- Location
- USA
[X] Prometheum
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
SCEDQuest Epilouge
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The tension was suffocating, a dense cloud hanging over the crowd gathered outside the commanding officer's office in the Space Command Exploratory Division. They stood in silence, waiting, their breaths collectively held. The quiet was so absolute that even the faint beep of an automated delivery truck reversing in the distance sounded unnaturally loud. Every eye was locked on the closed door, as if sheer willpower could force it open.
It was a strange mix of people, astronauts, astrotechs, accountants, technicians, janitorial staff, every rung of SCED's ladder was represented. Many of them had been part of the organization since its wild beginnings, back when it was Vice Admiral Carter's probably-illegal, definitely-audacious side project. Despite their differences, they were united now in their loyalty to the Director and the mission he'd built.
Finally, the door creaked open, and Alexei Leonov stepped out. The legendary "second first man on the moon" and acting CO of SCED carried himself with a rigid tension that matched the crowd's mood. His face betrayed nothing, but his sharp eyes scanned the room, seeming to weigh the atmosphere before he spoke.
"I just got off the line with the Big Boss," he said evenly, his voice cutting through the thick silence. Everyone knew who he meant.
"The news isn't good," he continued, pacing slightly. "Budget cuts are coming across the board. They're pulling resources to fund the TCN project. Space exploration, expansion, colonisation has been slashed. We're done. SCED won't be the ones leading humanity to the stars in the decades ahead."
The air seemed to leave the room in an instant. Heads dropped, murmurs of disbelief rippled through the crowd, and a few began to quietly sob. But before the despair could fully take hold, Leonov raised his hand sharply, commanding silence again.
"But it's not all bad news," he said, his voice firm, yet sly, like he was holding back a trump card. The crowd stilled, sensing something beneath his words.
"Do you really think Director Carter would abandon his most loyal crew, let us hang out to dry?" His tone sharpened, igniting a flicker of hope among the crowd. He leaned in slightly, as though sharing a secret. "We'll retain the funding for the Epsilon Eridani Expedition. That fat stack of credits is untouched."
For a split second, there was silence. Then the room erupted. Cheers burst forth like a dam breaking, wild and frenzied. People clapped, shouted, and even wept openly, their despair flipping to jubilation in an instant. The sound was deafening, a storm of manic loyalty.
"Carter's got our backs!" someone hollered, their voice half-lost in the roar.
"Always does!" another shouted back, and the cheers redoubled, quickly turning into the director's name being rythmically chanted.
Leonov held up his hands again, trying to regain control, but the crowd was barely listening, swept up in their fervor. Leonov only gave them a tight-lipped smile, waiting for the frenzy to burn itself out.
When the noise finally began to fade, Leonov's voice cut in again, crisp and commanding. "Yes, we've got the funding," he said, "but it's not a blank check. We'll need to get creative, make every credit count. The administrative staff and I will figure it out. Until then, spread the word, and clear the corridor!"
He turned sharply to one of his aides. "Hanson, get the paper-pushers into my office now. We've got some accounting gymnastics to pull off."
Amalia Amiri slurped a cup of noodles, her posture mirroring the curled shrimp that flavored her lunch. She sat hunched over in her small office, reviewing the latest batch of data. Her chopsticks hovered midway to her mouth as she cast a glance out the window, her gaze landing on the gray, barren lunar surface. Even now, the sight felt surreal, almost impossible to believe. Living and working here on the moon was a dream realized, a challenging, often grueling dream, but worth every hardship.
In the early days, living conditions had been far more primitive. Amalia hadn't minded; the opportunity to work on her doctorate in this extraordinary place, under the SCED banner, had been reward enough. Fortunately, the Treasury had finally taken the hint, funneling significant funds into lunar infrastructure. The promised mass migration to the moon might never materialize, but Earth itself might yet be saved.
From her office, the view of Earth was blocked by the habitation dome perched at the edge of the crater. Still, she appreciated the recent improvements: unlimited warm-water showers, expanded ration cards, and better facilities, small luxuries that made life here more bearable. The SCED and, by extension, Director Carter, always seemed to look out for their own.
