The Secrets' Crusade

[Snowfire]

[X] Stay here, to examine and feel this memorial more deeply.

:I think we found another strand of hope,: you said first. :Younger Shiplords, they felt a little like teenagers. I think humanity could learn to coexist with them, assuming their elders stop trying to kill us all.:

:Really?: The surge of interest across the link was palpable, and not just from Lea.

:Yes,: you replied. Though how to describe the group you'd met? How they'd acted, answered your questions, and the glimpses of their true society beneath it. It was difficult without just showing it, but you tried. :None of them seemed to really believe in the worst of what we've seen of the Shiplords, not in the ways that matter. If that's enough, well, that shouldn't be my decision to make.:

It was oddly freeing to say that. To admit that for all the power and skill you'd wielded in executing this mission, the results of it all wouldn't, and shouldn't, be yours to use. But you weren't there yet. There was more to do here at this Sorrow, and then would be the Consolat homeworld, a place with so many question marks hanging over it that it might as well be shaped like one.

Most importantly, would the codes Kicha had given you be enough to let you enter that most sacred – the only term that felt to fit – of Shiplord systems? And if they did, what would you find there? What would the Nexus that you'd seen referenced look like? What would it do?

One thing was certain, though. Given the location of the system, now core Shiplord territory, anything but a successful infiltration would be annihilated by internal response fleets. Not that attacking the place would end well for anyone, in your view. If there was anything that could set off a frenzy among the Shiplords like the one which had taken them into the madness of their war against the Gysian race, attacking that star system would be it.

You jolted out of those thoughts to find the feeling of those around you smiling. It wasn't the human expression, but it was quite clear regardless. Opening your mind again, you brushed out a wistful sigh.

:I think I'd like to stay here for a little while,: you said. You ignored the quiet amusement of your fellows with the dignity it only deserved. Looking around the vaulting gallery felt strange, like the summit of a great mountain raised high above the currents of history. :I feel like I can almost feel what was when it was created. The reality we lost, could have had, before the Peoples were forced to accept defeat.:

:Do you think it will help?: Mary asked.

:I don't know,: you admitted. You reached out towards the place around you, the feeling of a mighty peak, searching for what was beyond it. :But I think I should try. You can stay if you'd like, but there's an exhibi-:

You cut off abruptly as a priority signal flared in your expanded perceptions. It slashed away the light focus you'd been bending upon the place around you, thrusting you abruptly back into the wholeness of your physical existence. What on earth?

:It's Jane, on the Adamant,: Sidra said. They slipped the words into a sudden moment of acceleration, all feelings of wonder banished. :I'm not tracking any suspicious movements around us or in orbit, but I doubt the sensors I can access from here could pierce Shiplord stealth systems even if they couldn't be ordered to ignore stealth craft.:

:Understood.: You spared a moment to look at the others, noting the beginnings of reactions from the other Unisonbound. Mary was still catching up. You hoped that would be okay. At least there weren't many Shiplords in this section of the Forum. And only then, perhaps a fraction of a second in elapsed time later, did you accept the call.

"We need you up here." It was an audio-only transmission, to take into account potential interception. "We have a critical message from our friend at the Third. You need to see it. In person." The last two words came after a precise pause, just enough to let you start formulating the reply they overrode. Jane had been getting used to you, hadn't she.

Which meant this really was important, but the priority call had told you that. Jane hadn't gained her rank and clearance by coasting. Risking a direct communication from orbit like this wouldn't have been done for anything less than a critical event.

Which informed your next question rather handily. "Timescale?"

"Immediate." A reply which raised another question. Or…no, it didn't. The Adamant had received a critical message from Kicha which you needed to see immediately. Jane was all but screaming that she wanted everyone back on the Adamant an hour ago. You couldn't afford to be blind to that.

You consulted positions, orbital corridors and your shuttle's power curves for a moment, Sidra helping with the exact mathematics. "Twenty."

"Try for fifteen." Jane didn't sound happy telling you to do that, but telling you unhappy things was part of her job. "We'll be bright."

And with that final message, telling you she'd be bringing the Adamant to full readiness in preparation for unknown action, she cut the link. You looked around at your friends, in many ways the core of a second family, and blew out a helpless breath.

"We're leaving. Kalilah, Lea, get Mary back to the shuttle. I'll get Iris." At the same time, you reached across the links of your Heartcircle. :Vega-:

:I know,: the Harmonial replied. You supposed it was good for the soul to be humbled sometimes, given how often you did it to others. :Making our goodbyes. We won't be late.:

"But Ama-" Mary began to protest. She stopped a moment later, her entirely brilliant mind connecting the dots. She couldn't think as fast as any of you, but there was only one person on the entire crew who you thought could really match her intelligence. And Iris cheated to get there.

Only the fact that you were all talking across links instead of purely verbally let you hear her concerned acceptance of the new reality. You were too busy moving towards your daughter's signal point. She didn't need your help to get out, already signalling that she was disengaging from conversation, though with flags that made it clear how unhappy she was to do so.

But she would need the presence of a Unisonbound to get back to the shuttle in time to meet the frankly absurd deadline you'd set for yourself. It was a risk, but a critical call like this made minor risks like that more acceptable. That was the entire point of the priority, to warn you of something that could break your cover. Which meant you needed to be gone. Now.

You made it out of the Forum, to the spaceport, and then to the Adamant itself in sixteen minutes of chill focus, every action fixed on the goal of reaching the tenuous safety of the ship that could get you out of this system. No traps had waited for you in the atmosphere, or in the void of space as you passed through the tapestry of orbits formed of the small Shiplord fleet around you. Few of them appeared armed, but the Adamant had been built to survive, not fight.

Your first port of call on leaving the shuttle was the small meeting room behind the bridge, where the expected grim-faces of Jane and Lieutenant Gilsan, your Intelligence Officer, were waiting along with an addition you'd not expected – the tall and distinctly harried figure of Lieutenant Roshan, the Adamant's Head of Engineering.

"Which news first?" you asked, barely through the door. The room was rather plain without the holograms that usually illustrated planning above the table.

"The message," Jane stated, gesturing you towards a chair. You caught a flicker of unhappiness from Lieutenant Roshan, but it was squashed quickly. You took your seat, Vega, Mary and Iris finding their own. Given their roles in the Adamant's mission it made sense for them to be here. The rest of your Heartcircle would be briefed in due course.

"What did she have to say?" It was already clear it couldn't be anything good. Best to have the truth of it.

"Better you see for yourself." Jane flicked her fingers towards the centre of the room and the holo-imagers flared to life. The figure that took shape there was the one you'd expected, though how you could tell when Shiplords really did look largely the same to the human eye was a question you'd want to try and answer another day.

The air around Kicha was oddly opaque, perhaps a deliberate attempt at privacy beyond the norm. What you could make out of the room beyond was vague at best, but seemed to speak of a place for living. Long windows let the light of her home's star illuminate the area and there were odd, to you, pieces of furniture scattered along the walls.

Kicha's veil was torn by concern, as deep an emotion as any you'd seen from the ancient Shiplord. But her words, when they came, were calm.

"I hope this finds you, and finds you safe," she began. "No doubt you've seen the broadcast by now. I know it might not be everything you'd hoped, but it's a place to start. It's what came after that's led me to reach out, however. I remember what you said at the Third Sorrow, that you wouldn't enjoy the spotlight of the Authority's focus."

To your left, Vega hissed in a sudden breath. "Oh no."

"I'm afraid that you aren't going to be able to avoid it for very long," the recording continued through your friend's exhalation. "I'll be able to keep them out of my Sorrow's records for perhaps a few days, but for all that this place is mine, my authority over it isn't absolute. If the Authority demands your identities, I'll have to give them up."

"They already know that you're on a pilgrimage, which gives them somewhere to start for now. Ships will be on the way, honour guard, but again, I know your feelings on such things. And if you want to finish your pilgrimage, to honour those final memories I hope you've found your way to understanding, there's little time.

"As a good citizen of the Authority," lines of humour flickered through the concern radiating from Kicha's veil, "I should urge you to make your way to the Authority itself. But as Warden of the Hearthguard, I can only tell you to continue what you've begun. The pilgrimage is a search for answers. If you believe there are more still out there, we may need you to find them.

"Good luck and safe travels." The hologram swam out of focus, then snapped off, leaving your mind racing. In this, though, there was no one faster in the room than Vega. Harmonials made the entire matter of translating doublespeak distinctly unfair.

"Our identities are about to become compromised," the pale blonde said with absolute certainty. "There's more, of course, but I'd prefer not to tread too heavily on the analysis Lieutenant Gilsan has prepared for us."

"Thank you, ma'am." The young intelligence officer gave her a wintry smile. "But you are ultimately quite correct. It's not the sort of immediate compromise that we'd all be afraid of, but it will lead to one. The Adamant's covert systems are excellent, but I cannot imagine we can go to the Authority without being required to let Shiplords onto the Adamant. And at that point, well, we're done.

"There's no way for us to fake the interior of a Shiplord vessel; we don't even know what a civilian model is meant to look like on the inside. And that's before you get into the Adamant Matter that makes up the entire structure. Or our drive." Lieutenant Roshan winced at those words. That was…not a good sign.

"What's wrong with our drive?" It might have been better to leave the question until the end of the report, but you could already tell where this was going. You had to leave, the question was where, and there was a complication with the drive that was going to make that question difficult.

Brevity, in this case, was critical.

"Our diagnostic scans on spinning up the drive on your way up from the surface identified microfractures forming in the structure of the crystal at the centre of the system." Lieutenant Roshan's deep, steady voice was usually a comfort. Today there was a tremor in it.

"I can't say for certain what this means for the system," he continued, his expression twisting with frustration. "If this was a normal First Secret drive, yes. But all the components I know from those are fine. It's just this crystal at the centre and Miracle that is, well, that's perhaps exactly the right word here."

"I understand," you told him, told the room really. The possibility of being stranded here, after having found so much, it was terrifying. But that wasn't necessarily what Roshan had said. Damage, not collapse.

You turned to look at Mary, who was already poking at her tablet. "Any ideas?"

"A few," she murmured, eyes flicking across the screen. She paused for a moment to look up at Lieutenant Roshan. "Do you have the diagnostic scans?"

"Right here." He flicked two fingers up the screen of his own tablet, passing it across the space. "I was hoping you'd be able to help, Doctor. I'm good at my job, but this is just beyond me."

"It would be beyond almost anyone," Mary acknowledged, fingers still moving. Plugging in data. "I'm going to need to run some simulations, but I'm confident in at least an initial hypothesis now. The important one, really."

"Which would be?" You asked.

Mary smiled wearily. "This isn't a total system failure, at least not yet. But I think it's going to restrict our range, potentially by a great deal."

"Why?" Jane asked. She looked more strained than you'd ever seen her, but then the Adamant was her ship. In her mind, its failings would be hers. You'd have to watch that.

"It's difficult to explain," Mary hummed, tapping a few more commands before setting the tablet down. "But in simple terms, what the Void Crystals do is create a conduit for the Uninvolved to act in conventional reality without being detected by the Shiplord sensor net. If that conduit is damaged, then their ability to act undetected will be damaged with it."

"Why does that matter though?" Vega asked. "Tahkel constructed the drive through the crystal. That's…that should be it, right?"

"It's not that simple," Mary sighed. "Ever since we got this drive, the fact that the Void Crystal is an integral part of it suggested that there was a level of active involvement required to shield us from the effects of circumventing the First Secret's limitations. That energy cost has to be paid somewhere, after all, and I'd be shocked if the scale was linear. Which means that even minor damage could translate to a major effect on how far we can push. And pushing harder will only accelerate the damage."

"But if we treat it as a standard First Secret drive," Lieutenant Roshan said, nodding as he followed your friend's logic. "Then that shouldn't inflict any additional cost, should it?"

"That would be my hope, yes," Mary nodded. "It's just a theory, but I've been studying the drive when I can around, well, everything else. And it's the best conclusion I can draw from available data, at least until my analysis finishes.

"In the meantime, however," she trailed off, looking meaningfully at you. You didn't have to be a genius to see where she was going.

"We need to get out of this system," you said heavily. "And we should be able to, before Kicha's deadline. She said a few days. That's enough time to leave the system shell. The only question is what we do then."

"Home, surely," Jane began, only to stop midway as she saw your expressions change. "I see. What did you find down there?"

"The location of the Consolat homeworld," you said simply. You reached out, calling up a starmap, and Sidra translated the coordinates you'd been given at the Last Memory. It was actually quite close. "The place where, if we're right, the Secrets began. And I'm not sure we can afford to ignore it, despite the damage to our drive."

Gilsan swore, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Once the Shiplords have our IDs they'll be able to track our progress. And if we vanish completely, some of them will start to wonder why."

"And even if they don't." You nodded to him. "They'll be looking for us. They'll know where we've been and what we've done there. We'll have to be prepared for the possibility that they'll station more ships at the Origin in response to that."

"Or to Kicha's message," Vega pointed out quietly. "There was more than one reason that she was speaking roundabout. She knows she won't be able to keep that message hidden forever."

You turned to stare at the Harmonial, blue eyes widening. "You're certain?"

"Entirely." There was no hesitation in the word, and you sucked in an involuntary breath. The risks involved in that- "But she also recognised the need to warn us. Getting caught in-system by a broadcast, or by one of the groups they'll be sending to escort us to the Authority, would be far worse than this."

Jane broke the silence that followed, blowing out a breath, her expression resigned. "So we go to the Consolat homeworld, then?"

"I'm not sure there's another choice," you said with a helpless little shrug. "It's going to depend on the results of Mary's analysis, of course, but if this is going to be done we need to do it now. Will there be enough time for you to finish before we leave the system?"

Mary checked her tablet for a moment, then nodded. "There will be." Her green eyes flicked to Lieutenant Roshan. "I'd like to run some tests on the drive, Lieutenant, if you'll allow it?"

"Of course," the man nodded quickly. "Anything we can do to help, ma'am. I'd rather not find out what happens if we try to jump beyond the safe range."

"Nothing, I'd expect. The First Secret has safety measures," Mary replied instantly. She frowned, bringing a considering hand to her lips. "So long as the Uninvolved don't prevent them from activating, at least."

"Maybe we can try to talk to one of them," you said. "That might have been what they were trying to do in the jump transitions. But for now," you turned your focus to Jane. "Get us moving for the system edge, Commander."

"Yes ma'am."

---

Mary Analysis: 72 + 36 + 15 = 123/80.

Mary was able to report her results to you on the second day of three as the Adamant churned steadily out towards the system shell. You'd made a brief goodbye to Warden Yarin as you left orbit, and the journey had been quiet since then. Her feelings on the matter were actually rather positive, all things considered.

"It's not as bad as Lieutenant Roshan was worried it might be," she explained at the evening command meeting, over a shared dinner. "We're going to lose a lot of range, and that will continue to drop as we push the drive beyond its limits, but after a jump or two we should be able to model that properly. The only problem is that there's no way we're going to make it back to Earth in those two jumps. We've lost the galactic reach we had before."

Given that you were more than half the galaxy away from Sol, that fit with your expectations, but wasn't exactly pleasant to hear. But it was also better than the earlier fears as Mary had worked to puzzle out the exact nature of the problem.

"Kind of narrows our options down though, doesn't it," Jane sighed, picking at the remains of her food. You were happy to say you'd helped keep her from getting bound up in blaming herself for not noticing the issues with your drive, however impossible that would've been. There was relatively little you could do for a more general melancholy in response to her ship's wings being abruptly clipped.

"It does," you agreed, "but we'd already planned for that. And all the reasons we discussed to visit the Origin first still hold. That hasn't changed."

"No, I guess it hasn't." She shook her head, clearly still frustrated. "It just leaves us much more vulnerable than I'd like, especially if we want to infiltrate one of the most important cultural touchstones of the Shiplords species."

"It's the world that is," Vega said philosophically. "Are you sure you can't Mend the flaws though, Mandy?"

That had taken surprisingly long to come up, but the answer was a frustratingly simple one: you just weren't sure. And it certainly wouldn't be safe to try doing so in the middle of a Sorrow. The only baseline you had to work from was when you'd repaired Artefacts for other Potentials, back when you were just a particularly gifted Mender.

