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Aimo's in Australia and Pete wasn't too well, but Loz was in town so Merrick Sturnn (who was actually really on Tarsus by his schedule!) joined the group for once.
Sturnn
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Being flush with standard crates of ship spares, the crew decided to leave some on Tarsus, and their old acquaintance Hayden Poole was able to find them a secure warehouse on Newland Down starport to stash them. His fortunes and prestige had soared since this bunch of misfits had taken his hire to stop bandits waylaying his Nob Boost deliveries, and a few credits for a warehouse was nothing in return.
Some of them went up for sale, along with some life-support recharges.
Some consideration was given to moving the Short Walk onto a Tarsus/Collace - Kaldamar run, though with only only Jump-1, it was going to be a tricky proposition. If the wreck of the Blue Razor corsair could be put back in operation, though, there were other possibilities.
It seemed to be a good moment for a break, and the entire crews of both Walks took a night off and hit the town, following a slap-up dinner with a tour of Newland's bars that lasted until dawn. At some point, it emerged Sturnn had taught the rats his career's nemesis - gambling - and despite their confusion at hiding your playing pieces from each other, had left them very thoughtful.
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The Long Walk settled onto the cleared pad at the ranch, and the crew debarked to take a look at progress. The basic layout of a ranch establishment was done, and prefab buildings were up providing a reasonably hospitable place to stay. As yet, no water supply was available, but with a trained Scout on the crew, they managed to use the sensors to pick up evidence of an aquifer a little under 5km away. An order was placed to a suitable company to get a feed from it.
As soon as the hatches were opened, the ten rats who'd travelled with the Long Walk had disembarked and disappeared into the wood, where they spent several hours conferring with their kin and sharing what they had discovered in their trip to Outer Space. Eventually they returned. As a group, the rats were interested in negotiating with the Kaldamarans for lebensraum, though aware that this would be a delicate business.
After a bit of thought, the group decided to return to the Ancient base under the wood and finish exploring the subway system before turning the whole lot over to the local government. The rats were willing to go along although a bit unhappy about passing through the ruined biology lab, which they reported still made them feel physically uncomfortable in some way.
After installing a spare airlock down into the base, the Cats descended into the complex and made their way through to the subway station. With some help from the rats, a car was called, and the group boarded. More detailed exploration of the controls allowed the rats to bring up a holo display of the network, which showed nine stations laid out along four routes, with a large hub in the centre.
One was obviously their current location, so they set out to explore the others. The seats and spaces were too small for humans, especially armoured humans, so they ended up either sitting on the floor or using their armour's locks to set it at a seated stance.
Each site was marked by an unintelligible symbol. These never did become clear.
Something else that never became clear was notes as to what order these were visited. So I have guessed. The decision to explore this caught me by surprise; not only had I never written up my plan for the unexplored bits but I didn't have the maps of the explored bits with me either. So this was all a bit improvisational.... and when I came to write it up, I couldn't remember where the Gun room had been. I've tacked it on where the Weather Station subway appeared to go nowhere.
This was a huge circular dome, with several levels. Living quarters, some equivalent of shops and workplaces, all were closed up and seemed mothballed. In the centre was a large cylindrical hangar with a domed ceiling that looked designed to open. It suggested a landing bay for a starship, but it was empty. A subway nexus was under the dome, with tracks leading off NW, NW, SW and SE.
The next place they stopped was a circular cavern around 50m across, inside which was a deep shaft disappearing off downwards. A dull red glow was visible below, and PRIS sensors suggested that an off-the-scale energy source was also down there. A drone sent to investigate was stopped by some kind of force field. Similarlities to a room in the Mossyface base suggested that this was some kind of power station, feeding via conduits below the bases to "connectors" such as the one at Mossyface, in the other bases.
The end stop along the north-west track turned out to be the original Mountain of Dreams site, now pretty much confirmed as a device for terraforming (or Ancient-forming) the planet. It could certainly control the weather; it was possible that it could also strip the entire atmosphere off the planet. As they had felt at the time, it was indeed a deeply dangerous piece of equipment in the wrong hands.
The first stop on the north-east line was differently-shaped to the others. A long rectangular gallery extended away from both sides of the track, and two large bays held slightly different subway cars, designed with a big open bay instead of the seats.
The galleries had large racks running down them, which were reminiscent of something. A moment's thought brought up the memories of the Servitor racks under the Mountain of Dreams. This, however, was much bigger, and the machines stored on them looked utterly different. More than two metres high, each had digitgrade legs, heavy armour plating, a featureless but distinctly Droyne-shaped head and some sort of tube mounted on the back of each forearm. There were fifty of them, and at the end of each gallery were storage bins with spare parts. Oh, and they were all black.
The rats reported that they couldn't 'connect' to the psionic controls here; they had security measures of some sort.
The rats were definitely uncomfortable here. The best they could manage was that it was "psychically troubling"; feeling "echoes of violence". They weren't the only ones; all the Cats were definitely nervous here. Other than checking to see if they were attached to their racks - they were - there was no interest in meddling with them. It seemed quite likely that, if inadvertently activated, security units like these might be very unlikely to consider any of them legitimate occupants of the base; and they looked equipped to make a very definitive point about it.