Her computer console beeped, pulling her focus back to her work. The supercomputer she'd secured time on had finished its latest computations. She scanned the indicators, graphs, and measurements it had derived from terabytes of Craterscope observational data. Another dud. Another lifeless, uninhabitable rock.
Amalia cursed under her breath, setting the noodle cup gently on her desk. How she envied the team working on the discovery of Epsilon Eridani h. But her time would come. For now, she would continue her meticulous search, gathering data and contributing to the broader efforts of the SCED.
There was, of course, her side project. The sweeping budget cuts had gutted civilian space exploration initiatives, but Carter had ensured a steady flow of funding for military applications. SCED members were encouraged to leverage their expertise in service of the wider Space Command. Amalia had found her niche in these new priorities, and her console's screen now displayed the title of the current work-in-progress report she was working on with a few colleagues:
"Project Apocalypse: A Feasibility Study on the Use of a G-Drive-Powered Interstellar Vehicle as a Relativistic Planetary Assault Weapon."
Every star in the night sky an enemy. The phrase echoed in her mind, chilling and galvanizing all at once.
Her academic focus had always been on the search for advanced extraterrestrial life: detecting radio signals, identifying planets with unusual light patterns that might indicate artificial illumination, and investigating stars with peculiar dimming, suggestive of Dyson constructs. That pursuit was as much one of wonder and curiosity as it was a mandate to prepare for the unknown, for the threat of an adversarial universe.
Amalia shook her head, dispelling the thought. She picked up her noodles and continued eating, savoring the rare indulgence of shrimp as she prepared to dive back into the work.
Mercury was one of the worst postings, not only because of the harsh conditions but due to its very position in the solar system. The planet was tidally locked to its orbit, meaning that any construction on the surface had to contend with the extreme fluctuations between blistering heat and freezing cold. Add to that the constant bombardment of solar radiation that stripped the planet's surface bare, and it became clear that any material found here was more easily accessed elsewhere in the system, usually farther out, where the resources were more useful.
But Mercury had one undeniable advantage: its proximity to the Sun.
Sky Vellia stood at the heart of it all. As the lead scientist for the first experimental stage of the Epsilon Eridani Expedition, they were overseeing the development of the solar-powered laser acceleration array, the infrastructure that would eventually propel solar-sail powered probes into the vast interstellar void. For now, though, it was small scale: a compact, well-shielded habitation module, around one square kilometer of solar panels, another kilometer of radiators, and a laser engine where the engineering team conducted tests, shooting their powerful laser at pieces of aluminum foil.
"And this is the control center," Sky was saying, guiding a visitor through the facility. They were currently giving a tour to a member of Parliament from Starbound, who'd come to inspect their progress.
"Not much to it, is there?" the representative remarked, clearly unused to the lack of gravity. His gaze flicked nervously between the two stations in the capsule, where a laser was being carefully aimed at the floating aluminum flakes.
Sky smiled slightly, knowing exactly what he was thinking. "It's a testbed facility," they explained, helping him rotate on the spot with a practiced gesture. "This is where we test everything, from the specially developed solar panels to the laser engine. It's a hazardous environment. Solar radiation damages everything that isn't shielded. We're here for precision and redundancy, not luxury and space."
The representative nodded, still glancing around the confined space. "I understand, but it still feels… small."
Sky chuckled softly. "Out here, showering with cold is a luxury." They gave him a small, almost wistful smile. "This is the frontier, after all. We're so close to the sun, we don't have the luxury of comfort if we don't want to be boiled alive."
The representative fidgeted with the grip on the side of the module, clearly uneasy with the zero-G environment. He seemed to be searching for something else to latch onto, something to distract from the awkwardness of the situation.
"Did you know," he said after a moment, voice dropping slightly, "that Carter's been having talks with the Lands of Nod about joining the expedition?"
Sky froze, their expression darkening. The low hum of murmured chatter in the control center abruptly ceased, and the security agent beside the representative stiffened, eyes narrowing.
"What?" Sky's voice was a sharp, angry growl, much sharper than they intended. The words hung in the air for a moment.