"It never took me less than months to fix Artefacts," you said, again. It could have been annoying, but you could tell what she was actually doing. Using repetition to get your mind away from the particular failure point. "I don't think that's really viable."

"Not right now," the Harmonial agreed. "But it's good to have it there as an option, if we need it to get all the way home in a reasonable timeframe."

And wasn't that the truth.

You'd have vastly preferred to head for Sol now, but there was no certainty you could make it before the drive dropped to standard limits. And even if it didn't…you shook your head. What you'd said to Jane was the truth. All the reasons to go to the Consolat Origin were still there. Another risk, yes, but the entire mission had been one of those. And in a way you felt…like you almost owed the attempt.

Not to the Shiplords, not in their entirety. But Kicha, Entara, the Teel'sanha Peoples, they'd all given you pieces to the map that now pointed onwards to the home of the Consolat. And the home of the Secrets. If you could find a way to understand what the Peoples had missed, to understand the Secrets, wouldn't that be a way to end this war?

You couldn't know without going there.

It had been a lot to think on. But it hadn't been everything you'd done on your way to the system's edge, either.

What does Amanda find to occupy herself on the way to the system's edge? Pick one:
[] Talk with Sidra - your Unison Platform has not been themself since the Third Sorrow, and perhaps before. Something's wrong, and you've been putting off this conversation for weeks. There probably won't be time at the Consolat Origin. See to it now.
[] Talk with Kalilah about recent revelations - this will allow Amanda to level the (frankly impressive to still be functional) emotional state of the most powerful combat asset in the entire mission, the Adamant included.
[] Help Mary - specifically with her investigation into what the Secrets being deliberately created might mean, and how you might be able to leverage this in investigating the Consolat homeworld.
[] Listen to Iris - your daughter spent most of your time at the Forum as part of a group talking to an ex-Tribute Fleet officer. You'll take the time to properly work through that experience after the fact, and see what truths might linger.
[] Write-in?

The next day you passed through the system shell without incident, vanishing away to a randomly plotted point in deep space at the edge of standard jump range. Kicha's warning, it seemed, had proven enough. The Authority transmitted a broadcast to the identity codes Kicha had provided for you bare hours later, an earnest request for you and your fellows to travel to meet with them.

A few hours later, with no reply forthcoming, they broadcast the details of those identities to the general population and detailed several Fleet Survey units to begin a search of Shiplord space for you and your ship.

And that left some people in a very odd situation.

I am open to discussion on if the Adamant should, in fact, head for the Consolat Origin. At the moment I just can't see Amanda not taking this chance, not with the other risks they've taken so far in this mission. But I can also always miss things, and if you feel I have, this would be the time to bring it up.

 

[Snowfire]

"You're sure it's fine if I'm not there?" you asked your daughter, watching her closely in the ways only a mother can. She'd been more subdued than normal since your frantic return to the Adamant. You were in the quarters you shared with Mary, sat close together in the set of cosy lounge furniture you'd managed to squeeze into the allocated space.

Your daughter smiled up at you. "I'll be fine, mom. Really. Sunset and the rest of the intel section are good people. And it'll be important to have their perspective when putting this all together."

The smile didn't entirely reach her eyes, but enough of it did for you to feel like she wasn't trying to avoid taking up time she knew you'd indexed for other things. You'd caught her doing that sometimes when she'd been younger, still new to her ability to access your schedule but all too aware of how important you considered her well-being over your own plans.

"Alright." You reached up and pulled her into a quick hug, delighting in the feeling of warmth the simple act inspired. You hoped you'd never lose that. "I just-"

"You worry," Iris said, rolling her eyes affectionately. "I know. And I'll make sure you get a copy of our report the moment it's done."

"Thank you sweetheart." You kissed her on the forehead, then let go. She rolled her eyes again, but the smile you'd prompted didn't fade one bit as she walked to the door to your quarters.

"Just do something for me, okay?" she said, coming to a stop as the hatch cycled with a gentle hiss. You looked round to see her watching you carefully, and very seriously. It was a rare look, especially directed at you.

"What?" you asked.

"Talk to Sidra, like you said you were going to," she said gently. "Don't get distracted with something else this time. Like all the other times."

For a moment you thought about protesting. It wasn't a very long moment, but it was there, and you weren't sure how you felt about that. It was strange to have your daughter tell you to do something, but she'd had that right for more than a few years now. And she, well, she wasn't wrong.

"I will." You bowed your head, and a subtle pressure flowed out of you in the admission. "I promise. I owe them far too much."

"You really do," Iris agreed. Her eyes shimmered with tears for a moment, before she brought up a hand to wipe them clear. "Thanks, mom."

"You're welcome." But she was gone, leaving the reply drifting in the sound of the hatch to your quarters closing. You looked around the place, thinking. Mary wouldn't be back for some hours, and everyone else had their own duties, self-appointed or not. That left you with the time you'd promised, and not just to your daughter. And-

You were trying to distract yourself.

"Enough of that," you said. The longer you kept doing this, the worse it would get, and you couldn't betray a promise like the one you'd just given. You took your mug from the table, slipping it into a dispenser with a quiet clink, and dropped back onto the sofa. Nothing left to dodge anymore.

:Sidra?: You sent. Your breathing steadied to a slow tempo as you waited for the intelligence, the person, behind your Unison Platform to reply: in, hold, out, hold. It took long enough that you wondered if they were going to.

:Yes, Amanda?:

:Can we talk?: Asking the question was somewhat redundant, given the connection you shared. But not asking, expecting Sidra to simply know and act on that knowledge, that would've been so much worse.

:Of course,: the Unison replied. You felt their attention focus on the bond you shared, a feeling like meeting a dear friend's eyes, and yet so much much more intimate. :What would you like to talk about?:

:I think.: You reached up, detaching the brilliant jewel of crystalline circuitry that formed the heart of every Unison Platform from its necklace. :I think you know, Siddhartha. But I need to say it, don't I.:

Energy and thought pulsed agreement from the impossible creation you and Vega had forged across two Miracles as you settled it onto the coffee table. Then you took a breath and reached inwards, for the channel of brilliant energy that was the wellspring of your Practice. Endless power surged up immediately through the lens of your Focus and you sent it all rushing down one arm to where your left hand rested on the core of your Unison Platform. You didn't really know why you were doing it, but your instincts told you it was the right thing to do.

They were also telling you it was better to say this straight. You'd spent too long skirting the edges already. :There's been something wrong since the Third Sorrow and I promised to talk to you about it, and more, weeks ago. I'm not going to leave you waiting any longer.:

:So?: Sidra asked, stretching out the question. Not with any malice, you could feel that. And behind it, the reason they were playing so coy.

:So I'm here, now,: you sent, investing the projected words with the will that guided them, the certainty that you could be there for however long this took. That this, that Siddhartha, mattered to you. :Can you please tell me what's wrong?:

Silence reigned for a brace of heartbeats, then something flowed out of your Unison, into the power you'd gathered for them. Energy flowed into light above your Platform, taking the shape of a human with no true features drawn in shifting colours. It took you a moment to recognise it, recognise the scale of action Sidra has just taken. Taking form to speak out loud was not a common thing for Unison Intelligences.

"How much do you remember about how each half of a Unisonbound shapes the other's existence?" the avatar of your Unison asked. Of all the questions they could've asked, you certainly hadn't expected this one.

"I," your mouth worked for a moment, thoughts racing to catch up. "I know that changes to one will usually bleed into the other. It's a result of how the Unisonbound synchronisation process functions, how the life of every Unison Intelligence is partially drawn from the Potential who connects to them.

"Over time, that connection grows into what's believed to be the heart of what makes a Unisonbound what they are. It's how a Unison can access their partner's Practice and shape it in ways that Potentials can't. It's the source of our shared power, but also more than that. Changes to a Unisonbound's life have been shown to filter through to the Unison, and though the reverse is more rare, it's happened too."

"Just so," Sidra nodded their featureless head. "I could complain about the risks you've been taking lately, but I've realised that they aren't what I'm worried about. Not really. And it's not like taking risks is anything new to us."

"I suppose not," you admitted. For a moment, you matched small smiles. Then Sidra's avatar smoothed back to blankness.

"I'm starting to have questions," they said, then shook their head. "No, that's not right. I've had questions for a while, and they're starting to scare me. What I've seen in monitoring your soul, Mandy, it's unlike anything we've seen. All we have to go on is what Tahkel told you, and we're still not sure what that truly means for you.

"That made me worry about you," Sidra admitted heavily. "But it wasn't until more recently that I realised that there was another question. If you change, what happens to us?"

Sidra paused, a tracery of lips twisting on their avatar's face. "What happens to me?"

You tried to find words. You really did. But for a moment, there simply weren't any. You couldn't answer that question where it came to just you. Trying to make sense of what it would do to your Unison, to Sidra, it was entirely beyond you. And for a moment, you felt the sheer enormity of that question bear down upon you like some mythical titan.

But then you pushed back. You and Sidra were still connected, letting you feel the source of your Unison's confusion and pain. They weren't searching for an answer you couldn't give. They were looking for the answers you could.

"I'm sorry," you began. You knew these words well, and you'd never failed to mean or make them count. "I'm not sure I have any choice in what's happening to me, but you've got even less. I could, maybe, control what's coming for myself, but you've no choice in the matter. The way we share our existence means you'll be dragged along beside me into whatever we become, and I should've recognised that."

You shook your head. "I should've done something, at least. Before now. But what I should have done before, I can at least do now." You faced the projection in front of you squarely, reaching deliberately inwards at the same time, melding your words with the feelings that drove them. A hope, at least, that that would reach your friend.

"Whatever comes," you told them, "Whatever I drag you into becoming with me, I promise you this: I won't let it change who we are. If I have to, I'll find a way to break the connection between us, to make sure you survive free of whatever's going to happen to me, when it happens."

"Amanda," Sidra replied sharply. "I'm not, I don't-"

"I'm not saying that we have to do that, Siddhartha," you said, shaking your head again. "But I want you to know that the option's there. You have a right to choose the shape of your own existence, just like anyone else. I don't think either of us want to do something that drastic; I'd like to hope there's another answer for us, once whatever I'm turning into becomes clear."

"I think we both know where the change is taking us, Mandy," Sidra said quietly, as if to themself. "You've just not wanted to think too hard about it. And I've been too worried about what it will mean to really face it."

Two images flickered into life around the blank-faced silhouette of their avatar, and you recognised them immediately for what they were: snapshots of your soul. Patterns of colour, within which were framed the shape of your sentience.

One of the images was the same one you'd looked at before leaving Sol, the picture that had proved Tahkel was telling the truth when the Uninvolved had said you were becoming something more than just a Potential. There'd been something in the patterns woven across your soul in that scan, something that begged for comprehension and demanded respect for the beauty of its complexity. It had proven Tahkel right, but that had been it. Not even Mary had been able to make sense of what the new patterns meant.

The other image was, you knew without any doubt, what your soul looked like today. You tried to make sense of it, of the twisting light and fractal patterns, resonating and reflecting across the image in ways that something in the depths of your mind told you just shouldn't be possible. Something sharp stabbed at a place between your eyes as you tried to look closer, and you flinched away, blinking back tears.

"Do you see?" Sidra asked gently. You could feel their regret for hurting you, but also the certainty that you now shared that nothing else would've proved the point. Whatever it was, at least; neither of you seemed to know that part.

"I do," you said, wiping at your eyes. "I don't understand, but I see. How long have I been like," you gestured at the image, not wanting to look at it again right now, "that?"

"It accelerated after the Third Sorrow," Sidra admitted. "I've been logging reports, but there's no guide for something like this. I think Mary's been trying to work out what's happening before bringing it up. She wants to give you something that isn't just more questions."

"Whereas we," you sighed, "we don't need to make sense of it to know what it probably means. Not when we've talked with an Uninvolved."

"You recognise the similarities, then?"

You nodded in reply to the Unison's question. "They remind me of what we saw when we watched Tahkel create the Adamant's drive. It's not an answer, not exactly, but it's a direction. And that would explain some of your worry, I think."

The head of Sidra's avatar tilted contemplatively to one side. "It would, wouldn't it," they admitted after a few moments. "The way Uninvolved exist, they're a melded consciousness. What went into them still exists, but they aren't…the way Tahkel explained it, they weren't distinct."

"Well," you said, resolution filling your words. "We'll just have to find a way around that, then. Because I don't care what it might give me, how continuing down this road might change this terrible game the Shiplords have made. I'm not sacrificing you to do it."

"Not even-" Sidra began, only for you to slash at the air with one hand.

"No." You didn't give any space for a reply. "Maybe it's hypocritical, but I don't much care. I won't lose you to this, Sidra. Understand?"

Tension hummed in the air between you for a moment, before flowing out of your Unison in a gentle sigh. "You're impossible."

"You'd know."

All danger to Unison synchronisation between Amanda and Siddhartha has been cleared.

The changes noted to Amanda's soul in the aftermath of the Third Battle of Sol have continued to progress, and similarities are beginning to emerge when comparing the imagery of her soul and her own, albeit limited, observations of an Uninvolved.

"What do you mean they're no longer in-system?" Krea's nanoshell twitched in frustrated confusion, the young Shiplord breaking away from the dataflows that were as much a part of the star system around them as the planets themselves. For a moment, the flickering irritation of her nanoshell seemed enough that she'd slam herself into the nearest wall.

Fortunately, Niden had come to rest beside his younger, more passionate sibling, merging shells in a motion of casual intimacy. Moments later, both took on the stillness of direct linkage. It was not the first time that her creche-group had watched her reduced to physical feedback when presented by a problem she couldn't solve. Everan doubted it would be the last, either, though in this case her curiosity seemed to be catching. And who could blame them, really.

"Odd, no?" Raine's soft voice intruded, a no-doubt unmeant proof of Everan's thoughts. As was common with Raine, they didn't say anything more, leaving it to him to make up the rest of the conversation.

"That they'd leave so suddenly?" It couldn't really be anything else. The creche-group that his own had shared a momentous broadcast link with had been polite, insightful and kind. But they'd also left with unseemly haste, falling back on more formal language in an attempt to blunt any offence. It was an odd way to go about it, but in a civilisation as massive as theirs, well, it took all sorts.

Raine's nanoshell flicked in agreement, but there was a tilt to it, something outside the norm. Everan flickered a sigh back, trying to coax them into explaining. All he got in reply were the shapes of an enigmatic stare.

"Yes, it's odd Raine. They never made any promises, or exchanges of contacts, but I know Krea would've liked to speak more with them."

"Dreamers dream together," Raine nodded, and Everan fought to restrain a sudden surge of laughter.

"Does that make all of us dreamers, then?" he asked. His creche-sib pouted elegantly at him. "I will have to tell Krea when she and Niden rejoin us."

The pout transitioned to a glare, and this time he did laugh. It was a rare enough sound among pilgrims at any Sorrow, but their little ship hadn't lacked it so far. Why start now?

Their transport was a tiny thing, especially compared to the vast liners and pilgrim ships that ran the jump routes between the Sorrows and Shiplord core worlds. Niden said it had probably once been a mail courier, before developments to the interstellar communications network made them obsolete. The building-sized brick of memory storage had been ripped out and replaced with comfortable, if cramped, living quarters for a small creche-group or family.

Raine had dubbed the space intimate, a point of high praise. Aki-lai might be a minnow of a ship, but it was also theirs, which meant freedom. In this case, however, it also meant something else: unrestricted access to a sensor package.

"Will we search?" Raine asked, innocently curious, yet there was a definite tension beneath.

"I think that depends on what Niden and Krea find," Everan replied soothingly. The entire creche knew that Raine could sometimes struggle with change, especially if it wasn't their change. It was important to be kind with that. "But it'll be a decision for all of us."

His creche-sib seemed to consider that, then sunk down to rest against him. They didn't extend to merge, but that was the norm. Just sitting with him told him what they were feeling. Anything more would have to wait.

