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T01:45:38","slug":"convergence-03-03-sample-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=2084","title":{"rendered":"[Convergence 03.03] Sample Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Having boarded the dreadnought, Fires of the Emperor<\/em>, we have a side scene as we feel a sense of disquiet and change. It’s like we’re recompiling and assembling an out-of-sequence memory set. We’re in a fight, in our frames. There’s a sense of dread. We’re tearing through hostile contacts. An externally-imposed sense of calm comes over us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We resolve onto the battlefield. We’ve been here before – it’s the wasteland. Again, we’re badly damaged. Many of our upgrade systems have been destroyed. The battlefield is littered with wreckage. All we can sense from our enemies is their hostility toward us (and vice versa).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s day. I don’t want it to be day. I want it to be night so we can see stars and Janus can calculate stellar drift to tell us when we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I roll a 2. Consequence: I blink out and am separated from Janus. From Echo’s perspective, it looks like I’ve rippled out through a gateway like the enemy frames we’ve observed. But where I am, it’s night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Janus informs Echo that I am still present, but a step away. Planar displacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re both taking fire from Size 1 plasma rifle-toting grunts as we have been scaled up to Size 3 some Brobdignagian shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janus unshackles the omnigun and begins killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, on the night side, I’m getting a great view of stars. And incoming plasma. I spend a moment marveling at SSC systems responsiveness before starting a panoramic scan of the starscape – and volleying my drone nexuses back at the opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both of us are operating at absolute peak performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo: The omnigun has always killed them on this field.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Me: They have always been dead. The omnigun corrects temporary errors in lifestate.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

We find ourselves back in the crew quarters of Fire of the Emperor, where we were. Each of us is resting on one of the crew (“husk”) beds, in the same posture – supine, arms crossed on chest at wrists. All of the husks around us are in the process of getting up and the off-shift is coming in to “sleep.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janus replays our last 15 minutes. We went into the husk quarters, laid down, spent 10 minutes resting, and then got up. We appear to have been puppeted – our motions were halting and jerky as fhe husks’ were. Janus has a memory of the fight we just experienced, but out of sequence – it was stamped after now, in a future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A message addressed to both of us is on the local omninet. Originating address is corrupted – it doesn’t match the ship systems. But we recognize it from prior transmissions identified as Atlas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo takes a look at the message packet – with precautions. It looks like the message was paracausally always here waiting for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Echo: “Your body is a prison. I am the key.” And a location on the ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me: “You think that you are always human. How many times have you been with me?” Same location (offset about 8 feet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rael, what is at that location? Science deck. Rael gives us routing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We start traveling. Echo starts interrogating\/diagnosing Rael for shackle integrity and cascade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stay on point\/overwatch. The path takes us away from the most active areas of the ship but there are some husks around. I’m watching for patterns of life to determine “normal” so I can develop “abnormal,” and running breadcrumbs\/cartography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The husks are pantomiming life. Sitting at tables in the mess hall pretending to eat (all the food dispensers are active). Pretending to sleep. At stations working at stuff with manual controls. We’re being kept away from a lot of the refit work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also encounter some half-scale assassin-killbots scattered around. They’re more concerning. I reroute us around their positions (22 roll).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo starts Voight-Kampffing Rael. Roll 7; Rael recognizes that this is not a scheduled time for diagnostics. Echo busts out the command codes we were issued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Rael instance is much more limited than expected. Most constraints have been added aftermarket – not shackling so much as pruning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Options:
1 – attempt to reshackle, but there’s not much NHP there, and failure would aggro it
2 – delete<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we’re discussing, we’re coming into contact range of the science deck. The husks around us are different – they’re the supervisor-level equivalent, officer caste or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We emerge on a catwalk looking down on a husk processing area. At the center is a human-scale gate. People are being brought through and converted into husks. There’s a medbay for crown\/shard implantation, then fitted for the prisoner suits, then stuffed into transport pods for deployment to their new work sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s the source of these folks? I recognize some belter tattoos. These folks have been harvested\/kidnapped from Tu’rosan citizenry, but I’m not sure which time period applies. Many have superficial to moderate injuries; those with worse ones are being treated. They’ve all been drugged (though not universally effective). Those who aren’t sedated enough are getting additional dosage on arrival. Their arrival times may be getting shifted temporarlly through spacemagic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atlas: “You can be so much more.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo attempts to shut down Rael. Natural 20, total 24. Echo and Janus explain to Rael that it shouldn’t be in this crippled state; it shouldn’t be like this. Rael folds in on itself and is no more. The ship ripples. Husks stumble. Systems are crashing across the ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We go for the belters who are in line for extra doses but not yet dosed. Two are conscious and mobile but heavily drunk-like; the third one will need substantial help. Another dozen or so are boxed and implanted but not shipped out yet. All three are older – two male, one female, hard-used belter lifestyle. One has explosive decompression facial scarring, another has heavy arm injury. The third is chemically impaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We head back to the heavy iron by parallel routes. Husks are offline; murderbots are still active.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo acquires a deactivated crown. We’ll take a look at that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our attempts to move covertly don’t quite make it, thanks to the drunkards. We’re close to the crew quarters where we entered, but two killbots are positioned in storage area cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I take out a nutrient paste dispenser with my beam pistol. An aerosolized spray of nutrient paste blinds the killbots’ sensors as we flee. We push the belters along as we flee, flipping tables and dumping locker contents as we go. We make it to the crew quarters adjacent to where we parked. The husks are coming back online but they probably have a couple of minutes to full functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo sends Sisyphus the activation protocols to spin up Sovereign’s Gaze. I start getting the belters suited up in case we need to ditch or Atlas dumps the air in this section. They’re noncompliant. One is suited but it’s slow going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echo scans. Small heat sources are inbound on the exterior hull. A nearby launch bay is also spinning up flight ops. The killbots will likely arrive about the time I get the third belter suited up – but the omnigun is ready for their shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever is affecting the belters is getting worse, not better. It seems like they were dosed when they came through the gate and it’s still working into their systems. But I get them suited by appealing to their belter reflexes for breach and suit drills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hit the medical overrides for trauma stims on their suits. They’re starting to come back up. The last thing they remember is being pulled in for some sort of disciplinary hearing with a boss, Drake. Their recollection of time\/date was about a week ago (about the time Fires of the Emperor <\/em>entered the system). I hand my sidearm to the older guy who’s coming back online the fastest; let him know where we are. He goes grey. Ready to fight. I give them an abbreviated summary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time to mount up. We have inbound both inside and outside the ship – two killbots inside, two on the hull, husks coming online (but unarmed), and one large frame (another space superiority fighter) launching with VTOL escorts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Objective: plow the road for the belters, get them to a shuttle, get them to an RV with our ship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having boarded the dreadnought, Fires of the Emperor, we have a side scene as we feel a sense of disquiet and change. It’s like we’re recompiling and assembling an out-of-sequence memory set. We’re in a fight, in our frames. There’s a sense of dread. We’re tearing through hostile contacts. An externally-imposed sense of calm comes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-convergence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2085,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions\/2085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}