"I—I'm sorry, I thought you knew," the representative muttered, now looking genuinely uncomfortable. "Some Nod laser specialists are being considered for the project, to help improve the laser engine. Less waste heat, better beam coherence. If I remember correctly. The Director's trying to set up some kind of framework for an Anti-Scrin defense council. Both our nations have a vested interest in the exploration of our immediate interstellar neighborhood, security-wise. It's still early, though. Baby steps, you know, but… well, you didn't hear it from me."
Sky shook their head slowly, the sharp edges of frustration softening into a resigned understanding. "I guess if it grew from Carter's initiative…" Their tone was clipped, but there was an odd sense of acceptance there.
The representative, eager to shift the focus away from the uncomfortable topic, pressed forward. "What happens to the full installation once all the probes have been launched?"
Sky blinked, taken aback for a moment. "Depends," they said thoughtfully, continuing. "The Lighthouse Array, once completed, is expected to produce 200 gigawatts of power. I think the plan was to look into antimatter manufacturing after that..."
John Adams stood motionless, staring at the distant pinprick of light in the pitch-black sky. The Sun, so faint from here, was a barely discernible glow, casting long, faint shadows on the icy surface of Makemake. The plantoid lay at the farthest reaches of the solar system, its orbit pushing it some fifty times farther from the Sun than Earth.
"Stop daydreaming and help me," Meying Lee's voice cut through the silence, pulling him back to reality. She nudged him with her armored hand, her voice laced with the playful impatience they'd long shared.
John snapped back to the task at hand, shaking his head inside the sealed environment of his heartcase spacesuit. His focus returned to the drilling robot in front of him, which was silently extracting core samples from the frozen surface. It was mostly working on its own, as designed. John and Meying were there to keep watch and troubleshoot, just in case something went wrong.
There had been a proposal some years ago to limit this kind of expedition to drones equipped with EVA capabilities. The idea was to send out machines that could work independently without needing humans in such extreme conditions. But the SCED had protested vehemently. They had their own reasons, of course, human expertise, oversight, and experience were invaluable, even in the deepest reaches of the solar system.
John chuckled lightly to himself. This was their routine. They'd done it countless times before: drilling for traces of the precious "mystery element", the same elusive element first identified on Mars. So far, all they'd found was ice and dirt, but it was still progress. It was still something.
The robot's mechanical arms whirred, finishing the last of the cylindrical water ice samples and carefully depositing them into the collection tubes. Satisfied with its work, the robot ceased, its task now complete.
"All right, R2," Meying said with a grin, slapping the robot's metallic backside playfully to encourage it forward. "Pathfinder's coming back in a day, and we've got a lot of ground to cover before then."
The robot gave a soft mechanical whirr as it moved, dutifully following its programmed path.
Doctor Kawaga stood before his corkboard, arms crossed tightly, eyes narrowing behind his glasses as he scrutinized the mess of data before him. His mind was already weary, but he pressed on. Red string crisscrossed between prospecting reports, laboratory notes, and planetary data, connecting theories made by colleagues and their angry, often venomous refutations. It was a tangled web of information, each thread leading somewhere new but never quite to the heart of the mystery he was supposed to solve.
It felt, more often than not, like a puzzle with only one piece, a piece that stubbornly refused to fit anywhere, no matter how hard he tried to make sense of it. The M-element, the mystery element discovered on Mars. What was it? Where had it come from? Was it natural? Artificial? If it was the latter, who had brought it here? The Visitors didn't seem to have any use for it, and that left a whole new set of questions: if it was natural, why hadn't they found any traces of it anywhere else in the solar system?
Theories abounded, each one more outlandish than the last. Dense, perhaps? Maybe it was concentrated deep within the cores of planets, but if that were true, there should have been anomalies, strange gravitational or electrical readings in the asteroid belt, or odd fluctuations in Earth's gravity. Yet, nothing. Nothing except for Mars, where, over the years, the SCED had managed to gather barely ten grams of the elusive substance.
Ten grams. A speck. And yet, it was their greatest treasure. The name Carterium had been thrown around by some under hushed breaths.
Kawaga sighed, his gaze lingering on the board. It was maddening. The data never aligned in any meaningful way. It was as if the element itself were deliberately evasive, slipping through their fingers whenever they thought they had a grasp on it.