Thalim found them like that some time later, noting without judgement the way Krea and Niden had fallen into direct link again.

"How long have they been?" The fifth member of your creche-group asked. You consulted the shared clock, trying not to frown as you realised how long it had actually been. You could feel the standby-sleep of Raine next to you, and the clock was showing several hours. You were about to get up, have the two opposites take a break, when they preempted you.

The links between the two rippled and then flowed back, the two groaning faintly as the strain of it hit them. Yet there was an undeniable satisfaction to Krea's movements, one that made you extend a gentle ping to Raine, drawing them back into the space.

"What did you find?" Thalim asked.

"The start of a path." Krea said, excited. "I don't think anyone else would understand it, not without us telling people about our chat with their creche-group."

They still hadn't done that. Niden supported doing so, Krea wanted to try searching herself. Everan and the rest? They weren't sure yet.

Everan sighed. This really would have been simpler if they'd found nothing. Now they had a choice to make.

"So, do we follow it?"

[] Yes
[] No

 

[Snowfire]

Humanity had once looked to the dark between the stars as a place of wonder, the emptiness beckoning and calling like the great oceans had in your people's antiquity. The early exploration missions had, in fact, spent a great deal of time there. Part of that had been the result of the incredibly crude stardrives pre-Sorrows humanity had been restricted to, but part had also been that simple curiosity.

Then the Shiplords had come. Humanity had possessed several small extrasolar exploration groups at the time, but not one of them had ever made it home. And in their parting orders, the Shiplords had laid down a fierce warning against entering the space between stars. It had only been in the last few weeks, at the Second Sorrow, that you'd learnt the truth of that warning. Just one more lying chain among the scores the Shiplords used to control the galaxy.

"First-wave results are starting to come through," Mary noted from her station. Her fingers were unusually still, all her focus on the data trickling in from the Trailblazer packages you'd launched over the last day.

With your Shiplord IDs blown at worst and under sudden intense scrutiny at best, it had felt safer to fall back on the methods that the Adamant had first been equipped to support. Which was why the Adamant was ghosting through interstellar space a few short lightyears from the edge of the Consolat home system, hidden in the mass shadow of a roaming comet. You'd had no up-to-date information to work with, and so had erred on the side of caution.

And there, the choices you'd made what felt like half a lifetime ago during the Adamant's fitting-out had come back to grace you.

Long-Range Scans: 44 + 36 (Mary Learning) + 15 (Trailblazer Scansats) = 95 vs 40/60/90. Highest quality survey data obtained.

The expanded nanoforge you'd seen built into the ship had maintained all of its systems, barring the core of the FTL drive, without fail throughout your infiltrations. Now, it was finally able to be turned to one of the purposes for which it had been made. Trailblazer systems had been created to aid humanity's covert return to the stars beyond Sol. Now it helped do so for a star far further from your home than the designers could have imagined.

"What are we looking at?" you asked Mary. It was an act of making conversation, but not a poor one. Anyone could look at a star system. Not everyone would be able to make sense of what they saw.

"Two asteroid belts, six planets, one of them a gas giant with what looks to be a major moon system," Mary rattled off. A projection populated as she spoke, the pale light of the system's yellow star already present at the centre. "Most of them aren't all that important though. The one we're after is planet two."

The system map zoomed down until that world filled it. It was firmly in the goldilocks zone, and the combined imaging capacity of the Trailblazer systems had given more than enough data to confirm the presence of life. It was a remarkably pretty world from this distance - a painted orb of blue, white and green in a way that seemed remarkably similar to Earth. There were just a few notable differences.

This world was, for all its life, devoid of any major population of sentients despite the sprawling city-complexes scattered across its continents. Flora had grown up through the buildings in some places, but the process of swallowing them whole seemed still far from complete.

"They must have some truly impressive maintenance systems," you murmured. You felt the attention of the room flick to you, and shook your head, pulling up a few of the first detailed images of the empty Consolat cities.

"Look," you went on. You made a few adjustments to the image and the outlines of several buildings glowed with gentle blue light. "The plant life's made it all the way up to the buildings, into them in some cases. But most of the structures are still standing, with no sign of major damage. Something has to be restraining the planetary fauna, something that's still active even millions of years later."

"Or the Shiplords have been maintaining the systems," Jane Cyneburg pointed out. "We'll have to wait on the full analysis, or landing parties, to be sure."

You reminded yourself that the Adamant's Captain had been a first-wave Trailblazer officer before being fingered for this mission. As a result, she'd benefited from a far more in-depth education on certain carefully-picked subjects than most FSN officers ever would. One of them had been covert survey operations.

"How likely do you think the second will be?" you asked. It was an important question, though maybe asked a little too early. You felt more than heard the sigh of your Unison.

Jane just shrugged. "It's impossible to say at this point. We'll need the full scan analysis first, and that's going to take time. Even with Iris and the Lagless core. We, well-"

"We only get one shot at this," you finished with a nod. "I know. I understand."

"But you wish we could know right now," Jane replied knowingly. "It's the burden of command. I'm just quite happy that this one's yours, Amanda. Looking after the Adamant, that I'm good at. Making decisions that could directly affect our entire species? That's more your speed, I think."

Her tone was light, but there was a thread of steady calm spun through it. And why would there be? She was right. You could feel it even this far out, a subtle divergence in the shape of reality, centred on the Consolat's once-homeworld. For you to be able to feel even that much, lightyears from the system's heart, spoke of something impossibly vast having happened here. Though if what the Last Memory had told you was true, something impossibly vast had happened here.

Carving loopholes into reality with the death of your entire species didn't strike you as something that could be done quietly. Not to the senses you and the other Potentials aboard the Adamant possessed. And especially when there was no system shell. Yet the odd, soulspace-adjacent nature of those creations had been, you assumed, how the Shiplords had hidden the Sorrows from the Uninvolved. And that raised a question: how had the Uninvolved missed it?

A difficult question, but one you didn't have any good way to answer right now.

System Analysis: 68 + 33 (Iris Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 15 (Trailblazer Survey Protocols) = 136 vs 50/80/120. Flawless analysis of survey data.

Iris wasn't physically on the bridge, but your daughter was certainly present. The Adamant's upgraded computing core had been fully opened to her needs, and the steadily populating imagery all around you was only the most obvious example of her presence. You could feel the weight and complexity of the data pouring across her mind, the full sweep of the recon sat data flowing slowly together into a cohesive whole.

Data management like this had been a core function of the program that had eventually birthed your daughter into the world, and she'd never lost the knack. It flooded in, a sheer depth of the data that the analysis team would have taken days or weeks to parse fully, and now didn't have to. With Iris and the Lagless core, all they had to do was run spot-checks on the results.

Part of you wanted to give Elil and Vega the chance to look at the data, but you weren't sure if the risk was worth it. They were both exceptional in the field of data processing, but they were also key parts of the Adamant's stealth systems. You could pull away one of them with relatively little concern thanks to the small Harmonial working group aboard, which would give them something to do after being largely reduced to shoring up the harmony of the Adamant and her crew.

There shouldn't be any observation platforms this far out, and your stealth systems should be entirely capable of handling any that might be there. The question was, should you risk it? You were sensitive to Practice in ways no other Potential was, but the feather-light presence of that second world didn't feel quite like Practice as you knew it. Similar, yes. The same? No.

Trying to understand it from this distance was something to which Insight or Harmony was far better suited. Though it did raise a concern of what might happen if they looked too deep. Vega was very good at creating Miracles, but that was sometimes a double-edged sword. She couldn't always stop herself.

So.

One of Vega or Elil can be substituted by the Accord of Harmonials to investigate the survey data and try to begin examining the odd presence to the star system. Pulling both off the stealth gear is also acceptable, but could leave you vulnerable to an extended sensor net - assuming one exists.
[] Elil
[] Vega
[] Both
[] No
[] Write-in? You cannot cycle Elil and Vega for the purposes of this decision.

Spoiler: "Pros/Cons"

Elil: A skilled analyst, like almost all Insight-Focused. Likely to provide clues or pointers, but little more than that. Should be fully capable of restraining a Miracle, especially with the support of the rest of the Heartcircle.

Vega: The most powerful Harmonial in existence, her ability to bring things together into a cohesive whole is essentially unmatched. More likely to provide information on the nature of the change around you and how to work with or through it. Might be able to restrain a Miracle with support from the rest of the Heartcircle, but also rolls against a lower breakpoint to trigger one.

Both: Putting Elil and Vega together on this is almost certain to pinpoint any hypothetical source point for the Consolat's sacrifice, with a good chance to provide some initial understanding on how to work with the Practice-like presence around the system. Vega Miracle breakpoints will apply and will be rather difficult to prevent. Any Miracle is going to be loud.

 

[Snowfire]

It took all of an instant to decide. Vega, whilst brilliant, would be too dangerous to your mission goals right now – especially when trying to act at such extreme range. The Consolat homeworld lay at the heart of every one of the Shiplord's Sorrows. It was where the Teel'sanha's hope had failed them, and what they'd died to pass on. You wouldn't, couldn't, risk that.

Elil then, you thought, nodding to yourself. It was the work of moments to pass orders for the Insight Focused to be substituted for by the small working group of Harmonials aboard the Adamant. You'd had a hand in training some of them yourself, and you knew they'd be glad for a chance to actually use their shared talents.

An hour later, Elil began his dive into the flickering weave of power that echoed silently from the Consolat's combined birthplace and grave. If the younger Potential felt intimidated by the challenge, nothing in his darkly-toned face showed it. The rest of your Heartcircle was there, of course, just in case of something going wrong. Mostly it was to help in case the Insight Focused dug too deeply into his focus and risked unleashing a Miracle, something that you might be able to help restrain by spreading the energy out through your shared link.

But it was always possible that something else was waiting, like what had happened to Project Insight in the Nightfalls incident. Their encounter with anti-Uninvolved countermeasures hadn't been a pleasant one, but if it did repeat here Elil would be in the safe hands of two very skilled Menders. Lea, for her part in that duo, looked alert and focused from behind her draping fringe.

All of you felt when Elil began, the tell-tale feeling of a member of your Heartcircle reaching for the core of their existence. His Aegis would've manifested right then if it hadn't already been extended, and you watched intently, wary for even the barest warning of an oncoming Miracle.

Searching for Insight: 64 + 27 (Elil Practice) + 10 (Steel Eyes) - 20 (Extreme Range) = 81 vs 60/90. Key sites for investigation identified.

And yet this time, none came. Thirty minutes of tension passed as Elil's soul flowed out into the world, searching and examining the phenomenon that so intrigued you and every Potential aboard. Then the Insight Focused let out a long, shuddering breath, like a man who'd just completed some vast physical labour, and slumped forward towards the deck.

You and Lea caught him in the same instant, both reaching out with your shared Focus to check your friend for any signs of harm. He was tired, verging on exhausted in fact, but that was the worst of it. He leant against you for all of a minute, letting himself rest as you fed energy back to his weary soul.

"Thanks," he said, finally. His eyes were dark and distant as he looked up, as if still fixed on a place light years distant.

"Of course," you told him.

"It's who we are," Lea agreed.

He smiled briefly, a flash of white teeth, leaning back from you both as he took a cleansing breath. Then he pushed himself up from the deck, two quick steps taking him to the controls for the room's holographic systems. He tapped at it, bringing up an image of the Consolat homeworld, humming slightly as it appeared. Then he started marking locations in a steady hand.

"I didn't get all that much looking around from this far out," he admitted. He sketched a circle around a reserve of seemingly still carefully tended trees in the outskirts of one of an ancient city. "What I did get, however, are these."

"What are they?" Kalilah asked, ever practical.

"They're where we need to go if we want answers." Elil circled another location, this one a towering spire at the centre of an urban sprawl, the streets now choked with flora. "It's hard to explain it properly, but best I can tell these are like anchor points to that vague presence we've all been feeling.

"I can tell that there are more important ones to the set," he added, frustration bleeding into his voice as he circled another site. "An order that was right there, just out of sight, but I couldn't pull it together. There's too little to work with this far out, makes it hard to focus properly. I learned some things from Phoebe before we left, but the Project Insight techniques were designed to work as part of a group. A solo adaptation was never going to be as good."

"You shouldn't beat yourself up," Mir said, the fair-haired man laying a comforting hand on Elil's shoulder. "This is a lot more than what we had to start with, Elil. Narrowing down the search from an entire planet to four sites."

"Five," the Insight Focused correctly idly. He touched a control and the display snapped out to a solar system view. His eyes flickered across the image for a moment before his fingers stabbed out a final time, highlighting a point on one of the gas giant's moons. "And I know, Mir. It's progress. Doesn't stop me wishing it was a little more."

You could all sympathise with that.

"What now, then?" Lea asked, sweeping a grasping hand across the space Elil occupied in her vision. Checking him again, now that a little time had passed. You couldn't begrudge her that; if she hadn't done it, you would've before leaving.

"We wait for Iris to finish collating survey data," you said. It wasn't the most glamorous duty, but there was only so much any of you could do from here. Safely, at least. You flicked a command to the holo, pulling up a progress tracker. Then blinked when nothing appeared.

"Iris?" You said, drawing your daughter's name out. It wasn't, quite, a parental tone.

"I finished whilst you were working with Elil," she replied through the room's projection array. You could all but see the victorious smile behind the words. "Didn't want to bother you until you were definitely done."

"Well, we're done now," you pointed out. "Bridge meeting room?"

"Nah." The door opened to reveal Iris standing there, the exact smile you'd expected right there on her lips. "Felt easier to come to you. And you've already got the system map up, too."

"I suppose we do."

Jane, Mary and Lieutenant Gilsan from Intel followed the embodied AI through the door, which sealed quietly behind them. Seats flowed up from the nanomass that coated the Inviolate Matter bones of the Adamant's construction, transforming the calm meditation area into a meeting room.

"Mandy," Lea said, nodding to Elil. The Insight Focused was still mentally present, moving towards one of the chairs, but even with support from you and Lea he was showing strain. He had a right to be here, of course but he also didn't have to be.

"Elil," you spoke before he reached the chair. "Sure you don't want a break?"

"I don't need-" he started to say, only to check himself as he realised exactly the response that statement would prompt. He thumbed his chin, considering, and swayed a little on the spot. "Ah. I suppose I do. By your leave, Amanda?"

"Of course."

:I can feel the concern,: you sent to Lea as Elil nodded. :Go. Make sure he's alright. I can check in on him later.:

A bright, sunny bubble of warmth fluttered around you, and you felt more than heard her smile.

:Thank you.:

She came to Elil's side, supporting him unobtrusively, and the two left for the Insight Focused's quarters. The rest of your Heartcircle took the seats provided, leaving you the one between Iris and Jane, with Mary on the opposite side of Iris.

"What do we have waiting for us, then?" You asked. Iris opened her mouth, paused a second to receive a nod from Jane, then spoke.

"What we're seeing is a quiet system," your daughter said. Grids and markers bloomed across the system map, noting points of interest as she spoke. "We've identified a sensor net like the ones around the Hearthguard memorials, but none of the intelligence group believe that's all there is here. This is the heart of the Shiplords' traumas, there's no way they'd leave its defence to a standard sensor net."

A point of light flared between the orbital paths of the second and third planets, a station of some sort. "There's an interstellar Lagless array here," Iris continued. "An old one, from the scans, but that's not immediately relevant. Most of the station's cold, but there are enough emissions from the station for it to be considered active.

"On its own that wouldn't be much of a problem. But we're not the only people here." The image blurred for a moment, then snapped into focus on a close-up of the Consolat's homeworld. A marker glowed next to it. A ship of some kind, but not coded as a warship.

"This isn't the only Shiplord craft in the star system," Lieutenant Gilsan said, his tone businesslike. "There are several picket ships, which we expected. But this isn't one of them." He made a gesture and the signature analysis for the craft expanded out to fill the projection.

"First off, it's not a warship." You'd known that, but some of your Heartcircle wouldn't know naval codes as well. "It's big, more than a kilometre in length, but very little of that space seems to have been dedicated to transportation. That together with how it's broadcasting scientific codes makes us think it's here for an archeological survey of some kind. It's possible that the Shiplords keep a ship like this here permanently, but…we don't think so.