The bins of spares were another matter. Nevada went from bin to bin, selecting pieces, until he had collected what looked like a complete unit laid out on the floor. Everything seemed to be there, except for the brain and power supply. Although he wasn't going to get a complete unit, he loaded the pieces into their subway car to take for future study. He included several spare tubes - tentatively identified as weapons. These were featureless, flat-ended and with a cluster of contacts at the back for connection to the main machine.
Moving on, they were startled when the car suddenly started to judder; it had been impossible to tell it was moving previously. The rats brought it to a halt, and - after some fiddling - brought up a holoscreen showing the view forwards. It was green, murky and distorted. The car was under water - sea water by the look of it.
Backing up, they reversed out of the water and back into dry tunnel, and climbed out. The sides of the tunnel where it descended into the water were stained and eroded, suggesting that the tunnel had been flooded for a very, very long time. Cross-checking with the ship's sensors suggested that the subway was heading out under the sea here; by the looks of it, the sea had finally broken in.
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Several of the small maintainance drones (which for some reason had been christened "skutters") could be seen here, under the water, unmoving and looking broken. Possibly they were not designed to work underwater - or to know that. Certainly, no repairs could be seen.
They turned back.
The first station on the SE line opened into a long gallery, studded with myriads of 20cm cylinders, all of which glowed a pale blue. At the end was a huge circular metal plate with strange patterns on it. Again, the rats could not connect to any of it. A tentative identification of a memory bank or computer of some kind was the best anyone could do.
The tunnel was blocked further down, and more of the small cylindrical maintainance drones were patiently and futily working here, trying to excavate and repair the damage. They were capable of maintaining the base, but this level of earth-moving was beyond their specification.
The Cats brought down one of their mining drones, and with that cut through the rubble. After fifty metres, the tunnel opened out again and they were able to proceed down to the next chamber.This was another circular, domed space, with a deep shaft in the centre disappearing into nowhere. Poised above this was a teardrop-shaped object, supported on several arched pylons that held it above the shaft with a pointed probe facing downwards. There were no accessible controls here either; the psionic ones were secured beyond what the rats could hack.
The rats felt the same here, psychically troubled. Eyeing the structure, the Cats became somehow sure that what they were looking at was some kind of weapon. Once again, they felt no appetite for meddling with it.
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The final station was the one further out down the SW line; Mossyface being the inner station on that line. In a pattern becoming familiar, a holographic globe rotated slowly in the centre, with six small seats arranged in a circle around it. Each had the now-familiar silver cap and some rather more extensive physical controls - including a trackerball.
The globe had markers displayed all over it, indicating the presence of everything significant on or over the world - including the Long and Short Walks. A very little experimentation showed that the consoles could be instructed to "tag" some or all of these items, and everyone had a very strong feeling that there was more than a little connection between this and the area they had dubbed "The Gun". They were pretty sure they had found the system defence system. "Oh, I want to test this!" said Nevada, but even his heart wasn't really in it. It just felt too dangerous to mess about with.
After loading onto the Long Walk the assorted souvenirs they had obtained, the crew settled down for a discussion. Nevada and Sturnn were in favour of passing everything they had learned on to the local government. Wombat, with his Scout sociological training, was more cautious, pointing out that this was a very 'young' administration and wondering if they were capable of being responsible with such momentous potential. However, the experience the Cats had had with the Tarsans - especially their friend Haydn Poole - drew them to the conclusion that they were; and that in any case, this was something that belonged to Tarsus, and it was up to them to make the decisions about it. For a start, any proper analysis of the sites was going to require specialists in Ancient technology, and probably deployment of covert psionics. Both things were available to the Imperium, but neither Tarsus nor the Cats with Guns were able to provide them.
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A call was put through to Haydn, requesting him to come to the ranch and tell no-one where he was going. He was startled at this, and would have been distrustful if it had come from anyone else. The fact that it was from the Cats - and included mention of a barbecue and beers - was enough to convince him, and he duly arrived.
After some dinner and small talk, the meeting got down to business. Wombat looked levelly at Poole. "We have discovered some dangerous things," he said seriously. Haydn gulped. With that as a leader, he was shown down into the base and taken for a tour via the subway. As none of the cats could actually work it, Nevada had persuaded five of the rats into a backpack which was surreptitiously brought along to allow them to make the subway and doors work.
He was fascinated with the labs where his world had probably been shaped, awed by the scale of the central hub, made very nervous by the warbots and outright terrified by the Gun. "It is a very good job," he said at last, "that we didn't have this knowledge during the recent war. Because someone would probably have used it without knowing what it would do."
He squared his shoulders. "I shall brief the rest of the Government on this, and have it all classified and kept secret. We'll probably need to provide the Scout Service access, as they know it's here, but I think we can rely on them to be discreet and sensible with it." Wombat nodded in agreement.
Haydn grimaced. "My nightmares thank you for showing me this," he said darkly.