The door behind him swung open suddenly, the sound of it startling him out of his thoughts. His aide burst into the room, flushed and breathless, her voice filled with urgency.
"Doctor! Doctor!" she panted, struggling to catch her breath. "Boston, Boston's found traces of the M-element in a Charon sample! It's... it's ten thousand times less than on Mars, but it's there!"
Kawaga's heart skipped a beat. His eyes widened as the words hit him like a jolt of electricity. Charon? He turned slowly, his gaze shifting back to his corkboard as the magnitude of what he had just heard began to sink in.
Charon… this could change everything.
His fingers twitched, itching to grab the nearest marker and start connecting new dots, drawing fresh lines. A discovery like this wasn't just important, it was everything. Ten grams from Mars had been their greatest treasure, their sole clue. But traces on Charon? That could mean something entirely different. A different source. A different possibility. A thread he hadn't even considered before.
Kawaga turned back to his aide, his voice low but full of purpose. "Get me the full report. Now. We need to confirm this. If this is what I think it is…" His mind raced ahead, already running through the implications. This could finally be the breakthrough they needed.
Heyho everyone. If you are no aware, there is I believe currently an unofficial vote going on on what GDI's name for Element Zero should be. I think []Carterium is pretty funny. I think it will be used in conjuction with Eezo to avoid confusion, but it would mean a lot to me if you could vote for my suggestion. Thank you. Sorry I was not able to continue SCEDQuest all the way through. I hope everyone had fun regardless. Thank you Ithillid for this quest. <3
It was a strange mix of people, astronauts, astrotechs, accountants, technicians, janitorial staff, every rung of SCED's ladder was represented. Many of them had been part of the organization since its wild beginnings, back when it was Vice Admiral Carter's probably-illegal, definitely-audacious side project. Despite their differences, they were united now in their loyalty to the Director and the mission he'd built.
Finally, the door creaked open, and Alexei Leonov stepped out. The legendary "second first man on the moon" and acting CO of SCED carried himself with a rigid tension that matched the crowd's mood. His face betrayed nothing, but his sharp eyes scanned the room, seeming to weigh the atmosphere before he spoke.
"I just got off the line with the Big Boss," he said evenly, his voice cutting through the thick silence. Everyone knew who he meant.
"The news isn't good," he continued, pacing slightly. "Budget cuts are coming across the board. They're pulling resources to fund the TCN project. Space exploration, expansion, colonisation has been slashed. We're done. SCED won't be the ones leading humanity to the stars in the decades ahead."
The air seemed to leave the room in an instant. Heads dropped, murmurs of disbelief rippled through the crowd, and a few began to quietly sob. But before the despair could fully take hold, Leonov raised his hand sharply, commanding silence again.
"But it's not all bad news," he said, his voice firm, yet sly, like he was holding back a trump card. The crowd stilled, sensing something beneath his words.
"Do you really think Director Carter would abandon his most loyal crew, let us hang out to dry?" His tone sharpened, igniting a flicker of hope among the crowd. He leaned in slightly, as though sharing a secret. "We'll retain the funding for the Epsilon Eridani Expedition. That fat stack of credits is untouched."
For a split second, there was silence. Then the room erupted. Cheers burst forth like a dam breaking, wild and frenzied. People clapped, shouted, and even wept openly, their despair flipping to jubilation in an instant. The sound was deafening, a storm of manic loyalty.
"Carter's got our backs!" someone hollered, their voice half-lost in the roar.
"Always does!" another shouted back, and the cheers redoubled, quickly turning into the director's name being rythmically chanted.
Leonov held up his hands again, trying to regain control, but the crowd was barely listening, swept up in their fervor. Leonov only gave them a tight-lipped smile, waiting for the frenzy to burn itself out.
When the noise finally began to fade, Leonov's voice cut in again, crisp and commanding. "Yes, we've got the funding," he said, "but it's not a blank check. We'll need to get creative, make every credit count. The administrative staff and I will figure it out. Until then, spread the word, and clear the corridor!"
He turned sharply to one of his aides. "Hanson, get the paper-pushers into my office now. We've got some accounting gymnastics to pull off."