"Why not?" Kalilah asked. Her eyes were fixed on the ship with a dangerous intensity.

"There'd be signs of long-term decay, even with Shiplord systems," Gilsan explained. Another gesture highlighted the hull analysis. "This ship? It's seen a shipyard within the last few years. Nothing major, but it went through a maintenance cycle. Now yes, it's possible that a ship like this one is kept here, and they rotate, but…why would they do that? I know, aliens, and best we can tell this system makes them a little crazy.

"And I know it's not exactly professional, but it doesn't feel right. Not from everything we know about the Shiplords, how they act. I think this is here for a reason. Might even be to do with us - humanity, I mean," he added quickly before any of you could truly tense in concern. "Trying to work out a way to understand what we can do."

"It's not impossible," Mary mused. "We know that Potentials are, in some ways, similar to the Uninvolved in how they affect reality. We know that the Consolat created the Secrets, and that this place," she looked at you apologetically. "I can't be certain, but everything I've heard you say about this place Mandy makes it sound like the echoes of a Miracle. Just an impossibly huge one, even by their standards."

"And I, we," you corrected yourself, "haven't exactly been circumspect in our use of Practice when fighting off Shiplord attacks on Sol."

"No," Gilsan said solemnly. "We have not. As I said, I've got no proof of this. Looking at the data, it could be anything. But this feels right, and I've learnt to listen to my instincts."

"Hard to argue with that," Mir muttered under his breath.

"Indeed," you agreed. "That said, we have to accept that we don't know the real reason that ship is here. I'm seeing another marker beside this vessel, one of the picket ships?" Best to move this conversation along for now, going in circles on the matter wouldn't help anyone.

"I-yes, ma'am." Gilsan nodded. "There are two more, one at the system edge and one near the interstellar relay."

"That's going to be annoying," Jane sighed. "I assume that our stealth systems should still function properly, however?"

"They will," Iris said, without a trace of doubt. "We'll want Elil and Vega running them whenever we activate our drive, but the systems were designed to handle this. Getting a shuttle down to the Consolat homeworld will be a challenge, but nothing we can't handle. Vega and Mir got a shuttle down through a Shiplord sensor weave finer than anything we've seen at the Third Sorrow. They can manage this."

You considered that statement for a moment, then nodded. Iris was many things, but she wasn't reckless with the lives of others. If she said this was the case, it was, to the very best of her knowledge.

"What about AI presence?" You asked.

"There doesn't seem to be one," Mary said, after a moment. "We're still analysing system traffic, and there's some truly impressive security there, but it all seems VI-driven. AI systems aren't exactly subtle in their signal patterns."

Iris looked down and you frowned as you saw the touch of guilt in your daughter's eyes. You reached out to Sidra, then through your Unison on pure instinct. You could tell what was going through her mind, and that couldn't stand.

:It's alright to be happy that you don't have to shackle someone like you,: you sent gently. She glanced up, the motion almost a blur. :You're more than doing your part here, love. Please, don't burn yourself thinking that you should be able to do more.:

She seemed to consider that. Then she nodded. Just once, but that would be enough for now. You could talk to her about it later, if she needed it.

"Something to keep an eye on, then," you said out loud. "For all we know, they could have a dormant system guardian, and I'd very much prefer not to alert one to our presence. So we operate under that premise." It would definitely make some of your work harder, but survival was more important.

"I'll pass the word on that now," Jane said, her eyes going distant for a moment. "There. Now all we need is your decision on where you want us to put the Adamant for initial investigations. I can see that Elil has found some points of interest, and that's going to make the first question pretty simple. Do we go to the second planet, or the gas giant system? Our shuttles can make the trip from an orbit between the two, but it's a massive travel lag, and I'm not exactly comfortable with that."

"A fair point," you agreed, breathing out through your nose. "What else?"

"The gas giant's pretty simple, there's no obvious presence there, we can afford to get close to that moon. The Consolat homeworld however? We've options. I don't want us too far away, but if you're worried about our stealth capacity we could hide on one of the near-planet asteroids. Other than that, medium distance or planetary orbit. Most of this is about balancing risk with ease of access."

"I understand." And you did. It wasn't a fun thing to have to choose, but it was also your job. You wouldn't let any minor discomfort slow you down.

Where will the Adamant be placed initially? This will determine available options for your first phase of actions at the Consolat Origin, as well as certain background rolls.

[] The Outer Moon - The only one of Elil's results not on the Consolat homeworld. There are no obvious sensor presences, but going here will also deny you access to the four points of interest on the second planet.
[] The Origin - The Consolat homeworld, and the site of four out of five of the points of interest identified by Elil. There is a Shiplord civilian craft, presumably a research vessel from its codes, in orbit of the planet as well as a single picket ship. If picking the Origin, you must also pick a distance.
-[] High Orbit - Sharing orbital space with Shiplord craft whilst remaining hidden is exactly what you did at the Fifth Sorrow. This will provide immediate access to the sites on the planet below, and minimise time to extraction in the event of detection.
-[] Middle Distance - Take up position a few lightseconds out from the homeworld's orbital path. This option splits the difference of access and risk, favouring neither.
-[] Near Orbit Cluster - Much as the Adamant currently hides in the mass shadow of a comet, hide in the shadow of an asteroid that shares the orbital path of the Consolat homeworld. This will significantly increase the time required to reach the homeworld, but is the safest option if you want to take Elil and Vega with you to secure the landing party.

 

[Snowfire]

The Adamant flickered into reality at the edge of the Stellar Exclusion Zone, all stealth systems fully active, and all eyes watching the outputs of your ship's sensors for any sign that something might have noticed the jump. Even the most advanced implementations of a system like Sol's Lux Sagum should be spoofed by the perfect stealth of your enhanced camouflage, but there was no sense in being complacent.

"Jump complete," Lieutenant Aster reported from the helm. "Sensors are looking clear."

"Shape our course for Origin Four, Mister Aster," Jane told him. "But keep your hands light on the controls, just in case something goes wrong."

It had been tempting to head straight for the Consolat homeworld, very tempting in fact. The Adamant could hide in the shadow of a Trojan cluster asteroid, with your ground team transiting by shuttle or establishing a base on the planet. The Trailblazer gear had, after all, been designed to establish outposts like that. Given the expected state of the planet's infonet after so long, it seemed likely that there'd be plenty of places to hide.

But in the end, you'd decided against it. There was, in some ways, too much on the Consolat homeworld. It would be terribly easy to lose track of your actual objective when torn between four different points of focus. Better to start slow, with a location that restricted you to only one. And somewhere much closer to the edge of the SEZ, just in case something did go wrong.

"Yes ma'am," Aster replied. There was a gentle hum of power, and the Adamant's drive lifted you all forward, into the shadow of the Consolat's home star. From here on out, escaping would require an element of travel through realspace. No pressure.

You'd left things long enough for Vega and Elil to get a proper rest ahead of their first major test since the Third Sorrow. That had only been a few months ago, but a lot had happened since then. And you'd all had just enough time to grow used to the safety of well-forged Shiplord identities. Losing those hadn't been enjoyable, especially when you'd not made any mistakes in using them. But they'd also served their purpose. They'd gotten you here.

"My goodness," you murmured, switching to the Adamant's visual feeds. You'd known, intellectually, that Origin Four – the gas giant of the system – was many times larger than Jupiter. In truth, the hands of fate for celestial objects had only just denied its place as a true star, and you'd never actually visited a gas giant in person before. You'd seen holo, of course, but that was just recordings. There was something very different in seeing it directly, and you had to wonder how different it would be again once you could look with your own eyes.

"Yup," Jane agreed, her lips curved in a small smile. "They're impressive, aren't they."

"I'll say."

It was simply enormous, easily distinct amidst the starfield most of fifteen light-minutes out. It would take you more than an hour to get there, what with you taking your time to limit the strain on the stealth systems and your thankfully rested Potentials who were connected to them. You wondered if you could get away with just staring at the planet all the way in.

Probably not, you concluded sadly.

The immense planet was awash with colour, hues of ethereal sapphire and deep, deep azure swirled together as if by some vast painter's brush. A dazzling ring system surrounded it, ice and stardust reflecting the light of the stars in gleaming bands of opalescent silver and diamond-white. And that was just the planet. The cosmic giant was attended to by dozens of moons, many of that retinue distinct in their character.

The largest was almost the size of Earth, its surface marbled by bands of rusted red and emerald green within a turbulent atmosphere. Another, smaller moon was overtaken by swirling clouds, and a likely biological source of light made the enormous storm systems glow with a gentle lavender light. Your target was neither of them.

"No figures this time?" Mary asked over a private channel, checking just as you'd asked.

"None," you replied. "But this place, Mary." Words couldn't do it justice. You could really feel it, now that you were in-system. The echoes of an act of not-quite-Practice so vast that it had left a permanent mark on reality. Before this mission you'd always thought that Practice was part of the Secrets, simply one of an enormously higher order, granted to your people by the Dragons' sacrifice.

But looking at this system, actually feeling the power still there rippling through your bones, it made you wonder. Had you been wrong all along?

You shook your head, returning to the question Mary had asked you. Trying to explain. "I'm not sure if that's good or bad, to be honest. I've only properly seen them once, in our jump to the Fourth, but I can't help but think it means something."

The memory from that jump still haunted you, a spectre in the back of your mind that you'd had no opportunity to exorcise.

"Well," Mary said, her tone encouraging, "Maybe we can look into it here. I can't imagine we'll be able to spend all of our time on our target. Though it is rather strange."

"Still can't make sense of the atmosphere?" You asked, only half-teasing.

She blew a raspberry at you over the link. Without opening her mouth.

The moon that Lieutenant Aster had set the Adamant on course for was a barren, grey thing, with none of the vibrant colours found on more hospitable worlds. Yet for all its appearance as a lifeless and desolate place, the little planetoid had a thin but serviceable atmosphere. That and the unending dusty greyness of the world created an odd prismatic effect around the satellite, like some ghost's ethereal veil.

That wasn't everything your sensor techs were examining, however. Now that you were actually in the system, it was possible to run full scans with the Adamant's array, using the stealthed scansats further out to refine your data.

Inner System Scans: 92 (rolled on Discord, end me) + 36 (Mary Learning) + 15 (Trailblazer Scansats) = 143 vs ???

Fragments detected.

The first sign that something wasn't quite as your long range scans had suggested came early on, when something flashed up on the system map for a moment before vanishing.

"Full stop," you snapped. The command was pure instinct, and the reaction to it, immediate. The Adamant came to an instant stop. "Iris, what the heck was that?" Mary would, later, tease you about how you slipped into parental language mode.

Fragment Analysis: 32 + 33 (Iris Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 10 (Tombstone Filters) - 60 (???) = 35 vs 30/???

Highly limited fragment identification. Anomalies.

"Checking," the young AI replied from her station. "The combined sensor coverage picked up something. It's archetypal sensor ghost territory, but we shouldn't be dealing with those. All our diagnostics are solid. The only other option is that there's something stealthed out there, hiding from our scans."

"They must be absurdly good to hide that well," Jane said, pulling up the log and studying the placement of the ghost return. It had been barely a light-second away. She peered closer at the data, then her eyes widened. "Iris, doesn't that look suspiciously similar to-"

"The tombstone stealth coatings, yes," your daughter replied. "It's not the same. I'm applying the filters we developed, but I'm only getting more ghosts, nothing certain. The mass readings are all over the place, and there's just nothing there when we point optical sensors at the area.

"And you aren't seeing it because it would make the system map entirely useless," she added a moment later. "I'm getting thousands of return fragments, and I couldn't tell you how many of them are real."

"What do you think it is?" You asked, looking between Iris and Jane. The FSN officer replied first.

"Iris, do they all seem to be in fixed orbits? From what data we can get, I mean."

Iris hummed for a moment, then nodded. "They do."

"I hate to say it," Jane said carefully, "but that screams defence platforms to me. Any pattern to the returns? Say, concentric spheres working outwards from the system's star?"

"I can't tell. I'm sorry." Iris grimaced, clearly frustrated. A moment later her eyes focused, darting across an image only she could see. "But there's something else, too. Mary, can you check the new figures on the scans I just sent you? Compare them to expected standards."

Mary blinked, then pulled up the scan files with a soft sound of assent. Looking over you saw planetary data, far more detailed than what you'd been able to get from the scansats. Mary ran through a set of comparisons, made a few calculations in her head, and then paled.

"What is it?" You asked the two of them. You weren't annoyed, but you did need to know things, and something that made Mary go that pale probably wasn't good.

"Several," Mary's voice was a little shaky. "Several of the moons in the gas giant system and one of the more sunward worlds have isolated mass anomalies."

"What sort of anomalies?"

"The type that you'd see if you hollowed out sections of a planet and filled it with something else," Iris said bluntly. "As well as building what I can only describe as launch corridors out through the planet's crust."

"Oh." And as words went, it summed up your feelings quite effectively. You wondered, for a moment, if the Shiplords even knew. But no, they had to. They'd had control of this system for aeons, and you knew that their sensor technology was still significantly superior to humanity's unPracticed best. Which meant they'd left this here for a reason. It could just be that it had been a creation of the Consolat, but something tugged your mind towards the other possibility.

That the Shiplords would've only left a defence system like this remain if it was a match to their own. And that was, quite frankly, a little terrifying. The Shiplords were, for all the horrors they'd committed, a fully developed Secrets-based civilization with all the terrible power that implied. If the Consolat had been able to build something that could match them, in so little comparative time, and without the Secrets to fall back on?

One thing was sure, it made the Consolat being truly and deliberately responsible for the existence of the Secrets far more likely. How they'd killed themselves in the process still wasn't clear, but they must have cracked the workings of the soul in ways that humanity was still only beginning to grasp. Had everything else flowed from there? Or had it been the end result of a technological progression hundreds of thousands of years in the making?

You shook your head, trying to clear it. Asking the questions on that topic wouldn't do you any good right now. You needed the answers instead, and for that, you had to keep going.

You wet your lips, suddenly nervous in a way that you hadn't felt in a very long time. Most important question first. "Is there any sign that we've been detected by these systems?"

"There's no reaction that I can see," Iris said cautiously. The silence around her was utterly cavernous, and she tried to reassure them. "Believe me, if these systems were to react, the entire system would know it. But if they're an automated defence matrix for the star system, they might only react if the star system starts to be threatened."

"It could also be why we've not detected any AI presence," Mary added quietly. Her tone was definitely not happy, and she continued as the bridge's focus turned towards her. "If this system was built by the Consolat then any system AI that the Shiplords tried to install might conflict with it, therefore activating the defence system. Which means if we mess around too much in the infospace here, trip enough flags, then it may well be a Consolat AI that we end up facing."

"I'm not really sure that would help, Mary," you replied, though there was a hint of question in the statement. Your friend shrugged.

"It probably wouldn't," she admitted. "But if it's not a Shiplord system, its priorities might be different. There could be an opportunity there, but only if we've absolutely no other option. We've no idea what scale of AI we'd be dealing with. If the Consolat worked out how to create all this without anything like Practice, it could be a true AGI."

Iris made a choking sound. You darted a look at her, making sure she was okay for now. Then returned a questioning gaze to Mary. "What does that mean?"

"Iris has a soul," Mary explained. "And there's a Secret for AI. I'm sure of that, even if Practice made it unnecessary. But once, before we discovered the Second , there were attempts at constructing AI based purely in computers… That development is where systems like the VI your older sister has was built on. It never got further than that before the Second Secret made it irrelevant, but with enough time? Who knows what they may have done."

"Not a risk we'd like to take when those other options remain, then." Jane could've made that sound like a question. She quite pointedly did not. "Do we continue in-system, Mandy?"

"I don't see much choice," you replied, scratching lightly at your hairline. "We have to know what's here. Just, maybe take it a bit slower than we'd planned."

"You heard the lady, Mister Aster." The tone of command in the voice of the Adamant's Captain was undercut only by the tense smile on her face as she gave the order. "Steady as she goes."

"Steady as she goes, yes ma'am," Aster confirmed, bringing up the drive again.

