September 14, Shahrewar, 09:34 local time
Farshad lay prone in the flattened rubble of what in a previous age had been called Indar. The seal of his envirosuit was slightly askew, fogging his vision. Fortunately, his objective was close enough that he did not need to see particularly well to gauge his timing. Unfortunately, it was also so close that he did not want to move to clear the seal, lest he give away his position.
Around him, laying in other piles of rubble and pressed up against ruined fragments of former walls which still held more verticality than most, were the other five members of his hand picked squad. Ahead of him, it’s bulk still slightly settling into the rubble as wisps of steam rose from its recently superheated surface, lay his objective.
He surveyed the scene again, once again impressed by the scale of the thing. The largest Indar asset to reach orbit of Shahrewar had been perhaps the size of a small personal vehicle - small satellites, primarily for surveilling the activities of other clans. The massive vessel before him had already disgorged two massive lorries while he watched, and he suspected that those were just the stragglers.
So far, everything about the vessel was lining up with the accounts from their scouting team. Now, everything hinged on two observed behaviors of these mysterious vehicles, and their interplay.
Firstly, it had been observed that the doors of the lift vessel would open when a cargo lorry approached, just wide enough to allow it’s entry.
Secondly, it had been verified that the lumbering lorry would stop when a large object (or being) interposed itself in its path.
What was unknown was if the vessel doors would shut if unauthorized motion was detected. Or if the lorry would still slow in such a case. His team was about to find out.
And with any luck (and copious shaped charges) they would find out whatever was piloting this craft as well. He was not confident he had enough charges to breach the exterior airlock, but any interior doors should be a cinch. They would then detain whatever beings were inside for interrogation and secure the craft for more detailed inspection and disassembly.
September 14, Shahrewar Troposphere, 09:54 local time
There were no interior doors. The whole craft appeared to be automated, just like the lorries.
And indeed, the blasting charges were inadequate to re-open the airlock doors.
The shaking began to stop as the craft exited the troposphere. The first Perugians to orbit Shahrewar glanced at each other nervously and double checked their stocks of canned air for their (unpressurized) enviro-suits.
September 14, Cargo Hold of the Aphrodite, in transit from Gaia to PIII
Iatragoras reviewed his message blat once more before flicking his spines and squirting the relay command at the controller.
It was unfortunate that the minute or so light speed delay prevented a real time communication with Automedon of Zancle, Captain of the Asmara. He was clearly shaken up by the events of the last days, and Iatragoras regretted not being able to console him in person.
It was understandable that he was shaken, given the unexpected situation. Stowaways! And, worse, stowaways which could not breath methane! It was fortunate that there had only been one casualty.
As much as Iatragoras would have liked to try to speak with the neighbors daring enough (or mad enough) to sneak onto the Asmara via cargo shuttle, he agreed with Automedon’s decision to send them back down via shuttle as soon as they could be corralled back aboard, along with their fallen comrade. To extend their abduction may have exacerbated the incident.
Nobody had expected Neighbors to burst forth from the shuttle upon its arrival, certainly not the maintenance tech standing in the bay to check the odd fault messages being thrown by the shuttles airlock and it’s lorries. Thankfully, the tech had kept his head - and that gesticulation seemed somewhat universal. When the neighbors surrounded him and gestured for him to move, he had moved. He had led them into the airlock they had directed him to.
Then he had sealed it and called for orders from Automedon.
Automedon had elected to simply close the blast doors leading to the lock, disconnect the airlock module, and pack the whole lock into another shuttle for return to the surface, maintenance tech, neighbors and all. Then a volunteer crew had suited up in the available powered exosuits (typically used for heavy lifting), entered the shuttle, opened the lock, and escorted the tech out. A focused microwave blast from the crew’s elected peace officer had discouraged any further scuffle from the somewhat terrified neighbors, who had seemed a bit more concerned with the seals on their environmental suits than any further kidnapping attempts - a small glimmer of sanity in an otherwise crazy incident.
It was only after the tech was secured and the first shuttle was swept that they found the corpse.