Amalia Amiri slurped a cup of noodles, her posture mirroring the curled shrimp that flavored her lunch. She sat hunched over in her small office, reviewing the latest batch of data. Her chopsticks hovered midway to her mouth as she cast a glance out the window, her gaze landing on the gray, barren lunar surface. Even now, the sight felt surreal, almost impossible to believe. Living and working here on the moon was a dream realized, a challenging, often grueling dream, but worth every hardship.
In the early days, living conditions had been far more primitive. Amalia hadn't minded; the opportunity to work on her doctorate in this extraordinary place, under the SCED banner, had been reward enough. Fortunately, the Treasury had finally taken the hint, funneling significant funds into lunar infrastructure. The promised mass migration to the moon might never materialize, but Earth itself might yet be saved.
From her office, the view of Earth was blocked by the habitation dome perched at the edge of the crater. Still, she appreciated the recent improvements: unlimited warm-water showers, expanded ration cards, and better facilities, small luxuries that made life here more bearable. The SCED and, by extension, Director Carter, always seemed to look out for their own.
Her computer console beeped, pulling her focus back to her work. The supercomputer she'd secured time on had finished its latest computations. She scanned the indicators, graphs, and measurements it had derived from terabytes of Craterscope observational data. Another dud. Another lifeless, uninhabitable rock.
Amalia cursed under her breath, setting the noodle cup gently on her desk. How she envied the team working on the discovery of Epsilon Eridani h. But her time would come. For now, she would continue her meticulous search, gathering data and contributing to the broader efforts of the SCED.
There was, of course, her side project. The sweeping budget cuts had gutted civilian space exploration initiatives, but Carter had ensured a steady flow of funding for military applications. SCED members were encouraged to leverage their expertise in service of the wider Space Command. Amalia had found her niche in these new priorities, and her console's screen now displayed the title of the current work-in-progress report she was working on with a few colleagues:
"Project Apocalypse: A Feasibility Study on the Use of a G-Drive-Powered Interstellar Vehicle as a Relativistic Planetary Assault Weapon."
Every star in the night sky an enemy. The phrase echoed in her mind, chilling and galvanizing all at once.
Her academic focus had always been on the search for advanced extraterrestrial life: detecting radio signals, identifying planets with unusual light patterns that might indicate artificial illumination, and investigating stars with peculiar dimming, suggestive of Dyson constructs. That pursuit was as much one of wonder and curiosity as it was a mandate to prepare for the unknown, for the threat of an adversarial universe.
Amalia shook her head, dispelling the thought. She picked up her noodles and continued eating, savoring the rare indulgence of shrimp as she prepared to dive back into the work.
Mercury was one of the worst postings, not only because of the harsh conditions but due to its very position in the solar system. The planet was tidally locked to its orbit, meaning that any construction on the surface had to contend with the extreme fluctuations between blistering heat and freezing cold. Add to that the constant bombardment of solar radiation that stripped the planet's surface bare, and it became clear that any material found here was more easily accessed elsewhere in the system, usually farther out, where the resources were more useful.
But Mercury had one undeniable advantage: its proximity to the Sun.
Sky Vellia stood at the heart of it all. As the lead scientist for the first experimental stage of the Epsilon Eridani Expedition, they were overseeing the development of the solar-powered laser acceleration array, the infrastructure that would eventually propel solar-sail powered probes into the vast interstellar void. For now, though, it was small scale: a compact, well-shielded habitation module, around one square kilometer of solar panels, another kilometer of radiators, and a laser engine where the engineering team conducted tests, shooting their powerful laser at pieces of aluminum foil.
"And this is the control center," Sky was saying, guiding a visitor through the facility. They were currently giving a tour to a member of Parliament from Starbound, who'd come to inspect their progress.
"Not much to it, is there?" the representative remarked, clearly unused to the lack of gravity. His gaze flicked nervously between the two stations in the capsule, where a laser was being carefully aimed at the floating aluminum flakes.