There was more discussion as you closed in on the gas giant, but all of it circled the same points, that you just didn't know enough to say anything but that you didn't know enough. There was one last surprise waiting for you, however. As the Adamant slipped into the orbit of the barren moon of your target, you felt Mir tense in the close-knit web of your Heartcircle's connections.

Ghosts of Peace: 41 + 25 (Mir Practice) - 10 (Focus Incompatibility) = 56 vs 50/???

Success

For a moment, the Practice flooded from the younger man, his Focus of Peace reaching out for something far below. You traced how it moved, spreading out across a vast and rugged plain that on a habitable world probably would have been an ocean. Then it snapped back, like a child pulling their hand back from an open flame.

:Mir?: Yours wasn't the only voice to clamour for your fellow's attention.

:What was that?:

:Are you alright?:

You felt Lea blur out of her quarters towards the Peace Focused's stateroom on the wings of her fully extended Aegis. You were maybe half a second from following your fellow Mender's example when Mir answered you, his mental voice ragged and quiet.

:We're okay.: There were deeper meanings in the phrase, an acceptance of Lea's reaction, but also a request that you not join her given your own responsibilities. :I was watching, taking it all in, and I think I found something.:

:Down on the moon?: Vega asked. Her own tone was that of a person returning to full focus as the Adamant settled into orbit and Lieutenant Aster cut the drive field. :I saw you reaching down there, Elil too.:

:And me,: you sent, weaving the memory-image of what you'd witnessed through the words.

:Yes.: You felt Mir nodding. :I…I'm not sure where it is, not exactly. But it's something that was made to bring this place peace. Not in the way I would, but…it was close enough for my Focus to try to connect, but too different in the end for any success.:

:It narrowed it down, though.: This time it seemed Elil's turn to be supportive. :I only got the moon. You've gotten us further than that.:

You felt Mir attempt a vague protest, one quickly rejected by the support of his peers. One part of your mind stayed there, attentive to your Heartcircle's needs. The rest looked down at the world through visual link and also the more detailed survey data you'd started to receive. You quickly highlighted the area that Mir's Practice had been reaching for.

"Focus initial survey on this area," you ordered. "Mir narrowed it down for us again, something that his Focus could latch onto for a moment. That's all we can do from up here though. Anything more's going to take actually going down there to look."

You looked around the bridge, feeling the steady tension, the concern, and the steady resolution beneath it all. That would be good enough.

"Let's get to it."

Welcome to your first turn at the Origin. Each of these will take place across an unspecified number of days, typically less than a week, allowing you (as Amanda) to take or order the undertaking of action. Not all of these options will directly involve the Origin system.

You have Six (6) AP and One (1) Research (Mary) AP to assign, each representing a dice of effort. Unless otherwise specified, there is no limit to the number of AP you can assign to a given task. Some actions may require specific talents or characters to complete - this will be noted in the action text.

You may not select multiple actions that require the same character in the same turn.

Exploration - Direct exploration of the Origin system, based on The Adamant's location in-system. The Adamant is currently in orbit of the fifteenth moon of Origin Four, the system's singular gas giant.
[] Blazing a Trail - Locate and establish a Trailblazer-package outpost inside the current area of interest (an area roughly the size of a mid-sized ocean) on Origin Four-Fifteen. This will give you a safe location on the moon to shelter, store material or data, or even leave a research team behind when the Adamant moves on to investigate the Consolat homeworld.
[] Insight's Ways - Now that you're present above Four-Fifteen, Elil can try to find his way to the place that he felt on the planet. He doesn't know exactly where it is, but he's more than willing to try and isolate it. [Requires Elil]
[] Path of Peace - Investigate the point of interest Elil said was present on the moon using the connection that Mir almost formed with the place. If he did it once, accidentally, it should be possible to do it again. [Requires Mir]
[] To Harmonize - Mir and Elil work well together, but bringing their Focuses together isn't easy. You or Vega could help them bridge that gap. It comes with the risks of any combination of Practice, but those combinations usually have significant rewards. [Requires Mir, Elil and a Harmonial]
[] Write-in?

Investigation - At-a-distance exploration of the Origin system. Generally not location dependent.
[] Matrix Webs - The system's datasphere appears to be nominally accessible, but any exploration of the systems is judged to have two requirements. First, that Iris is involved at some level. And second, that any exploration is done with extreme care. [Requires Iris]
[] Lethal Ghosts - Active scans on entering the inner system detected sensor ghosts and isolated mass anomalies scattered across the system. At present, your best guess is that this is some sort of ancient Consolat system. You may want to figure out just what that system involves.
[] Fellow Guests - The Shiplord science vessel in orbit of the Origin is clearly here for a reason. It's unlikely that you'll be able to discover it from a distance, but looking at where its investigations are focused could be useful by itself. Making an effort to work out the capabilities of the ship would also make Jane more comfortable.
[] Echoes (Practical) - The Consolat Origin is soaked in the echoes of a massive event of reality manipulation, executed through something very like Practice. Mary can approach this from the perspective of a scientist, but it isn't the only option available to you. [Must have free Potentials. You may select specific ones from those available taking into account other selected options, or leave it to me. I will not screw you on this.]
[] Write in?


Research - Theoretical examination of not just factors present here in the Origin, but far beyond. Your Research AP must be assigned to one of these tasks, but additional AP may also be used.
[] Underpinned - With a solid proof now in hand of who created the Secrets, Mary wants to continue her work on understanding how the Consolat actually did it. This could well prove crucial in the weeks to come.
[] Echoes (Theoretical) - As the practical version of this option, but starting from a theoretical baseline. This will have slower progress, but will also have no possibility of triggering a Miracle that could potentially break your cover.
[] VIsions in the Jump - You saw a glimpse of the place where you met Tahkel when jumping to the Fourth Sorrow, and it had two figures there, one of them who looked human. Try to work out how that happened, and how to reach back to that place without requiring another jump. [Requires Amanda]
[] Practised Restraint - Vega was able to find a way to an understanding of Practiced Miracles that allowed her to trigger them with a level of regularity that was a little intimidating. She's offered to try and see if she can reverse the process. Not something you ever thought you'd need before now, but it should be possible. [Requires Vega]
[] Write in?

You may also pick Two (2) Personal Actions. These will have limited mechanical effect on their own, but can synergise with AP actions.
[] Talk with Kalilah about recent revelations, to help steady her soul.
[] Spend some time with your family. This will be a balm to you all.
[] Sharing a meal with the Adamant's command staff would let you listen to their concerns, and maybe learn from them too.
[] Relax and train with your Heartcircle. Keeping your edge in combat sharp is more important now than it ever was. And it's good to share time together.
[] Write in?

As you can see, we're swapping mechanics. I hope that'll work for folks, especially as it's going to mandate a shift to plan voting to let me cover more at once. On reflection, not doing this on the other Sorrows is probably a big part of why so much of it dragged. I wish I'd realised that sooner.

If you have any ideas for write-ins, ping me before voting for them.

Plan voting, please.

 

[Snowfire]

"I have to be honest, I didn't expect this," you admitted. The half-eaten slice of pizza in your hand made a fine pointer, though one you knew wouldn't survive long. It was much too tasty. But then, it had been made very traditionally.

"My family on my mother's side was of Italian descent," Jane said, as if that explained everything. Your captain's face was, for once, almost entirely clear of the stresses of command. She'd donned a short-sleeved top for this occasion, and it was stained in a few places by flour from where her apron hadn't been quite successful in its duty.

"Tuscan, in fact," the fair-faced man to Jane's left added. Commander Michael Dustsin winked at you in a way that felt secretive, despite being right in front of his superior. "She made sure we all know the difference."

"You're such a liar, Mike," Jane laughed. You'd not had much opportunity to interact with her XO, but none of it had made you think poorly of him so far.

"I don't know," Paskal Gilsan mused. The intelligence officer's eyes were bright as he considered the array of partially consumed food scattered along the bar you'd been using in lieu of a table. "I remember you being quite precise, Jane."

You laughed again, not for the first time this evening, and considered how this really wasn't anything like what you'd planned for. When you'd decided to share one of your evenings with the Adamant's command staff, your expectations of any knowledge transfer had been focused on skills related to their duties aboard ship. The reality that'd met you when you stepped into the wardroom had been decidedly outside of those expectations.

The ubiquitous smart matter of the compartment had been reconfigured into a spread of colourful clay tiles. The bright shades reflected cheerily from the polished faux-hardwood bar now laden with food and drink and was surrounded by traditional stools. None of them had been occupied then, but there wasn't a single empty seat now.

Behind you, heat radiated gently from three tall ovens in pale stone at the heart of a rustic kitchen, styled in more of the same stone and dark wood a match to the bar. They'd dialled the environmental settings up to the intensity of a summer back on Earth, and the smell of food all around you was underlaid by the scent of woodsmoke.

It had been a long time since you'd cooked pizza 'outdoors', but it certainly wasn't your first communal meal. They'd been an unconscious core to your first, fragile Circle. You'd shared in making meals so that eating them together would mean something more, and that had been – you could recognise now – where some of the strongest bonds had taken root between you.

You shook yourself out of those memories as you felt the attention of the room turn to you, covering the lapse of focus with another bite of your impromptu pointer.

"I'm sorry," you said, after taking a few moments to chew and swallow. "I think I missed the question."

"It's alright," Jane told you agreeably. "We were wondering what you thought about the reports that Iris filed earlier today. I know it's business, but–"

"But it's important, nonetheless," you agreed firmly. You considered the question for a second, then nodded. You did have some thoughts, and the sudden tension that had followed the question was easy to feel. Things hadn't exactly gone to plan, for either of the tasks your daughter had involved herself in.

Lethal Ghosts 27 + 33 (Iris Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 15 (Modified Filters) - 60 (???) = 35 vs 30/???

Bare Success.

"I think the issues that came up with the sensor sweeps are ultimately fixable." Better to address the near-failure first. You'd already done it once for your daughter, though you probably shouldn't use the same methods.

:You don't have enough arms, for starters,: Sidra pointed out.

:I'll have to try the facts, then,: you sent back, words glowing with a thankful smile. Sidra hadn't needed to say that. Your relationship with the Unison might not ever be the same as it'd been before you started this mission, but it seemed to be improving.

"The final report I saw from the analysis team said that they'd struggled to make progress in a way that gave us anything concrete," you went on, the time required to talk with your Unison barely noticeable. "And I can see how that would be frustrating. Not knowing what's out there, exactly what's out there, would be concerning regardless of the circumstances.

"Given how important this final," you hoped, "stage of the mission is, not being able to see what the Consolat left behind is going to force us to be more careful in how we act. But their efforts weren't fruitless, either."

There were a few brief nods in response to that, and you frowned. You could understand their concerns, especially when they were all so much more involved in the Adamant's day-to-day actions, but…

"Knowing that the systems are almost certainly Consolat in nature does help," Gilsan agreed. The lines of concern on his face didn't fade, however. "But that only tells us how little we know. Insight and the Trailblazer packages set us up to deal with Shiplord technology. We have no idea what the Consolat were capable of before they died. And unknowns are the best way to get yourself blown, or killed, in an infiltration mission."

"That's true." You nodded. "But none of their platforms have responded to our presence, even after taking Vega and Elil off the stealth systems on entering orbit here. Whatever differences they did have, they aren't enough to find us."

"And we're learning," Chander Roshan interjected. The eyes of the ship's engineering lead were intent in his dark face as he spoke. "Miss Iris noted in the report herself that much of the problem right now is having to learn the differences between Consolat and Shiplord stealth programs and materials. The analysis teams are noticeably closer with their algorithms now."

"Exactly so," you said. Then, after a moment of consideration, you added. "Iris told me that she's confident that a bit more time should bring us some real results now that they have some properly tuned algorithms. But there's just so much to do right now, everyone has other priorities to handle."

"Which I suppose brings us to the other external task she was involved with," Jane sighed. Her eyes sparkled, though, as she went on. "Did she take the slow progress on the sensor analysis personally?"

"It's possible," you replied, smiling. Iris certainly had, but teasing her about it wasn't any fun when she wasn't present. "Though I'd hope there are no complaints with her results there."

"I was expecting details on their landing party movements and a fine-grain analysis of the ship," Gilsan said. "Maybe a better idea of what's beneath the ship's blisters. Knowing if they're weapons or something else was a concern for my team."

"I'm noticing the use of past tense there," Michael said. "I saw the figurative cries of joy, but I was going to read the initial report tomorrow morning."

"Well, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise," you trailed off. Jane's XO rolled his hand in a gesture to keep talking. "But if you insist…"

Fellow Guests: 99 + 33 (Iris Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 20 (AI Network Bonus) + 10 (Echo of Nabu Network Bonus) = 162

Iris: Oh look, a convenient access vulnerability.

Iris had, after coming to terms with her self-proclaimed failure to break a set of stealth systems almost two orders of magnitude older than humanity, taken to the task of investigating the Shiplord research vessel. Gilsan's expectations hadn't been particularly enormous, though he and others in the command crew had hoped for some actionable data on the ship's capabilities.

No one had believed Iris would find a vulnerable access point to the ship's systems, break through the encryption and firewalls without setting off a single alarm, and from there extend her influence into a good eighty percent of the now-identified Midnight Dreaming's secondary systems.

There was a wealth of information on the ship's purpose in its archives and logs showed expeditions down to the bunker-complex that Elil had noted on the Consolat homeworld. A location that the Shiplords referred to as the Consolat Archive.

"My team's still picking through all the data," Gilsan explained, a rare little smile on the intelligence officer's face. "It's why the report we sent out this evening was only an initial brief. We'll get more clarity on what they've been looking for as analysis continues, and I don't think Iris is planning on sleeping for most of the next day until they have it all nailed down. But the salient points right now go like this."

"The most important point is also the most dangerous to our purpose here." Several heads leaned closer to listen, examples of others who'd decided to wait for the full report. "Part of the ship is sealed behind far more dangerous firewalls, which Iris didn't want to risk touching. Fortunately, there were some records in private logs that told us why: there's a team from Shiplord Central Intelligence aboard, leading the expedition.

"For those who don't know," he went on, lapsing into a reporting manner. "Central Intelligence is one of the sections of the Shiplord intelligence apparatus that we know very little about. Most of what we know is a result of Group of Six data sharing, much of it Nilean in origin, which outlines them as the most dangerous part of the Shiplord intelligence community. Their mandate is much broader, covering general threat assessment, analysis and resolution. They're also the section that appears to use AI the most."

"Which explains why Iris didn't try to break in, once she knew what she was dealing with," Michael nodded, his smile having long since slipped away.

"She wasn't able to be certain about the presence of a Shiplord AI platform, but essentially yes," you said. Your daughter's exact words had verged heavily into the profane, but there was simply no fun in telling the current gathering that. Not when she wasn't here, at least.

"So we're going to face a much more dangerous set of eyes when we reach the homeworld?" Michael asked. Gilsan made a noncommittal sound.

"Not entirely," he said after a moment's consideration. "Though it would definitely be bad for them to detect us here, given what the log files had to say about why the Midnight Dreaming was sent here."

"That being?" Chander queried. The engineer had set down his own slice of pizza to listen.

"Humanity's actions at the Third and Fourth Battles of Sol," Gilsan replied. "Which actually gave us something we hadn't expected: recordings of the action. We'll be making those available once we've been able to check for any anomalies."

You really didn't want to admit to how much you wanted to see those recordings, but Gilsan and his intel team had a point. You couldn't be sure that the Shiplords weren't doctoring the data, and jumping to conclusions wouldn't help anyone.

"Given how saturated in something very like Practice this system is, it's not difficult to guess their goal." You'd be looking into that later in the week with some of your Heartcircle, but you could share what you did have. "It's similar enough that I can make a pretty good guess for why the Tribute Fleet went berserk at us after my main involvement at the Second Battle of Sol."

For a moment, you couldn't stop yourself from remembering the feeling of that chain of perfect moments. The feeling of your soul, buoyed by the will of billions in the cause of blazing defiance. Anger, pain and a terrible resolution, to do what must be done regardless of the cost. Power of a magnitude that you'd only touched a handful of times since, demanding to be used before it shattered your command ship.