October 25, Shahrewar, Bunker 3:
Abbaseh sat alone in the dimly lit room, his back to the door. He knelt and ran his fingers through the urn in front of him, feeling the roughness of the fragments of chiten inside and listening to their crinkle.
The tiny fragments under his fingers were the final memorial of Abbaseh’s ancestors - a tiny fragment from each of his forefathers, the oldest ones ground to dust and settled to the bottom by generations of stirring.
Abbaseh’s father had told him, on the day he exited the creche, that within this urn was a scale from Jaleh Spuzgar himself, founder of the clan. But then, every member of the clan would claim thus, but only a few dozens of his scales would have been collected, by his direct sons, and placed in each of their urns with the evenly divided portion of Jaleh’s own urn. Abbaseh’s father had been a braggart - odds are not even a speck of dust from Spuzgar lay in this urn - his genealogy was certainly not so great as to have been traced back so far.
Abbaseh’s thoughts drifted to the generations before them and the struggles they must have overcome, and weighed them against his own. Perhaps some few of them had faced such trials, but he found himself doubtful. Why seek aid from ancestors who had never had to face such a time? Still, the ritual itself was calming.
From behind him, Jaleh asked “Something on your mind?”
Some Perugians claimed that during their commune with their ancestors, they would converse with them, being granted advice for the future, lessons from the past, or even blessings and mana. Abbaseh firmly believed that such claims were made entirely by two types of Perugian - charlatans and madmen.
Of the two types, unfortunately he was the latter, Abbaseh thought to himself.
“Still angry at me for telling you to volunteer for that first survey patrol I take it? We both know that if you hadn’t volunteered for that patrol, you would have volunteered for the soup pot soon enough.”
Abbaseh turned to face Jaleh, looking him in the eyes, unable to ignore his goads any longer “Would that have been any worse?”
“Oh please, enough with the fatalism. It’s ever so dreary. What are you planning to do about the news from Bahraman and his pet hedgehog?”
“Oh please yourself, we both know it is Bahraman who is the pet, and the hedgehog who is the master.”
“Aha, so you are thinking about it!”
“Of course. And the implications. If Bahraman’s interpretation of their silly wiggle dance is correct, the hedgehog’s aid drop protocols have changed due to some incident elsewhere on Shahrewar. Just “some incident”! He doesn't even know what happened!”
Abbaseh stood and paced back and forth across the room perpendicular to Jaleh, glancing at him occasionally and seeing his infuriating smirk.
“Our very lives depend on aid from the hedgehogs arriving like clockwork, each time those great ships make a circuit. Some idiotic Xeshm or Sawar clansman taking a potshot at a hedgehog could jeaporize the lives of every Perugian on the planet! Sure, the hedgehogs treat us as pets now, but if we bite the hand that feeds...” Abbaseh’s outburst slowly faded as he followed that thought to its logical conclusion, his eyes unfocused, facing the closed door in front of him.
“And what can you do about that?” Jaleh asked with an eyeridge quirk.
“Nothing!” Abbaseh yelled, his voice reverberating in the empty room.
“Nothing… yet.” Abbaseh muttered to himself. His expression subtly shifted, a hardness coming to his features, as his eyes came back into focus.
“Now you are thinking, oh Great leader of the Spuzgar'' said the greatest Clanleader in the history of Spuzgar, his voice dripping with sarcasm as a grin split his maw in an uncomfortably predatory expression. An expression which seemed familiar to Abbaseh.
Ahh, yes. He had seen it in the mirror occasionally of late.
Nov 18, Deep Space:
A strangeness in the warp, the medium through which the weft is conducted, is detected just beyond the orbit of Semichi VII - what Kapetyn scientists theorize could be a gap in the warp itself, and if some further energy was input, perhaps a bridge to... elsewhere. As a pure science project, this was potentially world changing. In any other time, this would be incredible news and make headlines across Gaia, but in the context of the current catastrophic death toll on the third planet, it hardly made the news.
OOC: I actually had my geo and grav survey orders flipped this whole time :|