Sky smiled slightly, knowing exactly what he was thinking. "It's a testbed facility," they explained, helping him rotate on the spot with a practiced gesture. "This is where we test everything, from the specially developed solar panels to the laser engine. It's a hazardous environment. Solar radiation damages everything that isn't shielded. We're here for precision and redundancy, not luxury and space."
The representative nodded, still glancing around the confined space. "I understand, but it still feels… small."
Sky chuckled softly. "Out here, showering with cold is a luxury." They gave him a small, almost wistful smile. "This is the frontier, after all. We're so close to the sun, we don't have the luxury of comfort if we don't want to be boiled alive."
The representative fidgeted with the grip on the side of the module, clearly uneasy with the zero-G environment. He seemed to be searching for something else to latch onto, something to distract from the awkwardness of the situation.
"Did you know," he said after a moment, voice dropping slightly, "that Carter's been having talks with the Lands of Nod about joining the expedition?"
Sky froze, their expression darkening. The low hum of murmured chatter in the control center abruptly ceased, and the security agent beside the representative stiffened, eyes narrowing.
"What?" Sky's voice was a sharp, angry growl, much sharper than they intended. The words hung in the air for a moment.
"I—I'm sorry, I thought you knew," the representative muttered, now looking genuinely uncomfortable. "Some Nod laser specialists are being considered for the project, to help improve the laser engine. Less waste heat, better beam coherence. If I remember correctly. The Director's trying to set up some kind of framework for an Anti-Scrin defense council. Both our nations have a vested interest in the exploration of our immediate interstellar neighborhood, security-wise. It's still early, though. Baby steps, you know, but… well, you didn't hear it from me."
Sky shook their head slowly, the sharp edges of frustration softening into a resigned understanding. "I guess if it grew from Carter's initiative…" Their tone was clipped, but there was an odd sense of acceptance there.
The representative, eager to shift the focus away from the uncomfortable topic, pressed forward. "What happens to the full installation once all the probes have been launched?"
Sky blinked, taken aback for a moment. "Depends," they said thoughtfully, continuing. "The Lighthouse Array, once completed, is expected to produce 200 gigawatts of power. I think the plan was to look into antimatter manufacturing after that..."
John Adams stood motionless, staring at the distant pinprick of light in the pitch-black sky. The Sun, so faint from here, was a barely discernible glow, casting long, faint shadows on the icy surface of Makemake. The plantoid lay at the farthest reaches of the solar system, its orbit pushing it some fifty times farther from the Sun than Earth.
"Stop daydreaming and help me," Meying Lee's voice cut through the silence, pulling him back to reality. She nudged him with her armored hand, her voice laced with the playful impatience they'd long shared.
John snapped back to the task at hand, shaking his head inside the sealed environment of his heartcase spacesuit. His focus returned to the drilling robot in front of him, which was silently extracting core samples from the frozen surface. It was mostly working on its own, as designed. John and Meying were there to keep watch and troubleshoot, just in case something went wrong.
There had been a proposal some years ago to limit this kind of expedition to drones equipped with EVA capabilities. The idea was to send out machines that could work independently without needing humans in such extreme conditions. But the SCED had protested vehemently. They had their own reasons, of course, human expertise, oversight, and experience were invaluable, even in the deepest reaches of the solar system.
John chuckled lightly to himself. This was their routine. They'd done it countless times before: drilling for traces of the precious "mystery element", the same elusive element first identified on Mars. So far, all they'd found was ice and dirt, but it was still progress. It was still something.
The robot's mechanical arms whirred, finishing the last of the cylindrical water ice samples and carefully depositing them into the collection tubes. Satisfied with its work, the robot ceased, its task now complete.
"All right, R2," Meying said with a grin, slapping the robot's metallic backside playfully to encourage it forward. "Pathfinder's coming back in a day, and we've got a lot of ground to cover before then."
The robot gave a soft mechanical whirr as it moved, dutifully following its programmed path.
Doctor Kawaga stood before his corkboard, arms crossed tightly, eyes narrowing behind his glasses as he scrutinized the mess of data before him. His mind was already weary, but he pressed on. Red string crisscrossed between prospecting reports, laboratory notes, and planetary data, connecting theories made by colleagues and their angry, often venomous refutations. It was a tangled web of information, each thread leading somewhere new but never quite to the heart of the mystery he was supposed to solve.