A breath.

And a word, sung to the world, that changed it forever.

Jane touched your shoulder, drawing you back to the world around you with a start. "Are you alright?"

"Memories." You brushed your hands across your face, as if the motion could sweep the recollection of Purify away. Surprisingly, it actually did. "I'm fine. Really."

"Alright." The acceptance was heartening. "So you think the Shiplords saw how the Consolat died in what you did to the Medicament-class they brought along?

You nodded. "I really do. It makes sense. I'm still working on why they gave up like they did, but maybe the answer to that'll be somewhere here. But if the Shiplords are focusing on the Archive, it's possible that they aren't able to access what Elil felt is present at the other locations. Or just don't know about it."

"You really think that's possible?" Another officer asked, her expression sceptical. "They've had millions of years, haven't they?"

"They have," you acceded. "But that doesn't mean they were able to understand everything they found. We learned how to understand and reverse-engineer some Practiced creations into things we could build without it, but every human has at least a spark of Practice inside of them. If the Shiplords lack that entirely, well, that could be what they're missing."

"So you'd suggest we go looking elsewhere?" Jane asked.

"Maybe," you hedged, shrugging eloquently. "I'd rather not go looking there first, at least. Knowing that they're there gives us some room to manoeuvre, but we shouldn't waste that."

"That lines up with our own opinions," Gilsan added. "We can use this, and it's not the only thing we got that we can use, but we can't afford to be careless with it. And that leads us helpfully onto those other things."

The focus that your impromptu fall into old memories had scattered found itself again, fixing on new information, and Gilsan went on. The food scattered across the bar remained, for the moment, forgotten.

"Iris was able to pull the output of a set of a shipwide diagnostic program, which I believe we can back-engineer into a full picture of the Midnight Dreaming's capabilities. And that, I'm happy to say, should help us stay hidden from their sensors whenever we do end up entering their close-range coverage."

"So some useful information and a potentially very serious bullet dodged," Michael summarised. "Seems like a good start."

"It does," Jane said. She raised the tall stein she'd been using throughout the evening to the rest of the room with the air of a woman making a proclamation. "To more of the same."

Glasses clinked, and conversation turned back to gentler things. And in some cases simple silence, as people rushed to make good on their culinary selections before any of the home-cooked food could get cold.

Curiously enough, you felt better about having talked, even though you'd hoped to help the others. But they seemed happy, and as Jane drew you into a conversation on the merits of specific toppings variations, you found yourself willing to let the matter pass for now.

The end of the night came far too quickly, in the end, but there was one more question waiting before bidding all good night. Not a question you'd initially expected to be asked on accepting the invitation to dine, but the reality of the occasion had made it seem more likely. It was a little funny actually, given how the question was only being asked because of something you'd begun as a child.

"We were wondering what you thought?" Martin Aster, the ship's primary helmsman, might have been volunteered to prove you right. But he also seemed genuinely curious, and the questioning expression on his bronzed face was mirrored by the rest of the room.

"Thought of what?" You had a good idea, but better to be certain.

"Of all this," he continued, gesturing around the compartment. "You said it wasn't what you expected, but what were you?"

"Is it really a question you need answered?" you asked. Yet in the same moment, you knew that it was. Wasn't it human? To want to ask the Mother of Circles – and oh how you'd learnt to love and hate that title in equal measure – if your own little island of chosen or even temporary family was good enough?

"I suppose it is," you answered yourself. "Otherwise you wouldn't have asked."

"Well," Martin looked up and down the bar at his fellows. "Yes, ma'am."

"Amanda, please." You shook your head, mock despairing as one hand tucked your golden hair back from an attempt to roam onto your plate. None of it stopped your smile from widening, touched by the brightness that the evening had kindled in your soul.

"But to answer your question." You set down your glass, refilled for the last time, and glanced round the compartment. Breathing it in in a way few humans could. Your voice softened, the tempo of it shifting, almost wistful. "This is what I hoped for from the very beginning, I think. As far back as I can remember, at least after the Week of Sorrows."

A solemn silence fell for a moment in remembrance of those fallen, all those taken in that week of pure hell. You joined it, but didn't let it lie for long. That wasn't the point of this time, or your words.

"I wanted the feeling of home. The warmth of the family so many of us had lost." A single long finger tapped the wood of the bar. "Everything that the CIrcles grew to become, and everything this is, too.

"So I think this is wonderful," you finished. There was a warmth in your voice that only the Circles knew, and you saw it as a few of those present recognised it. "Truly."

"Thank you, Amanda," Jane said at length. Her voice was a little choked. You hoped they understood; you'd have given this praise to any gathering like this. But a look in the dark eyes of the Adamant's Captain told you that she, at least, did. That was enough.

"You're welcome, but all of you made this real," you offered back, dipping your head into a silent thanks of your own. "I just helped."

Sensor algorithms refined for Lethal Ghosts, +10 to next attempt, higher DCs adjusted. Full access to scientific archives of the Midnight Dreaming acquired. Presence of a Central Intelligence section aboard the ship identified. Additional options available.

 

[Snowfire]

"What is this place?" The words were the first ones out of Kalilah's mouth after she and Lea followed you into the gently shaped section beneath the Adamant's bridge. Looking around the space, you found yourself smiling at the soothing curves present in nearly every aspect of the compartment.

"It's where the Harmonic Choir we brought from Earth have been spending most of their time," you replied. Lea, the third and final member of your group today, made a gentle sigh of recognition.

"I…see," Kalilah said at length, the confusion in her tone quite clear as she looked around the room. "Where are they, then?"

"They needed a room with a real view of Four-Fifteen for the work they're doing with Elil and Mir." You gestured the two towards the perfect circle of haphazardly scattered chairs at the centre of the room. "And I wanted somewhere a bit more connected to do this."

"To do what, exactly?" Kalilah asked you, brows furrowing. She stepped past you towards the circle of chairs, turning to face you. "You've been rather less than informative on why you wanted us both here, Amanda."

"I…I have, haven't I." You shook your head.

"More than normal," Lea agreed. The Mender matched Kalilah's movement, though her expression held a little concern to go with the curiosity. Honestly, that was fair. You were usually better than this.

"I'm sorry." You took a few steps forward, the two present members of your Heartcircle effortlessly matching you until all three of you were inside the ring of chairs. Your breath came a touch easier there, where the gentle aura of the room strengthened into something almost palpable. And you realised why, or at least part of why, you'd been being so evasive.

"I want to try and connect to the echoes left behind in this system, the remnants of what the Consolat did," you began. Truthful words, yes, but not comprehensive. "And I think I need your help to do this." You sighed. "Kalilah."

The elder Potential, perhaps the most personally lethal human in recorded history, stared at you in silent confusion for a long moment. You could see the thoughts rushing through her mind, wondering if you were joking but recognising through the link you shared that that just didn't fit. Which led to-

"Why me?" she demanded. There was only the barest of emotion in the interrogative, but you didn't need to rely on her words. You could feel the uncertainty churning beneath them, rippling from her soul out to yours. "Why not Vega, or you? You're the ones with experience in finding harmony in things."

"That's true," you agreed. You flicked a hand towards a trio of close chairs, offering and asking for a moment of motion to bring thoughts together into certain words. Kalilah nodded briefly, picking one of the outer chairs though her gaze never wavered from you. You took the middle one, Lea settling into the other in a gentle rustle of fabrics.

"But what happened here, according to what little we know at least," you said, amending the statement quickly with a disclaimer. "It was an act of destruction, Kalilah. An entire race died, and we still don't understand anything about how or why. We think we know what it did, that it was the price of the Secrets themselves."

A breath, taken slow, steadying yourself. "But we can't know that for sure. Maybe if we'd gone to the Consolat homeworld to start with, there'd be something there that could make it clear beyond doubt. But all we really have right now is guesswork, from a race that we know doesn't understand the soul in the way we do."

"Or how we suspect the Consolat did," Lea added quietly. It didn't break Kalilah's stare, but it won a brief nod. Accepting the point, that was something.

"But that's not everything, is it?" Kalilah said, finally breaking away from your face with her eyes, looking down at her hands. They were nearly as young as yours, lithe fingers with the warm glow of youthful skin. But as Kalilah stared at them with eyes almost a century old, they shook just a little.

That told you more than any words could.

"No." There was no reason to sugarcoat it. And several reasons not to do so. "You're still hurting, after we found the Gysian home system, after we found a race that the Shiplords spared. I don't think you blame the Gysians for living-"

"I don't," Kalilah whispered.

"But it still hurt you," you said. Your friend's fingers shook again. "And you've been suffering with that ever since."

"And you think that knowing…what happened here will help me?" The emotion that flickered behind Kalilah's tone wasn't quite fury, but that was a matter of degrees. And yet there was the faintest spark of curiosity, buried deep in the acrid dismissal.

"I think it's got a better chance of helping than leaving you to stew in your resentment," you said simply. "I also believe that we've got a better chance of doing this with you than on our own. And yes," you added, preempting her even opening her mouth. "Even if Vega had time to help."

You gave Kalilah a moment to absorb that before continuing, more softly now. "None of us have your Focus, Kalilah. I know you've never gotten close to the more ephemeral aspects of what Practice can do, but you know I have. Trust me, please trust me, when I say it matters."

"I do. But I also remember you worrying about what could happen if I tried to work my Focus together with Vega's." Kalilah gave you a look, the anger that had been there fading into concern. "Why would this be any different?"

"Because that was before the Third Battle of Sol." A few years ago, you couldn't have imagined anything making such a difference. But it did. "You know I spent time before Third Sol learning how to fully use my Focus in combat. That wasn't everything it taught me how to do."

"And Lea?" Kalilah asked, grimacing. "I…don't want to hurt either of you."

Lea smiled. "The way my Focus expresses itself makes me far less vulnerable to feedback from someone with your Focus," she said. "I accept the need for some things to break so that they can be whole."

"How you make that work so easily, I still don't know," you muttered. It was not common for that to be the untrained expression of a Mender's Focus. "It took me months to even get close."

"You can make star systems shake, Mandy." Your fellow Mender's dark green eyes sparkled with gentle humour. "I'm not sure you get to complain about that."

You waved the dread logic away with a smile, returning your focus to the matter at hand. And, more importantly, the part that you wanted Kalilah to play in it.

"I think I could connect to what's left of what happened here." Kalilah's gaze sharpened at the admission, but she didn't interrupt. You didn't try to rush this time, either. "But I'd be drawn to the parts of it that feel like they can be healed, and I'm struggling to believe much of it can be."

"And something we probably couldn't keep hidden," Lea added, reaching over to tap you on the shoulder. "You've shown a trend for spectacle."

"That would be another concern, yes," you sighed. It wasn't exactly something you enjoyed admitting, no matter how many times that passionate strength had saved your life. "But it's also not the only problem. Where I'd want to look isn't where we need to. We need to understand some of what happened here, how the Consolat really died."

"Which was an act of singular destruction," Kalilah said slowly, her eyes flicking around the room nervously. "I think I get what you're trying to do, Mandy, and it makes sense now. But are you really sure you want me to be part of this?"

"Kalilah," you said, chiding the woman several decades your elder. "You know me. If I didn't want you here, if I thought it could hurt any of us, or our chances in this system? I wouldn't have asked for your help."

"Not even because it would give me something to do?" The question was delivered calmly, but you felt a bite behind it. It was hard to hide something like that with how your Unisons connected you, especially now that Asi - Kalilah's Unison - wasn't restricting their shared output so much.

"Not even then." You shook your head. "I'd have found another way."

Kalilah considered that for a moment, long enough to make you a little nervous. Then she shook her head with a sigh of her own, and smiled. The expression transformed her face, even underlined by stress and unexpressed pain.

"Alright, Mandy." She flicked a hand up, taking in the room with the singular motion. "I believe you. You're too earnest about this to ever lie." You felt a hot flush spread across your face, and Lea laughed. Kalilah didn't pay it any mind. She was only a few decades older than you. That shouldn't mean so much when you were both past seventy.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Trust me?" You asked, offering her a hand. She took it gingerly, but didn't pull away when you tightened your grip.

Lea took your other hand in a firm grip when you reached out, and you smiled your thanks to the Mender. For all your outward confidence, you weren't sure you'd have wanted to try this without her here. She probably knew, too.

"Just try to breathe." Then you suited action to the word. In the first breath you reached down, tapping the wellspring of your soul through the crystal lens of your Focus, twining nonexistent hands into the endless stream of power. In the second breath you reached out to those beside you, spinning ephemeral workings of Practice and power into the points of physical touch.

You felt Kalilah's breath hitch for a moment, the sensation still unfamiliar. She'd never experienced a Trance before, certainly never so deeply outside of combat. And that was a very, very different experience, you knew. Reassurance flowed out from Lea to the First Awoken and her breathing steadied.

So you took a third breath, and reached further. This time you were pushed beyond the physical. Past the body, past the mind, to the impossible power of the two souls – no, that wasn't right. Only two Focuses, yes, but there were four souls beside you. And a fifth, twined within the space of your own existence.

Beyond the worlds of flesh and thought, one of the only souls that could truly match your strength stirred, reaching out into the world on brilliant trails of burning space. It was her Focus in its most primal state, destruction to all that she touched or saw. In that light, you understood why Kalilah had never gotten very far in more esoteric studies of Practice. Why would you try too hard, when all you could see and feel was nothingness?

This time, however, she wasn't alone. You reached back to those sightless strands, enveloping them in the truth of your Focus. You felt Kalilah breath out in silent wonder as her soul was able to recognise the world around it for the very first time. The emotions were almost painfully bright: the light of a newborn star, illuminating the world for the very first time.

:I can see.:

You saw her reaching out further, trying to find the shape of the space she could suddenly understand. It reminded you of every Potential you'd ever seen take this step, but it wasn't exactly the same. Not all of her movements were quite so blind, and you thought you knew why. What she'd done at the end of Third Sol, almost burning herself out to save you all, that had needed to draw on parts of herself that could only be found here.

She must never have realised what she'd done – but then how could she, given the limitations her Focus gave her. And there was no time to think about it right now, because none of this was done. You could feel the power of your Foci intertwining, building towards something.

Pain hissed against your soul, fizzing burns running across them as she reached out again, this time with far more deliberation. Reaching out across the star, and for a moment you saw a holo of the star system floating around you. Prismatic energy flowed and radiated from your joined hands and none of it mattered as Kalilah reached up, body following the edict of her soul.

:I can-: Her voice was a terribly distant thing. :There's something. Something here, I feel it. I don't know what you feel as Menders, but I know destruction. And this, it's more than even I am.:

:Where?: Lea's voice came from all around you, merged into the very fabric of the space. How lucky had you been for her to find her way first to the Unisonbound, and then to your Heartcircle? Someone with her precise expression of Mending, and exactly what you needed here right now.

It was almost enough to consider religion.

:It's on the world,: Kalilah sent, still in the depths of what might be her very first half-trance. It wouldn't last much longer; it couldn't. :Their world. And I feel it, everything else. It's like us, but just not. Feels like forged metals, a design. How did they do that?:

You hadn't the faintest clue. Yet feeling the power around you, the tenuous merge born of three breaths and the willingness to trust, it didn't matter.

So you took one more breath, and this time held nothing back. You'd survived exposure to Kaliah's soul before. The day fifteen years ago when she'd found herself stuck in her attempt to synchronise with her Unison. Your (former?) bodyguard had grown a great deal in that time, but it hadn't been her words that had shaken Sol.

:Let's find out.:

Echoes: 98 + Don't Even Ask = I Don't Want To Talk About It.
Trance Roll: 11. Trance

Kalilah's Focus tore your attention from the world around you as power flooded through it, and you rushed to reassure her before she could try to pull the unconscious action back into her control. The effort was too quick for words, a bare structure of emotion pulled together on a level of gut instinct, but it proved enough.

The suddenness of the connection came as a shock to all of you, Kalilah most of all. In the depth of your shared power, her nature called out to the world. And, for perhaps the very first time in her life, something seemed to reach back.