It felt, more often than not, like a puzzle with only one piece, a piece that stubbornly refused to fit anywhere, no matter how hard he tried to make sense of it. The M-element, the mystery element discovered on Mars. What was it? Where had it come from? Was it natural? Artificial? If it was the latter, who had brought it here? The Visitors didn't seem to have any use for it, and that left a whole new set of questions: if it was natural, why hadn't they found any traces of it anywhere else in the solar system?
Theories abounded, each one more outlandish than the last. Dense, perhaps? Maybe it was concentrated deep within the cores of planets, but if that were true, there should have been anomalies, strange gravitational or electrical readings in the asteroid belt, or odd fluctuations in Earth's gravity. Yet, nothing. Nothing except for Mars, where, over the years, the SCED had managed to gather barely ten grams of the elusive substance.
Ten grams. A speck. And yet, it was their greatest treasure. The name Carterium had been thrown around by some under hushed breaths.
Kawaga sighed, his gaze lingering on the board. It was maddening. The data never aligned in any meaningful way. It was as if the element itself were deliberately evasive, slipping through their fingers whenever they thought they had a grasp on it.
The door behind him swung open suddenly, the sound of it startling him out of his thoughts. His aide burst into the room, flushed and breathless, her voice filled with urgency.
"Doctor! Doctor!" she panted, struggling to catch her breath. "Boston, Boston's found traces of the M-element in a Charon sample! It's... it's ten thousand times less than on Mars, but it's there!"
Kawaga's heart skipped a beat. His eyes widened as the words hit him like a jolt of electricity. Charon? He turned slowly, his gaze shifting back to his corkboard as the magnitude of what he had just heard began to sink in.
Charon… this could change everything.
His fingers twitched, itching to grab the nearest marker and start connecting new dots, drawing fresh lines. A discovery like this wasn't just important, it was everything. Ten grams from Mars had been their greatest treasure, their sole clue. But traces on Charon? That could mean something entirely different. A different source. A different possibility. A thread he hadn't even considered before.
Kawaga turned back to his aide, his voice low but full of purpose. "Get me the full report. Now. We need to confirm this. If this is what I think it is…" His mind raced ahead, already running through the implications. This could finally be the breakthrough they needed.
Heyho everyone. If you are no aware, there is I believe currently an unofficial vote going on on what GDI's name for Element Zero should be. I think []Carterium is pretty funny. I think it will be used in conjuction with Eezo to avoid confusion, but it would mean a lot to me if you could vote for my suggestion. Thank you. Sorry I was not able to continue SCEDQuest all the way through. I hope everyone had fun regardless. Thank you Ithillid for this quest. <3
Last edited:
So how long before they will start aiming those photoids at stars to make them go semi nova?
Dont GDI have very good handle on artificial gravity?
Why wouldnt they add those to habitation module?
For eezo to be foundf in Charon ice means either Mass Relay was damaged or there was ship debris around it before it was fully buried?
Because otherwise where would it come from?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Its right there in that section. Because this is a cramped testbed with the minimal amount of amenities.
Huh. I didn't know about this, but you've got a really cool premise there.
Methinks that whoever ends up fighting the First Contact War is going to have a very bad day though. They'd likely be facing a more unified GDI and NOD, who are actually allied. That'd be terrifying because even if human stuff is janky as shit, it's going to be really vicious.
Some poor Turian is going to need to deal with a bunch of Gana and various miserable warcrimey tricks. Not to mention the stealth tech. Can you imagine that guy having to deal with random invisible lunatics in power armor?
- Pronouns
- He/his/him
[X] Prometheum
- Location
- The Underdark
To be entirely clear, I am going to be using element zero, ezero or eezo for the sequel quest. Prometheum (or Carterium I guess) are intended to be interim names that the Initiative uses before third contact. Part of a way of adding texture to the faction.
Promethium is already taken by element 61. Element zero and caterium definitely seem more appropriate to avoid confusion.
[x] Carterium
Last edited:
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Prometheum
- Location
- Hollister
[x] Carterium
- Location
- United States
[X] Prometheum