It came with a flood of alien emotion, rendered frayed by impossible age, but not beyond your ability to translate. You'd learned how to do something similar during your work with Observer Lorelli, trying to understand her people's Reveries. In the depths of a Trance, it was entirely automatic.

None of you found much in the way of context for all that feeling, and you somehow knew - Kalilah knew - that it was only an echo of the echo that still remained. There was confusion in there, the blank-faced shock of one whose certainty in what they believed to be true has suddenly been overturned. Shock and concern, that turned rapidly to fear, surging out from a point somewhere on the distant orb of the Consolat homeworld.

Loss as deep as anything you could imagine pricked your eyes, fear forcing out your breath in short gasps, but not for long. For an instant you felt the shadow of a vast spire around you, the pulse of the universe rising to sweep everything you were away. You recognised the shape of that looming shadow, you knew you did, but where-

:Elil found this place.: Sidra's voice was as distant as your own thoughts, but they made it through. :Was this where the Secrets were created?:

It just might be. Where everything began. And if that-

The last of the emotions drained away, leaving only a final kernel of stubborn resolution in the face of what was to come. You tried to hold on, to see more, but you might as well have been trying to wrestle a star. Light overcame you as the echoes that had protected you faded. And then there was nothing but light.

---

You came back to yourself only slowly after that, your reactions hampered and senses blurred from connection to something so entirely alien to what you were used to. Kalilah's symptoms were even worse than your own, almost debilitating for the First Awoken, though certainly not dangerous. Lea, by contrast, had been insulated from the majority of the event. Acting as the link between your Focuses had protected her, it seemed.

In the days that followed, all three of you would struggle to piece together the truth of what you'd seen. It proved at least one thing, that you were in fact able to connect to the energy structures that the Consolat had left behind, different as they were to human Practice. What you'd felt likewise seemed clear, the last moments of the Consolat in this star system, but there the certainty on the matter ended.

You'd no real context to the emotions you'd found, and the Trance hadn't been able to find memories to go with them. Vega, on examining your shared gestalts, warned the three of you that she wasn't sure much more would be possible without a Miracle that none of you wanted to risk. Or being physically present at the source of the echoes.

Fortunately, you'd been able to hold onto that piece of information. The spire at the centre of a city largely choked with plant life. You'd never doubted Elil, but the value of secondary confirmation about its importance was hard to understate. When you did get to the Consolat homeworld, it would be just one more reason to go there. If Vega was right, you might actually be able to get a glimpse of what had happened there, instead of only emotion.

And, almost more thankfully, Kalilah seemed better for the experience once she'd recovered. There were still guarded things in her manner, pain she'd not shared. But it was less than it had been before, and you weren't going to be anything but thankful about that. The process of debrief following your Trance had also given her some chance to talk to you and Lea, and she felt more settled than she'd been for weeks.

Ability to interact with the Consolat echoes confirmed. Option to refine this process available, building on Reverie techniques available. There is, here, the possibility to trigger something similar to the Metaconcert event, focused on the destruction of the Consolat. Doing so would require being present at or preferably inside of the spire on the Consolat homeworld.

 

[Snowfire]

"Thanks for doing this, Jane." As busy as you'd been with the aftermath of your work with Kalilah, it wasn't a surprise that you'd miss some things. You'd lost most of a full day to immediate post-action reports and debrief, and hours more of off-duty time dedicated to the two members of your Heartcircle who'd ended up involved in the event.

"It's not the first time I've taken on meetings mostly to report the results," Jane replied. Which was exactly what she'd been doing for you after Elil and Mir's success. "But I think you'll be interested in these ones."

"Why?" you asked, a mental finger pulling up the reports you'd received on the subject. "How important did the Harmonic Choir end up being?"

"Critical, according to your two subordinates." It wasn't exactly right for Jane to call Mir and Elil your subordinates, but you'd struggled to find a good descriptor for it. It would suit, for now. "They'd been trying without the help, but couldn't get their Foci to mix.

"I admit I don't understand the technical aspects of that," in as much as they were truly technical, "but I can report on the results after bringing the Choir into play."

To Harmonise: 95 + 26 (Half Mir + Elil Practice) + 10 (Steel Eyes) - 30 (Focus Incompatibility Nullified by Harmonic Choir) = 131
Trance Roll: 30. Trance
Automatic first exploration stage success. Entry point identified.

Jane flicked her fingers, brushing the reports you'd brought up to one side to make space for a map of a section of Origin Four-Fifteen's surface. You recognised that map, the area that Mir's brief connection to whatever was down on the barren moonlet had drawn the young man to. A grid overlaid the projection as it shifted into a terrain map.

"Here," she said, indicating a dot of green light near-hidden by the overhang of a looming mountain. "The ground-penetrating scan didn't give us nearly as much data as we were expecting when we swept the area, but that's no longer so surprising."

"Oh?" You made a tugging gesture, zooming in on the location and bringing up the latest report for it. Jane pulled it away, shaking her head.

"They haven't filed that one yet," she explained. "But it tracks with what we've observed on the other planets. Our best guess is that it's a control node for this star's automated defence system. The one that's probably in charge of all those stealthed platforms we've picked up, and whatever's hidden away in the mass shadows on this moon and other bodies in the system."

"Weren't those mass shadows a significant portion of the mass of several of the inner worlds?" You asked carefully.

"Yup." Jane nodded cheerfully. "Sounds insane, until you think about what a pre-Secrets species like the Consolat might consider a necessary level of defence. And how much time those defences have had to optimise, if Mary is right in assuming that there's a Consolat AI guarding the system's infosphere."

"What do you mean?" You asked after a moment. Your mind supplied you with a ready stream of possibilities, but the scale–

"The suspicion is that the planetary mass inconsistencies are a result of enormous cold storage facilities for automated defence craft," Jane replied. "Along with everything that would be required for production, maintenance and launch. Defences on a scale to make humanity's fortification of Sol look like a child's sandcastle."

"And they built this without the Secrets, at least as we know them?" You shook your head. "I know that Mary told us that they'd have to know how to do anything the Secrets can if they were to create them, but this…"

You trailed off, still shaking your head until Jane bumped your shoulder with hers. You looked over to find her smiling. "What?"

"It's hard to imagine you as out of your depth," she told you. Her smile slipped a little, fading back towards her usual professionalism.

"I suppose it is," you admitted. It took you a few moments to get there, but you managed. "But why is that the assumption?"

To Harmonise II: 71 + 26 (Half Mir + Elil Practice) + 10 (Steel Eyes) - 30 (Focus Incompatibility Nullified by Harmonic Choir) + 50 (Trance rollover) = 157 vs 150/???
Second exploration stage at first stage completion. Issues of scale identified.

"Two points." Another motion zoomed in on the area that the Potentials had identified, giving way to a model presumably gathered by drone footage. It looked by all appearances like just another section of barren rock, hidden in the shadow of a mountainous overhang.

"First is the level of security in place. We were able to locate an entrance point, but in the process we also found defences." A section of the rock face turned transparent, a passageway leading into the mountain itself, sealed by a slab of ancient battle armour. Then defensive systems were outlined in glowing crimson all around the tunnel, still active after millions of years.

"Lieutenant Gilsan is of the opinion that this is only part of the facility's immediate defence capacity," Jane added, all hints of her smile entirely gone. "And your subordinates agree, Mir especially. He said it was like everything about the place had been built with an overarching purpose, one that connected with his Focus but wasn't the same."

"The Consolat designed it to give them peace," you murmured. You stared at the somewhat ridiculous defensive array, before looking back to Jane. "Or something along those lines, am I right?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to assume that trying to break the security seals would be problematic," you sighed. As you did so, you were pulling up the latest reports, the ones from the meeting Jane must have come from.

"Elil and Mir believe it's possible, assuming they have a Harmonic element to support them. But this was designed to be incredibly secure, and we've no idea how far down the security protocols go. If they're as paranoid about it as we would be? There'll be layers of increasing complexity all the way down to the core of the facility."

"I see." You couldn't entirely fault the Consolat for their diligence in protecting their home system, but it was frustrating to know where something was and be entirely unable to do anything about it for now. "Any other options?"

"None that are any less dangerous. Especially with us still lacking a clear picture on infospace control." And that was one Pandora's Box that no one was keen to open right now. Knowing if there was anything waiting in the networks of the system could prove crucial to your long term ability to operate here, but the dangers of going looking there couldn't be underestimated.

Iris would stick her hand into that potential bear's den if you asked it of her, but she'd vastly prefer more information, any information, before doing so. Which could leave you a little stuck here at Four-Thirteen.

Your gaze strayed from the imagery in front of you to a projection on the other side of the room, where you'd been examining the latest scans of the Consolat's homeworld. Were you really going to be forced to go there?

"Well, it's progress," you said at last. "We've got a good guess of what's down there now, and some idea of how difficult it'll be to get inside the place. That's a lot more than what we started with."

"It is." Jane looked about as happy with the result as you felt.

"And it's good to see that the Choir was able to do exactly what I thought we might need them for." And that they didn't seem to hold the weeks of second-line duties against you. In fairness, if they had you'd have known about it before now, but it was a heartening confirmation. And one that could be critical moving forward.

You looked back at the image of the Consolat homeworld, the four points that Elil had found clearly marked. Mary and Vega had been hard at work behind the scenes since you'd discussed the best use of their time, and there was a command meeting tomorrow for them to present findings. That, then, you thought.

If you were going to determine any changes to your strategy so far, better to do it with the whole picture, and everyone there to see it.

Entrance to the point of interest on Origin 4-15 located. Options unlocked to support investigation or infiltration of the facility. Overt attempts to access the facility considered high risk, given your current lack of information.

 

[Snowfire]

The Adamant's main conference room was busier than normal, but that was only to be expected. Answers had been promised from Vega and Mary at this meeting, and the number of people who wanted to miss either of those was very short. Several research leads had managed to arrange time here too, unsurprising to be sure, but certainly something that made the conference chamber more crowded.

For yourself, watching as the last few attendees found their seats, you doubted that Mary was bringing anything truly comprehensive to the table today. You knew how your friend acted after managing something like that, and she wasn't doing so. A step on the path was your best guess, maybe a little more.

"That's the last," you murmured to the dark haired woman beside you. Nudging her gently out of her notes. Mary smiled, a flick of fingers clearing the various virtual windows around her away.

"Thanks, Mandy." She pushed herself up out of her chair, tapping a sequence on the air to manipulate the room's lighting. The lights dimmed except for a small circle around Mary, standard conference material to draw attention and focus.

"What are the Secrets?" she asked the quieted room. A spark of amusement kindled in her green eyes as no one answered. "That's the question you're all here hoping I can answer, isn't it?"

Silence reigned.

"Can you?" One of the researchers, you thought his name was Hallan, asked. "Answer that question, I mean, even if only a little more?"

"With that qualifier present, Halland?" Mary smiled at him. "Yes, I believe I can."

Underpinned: 60 + 36 (Mary Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) = 131/120.
First stage development complete. +11 rollover banked.

"This is only an incremental improvement on our understanding, I'm sorry to say," she continued, falling into a steady lecturing tone. "But it's still an improvement, especially as it comes with several confirmations to what were previously only hypotheticals." A small gesture activated the room's projectors, filling the air between you with a representation of the galaxy.

"First is the most important one. I'd want to actually examine some of what's down on the Consolat homeworld to back this up, but I think it's reasonable to state that Secrets were created. However they did it, the Consolat injected alterations into the structure of reality in a way that would allow other races to utilise them, on a galactic scale."

Mary snapped her fingers and a network of interlinked lines spread out to cover the galaxy, enveloping every star.

"Needless to say, this explains a lot of what we considered strange about the Secrets." She wasn't wrong there, you thought. "Though it also raises a number of other questions. I'd have to take far longer than we have to list everything, however, so I'm going to simplify things to my abstract. If you want to read over the full details, there will be a copy on the Adamant's network after this meeting."

"For all of us here who aren't scientists, I thank you," Jane said dryly. Mary's smile turned impish and sounds of amusement rippled across the room in a gentle wave, breaking a little of tight focus.

"I do try," your friend smiled. She took a breath to steady her expression as the laughter drained away, before continuing. "The Secrets, as best as I can tell, are not in themselves designed to break any law of physics as we understand them. They were made within the universe's structure, not to change them, and that's important.

"How so?" Vega asked, the Harmonial's lips pursed in confusion.

"For one thing, it implies that what we call a soul probably already existed." Mary shrugged. "The Consolat had to have something to connect the Secrets to, a way for life to access them. The scientific discovery of the soul commonly precedes access to the Secrets in the records we have access to. And, well, the Shiplords have souls."

"And they predate the Secrets," you said, nodding. Mary shot you a grateful look.

"Exactly," your friend nodded. "It's possible that the Consolat created the soul, created the whole structure, but that wouldn't really explain what the various Potentials aboard have been able to sense about this place. It's a possibility, certainly, but the data doesn't favour it. And, before anyone asks why this is important to the original point, I'm getting there.

"Since what we found at the Last Memory, I've gone back into my files and checked a few of my older theories." The imagery around her shifted, forming into various images, each one emblematic of the Secrets humanity had thus far discovered or were aware of. Mary pointed at the first one, an image of a ship flickering between two different stars.

"Of all the Secrets, the First is the only one that I imagine the Consolat weren't practically capable of. But they had to know the theory, a way to provide a structure that races to come could connect to with First Secret drives. I imagine that the Uninvolved might be able to give us a better answer, but they also might not. The last million cycles or so haven't exactly been kind to races who keep wanting to understand the universe, and that would pass over into those races that went Uninvolved instead of extinct."

There were a few unhappy murmurs at that, but none of it was disagreement. The path the Shiplords had taken after the War of the Sphere was exactly as Mary described. And the Uninvolved would be affected by that even after leaving the physical world behind.

"Now, it's clear that the Secrets provide a path of least resistance to achieving certain technological outcomes. They also possess a level of access control, though I've no idea how that functions." Mary sighed. "Our understanding of the soul is far from complete, and certainly not up to the task of anything more than informed guesswork. But, with that said, a few things seem obvious."

"First, however the Consolat did this, it had to require a truly enormous amount of energy. Even if how the Secrets work provides them some sort of mechanical advantage to everything they give us, building the structures to make that possible would be..." She trailed off, clearly grasping for words.

"It's hard to really quantify the scale of what they had to do, and that makes it even harder to describe how much energy it would've taken to do so. But something I've started to wonder over the last few days is if this is why the Consolat aren't here anymore."

That got a reaction out of you. Your blue eyes went very wide and spanned back into focus Mary, mouth opening to suck in an unsteady breath. None of that went unnoticed by the rest of the room, and sudden focus bore down on you as you stared at your oldest friend. She waited, ever-patient, as you worked through it.

"You're talking," you swallowed, "about something like how the Dragons gave us Practice."

"It fits," Mary said, spreading her hands. More murmurs filled the air around you, many of the voices uncertain. The details of what the Metaconcert event had discovered were relatively unclassified, but that didn't mean everyone had read them. "Something like what the Dragons did would be able to provide the energy density to act at this scale, and also support any ongoing maintenance costs pretty trivally."

"Unless the Consolat figured out where the energy supporting Practice actually comes from," another of the researchers pointed out. Her manner was that of one making a stubborn rebuttal.

"It's possible, Ella," Mary admitted. "But it wouldn't explain why the Consolat aren't here anymore. Why they died, vanished in fact, with their greatest work clearly incomplete."

"The Shiplords could've killed them," Ana suggested. "I know it's unlikely given the state of this system, but it's not impossible."

"Wait," Jane interrupted before the conversation could continue further. "Mary, you said you think that the Secrets are incomplete?"

Mary nodded

"Why?"

"Because too much of this feels well planned for the end result to be what we're looking at," Mary said bluntly. "Almost everything that the Secrets do had limits put on them by the Consolat when they created the system that supports them. The limiters to Fifth Secret drives are one example, but there are a lot of others. And that speaks of an intent to create a system that could be modified."

"Modified how?" Jane asked, eyes narrowing. "Controlling how the Secrets worked?"

"That and potentially more." Mary nodded. Her green eyes had turned very solemn. "Anyone as careful about what they were creating as the Consolat clearly were would have expected for modifications to be needed. Which means there should have been some way to control them after the fact. Modify what they could do, or even what Secrets a species could access.

"But if they did create something like that, I don't think it ever got finished. If it had been," she shook her head. "The Shiplords have had the run of this system for millions of years. They would have found it if it was there to be found. Which is why I think the Consolat never managed to finish everything. They got the core system working, and gave it a way to maintain all of its functions, but after that? It's just been running as they initially designed it."

"Of course, how it's maintaining itself raises some other unpleasant questions," Ella said darkly. Mary winced.

"Yes, it does." She snapped her fingers again and the various images around her vanished. "See, there are two main options that we've been able to come up with. One is that the Secrets were a one-and-done operation. They provide a mechanical advantage in support of the things they let us do.

"The other is that the structure simply abrogates the energy cost by paying it externally, which would…well there are two options for how it could be doing that. Either the Consolat created something like what the Dragons did in creating Practice, or the Secrets are fuelled in some way by the Uninvolved. If we were coming at this without the knowledge we already have, I'd be tempted to consider the last one as the truth, with the Shiplords being aware of it. It would explain some of the truly insane things the Shiplords have done, and why the Uninvolved appear to have a lifespan. But that isn't what we've seen from the Shiplords so far, or at least not all of them."

"It would require a conspiracy that not even Kicha was aware of," Gilsan spoke up. The intelligence officer's eyes were sharp as he considered the problem, before shaking his head. "Given everything else she was able to do for us, I don't see that as likely. The fact that she could tell us about what happened at the Fourth Battle of Sol, specifically the capture of a member of the Two Twenty Three…"

He shook his head again. "No. I see how it would be a convenient answer to many questions, but I think you're right in distrusting it. The rest of the picture we have doesn't fit."

"That doesn't remove the possibility that the reason for the Uninvolved's lifespan being limited is a result of energy needs, however," Jane pointed out. "Unless I'm missing something here?"

"You're not." Mary shook her head. "To be honest, that could be the case even if the structure is relatively static. Nothing comes free."

"Except that would suggest that any energy initially created by the Consolat's death wasn't a permanent thing," Vega noted quietly. "And that could have, well. Implications for us. Maybe not immediate ones, but if what the Dragons gave us might not be permanent? That's something we should be worried about."

"Also something we can't really do anything about until we know more," you replied, before Mary or anyone else could sink their teeth into that rabbit hole. "And I think we should try not to get too far afield here. You're right that we should think about this, but there are more immediate issues right now."

Vega sighed, her eyes troubled, but nodded. "Alright."

You nodded to her thankfully, returning your focus to Mary. "So, to summarise? I'm aware there's a lot more you could probably say, but there also seems to be a lot where we're not clear on what's actually happening."

"That's fair," Mary chuckled. "Summary, then. The Secrets provide a path of least resistance. They're not breaking anything about reality as we understand it, just making it easier to get there, and that's… not as insane as it might seem. How the Consolat made them, we've no clue as yet. It would've taken energy on a scale that makes your actions in battle defending Sol look like firecrackers.

"Finally, there's a question of how they've maintained themselves since then, with some rather disturbing possibilities. I've got a few options of where to go from here, if you want me to continue investigating. We can talk about it at the time."

"Thank you. I think that's everything we should be considering for now, and further questions are probably best kept for a different forum." Mary nodded in agreement, and you turned in your chair to the other reason for this meeting. "Vega, what about yourself? Any progress?"

The Harmonial blinked for a moment, then gave herself a little shake. "I'm sorry, I was processing everything Mary had to tell us," she said, mastering herself. "For myself, yes, I can report some progress."

Practised Restraint: 67 + 27 (Vega Practice) + 10 (Proven Miracle - Complex Harmony) = 104/100.
First stage development complete. +4 rollover banked.

Bonus to Miracle prevention. Full technique currently only available for Vega. Action unlocked to teach this to your Heartcircle as well as a partial version to the Harmonic Choir. Further study required to give the Choir the full benefits of this technique.

"It's been a little difficult going backwards compared to what I'm used to," the Harmonial admitted. "But I think I have something I can share with the rest of the Heartcircle. Teaching it to the Choir…that will take some more work to refine it, I think. I can cheat a little with them, but not to the same degree as with other Unisonbound."

"That was fast," you said, impressed. "You're confident it'll work?"

"As confident as I was that I'd be able to do something with Skylark." Vega flashed you a hesitant smile, and you found yourself laughing despite yourself. "It's a different type of harmony, but it's still harmony, and that's enough."

"You are the expert," you conceded, still smiling. "If there's nothing else, I leave this in your hands."

Vega shook her head. "Nothing more, no."

"Then I suppose we have a baseline for the coming days," you nodded, looking around the packed table. You saw Jane hide a smile, realising what you were about to do.

"So. What shall we do with it?"

You've made progress here at Origin Four-Fifteen, but the question now presents itself. Do you remain here, seeking out further answers in the outer system? Or do you dive deeper, to the Consolat homeworld itself?
[] Remain at Origin Four-Fifteen - You've made the first steps towards uncovering what's hidden on this ancient moon. Further direct investigation could be dangerous, but other avenues of investigation or research remain available to you here.
[] Move on to The Origin - The Consolat homeworld, and site of four out of five of the points of interest identified by Elil. There is a Shiplord research vessel, the Midnight Dreaming, in orbit of the planet as well as a single picket ship. The Midnight Dreaming is known to contain a team from Shiplord Central Intelligence. If picking the Origin, you must also pick a distance.
-[] High Orbit - Sharing orbital space with Shiplord craft whilst remaining hidden is exactly what you did at the Fifth Sorrow. This will provide immediate access to the sites on the planet below, and minimise time to extraction in the event of detection.
-[] Middle Distance - Take up position a few lightseconds out from the homeworld's orbital path. This option splits the difference of access and risk, favouring neither.
-[] Near Orbit Cluster - Much as the Adamant currently hides in the mass shadow of a comet, hide in the shadow of an asteroid that shares the orbital path of the Consolat homeworld. This will significantly increase the time required to reach the homeworld, but is the safest option if you want to take Elil and Vega with you to secure the landing party.

 

[Snowfire]

"Well, we're here," Mary murmured. The debate on where to had lasted well into that day's afternoon as you debated pros and cons with the command staff. The end result, however, had been quite clear.

"So we are," you said. The bridge of the Adamant was unusually quiet as the ship made final approach on the asteroid that had been chosen by your bridge crew as your new hiding place. It would remain in easy range of the world for several months. And, at Jane's strongly worded suggestion, it was outside the Consolat homeworld's orbital path, ensuring that any escape could be launched for a position as close to the system's edge as possible.

"Still think you made the right choice?" your friend asked. She wasn't talking about your decision to move on. Preparations to leave had been rather simple, really, but there'd been one decision to make first.

Months ago, back home, you'd made the decision to fit the Adamant with a Trailblazer nanoforge. It was a far more capable fabber than any ship the Adamant's size usually carried, and had proven its worth many times over the trip purely by providing a ready supply of spare parts. Including refills for the Masques that you'd used to such great effect across the Shiplord Sorrows. Now though, you had to consider some of the larger templates that the fabber was capable of creating.

The fact that you were leaving Origin Four-Fifteen didn't mean you wouldn't be coming back. And it would be possible to leave behind one of the minor Seed constructs that the Trailblazer initiative had come up with. So that when you did return, there would be a base of operations planetside.

The Seeds were essentially each a sphere of Sixth Secret nanotech wrapped around a mass reservoir, designed to let Trailblazer ships easily deploy covert structures at points of interest. Most of the resulting structures were compact and fully automatic, but a few templates had support set aside for a biological component. Those would be very useful soon, but hadn't been considered a priority for the moonlet.

Which had left you a couple of options. The standard listening post template was the simplest, and certainly the easiest on the Adamant's mass silo, but your Intelligence section had floated the possibility of deploying one of the more complex observation patterns. Their aim had been long term passive analysis of the moonlet's structure, with an eye for acquiring data on what really was hiding under the surface of the world. A listening post would only, well, listen. The observation hub might give you some real information, and the risk profile was low enough to make it worthy of consideration.

Neither of the designs were, despite the naming scheme, recognisable as "posts". They had few components larger than a speck of dust, and would be spread across most of a hemisphere.

Did you leave behind a Trailblazer Seed construct to monitor Origin Four-Fifteen? Choosing to do so will cost 1 AP of your allotment this turn.
[] Yes
-[] Listening Post - Produce a listening post pattern. Will provide a linked sensor coverage over the outer system and a foundation point for further investigation on Satellite Four-Fifteen. Will consume 5% of the Adamant's mass bunker.
-[] Observation Hub - Produce an observation hub pattern. Will provide the same coverage as a listening post and also provide passive analysis to Four-Fifteen's structure that could prove helpful if you return to the site. Will consume 10% of the Adamant's mass bunker.
[] No

"I think it was the best choice," you said. It wasn't like you to be so noncommittal, but you were a little distracted. Raising your voice, you asked: "How's the link to the Midnight Dreaming?"

"Steady and stable," Iris replied instantly. "Nothing on their scopes that I can see, though I'm not in all of their systems." There was a conspicuous pause. "Just most."

You shared a smile with Mary, trying not to roll your eyes. Your daughter had been inordinately proud of herself for her fine work in breaking into the ship's systems. It was a little risky to have her accessing the ship's systems, but they were broadly civilian. And she'd promised to set tripwires around the section of the vessel taken over by Shiplord Central Intelligence. She'd made steady progress in pulling down any accessible fragment of data beyond those sections of the ship's network, however. And had also confirmed the efficiency of the Adamant's stealth systems when you'd broken orbit several days ago.

:Stop delaying,: Sidra told you gently. :You're here. It's time.:

:...I know.: You stood with a small sigh, tearing your eyes away from the asteroid looming on the Adamant's visual display.

"Good work, all of you," you said, breaking the hush again. "Jane, Mary, would you join me please."

Jane's reply was instant, your second in command standing in the same breath. "Yes, ma'am."

"Of course," Mary smiled. You'd given her plenty of time to study the closer-range scans, so she'd forgive you taking her away from them now.

You headed for the connected conference room, feeling Sidra work the room's systems to prepare it for your arrival. A far more detailed holographic image of the Consolat homeworld was floating at the centre of the compartment's table as you entered, with all four primary points of interest marked. More markers denoted a number of suggesting landing zones, as well as secondary locations that your scans considered noteworthy.

Now it was time to decide what to do with it all.

You have Six (6) AP (Five if you left a Seed at Satellite Four-Fifteen) and One (1) Research (Mary) AP to assign, each representing a dice of effort. Unless otherwise specified, there is no limit to the number of AP you can assign to a given task. Some actions may require specific talents or characters to complete - this will be noted in the action text.

Exploration - Direct exploration of the Origin system, based on The Adamant's location in-system. The Adamant is currently in shuttle range of the Consolat homeworld, hidden in the mass shadow of a near-world asteroid.
[] Blazing a Trail - Establish a Trailblazer-package outpost at one of several landing points on the planet, allowing for longer term habitation and direct access to the planet's major interest points.
-[] Outline location and type of outpost here. See sidebar below.
Highly recommended for operations at your current distance.
[] Quarters - Send or lead a team to investigate one of the four points of interest on the planet below. You must specify which characters are sent to which location. Characters sent down to the planet may not execute non-Exploration tasks in that turn without a Trailblazer outpost present on planet.
-[] Immaculate Evergreens - An entirely too well-tended reserve of forestry on the outskirts of one of the Consolat's former cities. Scans have detected some sort of information network between the trees. [Mary or Iris recommended]
-[] Crumbling Halls - A sprawling and mildly overgrown complex of buildings, settled a comfortable distance from any Consolat cities. Data from the Midnight Dreaming suggests it was an academic centre. [Mary and at least one Mender recommended]
-[] Occupied Archive - The Consolat Archive, so named by the Dreaming's files, is a cluster of heavily shielded bunkers. Contains a vast amount of information left behind by the Consolat, but is also the only location on the planet with a Shiplord presence. [Elil and Iris recommended]
-[] Last Spire - A towering construct at the centre of a city thoroughly invested by fauna, and quite possibly the heart of the entire system's echoing presence in your senses. It may be possible to directly interface with the echoes of the Consolat's creation and death here. [Mandy required, Vega and Mary recommended]

Investigation - At-a-distance exploration of the Origin system. Generally not location dependent.
[] Matrix Webs - The system's datasphere appears to be nominally accessible, but any exploration of the systems is judged to have two requirements. First, that Iris is involved at some level. And second, that any exploration is done with extreme care. [Requires Iris]
[] Lethal Ghosts - Active scans on entering the inner system detected sensor ghosts and isolated mass anomalies scattered across the system. At present, your best guess is that this is some sort of ancient Consolat system. You may want to figure out just what that system involves. [+10 to this action.]
*New* [] Breach at Midnight - The Dreaming is not just a civilian craft. There is a section within the ship, repurposed to host a team from Shiplord Central Intelligence. It would be extremely risky, but it might be possible to breach its firewalls to discover what sent them here. [Requires Iris]
*New* [] Heart's Caution - Vega has found a way to invert the techniques that first brought her to your attention. Teaching this to the Harmonic Choir would require more work refining the technique, but she could pass it onto you and the rest of the Heartcircle. [Requires Vega]
[] Write in?

Research - Theoretical examination of not just factors present here in the Origin, but far beyond. Your Research AP must be assigned to one of these tasks, but additional AP may also be used.
[] Underpinned - With a solid proof now in hand of who created the Secrets, Mary wants to continue her work on understanding how the Consolat actually did it. This could well prove crucial in the weeks to come. [+11 rollover to second stage research]
[] Refinement from Reverie - Your experience of interacting with what the Consolat did here is similar in many ways to what you experienced connecting to a Marionette Reverie. Take the techniques you learnt in your time with Lorelli and turn them to this purpose. [Requires Amanda or Vega]
[] VIsions in the Jump - You saw a glimpse of the place where you met Tahkel when jumping to the Fourth Sorrow, and it had two figures there, one of them who looked human. Try to work out how that happened, and how to reach back to that place without requiring another jump. [Requires Amanda]
[] Practised Restraint - Vega was able to find a way to an understanding of Practiced Miracles that allowed her to trigger them with a level of regularity that was a little intimidating. She's offered to try and see if she can reverse the process. Not something you ever thought you'd need before now, but it should be possible. [+4 rollover to second stage research]
*New* [] Dreaming Secrets - Iris has managed to access the full civilian archive of the Midnight Dreaming, a research vessel in orbit of the Consolat Homeworld. Fully investigate the data she acquired. Will provide further detail on planetary points of interest.
[] Write in?

You may also pick Two (2) Personal Actions. These will have limited mechanical effect on their own, but can synergise with AP actions.
[] Spend some time with your family. This will be a balm to you all.
[] Relax and train with your Heartcircle. Keeping your edge in combat sharp is more important now than it ever was. And it's good to share time together.
[] Mir seems disturbed by what he sensed down on Satellite Four-Fifteen. Check on him.
[] Dedicate personal time to learn the Restraint techniques pioneered by Vega.
[] Write in?

If you have any ideas for write-ins, ping me before voting for them.

Plan voting, please.

---

Sidestory Events​

I currently have a list of small outline sections I'd like to write, but I know that just having them sit there won't help much. So, if you'd like to see a perspective outside of the current cast like I did last turn, give the list below a poke around and tell me what you'd prefer.

• Across the stars we search - PoV Shipteens
• Current disposition of the FSN's First Fleet, picking the bones of their latest target - PoV Lina Sharpe
• Warden once meant something. Today, we shall remind our people that we do not bend - PoV Kicha, Entara (Gysian survivor)
• Under the light of Sol, humanity gathers its might to cast across the galaxy - PoV Adriana Thera
• How the world has changed - PoV High Fleetlead Taldor (Returning)
• Between the stars we seek - PoV Alternate Nutrient Source Advised (Neras Starhome)